Friday, November 4, 2011

Spring is Here

Spring is such a lovely time of the year, the sun starts to shine, the buds appear and you can spend productive time in the garden. And your living style changes, daylight savings brings longer evenings, you can wear lighter clothes and the shops fill up with loads of colour. Next to summer, spring is my favourite time.

We have had the 3 kms of battens nailed to the house and it has given the house style and definition. The concrete drive and parking areas have been started, well 1/5th has been poured, the contractor starts then disappears for weeks on end.
But we need to buy another 100m of timber to edge and finish the raised beds. I have transplanted the orange raspberrries and bought red raspberries, a blackberry and a current yet to plant. Some veges have gone in, a bed of heritage red seeded bush beans, two plots of potatoes and salad greens. But tonight the annoying and damaging north west winds have arrived to wreck all my work.
We must get the fence built.

Our bathroom tiling has been finished, just need the plumber to fit the toilet and basin and the electrician to fit the lights, heated towell rail and we can use it, or rather guests can use it.

Our bees decided they were overcrowded and should swarm. Fortunately it was a day I was home and as they gathered momentum leaving the hive I found the offending queen bee settled on the wind break and was able to catch her. Subsequently the bees flew around for about an hour in a frenzy and without a queen to follow returned to the hive. I then purchased a new hive from Auckland and split the hive. I placed some queen cells into the new hive with 4 frames and so hopefully I will have success as establishing a second hive. I quickly added a new box and frames to the first hive.



I have planted more fruit trees including a heritage blackboy peach which to my surprise has set some fruit. But they won't survive either the wind or the fact that the tree is too young. The Tahitian lime has given us endless perfect limes that I have made into lime curd.

My limequat has produced so many fruits that have been consumed each night in a gin and lemonade, they are the most perfect accompaniment to a drink at the end of the day.

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