My pathetic little pumpkin vine was so far gone I finally picked the two little pumpkins that managed to grow this year. They're adorable, I love the colour and the little pink blush. You can see the stems are dried-looking but still very green. You're meant to leave pumpkins until the stems are brown, dried and dead looking. Well the rest of the plant was brown, dried and dead, it didn't have one green leaf left, so I took what I could get!
They went into a pumpkin soup last night. Not the best soup but it could be because they were under-mature. Not green inside or anything, just didn't have that rich savoury full flavour.
You can also see a lovely little melon on my lap, the second of my Minnesota midgets. It's the largest one, it just looks so inviting with those bulging ridges. Unfortunately after getting 60mm of rain in a single weekend not long ago, the melon was once again flooded with too much liquid and this time ended up tasting a bit over-ripe. I also have to be careful because unlike store-bought cantaloupe, this variety stays fairly green when it's ripe. But I'll definitely grow them again next year, they're fun!
The edamame are finally starting to fully ripen. Just look at how heavy with beans the plant is! The rest of the plant is in tatters but it's heavy with beans. I haven't had a chance to try them yet.
On the other hand, my potatoes are once again pathetic. I actually managed to get more potatoes
last year, growing them late in the season, than this year. They were getting so mite-eaten and caterpillar-munched that there wasn't much green left on them. You're meant to leave them until they turn yellow and die off before harvesting but I didn't think the tops would survive much longer. This is all I got for this year's trouble.
I won't bother next year, two years of failure in a row are enough for me. But a word of advice to others. Both times I tried a method people keep swearing works: you plant the potatoes low down in the pot, and as the greens grow you bury more and more of the plant until the pot is full of dirt. Supposedly potatoes are meant to grow all the way up the buried stalk. But both years all I got were a few potatoes at the very bottom, and a very long stalk. I actually wonder if the plant has been wasting energy growing a longer stalk that it should be putting into its potatoes!
And finally, not a harvest but a note on my new plantings. This is a busy time of year for the cabbage white butterfly, when people are starting to plant brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kale) but it's still warm enough for the butterflies to breed. Sure enough, almost every day I check my sprouts and find half a dozen white eggs under the leaves. I've already had to pick off two tiny caterpillars too. So beware gardeners! Even my butterfly decoys haven't helped one bit. The lure of the brassicas is just too much.
But on the plus side, my brassicas are powering along in this wonderful weather we've been having! Just when I thought autumn had arrived, we've gotten another flush of 25+ weather. And it seems Melbourne has had over 100 days in a row where the high always hit 20C or above. This has blown away the previous record of 78 days in a row in 2000-01 ... oh and there's at least another week of 20+ weather forecast.
Two very random things. The first is that I made my second focaccia. I promise not to take pictures of every single bread product I make but I was very happy with the improvement on this focaccia over the last one - more light and fluffy this time because its second rise went better. Thick enough to slice and use for sandwiches if we wanted. It didn't last enough for sandwiches this time!
The second is a random photo of our local possum. I was taking out the compost last night and heard a rustle. A quick peek revealed that the little poss-poss was caught out behind a shrub at the back fence. She looked a lot smaller than the big fatty I snapped in the fig tree, so my guess is this is a female and the other was a male. They are pretty freaking adorable even if they can be annoying. I'd much rather share my garden with them than with rats (which I have also spotted on the fence before).
I've been thinking hard about two places in the garden that need work. The first is the big square bed that used to be the fish pond, pictured here. After filling it in last year I've spent the year growing vegetables in it whilst I decide what to do in the long-term. Vegetables aren't a good long-term solution because only the bottom left corner gets enough sun, which is an awful waste of the other 3/4 of the bed.
The other tough spot is behind the house where the camellias used to be. I've considered a number of option but I think I'll go with Murraya paniculata, also known as mock orange or orange jasmine. It's a member of the citrus family, tough and not fussy, but I was sold on it when I walked past a hedge in flower. It has the most heavenly scent of orange blossom you can imagine, it actually stopped me in my tracks.
I only ordered a cubit metre of soil and a half-metre of barkdust but I reckon I got a lot more than I paid for! 
I've filled up a fair bit now as you can see, hopefully some of the dirt will settle and I can pile on some more. I've certainly got plenty of time, winter's the best time to plant deciduous trees. 
My first try was focaccia with garlic and sage. It didn't rise properly (I messed up and put olive oil on it before it rose instead of after) but the taste was absolutely amazing - rich, salty and olive-oily. The sage is from the garden which is my excuse for this rather non-gardeny entry.
I already transplanted one of the camellias last week, I'm going to try transplanting two more to the bed out near the street with the birch trees. They're currently soaking in a Seasol solution to help them with the shock. The small one is one of the new ones I bought last winter and the big one is one of the originals. They both got a trim too to make up for losing roots in the transfer. I think I'll chop out the pine trees too, they suck so much water and nutrients from the soil. After that the beds need a top-up of soil before replanting them.
In the meantime, here's the final harvest I got from the soybeans. I probably could have gotten more if I'd been happy to leave the ones that weren't quite ripe yet, but that was a bit tedious. So I just picked off everything plump and put the rest in the compost.
In the meantime my kale and brocoletti have sprouted. My kale had a surprise - a quadricot! Most plants have two "seed leaves", the first leaves that come up. Sometimes they mutate and have three leaves, called a tricot. But the sprout on the left had four seed leaves! The slightly wrinkled looking leaves in the picture are the first "true" leaves.
About Wednesday I noticed my first melon was starting to turn tan. Seems like within 24 hours of noticing the colour change, it was this colour. I lifted it slightly to have a close look and it came right off in my hand! Turns out some kinds of melon make it very clear indeed that they're ripe.
I needn't have worried! Two days later I had it for breakfast. It looks over-ripe and look at how juicy it is. The texture was a bit too mushy but the flavour was just right - beautifully sweet. A lovely melon! I saved some seed to plant next year.
There are only two more melons on the plant but I suspect that if I plant them on time next year I'll have plenty more. In the meantime I have a few little watermelons growing too, I hope they ripen soon. I might get a lot more fruit splitting though, we got 25mm of rain yesterday, as well as hail the size of marbles. A seriously crazy storm.
The soybeans on the other hand are still taking their sweet time. I split one open to check but the beans are still too small to harvest.
I know I spent a lot of time last year gushing about how much 
