Here we are, November has come around again and the countdown to Christmas has begun.
Apologies for my extended absence. A couple of days away from the blog to work on assignments and book keeping tasks ended up taking five weeks! Everything is finished for the year now, though, so I’m back in the saddle, and will do my best to post regularly.

While I was away, Spring came into full force, and the garden is looking magnificent. We have two nests in the trees in the back yard, one of which is at eye-height. I’ll hopefully be able to get a photo of mother and babies over the next couple of days to share with you. Right now, they are so tiny that they don’t even make any sounds (they only hatched on Tuesday).

The vegie patch got planted, too, with three types of peas; golden nugget pumpkins (which already have fruit on them); butternut pumpkins (squash); capsicums; chillies; eggplants, watermelon, and, of course, tomatoes – lots of tomatoes. Unfortunately, the silverbeet has gone to seed, so I”ll have to work out how best to replace it.

The rhubarb re-shot…

And the fruit trees are laden with so much fruit that it promises to be a bumper harvest. The plum tree, below, is in its third year of fruiting, and looks to have matured fully now. It has so many plums that it will look like a Christmas tree when they ripen. It looks like there might even be enough to make blood plum paste this year! Yay!

I’m so excited that the garden is doing so well, despite the on-going drought, and despite the fact that the only water it gets is from the washing machine or shower (or the rain, but we can’t really count on that, even though it is raining as I type). The fact that we have birds nesting in it, and other visitors like geckos, means that it is healthy, and that is good for everyone. The fact that it is still so productive despite the drought, is a miracle!