August – The Wrap Up

Yes I know, its the 8th of September and all that but I hadn’t done a wrap up post and despite occasional protests to the contrary I am a creature of habit/s (not all of them good….).  Before you start reading though I should warn you that not only am I drinking my second glass of wine for the evening but I did spend rather a taxing day in Melbourne’s city centre today.  What started as a ‘great idea’- to find as many of the 50 Mali sculptures as possible ended with a slightly manic 2 year old, a whinging 6 year old and two exhausted parents collapsing onto the train whispering ‘never again’.  I probably should explain at this point that Mali is an elephant who was born at Melbourne zoo last year(or perhaps the year before).  To celebrate the zoo’s 150th anniversary they made 50 life sized baby elephant sculptures and commissioned artists to paint/decorate them.  These sculptures are positioned at various locations around Melbourne’s city centre.  Whilst finding them is fun, trying to do it at the same time as trying to find shoes for a 6 year old with awkward shaped feet is to be avoided at all costs.   We managed 14,  my personal favourite being the one in the upper level food court at Melbourne Central, although woollen skinned one in Fed Square ran a very close second.

None of this has anything to with my garden in August though, but I think it probably gives context to the mood of the post if nothing else.  Anyway with no further ado here are some photos of signs of Spring, or to look at it another way – photos of my plants bolting:

Silver beet/Swiss Chard

Cavolo Nero/Tuscan Kale

Parsley

As I have chosen to regard all this rushing to flower as a sign of Spring, rather than a crisis,  I have forgiven the plants, but as usual I have neglected to sow replacement seed quite early enough…sigh….. To be fair though I should be able to get crops out of all of them for a while yet so all is not lost.

That is especially true when you consider that not only are the blueberries flowering but the Cape Gooseberry seems to have set some fruit:

The other thing doing well in the garden at the moment is the watercress.  We have had enough rain to keep it pretty content:

Also doing well, albeit a long way from harvest, is the garlic.  These are fatter than my leeks, which is probably as much a reflection on my leeks as anything else, but still this does look promising…

Then there are the broad beans which have recently started to flower, so I am now anxiously anticipating beans in the foreseeable future.  Ahhh now that really is something to look forward to.

For me August is something of a transition month, Spring kind of starts here in August to the extent that many winter crops start to bolt (even if the temperatures don’t really warm up until September, and even then not that much – today was about 16 degrees C).  Equally August is when I sow many of my summer crops so I have heaps of punnets of seedlings to show you, but that is for another post.  For now its bye bye winter, hello Spring!