A Perfect Saturday

Although cold outside the house was warm (with a jumper), the fire still trickling along thanks to the better quality wood. There was a plan to go to Gloucester today to pick a new fan for the wood heater and at the same time attend the monthly Gloucester Farmer's Markey. As there was no confirmation of the part arriving we had to hang about until 8.30 for them to open and answer the telephone. No Part, trip cancelled. That's OK, lots to do at home anyway. Got out the tractor and went around collecting all the bags of cow manure. Filled the cow pat compost bin with a few bags left over for other tasks. The bin should be broken down enough by Spring to make one of the ingredients for our oversized Tomato bed. Covered the lot with a few biscuits of mulch hay to give the worms some protection. The contents of the few remaining bags was put around some of the bigger brassica in vegetable bed and mulched with hay.

While the tractor was out and about used it to push over an old stump (dead Mandarin) in the house garden to make room for an ornamental. Being just a tad rocky at out place we both hooked in with an iron bar and post hole shovel to expand the hole in order that the ornamental gets a good start. We will fill it with good compost. At this point a confession - not being careful with the tractor resulted in a fist sized hole in the ornamental grill. First scratch on the shiny new toy which only has 25 hours on the clock. Managed to repair it later in the day and it looks as good as new again. Must talk about the tractor one day. It has what is called a 4 in 1 bucket on the front which allows you to open and close the scoop. In this case it allowed us to grab the stump once it was loose and lift it out of the way. The next job will be to improve the grill guard as well as remind self to be more careful.

Plodded along all day with satisfying achievements such as finishing the lawn mowing and making the whole place look respectable. The next batch of Cabbage seeds had germinated during the week and all these were potted up. Just one of those satisfying days were lots of little jobs get done and you go inside feeling a sense of achievement.

Started dinner with the usual cheese using a freshly picked Daikon Radish.  Roasted more Sweet Potato, steamed some freshly picked cabbage with Fish Sauce. Still picking Eggplant, nothing fancy with it just fried until lightly brown smeared some homemade Gay Bilson Roasted Tomato Jam and dressed with a little Havarti which melted gently. The vegetarian main was Mussels with onion, garlic, turmeric and ginger while the non-vegetarian was mince patties with chilli jam, soy sauce,  black pepper and turmeric. Watched a Miss Marple before settling in for a disappointing game between the Wallabies and the Lions. Might have to move to New Zealand or South Africa to find a more competent team to support. Still nice to see George Smith again.