Well it feels like everything is still growing as I write this at the beginning of May. There has certainly been plenty of rain around the country - some of you in parts of New Zealand and Australia are getting more than your fair share! The lawnmower in the family has been complaining that he even the grass hasn’t let up.

As the nights draw in and the air turns a little cooler, the natural cycle of the plants in our garden begins to come to an end. In their short lives, plants have one primary goal—to reproduce. The seed cycle is the final and most important part of that process. They quite literally “go to seed.”

Each plant has its own way of scattering seed. Once that job is done, the plant dies back, returning to the soil or compost and contributing its goodness to the earth—ready for the cycle to begin again in spring.

Like many parts of the South Pacific, we have been affected by the La Nina weather pattern bringing grey skies and a cool summer. I saw my neighbour the other day and we were joking about how much we’d enjoyed summer last Wednesday. There will still be warm days ahead and March is a lovely month as we head towards the start of what I think might be an early autumn.  It is the autumn equinox this month around the 21st March so that’s when true autumn begins.