Happy New Year & Emergency Gardening

Not a bad haul! 

Christmas and New Year over, visitors have left and I realised that the garden was in dire need of a quick fix before it all got totally out of hand, like it so often does here at Ripple Bay. It was so windy today that I battled my way to the hidden garden tucked behind our garage and pulled out weeds and things and trimmed and tied back tomatoes at a rate of knots. Felt very virtuous when I also found a whole hidden cache of yellow cherry tomatoes from a plant that was supposed to be in a trailing pot but which I had stuck straight in the ground last year in a fit of optimism.

Big bucket of weeds and things

makeshift driftwood bench

garden after the quick fix

My New Years Resolution? Get in the garden and keep on top of things? Nah, only joking. My real resolution is "DO MORE STUFF"! Thanks Kate (one of our groovy visitors) for the inspiration.

Happy 2014, Emma x

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Preserving and Saving

Autumn and the smell of the air has changed. On the sea it has become more metallic and on the land it has a colder sharper tone in the evening so that the warm scented days and the stunning sunsets are really appreciated.

At sea we have been catching kawhai and smoking it with our neighbour's fish in our home made smoker, made (or should I say hand crafted with love!) from our old stove and a gas burner. The wafting smell of the manuka smoking is very autumnal and bonfire like.

In the garden I have been removing all the tomato plants and in the kitchen preserving the last tomatoes. I thought I would have a go at freezing them, I know this is not the usual thing to do, but somehow I just didn't feel like fiddling with all the canning stuff. I wanted to get on with it and get it done.

Funny how we are packing and preserving a bit like squirreling away nuts for the season ahead!
Blue

Which came first the Tomato or the Egg?

Every year I am always surprised and caught out by which vegetable plants decide to take off and which dwindle off and fall by the way side with barely a small offering. This year the star of the show have been the tomatoes which have been amazing, particularly a variety called Cherokee which are huge, almost black and heavy and warm from the sun.

I think they must like all the seaweed and fish skeletons I have been cramming into the soil. Are you a neighbour like me? I rush round to the boats I see coming in with a catch and requisition the fish remains after they have been gutted, and then I plant them in my garden. And....it really works!

Happy weekending,
Blue x