Make- Grow- Thrift

I haven't been blogging much lately as the challenge of indulging in paid work has left little time for much else at all. Even my housework and laundry is 'way behind' now. I actually will work 12 days straight as I worked all last weekend. The election was on Saturday and Queensland has a new Premier but our work continues behind the scenes. Somehow I just don't want to miss out the usual Monday feature on Jodie's Blog  so I've 'cobbled' togther a few ideas that fit with the theme.

Firstly, my bunch of flowers. I grew a pentas bush from a cutting, a number of years ago. During the drought I lost a number of these plants; I had red, pink and mauve ones, all grown from cuttings. Eventually I only had one sad little mauve plant  left. With the rains last year and this, the shrub has just grown wild and is covered with blossoms. They are a great plant for cutting flowers from as the blooms last quite a few days. My SIL also grew a plant from a cutting of my shrub and hers is doing just as well.

My next photo (taken in the dark) is an old black plastic rubbish which used to be my makeshift compost bin when I rented a little house 12 years ago. I had cut the bottom of the bin out, turned it upside down and then put the lid over the cut out part.

It's a bit dark to take photos but this is my old black plastic bin

When I came to live at this house I didn't need it as a compost bin any more and it just sat unused beside the 'proper' compost bins that we now have. Then last year I was looking for some big containers in which to grow potatoes. I decided to use the old black bin and I got a lovely big crop out of the 3 plants I put in. A few weeks ago when the weather started to cool down I put a seed potato into the old black bin. On Saturday morning I found that it had green shoots, so that was a lovely surprise.

The little green shoots of my latest potato plant. It's amazing how much light that little torch emits!

Now that I'm working (albeit temporarily) I've started to make time each morning to wander around the garden; pulling a weed out here and there, checking all the flowers on the eggplants and the capsicum plants. Checking the lettuce seedlings, the silverbeet, the herbs and training the sweet potato vines back from the lawn. I find it just helps so much that peaceful time in the garden...just like my dad used to do after work each day.