Mr Spotted Neck Has Found a Mate! Surprise Ginger Find.

Last week's weather became wintry. Finally we had a few days of intermittent downpours. The winds were strong at times and suddenly quietened down with sunshine breaking out of the clouds. Then everything started all over again.  Temperatures have been sometimes lower than 20 and sometimes a bit higher.

This week started really hot and windy. Temperatures up to 35 deg. Then it became cooler but still no sight of a much-needed rain.  My poor plants, I wonder how they cope with the ever-changing weather and temperatures. They must be a bit confused.

Our dear Mr Spotted Neck (wildlife) up on my neighbour's roof still looking for a mate. My hubby bought me a  digital SLR camera for my birthday so now, I can take sharper and better pictures.

My two silvery fir plants produced so many tomatoes. I actually have not finished the frozen ones from last season.

We now have a flight of sparrows visiting as well and so far they are the tamest birds we had. Mr Spotted Neck sometimes bullied them but when food is abundant, they can share a meal together.

To my surprise while tidying up the carrot foliage, I found a small ginger plant growing. I have planted some ginger slips last year but only one grew (the one in front). However, another slip survived the winter and it has sprouted. Wow, I am so inspired to try sweet potatos asap!

Five cucumber (burpless) vines this year hooray! A little crowded though. The leader vine is having a maturing cucumber plus 3-4 more growing!

More pak choy green thriving under the netting along with the tomato silvery fir.

Lots of green chillies on my chilli fire.

I am so proud to announce that Mr Spotted Neck has found a mate!!! My son and I actually felt sorry for him cooing every day for a mate and we, hehe...prayed for him.  Recently we noticed him courting a lady in our garden but kept getting rejected. These few days,  we saw both of them in the garden together. This morning we saw them feeding together! Finally! Congratulations! Bird-watching is really fun!

Busy Saturday

It was a really busy 3 hours I had out in the garden last Saturday.  I :

• pruned my chilli padi plants.
• thinned out my pak choy and gai choy/mustard green seedlings.
• built a shade for my transplanted green globe artichoke plants & trimmed them.
• sowed sweet corn and other vege seeds.
• sowed lucerne seeds for green manure.
• did watering.
• deadheaded my daisy bushes.
• deadheaded my King Alfred daffodils. 

I told my boy that this spring I would not grow any tomatoes.  We ate the frozen ones from last season really slowly.  One reason is that the frozen tomatoes thawed really badly.  They are so mushy that I could only use them for soupy dishes.  I have spoken too soon.  I found a few tomato seedlings growing in the big fig's pot and in the pixzee peach tree's pot. That was mid-winter and they were looking really purple and frozen.  They must be from seeds from the compost bin.  And they must be tomato silvery fir since I only grew that variety.  My first instinct was to let them die in the cold since I had no intention to do tomatoes.

But then two of the seedlings caught my eye, I knew I had to keep them. They were the two strongest seedlings. They looked really healthy, though purplish out in the freezing cold. What a tragedy to let them die when they were trying to survive!!! So I prepared two pots and pulled them out and planted them. I placed a newly-bought plastic cloche on them and let them get some sun.  With a little tender loving care, they are now no longer purple and looking even better.  Okay, tomatoes for the next season...

New chives emerging from the soil. Oh I just loving seeing life spring forth from the dead ground!

Our only plum tree has the whole tree full of white blossoms this year.  I sure hope to eat more than 10 plums this summer/autumn since we really did only had 10 or so each of last two years.

Very pretty white flowers lightly perfumed.

My Tung O plant (edible chrysanthemum) survived winter unscathed.  I gave it a light prunning to open the plant up and remove the browner branches.  I use this vege for steamboat/hot pot or Japanese Miso soup.  It is nice by me but my hubby doesnt want too much of it.

This is the shade I have set up for my green globe artichoke plants.  The weather forecast a really warm end to winter and I knew that my divided artichoke plants could not make it if I do not build them a shade.  Imagine, a shade in winter! Sounds crazy! Well, they have been recently divided and replanted and kept wilting in the day, so I knew a whole week of warm sunshine would do them in. After building the shade, I also remove more whole leaves and halved some of the leaves, leaving only baby leaves behind.  I also watered them with a few rounds of seasol during the week and checked them every few days. That should make sure they really survive.  Now I am glad to have divided them in winter.  Imagine doing so in spring or summer, they would have die for sure.

A really trimmed artichoke plant, staked.

Here's the patch where I have sown sweet corn.  I used plastic fruit containers as cloche and weighed them down using decent sized white stones.

I deadheaded the King Alfred daffodils right out of my son's bedroom.  Now all they need is some good fertiliser to help them make bigger prettier flower heads for next season.

My chilli fire surived winter with the plastic protection.  Since it has now turned warmer, I removed the top plastic for it to get some sunshine.  I did that for my chilli padi plants too.

I had to thin out the pak choy and gai choi seedlings heavily in this raised vege patch because greedy me oversowed by a great deal! The remaining seedlings here are just about 1/5 or less than what I have removed! The work almost killed me.

I sowed some yellow capsicum, kang kong (water spinach), egg plant, cucumber and lady's finger seeds.

Edibles Update

My son and I bought some alfafa seeds and it was really fun watching the seeds germinate and grow from pale seedlings into green leafy sprouts.  I had prawns & alfafa sprouts sandwich for breakfast. My son does not enjoy vegetables (though I do force him to eat) so he just had a biteful of my sandwich and decided to stick with his  toast with orange marmalade & cheese.

On Sunday my hubby helped me to easily dig up my artichoke green globe clump (I could not even drive the spade into the soil!) I divided the three and replanted them. For the last few days the artichoke plants looked good in the morning but were in a wilting condition when evening arrived. I am praying they will survive this dividing and re-planting.

The saffron plants around the peach tree seem to be dying down. They certainly dont look very glamorous.

Those saffron in the planter look like lush grass and not ready to die down yet.

These are baby spinach which my son and I have planted. They have emerged but growing slowly in this cold weather. Well, spinach are cool season vegetables anyway.

 We use fruit containers as mini cloches over the spinach to trap as much warmth from the sun as possible.

 This little pak choy in my fig tree pot is growing very well. Time to harvest for soup.

 These two pak choys have been harvested for soup. Very tender!

 I am still harvesting my chilli fire chillies even though it is mid-winter! What a joy!

 I finally dug up the last of my two burdock plant. It was labourious digging and tugging but I managed to dig up a whole big basket of burdock. I have used them for soup (though I did not eat the root, just the yummy soup). I will be using them for stir fry tonight.

Cool Summer & Garden Update.

So far our summer 2010-2011 has been cooler than previous years. We had one day of 40 deg celsius but that's it. Other days are cool and sunny or cloudy. So some of the garden crops are growing seriously slowly such as my yardlong beans (long beans) and eggplants. I am certainly thankful for the weather because I dont ever want heat waves. The patch right out of my main door is filling up with foliage and fruits...tomatoes, corns, spagetti squashes and soon, okra (ladies' fingers).

The pumpkin vine has crept onto the lawn and I spotted a little pumpkin with its female flower. So far lots of male flowers were produced.

The one and only gorgeous lemon verbena is thriving outside my bedroom window. The only issue is it is growing out of the garden edge and soon it may sprawl onto the lawn. I want it to grow taller and bushier so I probably have to give it a prune asap.

The peach tree out of my bedroom is laden with peaches. Just waiting for them to ripen!

9 sweet corns are growing on three corn plants!!!

A male pumpkin flower.

I realised I actually have more pixzee peaches than I thought. They are so prettily pink.

Spagetti squashes are growing fast. This is one of the three.

Drooling as I typed. I pickled a big harvest of green chillies.

Here's my gorgeous grapevine Carolina Black Rose crawling both ways on the pergola.

Why gorgeous? Because it looks so from my kitchen window! I will never get sick of this beautiful picture from my kitchen. I know that trellis isnt pretty, but who cares?

Update of All Sorts...

It has been another busy week. There were a few chores I had to finish for the garden - providing support for the climbing carolina black rose grape vine, weeding, netting the remaining unprovided peaches (from feathery looters), preparing ground for a new passion fruit vine, staking bean plants, pruning tomato plants, fertilising, decorating for Christmas....on and on...looks like it is not a few chores after all! Well we are still enjoying the brand new lawn and will continue to do so. Here I snapped Samuel and Marco having fun together. They were so cute!

The dietes. Arent they gorgeous? They are very common natives planted in multiple clumps for mass display. From far, they look like fluttering white butterflies because you can hardly see the green slender stems holding the flowers up.

Rather orchid-like.

I have successfully propagated a few aoeniums (wonder if the spelling is right or not) before pulling up the mother plant which look ugly. I have not decided what to do with the new plants yet.

The brown turkey fig tree right out of my dining window looks very healthy and it is having figs!!!

Here's the two pomegranate flowers. I am not diehard to eat any pomegranate from this tree which was left behind by the previous owner. It is a young handsome pomegranate tree. I just bought 3 large pomegranates for $5 and that's cheap! They are from USA. I realise these fruits are rather troublesome to eat though I heard they are very nutritious.

All my three sweet corns are flowering. Male or female I dont know. Having corns' more important haha...

My two-year-old gladioli are flowering again!!! So pretty while blooming but not so when they start to die down!

Yummy heart-shaped strawberry due to cojoining work!

And I love strawberry flowers! So delicate, so dainty, so sweet, so pretty!!!

Almost all my tomato silvery fir plants (7 in all) are flowering and fruiting. Yum Yum...

The kang kong's growing well in the new vege patch. So are the potato plants. And burdock too (hidden by potato).

Chilli fire plant fruiting crazily. I am going to harvest a big number of green chillies for pickles!

3 more beans yardlong have germinated at the site where the snow peas used to be.

I happen to take a picture of these two calendula seedlings exploding out of their seed hulls. Very nice.