Spring has sprung

I think spring has finally arrived. Usually we get quite a bit of warm weather, even in August. But this year it’s been mostly mild days and very cool/cold nights. This week seems to have heralded warmer weather. I’m sure it will be hot and dry before we know it. Actually, it’s already dry here so it just needs the warmer temperatures.

I noted the seasonal change when I went out in the night to pull something off the clothes line last week and it wasn’t even damp. We don’t have a dryer so winters can be a bit tricky when it’s cold and humid much of the time. Days aren’t so bad if the sun is out but drying clothes at nights is nearly impossible in the winter. I usually have clothes draped all over the house on the worst nights.

Another sign of the season is pollen. It’s showing up everywhere and our whole family has hayfever in one form or another. I’m not sure if it’s related to the season but my eyes have become incredibly dry. My Sjögren’s syndrome does give me a lot of dry eye problems and I use artificial tears like Refresh as needed. Usually, I can get away with one application a day and sometimes I just never get around to using them and get used to slightly dry eyes. In the past week I’ve found I absolutely have to use drops at least three times a day, especially when I wake up in the morning. I literally cannot see clearly some mornings until I’ve used them.

A rather exciting sign of spring is the re-emergence of leaves on our grape vine. We planted it last year and not much happened with it. At the end of the season, the leaves fell off and we weren’t sure if it was alive or dead. But little green leaves have come out all over the plant so we are looking forward to watching it grow this year. We will need to find some sort of support for it to grow this year. The garden arch we installed last year was very cheap and every time we had really strong winds it fell over. The passionfruit vine is still attached to what’s left of the arch and is looking quite decent but hasn’t started flowering yet. I seem to recall it flowering around this time last year so it should be too long now.

The bees are buzzing everywhere in our garden. We have a grevillea bush outside our laundry room door and every time I got out there is a loud hum from the bush which is currently in full bloom. The bottlebrush plants are all starting to bloom and will soon be heavy with flowers. It will be quite a sight to see the branches laden down with red flowers that resemble a bottlebrush.

The Scientist and I planted some native shrubs along the back wall of the house about a month ago. Previously I had planted tomatoes, lettuce, bell peppers and basil there. The only things that have ever really grown well there are the cherry tomatoes from last year (which were fruiting right through winter) and basil which grew like a weed there a few years ago. The cherry tomato plant only had a tiny bit of green left by winter’s end so I pulled it out. Our plan is to do a raised garden for the veggies this year. I’m hoping to do a no-dig garden in hopes of having more optimal soil than our usual sandy soil is for growing veggies.

I had a great disappointment a few weeks ago when I pulled out the beets we planted in May and discovered they hadn’t grown any beets. They looked perfectly fine other than the missing veggies. I put them back in the ground and will wait and see if they will grow in a few months. I planted some rainbow chard and after a slow start, that seems to have taken off a bit. I haven’t harvested yet but might give it a try some time soon. And some spinach I planted was nearly eaten by creatures during the winter but one planted remained in a rather shabby state. It has started to grow a bit more during the last couple of weeks so maybe it will be okay for a spring vegetable. I also planted out some oregano and mint in May and both are starting to take off. I hear that mint can be a bit of a weed but I think we’ll be able to make good use of it should that happen. The habanero chilli I planted last summer is looking very good right now and surely will start flowering in a few weeks. I’m feeling uncertain about some of the other chillies. The jalapeño is dead and the Thai chillies aren’t looking that well. The others seem like they might be okay in a few weeks. There is also a cherry tomato plant that has survived two winters along our back fence. The healthy part of the vine is a couple feet from where the plant is rooted. Near the roots it looks to be nearly dead.  There are Asian red mustard plants growing wild from seeds that fell from last year’s plant, more or less in our footpath. We haven’t removed them but they really aren’t in an ideal location.

I just about forgot to mention that a rather horticulturally-minded friend has given me seeds to plant a climbing plant called Kennedia nigricans, which is a native in our area. I’m really hoping a few of the seeds take off so that we can have an easy-to-grow climbing plant to cover some of the fence.

I’m looking forward to opening windows over the next few days with temperatures expected to rise several degrees. That is assuming we don’t get smoke drifting from any fires in the area. We already had a period of smokiness in the house today when I left open sliding glass doors at the back part of the house.