Weekend work

I am worried about Rosie, our 12 year old Airedale Terrier. She's lost a bit of weight over the last week or so and she's been vomiting. She's still eating her evening meal but won't touch the biscuits in the morning. I've been giving her a little bit of porridge during the day, which she loves. Hanno will take her to the vet today. :- |

For the past few months, we've been talking about putting up a screen near our bedroom to shade the wall from the summer western sun. Our plan is to grow luffas all along the screen during summer and smaller crops, that would allow the sun through, in winter. Well, last week Hanno built that screen. You can see him in action, with his sidekick, Rosetta, above. (Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.)

We enriched the soil, which was mainly the natural clay we are on here, with compost, worm castings and some of the rich soil from the chicken coop. It was watered in with a weak solution of seaweed tea. Our first crop is lettuce and tomatoes - two Tropics and two beefsteaks. We've covered it all with straw to keep the soil at an even temperature and to conserve the water used on the garden. When these tomatoes have cropped, they'll be pulled out and the luffas planted. I will be selling those organic luffas with my homemade soap in a few months time.

Tomatoes are an important crop to us and generally I like to plant pink Brandywines. If you've never seen a Brandywine, above is a photo of one we ate on the weekend. I think they're the perfect tomato - juicy without being watery, more sweet than tart, few seeds and they have the most divine flavour.

What we eat depends on what is growing in the backyard. On Saturday I made some coleslaw and we had that with a garden salad with snow peas, and potatoes with butter and parsley.

I had just started taking off the outer leaves of the cabbage and out popped this little fellow! He's a sedge frog - a tiny leaf dwelling green frog which, when fully grown, will be about two inches long. He's now living in our green house.

We pulled out all the brandywines and cucumbers last week, enriched the soil again and planted up some leeks and more tomatoes. If you're new to vegetable gardening, I can't encourage you enough to enrich your soil. Compost, worms and all sorts of organic matter in your soil will help you grow the best vegetables possible. It is well worth the time it takes to do it.

And here is yesterday's garden, taken from behind the lazy housewife beans. We're eating some of these green beans raw and the rest I'm allowing to dry on the vine. I'll harvest a couple of jars of the finest dried white beans for my stockpile cupboard from them. They'll be a nutritious addition to soups and casseroles later in the year. I love those dual purpose vegetables.

Above you can see a pineapple growing among the kale. I am hoping it will produce pineapples this summer.

And in this last photo, meet some of my peeps. Here are Pippa and Mrs Rudd - two silver sussex, Margaret, my big light sussex, Martha, the buff Orphington at the top, and Bernadette, the Barnevelder at the bottom. Bernadette always looks angry but she's quite timid and sweet.

Gardening and knitting took up the best part of my weekend. My daughter-in-law, Cathy, found some Lion organic pure cotton for me last week so I experimented with that, knitting and unpicking it a few times until, at last, I was happy with the result.

Every so often my family and friends tell me they've read something on my blog, but none of them ever comments. So, in the hope of flushing them out, I'd like to say hello to Trisha, Kathleen (my sisters), and friends Susan, Bernadette, Wendy and Anna. :- )

Just one last word to my Australian friends. If this truck drivers' strike goes ahead, I encourage you to top up your stockpiles. Hanno and I are not due to shop for a while yet, but if the truck strike is on, it will affect grocery deliveries very quickly, so Hanno will stock up on a few items today. If you need to stock up, shop today or tomorrow if you can.