In the garden - October/November

I realised, belatedly, that the titling of my garden posts was a bit stupid - when I'm writing "in the garden - November" what I actually mean is "it is November now and I'm writing about what happened in the garden in October." And theoretically I was going to be publishing them early in the month, whereas today is the 25th. Oh well. Here is what happened in the garden in October, and for good measure, the bulk of November.

An artichoke happened! "Artichoke", singular so far, but there is another one on there. We had it steamed with some olive oil and vinegar for dipping.

I have far more food memories of my maternal grandmother, Grandma, than my paternal grandmother, Granny, but one thing I associate with Granny is artichokes, as I ate them for the first time with her on holiday one Christmas. I also recall her giving us vanilla icecream sprinkled with Milo, or occasionally a spoonful of jam.

The blueberries have continued to do well - yesterday E took to kindy for morning tea a box of them picked entirely from our own plants. But the main fruit event of the month has been apricots. 24 of them to date! The combination of mesh and paper bags has been a real success this year - I obviously got them on at the right time. They have had a bit of ant/other insect damage and definitely look home grown, but not one so far has been fruit fly ridden.

They look particularly home-grown in this photo - the lighting is a bit funny  -
 they are actually much orange-r than they appear here.

We are saving the stones in the hope that Papa may be able to add a few trees to their collection, although I have read that growing apricots from stones is a bit of a production, requiring a nut cracker to extract the bit you actually plant, and them time in the fridge for them to germinate. We all love them so much it is worth the effort - although 24 is definitely our best haul yet (and there are still more to come on the other half of the graft) it is still few enough that I ration them out for dessert after dinner, one each and no more! C especially loves them and sits chomping away with her one tooth, beautiful orange juice running down her chin.

In the garden - October

In the garden, in September, there were tomatoes, broad beans and rainbow chard! Lots of each! E has been eating cherry tomatoes like they are lollies and we are picking a full handful every day or two. We haven't done anything more adventurous with the broad beans this year than eat them straight from the bush, or in salad, but there are plenty for both.

The blueberries are still laden but with only a few ripe ones so far.

I thought about building some sort of fruit-fly preventing structure out of poly piping and big sheets of netting to protect the apricot tree but time got away from me so I went with what we had and dragged out the mesh sleeves and paper bags from the shed. I also couldn't quite figure out how I would deal with the fact that the tree is grafted and one half always flowers/fruits well before the other - so far one half has big enough fruit that it needed bagging, and the other half is still mainly flowering with only a few tiny fruit.

And the roses are back, and glorious.

Family meal times - household rules

We had a particularly galling lunch time on Saturday, that involved E refusing to use a fork or spoon and so smearing lasagne all over her (new) blue and white dress as well as the chair (despite it's protective cushion), me taking her plate away several times and then relenting and giving it back, and lots of raised voices and general unhappiness from both of us. Sadly these kinds of episodes are not uncommon at the moment. 

After I had calmed down, cleaned up and sent E to her room to listen to CDs, I decided that we should write a list of family meal-time rules. She is a creature of habit and whilst she does not respond well to arbitrary authority, if she thinks something is a "rule" then she is generally more willing to comply with it. So later that day we sat down and wrote our list. This is what we came up with:

* Stay still;

* Sit on your chair with legs forward;

* Eat over your plate;

* Use knife and fork;

* Don't talk with your mouth full;

* Always ask by saying "please";

* Be grateful for the meal;

* Afterwards, put your dishes in the sink; and

* Wash your hands before and after.

Interestingly, E came up with almost all of them, so she clearly knew what we expect of her even if she isn't always willing (or able! I need to remember she is only four!) to comply with our expectations. Hopefully this will help - it will at least mean we can say "remember the rule about sitting on your chair" rather than issuing seemingly random demands.