Saturday 31 May 2008

finished

I am happily contemplating the wall of bookshelf in the rumpus room. We finally finished putting it up this afternoon: it was begun about two months ago. It looks good, tidy and clean, especially given that I bought the bits off ebay in a frenzied last-minute impulse bid, without really measuring the wall or reading the description properly, and in the event it had to be supplemented with bits of cheap pine shelving from the swedish house of mass-produced bedlam. As of today there remains about 50cm of unoccupied bookshelf in the house, so let's say that's roughly 25 more books. After that no more books allowed in.

I would show you a picture but there is a backlog of unshowed pictures to be cleared so instead here is a picture of the chooks



taken about a fortnight ago on a day when I was really, really angry with them because while we were out they tunnelled under the fence of the vegie patch and completely destroyed it - insouciantly ripped out all 30 of the 20cm high snow pea plants, ate the lettuce, silverbeet, spinach and kohl rabi seedlings, scratched up the young radishes and spring onions, dug themselves some craters and grovelled around in them with gay abandon. The only things they left alone were the baby broad bean plants. Everything else was a write-off. I grew all those vegies from seed and it took ages, because it's been cold at night and the seedlings are slow to grow in this weather.

(wicked chooks are standing on a raised bed we built and filled with soil, there is a tarp over it so they can't throw all the soil out on the ground, this doesn't stop them trying.)

So it was a sad day. After a bit I decided I would not be defeated by a pair of snivelling chickens, I just went to the nursery and bought some seedlings and bunged them in, so I did that, and here's how it looked afterward: runty and lame, but not like a bomb site at least.




Meanwhile more seedlings are coming along on the seedling table. These were planted in mid April. It's called 'really fecking ridiculously slow food.' Months of work for a few mouthfuls of lettuce.

5 comments:

Kirsty said...

Bad chickens! I hope they gave you extra eggs--perhaps not quite the way you wanted to eat those greens.

On the slow food front, just this afternoon I harvested a handful of rocket leaves that I've since eaten scattered over a home-made pizza. I was so excited by this, my second rocket harvest, that I forgot to take a photo, which you know is not like me at all.

Mel said...

I feel extremely angry with your chickens and they have done nothing to me. I hope that at least you picked them up and shook them until an egg fell out, or some such.

Ampersand Duck said...

As of today there remains about 50cm of unoccupied bookshelf in the house, so let's say that's roughly 25 more books. After that no more books allowed in.

*snort*

lucy tartan said...

Kirsty, are you finding the rocket grows back after you cut it? I can't even get mine to grow bigger than 10cm long.

Mel I should have shaken them or something. I did threaten them with death and donating their corpses to KFC.

Anonymous said...

I bet those chooks are nervous now!
Hats off and great respect to you growing all your vegies from seed - very hard core.
I'm an avid vegie gardener but apart from a few seed packets all all mine are Bunnings punnets....and planted by moon cycles which I can recommend.