Castle in the Mud

You really know that summer is just around the corner when the harvest includes tomatoes, zucchini and nectarines. In the last 2 days I have picked about 15 cherry tomatoes from self-sown plants that are rambling in part of the vegie garden. They are coming up like weeds in between the zucchini as well as over near the blueberry bushes. I must get some full-sized tomato plants too. I picked a zucchini tonight which was the size of a pencil on Saturday before I went away for a couple of days but now is just over 400g - I used it to make a zucchini quiche which I popped in the oven while I was cooking tonight's dinner. I also picked about 30 nectarines. Some of the wildlife (scrub turkeys I suspect) have been having a nibble at some of them in the past couple of days so late this afternoon I grabbed a pile of my calico bags and have covered a lot of the fruit. Hopefully that will save most of them from being demolished. The nectarine, like most of the fruit trees is only 18 months old and has a great crop on it. The other nectarine and peach also have heaps of fruit but they will be a little later. I think it is partly the variety of tree but also because they are a bit more shaded and protected on the southern side of the house. I planted them all on purpose on the southern slope in the hope that it would be cold enough for them to set fruit. My experiment appears to have been successful so far. I did not pick any mulberries today apart from a handful to eat but there are plenty so I will make time to do that tomorrow. While I was surveying the garden I noticed that there are about 30 pumpkin seedlings growing in the fresh compost that we added to the empty garden bed. I need to transplant some of them to the 'snakepit' down below the fruit trees and am also going to give some to my sister.