Self care by growing a garden

Chicken stirfry on the menu in the near future @Former-Member

I am a fan of free range organic chicken @Former-Member,

Had a bit of turkey recently also, my mum has some turkies who seem to think they are rabbits so has a excess. Not complaining when I dont have to clean them either😁 just enjou the end result .

@Determined@Former-MemberI've found that I can't do the "dressing" if I'm otherwise under stress. So despite knowing they would taste way better than anything from the supermarket, I've passed on offers of "soup roosters" on our town's facewhatsit page. Have harvested our home grown bunnies in the past too, but not recently. Our beautiful big male bunny died recently, and we'd never managed to breed from him. The couple of times we tried, the females were "unresponsive". They're very good at making it known when they're just not interested. We're planning on getting another male soon, but he'll be more pet-sized. Flemish Giants and NZ Whites are great meat bunnies, and we're happy enough to treat "breeding stock" as pets (but not the "pot bunnies"), but they're a bit big for cuddling, especially of they get nervous and kick. Ouchies.

Got the July Gardening Australia magazine @Smc if you can sqiz a look in the what's on in July, hidden in Qld is a learning day being held not far from Ballarat with Jeremy Coleby-Williams as well as an orchid do in the Geelong region.

Couple of things on in Brisbane area @Determined nothing further north though @Shaz51@and nothing in the West@Adge.

Rose pruning in SA @eudemonism and a succulent event in Sydney. @Faith-and-Hope if you do plan on a trip to the nation's capital there is an arty event "Warm Trees" at the National Arboretum 30 June - 29 July - knitted flora and fauna of NZ.

Thanks @Former-Member. Both the event with Jeremy Coleby-Williams and the orchid show came up at our garden club meeting. As an affiliated club, we get notices from the RHSV, and clubs in the general district share around their events too. I'm not planning on Jeremy's talk, big names = expensive events. He's good, but I'd wonder if his combined English and Brisbane gardening experience would be relevant to us.
We've got a few really good gardeners in the local area, some relatively famous, some not (but still really good) who are willing to share their gardens and knowledge. David Glenn is the nurseryman/horticulturalist behind Lambley's, north of Ballarat. Also originally an Englishman, had a nursery in the Dandenongs, then had the shock of moving to a windy ex-potato farm in Central Vic! It's near a district called Blowhard- say no more.... Our club has had guided tours of his gardens on more than one occasion. He's good. Knowledgable, local and approachable. His wife Criss Canning is an artist who uses their gardens as a source of subject matter for her still life paintings (see below...), along with a huge collection of attractive bric-a-brac.

I was thinking of passing on the orchid event info to my sister, who's keen on orchids, but it's happening down past Frankston. Totally the wrong side of Melbourne for us. (South West outer suburbs). There's smaller but still very well run orchid events held in big centres like Bendigo and Ballarat, so they're much more accessible from here. I've killed most of the orchids I've tried to grow, but have a healthy potful of native Greenhood orchids that I bought from one of our garden club speakers a couple of years ago. I think being a local species makes all the difference. It's perfectly suited to frosty winters and dry summers, which have been the killers for other types I've tried. In fact, you have to let it stay pretty much dry in summer, or it rots out.

The bizarre green-black iris in this Criss Canning painting is one of the ones David Glenn showed our club on a visit. It only flowers for a short time, and doesn't do well in pots, so its fairly uncommon.