Fruit and Vege

Spring bounty from our garden and those around us

The garden as it was, full of clover/oxalis

A clean garden!  Our garden looks just like Vaso's.  Her son came and pulled out all the weeds, got rid of the rubbish, re-pruned the roses, sprayed them, cleaned all the pots and actually....wait for it, swept the soil with a broom!!!  I can't believe a garden can be so smooth and clean.  The area around the swing was soon shaved and swept just like the rest of it,

We have already planted pumpkin plants, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers.  Several different types of zucchini, unknown until they have something to harvest.  The garden man at the farmer's market kept on pressing on us 'one more plant', a long cucumber and a short cucumber, a round pepper, a pointed pepper and a hot pepper.  His mother, sat like a huge sloth behind the portable till. leant back to make sure we had some of those big purple aubergines and the long skinny ones as well, two sorts of basil, and had him throw in a flower, some sort of marigold I think, for being such good customers.  

Thanks to daughter, Elli, all of these have been planted, here and there, even in the compost.  They have been watered and at the moment seem to be thriving.    Hmm, no tomatoes though.  Our crop last year was miserable.  The pumpkin seeds have been flown over and hand delivered from family in NZ.  Maybe this year we'll have some real pumpkins instead of watery squash.

Cross your fingers and spit three times.

The last of the lettuces were rescued from their skywards journey, blanched and frozen, all ready to be used in the easter-offal soup.

Tomorrow will be the turn of the last of the spinach and other chard like vegetable.  Likewise they will be blanched and frozen to be used in summer pies.

The grape vine is covered in green leaves and bunches of grapes have formed already.  Some of them were thinned out by Vaso's son who looks after her vineyard, and our two vines

Green tomatoes bought at the farmer's market.  I got carried away. 2 kilos is a lot of green tomatoes.  I tried fried green tomatoes today.  Didn't like them.  I suppose I''ll have to make chutney in the next few days

Vaso is harvesting the last of her oranges and mandarines.  The case underneath is full of

mandarines and it was overflowing.  Thank goodness we've managed to give away a few kilos of those.  Vaso isn't the only one who has given us citrus fruit lately.  A  friend on the car ferry  came over to chat and shoved a 10 kilo bag into the car and another 5 kilos of citrus was presented to us by K's cousin who sells them at the local market.

Marmelade?  Again?  We're still ploughing through the grapefruit marmelade made from this winter's crop.