December 2012

December is of course the first month of summer though it often doesn't seem that way as we usually have to wait until January for the weather to settle down. This year things seemed a bit early and certainly very prolific with the promise of lots of different fruit for the first time.

We had sort of let the orchard go a bit wild to give the wild flowers a chance but, after the main threat of brown beetle was over, we decided to tidy it up and remove the last of the cages. Many of the cages had broken and others were too small for their occupants so we removed the lot.

Much smarter eh!

None of the plum trees in the orchard produced any fruit, despite several of them being covered in blossom but at least one of them was useful, providing a home for this family of gold finches.

And elsewhere, the signs were most promising. Cherries ...

... tamarillos ...

... passionfruit - on a plant that had lived indoors at our old house for many years without ever producing a flower ...

... apricots ...

 

... feijoas on party bush where the first stick insects were collecting ...

 

... chilean guavas ...

 .... pears, and pears and more pears ...

... and for the first time, apples.

And yay, some of them turned into harvests ...

... yum!

The greenhouse was doing its stuff too, but only managed a few tiny tomatoes before we went away for xmas.

 

And not to be outdone, my dancing ladies came out to play (several months early I think) ...

... and our magnolia grandiflora produced its first 3 flowers, the aroma of which were quite divine.

 

 We also had a visit from Bev who seemed keen to have a long promised morning tea in the willow hut, but of course first she had to earn it.

But hopefully it was worthwhile!

 

She also helped us drench the lambs.

 

And just for the record, the vegie patch was still doing its stuff rather nicely.

 

November 2012

November usually brings with it our friend the brown beetle and this year was no different except that we decided to ignore them. And so the plum trees in particular lost some leaves but they all recovered eventually. Maybe there were fewer beetles this year as we had attacked them over the last two years or maybe there were fewer still evenings or maybe there was another cause but for whatever reason the damage was far less than previously, thank goodness.

And the fruit cage was finally finished! We had a few tricky corners to finish off ...

...and a gate with a catch to add and then didn't it look fine!

Alice returned for a post-exam rest was put to work digging up more comfrey from the fruit cage and then planting the new plants we had grown from the roots she had dug up on her last visit around the fruit trees in the orchard,

She also helped us with our massive broad bean harvest.

We also planted out our kumara bed - this year we managed to grow our own plants from kumara we had stored from last year and this seemed to work really well. It was amazing that even though most of the kumara got damaged when we dug them up last year, they stored really well. But even more surprising was that a few of them didn't sprout even though they were left in the bed in the greenhouse for several weeks and so we decided to eat them at that stage and they were still edible!

And then I rediscovered a local orchid shop that I had last visited maybe 15 years ago (and still have the plant I bought then) and so I took Alice along and we selected rather too many new plants.

Two were destined for the planter in the breezeway, where they looked quite stunning ...

... and rather outshone the other planter.

While the others brightened up the shelf inside . 

And finally we were introduced to loquats which taste quite like apricots and grow rampantly at a friend's house. We were given some self seeded seedlings and cleared a bit of the gorse away on the slope to give them a new home.

October 2012

October arrived and with it some rain, at last, and a great horticultural disaster. All things on our new section are meant to be organic but this was relaxed to rid the pony paddock of its extensive gorse and blackberry content. And then this was extended to Brambly Bank, which I 'cleared' of blackberry last autumn. I had deliberately borrowed a sprayer for those 2 jobs but last time, the other sprayer was broken and so I had to use ours. I remember emptying and washing it out afterwards but somehow a residue remained and, when I came to spray a plum tree, a peach tree and a houseplant with some gentle Neem oil to remove hoards of black fly, all 3 of the plants were dead within a couple of days. O me miseram! The plum tree was the greatest loss as it had been very healthy (apart from the flies) and was a pollinator for the other plums. Any replacement will take 3 years to catch up. Ah well, such is life! But now we have a new organic sprayer so that hopefully this will not happen again.

Elsewhere, Dave built a new pond in the centre of the vege patch - this was always intended to be a feature of the vege patch but we had never got round to it. We used a deep plastic barrel which Dave carefully concreted in ...

... and so we could at last retrieve the fish we had brought with us (3 years ago) from their temporary home in the orchard which had doubled as our only water source when we had first arrived and was now well past its best.

As usual Dave did the structural part ...

... and I did the fun part, with a couple of helpers!

And our long planned lambs arrived. The wet weather meant that the grass drive was too slippery to get the trailer up on the first attempt ...

... and rolling it back for a second go was not too successful.

Anyway, we made it in the end

and then manhandled them into their pen.

Then came the tricky bit, naming them! The male with the white rimmed glasses had been partly bottle fed and already been named Mister Pip, so that was easy, but what about the 2 girls?

After much thought, and brilliant ideas from many sources, my favourites, Flopsy and Mopsy, were replaced by Lady Baaa Baaa, for the lighter one and suggested by Dave (many being amazed that he had actually heard of the pop star), and Mo, both the Twitter name of Michelle O-baaa-ma and what she's here to do (mow) and sort of derived separately by Joanna and friend Phillipa.

Aren't they sweet? Not so very tame yet though and clearly in need of drenching for worms. Ahhh, that means we have to catch them every 3-4 weeks for the first 8 months. Let the fun begin!

At last we obtained another net for the fruit cage, rectangular this time and plenty big enough, so we were able to finish that job.

The vege patch was looking rather good with the promise of another freezer full of broad beans. And we hadn't even finished last year's 30kg!

And the early flaxes flowered and immediately attracted our very own tui who was there constantly and didn't seem to mind us at all.

Isn't (s)he fine!

Neighbours had told us we had big black rabbits along with the normal little grey fluffy ones in the pony paddock but we had never seen them until one day one ventured up to our 'lawn'.

Finally most of the trees had survived the winter on Brambly Bank but they were being overtaken by new brambles ...

... and rather a lot of grass and other weeds.