In complete contrast to last years approx 600mm of rain, I believe Northland has had 60mls of rain over Jan/Feb this year. This is certainly evident in the lawns around us starting turn brown instead of having rivers running past our windows. Our spring water underneath, while a nuisance in wet weather, does keep us going a wee bit longer and has feed our trees.
That being said, a lot of crops in the garden are starting to finish. It's still far too hot here to even think about putting winter crops in so we are in a bit of a limbo. The back gardens will not be replanted as they finish (except for one bed of potatoes). The side 3 beds will be kept going with our second sowing of cucumbers/zucchini and corn. I also keep filling the tomato bed with basil (taking the tips of/rooting and replanting) and let that take over as the tomatoes finish. I then make pesto - lots of it to freeze.
And today, as I cleaned up the large back bed, I harvested some squash from the plants which vines had died off. I also had to cut up one of the zuchettas as curiosity got the better of me. We've eaten a few small as zucchini but we were keen to see what happened if we let them mature. I believe they will store for 1-3 months but are likely to be turned into soup before then. Tonight we grated some into our corn fritters (we don't use cream corn, but kernals and whatever else is ready in the garden).
And bottom right pic....I finally got some snake beans to actually flower/form beans. I am actually a huge fan of these now too. So easy to cut up and we only needed two.
As well as having a bit of a tidy up day outside with the boysenberries getting cut back, and the sunflowers pulled out, the freezers also got a bit of a tidy up. I plan to stock up with a bit of baking and soups to help with the manic juggling we are now incurring with C starting high school. We have an immense juggling act as we have a number of clashes happening with our two kids sports, which is also resulting in late nights (C has made it into the school sailing team as well as hockey Academy). A bit of a shuffle around, and some careful planning, and I am sure we will get things on track, but in the meantime I have become that crazy mother that drops one child off to one thing, then goes and picks up the other, then goes back to the first child.
I also managed to squeeze in some pizza sauce, and two jars of jalepenos for the fridge. We also have our next batch of relish (and probably last) on the stove atm.
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