TarraGONE

I was so glad to see our Jenni again after a weekend away from her...
We were adventuring about, "just looking" at farms for a possible weekend getaway and lifestyle investment... but that's a whole different story all together.

It was a very inspiring breakaway and to me one of our more romantic weekends away together, but I am always glad to come back "home" and even more so since spending 2 days without our "baby" (Jenni). She is so cute and friendly and such a truly happy little pup, but Oh so demanding!! When I peeked around the garden to see what's still growing and where new holes to china have appeared I discovered my little tarragon (now tarra-gone!) plant ripped out and wilted under the bushwillow. :( ahhh, oh well, I expected far worse. There's no use crying over spilled milk and I suppose my beautiful garden WILL suffer at the red paws of the demanding miss Cutie-pie until she's a little older. I made my beds and now she will sleep in them (and pull out a few plants while she's at it ;)

In the above pondering resides a bunch of very important philosophical decisions and real life facets tied up together...

First in my mind is the philosophy that I have always had: You will never know until you try... Indeed, and actually I'm still not even certain whether having a dog is working for us or not... I know that it still CAN work out, if things improve a little on the side of her demands... but I also know that if our priorities/needs changed (eg. if we had to travel abroad while she's still so young and time-consuming/ if we have a baby and our time is even more restricted, etc.) things could go horribly wrong and we could end up with an undisciplined, even more demanding burden on our time.

The same with the farm. Well, actually even worse, because a dog is a couple of thousand rands worth of hassle, where a farm could be a couple of Million rands' chronic pain. Although I know that I would REALLY like to try it, there are all sorts of factors counting against this decision. But if we just forgot about all the issues and difficulties of farming in the first place, what worries me most is the realisation that there is an obvious difference between the dream and the reality. Knowing my own personal flaws I have experienced the enormous difference between what I always imagined something would be and what it truly is! What I imagined I'd have time for and what I become to lazy to do or just too obsessed with some new thing... etc. To be VERY honest I don't think I have what it takes to make this dream a reality on the steam of my own desires and wishes, I will have to go into it only if I have a partner equally enthusiastic, equally committed and equally crazy to plunge in and make it work out. Hmmm...? A VERY hard decision indeed!

But just look how awesome the natural setting is: I can just see the horses, cattle and alpacas grazing in these "paddocks" :)

It is such a dreamy place and a true inspiration from nature!!

How I wish I'd crawled back into bed

Happy as a sunflower... Oh so sweet.

 I'm such a good girl - promise ;)

It has been a rather eventful week, mainly due to Genevieve, who has been Miss Jackyl and Hyde... ;) It started off with her being an enormous brat, jumping up, biting at me and growling for attention and the next day she was the sweetest angel for just about a day and a half. :P I told Hunny that whatever remedy he had given her should please be continued, but alas! it seems like it was all her own idea. On the perfect day she only slept in her very tiny dog bed (we're still waiting for a crate *sigh*), she played with her own toys, she ate ALL her food (all of a sudden) and snoozed quietly at my feet while I was watching TV (bliss). I felt so amazed and accomplished, believing that all my effort to try and discipline the wild little beast had paid off, but unfortunately all returned to "normal" the day after, when we had, once again, a little hooligan on our hands that bit, growled, eaten my raspberry bush :( and even peed on the blanket she'd slept on in front of the TV!? Eish!!

How can u be mad at me when I'm so cute!

In my desperation to try and relive her moments of best behaviour I tried some dominating tactics, holding her on my lap, rolling her onto her back and getting her to lie still. We eventually had her pacified for 2 minutes, tickling her tummy. I could even (quickly) trim her toenails. In my state of elation at being able to groom her properly I ventured out to get the proper Irish red setter trimming equipment and started trimming her feet, ears and legs. I was a little less successful to say the least. I know I was supposed to introduce the whole trimming and grooming experience more sensitively, but who really has time for all that! I'd been on leave for an entire month and still hadn't managed to get to half the things I'd planned to do and this was my last week of leave, so patience and dominance would have to do the trick. Obviously I was mistaken :P

Jenni wasn't all that bad I suppose, but after a long walk, lunch and a "hurry-up" outside I was hoping to have a passive pooch to trim and brush, however, Madam had other ideas. She had much more fun biting at the scissors, nipping my hands/clothes/shoes or whatever she could reach. Presenting her favourite toys had zero effect and she squiggled and squirmed most of the time. I had to be more than just stern and really lost my temper at times and would just pin her down to the floor, which would work for all of 10 seconds. *another Deep Sigh* At least in the end she was sort of trimmed and I could brush her undercoat with the pin brush. It is recommended that for showing one not brush a completely dry coat and so I brewed a fragrant tea of rose geranium to spray on her body. The showing gurus recommend some conditioning mist, but I don't know where to get hold of that so I decided to be creative ;) At least it made her smell lovely.

At last!

 

Disappearing whiskers...?

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... ?