Vegfest 2011

Some may be thinking "what the hell has happened to the vegie patch?" Well, my inadequately occupied friends, it lives! I went to the local hardware/garden mega-shed and carefully chose whatever they had on sale out in the carpark. Came away with parsnips, fancy lettuce, spinach and tomatoes. I believe tomatoes are tricky so if I come up with a crop there I'll be delighted. I have been cooking roasts more this year than ever before, and that's where the parsnips come into their own. They are strangely expensive in the shops for something so basic and root-vegetabular. I don't really like fancy lettuce much, although you can can pick it progressively as it grows. Last year all my icebergs were ready at once and we didn't do them justice Elf didn't like them as they were sluggy.

 I also have some chives in that I don't remember planting, and some garlic dad planted for me which is cranking along nicely. Elf bought me some mulch today and I have just mulched for the first time in my life. Felt great.

Left to right: spinach, garlic, tomatoes. Behind: grass - my specialty.

The mulch economy

Elf had a load of mulch delivered down the front of the house on Friday. Her masterplan to get it up to the backyard was to pay 25¢ per bucketload to the boys and any other kids we could press-gang on the weekend. On Sunday morning Marcus, Cameron and Lana got into the task eagerly, in fact so eagerly that Elf soon decreed a $10 cap on what she would pay any one urchin. I acted as foreman/tally clerk. I was also preventing Winston running out the open gate, and reading news off the internet, cumbersomely copied from the net-connected computer downstairs onto this offline laptop.

I think all three kids got up to $10 in the end. Michael participated occasionally, but kept swapping his bucket for smaller and odder containers, culminating with a medium-size jam jar.

I am also paying Marcus 10¢ a time to blow his nose at the moment. Before I "monetized" the situation, every time I would ask him to blow rather than snort disgustingly (he was usually reading or playing games on his i-pod at the time) he would complain that blowing his nose hurt. Apparently it hurts a lot less when it gets you 1/30th of the way to a pack of football cards.