Absence makes the heart grow fonder ...

Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Oh, there is another excuse .... here it is!

Yes, we've been growing one of these for the last few months and our due date is almost upon us so as you can imagine, myself and Mr TG&C have been a little preoccupied.
However, in the meantime, here's an update on the garden. It's now winter here in the tropics of Far North Queensland and the weather has been rather magical. While we've had some rain over the past week, today we had a beautiful, sunny, 26 degree day and it was just perfect so the garden is starting to get going again.
Here's a sample of what's growing at the mo....

A few seedlings in pots, growing, growing, growing, getting ready for being planted out into the vege patch proper.

Our one-and-only orange. This tree is probably only about 18 months' old so I don't have great expectations of it just yet ...

This is a certain nawty dawg. Well, we love him, and he did chase some religious types out of the yard the other day (!!) but he's rather naughty too. If it's not picking almost ripe capsicums (now we have to put them in pots on the deck to protect them!), he's digging at the compost bin in a bid to get at something nice and smelly in there, or his latest trick is trying to get underneath Mr TG&C's mynah bird trap. Grrr. Any suggestions?

Rosella, rosella. Now, we've only got about three of these bushes in our yard and I reckon you need twice that many to get a decent crop for jam-making. However, I have found that if you pick as they're ripe, then chuck them in the fridge, they last a good couple of weeks until you're ready to get jamming. The other benefit of this is that the outer red "petals" aren't as tough to peel after they've been refrigerated for a while.

Mandarins. These are about the same vintage as the orange, but there's about half-a-dozen fruit on this one so we have high hopes of seeing some yummy sweet mandarins in the kitchen before too long.

Lime-alicious.This is the same era as the other citrus but seems to have more oomph than the others. He's been fruiting for at least six months straight. And they are BIG and JUICY.

Monstera deliciosa. I posted a pic of this fellow quite a few months ago now and thought I'd show you an update. He hasn't fruited yet but I can't wait for the day he does!

The existing yellow passionfruit vine. Yesterday Mr TG&C planted a purple passionfruit beside it, so hopefully it will look all nice and colourful when both are in fruit at the same time. What do you reckon?

Till next time. I promise I'll try not to leave it so long in future!
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