Suddenly it’s autumn

When I’m considering wearing socks I know summer is over – yet in my last post it seemed it would never end. Now the heat pump is on. The temperature has plummeted in the last couple of days, the sun doesn’t come up until closer to 7am than 6am, and when it’s shining (which it isn’t right now) it creeps further across the windowsills on the north side of the house. On a couple of days I haven’t taken the cover off the egg chair, while last week I had to wait for the sun to go off it before it was cool enough to sit in. Sigh!

The lawn looked as if it was going to turn yellow at one point, but the episodes of rain we’ve had have kept it green and the garden growing well. The ‘salad bar’ is still ready for action so I hope there’ll be a few days when summer does a reprise. Right now it’s soup or scrambled eggs with toast on the menu.

Winter-ready – while the grapes above the wood pile are ripening

I imagine the people attending the music event, Electric Avenue, in the park today and tomorrow would rather die of hypothermia than be seen wearing a jersey but might be able to keep warm by leaping about and mushing together in the mosh pit.

Post Script: Wouldn’t you know it? The sun has come out. Cicadas are chirping. I’m going out to sit in the egg chair.

Summertime, and the living is easy

It was entertaining to sit in the egg chair and watch birds in the garden today. There were piwakawaka (fantails), finches, waxeyes and blackbirds (two flapped about in the birdbath) and constant bird chatter high in the trees. I’ve noticed a lot of black seeds on the ground and the usual bugs, especially passion vine hoppers, so I think there is plenty for birds to eat.

The same is true for us, I thought, as I gathered salad ingredients from the garden.

Tasty tomatoes

For tonight’s dinner, I had the satisfaction of harvesting ripe tomatoes to pop in the pot.

With fresh herbs from the garden

There are plenty more tomatoes for the next time – and more yet to ripen.

A new variety for me: ‘Potentate’

While it’s much easier to open a tin of tomatoes, the effort of growing your own is something else!

Aloe Vera flowers

In December 2024 I wrote a post about repotting my aloe vera which had become too big to keep inside. I needn’t have been concerned that it wouldn’t grow outside. This summer it produced a spike over half a metre tall (66cm in fact) from which elongated trumpet-like flowers emerged. It was intriguing to watch – my home-grown variation of the ‘corpse flower’ in the Botanic Gardens which people queued to see.

29 Nov ’25
12 Dec ’25 – 44cm tall
7 Jan ’26
8 Feb ’26 – 66cm tall
The top of the plant 8 Feb ’26
The base of the plant 8 Feb ’26

Today, the last flower is fading at the tip of the spike. The plant is on more of a lean than it was, probably because Felix tried to climb it this morning. Incriminating evidence: his fur all over it, and the thumping and scrabbling noises he made as he fell between the wall and the pot – which was where he was when I looked out the window. However, the plant seems to have a firm foundation, having grown massively since I repotted it – quite a change from the wobbly little plant it was when my nephew gave it to me in 2021.

A closer low angle shot of the flowers – each about 5cm long

I got up for just a moment …

And now I have to write this post standing up.

It’s nice to have a day of steady rain to read and do a jigsaw and write a blog post while the rain waters the garden. I dried Felix when he came inside all soggy, and gave him some of his favourite cat patē which comes in a tiny can. I sat down again at my desk to read a book, got up to reach for something and turned around to find my chair was occupied.

This could do …
Now for a wash
Left paw
Right paw
Behind the ears
Left side
Right side
Tail
Tummy
Tip of the tail
Zzzzz

Porcelain flowers

A wide shot shows the extent of the plant from far left to far right, and up to the roof.

There’s a sweet honey scent in the garage; the hoya is flowering. Its flowers are sometimes called porcelain flowers, which seems apt as they hardly look real. There are three clusters of flowers this summer. You can see nectar dripping from the centre of each flower.

Another budding flower cluster
New shoot heading up into the roof

I have had the plant since the late 1970s when house plants were all the rage – as they are again now. It’s still in the same small pot and macrame hanger. Long ago, I decided to divest myself of indoor plants (but do enjoy a couple of small ones I have been given) particularly when the monstera deliciosa grew monstrous (think Little Shop of Horrors) and the spider plants looked tired. They ended up in my classroom and in the department resource room for years. I liked to think they removed pollutants from the air, but apparently, you need to have a room crammed full of plants for that to happen. I would bring them home over summer, not into the house but into the garage or sheltered spots in the garden. One, a Fatsia Japonica, didn’t make it back to school. It is now about three metres tall and about as wide, growing happily in the garden – despite at times attracting blackbirds (for the seeding flower heads), scale, aphids, whitefly, sooty mould and ants.

The hoya remains on the laundry side of the garage where it seems to be thriving beside the window, growing in and out of electrical cables and the laundry stuff. I try to remember to water it, feed it occasionally and wipe the leaves with Conqueror Oil sometimes. When it threatens to spread itself around the garage I cut it back but, undeterred, it sends out new tendrils with ambitious intent.

When life gives you plums …

Actually, it was my sister who gave me a bag of plums from her tree yesterday. She’d already put 14 bags of plums in her freezer and had more to give away. I planned to put them in a fruit sponge, but in the meantime I decided to make muffins this morning. There are still plenty left to make the sponge pudding.

The plums turned out to be a bright red inside
Double yum!

Notes on the recipe, should you be interested: I used less than a cup of sugar (as we do these days), and I used raw sugar. Instead of ‘margarine’ (yuck) I used rice bran oil. Plain yoghurt with a dash of vanilla added did the trick as I didn’t have vanilla yoghurt. To moisten the mixture a little I used sparkling elderflower instead of milk. I also used a cup of wholemeal flour and two of plain flour, with baking powder added (1 tsp per cup), as I don’t have self-raising flour. I have previously used this recipe to make blueberry muffins. The recipe says it makes 12 muffins; I managed 20 – perhaps my muffin tins are smaller.

Source: More Muffin Magic by Diana Linfoot

When life gives you marrows …

After a few days of rain, much appreciated by the garden, I looked under the leaves of a courgette plant and found a courgette well on the way to being a marrow. I had the perfect use for it, a favourite recipe cut from a magazine a few decades ago: Carrot and Courgette Kugel.

The most used recipe in my book of collected recipes
I didn’t need the whole courgette for 3 cups, grated
Yum!

Outside again

This morning the rain dried up, the sun came out and I took a look at progress in the garden. First, some of the edibles:

The more it’s picked the more the rhubarb grows
Huge courgette leaves, tiny fruit!
Recently planted ‘salad bar’
Ripening Potentate tomatoes
I hope the sugar snap seeds are germinating in there
Sturmer apples beginnning to ripen
Cranberries galore
More lemons than I know what to do with

Then the flower garden:

Dahlia
Shasta daisies, Japanese anemones and montbretia doing well (not that they need encouragement). Rhodo mulched with clippings from the Xmas tree.
Westerland rose going strong 3 months after it was planted
Hydrangea flowers as big as your head!
Very tall iceberg rose
Fairy rose scrambling out and up for light
New planting (geraniums, gazanias, cineraria silver dust, marigold vanilla cream) to add colour to the berm doing well – so far.

Nothing appears to have suffered from the rain and, for me, it’s a relief not to water most days. Everything looks green. Most plants look healthy. As will I, no doubt, after trying some of these recipes:

Replicating Jamie’s cheesy grin

An inside day

It’s nice to have a rainy day to catch up with inside things. I caught up with the newspapers, cleaned the oven, read a book, admired the fresh green of the garden from the windows, listened to music, did some diary planning … and worrying news kept filtering in from the north about torrential rain, flooding, slips, peoples’ homes and lives in danger – and the shocking news of a large slip hitting a campground. Rescuers are still searching for the missing.

I finished Wild Dark Shore this week and it continues to haunt me, particularly as stormy weather escalates in real time – drowning out the news of bush fires in Australia. The subantarctic island setting of the novel is a microcosm of climate change across the world, haunted by the plundering of whalers, sealers and doomed expeditions of the past – read into that what you will. In fact, there is a lot of symbolism such as the lighthouse which has long since stopped sending out warnings, and the seed bank underground which is inevitably flooded. As storms increase in severity and the ocean level rises, its inhabitants scramble to rescue what they can before being evacuated and, although they are hopeful, they are prepared to face more extreme weather wherever they end up.

I saw a museum exhibition once about Aotearoa’s beginnings, with a video representation of our islands emerging from the sea. It was unnerving – time was sped up making the land seem fragile and temporary.

I like to be cosy inside in rainy weather, perhaps slightly annoyed by being inconvenienced and, despite some anxiety, so accustomed and attuned to my comforts that I can barely imagine ending up on the roof waiting for rescue.