Coffeehouse.co.nz

A bit of a hiatus has been happening (or is it occurring?) on the lawn project, as you might have noticed. It’s been so windy and rainy lately (interspersed with fantastic days) that Tony the lawn man has got a bit behind. So our lovely patch of dirt has recently turned in to a luscious green field. Of weeds.

But Monday morning Tony arrived to give it all a bit of a spray. No pictures this time, sorry, as we had to just leave him to it and rush off to so some work. Hopefully we’ll be able to take lots of pics of the next stage to make up for it!

I was starting to think that I might have to re-use dandelions for November’s wildflower. Not exactly the same dandelion, but one with a much, much higher flower stalk. (It has to be to stick out over the very high grass that taken off with all the rain and heat lately.) But today we took a stroll down the back to the river to see how things are down there and whammo! Great swathes of buttercups met the eye!

They’re pretty cute flowers really. I like them.

And they saved you from yet more dandelions, so you should like them too!

It’s been a while since we had any big mounds around the place, much to the disappointment of the kities, but this week a new one appeared. A big pile of topsoil and compost for the vege garden.

Yes, that’s right. We’ve run out of other mounds to sieve (and any desire or motivation to sieve anyway) so we took the easy route this time and had a truckload delivered. They even found the little yellow flag I’d left out to tell them where to dump it. I was expecting the flag to be found at a much later time at the bottom of it all, but they obviously enjoyed putting it back right on the top. I chuckled.

I say we took the “easy way”, but we still have to shift it around the place. It’s going to take a few wheelbarrow loads! But that’s still a heap better than sieving! Luckily apart from a bit required reasonably quickly around the spuds the rest can sit for a bit while we track down some timber for a few more raised beds.

..is that it needs so many bloody connections for the speakers!

We’d very carefully added all the wires in the walls when playing cable monkey earlier, but there’d always been a bit of messiness where all the wires exited the walls and tried to make it to the stereo. Even harder when there’s extra wires for some outdoor speakers as well.

So while in the UK I managed to pick up a nice little unit to tidy that up. I’m trying very hard to forget just how much it cost me to pick it up. But at least I know that a) it was still a lot cheaper than I could get anything even remotely similar here for, and b) I know where there’s at least something that looks like a bit of gold to sell if the gold price keeps on rising!

It’s taken a few weeks to get around to installing it though. The thought of making bigger holes in the freshly painted walls took a bit of getting over. And a bit of organisation. We had to go to the local hardware store and try to get across the technical details of the tool that we needed to extend the Gib holes. Luckily the guy there knew exactly what we were trying to describe and took us right to it. Apparently they’re technically called a “wall board saw”. They’re a lethal looking thing. Imagine the most lethal diving knife you’ve seen, then double how lethal it looks and you might get close!

But luckily the wall and I both survived the surgery required to insert the new backing box and the main connection unit. And all the speakers still seem to work too. Success! Tick that job off the list. Still a few more to go…

If it’s not a fig, I have no idea what it’s doing on the fig tree!

The fig tree was actually the last in “the orchard” to sprout any leaves. And then I spotted this small fig like thing growing too. For some reason I thought that any fruit would come slightly later in the season than this. And for some reason I thought that it would be at least another year before we got any fruit at all. I’ll take a fig for now. It’s a good start!

As some of you know well, I’m a big fan of radishes. So I chuck in a row whenever we’re planting any other type of seeds. But Bec’s not that keen on them at all. Which is a bit of a problem when we’re faced with a whole row that needs eatin’ in a hurry.

So today I thought I’d give frying them up a go to see what they’re like prepared that way. And to see if Bec could manage a couple that way too.

Quartered, fried gently in olive oil until almost soft, then sprinkled with Maldon salt. Beautiful. All the bitterness and most of the heat had been fried out, leaving something that tasted kind of, but completely unlike, a turnip.

So did Bec like them? Let’s say I had trouble getting the bowl and fork back off her. So yes, I think she did. I think we’ll be making a few more bowls of them for snacks. A good reason to keep planting more rows!

Next up on the radish culinary trail – roast radishes cooked with the roast chicken…