And Now for November’s Weather and Our Backyard

Oh boy!  What a crazy month it has been.  I know it is spring and you get changeable weather, but this year has been a little crazy.

Traditionally, November is the month where the weather starts to warm up and we are done and dusted with frosts for the year.  The rule of thumb is that you are safe to plant your tomatoes and other frost tender veges after Melbourne Cup Day, which is the first Tuesday of the month.  We plant ours well in advance, but are always watching the weather forecast and are ready to cover the plants if needed…..You can see where this is going, can’t you.

Welcome to the ghosts in our garden.  We tend to cover our veges if the forecast is for 5 degrees C or less, as our yard seems to be colder than the official temperature.  We had a light frost two days after the Melbourne Cup.  Then, can you believe it, we had another, much heavier frost on the 12th.  That burnt some of our plants despite being covered.  Fortunately, they all bounced back.  Lots of people lost their veges that morning.  There was another light frost the following morning as well, but no damage, as we had everything covered.  Our dahlias weren’t covered, so took a beating, but they too have come back.

Now, we are currently officially in summer……. 

This was our temperature yesterday, 1st December.  That was at 2pm.  We did reach the lofty height of 17C very briefly.  The wind was up to 59 kph and we had a late shower of 4mm.  Welcome to summer.

It got down to 4.7 degrees C this morning and they are forecasting a minimum of 3 degrees C tomorrow morning, so everything was covered last night and will be covered again tonight…just in case.  That’s crazy…but not unprecedented, as Mick had snow on Christmas Day once when he was a kid living not too far from here.

To the other extreme, we have had a high of 34 and later this week they are forecasting 36. Some areas have already been up to the 40s.

The other main feature of November’s weather has been the wind.  It has blown and blown and blown.  A week or so ago we had a wild storm with our highest gust reported as 89 kph.  Other towns in the area had winds up to 120 kph, with lots of damage.  There were several large trees down here with some damage to buildings and cars.

There hasn’t been much rain and the benefit of any rain had been depleted by the wind.  We have had a few Extreme Fire Danger days with total fire bans.  Fortunately, no major blazes have broken out.

Despite all that, our garden has been flourishing.  

We have picked our first strawberries and raspberries.

The beds of berries and silver beet have been netted to keep the birds off.

We will definitely have tomatoes for Christmas and there are several zucchinis that will be ready to pick in the next few days.  The garlic is ready to harvest and the onions aren’t far off.

Our little cactus flowered on the weekend.

Mick has been doing some DIY in the backyard too.  The paving under the seats in our raised vege beds were looking a bit rough.

He decided to spruce things up a bit.  That looks much better.

I’ll finish with some random flower photos, just to show that it isn’t all doom and gloom.

And to finish, a posy of flowers from our garden for you to enjoy.