Time and lack of it

My life just seems to turn into one big whirl of busy-ness sometimes! It's nearly Christmas and I'm really not ready for it, although I am ready for the 2 weeks away that we will be having over that time! Kim and I will be having some time off in Western Australia - can't wait to catch up with Kim's family from over there, but especially our daughter.....she wants me to spend some time with her in the kitchen as she wants to get her mojo back.

Has anyone been inspired by my Lucy's Kitchen Facebook page. I've been enjoying posting about our food, and if even one person gets some inspiration to cook something, whether it be something I've done, or just been motivated to cook something from scratch or plant something in a garden, then I've achieved what I set out to do. As I've said before, it's not hard to cook good food, it's all about prioritising time and buying good ingredients.

This afternoon I decided that I'd better make some time to spend in the garden and tidy it up or else I won't have a garden! The green panic grass was starting to take over and shade too much. A little bit of shade in this heat is good, but not the amount I've been getting!

We've been eating kale and other greens, the odd tomato and lots of herbs. My eggplant is not so good - it's always too bitter, even after salting it. My lettuce are really struggling in this heat, so yesterday I bought the first lettuce that I've bought in months! I'm just waiting for my Brazilian spinach, Ceylon spinach and a newly planted Egyptian spinach to get big enough to start eating. The Ceylon spinach got me through last summer as our go to lettuce for salads.

I've pulled all my garlic - I didn't weigh it, but I did get two lovely big plaits. I've planted and waiting to harvest - snake beans, zucchini, tomatoes, capsicums, rosellas. The rosellas I mainly want to make some tea, although if I get enough off my two plants to make a small batch of jam I'll be happy with that too!

This was the first one I did and about the second one was twice as big as this. This one is gone and I'm working my way through the next one.

Below are some shots of my tidier garden, however I've lost quite a few plants from last weeks heat!

This last photo shows my two surviving (out of 5) rosellas and my asparagus that I never managed to eat in time. I didn't have enough netting to go over the top, so I've just put it around some of the plants to try and stop the chooks.