Spring Sputters

Spring has departed. Like a slinky down the stairs, it slunk away from me. I know where some of it went, but there's still a large portion of it unaccounted for. One week was a quick trip to Tasmania. That was followed closely by a work trip to Germany which was supposed to be for only a week but turned into three. So that's one third of it gone. The rest, I don't know about.

I have to send a special thanks to Suyin, who kept everything alive while I was away. Even lugging a watering can down my annoyingly convoluted path when she was sick with the flu. She even did some weeding, despite her wormyphobia. Hopefully the fresh peas and radishes were some small compensation. Oh yes, the peas. Here's what they looked like back in late October, just before I went away:

Golden Podded Peas mit Golden Pods!

 The golden podded peas matured first and tasted great pods and all when eaten like snow peas.

They can be picked at this stage and eaten as snow peas or left a bit longer to use as shelling peas.

The purple podded Dutch peas took a little longer but have magnificent purple flowers.

By the time I got back they were all but done. There were a few of the purple ones left which had got a bit old and hard. No matter, they were all a bit of an experiment to see if I could get a Spring crop before the sun got too hot and toasted them. I'll plant some more in Autumn.

Now on to proper Summer crops, and here's the amazing circle of corn, again from late October:

Crop Circle

You'll notice that I have two sizes of corn. For some reason most of the seeds I planted on the left side didn't germinate. Either that or some little rattie dug them up and ate them. I suspect the rattie. 

Corn, lettuce and very small tomato seedlings

 Here you can also see the trellis for the tomatoes and some lettuce seedlings alongside the path... But NOW:

Big corn, big lettuce and not-very-big-at-all tomato seedling

Everything is huge. The corn is now flowering, or at least the large half is. Corn normally likes to be planted in a big enough clump to ensure good pollination. Hopefully my two slightly staggered half-clumps will be ok. The tomatoes got off to a very slow start and are only now really taking off. I'll have to work on my tomato seedling raising technique. However careful I am, they always seem to sulk for a month after I plant them out.

There's lots more happening, but that all I have time for tonight. Back soon.