Late frosts Dry weather means clear skies, which means more frosts. We didn't get any truly late frosts - no white grass and nipped tomatoes at the end of November, as we've had once before, but enough to burn off what fruit there was on the early blooming apples and stone fruit. A damp late spring Finally, after blue skies, it began to rain. And rain. And rain. Not much, apart from a few 15mm or so falls, just 3-5mm twice a week or so, and 1-2mm most nights, just enough to make the air thick and wet. Bees do not like flying when it's wet. Blossom rots when it stays wet. So when the late flowering fruit trees decided they were moist enough to blossom, they didn't set fruit.

Possums Our resident possum has good taste. Credit:Gary Unwin Or rather, one very annoyed possum who has decided to ignore the loquat fruit since we cut down the tree with his nest in it, and focused on eating every apple and leaf on my second favourite apple tree. Admittedly this is only one tree out of 800, but it did happen to be the only one with a good crop of apples. Sugar gliders I love sugar gliders, cute little faces peering down from the avocado trees. Sugar gliders love avocado trees. They love their blossom, too. They also manage to knock off quite a lot of the young fruit as they clamber from branch to branch. I can't blame the sugar gliders for much of the fruit loss - the drought did that. But they did have fun with the little blossom we did get.

Birds A dry winter and spring, and a wet late spring, meant little native fruit for the birds. Birds do prefer native fruit, if no one has cut the trees down, or run so many cattle that the ground is too compacted for good fruiting - or it's a dry winter/spring. Not that I begrudge the birds fruit in a bad year. I have yet to see a cockatoo who can buy a mango at the supermarket General weirdness Mostly, this year has just been … odd. I planned the garden so that in dry hot years we'd get drought fruit like kei apples, deep rooted pears and the most heat hardy of the apples, like Lady Williams, Granny Smith, French Crab, Gravenstein and Earliblaze. In cold dry years there'd be chestnuts, walnuts, pecans, apple pears, loquats, persimmons and much more. In cool wet years we'd get lots of cherries, pears and even more apples. But I never planned for years that would be hot at the wrong time, cold at the wrong time, dry then damp, with mist that hung till midday.

The garden is confused. The spring blooming roses have bloomed again in autumn. The summer blooming roses mostly sulked. The spring bloomers appeared and vanished with hardly time to wave goodbye. The summer blooming ginger lilies, usually a flagrant display, have bloomed in twos and threes for the last two months and are still flowering here and there - excellent if you want them as cut flowers (I don't) but not exactly wow factor. We have had a brilliant crop of native limes, crop after crop since early December and still fruiting. And now through winter? We'll have lemons, but not many; Tahitian limes unless something happens to them before they ripen; possibly other citrus too, unless the small green ones drop off before they ripen, and there does seem to be a plenitude of tamarillos, both the red and orange ones, and masses of pomegranates on one tree, one on another tree, and none whatsoever on the other two. But there's not a quince on any of the trees, no late apples except a few crabs, nor late pears, no persimmons or avocados, the first year ever we've had no medlars or … This is possibly when I should stop bewailing what we won't have, and think about what we will have: the parrots eating the bright red melia berries and probably most of the pomegranates, the wombats happy with the rain that has given grass, even if it hasn't replenished the water table, and a glorious profusion of various fungi. And it will be beautiful.

This week I am: Trying to cook masses of rhubarb before winter hits.

Accepting that the front flower garden will have to remain bare of blooms this winter, and spring as well. They'll get planted for summer if, and only if, it looks like rain.

Considering crab apple jelly then deciding that the birds can have them this year instead.

Reminding myself - and everyone else - that the stinking roger and other annual weeds need slashing now, before they set seed. (They grew when the grass shrank in the dry part of spring - a good grass cover is the best way to keep weeds at bay).

Getting around to a bit of diluted bleach on the front steps - all of them large flat stones. For the first time in the 36 years they've been there, they're slippery from all the moisture and lack of blazing hot days. The bleach will clean them and possible bleach a little of the vegetation around them.

Enjoying the casuarina mating season, with trees rust red with pollen.