first winter musings

Winter’s well and truly here, and with it the best and worst of life in Fryerstown. I love winter but the house here is so, so cold and so hard to warm up, and this first burst always brings dread at the three or four months of denying discomfort that’s to come – if I won Tattslotto it would be a designed-from-scratch passive solar house for me. So much for the charms of our relocated suburban 40s weatherboard!

There’s still things we should do around the house – blocking cracks, dividing open spaces with curtains – but they’re limited. Might be the year to track down that temporary plastic ‘double glazing’ that gets Americans through their Boston and New York winters. In the meantime, I’ll be packing away the cotton throws and cushions, in their cool blues and greens, and dusting off the rugs and covers in golds and oranges.

But the winter positives? Bright sunny hours through the middle of the day, all the lovelier for glowing through morning fog and sparkling off dewy ground. Greening up all over. Soft moist ground where we’re used to sun-hardened clay.

Slow progress with a few weekend jobs – starting to prep planting areas for coming fruit trees, dividing and planting out iris rhizomes (much harder than it looks in the books, especially into our half inch of topsoil!), belatedly putting up roo/wallaby/rabbit guard around the newest allocasuarina. Chris a bit alarmed to see me scratching out a swale and piling up manure for the pomegranate to be planted just beyond the front porch – I had to promise that if we ever build a deck we can build around a tree, and it’s a tree that will keep the low summer sun off that west-facing loungeroom window (which can’t hurt cooling that room, but will even please Lydia by keeping the glare off the telly!).

Working outside on Saturday, the chill southwest wind was biting. Windbreaks from those cold winter winds would be worthwhile, though it’s the hot northerlies that have been taking our attention. There’s minimal protection from the southwest - it’s the only direction we look across open paddocks to the horizon - and the side lane and our main gate limit possible plantings. Shorter, closer, fast-growing windbreaks for the more critical areas may be the go – acacias along the drive to temper winds coming down into the grove, and perhaps rosemary hedge beside the (yet-to-be-planted) irrigated orchard.

And winter being a good time to curl up with books near a heater, lots of new planning and (belated) research. Not sure of the wisdom of ordering almonds now – the plants should be fine but our late frosts will compromise fruiting. But ordered they are, so I guess I’ll plant them and find out.

Have also drawn up a new plan for the veg bed, and if I can just resist the call of bare soil and the promise of fresh veg to come for long enough to restructure it, I think I’ve got a workable plan. Picking up ideas and inspiration from both Katie’s and Lisa’s properties, will build in wicking worm beds and try a plan of five radial beds, with the idea that (a) down the track they might suit chook tractoring with potential to move a structure through the centre (like drawing a 5-pointed star) rather than lifting over and across growing beds, which Lisa found difficult; and (b) that will create wedge-shaped spaces between beds that might accommodate overhead fruit trees to help shade the beds. Failure to establish fruit trees within veg beds last year suggests I took the idea of planting under fruit trees a bit too literally – though delaying planting out can’t have helped, or forgetting that if the trees might eventually provide some shade to the veg, the trees themselves would need some shading while young and still getting established.

Am also turning my mind to redesign out the back. The basic ideas are all there and sound, looking at the original design, but I realise I’ve been too guided by what’s already there – the pergola uprights corresponding with a small change of level that divides the area into a kind of entertaining area further from the house and a working/access area closer. Instead, looking at the shade the pergola can offer, the shot would be to create a level area that goes under and beyond the pergola with narrower access path beyond (between pizza oven and barbecue) and along house wall. Plenty to do, and time to knuckle down and do it!