Rainbow beets

The other night I had an absolute craving for Silverbeet.

It may have been my body telling me I needed iron and salt after playing football that day. It could have been  my mind reminiscing about my childhood.

Luckily I have these amazing rainbow coloured "beets" growing in abundance in my garden.

This one reminded me of an Oompa Loompa!

I simply cut off the stalks (even though they are so pretty!) and then roll them up into a bunch and slice them in rounds. Then into a pot they go with a bit of water and some salt to cook.

The best bit however is the water left after cooking them (something my Mum gave me as a child). In this case it was a beautiful warm maroon colour. I simply added a bit of salt and pepper and had the most wonderful nutritious drink with my dinner that more than satisfied my craving!

Rainbow beets

Ear, ear

Apologies for a lack of posts during the month of March. A combination of bad weather, busy work schedules and winter sport starting means that I have been away from the garden, the sewing machine and the house.

Summer has been and gone without warning. The weather changes from hot to mild to freezing cold. Rain, wind, sun - the garden is not sure what is happening to it.

However I managed to pick some of our home sown corn despite the wind making a mockery of the perfect rows. It looked more like a sculpture on the Wellington waterfront than the upright rows in a corn maze.

The corn itself was DELICIOUS! And really this photo does not do it justice. It was sweet and juicy and just so much more satisfying knowing that you had grown it yourself. As my partner said "it's hard to imagine this was grown from one of those tiny bits".

We will be growing corn again in summer, if summer ever arrives again.

Ear, ear

The garden in February

Tomatoes and Violets

Blackberries

The beds are full

Fragrant Basil

Red Kale Jungle

"Gold Rush" Zucchini's bathed in golden light

Skyscraper Corn

Ear that?

 Just some of the treasures from my vegetable garden.

The garden in February

Potatoes

Decided to finally dig up the last of the potatoes tonight. Wasn't expecting this many!!!

The varieties are Cliff's Kidney, Jersey Benne, Purple Passion, Desiree and some special Maori varieties: Tutaikuri and Karuparera. My favourite are the Karuparera.

Me and my 2-pronged fork did a really good job!

Most interesting potato dug up was this one:

Use your imagination!

Potatoes

My dream house

We are in the process of buying a house and I can vouch that it definately is in the "top 3" stressful things that you can do with your life.

Not only do we have to find something that we actually want to live in but we also have to both like it! Then there is the process of tenders - the house buying lottery as I have renamed it. You put in an offer against other people's offers and hope you have the winning powerball!

So what does my dream house look like? Well currently my dream house is in Carterton in the Wairarapa and unfortunately I dont want to move to Carterton. It has a huge market garden and an orchard! The house has character, a wood burner and great insulation. So how do I find something in Wellington that has enough land for me to have my garden and my orchard without moving to the Hutt or worse of all Tawa???

Look at the sunlight on this place!

Well we found this cute house in Northland and I took a photo of the back of it from across the gully in 5pm sunlight. That huge sloping section you can see is actually terraced and has an amazing vege garden and fruit trees. They actually put up photos of their pumpkins on the real estate website to help market the place - it was certainly a drawcard for me haha (note they have removed that image now - possibly because gardening isn't attracting the professional couples that usually buy in this suburb?)

I almost want to put in the tender document: 17.1: We are keen gardeners and promise to maintain the wonderful garden that you have created over the past 20 years that you have lived here. Surely that would help win us the tender??

So now we wait with fingers crossed... I have veges to plant!!

My dream house