It's amazing how loud bees are when they are en masse in a tree. Every time I walk past this beautiful flowering gum up in my pasture I stop and watch these girls excitedly buzzing around these glorious blossoms. And it's not only the bees that love these flowers, there are plenty of butterflies up there as well. I might look into planting a few more of these gums around the place just for the sheer joy it brings these little creatures.
Closer to the house now in my veggie garden there are plenty of bees and pollinators helping out. My veggies are all coming along. Even a cabbage is doing well. It's kind of out of season with the others having gone to seed ( small ones that I'd left and hadn't harvested!). Yay!!
My sprouting broccoli is even doing ok after being attacked by the cabbage moth caterpillars. I'll be doing a harvest today to encourage more sprouts to shoot! It seems to be the year of the eggplant in my garden this summer. I have heaps of these skinny purple eggplants growing so I'll have to find a recipe for fresh eating and maybe a little preserving as well . My Italian preserving book usually has something interesting in it so I'm sure I'll discover a recipe to excite :) . My second variety of cucumber is kicking into life. I thought this was my usual lebanese cuc variety, small and squat, but these things are turning out quite long and skinny. I'll have to check my seed packet to remind myself what I actually planted!!
A new variety of bean that I'm growing this year is a Ukranian climbing bean. I think I planted eight beans on each side of this arched trellis. One side is going gangbusters while the other is taking a bit to get going. When the plants were young I had too much planted next to the slower side which did impact on their growth. I'm not too worried because the rampancy with which these plants grow has given me an enormous amount of food. I'm enjoying picking the beans young and fresh for salads but it's hard to clear them all in time. They start to develop the bean inside very quickly. Looks like I'll be enjoying more of this bean as a dried bean in winter in a hearty baked bean recipe, than fresh in summer! No problem - delicious either way!
I've been working on a few mundane chore type activities this week which aren't particularly photo worthy. Cutting up kindling and piling in the wood shed, tidying up areas of garden and piling up the branches ready for shredding, and a bit general maintenance - like finally weeding my paved area! It all has to be done sometime right!?
What's happening in your garden at the moment? Would love to hear from you. And please let me know if you have any issues with commenting (if you try) as I am a little frustrated at times with this feature associated with this blog! Hopefully there will be no issues. Please let me know what is the most successful veg you have growing if you have a veg plot yourself!
Have a great week!
Cheers
Linda