April 2016

The clocks have changed and evenings are all but gone.  We’re still getting glorious sunny days but the mornings and evenings can be a bit brisk, and there’s autumn colour in some of the trees.  The fire’s been lit for the first time, and the inaugural frost of the season (April 14^th) made for frozen spinach in the morning smoothie.  The grape vintage is in full flow so there’s a sense of busy-ness and the roads around Marlborough are clogged with vineyard vehicles. 

Lucas was home over Easter, and Karyn’s daughter, Emily was persuaded to come round and take a few family snaps.  They are to be used as a gift for Grandma and Grandpa Nick’s up-coming silver wedding anniversary which we cannot attend in person.  Emily managed to capture all of us beautifully, including Maggie.  Massive thanks Em, it was no mean feat to turn photo-phobic boys into models!

Only a few flowers remain now.  The cosmos are particularly enduring.  The ones in the photo are chocolate cosmos, which as their name suggests, actually smell of chocolate.  Every year I save the seeds of white cosmos flowers, but most of the seedlings are varying shades of pink.  The swan plant (aka the testicle plant) in the vege garden has flourished, but we haven't seen any monarch butterflies for whom it was planted.  The main flower bed has been weeded and is awaiting its thick layer of mulch in the form of clover straw.  I’ve got 30 bales ($6 each) which I’m hoping will be more than enough to cover most of the beds.  The raised beds in the horse arena were back-filled with clumps of weeds so need to have an organic matter boost.  The trees planted in them will be able to access good soil, but only when they’ve broken through the hard-core below.  That might take a while so a bit of extra nourishment won’t go amiss.  They’ll get horse poo topped with the clover straw and hopefully that’ll tuck them up well for winter. 

The citrus in those beds are now protected from the ravages of winter by frost cloth suspended from waratahs.  Hopefully it’ll hold out against the blustery nor’westers.  The citrus plants themselves are looking fine and healthy, if not a bit overwhelmed by the comfrey.  That should add extra nutrients to the soil and provide a bit more protection, at least until it dies back over winter. 

It turns out that the overgrown and non-producing raspberry bed in the horse arena is in fact productive after all.  A red glow, spotted by Karyn, led to the discovery of treasure in the form of autumn raspberries.  Large, sweet, juicy raspberries.  And there were more of this late-fruiting variety among the raspberries in the vege garden keyhole bed.  Other than quince, the fruit is pretty much over, so it was a very pleasant surprise indeed.

Karyn’s plot is in need of weeding, and is frankly, lowering the tone of the otherwise pristine vege garden.  That’s what I tell her anyway.  Her brassicas are doing well and she has surpassed herself with carrot germination, and even her parsnips are coming through – which is more than can be said for mine.  The pathways around the keyhole beds were created from weed-mat covered in wood chips, and this worked well for a while.  In the last few months the wood chips have broken down considerably, and in many places are really saw-dusty soil in which the weeds thrive.  Keeping the weeds at a manageable level has become a massive task, so I’m probably going to have to remove the wood chip, re-lay the weed-mat and add gravel.  Better start shovelling and saving.

Our friends Jill and George have been around a few times.  I first met Jill in Greymouth, and that's a long story.  George has a bit of a chainsaw obsession and they've recently moved from a lifestyle block in Invercargill, to a residential block in Renwick.  There isn't much call for 4 chainsaws on a residential section, so we've been the happy recipients of his skills. He's been working on the huge pine tree that was felled by the council because of its proximity to the power line.  Our medium-sized chainsaw wasn't up to the task.  There's plenty of wood, and it's great to share it like like this.

Peter has been monitoring the pond activity.  A few sweeps with the net revealed about 2 dozen tadpoles, all growing nicely though still without legs.  They were all in the trough pond, and we had been wondering why no fishy creatures seemed to want to inhabit the bath pond.  Plan D was to empty this pond, clean it and re-fill it, and it was gonna be a while before that reached the priority list.  Then Peter spotted some 5 inch whitebait and Billy remembered that they’d been added as small fry ages ago.  It’s likely that they’ve lunched and munched their way through the rest of the introduced pondlife.  Not the best outcome, but it is good to be spared from Plan D.

It’s still dry, but we have had some rain.  One day we even had puddles in the paddocks and I caught Hera and Aphrodite splashing around in them.  In the absence of high temperatures, the watering load has reduced significantly.  The citrus and olive trees usually get a weekly soaking, as do the winter vege crops.  They seem to be healthy and growing well so hopefully that’s enough. 

I managed to find good homes for most of the crab apples.  It just wasn’t possible to resist the urge to make crab apple jelly, but I did manage to keep it to a single-batch minimum.  Having biffed out several jars of previous-vintage jams, maybe I’m starting to get the hang of that moderation thing.  If only the same could be said for alcohol.  The various blackcurrant and plum concoctions now have sloe counterparts.  And there’ll be no avoiding Quince Vodka of course.  You can’t have too many winter-warmers.

The productivity of the property is ongoing and I feel extremely wealthy in terms of fresh produce.  I'm snacking on fresh figs, and have just harvested our first nut crop - chestnuts.  8 of them! Not much to write home about but at least the nuttery is getting going.  One chestnut tree and both walnuts have died, and it's a mystery as to why.  One of the walnuts has grown a shoot from below its graft.  I'm interested to see what grows so I'll wait and see for a while. 

Onions and pumpkins (crown and butternut) are ready to harvest, and now we've had frosts, the remaining tomatoes (hundreds of them) need to be picked. Pleasant tasks which will be done soon because they're pleasant. Jerusalem artichokes are probably ready too (they're flowering) but I haven't been brave enough to tackle them yet. Carrots, beetroot and brassicas are still going strong.  I'm looking forward to closing down the beds with the clover straw. Hopefully this'll provide a blanket for the soil critters as well as keeping the weeds down.

This is the best time of year for stunning sunrises.  The mist rolling down the hills and the sun gently burning it off.  It's truly delicious catching the early morning rays as they wake everything up.  The animal feeding round nowadays is just the chooks, and that's a great excuse to get outside and greet the day.  On a whim I decided to write the shopping list in French (actually pigeon-french because I couldn't remember much.  Billy added the last item. I think you can tell he didn't learn French at school.