The winter garden

I have been taking photographs and composing blog posts in my head, but somehow, not making it to my keyboard to actually type these things up! Bad blogger, no biscuit for you!

So, here’s a bunch of garden pictures from mid winter to mildly amuse you. A little background to these shots — it has been incredibly dry here these last couple of months. I think we may have had about 5 mm of rainfall in that time, it’s pathetic. I mentioned a long while ago now that the dirt floor of the chook run was looking very dusty — no rain of note since then.  These photos were taken during that dry patch, and the garden is looking a little withered, and the chook run is hard and compacted.

This last week, however, the heavens have opened up and given us a dose of classic Sydney rain: sideways-in-the-face. Thanks, Sydney! This has caused the usual flooded back yard, and is the reason why we have raised garden beds. I didn’t have a chance to snap a picture of the flooding yet — it was brief this time and the ground soaked it up like a sponge.

So, without further ado, some pictures!

First Coreopsis bloom

The asparagus is died back and the potatoes have been harvested. We got one small bucket, which we will use for seeding the summer potato patch.

These beets are still going. They’ve been delicious roasted over the winter! The lettuce behind is the best we’ve ever had.

The prostrate Rosemary is looking lovely with pale purple flowers. It is doing much better than the culinary rosemary in the garden bed!

The broccoli bed now has a few remnant broccoli plants, but most have been fed to the chooks or eaten up by us. The broad beans are coming along nicely!

These broccoli flowers are classic yellow, but we had some naturalised broccoli flower white! Very cool.

The broad beans at the back of the bed are flowering well now. Looking forward to some pods soon!

Hmm, climbing peas have done their usual trick – powdery mildew has overtaken them, despite the cold cold weather. This always happens!

Here’s a close-in view of the powdery mildew. This is inevitable in Sydney.

The cuttings I took from my neighbour’s lavender bush are looking rather lovely, though! I think this is Italian lavender, but I’m not sure.

And lo, here be Jonquils. Those crazy kids, you just can’t kill em.

I dead-head this daisy periodically and about a month later it goes nuts again. A very cheerful plant!

Our lemon tree (the second we’ve attempted, and the third citrus in this particular spot) has finally produced a fruit! And it was a good one. Yay!

I can’t resist a photo of the girls. They are a happy bunch now. See how bare that ground is? They can’t wait for Spring and some new greens.