From green to golden in a week | In Fiona's Garden

We'd only been away a week but our green landscape had turned gold, the front lawn was toasty brown and the entire garden looked like it needed deadheading.

Happily there were some surprising positives.

The big leaves of my self-seeded annual tobacco plants were unfazed by the sudden temperature hike.

Fragrant white blossom covered climbing star jasmine (Tracelospermum jasminoides) and best of all the stems of a rosy pink Alstroemeria x ligtu hybrid, that often flop in hot dry weather, had actually stayed upright.

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Alstroemeria x ligtu hybrids are great value in summer borders as they flower for weeks and don't spread aggressively, unlike their relation the invasive parrot lily (A. psitticina) with green tipped red flowers that's an environmental weed in NSW, Victoria and WA.

Deadheading Buddleia davidii (ongoing, but it does make a difference), euphorbias and daylilies reminded me to catch up on January pruning.

Early-summer flowering shrubs can be cut back now if you want to restrain their size and keep them compact.

I tip prune purple elderberry (Sambucus nigra purpurea), several mock oranges (Philadelphus) including evergreen P. mexicanus, and an early blooming abelia (A. floribunda). This low growing (1.5 metres), arching shrub must be pruned early as it flowers on the previous year's growth so needs time to produce this for next spring's blooms.

Once I start pruning I can't stop and find myself cutting back Salvia nemerosa hybrids whose upright, purple flowers are just finishing, winter wallflowers ditto, catmint 'Six Hills Giant' - it will flower again with any luck - and curry plant, Helichrysum italicum with showy yellow flowers and glittering grey foliage smelling strongly of curry.

Weeding is never ending despite my best efforts at mulching.

Seasol's organic weedkiller Earthcare kills most weeds overnight, even the ubiquitous variegated arum lily (A. italicum Pictum). The brute will probably re-emerge eventually from its devious underground bulbs, though mine hasn't yet, hurrah, but with luck it won't have time to flower and set seed before autumn.

Warmer weather means turning on hoses, though not on the lawn which will have to wait for rain - it soon greens up. But you can't neglect vegetables, they need water every day.

Zucchinis are the most demanding, followed by eggplants, bush beans and red-stemmed spinach, with sweet corn, amazingly, the most drought hardy: mine survived a week over Christmas with no extra water apart from a brief shower, as I forgot to tell the kind neighbour who watered everything else where I'd planted it.

There's still time to sow vegies in all but the coldest regions, and warmer nights should encourage faster germination.

I'm desperate to get my pumpkins under way, which so far have shown no sign of life.

I'm also sowing beetroot, climbing beans and cucumbers, and more lettuce, spring onions and tomatoes.

Gardeners who want to get ahead can sow biennial flower and vegetable seeds in January but as I'm running out of space, sigh, more on this next week.

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