We spend a lot of time at the Auckland Museum and the Domain gardens, so much exploring to do, the Museum is great when it’s rainy outside, and the glass houses in the Winter Gardens are really colonial and pretty.  This particular morning earlier last week was just stunning, a perfect Autumn day.

Striking yellow lichen growing on the posts in the top path of Fernz Fernery.

Hoya flowers opening like little parcels

Such pretty blooms in the Winter Gardens glass house.

We bought a swan plant about a week ago and I’ve been looking most days and checking under the leaves for any little eggs, or hoping to see a butterfly visit one day, and today I found a few eggs!  Very exciting, they must have arrived in the last couple of days, and I’ll be waiting to see how long it takes them to hatch.

Such a lovely and satisfying way to celebrate the solstices.  This is the second attempt at garlic growing for us, and this is by far more successful than the first.  I so recommend growing your own!

The photo above was taken in August and shows the first strong shoots pushing up through the mulch and good worm cast compost…  only four months later and we have these!

I found some lovely large organic garlic cloves at my local organics shop, much of which was already sprouting and was much better than the seed garlic I bought from the plant shop the previous year.  We used the same bed in the garden, and for the six months it was between crops we added several layers of compost as garlic apparently uses a lot of nitrogen.  After planting the cloves we covered the bed in a thick mulch of leaves.

It was really very easy to grow, we have a worm farm which provides a good liquid fertilizer, that I applied fairly regularly, we had plenty of rain and so I did not need to water very often until late November.  We also tended to avoid many other plants growing in the same bed as garlic is one of those plants that does not make a good companion, ours shared the bed with some self-seeding Kale and Calendulas and that was about it.

It took a morning to brush off the dried dirt and braid up, about 50 cloves, six of which stayed smallish cloves and a couple that were spiked by the fork, so plenty for us and some to share around.  It’s good to let it air dry, we kept it mostly shaded for a few days until it was ready for braiding.  The flavour seems to develop nicely as the cloves dry, but you can still cook with them fresh.

We all went along to the New Zealand Carnivorous Plant Society annual show last weekend and it was cool.  Rob took a few photos of the display plants and I took home the deadly sundew above, it is a Drosera binata, it is a native, and is so beautiful.

I was really keen to see some native carnivorous plants, and to bring one home was great!  They had some healthy pitcher plants, and other sundews and of course impressive venus fly traps, plenty up for sale and the growers had so much knowledge to share.  I will be at the next one for sure.

So elegant!

Soon we will be planting out our annual garlic patch, in the meantime the vege garden beds are a bit over grown, but the herbs are doing well.

Calendulas are popping up everywhere, and the rhubarb and comfrey is springing back to life.

The red kale is looking lovely, so good for a salad!

The front herb garden is looking quiet, with the purple sage, angelica and occasional pansies doing well in spite of the chilly and more shady winter months.

We have had lovely butter beans, they really took off after the nearby garlic was harvested it seems proof that they are not good plant companions at all!

And the beetroot chili didn’t turn out so well.. arh, it apparently tried to escape from the jar and, well was perhaps not fit for eating afterall.  Once we managed to get the lid off (no small task!) it just kept on oozing up and out in a strange kind of menacing way.

What with all this lovely, rainy, windy, cold and warm Spring weather the herbs are coming along nicely.

I’m drying herbs for tea and for use as culinary treats for the less favourable months, so far in the drying cupboard are trays of lovely comomile, spearmint and garden mint, all good plant companions and good for fresh or dried teas.

Meanwhile in the vege patch the silverbeet, kale, broad beans – oh and the garlic! are all thriving. The first garlic bed I’ve sown is looking good, and I can’t wait to give a try when it’s due for harvest on the Summer Solstice.

And in the workshop-come-glasshouse seed trays of corn, sweet basil, opal basil, tomatoes, sunflowers and chilli peppers are doing well too, it’s going to be a busy summer season once the beds are full and enjoying the sun!

This is the garlic as it was in July…

We’ve been quite busy lately, and the garden is coming along really well – aside from the tomatoes getting blight…

My basil has been growing in pure wormcasts and has survived an aphid attack – and won! No sign of the little green bugs now.

The beautiful purple climbing beans have given us more than we can consume ourselves…

Austin likes to supervise any harvesting of course.

And the rhubarb is getting there too..

One of the new developments at home, I recently transplanted this hoya that I had growing in a pot into a hanging container.  It’s obviously much happier and this is the first time it has flowered since I have had it…  very exciting.

And the next big thing, my lovely little pitcher plant has a nice new flower too, much bigger than last year’s one, take a look here, it flowered in April of last year.