The weather has been very odd here in Perth, with some warm sunny days in between cold, wintery days. While some plants have suffered from the unseasonal cold, the majority are going well with the additional rain.

The orchard now has 11 trees covered to protect them from fruit fly and/or parrots….although today we did notice an Australian Raven having a good attack at one of the nets! There is flat peach, nectarines, loquats, pear, avocado, and several plumbs all safely under cover- fingers crossed!

The roses too are really blooming and add such a lovely colour to the garden! Thankfully this year’s quite severe winter prune was successful!

And ‘pumpkin palace’ has really taken off, despite a couple of set backs with a chook getting in for a short while! We have grown pumpkin, luffa, cucumber etc vertically for some years now, and it saves a lot of space as well as being safer due to snakes. We rotate the garden beds around the chook run- currently last year’s pumpkin palace is fallow and we add all the chook scraps in there for them to eat and scratch around. Another is sown with wheat and lupins as a ‘clucker tucker’ area. The third is this year’s pumpkin palace!