Autumn in the garden ticks along at a quiet hum. Quickly waning daylight hours alongside warm days, warm soils and cool nights means growth starts to wind down but the garden remains steadily productive without being overwhelming. It's been a relatively dry and mild autumn so far, which has meant keeping up with watering as plants sneakily wilt behind my back, The heavy morning dew tricks me into thinking the soil has a lot more moisture than it ... Read the Post...
A year of foraging and garden preserves – autumn’s arrival
March has seen me crushed by the weight of kilos of garden produce. Every flat surface has been taken over with overflowing baskets of pears, tomatoes, hazelnuts and blackberries, while the fridge and freezer situation calls on skills developed during tetris training from the arcade game era of yesteryear. Unlike the garden, where the stampede of urgent jobs starts slowing to a gentle canter, the urgency instead shifts to the kitchen, where ... Read the Post...
A year of foraging and garden preserves – summer wanes
There's probably a lot of poems out there about the gradual fade of summer into the lazy warm days and cool nights that signal the start of autumn, so I'm not about to add to the literary ruckus, but from about early February settles in is the start of my favourite unnamed season. When the forests are filled with Meadow Argus butterflies, white cockatoos congregate in flocks along the river line and the first blackberries glisten purple. It's a ... Read the Post...
A year of foraging and garden preserves – midsummer
It's long overdue but the season seems to finally be settling into a more predictable rhythm. From September to December last year, the challenges of getting the greenhouse built and set up, travel, erratic weather, a lingering illness and end of year burnout set me back and put a damper on my garden mojo. But the garden trundles along, with some disappointing fails and a few unexpected bumper harvests - and the eternal redemption of the 'reset' ... Read the Post...
