Hot Christmas harvest

Temperatures have warmed up and will consistently reach above 33 degrees in the next days. Today the prediction is in the high thirties, getting worse tomorrow. Hard times for our garden. I am pleased the the garden beds are all protected from the morning and afternoon sun due to a big ficus in the middle of the garden. He provides much welcome shade until late morning and about 3pm shade is back from the neighbouring property to the West. Therefore it could be a lot worse.

The shade cloth is holding up despite heavy winds last night. The big tree again protects our plants from the wind and diverts the path over the roof of the house.

The beans have come out of patch four and raise their heads into the sky. The lucerne mulch does wonders and now that I know where each plant is I water that spot more exactly. I put some mustard seeds down and will see what happens. I used spice from the kitchen and hope that works just the same.

The water tank is still more than half full after 10mm of rain last week.

Most struggling with the heat is my lettuce experiment. It is starting to go to seeds. The spring onions are doing very well but I should have planted them more closely together.

The first tomatoes are ripe and I cut them in slithers to be eaten right away.
The grapes are turning red and get more juicy by the day.

The cat is still fending off predators and has a very successful hunt last night where we let her outside because of the heat. She came in at 2:30am this morning and  locked her away. When I got up and went into the garden for watering I noticed a lot of foot steps in the patch where I spread out the dug up dirt from the banana planting. The cat loves this spot, as the soil turned back into sand when drying out and staid loose and easy to move.

And then I saw the dead rat. Probably has been dead for a while, it started to be eaten by ants who nibbled on the ears and are visible on the photo which I took before I got rid of the dead animal in our rubbish bin.

Good to have a cat. Although she has killed two willy wagtails, one dove and two or three other birds in the past 1.5 years she has terminated at least 20 mice and ensured that we have something to harvest. A new pair of willy wagtails have moved into the garden and these ones seem to be more clever than the last birds.