Flowers from my garden: dahlia, scabiosa anemone and geranium.

I know that summer's coming to an end when I hear the cicadas singing. Last week I went for a walk in a nearby forest and their songs were deafening; there must've been thousands of them up in the trees. The cicadas have started leaving their empty shells on my oak and sycamore tree. I remember wearing these shells like a broach when I was a kid.

There are 42 species of cicada that are unique to New Zealand. They live in other countries too, but only warm ones. According to a website dedicated to New Zealand cicadas, more people do a google search on cicadas in February than any other month.

I love the sound of cicadas because they embody the feeling of summer: browning grass and parched plants, the smell of dry earth and sunbaked leaves, the smell of plastic hose melting in the sun and the boiling-hot water that shoots out when the tap is turned on, hot windless days, blue skies and the welcome shade of big trees.

Cicada songs also make me feel sad. Summer is nearly over, The garden is looking faded and rumpled compared to the way it looked back in spring when new leaves were in shades of lime, chartreuse, mint, lawn green and malachite. Everything looked so vigorous. Some of my roses are having a second flowering, the flowers are lush but the rest of the plant looks gawky. They're all legs. Back in spring and early summer, those marvellous fast growers like foxgloves, honeywort and various lilies, sprung up around the roses and hid their ugly legs. Those plants have either gone or are in the process of dying, leaving bare weed-infested gaps in the flower garden. All the leaves of the remaining plants have turned a shade of dusty grey-green. What to do?

I filled the gaps of course. I planted two Cistus x purpureus 'Billiancy', two Scabiosa 'Vivid Violet' and a Geranium 'Roxanne' (PVR), which are very hardy. I planted a deciduous hibiscus called Hibiscus moscheuttos 'midnight marvel' ( which I know nothing about, so fingers crossed it will be better at surviving frosts than the evergreen varieties - it has beautiful bronze leaves that remind me of grape leaves). Lastly I planted a red penstemon called 'cha cha cherry', (these originate from North America and East Asia and are used to dry conditions). The small red penstemon flowers look jewel-like against the crimson roses, abutilon and anemones (but it's completely lost in the photo below).

The flower garden in February, which has been knocked about by strong winds.

Wellington had the wettest winter and start of spring. The rain just wouldn't stop. Meteorologists told us that records were broken. Everything was sodden. The soil was waterlogged and everything was green and glossy. Then came the drought. Six weeks without rain. Then there were sprinkler bans and hosing restrictions...all of this before Christmas. The start of summer looked gloomy for gardeners. Luckily there were several good rainfalls and a storm in January. The good news is that the sprinkler ban has finished, but the bad news is that another storm is due to arrive in two days. A bad one with 120km winds.

My latest rose, Charteuse de Parme soon after it has opened.

Here is my latest favourite rose, a hybrid tea called Chartreuse de Parme. I planted it in late winter when the first leaves emerged. I wanted a purple rose, more lilac than pink, so I was disappointed when the first flowers were a shocking magenta. Then, as the flowers aged they changed in texture and colour, becoming paler and bluer, like faded silk roses. It's hard to capture the exact colour in a photograph, but I'll try.

My latest rose, Charteuse de Parme after a week or so.

Monarch butterfly on the orange abutilon.

My pear tree, the unnamed one I bought for twenty dollars 2 years ago, is having a bumper crop of pears. So much so that the pear tree is in danger of snapping in half from the weight of the fruit. With the cyclone arriving on Tuesday I had to do something to help the tree.

I pruned a branch, removed most of the fruit and hammered in 3 stakes, which I tied to the trunk. The tree is more upright and lighter. I think I've saved the tree but at the cost of all the beautiful golden fruit. This is the first year that the tree kept its pears (last year they blew off in a storm). I don't know if these pears will ripen off the tree. I don't know if I'm able to cook with them if they don't ripen. I don't know much about pears apart from the fact that they are lovely trees easy to grow and pest free (unlike my plum which is very very very ugly, but that's another story for another time). I will have to do some pear research...quickly.

The Wellington Botanic Garden is, to my mind, one of the most beautiful places in the world. It spreads across several hills and valleys with many views of the harbour and hills, not to mention all the different intimate gardens - woodland, desert and dark sub-tropical forests (to name a few). As Katherine Mansfield says in her story titled In The Botanical Gardens - ' They are such a subtle combination of the artificial and the natural - that is, partly, the secret of their charm.'

Here are a couple of very old cedar trees (species unknown, but will find out) that I came across at 9.30 this morning. They are near the duck pond but you'd never know it when you stand under them. I had the feeling of being in a lost world. The second photograph made me think of veins and arteries in a pair of lungs or a heart. You can see the trees's cones up in the top branches, looking like marbles, but in reality they're as big as oranges. Both of these trees are immense.

Cedar tree, Wellington Botanic Garden, February 2018.