We have had rainstorm after rainstorm come through the past couple weeks. My garden looks fantastic....except for my green bell pepper that doesn't approve of this amount of water. (Looked like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree a couple days ago.)

But starting on Friday it's going to swing from cool and wet to hot and dry. I'm going to have to actually water!

In other news, my lo3 (little one #3) has been on a Fruit picking binge. Strawberries, raspberries and cherries primarily so far, and a handful of honeyberries. The blueberries are still mostly green but they will ripen soon.

The sad news is that once the cherry tree is done producing fruit, I will need to cut it down. It had its last hurrah last year, but it has one live branch left and that too is dying. I'm going to miss that tree. And as I don't know what killed it, I don't know if I should bother trying to replace it. 

@fantasia, do you have any trouble with squirrels? My grandparents used to have a black walnut tree and two apricot trees in their yard, the walnut tree died and then a few years later they cut down the apricot trees. Now they have trouble with squirrels eating their tomatoes, they never had that trouble before and it's happened every year since the apricot trees came down. Just something to consider when you remove the cherry tree.

The zucchini is about ready to blossom!!! Yes, I am terribly excited, I haven't had garden fresh zucchini in 8 years and I love zucchini.

Scarlet, the siblings, and I got mom strawberry plants for Mother's Day and dad gets blackberry bushes for Father's Day. We just can't stop, we are having too much fun learning to grow things, harvesting them, and eating them. In other berry bush news, the Toro bushes are still alive, but still not doing much. I have picked 22 blueberries off the Top Hat that's still alive, there are a few more blueberries still to pick. We think the Top Hat looks better after a lot of attention in the last two weeks, but it might just be wishful thinking...I guess in a few more weeks or so we will figure out if it's going to be healthy again or not.

SnowAngel

Posted by: @fantasia

The sad news is that once the cherry tree is done producing fruit, I will need to cut it down. It had its last hurrah last year, but it has one live branch left and that too is dying. I'm going to miss that tree. And as I don't know what killed it, I don't know if I should bother trying to replace it. 

Oh, how sad. I too will be taking out a tree before spring this year. My valiant apple tree, "Beau Jade" [yes, chosen as close to 'Jadis' for my old Narnia garden at my former home, and replanted at my new home 9 years ago] has been slowly leaning over further and further. I could study geometry and trigonometry on its angles. In autumn I picked about 100 apples, which is amazing for a small tree barely taller than hobbit sized me. Lovely, cooking apples.
It is now propped up with two pieces of wood, one of them almost at a right angle. Thanks, tree. You served me well.

Sorry to hear about your cherry tree and your apple tree, @fantasia and @coracle. I had an apple tree that I planted from a small potted seedling when I was 7, in our back garden, and it grew for years and eventually started producing delicious apples (similar to Granny Smith but with a slight red blush), and one year I had to rescue it from being almost strangulated by vines that grew along the back fence and had twined themselves around the apple tree and were starting to cut into the wood as the tree grew. It survived that and produced more apples than ever the next February, as if to say thank you! (And it had some interesting scars on its trunk as a result, but those faded as it grew further.) But at some stage after I grew up and moved out, my parents had it cut down; I can't remember exactly when or why, but I think it became diseased and they couldn't save it.  

I love the sound of a Narnia garden, @coracle! What else did you plant in it, apart from the Beau Jade apple tree?

I don't have a garden where I am now — one of the very few disadvantages of my beautiful new home — but I've started collecting a few indoor plants. The Phalaenopsis orchid that I bought last year lost both its flowering stems earlier this year, but now it's starting to grow a new one, so that will be lovely! It has creamy yellow flowers with deep pink centres and pink edges. And I've recently bought a plant pot in the shape of a sheep, with seeds for a dwarf variety of mint. Only four tiny seeds, as I was slightly perturbed to find when I opened the packet, but I planted them, and they've started to sprout and are showing more and more tiny leaves, so I expect they'll keep growing and spreading...

@courtenay my Narnian garden idea arose following a Shire themed garden made by friends in US. I named my home something like Cair Paravel, (using my own convenient surname), and planted all sorts of things to go with the theme. When I moved across town*, many plants came with me, especially my rose bushes for Lucy and Peter (Happy Child and Top Brass), the Princess Susanna lilies, and the apple tree. I had a Turkish Delight bush (will have to look up its type, but its reddish, and really called that), Shasta Daisies, and there was a Holly bush(for Christmas) and self sown foxgloves (the LWW fox). Around 2005 there was a lovely garden centre very close to my home, and I often walked around looking for appropriate plants. 

[2011 major earthquakes here left some areas of the suburbs no longer safe for housing, and we were paid out and our homes demolished, so I brought as much of my garden as I could]

Ugh, now the Top Hat has powdery mildew. I am so glad that Scarlet is in charge of the berry bushes.  

The blackberries are looking good and soon the strawberry plants will be going in a brand new planter the guys finished building yesterday.

We have had a few cooler days in the last week and the zucchinis are not quite ready to pick. But they are really really close. And so are our blue lake beans, hoping to have these for Independence Day. There are quite a few tomatoes on the plants, but none are ripening yet.

We haven't gotten very many peas from our first planting, and most have been eaten right in the garden. The second planting is coming along in with the corn.

SnowAngel

It's midwinter in my country, but sometimes there are warm patches. This week I've got out and pruned most of my rose bushes. They all look pretty awful, and spring will change it all, I hope. 

I'm also slowly tidying the garden which has been rather neglected in the last 18 months. 

We've had a few warm days this week. What a treat!
Today I did my first gardening in many weeks. Oh, doesn't the garden smell nice, when you get down on a kneeling pad to weed? I am so pleased to have tidied up one of my favourite flower beds today!

Today I began the process of removing two  fruit trees. The feijoa bush was planted in 2015 and produces lots of feijoas, but I no longer feel like eating them. So I've lopped off all the branches, and will get a professional to dig it out. 

I've also got a small apple tree, which has produced lots of fruit (cooking apples, but nobody wanted them in the last 2 years) but is falling over. I think the roots can't hold on in the poor soil. It was brought from my old home with its Narnia themed garden, and its name us Beau Jade (as in Jadis). Maybe there'll be enough wood left to carve a tiny wardrobe?

I had a gardening contractor come in this morning; he mowed the lawns, pulled out the 2 feijoa bushes and the apple tree, pruned the wisteria, and tidied all the edges with what we call a Weed-eater. So much better to look out on now! 

It was a strange year for the garden. We had a late Spring and then unusual weather during the summer and the tomatoes just didn't produce until almost October! I also didn't spend much time in the garden this summer (distracted by other things), so after a couple years of making progress (2 steps forward), this was definitely a one step back year for the garden. There's always next year . . .

Yeah, @grandmama, some years are like that, eh?

We had a decent gardening year, 'though not the best we have had. The perennials were stunning and prolific, but the vegetables were mixed: lots of beans and peas and potatoes (although some potatoes were a bit smaller than usual, which is puzzling); beets had quite a good harvest; tomatoes were so-so. These were absolutely delicious, but not plentiful, particularly the Brandywines. The cherry toms kept on coming until well into September, and boy, were they tasty! But we figured the Brandywine issue is  because some tall cedars have gradually spread shade over them from mid-afternoon on, so they do not receive that full-day sun as they used to. We will be changing that next year, as we will keep them in the same plot, but plant them in the south of that area, where they will get a better amount of sun. If I had to choose my favourite food that we grow, it would be tomatoes, so we want to get back to a bountiful yield.

Harvest is finished for now. In fact, today I am planting garlic cloves to harvest next year in August or so.

The potatoes and beets are all bedded won in buckets filled with sand, to help them last well into the winter months.

There is something about an Autumn floral garden. Things are wilder-looking; some plants are dying ... but it is all still just so beautiful! Especially surrounded by vibrantly-coloured trees with their vivid reds, oranges, yellows. I do so love Autumn!!!

My thumbs don't seem to have been as green as I thought. Of 6 rows of seeds planted, only 2 did well (leafy plants for broccoli and radishes growing), plus one beetroot plant. I've already planted more of the hybrid 'peans', and will redo butter beans, carrots, sage, and beets. 

This week on the hottest day of spring I cleared away the healthy weeds that had usurped the space. Now I need to plant more seeds in other beds, including more flowers. I also put in some more flowers from the garden shop.

After this I have 4 urgent weeding tasks. It will look better when it's done.

With a bit of time today (Christmas eve, summer here) I plan to pull out broccoli plants, which have not produced heads, and buy more from the garden centre, along with some silver beet plants (a green veg). I'm trying to grow only what I'll eat, to save waste. 

Update: I've got lots of vege plants growing, have already started eating the butter beans, and can count at least 10 little green tomatoes on my plants. There are some beetroot (beets) almost ready to eat too.

Meanwhile the small pear tree has a few dozen pears growing daily, and the peach tree is loaded. 

This morning I found my flower bed has been invaded by an army of insects that could have been designed by Weta Workshop. They looked like wide ladybugs, black with gold and white spots.  They've been attacking the flowers and their stems, and spoiling my lovely hollyhocks. So I've sprayed these ('green vegetable bugs') and some others ('fluffybums') on a hydrangea plant nearby. 

Let's hope the bugs don't return, at least this summer.