Ah, @simplymike, I hope I'm not too late for the garden challenge! I've been away for a fortnight, leaving the garden in the capable hands of my son and a makeshift watering system which seemed to keep everything alive!

When I returned, there were artichokes! As I write this, I am steaming them whole with lemon, and I'll then cool them, slice off the outer leaves and marinate with olive oil, oregano and some vinegar, salt and pepper. They will be part of my birthday food platter when I camp on the weekend - seriously, shaved manchego and home marinated artichoke hearts are the BOMB!!!

The blossoms have been amazing this year - I'm so blessed to have had a European spring and now enjoying an Australian one! The quinces and pears have already set fruit, and my son's girlfriend and I are already planning manchego, baked quinces with spices and wine, and tarts.

There's other fun things happening all over the garden. The rhubarb's mostly been divided and sold (I make about 50 bucks each year from divided rhubarb, which I buy magic manure with - a gorgeous blend of fish, livestock manure and compost that I sprinkle on the garden), the mugwort is coming, the coriander is starting to grow, and the potatoes are bursting through the straw. I am trying the straw method this year, and crossing our fingers we don't get a late frost! The blackcurrants are in leaf and I've taken lots of cuttings this year. Seems I can never quite take enough, or be as prepared as I want to be. Maybe one of my summer jobs should be just filling some pots with soil ready to poke cuttings in for next year.

The raspberry patch was transplanted this year, and is doing well - I've actually put strawberries next to them and I might make a polytunnel/hoop house shade thing to go over the top, both against birds and the hella hot Aussie sun. I've been meaning to do that for years and now I have the time off work, I should stop procrastinating and just do it. A lot of my garden work this year is making good systems so when I do go back to work, it's not as labour intensive. Who am I kidding, right?

I've made a ton of wicking buckets for the greenhouse/hoophouse, as I found a source at a bakery that were selling them for a buck each. I'll write a how to later but they should keep the capsicum, tomato, chilli and eggplant well watered. I will plant them in the garden too but I wanted to see how early (and late) I could get these summer crops. I've also got turmeric growing in the beds and the other day I noticed my ginger sprouting! So I've planted that in the beds as well - if I can grow turmeric and ginger in the hoophouse I'd be thrilled.

Stupidly I forgot to plant eggplant as seeds - just overlooked it - so I will buy some seedlings this year. I've got some orange and chocolate capsicums, some mixed capsicums (oh, we call them capsicum here in Oz - most places call them peppers) as a few varieties of chilli, including a black one, and you can't get cooler than black! I have purple and green tulasi AND common basil, some yarrow, chamomile, mullein (yay @nateonsteemit), blue elderberry, white sacred sage all coming up, yellow butterbeans, spaghetti squash, luffa, lebanese cucumber, lemon cucumber, black midnight zucchini and romanesco zuchinni and a few other things I can't recall right now. It's all quite exciting. The good thing is that at this time of year, I can just grow them on in the greenhouse so they're big enough to transplant and not get eaten by bloody slaters and earwigs that cut them off at the stem. This time of the year is HARD to grow veggies due to bugs - coffee grounds, diachomatomeous earth and eggshells are all well and good but then it rains or the earwigs just go 'screw you' and next thing everything is lost anyway!

We've also been eating beetroot, garlic tops, silverbeet, broccoli, garlic chives, purple bokchoy and perpetual spinach, and tons and tons of lemons and limes - I've got both Moroccan preserved lemons and lime pickle on the go. I love have these citrus on tap. There's also the natives - check out this wattle with the flowers growing from the LEAF. Bizarre, but cool.

Well that is most definitely NOT it for my garden, but I don't want to bore you - I'm sure you'd rather be out there in your gardens! I'm sure I will wax lyrical in a month's time about how big everything is growing - it's so exciting to be at the start of the growing season, knowing how much of a glut I'll have this year because I've put the work in. Fingers crossed, anyway - you know how easy the tables are turned if there's a hot spell, the watering system fails or the bugs come in and ruin everything. Plus, we have rabbits up by the house for the first time in ten years - thank god the main part of the vegetable patch is fenced off anyway, but if those f&(&(ckers get in I won't be best pleased!!!!