There's lots to do in the garden at this time of year. Even more so in our garden, with wilderness areas to clear, and really tall weeds (some taller than me) to pull out.
I'm on a quest to find ways to eat broad beans. Ours have done really well this year. I was never a huge fan of broad beans until I grew my own and discovered how delicious they are if they're picked before they get too huge. Martin is still rather indifferent to the whole broad bean concept, so I'm trying to win him over.
Obviously the snails don't need to be won over!
More promising signs - the fig tree already has baby figs. I remember the label saying that this variety (Black Genoa) will fruit in early summer and then again in autumn. This is the first time this has happened, so this fig-lover is very happy...
I've been enjoying
this book and am now thinking about growing more edible plants in our front garden. We already have three small Kalamata olive trees out there, but I'd like to gradually replace some of the native plants with drought-tolerant productive plants. I've ordered a Natal plum and a caper bush from the Diggers Club - we'll see how they go.
If all the doom-predictors are right, backyard (and frontyard!) food production may be a small step to dealing with these problems. It makes me wonder what all the people living in McMansions which take up their entire block of land will do. Some of the houses which have gone up in our suburb in recent years are huge, with no garden to speak of at the front, and probably just a paved courtyard at the back. I was relieved to hear that
the average size of the Australian house has now peaked and that the trend is for slightly smaller houses. Hopefully smaller cars, too!
Finally, some more pretty plants flowering right now...
