It’s been so dry lately, we haven’t had significant rain for over 2 months. Just a couple of millimetres every now and then. All our fruit trees and garden vegetables are suffering. We have to water every day now, as the daytime temperatures rise significantly. The situation isn’t helped by the hot, gusty, dry winds, desiccating everything with green leaves. I have recently planted out a lot of little seedlings, so they need daily watering to keep them alive.

There are even cracks developing in the bare earth of the veggie garden, where the weeds have dried out and died. I haven’t seen cracked soil like this since the last drought ending in the catastrophic bush fires of 2019. It’s not an endearing sign.

We are OK for the moment, as there is still some water in the the dams, but they are all low, the main top dam is very low. I will have to pump water up from the lowest dam, up to the middle dam, and then from there, up into the top dam. It’s our natural summer routine of the transhumance of water!

It’s quite a rigmarole and takes a couple of days of pumping. However, although it is a lot of work and it is time consuming. I consider myself so lucky that we have the dams that we dug here 4 decades ago, so that we can continue to water our gardens. I was once told that, the harder you work, the luckier you get, or so it seems just now. Now that all the sweat, effort and aching muscles are forgotten. Maybe, It isn’t luck!

I use one of the petrol driven fire fighting pumps to do the transfer. It keeps the pump motor in good nik. I know that it is starting easily but not running reliably. That’s important to know going into such a dry start to summer. I will need to pull the carbi off tomorrow and see what’s going on. This is a job that can’t be put off. It needs to be done now. I need to know that I can activate the fire fighting system immediately and reliably when needed.

I need this pump to be 100% reliable before the summer heat comes in. motors need constant attention.

I’m reminded that nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.

Although we are still in the last month of spring, already the grass has dried off in the paddocks and lawn around the house. I am watering the 4 new avocado trees every 2nd day, just to keep some moisture in the soil for them to get established. It must be quite a shock to their system, to go from a mollycoddled, tropical, irrigated and shade cloth covered nursery environment, to this hot, dry, windy place. 3 of the trees have dropped a few leaves in the past few days in this wind. Not a good sign, but what can we do?

If the summer looks like getting worse, and that’s very likely. I might have to cover them in shade cloth to ease the stress. Just until they settle in and start to produce some new leaves and a spurt of growth at the tips. They hate drying out, but hate getting water logged even worse, so watering every 2nd day seems to be keeping the soil just moist. The last time that I planted 4 new avocado trees, the wallabies came in and ate the tops out over night. So this time the wire mesh fencing went up around them straight away. And guess what? The wallaby left its tracks right up to the new trees last night, and the wire mesh did its job.

Some of the dozen new dwarf cherry trees that I planted last winter have had their first tiny crop of cherries on them. We are enjoying deserts of mixed orchard fruits of cherries, mulberries, blueberries and strawberries, dressed with a little fresh cream. That is pretty special and makes all the past mowing, weeding, pruning and watering so worthwhile.

The mulberries are in full season just now, so I have been making mulberry tarts. It’s a definite once-a-year treat. As the fruiting season only lasts a couple of weeks.

Our son Geordie has started a new business making small batch, seasonal cordials, while he waits for his liquor licence to come through. He has been a gin distiller for the past few years since the fire. He has now gone out on his own. Without the liquor licence, he can’t sell his gin as yet. But he can make and sell his special, small batch, local, seasonal cordials. A lot of the produce for this has come from our garden and orchards so far.

He has been making lemon cordial from our lemons with the sophisticated addition of lemon balm, lemon thyme and lemon grass to fill out the flavour profile. These are adult cordials. Made in small batches from our real, home grown, organic fruit. unsprayed, unwaxed, freshly picked, just minutes off the tree. No carbon miles, just carbon feet. Actually, we walked, so no carbon at all!. His fruit cordials offer solid, rich flavours, sophisticated flavours, not just some sugary flavoured coloured water.

Yesterday we made a very nice, rich, dark, mulberry/lime cordial with the addition of 3 different mint leaves, chocolate mint, spear mint and garden mint, plus kaffir lime leaves and our home grown and hand squeezed Tahitian lime juice.

One of my favourites is his strawberry and basil cordial, beautifully flavour-full and a delicately dense pink colour. The combination is surprisingly good, but we can only make this combination in the spring/summer season when we can grow enough sweet basil. These are definitely, small batch, seasonal products.

Geordie has called his company, ‘Bantam Beverages’, small batch, seasonal drinks. He was selling them here during the Arts trail – Open Studio sale. We sold out of the strawberry and basil, and only had a few bottles of the lemon mix left. We are helping make more stock now, so he will have more bottles to sell on the special, one day only, half price sale on the Sunday 14th of December.

Come along on Sunday 14th of December for a free tasting and some 1/2 price pots.

Sunday 14th December. 9am – 5pm.

Steve and Janine’s Pottery Workshop, at the old School,

5 Railway Pde, Balmoral Village, 2571.