Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Keats wrote a lovely "Ode to Autumn" celebrating this most glorious of seasons, when the mornings are crisp, and the leaves glow like wine.
We are having a run of beautiful, balmy days, and the garden is a joy - there are figs, and quinces, and a riot of late roses, and the ornamental grape vine looks like stained glass in the afternoon sun.

I took photos this afternoon, and thought I'd share them with you.

 
The ornamental grape, mingled with the lovely apricot Rosa 'Crepuscule'

I've been spending a lot of time on the back veranda, enjoying the autumn leaves

A lucky shot of R. 'Golden Wings'

and my favourite - R. 'Mutabilis'

 and this strange flower, promising some more old-fashioned fruit... anyone recognise it?

Tomatoes in pyjamas

We've all heard of Bananas in Pyjamas, but I have Tomatoes in Pyjamas!

There's very little topsoil in my garden, so veggies must be grown in containers. I planted these four tomatoes a couple of weeks ago - 2 Romas, and 2 bush Cherry. We can get frosts here almost up to Christmas, so they need to be protected at night. Easy enough when they were tiny, but now that I've staked them, it's a bit more problematic.



So I cut up an old doona cover (3$ at the op shop) and made individual bags to put over them on frosty nights.
Voila - tomatoes in pyjamas!
They look kinda spooky, don't they? Just imagine them on a moonlit night...

The strawberries planted in old tyres are flourishing, lots of flowers already.
I planted rhubarb, silver beet and sugar peas in the styrene boxes.

Really, this is more of a fruit garden if you think about it - tomatoes, strawberries, rhubarb...

Something has been munching on the lower leaves of the sugar peas, so the other day I mixed up some Nicotine Tea (cigarette butts soaked in water - eww!). It makes a nasty-looking brown brew, which I poured around the peas, and on the lower leaves - hopefully that will fix the problem!

Around the garden

My garden's a disgrace - I admit it. Planted with high hopes around eleven years ago, I lost interest when the drought struck, and anyway I'm not physically able to do much these days. I rely on a local bloke to keep the grass cut, so it's not a fire hazard.
Amazingly, many of the shrubs have survived the Big Dry very well - so well that a working bee was needed to prune and tidy up a couple of weeks ago.

As the last trailer load left for the tip, my daughter cast her eye around and decided that the pile of old tyres I'd been saving for something or other, could be put to good use. This is the result - my new strawberry patch. Ugly, yes. But practical. My garden is built on clay and rock, with hardly any topsoil, so veggies are out of the question unless you use containers. There are six of these conveniently placed along the back verandah, and I look forward to feasting this summer.

Yesterday the Resident Grandson helped me to make made another kind of container garden. We used styrofoam boxes (with the bottoms cut out) filled with a mixture of soil, cow manure and compost. Again, they're ugly (but free) and hopefully the ugliness will soon be disguised by lush green leaves.
There's only six so far, and I've already planted rhubarb in two of them. I'm thinking silver beet and tomatoes for the others.

The seedling apple tree by the gate is just coming into bloom, and will soon be glorious - pity the fruit's not up to much.

The rosebuds are all covered with thrips as usual, but help is as hand; I seem to have hundreds of ladybirds this year, all hard at work.

There's also a pair of red wattlebirds which have taken up residence nearby, and they are doing their bit too. These birds are really honeyeaters, but they eat insects too.

I hope they don't eat the ladybirds too!