I am determined not to moan about the weather this year, but to be honest it leaves me no choice. We got home on the 4th of Jan, and it has done nothing but rain or be gloomy and bleak. To be fair yesterday was nice and today was nice-ish, but the weather is closing in as cyclone Hale is heading our way. Hopefully it will be ex-cyclone Hale by the time it gets here. So, my chore for the rest of the day is battening down the hatches. Normally when we make a point of tying down potential projectiles it turns out to be a storm in a teacup and a good tidy up is never wasted.
In spite of the poor weather, I have embraced the conditions and focussed on what the garden needs. I have an open day here on the 21 January where people from all over will be coming to visit the garden, so it needs sorting out. It is too far away to tell what the weather will be like, but I’d say chances are it will have cleared up by then… surely?!
I was given a lovely day by day diary for Christmas and so I have once again started off with gusto to fill in the days with everything I did in the garden. Historically I’m terrible at this and end up going through my photos to try and remind myself what I did. I can say with great pride, I’m 5 days in and doing well. Each page is filled with little notes I think future me might find useful and I’m even making a note of the weather. Yesterday I wrote ‘sunny + lovely’ which made a nice change from all the other entries that said, ‘wind and rain’.
I’ve been quite productive, with the garden open day and the blank pages of the diary staring out at me, alongside the holiday neglected garden calling to me. All three of the major sectors and rooms have been taken care of and are weed free, tied in, pruned and cleaned up.
I am determined not to waste the harvest this year, so a few drops (a deluge) of rain won’t get in my way. And I may have got a little soggy picking my first blueberry harvest that was a delight on top of ice cream last night. There is still more to come, which is quite satisfying knowing my makeshift cage worked well. Next year will definitely get an upgrade. I also had my first okra for the season, which I discovered while building a support structure to keep them upright. I didn’t have enough bamboo canes so got a little creative.
The other first to harvest was the tromboncino and I have to say, I’m not sure I’m a fan. It seems a little marrow-esk in flavour and there is a lot of it in each one and the plant is loaded with them. I may have to gift it to friends… sorry friends. But maybe they can have a cucumber and some eggs to go with as both of these are in great supply in our garden.
Gloomy weather aside, the garden is doing ok… except the tomatoes, but I don’t want to talk about that just yet, it is still a little upsetting to the point I considered not bothering again, but a summer garden without tomatoes isn’t really a summer garden at all….
Come again soon – hopefully this incoming cyclone will spare us.
Sarah the Gardener : o)
Goodness! That is as bad as it got?! Ours is of historic severity, and likely the worst since 1982. Of course, winter is the right season for it here, so I can complain no more than you can.
I have seen the reports of your storm and it sounds terrible. I hope you are safe in your area. Ours by comparison are just annoying because it is supposed to be summer and it is having an impact on my growing season. : o)
Well, it is a sloppy mess, but it has not been very dangerous for most of us.
This latest storm seems to have avoided us, but it is still in full swing and has made a right mess of the East of the country with serious damage that will probably take months to repair.
Our weather has been in the news quite a bit, but comparable and worse storms in other regions are not.