Home grown greens

Supermarket greens are rubbish. They are expensive and often wilted. They've been picked for a long time before they get to the shelves of New World Wetville. Once there, they get tossed round some more to intensify the unnecessary bruising.

On the broccoli front, we have to take our chances. Broccoli turns over quite fast in supermarkets and I cannot grow it successfully all year round.

But in winter, when greens feel so particularly essential to conbat winter colds and lurgies, and the prices in the shop climb steadily and the issues of unfreshness continue, home grown veges are totally worth the relatively small effort.

Due to spending most of summer sewing instead of gardening, I've got very few greens ready in my garden right now, just lettuce and some herbs (basil and parsley are the most useful green herbs which I'm using). But I have got kale plants in ready for winter. The only work I need to do for them is to scrape off caterpillar eggs and to squash caterpillars until it gets cold enough to stop the white butterflies from visiting.

This morning I pruned and weeded my herb garden and made room to sow viola Miss Helen Mount (heartsease), rocket, red mesclun and miners lettuce. The self seeded miners lettuce from last year is already poking through, ready for the cooler weather. This afternoon I dug, weeded and fertilised part of the overgrown garden by the lean-to and then planted celery and spinach. Next time I have a magical window of gardening opportunity, I have silverbeet plants and seeds to plant/sow and daffodil bulbs to plant.

Yesterday we went to Art in the Park, a fabulous visual arts showcase. Fionn performed in the kapahaka group at the beginning of the day while Brighid clung to us, keen to join the group one day and yet currently too shy to watch without a cuddle. The art was very good and as I had some birthday money from Mum and Dad, I looked at the cheaper pieces with a new eye. But I realised that until we paint the rooms the colours we want and ditch the muddy green wallpaper forever, there isn't much point choosing special pictures. So I bought a necklace and saved the rest of the money for more jewellery purchasing at another time.

Today was Childrens Day, which for us translated to the children cleaning up their room under bribery duress and then the four of us going swimming and hydrosliding for free with almost every single breathing child and his/her parents in the entirety of Wetville and its much wider surrounds. Fun though.

Another sign of the changing season: I'm looking at alternative/complementary health websites. I even dragged the coconut oil out of the nether regions of the spice cupboard.

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