Melbourne weather: the week ahead

I think the wonderful First Dog on the Moon has accurately summed up my feelings regarding the Age online weather forecast for the next seven days in his latest cartoon.

Our back courtyard faces north and west, with very little shade. Maybe I'll bring the fledgling herb garden inside for a few days so the plants don't burn to a crisp?!

(Oh, and a huge thanks to all the kind souls who have offered me gardening advice. Will be putting some of your creative ideas into practice soon!)

Fledgling Herb Garden: aaaaargh!

Okay, so, barely two weeks ago my fledgling herb garden looked like this:


And now it looks like this:


Readers, I beseech you in the name of all that is good and pure in this world: WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY MINT??


I have NO idea about this gardening malarky. Is it a disease? Is it a swarm of invisible aphids or locusts? Is it a Very Hungry Caterpillar??


I took some photos after dark with the flash, in the hopes that the identity of the culprit may be clearer. If you feel so inclined, please click on any of the photos and then click on "All Sizes" to zoom in.


Whatever the evil bastard is, it has also had a go at molesting my basil. Not even my docile innocent little sage was spared!


I currently put nothing on the herbs except water... do I need some sort of pesticide??? PLEASE HELP!

(On the plus side, the parsley and chilli plant seem to have been spared, as has the Vietnamese mint which is getting taller and taller each day.)

An update on Melbourne Gastronome and her fledgling herb garden

...Well, we're a week into the new year and this is only my first post of 2009. So much for my grand plans of clearing the blog backlog this week. There is however, a very good reason why I've been neglecting you, gentle reader: I've been miserably sick, with tonsillitis.

I won't go into all the feverish post-tonsillectomy tonsillitis details (don't you hate it when you get sick and all you can talk about is how sick you are?), but suffice it to say that from the 29th of December til about two days ago it felt like I was swallowing razor blades with every swallow, and I could not bear to even think about food, let alone get excited about actually eating it.

But I am on the mend! I am gradually rejoining the land of the living (albeit with much resentment on my part that so many precious days of annual leave have been WASTED and should really have been sick leave instead) and am once more inspired to write about food. But first, a little update...

Despite being sick, I enjoyed the New Years Eve shindig that DJ and I hosted Chez Gwynneth (being dosed up to the eyeballs on pseudoephedriney Sudafed helped). Excitingly, we now have a barbecue! It's on long-term loan from T, and was kindly delivered to our doorstep by J and his dad. DJ cleaned it and we fired it up on NYE, only to realise once it was warmed up and all our guests had arrived that we possessed none of the necessary barbecuing accoutrements - such as BBQ tongs, for example.

I rootled around in the second drawer down, but could only find a set of teeny tiny tongs I'd impulse bought a few months ago at Minimax (because they were very cutely and conveniently arranged in a bowl next to the cash register, and cost only a dollar). Our friend A made valiant use of them, despite their miniature size - that's my hand holding them in the picture below to give you some sense of perspective.


For Christmas I gave DJ the ridiculously large shiny red pepper grinder below - it quite dwarfs our poor little salt shaker (sorry Scott, no sea salt - what a bad white person I am!) :)


And what of my Fledgling Herb Garden, I hear you ask? What progress has been made there over the last three and a half weeks?

Well, I'll show you. To refresh your memory, this is how it looked on the 14th...


...and this is how it looked this morning. At first glance, not bad progress eh? Just before Christmas I was inspired to add a few more herbs: in addition to lemon thyme, Vietnamese mint, Italian flat leaf parsley, sage and two lots of basil I now also have common mint and rosemary, plus a Thai chilli plant. But let's look a little closer, shall we?


That Italian flat leaf parsley does NOT look well. Should I move it into the shade? I arranged all the plants on the back step for the purposes of photographing them, but so far I've had only the Viet mint and the chilli plant in the shade, and the others in more or less direct sunlight.


Oh, and that common mint already seems hellbent on world domination. Just as well the rosemary seems happy to take up very little space. Any gardening tips would be greatly appreciated!


Note: Melbourne Gastronome's address has changed from http://melbournegastronome.blogspot.com to http://www.melbournegastronome.com - please update any bookmarks/feeds accordingly!

Fledgling Herb Garden 2: The Re-fledgling

Last summer I set up a gorgeous little fledgling herb garden, despite my complete lack of know-how in all matters gardening. "Surely I can keep a bunch of herbs alive, right?" I thought to myself. Well, not quite. It goes without saying that I was devastated when I discovered that herbs have a tendency to (a) go to seed, and (b) die in winter. I don't mind telling you that by September, my pots were looking pretty fucking woeful.

So I set up my new fledgling herb garden last weekend... but alas, as you can see, while the Vietnamese mint, Italian flat leaf parsley, sage and one of the basil plants are thriving, the lemon thyme and the other basil plant on the left have already met with a little accident. See, they were positioned directly under the edge of the eaves of our house... and yesterday's ridiculously monsoonal weather (Tropical Depression Suri, housemate DJ calls it) meant that torrents of water overflowing from the drainpipe were pouring directly down onto my poor little herbs, sending potting mix flying, exposing the roots and battering the itty bitty leaves. :-(

A swift transfusion this evening of replacement potting mix, pinched from Mum and Dad's garden shed when I went over there for paella and pinot, means they're looking a bit happier NOW, but how long will that last??

Stay tuned for the next hair-raising installment of FHG!