One day at a time

With the heatwave well and truly in our neck of the woods at the moment, there's little going on beyond watering and mulching (and watering and mulching).  So far so good though, as we haven't lost anything.  In fact, it seems as if the watermelons are up for a bit of heat as they continue to grow regardless.  And grow they do

You probably can't see just how big this puppy is but I would estimate we are up to almost 15kg now and the spoon is still green, so its not finished growing yet.  By spoon, I mean the small (surprisingly spoon shaped) leaf at the base of the stalk which, when it turns brown, is an indicator of watermelon readiness.  As I'm not very musical, I don't go by the tapping method.  The 'spoon method' worked well last year, so I'm peering at the stalk of this one fairly regularly.  There is also a tendril next to the spoon left which will also need to brown, so I'm watching for both.  We've got about six or seven on the go with this one and a handful of small ones in the corn patch.  And I've just seen my first little melon on the swales (when I was watering this morning) and lots of flowers, so hopefully its the first of many.

And here is an update on my pool path.  The first of the azaleas have gone in and are taking nicely.  I have the others ready to go but I'm waiting for this heat to past. I'm telling myself that I don't want them to suffer heat stroke, but I could be afraid of suffering the same fate in this weather with all the hole digging required.  So that will be a project for Sunday perhaps, if things cool down by then.  Its back to work next week, so the projects won't be coming in as thick and fast, but it really feels like we've made some progress, which is very exciting.