Too much rain for much too long

Finally, a sunny day today. Well, it started off foggy, but that's burnt off and now it is a warm day with blue skies.  It stopped raining yesterday after what seems like weeks of continual rain.  The paddock is saturated, as shown in this photo from a day or two ago.

The pumpkins do not seem to mind having sat in this for over a week.  Most of the puddling of water, is because the chickens get in there and scratch the ground up that way.  Otherwise the water would be one flat pool.

Five pumpkin plants are visible in this picture.  The only one with fruit and they're already larger than softball size, are the Atlantic Giant.  This is one which viewed in the photo above, is slightly in front of and to the right of, the small fig tree.

Here's another photo of the other end of the pumpkin "landrace".  These were planted earlier from an earlier successful germination of pumpkin seeds, and have grown larger as a result.

The best tomatoes, are yellow pear.  The seeds were a gift and were planted for the heck of it.  Just as well, as the other varieties are either struggling or damaged from sitting in water.  In the background you can see the Bloody Butcher corn.

The peas plants are starting to dry, and I'll be able to save the seed soon. Next year planting at least twice as many, seems like a good idea.  Either landrace multiple varieties, or stagger the plantings so there are fresh peas continually.  They're quite nice in a salad.

Most of this year's potatoes were Cliff Kidney, which were left of the Yellow Pear tomatoes.  And the row here which was mostly Vivaldi off along to the left.  Both of those, are now dying off.  But the Moimoi which have the purple stems have taken off and are flowering.

The yams I planted a month or so back, are taking off and showing more and more growth every day.  Thankfully the bed is sloped, and only the bottom southeast corner is just sitting in water.  I was concerned whether they would make it through the layer of grass clippings compressed by netting, but that doesn't appear to have been a problem.  When the chickens are locked up for the night, I need to peel back the netting and deal with the weeds/grass that's growing on top.

Along the sides where I had fully cleared the grass, the chickens have been scratching and fully kept it clear.  It'd probably pay to clear the grass around all sides of it, so the chickens can keep it all clear.  A problem with past yam plantings is that grubs have eaten bites out of pretty much all of them, so it can't hurt.

Speaking of the chickens, they've discovered a new treat.  A garden plant by the gate.  The red flowers seem to be a regular treat they're helping themselves to.  Here's one caught mid-air leaping to bite one off the branch.

The chilli plants are still small.  They just don't grow very fast around here.  But someone gifted some green chilli peppers, and they've been pickled for the fridge.

Here they are jarred up and cooling.  There was some leftover pickling liquid, so the apricots got the same treatment, but without the spices and garlic.  There's not much else to do with the apricots as there hasn't been enough sunshine for them to ripen consistently, and the abundance of rain lately has caused them to split on the parts that are ripe.

Worst case scenario is that the apricots can be fed to guests on the same plate as the pickled walnuts are.  Last weekend's visitors actually didn't mind them, whereas the taster preceding them spat the walnuts out.

First day of Spring

It has been raining or drizzling for the past couple of days.  Today, we get the first of the Spring snows.  It's snowing pretty decently outside at the moment and has been for the last half hour - hopefully the ground is saturated enough that it melts as it falls.

Winter Snow

I was hoping the ground was wet enough that the snow would melt.  Unfortunately, not.  The power has been out all morning, except for one brief interlude when I heard the washing machine turn on when I was outside.

The maple tree holds a fair bit of snow.

The chicken coop fencing is down.  It wouldn't have done much good to shut the chickens into their fenced area.  None of the chickens was keen to venture out into the snow.

The view of the back of the house from the field.

One lone chicken ventured out between my gumboot prints.  This one is headed for the shed to lay an egg, some of the chickens seem to prefer it to the coop, some days.

Every year branches drop off the eucalyptus tree in the front yard.  Usually it's because of wind.  The front hedge, which is 50% mexican orange blossom's, is somewhat depressed.

Some tree, maybe an ash, couldn't deal with the snow, around the found of house.

The sun has started to come out, so the snow is starting to melt, and I can hear it fall from trees around the house.

Off to call the power company to see what's up.

A better Summer in Winter, than the actual Summer

It's winter, but the temperature yesterday reached 25C, and today reached 29C. I doubt we had hotter temperatures than that in Summer, which was plagued by overcast misty days. I had to go out and water the plants, the passionfruit and broccoli were looking wilted.

I'm seriously hoping we get some hard winter before spring comes.  On one hand I do have things like the figs which don't like it so much, but then on the other hand I have maples which would like a frost and other various standard trees that like a given number of hours below 8C during winter.

Weather

This is a picture from the first bout of heavy wind, now over a month and a half old. That knocked out the power for a day or so, where I live. It also left a local bridge that I use blocked, requiring me to do a long detour.

Pretty much every day, these days, has some strong wind. But about two weeks ago, there was another bout of bad weather. It started by in the space of ten minutes going from a sunny day, to dark and windy, to heavy hail, and finally back to a sunny day. I was by my garage shovelling potting mix and planting new seeds in new seed trays, so had to hurry to put some protection over my existing seed trays.

The front lawn. The peach tree near the center of the photo, which had minor blossom on it, didn't get too badly damaged. It currently has lots of fuzzy buds on it.

The eucalyptus tree part of the front lawn (Sunday).

The eucalyptus tree part of the front lawn (Monday). This is after the second bout of wind.

There's an old apricot tree by my raised beds. I didn't think there were many budding fruit on it as it was, but after the wind, there are now even less.

The power went off early in the morning, so I decided to drive into town and take care of some business. Unfortunately, my preferred route was blocked.

My second preferred route was also blocked.

And more power lines were down.

Thankfully the power came back on shortly before I actually left for town, and although it went off for several hours later in the afternoon, it's been on since. The eucalyptus tree blocks the winter morning sun, and it's not near enough to anything other than shrubs, to do much damage if more pieces fall off. Here's hoping for no more power cuts.

Foggy weather

On one of the few days with seasonable winter weather, there was heavy fog that lasted over night.  It's quite nice to go running in, when I go in the morning.  Although when I do, it makes me think of the roving pack of wild dogs Liza had in her neighbourhood in Atlanta.  At least we only had double shootings and muggings at knife-point in mine.

Heavy fog out the gate.

No power, no phone

Extremely strong wind last night. Power went out around 5 PM. Cell phone reception wasn't working after my run this morning, but was working at around 6 PM last night. Had to come into town to use internet, and trees were down on roads blocking bridges and otherwise just torn up at the roots and lying on fences.