Garden Gnome

When I woke up this morning I looked outside and saw that the sun was shining down from a warm blue sky, the grass was thick, green and shining with early morning dew and our corn had flowered. It is such a good feeling when something you are growing finally bursts with flowers or fruit or grows an inch or two. It made me smile and I let the ‘get dressed before you go outside’ rule slide and we tip toed out in our pyjamas to have a look.

My Grandfather passed away this week and while it is a sad time for my family I cannot help but recall all of the wonderful things about him and I fondly remember how proud he was of his garden. We would get in the car and drive for endless hours (ok, I think it was about 12 hours) and the first thing he would show me was his tomato garden. To this day I always think of him as I tend to my tomatoes even though I know they will never live up to his. My Grandmother on the other side of my family has green bones. She can make anything grow, and not just grow but go wild with growing. So surely I inherited some sort of gardening skills along the way. Alas, I do not have a green thumb, maybe a green toe though as I do like to ‘dip my toes in’ the gardening game every so often.

Despite my lack of gardening skills and my unmatched ability to make plants shrivel up and die I do love having things growing in my garden, especially edible things. At the moment we have lemons, limes, cumquats (though I don’t know why because they taste horrible), kaffir lime, tomatoes, corn, strawberries, rainbow silver beet (though it is looking a bit too weary to really include on today’s roll call), carrots, aloe vera (though not technically for eating), pineapples (sort of, I think I have given up on these), basil, rosemary, mint, chilies, Thai basil and a heap of other green plants and flowers that are yet to turn brown.

We used to have a coffee tree that we loved dearly but had to leave behind when we relocated overseas. And along the way we have loved and lost a lot of plants but I keep trying and I take joy in what is growing at the moment. And so does Miss 3 who loves to potter in the garden. She is a bigger threat to our crops than the birds or even the snails – because as soon as anything is ripe, something she learnt how to tell very early on, she has picked it and popped it in her mouth. Anything that requires chopping or cooking she dutifully harvests and sits them on the kitchen bench and asks what we are going to cook today. Whenever we get an overload of things we try to make the most of it – we love preserved lemons and recently pickled some chillies.

I came across these amazing little ‘cucamelon’s’. They look like watermelons that are the size of grapes and actually taste like cucumber and lime. How amazing would these be in a salad. They are grown in Mexico as a sour gherkin but if I can track down some seeds they may be worth a try.

For some reason I have grand ideas of one day owning a home with enough room to have a little hobby farm. I dream of rows of vegetables and herbs, a few fruit and coffee trees, some chooks and maybe even a furry animal or two. Maybe this could be my retirement plan as I have no idea how to look after all of that let alone how to find the time to do it.

Do you have a green thumb? What is growing in your garden at the moment?