Friday, January 20, 2012

Our Garden Produce

Well here we are nearing the end of January already!  I can't believe the school holidays have gone so fast.  In that time I feel that I really haven't done alot with the kids and that always makes me a little sad.  Out of the 6 weeks of school holidays we have 3 kids with birthdays, Christmas, New Year and two full weeks where we have Mr11 with autism which sadly for us means being confined to the house while Hubby is at work because I am unable to take him out by myself due to his behaviour when he is with me.  This time with him also means that I have to stay within viewing distance of him at all times, also due to his behaviour.  The kids decided they didn't want to play board games or do any crafty things with me in the kitchen/dine where I can keep an eye on Mr11 this time so that has meant that they have been spending alot of time on their Xbox or watching TV as it has also been too hot to spend alot of time outdoors.  Having had my whinge though, none of the kids seem to mind, they have all seemed to enjoy the indoor relaxed time and I am the only one that seems to be bothered by it (Must be a "Mum" thing lol)

Looking ahead to the weather forecast for next week, the final week of school holidays, the forecast is for high 30's all week :(, way too hot to do too much yet again.  I think a trip to the movies may be in order and maybe a night time trip to the beach, out of the heat of the day.  Maybe we can get some baking done ready for school lunchboxes....oh yes and we have to do the dreaded school supplies shopping expedition!  YUCK!!

When we went away for New Year, the weather here was around 40 degrees and our poor veggie garden suffered majorly!  We were only away for 2 days but sadly my beloved tomatoes are yet to recover.  I am picking the tomatoes off them that were growing at that time but no new ones are coming forth at all.

Also we had a bad wind gust not long before Christmas which broke a huge branch (The main branch) off of our nectarine tree.  My Hubby hasn't yet had the time to chop it up and I am so glad that he hasn't.  We have been able to get a few kilos of nectarines off the tree.  I couldn't believe it when the nectarines which at the time of the tree getting destroyed, were lucky to be ping pong ball size, actually grew into normal sized nectarines.  They taste beautiful too!!  Sadly for the tree, it looks like the whole thing will now have to be removed as what is left just isn't worth having.

Here is a sample of our produce......



The nectarines you see are probably just 1/4 of what I ended up picking, with probably about another dozen or so still left on the tree.  Our strawberry supply has been pretty constant this year, even if it generally is only 3-4 a day.   The tomatoes aren't too bad, although not as nice as they should have been.  The two large melon like things on either side are our mystery items.  Believe it or not they grew from a Queensland Blue pumpkin plant.  I have others growing which look like they are supposed to but these two grew like this and the flesh inside was very pale yellow and the only way I even knew it was pumpkin was because of a vague pumpkin smell lol.  I cooked it up for the dogs and even they didn't like it.  I don't have a clue what happened but somehow we grew a couple of freaky Queensland Blues lol.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How lovely to salvage some of the produce from the garden after this crazy weather.The mystery items might be grammas a cross pumkin/squash thing??

Niki Jones said...

Hey lovely girl, I hear you on the the school holidays and the heat, we are having high 30's all next week too. Like 39 for 3 days straight & I can assure you, we will be indoors until 6pm every night, then we will break out into the night-ha. Love the veggies, we are harvesting simalar. Funny about the melons, I can vaguely remember the same happening here once too. Niki
Ps its all about balance when it comes to the computer games isn't it, I am ok with them on it throught the boiling heat, but I make a mental note to put it away when the weather gets cooler & study needs to be done, I try not to beat myself up too much about the vast amounts they are playing this holidays....sometimes I feel guilty to tho, oh well.

Logan Chamberlain said...

Time flies so fast when you have plenty of things to do. In our house, we try to manage our tasks by sharing responsibility. Sorry about the damage in your veggie garden. In any case, the produce looks delicious - especially the strawberries.

Jeremy Beauregard said...

Hehe, garden mystery! I’m not so much the expert on pumpkins, but it would have been fun to crack the mystery. Were you able to identify the produce? Your stock is so healthy! Too bad about the nectarines though.