Hooray, wet day!

Rain on the tin roof, a beautiful sound. We're almost getting average amounts of rainfall this year, but such has been the effect of the drought that the sound of rain still sends a thrill through me every time I hear it, as if the drought is breaking anew each time. So this amateur photographer and gardener heads outside as soon as the rain eases off...

Canna lilies after a dip in the above-ground ocean.


Pig Pen, otherwise known as Gardenia radicans, on its one day of good clean fun...

But in no time the crispy white gardenia blooms turn to sludge. I like the blending here of the shining pure optimism of youth, and the seedy decay of partied-out old age.

Here's the finishing touch we've been waiting for with our successful two-year program of striking a frangipani from a large cutting and transplanting it this spring. The first flush of sweetly fragrant white blooms with the lemony centre is a happy occasion.

The sole survivor of last year's successful Coleus Corner operation has really got going in the last couple of weeks, piling on a lot of growth and an almost impossibly complex leaf pattern. Quiet achiever, this one.

And the last couple of days of rain has prompted a pot full of chervil seeds to do their thing.

The climbing 'Blue Lake' beans have begun to flower, and the first beanette has made an appearance. Vegies have such lovely, complex flowers, I'm very fond of them all.

Silver beet looks handsome at all times, and after a shower of rain I just feel like peeling off a leaf and munching on it there and then.

The Eureka lemon is flowering away now, setting fruit too. But I think I'll remove most of the fruit so it can get on with the business of growing a bit more as a tree.

I could swear this ladybird was going from one little patch of powdery mildew to another on this zucchini leaf. I watched it for a minute or two and it went from one whitish spot to the next. Either there's an extremely tiny bug in the fungus that I cannot see, or the fungus itself is delicious. After all, we eat mushrooms and truffles! My organic milk spray is preventing the powdery mildew taking over the other zucchini plants (and the rest of this plant, too) but it works mostly as an effective suppressor of mildew's spread, rather than eliminating it altogether when it occurs.

Already the sunshine has returned, but it was lovely watching the rain fall down, the sky crackle with lightning and low clouds boiling with their dark grey, ferocious energy. It's hard to begrudge the sun and the clear blue sky the next couple of days to themselves, either, as everything grows with such verve right now. But it will be a thrill once more to hear the hiss of rain on the old tin roof.