While we wait for the steel frames for our new pottery building to be delivered. They have been delayed twice now. I decided to build a small herb garden inside the new orchard. This southern end of the covered orchard frame is quite close to the kitchen. Much closer than the actual vegetable garden, which is a good 100 metre walk away. It’s a long way to go and get a sprig of parsley or a pinch of thyme leaves.

This took very little effort or time, just a few barrow loads of compost and a low wire netting fence to keep the chook out from scratching all the seeds and seedlings out of the ground.

This is the ideal spot, so close to the house, and totally enclosed, a herb border along the fence line. It got me to thinking… It would be quite pleasant to have a bit of colour here too. Directly in line of sight from the kitchen window. I decided to build a small cottage garden full of flowers, just a little something to lift my spirits. Flowers bring joy to the heart. I feel that I’m in need of some joy just now.

My friend Adrianne Ades sent us a lovely gift of several packets of flower seeds last year straight after the fire. I broadcast them into the orchard site in autumn, along with some red and white clover seeds. The clover came up straight away. I got it in just in time to get some growth before the winter set in. It’s still doing really well. So well, that the clover is smothering and out-competing the flowers. I keep looking around as I walk through the orchard while watering the newly planted bare-rooted fruit trees. But as yet nothing that I can recognise. I’m ever-hopfull that something will show up in the spring/summer.

So to this end, over the weekend, I ploughed up a small patch of weeds, bare earth and some stragling grasses. It’s an area that hasn’t recovered at all since the fire. It got pretty hot there in that spot. Janine has been wanting to plant a hedge of natives for herself, plus for the birds and bees, so we merged both ideas, planting the hedge of boronia, mint bush and a bunch of other small flowering natives along the orchard fence and my flowers out further, so that we can see them both in a scaled, tiered effect.

We got it all done in one day, but needed to spend another day to get the fence built, so as to keep Hillary the chook and the rabbits out. The longest time was spent with the crow bar and post hole shovel digging the post holes. I was given some 2nd hand galvanised pipe fence posts that were just about the right size, so that is what we used, waste not, want not. In the past, I might have preferred to see some wooden posts, but not now! Everything has to be steel or other non-flammable materials.

I made the fence out of left over bits of re-cycled chook wire netting and the old orchard gate that survived the fire. Now we water and wait.