My vegetable garden is coming along well

The first radishes are being picked and they are really delicious. These are French Breakfast radishes which are mild and juicy, not hot like other radishes can be. I like to eat them with a bit of butter and a sprinkle of salt. Yummy!

The Flanders poppies are taking over, much to my delight. We are planting vegetables around them under Otto's close supervision. 

In some places you could easily think that this is a flower bed with a few vegetables dotted around lol.

 

The courgettes are flowering too and there are a few baby courgettes, but for some reason they are rotting. I don't know what is going wrong. Maybe the weather has been too wet for them, or the flowers haven't been pollinated well enough? I will just have to wait it out and keep my fingers crossed. The plants themselves are looking really healthy.

The tomatoes are growing well. Dad started them off from seed and kept them under cloches until they were big enough to plant outside. Since taking this photo the tomatoes now have flowers on.                                                                                                                                    

I like the white daisy-like feverfew flowers growing beside the veggie garden fence. They are attracting plenty of beneficial insects to the garden.

The potatoes are now ready for harvesting. Their leaves are turning brown now. At first I thought there was something wrong with them, but dad dug a few up and we have lovely baby new potatoes 😊 Now we need to decide what to plant after the potatoes have been dug up.

The leeks are being harvested a few at a time and I am making leek and potato soup, chicken leek and ham pie and leek and bacon quiche with them. I suppose I could use the leeks in other recipes instead of onions...hmm that is an idea. 

Do you have any other ideas on recipes that use leeks?

The cavalo nero kale is flowering nicely. I am keeping them for seed to grow later as I love kale chips made with olive oil, garlic and salt roasted in the oven.

Dad turned over the compost heap and used some of the mature compost on the veggie patch to return nutrients back to the soil. 

The nasturtiums grew here, by themselves, not far from the vegetable garden. It is a good place for them because they attract pests away from the vegetables and also bring beneficial insects to the garden.

It is now evening and the heat of the day is passing. It has been very humid today. Otto is lying near the open window loving it. 

This morning Otto's friend Ginger brought a live mouse and presented it to Otto by dropping it at his feet. Luckily this happened outside. I have never heard of a cat giving food/playthings to other cats that they aren't related to lol.

Now it is time to water the veggie garden, it's getting dry and some of the seedlings aren't big enough to survive untended with this heat.

See you again soon. Have a great week.

Hugs, Rose x

An evening walk with Otto and his friend

 

It is still spring and yet it feels like summer has arrived here. The temperature was 27 C yesterday and it is the same today. There is no humidity and not a cloud in the blue sky. We have all the windows open to let the gentle breeze in to cool the house down.

By evening-time yesterday the temperature was very pleasant, so I decided to go out for a walk around the garden with Otto. We were soon joined by Otto's friend, who we think is a neighbour's cat, or maybe a stray.

We call him Ginger or Gin-Gin, but he is very shy and won't come any closer than 5 metres to us. 

I managed to get a long-distance photo of him which I enlarged. It is rather out of focus, but here he is. He is rather a cute cat with a sad face.

The cinerarias and nasturtiums are in full flower now and I love the contrast in colour between the purple and the orange.

The grape vine is creeping over the feijoa bushes again. We let it grow wild and it produces many kilos of red grapes each year. Plenty for the birds and for us. 

We cook the grapes to make juice which we use to make kissel, a Russian dessert, which is quite delicious. Which reminds me that we still have 4.5 L of grape juice in the freezer to use up from last year.

I discovered a patch of comfrey that has planted itself under the grapes. Comfrey is great to use as a fertiliser as it is very high in nitrogen. But I don't fancy the putrid smell of rotting the leaves down in water to make the fertiliser.

Here is Otto. It is very hard to take photos of Otto because he is so lively and doesn't keep still very often. But I managed to take this one of him.

I think Otto and Ginger are about the same age, still quite young. They play together, pouncing on each other and making trilling, purry meows. Then they run up trees together. It is lovely to watch Otto with a companion since we lost Abby.

While I was walking I saw quite a lot of wildlife in the garden. Rabbits, Canada geese, quail, pheasants, rosellas and of course the pukekoes. I wasn't fast enough to get photos of them though. 

It is lovely to be so close to the wildlife. Very enjoyable and relaxing.

Here is a view over the canna leaves towards the orchard where the trees are now green. 

I need to pull out the kikuyu grass which is starting to swamp the cannas. It is a crazy grass that smothers everything in its path. (I always find things that need to be done in my photos!).

The mock orange (philadelphus) is flowering beautifully this year, and the scent it gives off is glorious. I wish the flowers would last longer so that I could pick them to bring into the house.

I shall pick some of our pink roses instead 😊

I shall leave you with another blurry long-distance photo of Otto and Ginger kissing. They do really like each other. 

Mum has just told me that Ginger came into the house and walked past her in the sitting room and then out through the window. He was very scared when he saw mum, but he is being quite brave coming into the house!

I hope that you have a great rest of the week. I will see you again soon.

Hugs, Rose x