Bring on Autumn's chill

AUTUMN is so cool.

Summer has been great, but I'm ready for this lovely cooler weather...

After a long, hard, hot few months, these cooler autumn days are a huge relief and joy.

Sultry days and hot, sticky nights have their place, but crisp mornings, sunny afternoons and cool evenings mean goodbye sweltering in T-shirts and hello jumpers, log fires and warming soup.

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Chook chat

EVERY time one of the gals lay an egg she lets out a cawk-like cackle to tell her friends and they all enthusiastically cawk back and forwards in delight.

Today they are flapping about their run, chasing foolish crickets in between laying.

For the last oh, say two years, the little devils have been laying under their excellent hutch in he far right hand corner which entails getting a steel rake to cover their largess.

So yesterday i crawled under the chok shack and firmly wired off their cellar.

This morning i was rewarded by an egg in the hutch nest.

How long this will last it any one's guess as they pace the run like POWs.

I'm sure they will have figured out a way around the birdwire - after all, they managed to almost lock me in the run the other day when in their rush to get out into the garden when he was feeding them, one knocked the door shut.
Tricked by a chook, is not a good admission.

Gidget on cricket patrol

Autumn harvest!

The last few days of summer were spent harvesting tomatoes to make a ripper sauce. I look forward to those cold dark winter nights when I’ll open the lid of the jar and a burst of flavour will erupt, taking me back to when I picked kilo after kilo of the red and yellow cherry, Roma and other varities, the sun on my back and the sound of the hens clamouring for the left-over fruit that didn’t make the cut.

Some of the yummy cherry tomatoes ready to be taken into the kitchen and tunred into sauce.

It’s been a slow growth season thanks to all the rain and low temperatures, so I still have about 40 tomatoes bushes yet to flower and another 30 still seedlings. As I follow the crop rotation plan, the brassicas (love broccoli!) will follow the tomatoes in these beds. I’m planting them in pots, ready to transfer them as soon as I can. I think I’ll be building a mini-greenhouse to see them through the next couple of months.

While it’s been a funny old summer, it’s been a good one too – swapping cakes and veggies with my firends for preserves; my good neighbour mowing my lawn in exchange for eggs; baking bread and adding my own herbs; seeing blue wrens in the Asian greens bed, flitting and flirting about from soil to birdbath.

With all the horrors in the news, it’s good to have somewhere quiet to sit and reflect on what’s important in life. No matter if your garden comprises a couple of acres or a few foam boxes on the back steps, it’s a wonderful place to go to take a deep breath.

Summer Love

Well it’s summer now and the sultry days are already drying out the sodden soil. Time to start giving the garden more love - tough love, that is.

This means mulch, mulch, mulch. And donning rubber gloves to remove the zillion and one slugs and snails that are relentlessly skulking through the veggie beds. Every couple of days I collect a bucket or two of the varmints and feed them to the girls who react as through they are being fed nirvana (perhaps they are) and gobble them down. It’s also important to water the veggies in between the rainy times to ensure that the tomatoes avoid blossom-end rot.

I’m also forking the soil in between fruit trees and veggies to ensure that the rain penetrates the often dried up mulch and dirt and gets to the roots.

Remember to add liquid fertilizer every couple of weeks to keep plants lush and growing. Weeding is also a critical task, but when you love your garden it becomes rather fun to dig out the weeds. (A good weeding soundtrack is anything by AC/DC as it keeps you going!)

With summer days here it’s also good to relax and take the time to wander about and smell the roses, admire the passionflowers, nibble some basil, pick some salad greens and enjoy the different varieties of apples.  Enjoy!