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Well I did. In spite of all the other things we had to do I managed to grow a token few chillies. These are chillies number 2 and 3 from the sad little plant in the corner of the courtyard. And there are 2 others which are starting to ripen too.

Actually, that last sentence gives a misleading impression. Let’s try again. There are 2 other chillies on the plant. And they’re both starting to ripen. There. That should clear up any confusion!

It really didn’t have the best chance. It didn’t even make it to the proper size pot. But there have been another couple of flowers appear suddenly, so there’s the possibility of adding to the count yet.

When it’s a Verbascum thapsus (Great or Common Mullein), of course! We finally managed to persist in our research long enough to track down the actual plant name.

But I think they might always be lamb’s ears to us!

And despite our best efforts to date at digging them all out, there’s still a huge number appearing as single rosettes or in little clumps around the place. We keep digging them out, and they keep popping back up. I guess it’s just going to be an ongoing war until either the seed bank or ourselves are exhausted. We’ll see who gives in first.

But having seen what happens if you leave them to it in Central, I think we’ll keep making the effort!

Looks like the plasterers have now finished work. If they haven’t then they spent a lot of time cleaning up their (not inconsiderable) mess for nothing! So today’s excitement was seeing things that we’ll actually see once the place is finished coming into the site, ready to be installed.

Ok, so a few boxes of vanity units aren’t all that exciting, but it does seem like some progress to us! There was just something about seeing them that made me feel like we’d really turned a corner, and all the construction was now complete, and we’re onto the final stages. Finally!

Mind you, there are still a lot of skirting boards still to be cut and fitted, but seeing a lot of them in today was also another reminder that we’re into the finishing stages of making things look good, rather than holding things up.

And as an added bonus, we managed to increase our zucchini production 100% over the last few days, without doing anything! Today we harvested two, instead of the last record of one! I feel a graph coming on if you’re not careful!

We also harvested most of the rest of the beetroot as we desperately needed to find a bit of space to plant the potted celeriac plants that were starting to look a bit cramped. You can buy tinned beetroot, but I’m not sure you can get celeriac quite so easily!

On Sunday it was way, way, waaaaaaaay too hot to go out to the land (38 degrees C outside at some stage);
Yesterday it was way, way, waaaaaaay too wet to go out to the land (it rained for every daylight minute);
But today it was juuuuuuuust right for a trip to the land!

So we went.

First up, checking the drains that that guys had finished off once they’d helped us plonk our irrigation pipe in the trenches. And mighty fine drains they are too! These guys obviously take a lot of pride in their work.

Next job, using all the excess Batts we managed to grab to add a token level of insulation to the roof of the pump shed, hopefully making it just that little less likely that all the pipes will freeze. (Not that that’s likely right at the moment. Still beautiful weather at the moment.) Not that we’ve really got the right Batts for the job, but it’s better than nothing.

Pretty horrible work really, we had to keep taking breaks to get a few breaths of clean air. We really should have rescued the Batts before they started all the plastering and sanding and stuff. Duh! Looking in at some stages it looked like we were setting the shed up for some sort of weirdly themed party. Maybe an undersea theme? But in the end we got there, and the whole roof has been covered.

A quick cough or 20 later and we were ready for the next task. Adding a bit of hare and wind protection to the larger trees before they get munched any more. We’ll see if they stand up to the first gale that whips though!

Last task for the day was to harvest some goodies! A (single) zucchini, and seven beetroot. Yum, yum! All to be eaten fresh for tea tonight. Gutted the photos of the just harvested beetroot didn’t come out (too bright to see the camera screen to check them at the time. Grrrr.) but we did manage a photo of the cooked up stuff, and it was all good!

Ok, so it looks like one of the butternut plants we bought might actually be a butternut.

Or at least it was a butternut plant, but I’m a bit suspicious that the fruit looks a bit green and stripy so far. In fact, it’s starting to remind me more than just a little bit of the pumpkin that definitely isn’t butternut shaped growing in the same plot… (After seeing something at the veg stall that looks close to what we’ve got we suspect it’s a “Buttercup” pumpkin)

Hmmm.

I suspect some form of cross-pollination has possibly occurred. I guess we’ll find out once it grows and ripens a bit. You never know, we might have struck gold with a never before seen veg.

I suspect not, however.

At least the zucchinis are looking like zucchinis! (Just hope they taste like them too…)

…we spent a great deal of time digging out all of what we’re calling Lamb’s Ears from our plot!

We drove past this field just out of Clyde today and it suddenly made all the time that we’d spent pulling them out earlier seem like a very, very worthwhile use of time. Some might like to call them wild flowers, but I still think invasive pest might be a better description! They seem to have just taken over some fields around here.

(oh, and the piccies are larger if you click them, like some others have been in some earlier posts if you want a better view. I never really know which are interesting enough to include bigger versions. Let me know if you want a better view of something, and I’ll add a big ‘un for you.)

…that one’s butternut-squash are potentially not butternut-squash, but some other form of pumpkin thingee.

You can make up your own mind though.

The plants definitely had a butternut-squash label attached, so I guess either someone took great delight swapping labels around, or the plants and/or seeds somehow mistakenly got mixed up. Or there’s some really weird cross pollination happening with the radishes. But hey-ho. At least they’re growing!

That would be radishes from the ranch!

I’m not sure if it’s the pony poo, or the fact that we just leave them alone to get on with growing, but I’m sure that these ones grew a little faster than the ones in town! But they still taste just about the same (can’t taste any pony-poo influence, at least!).

The other veg seem to have taken off too. The butternut squash has doubled in length, and the beetroot has taken off too (boo! hiss!). But it seems we can’t seem to grow celery. At least from seed.

House-wise (as that’s possibly more interesting than a couple of veg to some folk), today they were putting on the Linea weatherboards. First time that we’d seen all the claddings on together, and they look pretty much what we thought they would.

They were also adding more of the fiddly bits of the Hebel. Not too many more bits to go. They better get on and do it though, as there’s apparently an inspection early next week that would give them to go ahead to (finally) get on and start the gibbing…

Radishes of course! From the raddish patch!

In fact the first thing I had to eat this year was a home-grown radish, but I was so keen to eat them that I forgot to get a photo. Doh! But I’ve had a few handfuls of them so far, and they’ve all been nice. Just hope the row out at the land hurries up so it’s ready when the patch runs out…

As you might have guessed from the lack of regular posting on house matters, there’s not a lot of action going on at the ranch at the moment. For those of you in the Northern hemisphere remember that currently we’re at the height of summer, and everyone likes to have a bit of a break to get a few barbies under their belts around this time. We’d hoped that everything could get to a stage that meant guys would work though to either get the extra cash for New Year’s eve, or to pay off the credit card from the rash choice of offering to pay for the top-shelf round on NY eve, but it wasn’t to be.

But that doesn’t stop us having to go and water the plants every now and then anyway. Today’s surprise was the butternut squash that had taken off and seem to have a few baby butternuts on them. So given nothing else has been going on you can have four photos of them! Aren’t you lucky!

Go on. Vote for your favourite! Then one or other of us can gloat that we took the best one…