Hello, what's this I see?

Pottering around the garden this morning ticking off a list of 'feed this', 'repot that' type jobs, I came across this interesting person in my lime tree. Somewhere between 5cm-7.5cm long (two to three inches) he/she was doing the 'master of disguise' thing and not moving a bit. The perfect subject for a photo!

Handsome devil (click on the photo to make it bigger, if you like). With those spines on its back, I am sure all sorts of creatures, including me, would think "leave this person alone". Which is what I did, of course. Live and let live as much as you possibly can, then a bit more, I say. There is a very pretty, big black, white and orange butterfly known as a citrus or orchard butterfly which is quite common around here (seen here every day in fact). Perhaps this is Junior?

Update! Yes, this is a citrus butterfly caterpillar. Always welcome in my backyard!

Another pleasant "hello, what's this I see" moment this morning was the first tinge of yellow on my Eureka lemons. "About time, too", says the Impatient Gardener (me)! Isn't it nice when a crop shows signs of ripening?

Finally, a very pleasant discovery not in my backyard, but down at my local fruit shop, Banana Joe's in Illawarra Road, Marrickville. Quinces are back in season – hooray! I love quinces, and if you want to see what I do with them in the kitchen, I rattled on about them at length here, last year. Yummy as part of breakfast, stewed quinces, but quince jelly is also lovely, too.

Quinces have an old-fashioned charm (which is why I popped them into one of my Grandma's old bowls for this photo). Unlike so many fruits which seem to be available year-round to consumers, quinces (and figs, for that matter) still have their seasons, then their absences from the shops. I like that about them.

The other thing I like about quinces (apart from the eating) is that they're the stuff that dreams are made of. If in the extremely unlikely event that I manage to win Lotto or some similar lottery, I am immediately retiring from work and heading for the country, to do some serious gardening on a decent patch of ground, not just this little green handkerchief of earth I have here in the inner-city.

I'd like to grow things I can't grow in Sydney. I'd need a country property in our coolest zones, up in the mountains somewhere, so I could grow quinces, pears, apples, raspberries and all sorts of cool climate things that don't really work that well in Sydney. That's what I mean about quinces being what dreams are made of. The 10-minute walk home from Banana Joe's was consumed with planning out that orchard!