Oh, the weather here has been nasty for the past week or so. Very warm, very humid, and with such a high pollen count it is affecting even me.
Of course, the garden loves it. The garlic is just about ready to be picked – early this year. I will braid and hang about half of it, and the other half I think I will pickle for salads and roasts.
The tomatoes – doing brilliantly after their tottery start. I will have to plant some of them out into their final positions as soon as I can.
The potatoes – huge bushes, flowering. They’ll be ready in about 6 weeks, I think.
Everything else is growing on strongly. The forecast is for rain over the next couple of days, so I hope we get it. (It was forecast for last night as well, but naturally never arrived.) I seem to spend most of my life watering now, and it is a relief when enough rain arrives that I can give the watering a miss for a few days – suddenly I have a life back!
The rose that blew down in the storm. That is doing amazingly well. The 25% or so that survived has flowered beautifully – and as for the rest of it, now I have a mass of five foot shoots rising from the broken trunk. It will take about 2 years, and then it will be back to its glory.
Ready to blow down in the next storm!
I keep picking and freezing elderflowers to make wine for later. The batches I have made thus far have been very nice, but they don’t contain enough alcohol. So I need to add more sugar, but that means I will need to keep a close eye on the entire fermenting process.
Apart from that I have been deep down writing and (*sigh*) proof reading the book due out in May, which is why entries have been a little fewer recently.
Sigh for you Sara but joy for all of us who are anxiously waiting the release of the book – the weather here in Qld has been hot & humid too & an army of possums have decided to have dinner in my garden every night. I water & they eat, they’re very cute though, the babies on the Mum’s backs as they come down the fence line, they’re not so little now they’ve scoffed their way through all my plants however. You fight the blackbirds by day & I have the possums munching all night.
If the bills for the kitchen come too quickly you could always release the book early!! Just a thought…….xxx
Hi Sara. I’ve missed your gardening entries and am pleased to hear you’re alright (sighing is okay) and that everything in the garden is coming along so well. I hope you get rain, not too much nor too little. Yeah to the rose! Aren’t elderflowers marvelous! The fermenting process sounds … um … challenging!
Rain glorious rain. We’ve finally had some here Sara – 107ml so far for the month but until last weekend we’d only had 2.5ml, but ever so welcome. The tanks are full again ready for summer.
Ahh rain..we can only dream..send some our way now Joy…oh Sara can have some of it …lolol
Oops how did I become anonymous?? Sorry …bet the garden can use the rain.
It wasn’t me this time, Bronnie. 😉 I think the software automatically logs us out every month or so – I know I have to re-log in every month.
It has finally started to rain here – we are forecast rain to heavy rain for the next 24 hours. Ah, finally I will tip over 800 mm for the year!
Sorry Bronnie, my garden has drank it all already, so can’t send you any 🙁
Well its been raining here Sara, we had 37mls the last week, so I hope your garden did too. I am so glad I held off putting my pumpkins cucumbers and a few other seedlings out cold snap may have hurt them. I had to cover my tomatoes that are out and aubergine with hessian but they seem to have survived.