Weekend garden ramble

From now on, my two serves of fruit a day are cherries and berries! My first bowl of cherries from dad’s orchard:

I had a wonderfully restful weekend, which is a good thing at this time of the year. It started with Friday off work, and B over for some Christmas cooking: more wholemeal choc chip biscuits (my freshly-baked gift for her and her family), some fruity chocolate-y amazing truffles, and some mini meringues, which were a bit-nerve wracking for this first-time meringue maker – and the overly-cautious and warning-laden instructions did not help – but turned out perfectly.

I fully intended to document the morning and share it with you here, but we were having so much fun chatting, licking bowls (well, I was — B needs more practice in that area), and working out the most efficient schedule for the oven and the mixer that I completely forgot about getting out my camera. I have failed as a food blogger.

 

In the afternoon I sped off to my parents’ for the weekend (my new car sure can fly!). Actually, when I arrived, they were both out: Dad was still at the Sri Lanka vs Australia cricket match, and mum was off having a girl’s afternoon tea. My parents have a better social life than me.

 

The restfulness of the weekend came largely due to the intermittent but heavy showers, which kept us indoors more than usual. We would be all ready to go outside and say hello to the chooks, or deadhead the roses, or pick the raspberries, or darn the netting over said berries, when the rain would come whooshing down. Then of course the berries would be too wet to pick, and the chooks, having run helter-skelter for their house, would probably not come out for anything except food (hellos not sufficient).

 

Again, I fail you as a blogger because I didn’t take my camera with me. So I can only tell you about dad’s vigorous, vibrant scarlet runner beans; the black jack zucchinis with their astounding silver-speckled leaves; the juicy loganberries at various stage of ripeness (when fully ripe, they are black and taste like tropical fruit salad, but I’m happy to have them a little redder in colour and enjoy a tart explosion in the mouth). The rows and rows of onions of various persuasions (I took home a handful of pungent spring onions) and the lush rows of carrots, which pulled up out of the damp earth as perfectly-formed specimens (well, mostly - one had three legs) with a sweetness never found in a supermarket.

 

I am always happy-ish with my small suburban vegie plot until I visit dad, and see his multiple raised beds of tomatoes and corn and rhubarb and asparagus and more. A sigh of discontent and envy; then I remind myself that he is a fairly full-time gardener, cricket matches not withstanding. Anyway, it’s inspirational; I can see how much there still is to learn and achieve and grow.

 

At least when I returned home on Sunday afternoon, the rain had cleared and the sun was fairly sparkly, so I fed my modest rows of peas, beans, lettuce and kale; tended to my tomato bushes; and told my scarlet runners about their country cousins.

 

At least I could gloat a little that my pot of basil is far lusher than mum’s. I take these small victories where I can. Didn’t you know gardening is a competition sport within families?