Summer Fruit Summary

 This is the birthday boy, he's an old codger now having attained the age of 60 today!  Happy Happy Birthday to my dear husband xx

 The fruit harvest is slowing down now with the summer fruits all but finished. We ended up with 2 1/2 kilos of these lovely Italian Sugar Plums.  None of ours made it to the drying stage to turn into prunes, we gobbled them up as delicious fresh fruit.

 We picked the final few pears today, 9 kilos in total.  It took us a while to work out when the right time was to pick them so we had a few dodgy ones.  I dehydrated a dozen....peeled, cored and sliced them, then soaked briefly in water with a lemon squeezed in to stop them going brown, then a brush with a little bit of honey (as I was drying ones that weren't quite ripe).  They are a very nice snack.  We failed with the right time to pick the rock melon too, it's a bit under-ripe.  Two earlier ones were scoffed by creatures of the night so we were trying to beat them to it!  Food growing is a continuous learning curve.  One the right is the last of the Bramley apples, very early this year, they are soooo nice as a stewed fruit with rhubarb.

 

 The final tally of fruit over summer was....
Cherries - ten only, the first taste!
Flavortop yellow nectarine - 8 kilos
Apricots - 5.5 kilos a mix of Story, Trevatt and Moorpark on a triple grafted tree 
Angel flat white peach - 10 kilos
Elberta yellow peach - 2 kilos, the first fruit from this tree
O'Henry yellow peach - four only, the tree is not growing well, may need to be moved.
Goldmine white nectarine - two only, we ran out of nets and the parrots got them all.
Italian sugar plums - 2.5 kilos, the first fruit from this tree
Bartlett pears - 9 kilos
plus a few handfuls of blueberries, strawberries and blackberries that had only just been planted.
Oh yes, and loads of rhubarb, a constant cropper. 

Non events were the Greengage plum and Coe's Golden Drop plums....they are pollinated by the Italian sugar plum but that flowered much too early so the tiny fruits just fell off.  We may put another pollinator in.
The almond tree that always starts out magnificently with massive leaf growth,  loads of flowers and then almonds, always ends up looking sad and damaged at the end of summer with only a few almonds left...the rest shrivel up and the ends of the leaves are brown.  We may need to question if it's getting enough water right at the bottom of the orchard.
The little walnut tree that has struggled for the last two years finally died.
The three small hazelnuts in the back garden also died. 
We should probably presume that our soil is not suitable for growing nuts unfortunately.
However, adding that lot up, it sees that we have harvested over 40 kilos of fruit since Christmas so hip hip hooray!!  :-)

Coming up over the next two months are the Fuyu persimmons (that still has plenty of fruit despite being blown over twice!), Cox's Orange Pippin apples, Red Fuji apples, Sundowner apples, Granny Smith apples and 3 quince on a small tree in the back garden.

Water level photo for the beginning of March for our records.  Probably about 35000 litres of usable rainwater in there (we cant use the last 10000 as that's what stops the tank from blowing away!)  which is okay, but it's very very dry and some rain would be marvellous pretty please.

 There was a mystery bird of prey hanging around the other day, I knew it was there because the magpies were giving it merry hell.  Try as I might I couldn't get a clear photo, but looking at the feather markings I think it's either a juvenile Goshawk (we've seen one of these before now),

but this photo shows a collar of lighter feathers which indicates it might be a Swamp Harrier (what a cool name!)  Not sure which one is was and it's gone now.  I'm not surprised there are birds of prey hanging around, there are zillions of galahs.  

 We had a lovely afternoon at Boston Brewery with friends Angie, Amy, Judy and Marty last week.  It's the first time we've been when there is live music playing and we were entertained by the very talented blues musician Moondog.

 Steve and I must get back to our early morning walks on the beach now that Perth visits are over and visitors have departed.  We were going every morning for a while there but life gets in the way and now we must regain our good habits.  It's always so pretty, I love all the flat bottomed clouds in this shot.

 This was a morning when we excelled ourselves and were down at the beach at dawn!  Our area is unusual in that the morning sun rises over the water, that's an odd  sight in Western Australia. Very beautiful

Oh yes, I finally finished my crocheted cushion.  It's big and squashy and very comfortable to lean against on the settee.

 

 Until next time xx