More Siena dresses

 I have managed to squeeze in a little sewing time at our new house, but these two dresses for some reason were impossible! And I haven't sewn since forcing myself to finish them. The weird thing is that these are the Siena dresses which I've sewn before - see here and here.

The first one is the beautiful Aria from Frankie Bear. It is such a cute fabric and even cuter as a toddler dress.

The other one is the Bluey family from Spotlight, and is the dress our daughter will choose every time we open her wardrobe! The ribbon trim at the bottom was a lucky op shop find.

I still haven't found a good place to take photos, these are in front of the concrete rainwater tank - it looks cool, but the sun was hitting my camera creating those light effects on the Bluey dress. If my plants ever grow this spot won't work for photos in the future, perhaps I should leave a gap in this garden?

My native bees are here

 My sister-in-law looked after our bees for us until the weather cooled down as I was worried about the heat here as we don't have a nice cool spot for them. But now they're finally here so that means we're officially moved in (we really should finish unpacking the shed)! Don't mind Archie in the background - he's loving all the sticks that fall on windy days.

This is the coolest spot in the yard thanks to the existing small trees and next doors lovely shade trees. You can see a few of my orchids as well - a good spot to keep orchids is also a good spot to keep native bees! I plan to add in bottle brush, geisha and my finger limes in between the existing trees. It should create a nice curved green wall and give us some privacy as well. I'm sure Archie will also appreciate the extra shade and shelter from the strong winds we get.

I've shared photos of our bee garden at our old house. They should be happy here as we've seen plenty of stingless, blue banded, resin and leafcutter bees, plus lots of different wasps and hoverflies - even those beautiful cuckoo wasps.

One sunflower bloomed

 One of the first things I planted when we moved was a whole heap of sunflower seeds, and the rabbits ate most of them. Only one survived long enough to have a full bloom free of nibbles, then it got chewed one night, leaving just enough stem to put in a bottle of water.

Thankfully it is still happy enough and the native bees are absolutely loving it - obviously my next project is some fencing around the flower pit!

Elderberry planted

 We've moved the chickens a few times, hopefully the lastest spot is going to stick for awhile, that electric netting is heavy and takes me forever to set up!

This pot of elderberry cuttings have a spot in the ground in the chicken yard, and it is another experimental planting. I was a bit lazy this time as elderberry isn't easy to kill and I have more that I can take cuttings from if it doesn't survive. Because of the slope, I dug a hole a bit bigger than the plant and mixed some clay into compost before planting. Then I made a mini swale by mounding the extra clay around the back to stop the water running straight down the hill. The clay will help store the moisture and give it a chance to soak in, which should really benefit the elderberry as they are rather thirsty plants.

The main reason I wanted to get some in the ground early is so that I can use it to create mulch. It grew so fast at our old house and bounces straight back after a trim. My plan is to coppice this one and repeat every winter. I plan to pollard the mulberry to use as mulch every winter as well, I want to pollard rather than coppice so it will have some nice strong branches for our daughter to climb one day.

It's a multi use tree - mulch, berries and flowers! The chickens will enjoy any berries that fall, and they'll appreciate the shade in summer.

Mother's day candle holders

 We live 15 minutes from a main town, but it really is limited with what shops there are, as well as what they stock. Needless to say I am very quickly learning that I have to be a lot more organised - unless I feel like driving 40 minutes to the bigger shops - which I don't as I hate driving!

Unfortunately I was not organised as usual, so while I planned to paint terracotta pots with Lily for her Grandmother's and Great Grandmother's, we had to settle on these candle holders from Kmart. Which made the zygocactus I bought a bit pointless (yes, I am great at buying plants without even thinking about pots).

Our two year old did a bit of painting once or twice a day until we had enough paint on there (if this pot happens to move into the brush that the toddler is holding,  she is still the one painting right?!). They turned out pretty cute, and we already have our plan for next year, assuming I buy everything in advance!