It’s been a particularly warm early summer in Martinborough and although things had been getting very dry, we had a recent very wet week that perked things up. As we’ve been here full-time on holiday since Xmas eve, we’ve been able to water regularly. The tomatoes are going well in our new greenhouse, but if you look closely at the picture, you’ll see they are drooping a bit. We had scorchers yesterday and today that put temperatures in the greenhouse well into the 30s (C). The tomatoes got a good soaking after they were photographed.

Part of the vegetable garden in the background, with carrots, sweet corn and potatoes going particularly well. In the foreground are netted blackcurrants, daisies (for decoration) and artichokes (gone to seed). In the background is part of the orchard – plums and apricots.

This year we have a terrific grape crop. Plums have been hopeless, citrus trees (lemons, tangelos and grapefruit) loaded. It doesn’t seem possible to get great crops of everything in any given year. Apricots have been fair; peaches useless. Currants average but we lost many of them to birds, which have been particularly numerous and ravenous. The birds also did in our cherries, even getting most of the fruit we thought was safely netted. The one thing we can be sure of is that every April we start harvesting far more feijoas than we can possibly eat.

Our friend Bill Carter designed and helped us build this little lean-to greenhouse during the winter, so it's getting used for the first time. The left-hand picture shows a very healthy yellow tamarillo. We don't know how big it will get! There's also a couple of pots of young basil – at last we can grow it properly. There's other stuff on the ground and I've forgotten what it is – Liz is the main gardener in here. The photo on the right shows tomatoes (some of them old heirloom varieties) which Liz has grown from seed. At the back are some sweet peppers - green and bright purple.