Veggie Gardening in Raised Garden Beds

Backyard Makeover

After 20 years it was time for our backyard to have a makeover. Weeds had grown wild - we do have a bit of a wild garden. A few years of ill health also attributed to the growth of the weeds. 

Mr F got his digging shoes on and dug out all the weeds. He was pretty ruthless. 

Mr F hard at work. Me having fun with the camera

Next he built some garden beds. I have never seen raised beds so artistically angled and designed to fit the space perfectly. They are so well made, they will not break down.

Building archetecturally designed raised garden beds

Next it was time to fill the beds. We had over two cubic metres of soil that we screened to get out all the weeds and stones. I could not believe we had so many stones. The veggies certainly would not have gained any nutrients from them. 

Pea straw as a base for the soil in a raised garden bed

First, in goes a layer of pea straw. This will rot down and give nutrients to the soil and attract beneficial critters to it. On top of that went the soil, manures, coir and mushroom compost. Within days, the bed was ready to plant. I had some old potato pieces that had grown shoots. I kept them with just this situation in mind. So in they went as out first planting. Here they are coming up a couple of weeks later. They look small now, but believe me, they grew to be over 60cm tall (2ft).

Our first potatoes

Mr F had to take out a tree that was causing problems and sending out shoots everywhere. He had to dig down 1 metre (3ft) to get rid of the root. he filled the hole with lots of stones we had screened from the soil for the garden bed. It was heavy and hard work. Note the resting chair and some of the roots.

The all-important resting chair

It didn't take long for this to happen. We collected a lot of zucchinis from here. 

Zucchini is all pervasive. It covered everything else in the bed. 

While in the garden nursery, I found a sweet potato plant. It went into the largest pot I could find.

Sweet potato growing in a large pot

 Here's a little bit of the produce we have been reaping, - zucchinis, potatoes, tomatoes, and beans.

Produce from the garden in less than three months

And the broccoli is growing really well. 

Broccoli with its blue green colour

Crochet in Art

 I Love Crochet

I Love Photographing Things I Love  

I Love Digital Artwork 

Put these things all together and what do you get? 

Art made with crochet, photography and digital manipulation

Crochet swatches to measure tension

I started  off making some swatches to work out the gauge or tension of my work. If you crochet a square with 20 stitches and 10 rows, the finished size of this will depend on

1. the thickness of your yarn
2. the thickness of your crochet hook
3. if you crochet loosely or tightly 
4. the weather - whether it is hot or cold
5. the type of yarn you are using - whether it is smooth or textured

I took a few photos and the next one caught my eye a couple of weeks later. 

Mmm, I thought, I think I can do something with that.

Crochet photograph used to digitally make a new work of art

The program I use to do artwork with my photos is Picmonkey. There is a free version as well as a paid version. I used the free version. Here's the link http://www.picmonkey.com/

My image at the top of this post -'The Crochet Network' - is made with the photo above and digitally manipulated in Picmonkey.  

Do you join your different skills together?
I'd love to see some photos of your work. 

Here is a link to an article about crocheted beanies 
and another about art and using it digitally.  

Enjoy! 

Follow me on instagram for more crochet photos @tossyv

Printmaking and Chickens

Who would have thought that Printmaking and Chickens would meet?
I love my hens. They are a great source of joy for me. There is always something going on in my garden when the hens and chickens are out foraging.

I love taking photographs of them. Can you see the little chicken hiding at the back of it's mum?

Some of these photographs get turned into pieces art.

Some get turned into prints. At the moment I enjoy making gelatin monotype prints. These original hand-pulled prints can then be used in Computational Art.

The prints are scanned into a computer. There they are often layered one on top of the other. This makes a nice combined print and can add new hints of colour and shape.

From here they are put into various computer programs to highlight and intensify colours. The resulting prints have more interest with subtleties hidden here and there.

Enjoy.

Other articles you may be interested in:

Painting and Printmaking

Printmaking and Computational Art, byTherese Vahland

A Picture of Innonence

Whenever I see little babies I think of them as being so innocent. 

They have not had time in this world to become 

• deceitful, 
• sly
• cunning
• jealous or
• greedy

We could all take note of how they act, living for the moment, not living in the past or waiting for the future.

Photography

Babies give us great pleasure to watch and be around. Some are very quick to smile and make great subject for photography.

Today we can do so much with cameras and editing programs. Even Apps can contribute much to our final photographic experience. 

Many apps are free and you can get more variety if you pay. The writing on the photo above was added using Font Candy.

 

You can get apps to turn your photo into soft sepia colours ...

Or into a modern collage. Have fun by extending your photographic experience with apps which you can install in your phone or tablet. 

Photo taken by Therese Vahland

Friendly Birds

We have just met some overly friendly wildlife. We visited Moama and Echuca, towns on opposite sides of the Murray river, the dividing line between Victoria and New South Wales, two south eastern states in Australia. 

We stayed in a lovely cottage with very friendly birds. 

 This lovely Kookaburra sat on a tree near our unit most of the time we were there. Every now and then he would fly down and catch a worm from under the grass.

Kookaburras are known for their wild and loud that they make. Koo koo kaa kaa koo koo kaa. It sounds as though the birds are laughing. The sound echos through the Australian bush.

This lovely fellow was so friendly. He came up to 30cm or 1foot from my feet. These birds love meat. I had a meat pattie left over and broke it into little pieces. My friendly kookaburra enjoyed it bit by bit. 

My kookaburra had a friendly rival for the meat pattie. It was a magpie. This cheeky bird visited inside our unit on three separate occasions. He visited every room in the house and even checked out under the couch. Here he is strutting his stuff in the kitchen.

Free Sites to Enhance your Photos

Things I Like to Do

I must tell you - I like -

• writing my blogs and books
• painting - arty stuff, that is
• being amused by my chickens
• spending time catching up with family
• gardening
• taking photos

and - I'm a bit of a computer addict.

Now this computer geek business can involve all of these things because I can take photos of a lot of this stuff. Then I can manipulate the photos. 

Here are some examples and the programs I use.

Photo Manipulation Programs

Photoshop

Making a sepia photo.
www.photoshop.com/

A photo make into sepia using Photoshop

Free Photo Manipualtion Programs

Picmonkey

Making collages and designs.
www.picmonkey.com/

Collage made in Picmonkey

Design made in Picmonkey

FotoFlexer

Manipulating photos. 
http://fotoflexer.com/ 

Using Coloursketck on FotoFlexer

There is so much you can do, and these are only a few programs I use. Try them for yourself and let me know how you go. If you want help contact me.

The Magnificent Sky

One of our sons takes great photographs. I'd like to share some with you.


Today's photos are of the sky. The clouds and the sky give us an ever changing canvas of colour. If you were doing a painting, sometimes you would think 'No, I can't do it like that.' But there is nobody to tell the magnificent sky if a picture is right or wrong. It runs on an ever-changing script.


Thankyou Mr Sky Artist.

Photos of the magnificent sky by Bevan Vahland

Changes and Holidays

Well, they do say a change is as good as a holiday, don't they?

I haven't been on a holiday, so I'll just have to have a change.
I was hanging out in some other blog and found this great info by another blogger. It was all about different templates and new headers. I thought I'd give it a go.

Megan and Keren from shabbyblogs.com/ have some lovely ways for you to have that change. I hope my change has worked.



shabbyblogs.com

I've installed a different template - thanks girls, Then they showed me where to go for another freebie to make a great header from some of my favourite photos. Try it out here FotoFlexer.com. You can really do some stunning things with your photos.

Next, I went into the back blocks of the Layout pages of Blogger and added a few things and da-da!!!
Here's the result.

I'll probably change it again sometime because I like playing around with the design of web pages and blogs.

Check out my other web pages - www.allergiesandcfs.com. There is also a blog on there all about health called Let's Talk Health. It's about using natural therapies and remedies and plain old common sense to stay healthy or get healthy, whichever you need. Don't we all need good health?

Another of my web pages is www.mygardentreasures.com.au. Here I chat on about my garden and my chickens that live in the garden. There are two blogs on this site. One is a Garden Blog
www.mygardentreasures.com.au/garden-blog.html and the other is about my chickens.
www.mygardentreasures.com.au/the-bantam-blog.html

I hope you have time to drop by and say Hello there too.

The photos in my header are some flowers from my garden. Isn't it great what you can do with them?

Free Wallpaper for your Laptop

I have just added two more photos you may like to download to use as wallpaper on your laptop. These are free.

Red Geranium

Red zonal geranium. Wallpaper for a laptop. 1920 x 1080 pixels


It is difficult to get a camera to take true red photos. Red is a very dominant colour and is the first colour the eye can see. It has the lowest frequency. Violet, on the other hand is the highest frequency.

My Dad liked these red flowers. So try it on your laptop. Here's the link. so you can download it.

 

Australian Country Road at Dusk

Here is another piece of wallpaper that you may like.

Australian country road at dusk. Wallpaper for a laptop. 1920 x 1080 pixels

Here is the link for this sunset. We were driving along the Australian country road at dusk with a car coming towards us. Follow the link to Flickr to download it.

I like taking photos from the car window. Speed does different things to the photos. This one came out looking like a pastel painting, all fuzzy. I quite liked it.

Tree Lace

Have you ever looked, really looked, at trees when they have lost all their leaves? I was sixteen when I came out of school one grey wintery day.

The girl's college was on one side of the road and the boy's college was on the other side of the road. The boy's college was a poshy private school and had the buildings, grounds and trees to prove it.

The trees had all lost their leaves and I saw for the first time, while waiting for the bus, the beauty of a tree without leaves. Tree lace.

Patrick White, the great Australian Author and Poet noticed it too and wrote about it in his poem 'The swan flies over the lace corals of the trees'.

John Updike, the American poet, also wrote in his poem 'January' about 'The trees’ black lace.'

Blue Lace

Recently I looked up into the winter sky again to see Blue Lace.

Blue Lace Silver Birch Tree

 

 We are used to seeing bare trees against a grey sky, but here was my lovely silver birch tree giving me a delightful display of blue lace.

Managing Your Photos for Free

 

My Favourite Photo Editor

At the moment my favourite photo editor is PicMonkey. Look at the lovely way you can manage your photos.

I had fun sitting in my backyard the other day. It is filled with spring flowers. My two Silkie bantams were wandering around and came to peck some organic feed mix out of the earthenware mosaic bowl. This bowl took all my attention a while ago as I sat for hours placing the tiny pieces of brightly coloured tiles around the inside of the bowl.

This bowl sat for some time under the tap in the front garden providing a watering place for the local birds. Now it has a new use, that of a place to provide treats for my hens.

Chickens

Our young mother hen and her six chicks are in the photo on the right. Her chickens have grown considerably and have now sprouted wings. The wing feathers are the first real feather a chicken grows. They are now getting feathers on their shoulders.

The chickens have outgrown their first cage and are in a new cage bought especially for them. They live out in the garden with flowers surrounding them. They will be there for a few more weeks until they progress to their next cage.

My Garden Treasures

The central photo is from my web site. There I have more news about the poultry in my garden and all the flowers in it. My Garden Treasures

Experiment in Photoshop Elements

Use Photoshop Elements to Change the Atmosphere of your Photos

I love experimenting and Photoshop Elements is a good place to do it.

Look at the bar on the right hand side. You will see Edit, Create and Share.

Underneath that you will see Full, Quick and Guided.

Underneath that you will see Effects and Content.

Underneath that you will see Artistic with a little down arrow. This is where all the exciting things are. This gives you the power to change your photos.  

For my photos today, I used Edit, Full, Effects and changed through a couple of Artistic and Sketch items.

Original photo

Change your Photos by Experimenting

 

Select the little white hand from the left hand side of the Photoshop screen.

Use it to grab the element you wish to experiment with. Grab the Chalk and Charcoal or the Halftone and pull it above your photo.

 

The photo will change after a couple of seconds. If you like the result save your photo in File, Save as. Save it as a .jpg and place it in the folder you wish to save it to.

 

If you don't like what you see and wish to try another element, just press Control/Z and you will be back to your original photo.

 

Have fun.

Free Photo Editor

Pelargoniums and mosaics in my garden

We are so lucky today that we can use so many tools that are freely available on the web.

Here I have made a collage of some beautiful pelargoniums and a geranium along with a daisy and my birdbath that I decorated with mosaics.

The program I used is called PicMonkey. Try it out for yourself and see what you can do with your photos.

Art in Photoshop Elements

You can do wonderful things with your artwork and photo in Photoshop Elements.

I took a photo of some crosses I had to sell on EBay. I was cropping them in Photoshop Elements and decided to experiment with some parts of the program.

 

Here's what happened. They turned into a piece of artwork.

 

 

Experiment with Photoshop Elements and see what you come up with.

 

Free Photo Editor for your Photos

I have just been having fun with the wonderful photo editor PicMonkey - and its FREE. Thanks PicMonkey.

Using this editor you can make lovely collages of your favourite photos. Have a look at a couple I just made.



Duck and hens in my garden

 

 

This one is of my favourite hens and duck. It's nice to group them together. Similar things always look more impressive when they are grouped together. They become unified.

 



Black and white collage of birdbath

 

 

Here is another photo collage. I took the photo in colour of a birdbath which I had mosaicked. It looks very lovely in bright blues. I changed the colour in Photoshop Elements to black and white. This will make a nice print later on. Then I put it in PicMonkey, curved the corners and put a red frame around it.

 

What do you think?

How to Access all my Photos on my Phone

I can't access my photos

Sometimes I download new apps on my phone. They are often to do with photography. I like to see all the things these apps can add to a photo.

I took some lovely photos and put them together in a collage but then couldn't access them to send them to my loved ones.

Privacy Settings

I have discovered that there are privacy settings on the phone and here's how to enable your photos so they all go to your camera roll.

Go to Settings on your phone and tap. This will be on your front screen. Mine is an older iPhone.
Scroll down till you find Privacy. Tap
Tap on Photos
Turn to ON any photo apps you have to allow the photos to come into your camera roll.

And there you have it.

Return to your Photos > Camera roll. All your photos will turn up there from now on.

Happy snapping

Some snaps from my garden

Making a Sepia Photograph with Photoshop Elements

Original Photograph of a Beautiful Orchid

 

Changing your Photograph to Sepia using Photoshop Elements

Open Photoshop Elements

Open your saved photograph

Make a duplicate of it. File  > Duplicate

You are now working on the duplicate photo

 

On the right hand of the screen you will see Edit

 

 

Under this choose Guided

Choose Old Fashioned Photo

 

Follow the Guide

Choose Vivid Landscape

Click Adjust Tonality

Click Add Texture

 

Click Adjust Saturation - adjust the sliders

Click Done

 

Save your photograph

File > Save as

Choose the file you are going to save your photo in

Save your photo as a .jpg. This is often easier to use than a .psd

Click Save

 

Click Done

Click OK

 



 

 

To change your background to a clearer shade, after you make your duplicate photo,

Choose Water Paper on right hand side

Click Apply

Follow the rest of the directions from 'Guided' above

 

 

 

This gives a different, more delicate and more modern look. Enjoy.