Early spring

My first jonquil flowered a couple of weeks ago, just after the winter solstice. It's been a weird winter: warm most of the time with occasional bouts of freezing  snowyness. My fruit trees' buds are swelling as a result, and I'm a bit worried that they'll bloom and then get frosted off. Anyway, it's nice to see the (damp) jonquils brightening up my patch of skeletal fruit trees. 

a corny tale

Last night, I ate my first home grown cob of corn. I've been watching the strictly vertical stalks grow hairy bulges, not at all sure about when to pick and eat them. The first bulge's hairy top had dried up so I peeled back the layers to check its readiness. I found beautiful yellow tiles.

The corn was soft, subtle and sweet. It had not developed all the way up the stem, and I'm not sure why. Otherwise, it was perfect.



I've also become re-obsessed with tabbouleh. I've had parsley reseeding all over the garden, which has supplied me with lots of happy green plates. My tomatoes have finally started getting into the groove, and I add those to the parsley along with spring onions and mint, which I've also grown. I also add burghul, the juice of half a lemon, some panfried pinenuts and olive oil.

Newspaper mulch, weeds and those birds (you know the ones...)

This was going to be a happy post.  I was going to wax lyrical about the benefits of using newspaper as a weed prohibitor and mulch.  But alas, the blackbirds have hatched for the season.

It takes quite awhile to lay newspaper, particularly if it's around those stupid roses in my front yard which are thankless at best, leaving marks on your wrists that suggest that you're not really coping with life (I know I should just rip the pink-flowering devils out, but I feel guilty at the prospect of killing them).  You have to water the ground underneath, lay some compost, then layer wet newspaper over the surface of the compost (it takes longer than you think), and cover it in pine bark, sugar cane mulch, straw or other similar mulch, so that it doesn't dry out too much or fly away into your anally retentive neighbour's backyard.

The newspaper is fantastic for keeping down weeds and will break down readily, feeding your plants.  Excuse my scepticism, but I believe it's also a far more efficient way of recycling newspaper than the council bins.

However, I didn't take into account the blackbirds.  I can hear them making spring babies in my gutters in the morning.  By mid afternoon, they're digging up the newspaper: scratched up flakes of Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull lying in the dirt amongst the hybernating roses. 

The weeds are rebuilding their empire, and so Spring begins.