It is the season for harvesting and preserving. It can mean long days in the lottie and late nights. Not all that much time for sitting and appreciating, or at least Perhaps I shouldn’t, but I need my pauses to....erm....plan the next task, shall we say. Tea and bikkies just happen to be available. Right then what have been the goals then? Well, the hot and itchy job of schoffeling along the fence between the tall bushes and fence with the neighbour was overdue. It is a job that can result in the collection of an abundance of harvest mites. I have learned to take steps though. Another fun chore was to clean-up the Japanese anemones back by the “old wood” collection point. That took some time and the pollen had me draining tears, perspiration and so forth. After that one I saw beads rolling down the cheek of my Bride as well. Then there were the French climbers that had petered- out back over in the veggie quadrants. They were spent and had to come down. The problem was that I had the wigwams connected to each other for stability. Fortunately we have those re-useable rip-ties. So then, the vertical poles were removed and , weeds were removed, the soil was min-tilled and then we began piling on the winter mulch. The final harvest of the Bocking 14 Comfrey. The stems and leaves went down first , under that mulch layer. The peppers are beginning to heat-up in the greenhouse as well as out-of-doors. Because of the coolish weather that we had the past two weeks required that we had to place a cover over them to let in light, but keep in the warmth. The string of fire has begun to build. When we began working on that bean quadrant, we also knew that as more quadrants began to empty, that compost and stall manure would be required...so we emptied the largest of the two compost bins. You can see that the bin is empty and you can also get a glimpse of that wonderful compost in the open plastic bag there. The Bride laughed and quipped that it looked like it was made open to show. Cackle. At any rate we removed about 150 kilo’s of compost from the bin and bagged it up for later use as the quadrants start to be cleaned and ready for winter mulching. While we were working, the scene looked a right mess...a chaotic mess. Well, when we were all done with the removal and bag-filling, it was time for tidying-up to happen. It all looks so much more organised and neat this way. We placed an extra roofing segment between the compost and wood siding of the shed to thwart rotting of the planks. A little extra: the neighbour lady called me over to look at her gourd rack and gourds. I complimented her work and asked if she planned on making bird houses out of the gourds, but she said no, that she will make and sell sphere lights with them. Take a look st her finished product: Isn’t that clever? She is the one that made those little wing-flapping wooden birds for her father. I showed pics a while back now. A sad note is that she recently lost her dad to covid. So sad. Well, as I said this season is still rolling right along with harvesting and winterizing. At home we keep making tomato concentrate. Here I am removing skins from scalded toms. On the foreground you can see a large double tomato. Every season presents botanical oddities.. To end on a colourful note, a couple of flowery garden foto’s:
Hiya Mart. That was a massive compliment, and I thank you greatly. Over the years I have researched and planned my flower garden so that I will always have something in bloom throughout the growing season, especially in the normal downtime for flowering plants which occurs in june here. I want continuity for myself but more importantly for the pollinators, especially my bees. So there is a reason that something always seem in bloom—it is by design, not chance. That”s why I appreciate your compliment so much. Cheers mate. Yes, the toms. We have had some tasty ones this year.
What a beautiful sight It always so pleasing to look at your garden, it is always so pleasant at whatever stage of the season
Thank you so much, KK. That is such a nice thing to say. It is good to hear that you enjoy seeing the developments in my garden. The feeling is mutual, as I enjoy seeing your accomplishments there because the conditions are so different than mine. I mean you have some challenges that we do not— the seasons, monkeys etc. It is interesting to read about and see how you combat or work with these factors.
