Its been a while, but I'm back now. As you may have heard we had a family tragedy and lost our beautiful niece on the 7th December, RIP little angel. The sudden death of such a beautiful and innocent life has had a profound effect on how I have spent the last month or so and the way in which I view life and family. As grateful as I am for everything I have, I am now seeing each new day I have with my own little family as even more amazing and fortunate than ever before. Each time I look into my babies faces I see the fragility of life and how they need me equally as much as I need them. Everything I do is in someway related to them. They are the reason to my life, the why that I am here. As if I didn't have enough of a reason before to pursue our simple way of life, I see the importance ten fold now. Also after being away for a week or so and not doing and being us to the full, but grateful and appreciative for all that was offered, I was so happy to come back to our home to just be us!
While we were away the garden went nuts and as its been a while since anyone would have seen my little piece of Eden, so I'll make sure I get some nice piccies up for you soon. I spent most of the day yesterday trying to figure out what to do with all the goodies that had been produced and ended up making bread and butter cucumber pickles using 6kg of cucumbers! And still having more left over to share with friends and family. I stewed up the tomatoes for bolognaise sauce and now think perhaps its not the best use for cherry tomatoes as the sauce is full of seeds! The rest of the veges was stir fried for dinner tonight. Nothing goes to waste. I recently purchased a whole heap of new seeds and they have been waiting patiently for me to find the time to give them a home. Luckily hubby is on holidays for the next 3 weeks so that gives me plenty of time to attend to this.
I have also picked my beautiful big zucchini, lebanese cucumber and german pickling cucumber that I have grown especially to save the seeds. I have so many seeds now for next season and plenty to share with friends who appreciate this kind of garden life and love. I plan to do a specific page for each vegetable, herb and fruit that I manage to save the seeds from. Now I am no expert and I am also a first timer, so feel free to let me know otherwise if my information is wrong. That way I am learning too. I am a sucker for information and learning and am always most welcome of any advice you would like to share too.
As you know, we live across the road from the beach and pig face grows wild. Recently the kids and myself headed over with our buckets and together foraged and gathered 4kg of the fruit of which after peeling away the skin I was left with 1kg of pulp that I used to make jam. It has a unique flavour (the fruit tastes like a salty strawberry/kiwifruit thingy)but still plenty yummy enough that the kidlets eat it too. I will post up the recipes for this jam and my pickles soon, but for now I am going to go back and snuggle up with hubby and watch a movie (while he falls asleep 10 minutes into it!) and drink my delicious Russian Earl Grey tea that mum gave me in my Chrissy hamper. xx I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and see you all in the New Year!
