What lurks in the shrubbery?

Heat waves, bush fires, dense smoke, inquisitive chooks and an incompetent gardener seem to be a winning combination for this garden patch. Shaded by dark, broad leaves lurks a thick, green surprise! I am told they won’t taste very good when you let them get large. However, this needs to be balanced against the fact that massive vegetables are pretty awesome. The zucchini lives to grow another day!



The garden is also producing normal size zucchinis along with various types of lettuce. And today I got the first tomatoes of the season!














Not too shabby for two people, and it is early days yet. Based on some of the green fruit I saw, in a few weeks we     might have more vegetables than we can deal with…

Benign Neglect

The soil, though bolstered by several buckets of chook manure and straw, is predominantly clay. The easterly aspect is sub-optimal (and the hill behind us makes it worse). The fences block access to the inquisitive chooks in only a theoretical sense. Despite these setbacks, the zucchini, tomatoes and lettuce are doing well (it is best not to dwell on the subject of beans, capsicum and cucumber). So well in fact, that they even survived without me for 10 hot summer days and almost no rain.



Most of the plants are fruiting and the signs are looking good that something edible might be produced!



The real test will be if they can survive now that I am here to look after them!