My spinach is looking magnificent - large leaves, smooth (easier to rinse) and growing abundantly. The last time I mentioned this, yonder porcupine picked up the news on the airwaves and scuttled under the neighbour's gate, biting its way through my wire fencing and feasting on every last leaf. So I have taken no chances and cut as many leaves as I can. It is absolutely delicious, delicate and tender, unlike some of the rather mature specimens we find in plastic bags at the supermarket.
Looking around the garden, I can see that it is already time to start watering, as the pot plants are wilting and the sandy, oily soil is bone dry to the length of a trowel. I have never been successful with enriching the soil, as any compost just rises to the surface and blows away in the wind, so it's a boon to have a plentiful supply of underground water, fed by a well and 3 wellpoints which pump all day throughout summer.
Mango and Biggles have done almost as much damage to the garden as the porcupine, with their manic careering around, chasing each other. The bromeliads have been uprooted (not that they have any to speak of) and a young strelitzia has had a few stems snapped. There is also much evidence of enthusiastic digging, but at least they no longer use a litter tray. The scabious, which covers a big area, has suffered the most from their cavorting, with plants being crushed and flowers hanging forlornly from bent stems. But new growth is bursting forth everywhere, and nature will restore itself as the kitties become more sedate with adulthood.
It's only two weeks to the spring equinox and the sun is moving rapidly south, its passage marked by the undulations of the line of milkwood trees along the bay. Spring is definitely here.
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