Ah, Autumn, you sexy thang. Your golden light just makes me utterly effusive and you turn everything into a magical version of itself. You roll in morning fog like a veil between us and the fairy world and when you lift it you give us the bluest skies. You remind us of death but you do it in the most beautiful ways as you paint the falling leaves on the trees a whole spectrum of warmth from melted butter to honey and gold. You're also making my vegie seedlings grow so fast it's all a bit jack-in-the-beanstalk.

But I'm slightly grumpy with you because you've also made me sick and halted all my projects I had going on. Today I just managed to walk out into the fresh air and wander around the garden to see check out what's happening whilst I've been dying on the couch coughing my lungs up (sorry - gross!). I'm actually itching to get in there and dig, weed and plant (you know what that feelings like, right?) but for now I can just take photos and plan.

I guess the first thing to share is the garden path through the vegetable patch, which I'm really excited about. The inner patch is the first thing we put in when we got our acreage, smack outside the back door with a fence around it to keep out the wabbits and chooks. I love seeing it from the kitchen, just knowing I can go and grab my own food for dinner. Anyway, the middle path is usually just a dusty or muddy weed filled mess, because we'd never got around to putting a proper path in, and since we wombled some pavers, Jamie's been slowly putting them down and they are FABULOUS. Of course, like anything Jamie does, it has to be done properly, so I'm having to be patient, which I am not, and now he's laid up coughing too and can't do much more at the moment. Humph. I can be a princess and I WANT MY PATH.



One of the best things about having an established vegetable garden is that after a few years, everything just starts self seeding and planting itself. I love that - so much less effort on my part, and things seem to grow better when they plant themselves (we just down a 15 ft gum tree that did that - three years and we have a heap of firewood and we didn't do a thing!!). So the parsley, coriander and fennel have done just that, bless 'em. Oh, by the way - don't BOTHER growing coriander in any other way - it's far better to let it do it's own thing. Plant it in summer via seedlings and it will just bolt really quickly. The garlic chives have self seeded themselves too, which is great. We use a lot of them as Jamie suffers if he eats garlic or onion, but chives and spring onions are fine.

I had just enough energy to pick some comfrey to throw in a bucket of water to get some more comfrey tea growing for the garden. If you don't have comfrey in your garden, you absolutely have to plant some.

The stuff is a WONDER herb. Here are THREE posts on comfrey on Steemit you should probably read if you don't believe me:

• https://steemit.com/comfrey/@balkep/comfrey-believe-the-hype by @balkep
• https://steemit.com/gardening/@luzcypher/the-magic-of-homemade-fertilizer-feeding-your-garden-with-comfrey by @lucypher
• https://steemit.com/gardening/@gardenofeden/wildcrafted-medicine-the-incredible-power-of-comfrey-to-heal-wounds-and-bones by @gardenofeden

The silverbeet is still going strong. I always let it go to seed, so that plants itself too, and so did some beetroot. Although I have planted two punnets of beetroot, I let the self seeded stuff grow as I use that for another garden green. Why anyone throws beetroot tops away I do not know. They are great as a spinach substitute and in salads too.

Garlic is also a great one to let do it's thing. I always have some I've missed from pulling it up the year before, but tend to throw some whole bulbs in if they aren't great seed material, or are just the scrap stuff I'm not going to bother with. They pop up in clumps and I use the shoots just as you'd use garlic chives or spring onions. We call it sprung garlic. One of the garlic patches is coming along nicely and I need to do another lot next week. I've planted less this year than usual as Jamie's not eating it but I usually grow a few hundred.

There's a few other things that grow perpetually in the garden, but do better in some weather (and seasons, of course) than others. Rhubarb is one, but it's looking like it needs a good fertilise right now so I'll grab some compost to give it a top dressing. The other is artichokes, and mint, which is now taking over by the back tap so I do need to control that a little, though I haven't the heart really!

I dug up my black chilli plant from the garden and popped it in a pot - I'll have to pop it under glass or plastic to keep it alive through winter. The tomatoes are still bearing fruit, though the mice are getting them now and I'll have to do something about that.

There's a ton other things happening in the garden and a massive to do list:

• Sort out the compost bays, and create a new one
• Make a mini garden shed out of an apple crate
• Transplant the goji berries
• Make more comfrey tea
• Weed the back garden bed and plant some natives and mulch
• Dig up the jerusalem artichokes so they don't take over next Spring
• Cut down the useless fig tree that doesn't bear fruit
• Plant more garlic
• Think about an asparagus patch for the 10th year running and maybe do it this year
• Potatoes?
• Pick and pickle olives
• Pick the last of the apples, pears and quinces, and sort out the raspberry patch
  

The Garden Journal Challenge 2018

@simplymike had the great idea of starting a steemit garden journal and you can read about his challenge here: https://steemit.com/gardening/@simplymike/steemit-community-garden-journal-challenge-with-steem-bounty

He suggests that we take pictures about what we've been doing, showcase the photos and talk about it a little, and post with the tag #gardenjournal2018 , then pop over to his post and pop your link there. That way we can see what other folk are up to as well. It's a lovely idea - are you in?

He writes:

If we keep this up until the end of the season, you’ll have a great journal that tells the story of your garden. You’ll be able to see how your empty containers or beds turn into beautiful jungles of plants and flowers, and see your garden flourish with every month that goes by. From past experiences, I’ve learned that such a journal feeds the feeling of accomplishment when you’re finally able to pick that first ripe tomato, or the first large zucchini.

I love the idea, because journalling is such a nice way of looking back over the season and seeing the progress, and on-line of course we engage with other members of the gardening community. You'll find @gardenmike 's example here - he's been laid up too, which is hard for us gardeners to do as there is so much to get doing! Looks like he's going well now though. He's in Belgium - the opposite end of the growing season to us! However, we never get that cold here, so we still can grow vegetables outdoors all year long.

The final part of this April journal is a prayer for rain - we've had lots of sunshine but rain, not so much.

However, Ganesha is looking after my garden for me while I'm coughing and feeling sorry for myself. Perhaps he will remove all obstacles to the growing season for me, and bring some rain. As well as clear out this bloody cough.