Starting my vacation

I slept reasonably well again, but stayed in bed till about eight, dozing. Of course, I let mippies out very early or I wouldn't have been allowed to doze at all! By eight, mippies decided that I should get out of bed, they came and crowded me until I got up, ha ha!

I forgot to mention that, on Thursday, I also took the opportunity to visit an Optometrist. The one nosepad of my glasses had broken off. They replaced both - free of charge! I took that opportunity to also enquire about reading glasses. I'm currently using multi-focals which seemed a good idea at the time; but I'm forever sitting with my nose in the air at the PC to align the lower section of the lenses with the screen. I also have quite some difficulty reading a book, it's very, very uncomfortable, so I tend to take the glasses off and sniff the book as I read it, grin. As I haven't done much reading in the last couple of years, that wasn't so much of an issue - although sitting at the PC with my nose in the air, was somewhat irritating. I do want to read more, though, so reading glasses seem a good idea. They are not too expensive - but the anti-glare doubles the price! Since I spend more time at the PC than I do with my nose in a book (very sad state of affairs, in my opinion!) I'd say it's worth the investment.

Interesting note: when I was sitting outside last night, before dusk, I was shocked to see that the temperature was 40 Celsius! And that's in the shade! Sigh, Pretoria is much hotter (not just warmer) than PE! And where I live, it's always a few degrees warmer than Pretoria. Fun, eh? Well, at least there's a breeze going here ...

This morning is the perfect weather to burn the crap out of myself, if I garden! It's slightly overcast - just a thin layer of white, no real clouds as such - giving a lovely impression of shade, but it's over 35 degrees ... again: in the shade! So, if I were to go work in the sun, I would spend the rest of my vacation in bed with sunstroke! Not a good plan!

So, what shall I do today?

I took a stroll around my garden - but first, Mewthos threw himself at my feet to get his tummy rubbed! He loves that! The Oregano doesn't seem to want to grow, I'm afraid. Oh, and last night, I finally took the time to properly plant the one Carnation bush. I hadn't dug it in deep enough and many of its roots were above ground - now it can hopefully recover! The sage is doing well, with quite a lot of more seeds sprouting. The Rosemary, I think the three or four tiny growths in that pot ARE Rosemary, but I'll only know for sure when they grow a bit more. The Marjoram is not making any effort, I'm afraid. Ditto the Parsley & Chamomile. There were a lot of green sprouts, but now the pot is quite bare. I fear mippies are responsible, ha ha!

The flower bed is very busy! I can't yet tell which are flowers and which weeds - being my usual 'wonder' garden - but the six bulbs at least are definitely flowers! The succulents I got from Rose are all doing very, very well! I've got some flowers at the moment - all dark orange ones. I think they're called 'Ice Plant'? 

Moving across the car port, I see that the new beds I made, especially the paths, are already covered with growing weeds again! Ai, ai! I've been planning to dig the whole bed up, then put some of the 'compost' into the bed before covering it with the mixture of soil and compost again. All those weeds I pulled and grass - if I put them under the bed, they would help with drainage. The ground goes so hard that rain mostly just flows off it, with too little getting deeper into the ground. That is going to be a lot of hard work, though! And with that patch being in the full sun all day ... 

I'm hoping that the sprouts along the fence, behind my Spekboom, will turn out to be the daisies I sowed. In the old bed, next to the cosmos, I think only the bulbs and the cosmos will grow there. Apart from the sunflowers, I don't see anything coming up that I recognise. Well, I recognise some of the weeds coming up - so, hopefully the rest will turn out to be flowers? I doubt it, though. I never really did dig very deep into that bed, nor mix much compost into the soil - the top layer is still very hard. Ah, well!

The Cosmos are doing well, though. The row is in full bloom and starting to turn brown from the bottom up. In a month or so, it'll be time to pull them out - by then they will have dropped such a lot of seeds that I'm sure to have another wall growing very soon!

The watermelon are doing well, although they do seem to be heading east, into Leon's garden. The Spanspek, on the other hand, is just crawling along the pots, heading north. No flowers on the watermelons, yet, but lots on the Spanspek.

I picked the first pod of peas of the season! Nice and large peas, too! I noticed that peas - contrary to the 'instructions' on the back of the seed packets - do much better when they are all bunched up together. Where I've given each plant 'adequate' space, they are wilting without even growing. Interesting, eh?  My Shady Ladies are still growing, they've passed ankle height now and are really making an effort! The Basil is doing well, with lots of little specks where I sowed the last seeds. The mustard is making its first flower as well! Yes, I know, if I want to keep harvesting leaves, I should discourage flowering - but I'm curious to see the flower!

The sunflowers I had sown at the beginning of Spring are now creating their first flower! It's just a tiny little knob of green so far, but: Yay! Sunflowers seem to be quite as hardy as Cosmos - they're all coming up, growing, doing well. Even the one where I accidentally snapped the stem - it was pushed down by the cucumbers, and I tried to be careful when freeing it, but the stem bent. It seems to have fully recovered, though and is still going strong!

And then, to my delight, I see that I have a cucumber growing! My first home-grown cucumber! Happy dance!

I'm a little miffed about the gooseberries, though. Yes, they are still growing, though very tiny ... but, well, here I am, carefully selecting the best possible seeds, preparing a nice place, mixing in good soil, walking every day with the watering can to nurse them ... and what happens to Rose? Some bird craps a seed in her garden and she's got a lovely bush growing ... just like that!

Yeah, I'm not really miffed - I think it's funny!

I think that I should maybe give some thought to food for myself.

Okay, so I've started by picking some basil. A walk through my garden near noon is very sad ... everything is suffering in the sun and droopy! I'm glad I don't often see that! For now, I've got the machine making me a loaf of french bread - well, only the dough and I've added some grated cheese and some herbs. Lets see how that turns out!

It doesn't feel like holiday, yet - more like any other Saturday. Shouldn't there be more happy spirits bouncing around? Ha Ha!

I forgot to mention that the white Geranium are in full bloom! It looks absolutely lovely! I've got some five heads filled with white blooms on just the one plant! And the chervil is also coming up en masse - although it's not growing solo, a horde of mushrooms are coming up in the pot as well!

Crikey! Now I'm miffed! I just made myself a milkshake, and thought I'd add a few of the fresh strawberries ... guess what? Half of them are covered in mold! I bought them on Thursday, they were refrigerated the whole time - they really should not be covered in white mold, not this soon! And they weren't exactly cheap, either! Hrmph!

And then some eejot drove into the electrical pole and our power went out. Just like that!