Freezing: last week’s southerly storm kept blowing cold and wet until Wednesday. On Friday, the next one arrived. I’ve done almost no gardening, everything is sodden, the plants are barely growing they’ve had such a shock with the cold, and the only thing that’s going full speed ahead is the blackbirds excavating every bit of dirt not covered by protective mesh.
Planting: a couple of seedlings, mostly giveaways, that I got at the home and garden show – spinach, borage and lettuce.
Eating: celery, silverbeet, spring onion, various herbs, rhubarb (I only had a little bit from my plant, but I also got some from the market and I cooked both lots up together with with some honey. I’d forgotten how nice it is).
Setting: I’ve seen a couple of tiny pods forming on my broad beans, so here’s hoping I’ll have some soon. I won’t run out of silverbeet either – the stuff I’ve had over the winter is bolting now but the new seedlings I planted at the start of September are looking fairly good and I should be able to start picking a few leaves soon.
Belladonna Bess 
Fridays wind through the night and next day did some significant damage to our garden too….the first thing I discovered was the loss of a large leafy branch from the akeake, luckily it didn’t damage all the bulbs and orchids and other pots beneath it. The next was finding 4 more stems snapped off my rose Evelyn, one from Paddy Stevens, one from Mutabalis, 2 from Agnes, one from the unknown yellow and no damage to the dreadful Harry wheatcroft! Added to that was the snapped flower stems from three orchids and various flattened plants (sigh). In the process I discovered rust on Dutch irises that had previously been spared the plague. The ‘good’ news is I managed to apply fungicide in the brief windless spell early this morning….such is gardening in Wellington! Not all doom and gloom however, as I’m enjoying the first bloom of Clematis Mr. President, and the fragrance from Rhodie John Bull, and the colour contrast between the yellow Kniphofia and the blue rhodie, lots of promising buds on other things, and hostas popping up, lily-of-the-valley already flowering. Would you like some coriander seedlings?
If you’ve got spare, I could fit some in, but I don’t eat a huge amount of it, so not too much.