proteas - front garden

Geoff has been tending these gorgeous 'Braidwood Brilliant' proteas in the front garden. They are so spectacular! Our first go at planting proteas last year wasn't so successful with the intense heat over a long summer. We hope that these proteas are well established enough to survive this coming summer. Climate change makes gardening so much more challenging!
Geoff really enjoys growing flowers to cut - there have been lovely daffodils in the house over the last few weeks. Always a promise of spring to come.
More on protea cultivation on Gardening Australia website. 

September 2010 - peas

The shelling peas growing up the trellis looked healthy - just not a lot of them this year. These delightful specimens were set aside for my granddaughters to eat when they visited. Eating peas straight from the shell - delicious. So fabulous to share gardening with Marley and Lila - so many kids don't know where the food they eat comes from, or how it grows. Time to uproot the peas and get ready for a fabulous new climbing zucchini I've found on the Diggers website. Perfect for training up the trellis and quite space effective.

September garden - celery

Celery patch - with evidence of caterpillars!

September 2010
I'm amazed at how well our celery is going - two patches like this. When we came back after a few weeks away, the caterpillars had taken over. I don't mind a bit of munching but they brought all their relatives and set up a squat in our celery patch!
Now that they've been relocated (some went to people with chooks - apparently they love them!), the celery is thriving again.
I'm just loving going out and plucking some celery stalks to add to meals. I've added some recipes using celery onto the 365 seasonal garden recipes blogsite. The lentil and celery soup is especially delicious!

lillies in the fish pond

In summer the flowers bloom in the fish pond - for a day only. A real treat when they emerge!

We are incredulous that we still have tomatoes being produced. All of our tomato plants grew from the compost (emerging about April last year in a patch where we had been hoping to grow some flowers), fruiting for the first time at the start of October. Some plants are still going, though the season is drawing to a close (it's mid April - so these plants have been going for about 12 months!!!). We'll miss the steady stream of tomatoes so exploring options for winter tomato plants.

Rosella bird

What a delight it has been to be privvy to the raising of the baby rosella which we have named 'Charlie' (it's a boy - males have the colourful markings, females are green). The young bird doesn't have developed tail feathers, and Charlie must first master scrambling up and down the tree. The mother comes to feed Charlie and he has to reach the mother, and then the mother moves so Charlie needs to scramble once again to find its way to his mother. Every so often Charlie flutters down to the ground and finds another tree to climb. We 'chat' to Charlie when we're out in the garden. He spends most of the day in the tree by himself. Do birds get lonely....?

curry leaf tree

The curry leaf tree has colourful berries on the canopy. I'm potting some of the seeds - apparently they tree is easy to grow from seed, though the seed has to be fresh. The curry leaf tree is grown for foliage, particularly for Indian cooking. I used to use dried curry leaves from the shop, but having them fresh makes a huge difference.