(no subject)

This afternoon, I managed to spend some time in my garden. The large raised bed is now slightly more full due to the fine compost, cow manure, and gypsum I dug in, and the dirt has had seedlings and bulbs planted.

If I somehow manage to remember to water them regularly, there shall at some point, be:

• beetroot
• leeks
• garlic
• pretty-coloured kale

They're in the large bed that last held broad beans, which is good for they all like nitrogen, as well as each other. I must remember to put in a winter crop of peas somewhere on ANZAC Day. And I need to find something that'll cope with the semi-shade of the bed nearest the fence bed.

For persons who don't read vegetable gardening books as obsessively as I do, kale is to cabbage something like what radicchio is to lettuce. Same family, acquired taste. Even if I decide to not acquire the taste, the seedlings I got are supposed to turn out with pink or red new growth, instead of being purely greyish-bluey-dark-green. At least, I think that's what the tag was describing. The lady who served me seemed to think the pink bits were flowers, but kale only has flowers when, like lettuce, it has bolted and is no longer potentially tasty. The pink bits looked to me king of like the red bits of poinsettia. Mind you, she also thought that they weren't edible in any colour. Strange for a seedling found in the midst of other vegetable seedlings. Maybe she doesn't read the same books as I do.

One of these days I have to find me some Fat Hen or King Henry (both pre-spinach European greens). I've only seen them sold as produce in the Ventral Markets once (yay for Queen of Green), and have never seen seedlings or seeds. Tasty things, apparently easy to grow, and higher in nutritional value than spinach.

(no subject)

Some time last week, Bastard and Jolly Red-Beard were playing with my computer. To do this, they had to get to said computer. My desk feels naked, stripped of all the debris and piles of Stuff. Of course, now I have more than one place to put my mug, not just on the mousepad.

I still feel a little exposed sitting here. There isn't the comforting surrounds I've become accustomed to.

Anyway, today I destroyed the mint patch on the grounds that it had been at least three months since I last did that, and if it was going to rain again, I'd like there to be non-mint space left by the end of winter. An hour later, there is a patch of bare earth and hacked mint, and my nails are irretrievably dirt encrusted and broken.

Then Mum turned up. Instead of going straight to the Parental Abode to do stuff with her tax, we grabbed some items from my shed, and proceeded to a rental property she's tired of owning to do the last fussy things before the open inspection this afternoon. So now I'm grotty, exhausted, sore, and craving water like nobody's business. We then went to the Parental Abode, where I got picked up by Bastard, having deprived the Parental Units of tomatoes, sapote, mandarines, and lemons from their garden. Bastard and I went home, Bastard having promised to try making something yummy with the sapote if I helped.

While Bastard was having his afternoon nap, I stewed them with sherry, quince honey, and saffron. It's quite nice with yoghurt. Dinner also went on during this time - those tomatoes got quartered and thrown in a casserole dish with other veges and osso bucco from the freezer (defrosted). Tasty and gets to be left alone for a couple of hours.