Orchard Girls...

here's an update on the ducklings...yep, they're now quite confirmed as DUCKS! they are named officially "Poppy, Pansy, Marigold and Asha (the little black Cayuga)". In the foreground is Phoebe's most beloved chook, Fluffybum, an almost purebred Black Orpington (her comb is not quite perfect, apparently! Perfect enough, we think!). And in the background, taking care of everyone and everything is Fluffybum's man, Frank (also a purebred Black Orpington) . These lucky birds have a fairly blissful existence in our Home Orchard, which is progressively becoming our Permaculture Food Forest - certainly with their addition to the mix we are another step along the path to the required result!

beginnings of a Food Forest

We've been rather busy over the last few weeks with lots of planting in our orchard, filling in the gaps and hoping to create an edible forest - a Permaculture Food Forest is our aim. There is still far too much grass for our likeing and we will soon be fixing that. As well as another bunch of beautiful heirloom varieties, we have been adding in Kowhai, a native with a very attractive yellow flower and the very useful attribute of being a nitrogen-fixing, slender, lacy tree (will still let in lots of light) and are about to add small tagasaste(tree lucerne) plants, which also fix nitrogen from the air into the soil. Even more amazingly as we found out this effect is increased as we 'chop and drop' the trimmings/prunings where they fall as mulch, as the plants then release nitrogen from their root systems to compensate for being pruned! Cool! Clever Mother Nature - we love her! For our lower layer we've ordered loads of kumara plants, which will grow as a thick ground cover and we have an excess of tiny strawberry plants - they may like to ramble around under the trees?

Where Splishy and Bubbles live...

This lovely Waterlily specimen has been growing beautifully all through Spring and Summer now in our 'bath' pond out in the orchard.

It has been busy providing us with these lush crimson blooms every week or so as well as protective cover in the form of many lily pad leaves for our 2 newest additions, Splishy and Bubbles, a pair of vermillion goldfish.

A Fruitful Orchard

Well, Mum, this isn't meant to make you feel a little jealous, BUT!

How good do these crabapples look? Our tree is COVERED in them - I can almost taste the jelly - hey, didn't I say that last time???

And below is the youngish white-fleshed nectarine, almost ready...mmmm.

We have also discovered we have a pear - not sure what variety, yet - brownish so far. And there is a plum which has heart-shaped green plums on it - fun to try working out what things are...a peach with a bit of a pointy bottom, 2 almond trees, a lisbon lemon, a limequat, a grapfruit, 2 guava, 2 figs, a passionfruit, a black grape, a quince and many apple trees - definitely there are a couple of Braeburn and a Golden Delicious and a massive perhaps Cox's Orange... the oranges and the feijoas.

So our fruit bowl is looking good and we feel very grateful!

I just need to remember how to bottle now...