I love summer, especially the fruit and vegetables we enjoy this time of the year.

I grow lots of vegetables, but our hot dry summers normally make this a very difficult business- if you leave watering a day too long then you can lose a whole crop. Bur I love corn, beans, tomatoes and pumpkins which all taste better when picked fresh from the back yard.

I love stone fruits, especially peaches and plums. The biggest hazard to these is the Queensland Fruit Fly. Last year the cool wet start to summer caught me napping and I lost all my plums to the fly.

Our old peach tree died last summer, probably due to drought the year before. I've replaced it but it will be next year before I see any fruit from it.

Plums require pollination by other trees so I have two plum trees which flower at about the same time, but one tree bears fruit about a month before the other.

Today I picked the first lot of plums, 5kg of them- about half of the total on the early tree. They are near-perfect. Some have split from the excessive rain, and they have little insect holes in them. The remainder, which are the majority, are beautiful. They are quite small but sweet and flavoursome. Lovely!

I'm the big fruit lover in the family so I guess I will have to take responsibility for eating them.

Next week should see me pick the rest of the early plums and the late ones look like they will finish in about 4 weeks.

I love summer!