My last garden post of the year! How crazy. I honestly have never seen so many weeds in the garden and I still haven't got to the end of them though I'm leaving on my tassie trip in two days!

Most of the gardeners around here agree it's a good year for flowers too, given the rain. I've been enjoying the pink strawflowers which I'm going to plant every year as they are just so gorgeous! Yarrow is finally growing wild in the garden, well, nearly wild - I fenced a couple of patches off so the rabbits wouldn't eat it, so I now have beautiful heads of pink flowers. I'm also loving all the other flowers that people don't often think about - broccoli, lettuce, fennel. All food for bees but also architecturally beautiful too.

The chamomile has self seeded in the path this year, like the calendula does. I'm so excited this has happened! Already I have enough for a big jar of dried flowers. Hopefully it'll grow just as wild this year.

How big and beautiful is the clary sage? I just love it's flowers!

The sunflower and the elecampane are flowering yellow, and the nasturiums too - they hide a big blue tongue lizard that's living under the vegetable patch. Today I saw him waddling down the path to find water so I will put a tray out for him as I love him being there.

I've been busy netting a few fruit trees - to be honest I can't be bothered doing them all so if there's fruit on the trees when I get back it'll be a suprise. I have had to buy new netting which isn't cheap - the last stuff stunk of mouse poo and was torn.

The hops is taking over one corner of the garden so I have tried to get that under control a little. The choko is on the opposite side and I hope I get more fruit this year. I really haven't had much luck with the vegetables this year as the weather has been so odd. It'll be interesting to see what it's like when I'm back in three weeks - hopefully I'll get a few tomatoes at least!

Anyway, enough writing - I have a garden to mulch with the gum leaves that rained down on the path in the hot weather a few days ago. The bird baths must be filled, the chook shed cleaned out, and more straw on a few bare beds. Hopefully my son and his girl, and her brother and his girlfriend, will keep it all alive when I'm away. I'm sure there will be a ton of weeding to do when I get back!

Oh, and I've been playing around with garden prompts in Midjourney. Imagine a garden like these! What fun. A far stretch from my own, and clearly the AI has done the weeding...

Happy new year to you all, and hope your 2023 garden has more successes and less failures than this year. Much love!

With Love,

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