Chilli Cream Cheese Midnight Delight

The weather has been lovely the last few days, cold nights and sunny days, so we've been busy outside.  Steve is still playing in the orchard, getting the last couple of trees in the ground, then bringing the turf he's dug out up to the house where I am planting it in front of the verandah.  Finally the beginnings of goodbye to all the white sand that blows around.

I've been pulling out buckets and buckets of weeds from the vegie beds.  Cow poo is wonderful to grow stuff in but by crikey does it also produce masses of clover and grass.  Not to worry, at the moment the weeds are small and pull up easily in the damp soil, and the clover puts nitrogen into the soil so there are always positives! :-)

I'm picking loads of greens at the moment.  I let my lettuce go to seed last season, so I could save the seed, and some of it has blown around the place, so I go on lettuce hunts, they have sprung up in all sorts of nooks and crannies.  Love freshly picked lettuce!  Pak Choi, Joy Sum and Tat Soi are the asian greens I put in, and all have grown well.  I don't use a huge amount, just for stir fries, but I share the asian greens with my hens, who devour them with gusto.  My rocket plants grew like the wind, I love baby rocket leaves in salad, but now the plants are going to seed so I shall save some seed then the chooks can tuck into the old plants.  I've spotted the first few baby turnips big enough to pull up for a meal, excellent. 

The best thing, our favourite thing, is the start of the broccolini harvest. In the bowl is the central head, the first thing harvested off each plant.  I chopped these up and froze them.  Then from now on the plants send up tall, skinny side shoots, absolutely delicious tender stems and a small florette head.  And it goes on for a couple of months I reckon.  Good value.

Meanwhile, inside the house we have Neo Da Destructo.  I think I mentioned last blog post about his paper fetish, here is evidence of his time amusing himself, the tail of the villain himself seen left of centre.  He is also fascinated with toilets.  Weirdo.

 A glass of wine at the end of the day, rugged up outside, enjoying yet another incredible sunset.  We only enjoyed it outside for about five minutes though, then we got wimpy and dashed back inside in the warm!  

Late in the night I learned a wee lesson.  I kept hearing noises outside, and finally braved the cold to get up with a torch to investigate through the window.  I learned it is not a good idea to leave a garbage bag of kitchen rubbish just outside the front door, ready to go over to the shed.  Stumpy the Southern Brown Bandicoot (so named for his almost absent tail) had delightedly ripped the bag open, hauled out a stash of interesting bits and pieces, and was found with his head inside an empty chilli cream cheese wrapper, licking out the remainder with relish!  Rubbish bag brought inside, Stumpy's fun ruined, Dy back to bed, lesson learned :-)