So Fresh

I thought I'd give an update on out tomato harvest and show what the rampant cherry tomato plant has produced. Hunny made a lovely veg pasta witht the sweet fruit...

I have to admit that to me they taste just like any normal shop-baught tomato... I'm not entirely sure what I expected it to taste like, but they're still marvellous! :)  So here they are:

Another special little surprise was the very first gardenia from our little gardenia tree. My mom always says that it's a special gift from my great-grandmother, because she always used to give us loads of gardenias from her old tree.

They are so beautiful and smell intense and rich. Ahhhhh!

Delicious!

So, yesterday was the 3rd day of the 2nd stretch of my holiday (confused...? so am I ;)

 

I decided that I would make us a Moroccan chicken and chickpea soup and so I Googled 3 recipes that I combined to make an awesome flavour-filled pot of steaming soup. After I bought 2 whole chickens and a few minor ingredients from the supermarket, Jenni and I ventured into our garden to harvest a few sprigs of this and that and gather an entire basket of veg fresh for the pot. Taking Jenn along of coarse makes the job take twice as long, since I have to keep rescuing my celery stalks and spinach leaves from my little helper... before all our ingredients end up with baby-dog teeth marks in them. I ended up giving her the first piece of whatever I was picking and then she would run off with the piece of bean or whatever - rather cute.

 

Mmmm mmmm, Delicious, Frikkie's favourite !

 

Back in the kitchen we had an entire basket full of spinach, parsley, celery, tarragon, marjoram, thyme and 2 chillies fresh from our own organic garden. In the photo is also a bunch of cilantro (young coriander leaves) that I'd thinned out the previous day. I was looking desperately for a few islands of salad burnet and found 3 babies from the seeds I'd sown along with the coriander, so I made some space for them to grow. I just love both the salad burnet and coriander because they will always reseed them self and you'll have some for ever if you don't pull them out (which = easy enough).

 

You shouldn't have...

No... u REALLY shouldn't have!


This morning when I got to the kitchen I discovered a gleamingly proud Sashi perched over a small gift he had brought - to say thank you for all the lovely food we provide him with. It was rather upsetting, but I had to get the camera out to try and take a snapshot of his gratitude... just some of the small ways our pets colour in our lives and get us even more late for work! Shame, it was a very cute and very small little shrew of some sort but what was worst is that it was still slightly alive! :(

 No actually the worst was that in it's fear at being pawed and dragged around the kitchen it urinated all over the floor and now the kitchen reeks of rat-pee :( :( And the poor little thing - it must have been so scared and suffering a slow death. :(


I'm not exactly a bunny-hugger (although I do admit to having hugged one once), but I just find this extremely upsetting, especially on an empty stomach! The little creature was lying there with its shiny whiskers moving up and down with exhausted, shallow breaths - it was so horrible! And I couldn't do anything to save it. I Really wish the cat would stop doing it! Or he could at least just kill his catch before dragging it into the house! :P


Jenni had another little surprise for me: a lovely pumpkin flower that she picked fresh from the vine. OK, it wasn't especially for me - but I claim all the contents of the garden as mine, so I demanded my flower back. At least her taste in organic produce is improving - pumpkin flowers beat donkey and goose manure hands down!

To the Cederberg and beyond

We had a family get-away in the Beautiful Cederberg this long-weekend. What we discovered was that Life is hard (very hard) without electricity! Especially when it's 45 in the shade!! That's degrees Celcius!! I felt like I could die! I haven't been that HOT in a long time! Luckily in the end we had a great time and everybody enjoyed their stay, more so when the weather cooled off a bit!

 

 

Cederberg

 

The weather in the Cederberg is very fickle, the one night sprinkled water would evaporate from your face in 5 seconds, the other we actually slept with a double-thick duvet it was so chilly. So if you do venture there - be prepared!! And I wouldn't recommend it to anyone in midsummer! No way!!!

 

 

Jenni's morning walkies

Out of control?

Runner bean

In the 2 weeks since I last had a good walk about the garden and especially after the garden services have skipped a week of weeding everything feels SO out of control!! I have drastically underestimated the space needed by tomatoes, the gourds have started growing into everything and down the gabion walls and the lettuces are in desperate need of contributing to the compost heap. One thing I also know is that I won't ever plant plectranthus (the green-grey groundcover variety) in a garden ever again! Unless there's a large infertile slope or rockery I wish to cover up quickly. They are almost an invader!! I have trimmed them back 3 times already in the past 2 months! I don't even bother with secateurs I just rip big chunks of them out with a twist of the hand and chuck them in a far-away corner... the problem is they just don't die, they start growing roots and settle themselves in the new spot. I think I will slowly but surely remove all of them from the back garden completely, they're quite a pest with all the water we're giving the young, more tender plants. I think I will remove all the overgrown ones and throw them on the side of our garden where there's no sprinklers, hopefully they will die then and provide a bit of mulch?

I will also have to seriously work through the veggie patch! The rocket's taking over, the celery is looking dire and I think everything could do with a good trim or clearing out! I think I'll start up some new seeds and then plant them out when there's space after the cleanup. I must admit: this gardening project is much harden than I imagined it would be! It requires more than just a few hours a week and I haven't even given it that much attention since Jenni arrived. So I guess it's not that difficult, but you can't leave it unsupervised for more than a few days!! I will have to rescue the tomatoes and maybe trim them back a little because my whole little "support" I built has tumbled over under their weight... monster tomatoes!

 Scooby snack... ?

So proud of our green children

Sashi

I am So Amazed at all the veggies that our garden has produced! We only started the garden 2 or 3 months ago and there are already green beans, loads of rocket and spinach, tomatoes (still green) and LOTS of lettuce! It's truly amazing, I almost can't get over how quickly they have all grown!

Sashi investigating the awesome lettuce!! Mmmmmm.

A feast for the eyes.

Gourd bloom.

But wait, there's more...

Our first bright and beautiful tomatoes :)

I underestimated how fast the veggies could grow and how much space they'd need.

The gourds are taking over!!

Crate success

Crate success

So at last we have a puppy who happily sleeps in the crate, her own space, also known as her den. Many people who are unfamiliar with proper crate training think this idea is very cruel. Understandably so - it looks mean to lock an animal up into a small space!! But the idea is not to confine the pooch in there for ever! The idea is to keep them out of trouble. Therefore out of the pool, out of your cat's hair, off the persian carpets and out of your flower beds. The idea is also not to keep them in there for hours on end. Dogs need mental stimulation, physical exercise and attention! But dogs also love a safe, 'secret' place to sleep. In the crate no beast (including kids) can jump on them from behind, it's a dog's natural instinct to like the crate if introduced to it properly... and clearly our puppy now loves it. She actually prefers the crate over the 3 alternatives... she's got a BIG pillow, a basket cut out from a carboard box with a thick blanket in, and the tile floor which she sometimes prefers because it's cooler to lie on in the hot summer. The crate only has a towel in it, which she sometimes pulls out to lie directly on the newspaper (presumably because it's cooler).