Garden Update

My first Brocollini.

Spring has finally sprung, and I am starting to feel like me again. I'm a lizard, and without warmth and sunshine I get very tired. This was even more apparent during the last few months when I was renovating, with a toddler roaming around the filthy, cramped house, (I will write about that soon, hopefully) and in the first trimester of pregnancy with D2. Needless to say I was exhausted, but now my house is no longer a construction site and I'm in love with my kitchen, I'm in the cruisy second trimester of pregnancy and the sun is out making my veggie garden grow-despite the months of neglect it had to tolerate whilst everything else was going on. I feel very lucky that it didn't all die, yet alone still being able to eat from it.

Lara and I are having fun harvesting delicious strawberries from the garden, and the other night I was very proud to make homemade kale chips from homegrown kale. Not all jobs can be done with Lara, particularly now that she's developed a taste for great soil, so I decided to wait until she slept to plant out some tomato seedlings...in lovely cow compost and chicken poo.

Sadly, my experiment for a lovely little tomato  recycled green house failed in the midst of renovating when we got a few huge downpours of rain. Turns out a few small gaps of glass are enough to let in a shite load of water. Thus my attempt to plant tomato seeds early in order to be planting out my own seedlings now failed.

Failed glass house-it only takes one small hole.

So yesterdays solution was to bite the bullet and accept some assistance from good old Flower Power. Yes, I bought some seedlings. With the plan to plant some seeds and hope they germinate in time to make the most of the spring and summer weather...we shall see when I get to that. I brought three different cherry tomato varieties since I've long given up trying to grown full size tomatoes. The bugs always get to them before they are ripe enough, and the cherry varieties are so much tastier anyway.

Sugar snap, Cherry Fountain and Tiny Tim.

The big surprise whilst I was taking stock of the veggie garden was spotting my very first brocollini. I planted a few seedlings months ago, but between the possums, bandicoots and rabbits only one survived, so to see it with something edible on it was a great surprise. But now I have to keep an eye on the white cabbage fly moth that is attacking its leaves, along with the kale and other leafy greens, there is always a job to do in the veggie garden, rewarding as it is. At this stage I'm hoping nature will sort it out, but I will reassess when I get back from my birthday long weekend retreat up Smith's Creek. Boy am I overdue for a few days of doing nothing (as much nothing as a toddler's mum can get away with), I'm really looking forward to soaking up the sun, reading, sleeping and eating, and of course having Mark on hand to share parental duties so I can enjoy a meal to myself...now lets see how much food prep I manage to do today before we depart.

Such a pleasant surprise.