White blossom of the early plums is intense

SV100674.jpg, originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

It is really lovely. I think the tuis are liking it. We have four early plums altogether. The almonds have been in bloom too but there don't look to be any bees around to pollinate them and they didn't do well last year. The peaches are just starting and no sign of much on the apples or pears yet.

Well at least the geese love this persistent rain

SV100656, originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Our backlawn is proving a wonderful puddle for the geese. Sorry i can't seem to change back to the original format I used for a photo. Any suggestions? This way it takes up too much space but I am damned if I can find the way to change back.

We are investigting various types of solar powered battery electric fences. It is getting urgent now as they have been on the front drive picking out insects after the rain and it is only a matter of time before they find the gate or the vege garden.

Twelve tuis visit the flowering blossom tree

SV100648.jpg, originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

And here it is a little closer up. If you count carefully you can see twelve tuis feeding from it. They are flying in and out of of all day.

Early spring view from living room window

SV100652.jpg, originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

This is the beautiful tree which attracts tuis. Today I saw four rabbits, three geese and twelve tuis from the living room. I think it is a flowering cherry or prunus. You can see the Adriatic fig behind the pink tree on the left.

My sister Lesley digs in the mustard ready for tomato planting later

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

They have grown there for a while now and it is time to dig them in. A lovely job actually because the soil gets really friable when mustard grows and it is a pleasure to dig it.

I am also using the glasshouse to grow the seeds ready for planting out later. All sorts of seeds are in now, some bought via trademe and some from Koanga Gardens.

Last autumn I planted what I thought were Dalmatian peas. They grew well after I had installed an automatic timer on the tap, but then turned out to be sweet peas. I think my seedsaver friend Helen sent me the wrong seeds! We also grow good lettuces there.

Richard Evans teaches me to prune grapes better

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Originally uploaded by localcurrencies.

Well I thought I knew how to prune grapes but my brother in law Richard looked at them and asked me if I would like to learn a bit better. He apparently does some for commercial orchards in Christchurch. So I learnt a lot from Richard and we fixed them up. There isn't much life in any of them and we had no grapes last year. Hopefully things will be better this season. If not we will have to start planting new grapes.

We now have three geese

Well at the moment I can't seem to send a photo to this site but we now have two male geese and one female. We bought them at the auction at the Tree Crops Association local meeting on a very rainy day. They are doing a lot of work as manure machines. Grass in one end manure out the other.

For a while they didn't explore too much but lately have had the odd journey to the back door, not a great idea if you want to walk barefoot, or walk inside with your shoes on... We will have to solve this problem. They are Sebastopol variety, the white ones with curly feathers so they look untidy. Fortunately they don't make much noise at all and don't seem to fly. However I have recently discovered they can fly, so the solution seems to be to make them happy with lots of fresh water. We bought a container from the Warehouse and they wade in it, leaving more manure. So the water needs changing daily. Also I have gathered up the manure, put it in the blue tub with water and fed the liquid to the cabbages and celery and rhubarb.

They aren't sexually mature yet, so won't be laying eggs for a while.