Mildura Farmers Market

It's a big job getting ready for the market, bringing up the plants from the nursery area is made a bit easier with this trolley, 4 tins at a time. I take at least 12 tins every market. (sometimes more)

The car becomes a lush garden...looks and smells good!

Every available space in the car is utilised, bunches of herbs in their old sewing machine draws slot down the side of the tins of plants. 

My sister Fiona sells the best olive oil in the district, and lemon cordial. We save seeds from the plants in the garden and Fiona packages them up for our gardening customers. 

I sell bunches of fresh herbs, in season vegetables and bunches of flowers. My Zinnias are blooming  beautiful at the moment. Basil bunches are by far the most popular fresh herb.Corriander comes a close second but is very hard (impossible) to grow here in summer. I also dry herbs and package them up for sale. I think people are more comfortable with dried herbs....It's like they know what to do with the dried version.
Set up takes just over an hour and sometimes if the customers come early we don't actually get all the signs out. We are just about ready to start trading here. Waiting for the early birds

It was a good day. The customers did sleep in a bit and were a bit slow to all come out. Overnight rain might have put a few off but it did turn out to be a good day and worth all the effort. Thank goodness as it has been 5 weeks since the last market.

That's just a bit too long between pay days.

Above average rainfall brings...

WEEDS!

Wild lettuce that is way taller than me!

I took advantage of the damp ground and pulled weeds this week.

I had some fans watching my progress.

They waded across the paddock and ate everything I threw over the fence.

I think the wild lettuce is their favourite but they also ate all the other weeds.

If I weed three corner jack plants and throw them over the fence they will eat those as well.

There are very few weeds along the fence line as they clean them up all the time.

The fence is supposed to be electric but there must be a short on the line somewhere. The camels are hard on a fence that has lost it's spark.

Mulch down to try and reduce the weeds in the rows. I am excited by the promise of many Zinnias. 

I wonder if I can get away with pruning my chrysanthemums one more time before waiting for May flowers?

I have room here for a couple more rows.....I have run out of space in this garden but I think I may have run out of strength to clear these weeds............maybe after the next rain.

This is Winston. He is the Grandfather of this herd. A gentle giant, curious, companionable and handsome. The head of the family.

Lewis on the left and Linga on the right. They were very happy about my weeding and patiently waited for me to weed a large pile before I threw them over the fence. Winston does get the lions share but these two did alright.

Now it is too wet!

This has to be a once in a lifetime rain storm. We have recorded 149 ml over the last 24hours and it is still raining. This garden bed was designed to keep flood waters out. Built after the 1992 inundation saw us with 6 sandbags high around the house. The garden was designed to help take the stress out of an extremely high river but it has had the opposite effect with this phenomenal rain event, however there is little chance that the water will get high enough to come in the house. 

There will be no car parking down here for a while. 

The camels and sheep just have to share their paddock with the ducks.

The wet lands are overflowing. Etiwanda Ave is underwater.

I read today that the average rain for February is 19 ml. We are well and truly past that. Lets hope it stops raining soon. I can hardly believe I have said that. The drought has certainly broken.

It's too darned hot!

It's too hot for the garden today, 3rd day over 40 degrees Celcius I thought I would show off some of my pots. There is a bit of theme....This is a working tea pot. The saddle lifts up for filling with tea leaves and hot water. The tea does come out of the camels mouth.

Bookends...If you could read the titles on the books the whole piece would make more sense. "A girls experiment", "Wider horizons", "Nothing ventured"
I have many camel pots, small, medium and large. I must organise a themed exhibition and invite some camel fanciers. I am also very keen on Raku firing. That's where the pots are taken out of the kiln at 1000degrees Celcius and placed in sawdust to complete the firing in an oxygen reduced atmosphere.
All work is then just decorative but ancient looking. This is a silver backed pendant with a rune theme.

That's just a small example of the pottery I do. I have been making things out of clay for about 30 years and I still really enjoy it. Lucky aren't I.