2013 ..... A new beginning

Today is the start of something new.....another attempt at a blog!

This time of year is very inspiring for me, my garden which is situated in the Western Bay of Plenty in New Zealand is always abundant and we eat fresh fruit like kings. We are located in the North Island on the east coast and we are not called the 'Bay of Plenty' for nothing. We have bumper crops of everything every year - I love it, the cooking possibilities are endless!

Approximately 1 hour, 45mins from Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, we are surrounded by a kiwi fruit orchard on three sides and a state highway along the front, north of the mural township of 'Katikati' and close to northern reaches of the Tauranga Harbour. We have close to an acre of land which has many many different fruit trees. From mandarins along the front fence line to peach trees along the rear, scattered between are grapefruit, tangerines, lemons, strawberry guava's, quince, apples, feijoa's, figs, tamarillo's, nectarines, plums, banana's (yes, banana's) and locquots (not sure how to spell the last one but they are those orangy/yellow fruit with big brown seeds in them), oh and a Black American Walnut tree which is the large tree you see covering the driveway. I'm sure there are other's that I have forgotten to mention, in some cases there are more than one. We also have about 6 different grape vines throughout, rich dark purple plums around the front deck out the front to crisp white grapes on the front fence and in the vegie garden.

To get us started I thought I'd just post some pics of a couple of my favourite places and trees within the garden.

One of our favourite places to sit, it has changed a bit since this pic was taken, the seat has had to go as it rotted away and there is a huge pale pink rose behind it.

Again, this seat has gone and the garden is much much fuller with flowers.

This only flowers for such a short time but it is stunningly beautiful.

The grapes on the front deck, we sit under this vine and feel like we are in Italy or some where exotic, this was taken as the leaves were starting to fall.

One of the banana palms...these are 'lady finger' banana's and very sweet, I tend to use them in baking as they can sometimes be a bit dry.

Well, I hope you'll come back and keep me inspired. Thank you for taking the time.

Nannette