The vegetable garden

My life seems to be nicely balanced at the moment. I have days at home when I cook, garden, write, sew, knit and relax and just when I feel the need to talk to outsiders again, Monday comes around and I have a few days at work. Then, I satisfy the need to connect with others, I contribute to my community, I feel useful and that the time time spent away from my home life has been meaningful and valuable. And just as my cup starts to overflow and I need a break from that ...

I come home to this ...

Contentment: Happiness with one's situation in life.

I am happy here. I live with a happy and generous husband. I feel that everyday is its own golden capsule full of meaningful work that gives me a life worth living. Of course, not everything is perfect. I neither expect nor want perfection. But when the tomatoes develop wilt and die too early, or the caterpillars survive the winter and continue munching their way through the cabbages, I take that in my stride because, overall, things are as they should be and I feel I am doing my best.

I took my camera into the garden yesterday afternoon, because I know my blog friends like to see our little vegetable garden. Below are the only tomatoes to survive the wilt. My precious pink Brandywines yielded about 10 kilos of delicious, juicy tomatoes, then turned their toes up and died of wilt. These smaller Tommy Toe tomatoes seem to be immune to the disease and hopefully will keep us in tomatoes until we get some larger ones fruiting again.

Further over, spaces are getting bigger as we harvest vegetables for our table every day. Some vegetables are eaten raw, some are cooked and some are blanched and frozen for later in the year. Today some of these cauliflowers will be picked to make mustard pickles. When the days start to warm up, we'll be eating those pickles on a good sharp local cheese and home baked rye bread.

There is still a forest of kale there, even though Hanno has just finished his five day pot of pork and kale. I haven't frozen kale before but there is so much growing now I think I'll look into that. Does anyone here freeze kale? If so, is it just the normal blanching routine before sealing?

As I wandered around our little garden, I was accompanied by Rosetta, our almost human golden spangled Hamburg chicken. She doesn't damage the garden at all, she is just pleased for the human company and will follow Hanno or I around the yard, clucking gently and hoping to be picked up.

Another item of work today will be to pick the bulk of this chard and freeze it. We eat a lot of chard (silverbeet) , below you can see rhubarb chard and green chard, further over, we have the old fashioned swiss chard. We call that silverbeet in Australia.

Right next to the chook run we have snowpeas growing along with silverbeet, lazy housewife beans, cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuce, celery, welsh onions and herbs. That is my favourite part of the garden and I often stand there talking to the chooks.

I was surprised to find peaches already growing on our tree yesterday, and it's only mid winter. The peach blossoms are filling the evening air with a sweet perfume and when I wander around the garden then, I swear it fills my heart and soul to its limits.

I always plant flowers in the vegetable garden. It adds to the overall beauty and encourages bees to pollinate the fruiting plants. The flowers above are little daisies that are growing next to the bok choi.

This is more than a garden. It it a place to connect with the natural world, to reflect and renew my spirit, and being able to eat what we grow there is simply the icing on the cake. I can't imagine a frugal life without a garden. It gives us tasty organic food for the price of seeds and the time we take to cultivate it. If you have the space for it, I encourage you to grow a garden, it will give you vegetables and it will also grow your spirit.

I hope you had a good week and are looking forward to a restful weekend. Thank you for visiting me here, I appreciate the time you take to read what I write and I love reading your comments. Welcome to the new readers who arrived this week. Please take the time to say hello.