...my garden salad...

...disproportionately proud of my gardening efforts I suppose... but first attempt at growing tomatoes... they started to ripen just before we left the country (typical...)...

...so had to squeeze in a (mostly) home-grown salad before we left...

...this dinner is one of my favourite concoctions as pretty much everything can be done in parts/stages well before they're needed to go on the plate - so fits around baby sleeping, dishes, washing, school pickups, etc, etc... Alison Holst's Paprika Baked Chicken coating (which I make in bulk and which some of my family say is better than KFC - high praise from Pacific Islanders?!?!), self-crusting quiche (also Alison Holst's), and our salad veges/ basil plus a NZ avocado bought for exorbitant price in Aussie supermarket...

...oregano...

...the oregano in our garden has gone crazy... so radical pruning today but couldn't bear to just throw it all on the compost heap.... so this was a mildly fragant table centrepiece today... maybe tomorrow I'll hang some to dry...

...bacon and egg pie...

...bit of a recurring lunch / dinner / snack at our place at the moment... yum! With lettuce from our garden... hopefully soon have cherry tomatoes from garden too...

... new vege patch...

...gardening always seemed to me like such a grown-up thing to do... then again so did crochet (see below - must be solidly "in my 30's" :P)... I've dabbled mostly with potted stuff (or mini gardens in old wheelbarrows/etc) for a few years now... decided I wanted an actual patch for my birthday this year... silverbeet wasn't growing in pots and usually grows like a weed doesn't it?!?!... anyway I'm still sampling/ trying things in a small way... so we have a few silverbeet/ lettuce/ celery in the ground and under shadecloth... newly potted mint (burnt the last one) and the random self-seeded parsley that needed to be moved.. and cherry tomatoes in various sunny spots to see where they like it best... see how they go when I'm home more to talk to them (and possibly more importantly water and weed them)... and then hope they can survive on their own for a while in Australian sun while we desert them for NZ summer holiday...