It's been a busy week so far. We're still painting, although not every day, and we probably have another couple of days of work with it. I've taken the opportunity to go through all my old magazines - some of my British Country Living mags are 20 years old! I've thrown out all of them and just kept a few pages of recipes and gardening information. We looked after Jamie for a few days while he's on school holidays and planted up garlic and sweet potatoes bought at Green Harvest and the seedings we bought at the market last weekend. Even after a week, the garden is looking good.
For all the Gracie fans, here is a photo I took a day ago as she was enjoying a rest in the afternoon sun on her homemade tartan blanket.
In the kitchen, I did my menu plan and wrote up a shopping list, baked a five minute rye loaf, made yoghurt and yoghurt cheese, chopped lots of vegies for salads, made pumpkin soup, fried chicken and roasted some pork belly. I've been sewing, mending and knitting and today, it's grocery shopping. A pretty normal week and I'm sure many of you have done something similar. What's on your list for today?
The beginnings of a salad. The bottom layer was feathery fine shredded cabbage and the mustard seeds you can see were in pickling liquid in our bread and butter cucumbers. I used some of the liquid in the salad, added more herbs and mixed it all together. It lasted us three days and got better every day.
We planted about 70 garlic cloves - Glen Large, and two purple flesh sweet potato called Hawaiian Sunshine.
The Japanese anemones flowered to remind me that gardens are not only for vegetables and herbs. I've had these plants for 20 years and they don't flower every year. I take it as a good omen that I have this display now.
There is still work to do but the garden is starting to look good. We've already harvested bok choy and every day I'm adding more cayenne chillies to the freezer for a batch of chilli jam I have planned.
Here are the older girls lining up for day release. Patrick always leads them out. The young girls are in the second bedroom and only make an appearance when the old girls are out on the grass.
We finished our Green Harvest shopping and Hanno took Gracie on a walk up the hill to the coffee shop next door. We had a cup of tea there, a welcomed break in a busy morning, and then drove back down the mountain to home.
All our days are ordinary days now but they are the kind of days you dream about when you do what you choose and take your time. We're fortunate to be able to drive up to a place such as Green Harvest and know we're coming home with exactly the plants we want to grow. We don't stop for coffee much but when we both feel like it we do. Our days aren't governed by watches, we can stretch or condense time as we wish. Our main aim each day is to live true to our values, to keep doing what we do and to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. I can tick that as done this week.
