Autumn came with a rush this year. March was very wet and quite warm, then April hit, night temperatures averaged 6°C to 8°C, and our garden was full of dead leaves. Now it’s the 3rd of May and today is wet and not forecast to top 9°C.

We’ve had quite some success with the new veggie garden. It still isn’t looking particularly attractive, but we’ve got a crop of carrots coming along great guns. There are also some younger radishes looking promising and a whole bed has been seeded with cime di rapa, which have sprung up very quickly. I had left green manure growing in the fourth bed and that has now been dug-in, but as it’d already gone to seed, I may leave it to regrow over winter.

The native strip hasn’t been doing too well. Most of the plants hadn’t been looking particularly healthy, and now they’ve been overrun with weeds. When I get the chance, I intend to have a go at covering the whole thing with mulch, leaving only the most promising of the natives clear.

Our bulbs have been thriving; with the dahlias flowering strongly throughout April, and various other bulbs tentatively sprouting up through the garden beds and lawn. I really need to make more of an effort to map where each plant is growing, so that we can dig up some of the bulbs later for redistribution around the garden.

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Birds Visiting our Garden

We have some very cute Superb Fairy-wrens who hang out in a hedging type plant on the borders of our garden. Normally they flit about too quickly for me to photograph them, but I recently managed a few good shots.

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Walking around our local area

Presumably thanks to the wet March, the local fungus has had a particularly good year. We didn’t manage to photograph any of the mushrooms at their best, but by early-May, they were still looking decidedly impressive.