Slowing Down

 This is pretty much the middle of Winter and we are being treated to a storm with gale-force gusts today. This is normal for here. I'll be lucky if the trellis the peas are on is still standing tomorrow. 

A few weeks ago we had the first hail of the year, and I was out there, hail pelting me in the face, trying to tie up some kind of protection over my unseasonal peas. They were full of beautiful flowers. If I'd planted them just a couple of weeks earlier, they would have produced some beautiful peas before the weather turned unfavourable. They have soldiered on all the same, battered by hail, half blown off their trellis, vines broken but still going. Still growing and flowering and trying their damndest to produce some pea pods.

This is the most you can ask of veggies this time of year. That they just sort of hunker down and survive. Even the sunniest veggie beds are getting just a few hours of sun per day right now. The weather's turned nastier at night, so I've taken a break from my nightly slug and snail search. The seedlings are half-grown now anyway, so I'm letting them fend for themselves for a while.

This is Winter. Other than the peas, I have only Winter-hearty veggies growing. Broccoli, cavolo nero, purple mustard, celery, parsley, silverbeet, and collards. They only thing I'm harvesting at this point is the silverbeet that I started in the Summer. It should keep going all through the Winter now. The greens I started in the Fall are only half grown and growing slowly now. Everything slows down this time of year. Gardeners slow down, too. Less needs doing in the Garden and there's less favourable weather to do it in. But that leaves more time for dreaming of Spring.

Celery

Collard Greens

Cavolo nero in a pot

peas somewhat of a mess but still going