Little Layla and I spent the afternoon in the backyard a couple of days ago, and it reminded me why Autumn is my favourite season.
- Warm enough to hang out in a tee shirt, but not so hot you have to hide under the apple tree for fear of sunstroke.
- Hose is made redundant and is retired to the shed till next summer.
- Vegetable garden grows like snot.
- ANNNDDDDD there are still raspberries to pick and have on top the pav. (Chooks AKA Lovely ladies are looking a little worse for wear due to the annual shedding of feathers, but still providing more than enough fresh eggy goodness!)
Also, you can't go past the simple pleasure of raking up all those leaves... even having to do it 3 times after Lil and Maggie insisted on rolling around in them after I'd got them into a nice big pile.
I grew Kumara for the first time this year. I wasn't overly confident that I would have any luck as they are notoriously tricky to grow. Also, I didn't have too much room to spare so I planted all the sprouts along one trench, when in hindsight I probably should of only put one or two sprouts per trench. With nervous excitement (of the type one can only experience when digging spuds, pulling carrots or any other root type vegetable!!!!) Lil and I slowly forked up the plants. I did a wee dance when the first one came up, and in 10 minutes we had half a bucket full. Not all huge, actually some were down right tiny, but I'm pretty chuffed with my first attempt. And seen it's turned so miserably cold, I thought I might make curried kumara soup for dinner tonight. Will put some bread dough on in a minutes so we can have garlic bread too...yummo!
The Vegetable garden is still doing it's duty and keeping us well feed. Although the lettuces I planted are taking much much much to long and in desperation I brought one from the supermarket yesterday. (The supermarket checkout operator looked pleased, I have a feeling she thinks I only serve my kids frozen peas as they are the only vegetable I ever buy!) I have quite a few cabbages coming on at once which is worrying me, I mean how much coleslaw can one family eat. If anyone has a good cabbagey recipe, please send it my way! I'm off to the library now to trawl through the recipe books there!