Squish

It's great to be alive, when you can walk in the cool morning air, then spend ten minutes doing the rounds of the broccolli plants, destroying green cabbage moth caterpillars with thumb and finger. I don't like killing anything, I even avoid stepping on snails or ants these days, but I feel no sympathy whatsoever for cabbage moth caterpillars. Rescueing young brassicas from their voracious evil is most satisfying.
I sowed the broccolli seed on New year's Day, along with some spring onions and lupins, whose seed packets were of the supermarket variety and past their useby date, by eight years in the case of the lupins. The spring onions didn't come up at all, but there are 7 Russell lupin plants that survived the heat and rabbit attack and there was a good strike with the broccolli. I gave some seedlings to Huite and Harry and there's about 20 plants in our small vegie garden protected from the rabbits by sheets of corrugated iron forming a fence.
Some of these plants are nearly a foot high and without control of cabbage moth caterpillars they'd be decimated. As the cool weather comes the problem eases, and into winter when the broccolli is still cropping, hopefully, it's too cold for the moths. I try to get parsley, broccolli, and silver beet growing in late summer/ autumn so that there's fresh vegies to pick in the winter.
Thinking that my first broccolli might be the hybrid type that produces big heads and then nothing much to follow, I sowed a tray of non hybrid seed a few weeks later. This is the old fashioned type that gives small multiple heads but goes on producing for several weeks. These plants are smaller yet of course, and not having room inside the rabbit fence I've planted them here and there around the garden. Some have been lost to rabbits, others I put little guards around, and others still are doing well without protection in places the rabbits don't frequent. The dogs don't stop the rabbits, they catch so few, and then at night when they're in their kennels the rabbits have free reign.
I put in another tray of seed last week, which is just coming up, again a non hybrid variety, but a different type. We should have plenty of broccolli for the winter. The tomato plants are massive and loaded with fruit but none are ripe yet as I got them in late. There should be plenty for March and April. There's zucchini and button squash ready to pick and the butternut pumpkin vines have taken off and there's a few small pumpkins formed. And there'll be beans soon.
The pumpkin seed planted on New years day, which I saved from the vegie scraps bucket, came up, and the young plants are growing well, but I think it was too late to hope that they will produce pumpkins, especially as the weather has turned cool and has a real autumn feel to it. There's some shrubs showing autumn colour and there's a lovely lot of pink autumn crocus flowering.
On the weekend I cut up a tree that fell some time ago, and split the rounds for firewood. There wasn't a lot of urgency this summer as there's still dry wood left over from last winter. I'm looking forward to winter, and in the meantime we have the autumn, a time to admire nature and straighten up. And I'm having fun squishing caterpillars.