rain from the north

So like, it is raining again. I can not tell you how much I am enjoying this crazy wet spring. The tent is still out on the lawn from Mr Duck's big adventure. It is going to go MOULDY before it drys enough to put away. Just when it is dry enough to turn inside out, it rains again. How QUEENSLANDish. Not ONCian at all.

The season has moved on from cherries to mulberries to mulberries AND raspberries. Breakfast has never been so delightful. I am wondering if I need to turn the salad garden into an expanded raspberry garden because bloody hell they are yummy. Mr Duck and I have a bowlful each morning with yogurt, perhaps some banana (NOT from our backyard) and for little me with the delicate constitution, some nice whey powder to keep me beefed up.

I am enjoying watching the fruit on the trees expanding. Things are looking promising for the peaches and peachcots. There is a deep joy to be had from a maturing garden. Some of the trees and vines are into their 3rd and 4th and even 5th years, and it shows. We almost have the whole year covered for fruit - one tree ripening as another one finishes.

It starts with an early cherry (an amazing old huge and productive tree), then an slightly less early cherry, and then the mulberries, and then the raspberries. I can't remember who comes next, I think it is the apricots (only 2 this year), and then a flat peach......peach, peach-cot, nectarines....and then the wild plums should turn up, then plums from friends, then plums from the front garden. Late roadside peaches from Grenfell are next, then the nashis. Somewhere in there, for the first time, I should get some vista bella apples (very early). Later in the season should come the sturmer apples, and finally, in May, the kiwis. Lemons, mostly in winter with a few throughout the year. Then there is a little lean patch until the early cherry kicks in again.

The pears are the newest additions to the family - I don't expect them to fruit for a couple of years yet.

Thats my fruit forest. You don't need a lot of room. You just need a lot of plants. And most of these can grow on top of one another, in a forest, even with more than one tree in each hole (duo planting).

If you are just starting out, or adapting an existing garden, Jackie French has a similar approach with her "Wilderness" garden.