New Zealand wood pigeon .. enjoying the sunshine

Driving home on Friday I couldn’t believe my eyes when heading up our driveway I spotted my two rather fat sheep standing in my vege garden! OMG, terrorist alert – unwanted ruminants in brassica raised bed. Quick, urgent action required. I honestly don’t think I have moved so fast in years. I had no sooner stopped the car, flung the door open and leapt out screaming like some banshee. I’m certain I left rubber from my gummies on the cement into the bargain. Of course sheep aren’t really all that silly and quickly realising the error of their ways, they bolted crazily up the hill dragging the electric fence with them! Interesting to see how quickly they can move when they have to!

Gone forever – 2 broccoli. All that remained were chomped stalks …  And yes, there is always a moral to a story; in this case, don’t put the sheep next to the vege garden without turning on the electric fence!

Fantail .. and yes that is the brassica garden. I couldn’t bear taking a pic of the stump

Yesterday was gorgeous weather, blue skies and it was strangely warmish for July. Lovely! Our first tulip has opened too with its bright yellow head nodding in the sun.

How good do these look? Well done Andrew

Andrew cut down another green hand of bananas today which are now hanging in our shed to ripen. After the removal of the bunch, the banana stem needs to be chopped off at ground level, as it will only fruit the one time. Once this is done, the stem was cut into sections and used as a mulch, conveniently stuffing the chunks in between remaining banana stems. Now that is what you call recycling.

At long last I have mulched most of the garlic … and will do the remaining allium bed later this week. There were lots of self seeded plants poking up from the soil and of course lots of those proverbial weeds. I always hoist out the latter, but I find things like phacelia, borage and calendula harder to remove. Of course if I leave these plants in situ to flower, they will choke the garlic and rob it of its winter sunlight into the bargain. So sadly I will have to hoist these out too … big apologies to the bees.

Calendulas in the wrong spot!

I’ve been particularly bad and still haven’t pruned those apple and pear trees yet. I should have done them today as the weather was perfect. Plus we have at least 35 olive trees which are in dire need of a trim also. These I suspect will get their haircut closer to spring.

Too good not to share. Love all that colour. Flavour is pretty good too ..

I spotted a rather small snail sitting on one of my cabbage leaves yesterday … I glanced at it and strangely left it there. Not like me at all. I guess it was something to do with the fact that I was staring forlornly at the remnants of those brassicas.

Happy gardening!

PS Very excited, we have just arrived in Central Otago. Time to check out those vineyards, get some fab pics and have a glass or two of Toi Toi of course!