Sunday 11 December 2011

Wild winds vs wild flowers

Abundant verdant growth of early summer, with chamomile flowers
in the foreground.
The weather remains unpredictable, with heaps of rain, heaps of sun and high humidity and heaps of wind!  4 seasons in one day!!  Anyway, the garden isn't complaining.  Everything grows at a phenomenal rate, including weeds!
Our black corn crop doing extremely well, despite high winds.

The wind and cold of yesterday had me hunkering indoors, creating Christmas gifts.  Quite good weather for it really!  I didn't feel guilty not tending my garden.   Mike, however, rucked up against the cold and did the lawns, compost turning and then as I had mentioned the wind-damaged broad beans needed to be cleared, he took it upon himself to do the big task.  Later in the day, I asked him how many beans he had harvested.  He gave me a blank stare.  "Where are the beans?", I repeated.  He shrugged and told me that everything was in the compost bin.  And that I had not mentioned harvesting the beans before dealing to the plants!!  Men definitely are from Mars!!  Like the time I asked him to check if the laundry was dry.  Some time later, I noticed the laundry still hanging on the line.  "Is the laundry still wet?", I asked.  No, came the reply.  "Well, then why is it still hanging out there?" - "you never asked me to bring it in, only to check if it was dry, which I did", he replied!  (He has since gone and recovered a 4L bucket of broad beans from the compost bin!)
The wildflowers proliferate under the washing line.  Makes
 hanging up a pleasure!
Anyway, the chooks are now on bed 8, cleaning up after the broad bean massacre.  Broad beans, like most leguminous plants, fix nitrogen back into the soil, which green leafy plants take out, hence rotation of crops becomes essential, if you want to have healthy harvestings!  Talking of chooks, Liz and Spence have been decidedly lazy over the last month or so.  I am now going to lock them out of their sleeping quarters during the day.  They have been huddling up in their hidey-space almost all day, every day.  So in order to make them earn their living, I will try to exclude them from nesting in the day.  


Wildflowers

The giant sunflowers lining the pathway to the
washing line.  A shady avenue.

A single poppy.

The dizzying beauty of colours reaching up towards the laundry!
I have been having some life lesson tutoring with my teenage/adult son on contributing to the life and times of the family.  These things have to be done weekly as they have short attention spans and selective amnesia.  I coerced him into the garden, with the promise of the thrill of harvesting a mother of a cauliflower.  He stood up and beamed at the sheer pleasure of holding up something that he personally had harvested.  That night, we had Aloo Gobi (Aloo = potatoes and Gobi = cauliflower).  A delicious curry which my Indian friend taught me how to make:
Aloo Gobi Recipe:
Place 1 - 2 Tbspn ghee (clarified butter) in a pot and fry a teaspoon of each of the following: black mustard seeds, tumeric, cumin and coriander, and 1/2 tspn crushed chilli and 2 tspns of garam masala powder.  Add 1 - 2 chopped onions and fry till soft.  Add 4 - 5 fresh tomatoes, chopped, or a half can of tomatoes and fry a further 10 mins, adding 2 tspns salt.
Then place your bite-sized, chopped potatoes and cauliflower florets into a oven roasting pan, with 2 Tbspn ghee.  Stir in your spicey tomato mix, bake at 180deg C for 40 mins, stirring to mix and coat vegetables every 5-10 mins, or until soft.  Add more salt if required.  Serve with home-made rotis or rice.  Simply delish!  And easy-peasy to make!
A humungous cauliflower which grew seemingly overnight!

The proud look of a young hunter with his first vegetarian cull.
So I thought I would add some recipes that I put together yesterday, for gifts.  They are fun to make, economical and non-toxic.  
GreeNZ Herb Salt:
Place 3 cups Good Salt (not supermarket salt which is pure sodium chloride and not worth it's salt!)
into a blender.  Add 3 cups of dried organic herbs of choice (I used a selection of basil, rosemary, parsley, marjoram and chives).  Blend till thoroughly mixed.  Bag and label.


GreeNZ Herb Salt
Next week I'll add some recipes for facial scrub, herbal tea blends and foot scrubs.

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