Fruit salad garden

It's been a gruelling couple of days here. Tuesday afternoon my DIL Cathy was rushed to hospital with high blood pressure. My step son works three hours away, so I called him to come home, then Hanno and I went to the hospital. Cathy had a series of small strokes. She only in her mid-40s. She is okay and is home again now, and when I visited yesterday she looked good and said she felt okay.

Hanno and I went to the doctor yesterday, I got the all clear but Hanno has something suspicious in his blood test and needs a scan and more tests. He says he feels fine so we'll just have to wait and see what the scan shows. My sister Tricia phoned last night to tell me our cousin Stephen is dying in a Sydney hospital. For a family that has never had much in the way of illness, we sure are making up for it.

Next season's Washington Navel oranges - small now but they'll grow into globes of juicy sunshine by next winter.

My garden is providing much needed solace for me right now. I go out there and I swear it transforms me. It's a particularly abundant garden at the moment with a lot of fruit growing, and although it's very slow, the promise of it is there.

The pineapple top I planted two years ago is slowly - very slowly, maturing and is now presenting me with this small, but perfect, little pineapple. I cannot wait to taste this fruit. I'm hoping it will be ready for Christmas day. Hopefully, some red papaya will be ready for a fruit salad then too. We have two trees and both are setting fruit now.

Further over in the yard, on the eastern fence line, luffas are growing. I planted them all along this trellis so they'll get full sun all day with a little shade late in the afternoon. Now that all the seeds have germinated, this garden bed needs the edges cut with a spade and lots of mulch applied. That will probably be a weekend job.

The corn is healthy and producing fat, juicy cobs, and we are still drowning under a ton of zucchinis.

And while all this growing is carrying on, my lovely ladies keep producing about nine eggs every day. Mary is pictured above, making her contribution to her keep.

In the front garden, Hanno dug up the remaining potatoes. There was a small basket full which would be about 3kg (7lb). We haven't bought potatoes for months now and still have enough to see us well into next year.

We have planted some golden nugget pumpkins out where the bulk of the potatoes were and they're growing really well. There are only four plants but that will produce enough for us plus a few to give away. I must remember to grab a few small potatoes for seeds and leave them out to sprout before we plant the new crop.

Right next to the pumpkins, Hanno planted these little beauties for me - ginger and turmeric. In the photo above, the ginger is the larger one. I use ginger for my ginger beer and both ginger and turmeric in curries so it's good to have them growing in the garden.

I am moderating comments again. I was really disappointed in what happened yesterday and don't wish to discuss it further. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and look towards next week with love in your heart and hope for the future.