Spring time!

Before: Front of house with giant ferrel bottlebrush shrub.

After: Front of house after bottlebrush has been removed!

Now that spring is here I've been trying to get the outside of the house a bit more presentable and productive all at the same time. Here are a few shots around the place today to show some of the progress so far. I'm hoping to turn most of the front yard into veggies, and already taken out the horrible looking grass plants in the front yard and replaced them with tomatoes (photos below). The new herb garden I made using the strip of dirt between our house and our rear neighbours looks pretty good, and I'm pleased with using wasted space and turning it into something productive. So enjoy the photos and I'll try and post more soon! :)

Tomato bed freshly planted directly in front of front door.

Before: Weedy bit of dirt between our driveway and the neighbours

After: Lovely herb garden full of jalapenos, basil, parsley, dill, oregano and coriander

Runner beans!

Raised garden bed around side of house. Seedlings

 just sprouting

Apple blossom

Canning marathon!

Phew! 7:30 and I'm still boiling up my first batch of home made tomato sauce! Mind you I started about 2:30, so this has taken just a tad bit longer than I first imagined. I forgot that you need to boil down the thin watery tomatoes into a thicker sauce which takes ages. :P But now we are on the homeward stretch and we have 6 x 750ml jars of tomato sauce to show for it.
I still need a few canning supplies: a funnel, jar grabbers and lid grabbers, things that look small and unimportant until you try and do it without them, and then you see just how important they really are. It's not from a lack of looking mind you, two kitchen specialists and a kmart later no luck! Even tried to go online from a well known Aussie canning internet specialist and they were sold out! Gah.
But here is a visual diary of the canning process... let me know what you think!

Home grown tomatoes being chopped prior to boiling

One very full stock pot on the left.

Stirring tomatoes at a nice rolling boil

Chef hard at work

Putting the tomatoes through a food mill to remove skins and seeds

Milled tomatoes starting to slowly thicken

Canned jars of sauce, back in the boiling water bath

Voila! The finished product. We'll update once we've opened one!

Such a thing as too many tomatoes?

So now I have a dilemma. What to do with all these tomatoes? I sadly don't have a pressure canner as yet, or an actually decent kitchen in which to work, otherwise I might just can myself some tomato sauce. So now I have to think of something tomato-ie and nice and summery. Any suggestions?
But here are a few of the onions I planted. Not quite as big as I was expecting, more like a shallot. Ah well, their still cute. :)

Ferrel zucchini, soon to be culled.

My teeny little onions

Broccoli which doesn't seem to flower, we will be patient.