Lentil and Vegetable Tomato Soup

I may have inadvertently prepared the family to survive without meat. So, I hope we will survive the absence of meat during the grocery panic buying period.

We have had regular vegetarian and legume based dinner for 2-3 weeknights in a week for a few years now. 

A very simple vegetarian soup. Onion, carrot, zucchini, potatoes, dried green lentil, tomato and powdered sweet paprika. Zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes and bay leaves from the garden:

I added powdered Astragalus root as well into the soup to help with immunity and recovery in the time of uncertainty.

Alternative Method for Immunity Booster Brew

I tried another method to brew the Immunity Booster herbal drink. This time I cooked them gently on the stove top. Same ingredient as last time, orange, lemon, turmeric, dried orange peel and a few herbs from the garden, dried olive leaves, yarrow and calendula flower:

Lemon Honey Icypoles

My 5 year old had recently started school and he seemed to take on this icypoles craze. He asked me to make icypoles for at home. So, it seemed appropriate for me to prepare a beneficial icypoles during this time of virus crisis.

I recently bought this icypoles mould from Avanti and last weekend was the first time I tried to use them.

I decided to make honey and lemon icypoles.

Lemon rind was peeled and drying at the moment, for herbal tea.

The lemon juice:

Add honey to taste:

Combine honey, lemon juice and add water:

Pour into moulds:

Cose lids and freeze:

Lastly, washed the seeds and dry. I'm going to try to plant them. When life gives you lemons, you take as much as you can out of them!

Garden Bed Transformation

After a few years of gardening without raised garden beds, I finally decided to invest in them and bought 4 Birdies Garden Beds when they were on sale before Christmas 2019. Because my plants were already planted, I had to wait until the spring crops finished before installing them.

Garden Bed 1 was finally cleared last weekend and it was time to install the raised garden bed on Bed 1.

My favourite place to shop for soil is Soilworx, they are non branded, great quality and good value. 

This is the 2.5m long, 55cm wide, 38cm height raised garden bed from Birdies, in Slate Grey:

I felt super awesome when I found out the length of the bed fits nicely along the back fence and the original garden bed length.

Before placing the raised garden bed, I digged out as much existing garden soil as I can to use them in layering the inside of the raised garden bed.

This is what remained of the garden bed as we placed the raised bed in its position. I decided not to fully cover the bottom with cardboard as I don't want to block access of the existing worms and bugs. I just needed to block the grass roots, so I put cardboard on one side of the raised bed.

We used the box of the raised bed as the cardboard:

Now comes the layering. First is the red gum mulch:

Two layers of Garden Soil and Hay each. I used the garden soil that I digged out from the original garden.

And Aquamax Water Saving Mulch from Soilworx.

Another layer of soil, I used Veggie Mix from Soilworx. I originally wanted to use their Garden Soil mix, but they ran out of stock. The Veggie Mix is awesome too, especially because it has mushroom compost in it.

I added plant cuttings from clearing my garden beds yesterday and add in the Aquamax Water Saving Hay on top of it:

Finally, compost from our bin and final top up of the Veggie Mix:

I called back my seed planting master who went on bickie break to commence his job:

We planted Broad Beans, Snow Peas and Shelling Peas, with Rosemary, Chamomile and Parsley as companion plants.

Lastly, Pea Straw Mulch also from Soilworx:

Now, 3 more garden beds to go, just need to wait for the plants to finish producing before doing another Soilworx run to get supply.

No Rice, Dig Up Potatoes!!

This is what happened when your rice stock is low and you can't buy more because people are panic buying. We went to a few stores and can't find stock, so I returned home and started digging up the garden bed to forage for random potatoes remaiing from 2 years ago. 

Note to self - buy seed potatoes this year. It will be awesome to not rely on stores.

My Super Awesome Neighbour Gave Us Figs!!

I happened to be at the front garden on Sunday, watering the garden, when my neighbour was outside as well. They have this humongous fig tree out at the front. Passer-bys have been stealing their figs because the tree is right next to the pedestrian footpath. Anyway, she was collecting the ripe figs and insisted in giving them to me. I tried to give her one of my zucchini but she refused. 

The figs are sooo good!! I've been thinking to plant the tree myself, but it is so wide and takes up so much space. I need a bigger garden.

Immunity Booster Floral Herbal Drink

Just a bit of natural immunity booster in the wake of uncertain times. This is from the batch of orange, lemon and turmeric that I prepared, packed and froze a few weeks ago.

I brewed this for my 5 year old and added some honey. He drank it really fast and said "Yummm!!"

For mine, I added some dried olive leaves, calendula flowers and rose petals.

GentleSoulGnome Hiking Camping Trip to Apollo Bay Elliot's Ridge

We had a fantastic opportunity to go to a hiking camping trip this last Labour Day long weekend. It was a super awesome trip, the place is beautiful and the hike wasn't too hard.

Just a quick snap shot of the Gumtree canopy as we arrived at the Shelly Beach Picnic Area Car Park:

The first half of the journey from the picnic area towards Elliot Ridge Camping Area. We stopped over at this beautiful river that flowers to the sea.

A few skinks were sunbaking:

What fascinated me the most were these holes on the rocks around me:

Spider Plants in Eco Planters made from Recycled Plastic

Established Spider plants, propagated by dividing from the source plant. The leaves are long and have healthy root.

Super easy indoor plants and fast grower, new shoots already started to appear at the bottom of these plants.

The planters are made from recycled plastic. Cute glossy colours.

Lots of Pink Syngonium

My Pink Syngonium plants are growing like mad! They needed to be trimmed properly and I propagated these plants from cuttings.

Look at how big the leaves are:

And new stem had started to appear as well:

There are 9 plants in total, including these ones in plastic pots only:

They are big:

Two of them have been planted in glass planters:

Super Speedy Grower Indoor Plants

Hello everyone, I propagated a few indoor plants a few weeks ago and I only just realised today that they are looking so much different!! 

This is a photo that was taken on 19th Feb 2020:

And this is from today (6th March 2020):

All three of them has a new leaf each and another new growth. And, the leaves are bigger. 

These 3 plants are pretty amazing and grow vigorously once their root system is established. The plants from left to right are: Golden Pothos (Devil's Ivy), Pink Syngonium and Ctenanthe Grey Star.