It was a beautiful day today, and I didn’t care what needed to be done inside – I was going to be out in it.
My poor garden is in an appalling state! I really haven’t been keeping up – just accepting the food it gives us without maintaining it lately!
It was pretty refreshing to get in there and make a good start on prettying it up again!
One of the raised garden beds was full of self seeded broccolini and mini cabbage, a few cos lettuce that went to seed, some rogue potatoes that I never even planted there and a single capsicum that hasn’t fruited but looks quite at home.
Time to get a bit ruthless and remove it all!
Found plenty of fat juicy worms! The chickens suck them back like spaghetti – but only if they are lucky enough to find them by themselves. I prefer worms in the garden working for me!
I hate twitch. Long ropey grass. I can never get it all – sometimes tempts me to move over to the dark side of chemical poisons. Resisting so far!
I tried to choose the best of the moth eaten brassicas to replant under the ‘vegie net’ It took a while to carefully inspect every leaf for grubs and eggs and me flapping my arms about and yelling at any cabbage moth that came near. They look a little forlorn after their relocation, but hoping they will bounce back in a few days.
My best friend gave me these wonderful nets. She grew some beautiful non-grubby cauliflower over summer using these! I really should have put mine up again sooner.
And yes I know I have replanted in the same spot, but I like living on the edge – we shall see what happens!
Moving right along to this mess –
It took a bit of time to pull up and remove a good portion of the unwanted plants and weeds in here – I didn’t quite get around to digging it over but there was a vast improvement by the end of the day.
A small bit of excitement at one point as I disturbed a beautiful Redback Spider. These are famed for making life uncomfortable in the old days when you would find them under the toilet seat in the outside dunny!
So I risked life and limb to put her in a margarine container and moved her to a more ‘photographable’ area so I could show you all 🙂 (Most of you are probably saying, please don’t bother next time!)
It was hard to get a decent shot of her as after her margarine experience she was a bit skitty, and wouldn’t stop the race for freedom.
There is an antivenom, but a bite will make you reasonably unwell. (and no – I don’t garden with gloves!)
OK – I did don the leather gloves for this baby –
They are the nastiest thistle around. And even with the gloves on I got stabbed right through a couple of times!!! Much more troublesome than spiders in my opinion. (Serves me right for letting the garden go so long!)
One of the nice things about working in the garden is being able to forage for lunch. I ate tomatoes and raw beans. I could have really gone wild and had a carrot, but maybe tomorrow 🙂
I gathered a few fresh eggs then came inside to wash off the dirt and get dinner on the go.
I had thawed out some mince but hadn’t made any grand decisions about what to do with it. I have saved some to make hamburgers tomorrow, but tonight I made one of my favourite Japanese side dishes, Koroke.
Mash some potatoes and fry up some mince (I like to add some curry powder to the mince.) (And don’t add milk or cream to the mash – maybe a bit of butter – if its too soft they will fall apart)
Put some some bread in the Gee-Whizzer and make some breadcrumbs, and crack a couple of eggs –
Mix your mashed potato and mince and form into patties. Dip in the beaten egg and roll in the breadcrumbs
Shallow fry in a pan of oil and you are done.
I usually have teriyaki chicken to go alongside this, but I wasn’t going to bother driving into town for it. (We top with the Japanese Kewpie Mayonnaise and Tonkatsu sauce)
Such was my day! I hope yours was great too!
Cheers
PS Cari asked what a Granny Bonnet was, so I hunted up some photos –
Granny’s bonnet is a good name for it. A name that I have not heard, but I do have that in my garden too. I only knew it by “Columbine”. It was here when I moved in, two colors, one is a very bluish purple and one is a very reddish purple. I did try to save seeds last fall. I will have to post about how that turned out. Thank you for showing me.
Its good to learn the proper names – I am not good at knowing a lot of the flower names – sometimes they just go by local or old fashioned names! I get white ones as well. They self seed quite well too! When collecting you have to pay attention to get them before all the seeds fall out! 🙂 Hope yours do the right thing and sprout for you!