Growing Time.

Growing time. Growing( expanding) Time.  Both are applicable. I need more hours in the day but would be totally exhausted if it happened so maybe not such a smart notion.
    * Molly send your son over immediately, we'll put him to work.
   *Meg - I commented to Mary that obviously the pollen didn't get to her. "Nah," she said dragging on a smoke . So someone who does not  get affected by sissy things like allergies!!!!

I have been collecting macadamia nuts from under the trees and drying them on the trolley in the sun. The ones at the front have not yet split open their outer shell. They still have to be cracked after that.

I have been closely watching this cauliflower and marvelling at it's perfection and wrapping.

The first baby courgettes are sizing up. Yum! I can't wait to make fritters out of some.

I have pulled out going to seed parsley and missed radish to make room for more lettuce, 2 capsicums and a coriander. ( I don't much care for coriander but R likes it and the young ones coming soon do too.)

Yesterday morning I mowed all the lawns. Weeds and grasses were forming seed heads and the wind had left plenty of twigs and leaves for me to collect.The sight of freshly ( neatly ) mowed  lawns always makes me want to rush in for the camera to take photos while it's looking neat and tidy. So many things are flowering I can't keep up.

Filipendula is one of my favourites at the moment. So delicate, the leaves are fabulous too.

Usually I grow Iceland poppies ( Hello Gudrun )  but tried Shirley poppies this time. 

Meg the rose has a beautiful face too.
All these ladies in my garden!

This one is Sally.  While all the roses are beautiful I do have a problem with bronze beetles hiding in them and eating holes in the petals. You can see some evidence of it here at the bottom right corner. Some are so badly chewed they are totally destroyed. The only thing I can do is digitally squash them ( but they leap and drop to the ground). I dead head over a large bowl to try and catch as many as I can. We still have bees here so I can't spray with any insecticide. They overwinter under ground so are hard to get rid of.
 I started counting up how many flowers have people's names or is it the other way around, people have flowers' names. Many I know are named after the breeder or someone in their family. ( someone  wrote a book about "Ladies and Gentlemen in my Garden." I think I have it somewhere.

Over Ordered.

I think I may have over ordered on the rain!

This long holiday weekend for us was very wet.

We have had 140 mls ( 5.5 inches ) of rain in the last 3 days.. Blocked spouting had to be cleared by R in the worst down pour. We have metal ( gravel ) washed off some of the tracks but nothing more moved in the landslide debris in the creek , altough the creek itself was up and the spillway barely coped. Others about the country were not so lucky with Hawkes Bay and Gisborne areas getting severe flooding and slips.

I did some cutting out but the minute I sat down at the sewing machine the power went out. Not for too long but dinner was a bit late.The ball made some progress and one hemisphere is complete and the other has the last 3 to fill with motifs.

This morning is fine but cloudy but one of the main things I am doing is harvesting veges that haven't been picked for a couple of days. The wet has split some tomatoes.

I have the other beans still to pick and courgettes, but as family are popping in while passing for lunch I better get going. Some pikelets are my next job.