Plum tree.

The old orchard plum trees have a bumper crop this year thanks to the rain and mild summer. 

The winter garden, the avocado tree and me.

A few weeks ago I decided that I would need to move the avocado tree I recently planted. Ostensibly because it wasn't in the right spot, but really I wanted to fit in more mandarin trees. My rescue mandarin is doing so well this year I felt encouraged to plant more and have successive fruiting. 

I didn't look up the 'right' time to move the avo. It looks like it has buds ready to go and the roots were dormant. I moved three barrow loads of its soil that I'd built up out of compost so it felt at home. 

This spot looked so sunny in the midday winter sun. Previously it has been a chicken run, duck puddle and most recently a dumping ground for logs too large to fit into the Nectre. 

I feel content with my garden progress and useful morning exercise!

The Sandow Crescent Pecan Tree

   We live in a beautiful part of the world called Coromandel Valley.  At the centre of our street is an old orchard, Sandow Park Reserve, named after one of the old families in the area who grew apples,  pears and plums. Sandow Reserve is home to an old Pecan trees, thought to have been planted by George Summers in 1899.

   Every year the sulphur-crested cockatoos strip the tree bare before the nuts are mature, but this year, they didn't!  The stars and weather aligned to produce a bumper crop that the local parrots got bored of before destroying the whole lot, they didn't even make it down to the lower accessible branches.  I've been keeping my eyes on the nuts every time I go past ( I walk through quite often this time of year), growing more excited with each visit.

   Today, success, the fruits are ripe and splitting open and the nuts inside are ready to harvest, what joy!

You can read more about pecans here.

 Pecan nuts on ground, thrown down by raucous cockatoos.

This seasonal creek used to feed the orchard before multiple dams were put in upstream.  Now it features in my 'bug-out' plans for the zombie apocalypse.

Badger dog, pleased with todays adventure.