A great year for Dierama; the wands are well past a metre. The begonias are a bit shy, so far. Myrtle is flowering wildly - and smells lovely. The roses keep turning into balls of brown, rain-beaten mush - and growing even taller.

The wetas reckon 'in' is better than 'out' over the wet spells - and they pop up in the darnedest places! The thrushes have mostly dealt to the snails.

In the bush - anyone else having a flush year with Pseudowintera? Heaps of seedlings - and Pittosporum under every perching tree the birds park on.

This season's 'big' project - getting the pot lot onto benching so I don't find sorry sights too late for rescue. Hope you've all got more exciting plans than that!

Happy New Year to all.

I'm eating peas and baby lettuce I've grown from seed so I'm happy (only had my garden 3 months). I'm about 2 days away from eating my first courgette. Despite the complete lack of bees, pollination has been happening and I've got small green tomatoes that will hopefully ripen. A big fat strawberry is just starting to turn red. Roll on some sunny days.

I can't plant too much until I fix the crumbling retaining wall between me and the neighbour so that's my big plan for the year. That and turning rubbish, weedy grasses and ankle-twistingly uneven heaps of dirt into a back garden. I've never started with a virtual blank slate before. It's quite exciting.

Happy New Year!

We've got water restrictions so gardening isn't a priority until autumn. Hope they're right about us getting some decent rain then (though ironically we've had floods here recently too in the middle of the drought).

Thank you for sending the firefighters over to help fight our bushfires. I hope the ones who were injured are doing okay. Just heard there's a group coming over from the US. I think it's wonderful how the firies go where they're needed.