What happens when you go on holidays and neglect your vegetable garden?

Just before going on holidays I must confess that I get just as upset about abandoning our vegetable garden, dogs and chickens as I get excited about our upcoming adventure. This is seriously apparent in the busy lead up to spring. Sure my vegetable garden is all mulched and can survive a week without being watered, but it certainly won't thrive through spring and summer after a week of neglect. Despite the false hope and welcoming surprise it gave me when we arrived home.

We all went to Audi Hamilton Island Race Week with Mark, since Lara and Olivia would go in to meltdown if they didn't see their Daddy for ten days. We also scored a very budget friendly holiday by staying in the crew house....and I got to know some great people. 

Unfortunately our impeding holiday meant that I held off from planting vegetable seeds, and the vegetable garden got neglected for a whole week-actually longer than a week since there was the preparation in the lead up to holidaying and flying with two small children, and then the days spent recovering after flying home with two children under the age of three all.by.myself.....I apologies to everyone that was on that flight with me, my children aren't always that badly behaved. They are often that loud though.

The best part of coming home after holidays was being out in the vegetable garden with my four babies, and having enough fresh broccolini for us all to enjoy a good old raw snack out in the sunshine. It was also fun for Lara and Olivia to inspect the brussel sprout 'balls' growing on our plants that thrived with all the rain Sydney got whilst we were away, and to munch away on some fresh snow peas. Thanks to the vegetable garden, afternoon tea for our first day home was easy and fun. You have to love it when nature works in your favour. That said, I need to put in a lot of ground work in the vegetable garden this weekend if we are going to be eating from it during spring and summer. A serious game of catch up is required.

Since I'm feeling guilty about the current state of the vegetable garden I'm going to leave this photo of Lara and I having quality mummy daughter time here, because this one day with my family was worth having an under-productive vegetable garden at the moment, and I need to remember that.