The orchid/palm out the back, which featured on my opening salvo, (opening page, worldsbestest etc,) has long ceased to flower, and has retreated into normalcy..palm type leaves sticking up.
I will try to do a new bit each month
this month will feature..pumpkins!

Day one, not that we knew it then, featured the Planting of the Pumpkins.
Planting of the pumpkins entailed the burial of a bucket of compost..which was starting to get up my HoneyBuns nose as I recall at the time.
So, some time later, new life was noticed in said garden bed, namely a few brave green shoots heading upwards.
Few turned into myriads of the blighters, so half a dozen were allowed to continue, but we did have to keep an eye on them, on account of we had more shoots at sporadic intervals…
Hoooey, and we had flowers!
phase two..waiting for actual pumpkins to eventuate.
This didn’t happen, and the theory was put forward, to wit, that these had been got at genetically, and were in fact sterile.
One or two were pulled out..but then we noticed underneath one of the flowers, a very pumpkin looking bulb!

phase three was..same as phase two, to wit..waiting for actual pumpkins to eventuate.
This didn’t happen, although we had more pumpkin looking bulbs under more flowers..which got to a certain size, then proceeded to rot.
Phase four, putting plywood bits under the ..pumpkin looking bulbs to stop the rotting..
This didn’t eventuate in Proper pumpkins, although we did have one successful pumpkin taking off, unbeknownst as it were, which had nothing to do with plywood bits.
Hmmm
The HoneyBun suggested I look on the internet ..early on in the piece..probably about stage two as I recall..
So phase 5, check out the internet..which suggested that lack of pollination was the root cause of..most of the above.
sigh
So we did a few pollination of the female flowers..which were the ones with pumpkin looking bulbs underneath, with the male flower pollen..which were just long stemmey flowers, with totally different bits in the middle.
phase 6…we noticed that the Main Cause of no normal pollination was..ants. Getting into flowers of both sexes, and carting away the good bits…
About then, we had a growth spurt, and were faced with a very real prospect of pumpkins getting to the front of the house all the way from around the back, and Not Very Much Lawn Remaining.
So, phase 7 culling/pruning of..The Pumpkins.
Delicate operation. If the blasted things had grown in a straight line, all nicely laid out, then There Would Not Have Been a Problem. sigh.
Twisted around, through bits of metal work, lattices, into the neighbours, and with the occasional pumpkin hanging off some of these vines..well. Not a five minute job..
So a cubic metre or so later, we could actually see bits of lawn poking through, and the occasional flower making a colour splash.
Phase 8. How long to wait before
phase 9 Harvesting!
We had found a page or 5 on the net, suggesting how to tell when a Pumpkin was ripe/ready..to be picked. Opinions varied, but the one that resonated was..when the stem gets hard, then its Time. Naow, the First Ever Pumpkin to reach maturity..well, hard stem, and certainly heavy enough, was duly cut off and carted inside. It was about then that we noticed..all the other pumpkins had the same degree of Hardness of their Stems..ah. Perhaps the hard stem referred to was actually DRIED hard stem..:)
Phase 10. cooking and final testing of the Inaugural Alexandra Hills 2017 Pumpkin.
Went well, and tasted yummy.