Windy.

It's blowing a real gale today, definitely not summer weather. Vytas gave me a Skype call this morning and it sounds as though it is not much colder in Auckland even though they are officially in winter.

Meanwhile the garden thinks it's summer and the hillside is turning into a mass of colour. 

Bill, my neighbour, tried to get his kite up today for a test flight but the wind kept making it collapse so we'll have to wait for the wind to lessen. 

The climbing roses are out but I don't know how long they will last with these strong winds. We're taking things easy today so the only gardening I've done is to earth up my little row of potatoes. Some of the plants don't look that robust but I'll keep my fingers crossed. The 3 tomato plants in the conservatory are shooting away and I'm finding the wind-the-stem-around-a-string method much easier than tying the stem to a cane. I expect those of you that grow tomatoes regularly are saying 'Duh!' but I'm new to this. At Peter's work they were selling some planters for growing tomatoes upside down but I'm not sure about those. I've had a look on line and maybe next year I might try a normal hanging basket as some Which trials got 2lbs-4lbs per basket growing special varieties with Tumbler coming out the best.