Summertime blues ...

Good evening ... or good morning wherever in the world you may be reading this ...
It's been an interesting few weeks in the garden, here in the tropics of Far North Queensland. We had probably 10 inches of rain a few weeks ago, but since then it's like the wet season has almost dried up. And yet there's still been a bit of rain floating around.
It's officially Autumn now of course which means we should really be coming into our growing season. We've been away a little bit of late and have another trip coming up soon, but hopefully after that we can get cracking and planting.
In the meantime, here's a few recent shots of what's growing and what we've been up to.

Yay! Finally some passionfruit. I never realised until relatively recently, but passionfruit vines die after a couple of years. So I was devastated when our previous vine died, but finally we've got some fresh babies growing. Yay!

Pawpaws have been fairly prolific this year. Forgive the wrong orientation. Too tired to correct, but you get the idea. Thinking I might throw a few in our new, whizbang dehydrator. Thanks Sis!



Capsicums. Seem to have been saved from the dog's jaws for some reason. Think some of these made their way onto Mr TG&C's home made pizzas tonight. Yumm.

Another prolific fruiter. Limes. This tree seems to bear fruit all year round. The other week I made a lime cordial - didn't have enough sugar (about half as much as needed) and it was the wrong sort (raw instead of white) but it's a good way to use them, anyway.

Bush lemon. Grow my pretties, grow!
What's growing in your neck of the woods?

 

There's a monster in the garden!

As I write this, a small boy is resting his head on my right forearm. Very cute, but hard to type.
A few minutes later and he's happily eating his dinner - cheesy vegetable-laden fritters and water, followed by fruit. Even though he was a BLW baby, I've struggled to get veges into him. Sometimes he'll go for a room-temperature cherry tomato, other times not, but that's about all that I can get into him without disguising it. I guess since he came into our lives I've become a lot more conscious of our own diet and just how damn processed it is sometimes. While hubby and I both are "farm kids" by background, you just can't get fresh local produce all year round where we live. Unless you go to the local "markets" and even then, only a few of the stalls are local and you have to get up at sparrows to get there before they sell out.
So we try to grow our own. Living in the tropics of Far North Queensland, that can be quite a challenge but sometimes the garden surprises. For example, at the moment, we're enduring 30+ days and the humidity is most unpleasant. Yes, that's not as hot as many other parts of Queensland at the moment but it's still mighty unpleasant.
And so we would have thought that growing anything at this time of year was pointless, but I was rattling off to a FB contact what's growing in the garden atm and I was pleasantly surprised. We have lemons and limes, as we do almost year-round. There's also a few pineapples ripening. And there's capsicums growing in a special fenced off area (fenced off from a certain grey dog who has a penchant for bell peppers!).
But then in our main vege patch we've had basil growing for aeons and aeons and aeons. After our last crop including sweet corn and sweetpeas (now happily resting in the freezer) concluded, we decided to let the main vege patch fallow for the hotter months. But low and behold, a monster butternut pumpkin vine has sprung up.

 

Then there's a Jap/Queensland blue lurking down the back. (Is there a difference or is it like the KP/Bowen mango thing?)

 

Oh, and then there's a couple of cherry tom's hanging on in a shaded section ...

 

 

 

Oh yes, and here's the so-far safe capsicum ...

 

 

What's growing in your neck of the woods?