Mugrat 1, weeds 0.......well nearly 0

With mostly fine weather this last week or so, gardening has been relentless - rewarding, but relentless. With one complete random rotation under my belt, the weeds are under control, well almost, and a new rotation begins this weekend. Who needs casinos when you have the excitment of randomly choosing a garden area to nurture.

I am again trying to raise plants from seeds. I am desperately trying to grow saw tooth coriander, a gem we found at the cooking school in Hoi An. In Vietnam they use this variety of coriander, and the food was delicious. Saw tooth is a perennial and doesn't die if you look at it sideways, the way the more common coriander we buy here does. I'm also experimenting with some Thai basil and Eggplant Thai. My sunflower seeds have germinated and are thriving in the garden so that's at least one success.

One rare joy I have in the garden is the occasional sighting of the Beautiful Firetail bird, affectionately called 'red bum'. It is truly special little bird, hard to spot until it flashes its bright red bum as it flies away. It seems to be a solitary bird and is not easy to spot, hence the treat when you do see one.

One daily chore in the garden is to feed and water the chooks and ducks. They have a patch of the garden all to themselves, mainly because we can't trust the dog not to chase them. We don't feel guilty though, their patch is bigger than the back garden of most modern suburban houses. We currently have 2 ducks, as old as Methuselah and as cranky as Snape, and 5 chooks, 2 black, 2 speckled and 1 white.

From time to time one goes broody and this week it was speckled#1's turn. I have had to lift her off the eggs a couple of times and once, when she saw me walking towards the coop, she turned and bolted for the nest to try and get there first. I have tried to reason with her, explaining, no rooster, no babies, but she wont listen.

I'm sure she is now plotting her revenge helped, no doubt, by the ducks. Speckles#1 is also the chook that is clever enough to go straight to the food scaps bucket while I am busy throwing chook food out first.

The garden is at that beautiful time of the year and it is no hardship to spend a couple of hours a day looking after it. Each day we see new growth, less weeds and busy, happy wildlife. The local hawks and shags are certainly happy with our pond, but I'm not going to talk about that!