Sunday 27 September 2015

Spring 2015 Has Arrived

You know it's coming, it arrives every year, but after a long wet, windy and muddy winter, spring has finally arrived. I'm sure winter seems longer when living on a lifestyle block.  

When we hit the shortest day back around the 20th June, I was looking daily at the sun rise and sun set times, counting each minute of daylight that we gained.  Then a week ago we reached that magic number of 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of night time, and now that daylight savings has started, its practicably summer! Hooray!

I love everything about spring, the warmer weather, longer days, sheep with their lambs, ducks with their ducklings, buds bursting open with their new flowers and the honey bees are back doing their thing! It's just a great time to be back out in the garden.

I was a little worried about not having any bees to pollinate my fruit trees, with the varroa mite having destroyed the wild bee populations. However, fortunately, someone nearby must have a hive, as the bees have arrived.  I've been planning for their arrival, as I have planted a variety of flowering plants, along with a wildflower bee mix too attract them. Now the visiting bees have plenty of food sources to tell their friends about, and they will keep coming back to my garden to pollinate my flowers.



Above the bee's seem to love the Lavender.

Below the wild flower mix.. it's a bit weedy.. but I enjoy the wild look of it.


Below the grapevines have sprung into life.


Below are the nectarine trees and their flowers!



A spectacular display... when the trees are bigger they are going to be amazing, as I have them planted along the driveway!




But... as suitable as spring is for my plants, it's also perfect grass and weed growing weather... I spent about 4 hours mowing lawns today, and that was only about 75% of the lawn.  So it's busy as always down here at Wattle Lane.. but I'm loving it.