Skinflint Sunday: Getting Things Done.

It’s dawned on my mighty intellect that I only have 2 weeks to go before I’m on the plane with Megan and we’re off to Canada and Alaska. The travel agent sent over some docs to fill in for the cruise company and after looking through them, I’m finally starting to get excited.

Tom32’s girlfriend Sophie has lived in Canada, so she looked at the itinerary and said that it’s ticking all the main points of Vancouver, so that’s good. We’re meeting a blog reader called Martha on our free day in Vancouver, so I’m really looking forward to that. Megan wants to see ‘the REAL Vancouver”, (whatever that is), so I guess we’ll be wandering around looking at Martha’s favourite spots, which is perfectly fine by me. 🙂

I’ve decided that the grey merino dress will be coming out of hibernation for the Canada leg of the trip. The weather is supposed to be around 17C – 20C at this time of year, so that’s perfect for a dress and tights. I’m hoping the tights will keep away the mozzies. Once we’re on the cruise, where I assume we’ll be hopping in and out of zodiacs, I’ll start wearing trousers.

Much to my chagrin, I’ll be taking a suitcase along on this trip, instead of just carry-on. I loved the freedom of carry-on, but the cold-weather clothes won’t fit in. Or maybe they will. I bought a vacuum pump system that compresses clothes to use on my Ghan trip, so maybe I should give it a whirl and see what I can actually fit into my dear little carry-on case.

Seeing as I have only two weeks to go, I’ve suddenly;y swung into gear. I have about 4 weeks’ worth of work to do in the veggie garden to get it all tucked away for winter, so I have my work cut out for me. Yesterday I harvested all of these beans (Lazy Housewife), just at a time of year when I should be pulling up the vines. There’s more there, still growing, so I’m leaving them be for a bit, along with a few capsicums and (finally!) zucchinis.

The plan for the garden is to drastically cut down on what I plant this year.

I’ll be in Vietnam, Japan and Africa when I’m normally processing all of the produce from the yard. I can’t in all fairness expect Georgia to do it, so my main crop will be GARLIC. You plant it now, then pull it up in December. Too easy. I’ve bought a few different types of garlic to plant, along with the elephant garlic that one of Georgia’s friends gave her a couple of years ago.

I like the idea of keeping our house, as well as the kids’ houses, supplied with all the garlic we’ll need.

Megan and I fly out early in the morning on Mother’s Day, so I’m hoping to get the kids around for a dinner or lunch before we go. It frees up the coupled ones to spend time with their other Mother on the actual day, so I’m hoping we’ll be able to get together beforehand. It makes me very happy on the days that I have all the people I made in the same room with me. It’s almost as good when I have a day when I speak to the whole set on the phone. I like these people.

The little woofs are all good. I snapped this shot of Scout going into the water with the ball, even when it was freezing cold. She loves it.

Dad joke of the day:

Big plans and happy gardening harvests.

Look at what I harvested the other day from the garden. Finally, after 3 years, tomatoes are growing again. I’m so happy!

Weirdly, zucchinis have done nothing for the second year in a row. I always thought zuccs were one of those ‘no-fail’ crops, but I guess nothing’s certain.

I have 3 full trays of tomatoes ripening in the kitchen. I’m picking them as soon as they show colour, because even though we seem to have got the rats under control, I still have no plans to feed any of them with my precious tomatoes.

I’m loving the Tommy Toe variety this year. For a cherry tomato, they’re HUGE. Considering I bag and freeze most of them to use throughout the year – in 400g bags to equal a can – I love a tomato that weighs a lot.

This is definitely the year of the cucumber.

We’re growing thousands of them. Fortunately, I bought myself a Zwilling vacuum sealer after reading about them from Rhonda at Down to Earth.

The link includes her rundown of her experience with the Zwilling products. I’m loving mine.

Here’s how the cucumbers look when they’ve been Zwillinged. I just have to make sure that they’re totally dry before they go in.

While I was away at Kangaroo Island, I asked Ryan29 to harvest the elephant garlic that his friend gave us. They saved some bulbs for planting and put the rest on the freezer.

I’m hoping that these will last ok in the ground, as they took off the protective papery covering. Ah well. Nothing ventured; nothing gained!

I’ve bought 3 more types of garlic to grow. I’m going to be away for quite a bit of time this year, so having such a long crop in the ground will be a good use of the garden.

A few days ago I took the little woofs on a walk by the river. We don’t often come down this way, but after posting a letter, we kept on going.

Here’s a ‘new’ mural that popped up as the pedestrian walkway joins the river path. I put the word ‘new’ in inverted commas because I have no idea how long it’s been here.

Going with the theme I started last year of being away for my birthday, this year I’ve decided to do it again.

I’ve booked a really comprehensive tour of the Red Centre and the Top End. Here’s the itinerary.

It ticks off everything I want to see and, as I said with Antarctica, it’s expensive but I only need to see it once.

I’ll be gazing at a massive solar light installation from a sand dune at Uluru on my birthday. It’s a slight contrast from being in the centre of London at the Sky Garden from last year!

So this year is shaping up to be one of travel. Kangaroo Island, Canada, Alaska, the Red Centre and the Top End.

Not too bad…

Dad joke of the day:

Skinflint Sunday.

So much has been happening since I got home! You all know that I was out of the country when it was my birthday, so if course, I hosted 4 birthdays in one party last week. My 60th, David30, Evan27 and Mum turned 83.

IT WAS HUGE. Ryan28 and I worked like crazy in the week before, scrubbing down the outside verandah and furniture (the fans were FILTHY); cleaning up the gardens; I bought nearly 1K’s worth of plants, pots and potting mix to make everything beautiful outside: the two middle kids finished up the Man Cave furniture and hung many pictures; plus all the regular sprucing up when visitors are expected.

It was exhausting. But very satisfying.

We’re now getting closer to living in the house I have in my mind. Of course, this place has always been The Best House in Melbourne, but now it’s even better.

We ended up hosting 19 adults and 4 kids under 6, so it was mega. On Saturday morning Ryan28 and I were at Bunnings buying another trestle table and 6 chairs to accommodate everyone. It wasn’t what I expected to be doing, but hey. Having the extra table won’t be necessary for most gatherings, but I know that every now and then it’ll be fantastic to have.

We had 4 generations here. Pretty special. What was also special was that the kids gave me a skydive for my birthday! I asked them to do this, but I’m never sure if one of them will convince the others that they have a “better idea”. Happy that one day soon, I’ll be clinging like a limpet to someone casually stepping out of a plane.

Here is the view of the Man Cave as you walk into the room.

You can see Wallace and Grommit (my souvenir from Windsor Castle) at the left, with my art from the last trip (and Venice) hung on the other side. These last pics were hung just an hour before people arrived. It was going down to the last gasp, I tell you!

As you turn around, you see this:

Molly Malone and Sean are on the left, with a cobra sculpture from when I took the boys to Bali in 2006 on the right. The cupboard doors on all the units are all in high gloss white because the room gets quite dark in the afternoon and evening as the sun moves over the top of the house. You can just see a corner of my North Korea prints on the side wall. After 5 years, they finally have a place on the walls!

We’ve been here for 7 years and the space finally looks like adults live here instead of students and/or squatters. It’s like a breath of fresh air to walk in here now.

I love it.

It’s also a great space for adult kids moving back here to save money for a house deposit or something. Who knows if that will ever happen, but it feels good to have that option.

We ordered a hard rubbish pickup and threw out the two green couches that were given to us by Scott when he left the country for England, about 11 years ago. They used to be our inside couches but then we moved them outside when I bought the new leather lounges. Their time had come.

The spaces that were left, I filled up with plants.

Lots and lots of plants.

Here are the plants that I bought to live under the verandah in the backyard. They’re inside plants but I’m hoping that being shaded and free from frost will give them a fighting chance to survive. I popped a couple of pots filled with jonquil bulbs in front of them. The jonquils have been waiting to be planted in the front yard for 2 years.

I’ll do it. I promise…

I wanted the plants to embrace the area, so I ordered them in a curve. Over time, they’ll be joined by others to give a lush feel here. Baby steps…

Zoom out.

Imagine 3 tables all in a row, covered with white tablecloths and set with white crockery. It looked really good.

I’ve given up trying to grow a floral hedge here to attract the bees. I bought 3 pittosporums, which will grow and fill out this entire fence with green.

And here’s how the veggie garden is looking at the moment. I’m letting a couple of silver beets and cos lettuces go to seed, but everything else is young and ready to grow.

Here’s the other half of the front verandah. It’s a seating area with my lovely comfy couch and the beautiful teak coffee table I bought for the backyard. I’ll be oiling the table before Christmas.

Promise.

It’s so much more practical and inviting now, and it was all done with items that we already had around the place.

Here’s how it looks from inside. Again, I’ll be buying more plants as time goes on.

On Wednesday I’ll be picking up a carpet off-cut that I had made into a rug. My sister Kate suggested this, as it’s much cheaper than buying a huge rug to cover the space.

Funny story: I measured the space that I wanted the rug to define (my lounge room) and it came to 3m X 3m. I saw a suitable piece and ordered that size. For some reason, the next morning I decided to measure it again and I realised that it was too small. ARGH! I needed a piece 3m X 3.2m.

I rang the carpet place in a mad panic. Nope, they’d already cut it. Oh well. It meant that instead of the 3 seater couch having all its legs on the rug, only the front two would.

I went to bed and had a nap. Twenty minutes in, I sat bolt upright. Why don’t I get another piece sewn back on the end? Most of the seam is going to be under the couch anyway!

I rang the carpet place. Yes it could be done. So on Wednesday, I’ll see how noticeable the seam is.

And the price? Just over $500. A rug of comparable size is at least 3 times that.

So I’m happy.

Here’s how my living space looks now. I’m so glad I got rid of the beige walls and ceiling and added some colour instead.

I still haven’t finished. I’m having plantation shutters installed on the rest of the windows, I’m probably buying a new tv for my living room because my tv looks so good in the Man Cave that I don’t want to move it, plus the garden still has things I’m planning to do out there.

I also knocked back a teaching contract for term 1 with the school. I did it without a moment’s hesitation. I’ve drawn a line in the sand and I won’t be going back.

And I haven’t even mentioned that I’ve booked my next trip overseas, plus my plans for quilting.

Life is great, isn’t it?

Dad joke of the day:

A quiet Monday.

This is a shot of Ryan28 with the dogs, after Scout and I went to Elwood Beach for a Guinness Book of Records attempt to beat the record of the most dogs of the same breed taking a walk together. Over 1300 sausages showed up, so we beat the record previously held by the Beagles of 1,026.

It was a pleasant enough morning for me, but Scout really wasn’t happy. It was all a bit too overwhelming for a tiny dog who doesn’t even realise that she’s a dachshund. We contributed to beating the record once, but I won’t put her through it again, poor little mite.

The veggie garden is pretty much put away for the winter. I just want to move the rhubarb a little, but honestly, if it dies I’ll be happy to get one that’s a brilliant red colour. The green tastes just as rhubarby, but it’s just not the same.

I’ve completed my quest to earn the money to pay for Evan26’s Clown College in France, so I’ve pulled right away from work, telling both schools that I’m done for the term – and the new school that I’m done for the YEAR. This was an incredibly big step for me and I wrote about it <HERE>

So I have just one more work day on Wednesday, then two glorious weeks of freedom before I start the latest contract – 8 weeks of a 3-day week teaching Geography and EAL. This will give my North America savings a big boost. Even though I’m very grateful for all the work I’ve been given last year and this year – it’s certainly helped my boys and I on achieving some really big goals – I’m really wanting to not work so much next year.

Time to revel in my freedom again!

It’s almost time to make another batch of soap. I really must get back into completing the 5,000 piece quilt for the guest room. My lounge room still hasn’t been painted.

But hey! I’ve read 63 books so far this year. That’s not bad going!

Dad joke of the day:

Skinflint Sunday: It’s Lime Verbena time!

Most people have heard of lemon verbena – and I have 3 small plants in wicking boxes that I’ve had for at least 10 years – but personally, I’m a big fan of lime verbena, the lesser-known sibling. It’s a darker tasting tea than the lemony version. It’s hard to track down lime verbena plants.

I had one for a couple of years in a big concrete pot and when we moved to The Best House in Melbourne I put it out in the back yard, forgot to keep checking on it and it died. I was so mad at myself!

It took about 5 years before I finally found an online nursery selling them and I bought a couple just before the pandemic. One turned up its toes, but I stuck the survivor into the ground beside the asparagus and it’s flourished ever since.

Today was the day when I grabbed the secateurs, marched out and gave it a haircut. I have to dry the leaves in the dining room because the laundry is too full of other things. But that’s ok. The room smells like a beautiful hand lotion.

I don’t know why more people don’t grow their own herbal teas. They smell so good when you harvest the leaves, you get organic, free drinks all year round and you can use the leaves either fresh or dried. For taking up such a small space in the garden, they really pack a punch when it comes to giving good value.

Here are the last of the tomatoes and squash. I ripped the squash plants out and fertilised and mulched the beds they were in, and used this, with a few more home-grown tomatoes, to make the tastiest vegetarian pasta sauce for last night’s dinner. It was just Ryan28 and me, and we woofed it down.

And look at this fine sinkful of home-grown, free spuds!

I planted a few Aldi seed potatoes when the wicking beds first went in, just to condition the soil. Five years later, they keep popping up. Every so often I dig for the big ones and leave the littlies in the soil. After all this time, I think that they’re classified as free food.

As I always say, free is my favourite flavour.

This may surprise none of you, but working really cuts into your days.

(I’ve worked 36/50 workdays… on the homeward stretch now.)

I took the dogs out for a walk today. They haven’t been out for ages. When we had the elderly dogs here, they’d get very distressed if I took mine out, so in the end, it was kinder just to have all of them stay at home. Then, all this week I’ve been absolutely dead tired when I got home.

You should’ve seen Scout’s face light up when I said the ‘W’ word!

We wandered around the neighbourhood, meeting another sausage dog along the way. Hank is a long-haired dachshund and the little girl walking him was enchanted to meet Scout.

I ordered my mother of the Groom dress at the beginning of January from an online shop in China. Enough time so that, if it didn’t arrive, I could still have time to get something else. Well, four weeks before the wedding, I decided that it was time for plan B. Mum said that she saw a shop in Southland with clothes that were “very Frogdancer”, so I nipped in, walked straight to it, tried on an outfit, paid for it and left. In and out in 10 minutes! Just the way I like to do clothes shopping!

This s the photo I sent the bride. She was getting nervous that I was still dressless. Just for fun, I took the dress and jacket to work the next day to show the girls. If I’m going into work anyway, why not?

I also bought makeup. Haven’t worn it for years…

Jeffrey pondering.

Dad joke of the day:

Skinflint Sunday: The long weekend edition.

After 7 weeks, my elderly dog visitors have gone back home. Yesterday I spent 7 hours in total, driving them to Mooroopna and back and it was lovely to see how pleased they were to see my friend again. She was delighted to have them back, so it was a bit of a love fest.

Ryan28 said that Scout cried for four hours after we left. She’s a loyal little soul and she clearly thought that Elizabeth and Silver were part of her pack.

I am lucky enough to still have two days of the weekend, as it’s Labour Day tomorrow in Victoria. I came home yesterday to a sparkling clean house – Ryan28 swung into gear after I left and swept away all traces of the dogs. He worked like a champion. The floors were vacuumed and mopped, the leather couches were scrubbed and all of the couch quilts were freshly washed and dried. He even did some dusting while he was at it!

I’m glad I was able to help my friend, but I’m equally glad that I’m back to living with my house-trained, quiet and chilled little pack.

I read an eclectic mix of blogs, ranging from Financial Independence blogs to patchwork, gardening and frugality ones. One blog I follow is written by a farmer in South Australia, who writes one post a week about how she spent her week. She’s built up quite an online community that spans the world. She writes about family, food, making the most of what we have and making things stretch further… pretty universal concerns.

Lately, she’s been writing about food shortages, and people from all over the world have been commenting about how prices and scarcities have been affecting their corners of the world. Her latest blog post, written by a woman in the UK, is pretty sobering stuff.

I was seriously considering just putting my veggie garden to sleep for the winter, like I did last year, but instead, I’ll be dragging my mini greenhouse from the shed and planting some seeds. Can’t hurt and it might help. Plus I have heaps of seeds and they’re not doing anyone any good by staying in their packets.

Basically, the things that are happening over there will probably come to pass here as well. Maybe not to the same degree, but it will happen. In fact, it IS happening – anyone else notice how food prices have gone up? Last Aldi shop I did, I got the last dozen eggs – and I was shopping in the middle of the day, not at the end!

The collapse of one of the biggest trucking companies in Australia means that frozen products may soon be in short supply at supermarkets. If you have the freezer space, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to stock up on some extra bags of frozen food. Can’t hurt and it might help.

Last year I bought some butternut pumpkin seedlings from Bunnings and planted them randomly in the orchard. They’ve produced at least 7 pumpkins that I can see, and I’ll soon be harvesting them. It’s so nice to see that the Great Pumpkin Curse has finally been lifted!

I’ll save seed from these, but I don’t know if they’ll work. I try to buy Diggers seedlings at Bunnings but this year I couldn’t find any.

Deana’s roses are going nuts at the moment. I’m glad I went out and took this photo because otherwise I wouldn’t have known that the poor thing is covered with aphids.

It won’t be for long!

Today is the day that I prune my lime verbena to dry the leaves for tea. I have 3 lemon verbena plants in wicking boxes but I think I’ll plant them out here – they’ll grow better and most people prefer the lemon verbena tea to the lime. It’s nice to have home-grown things to give away.

And finally, you can even grow food in small pots. These jalapeno plants are dotted around the place, all in little pots. I’m collecting what will amount to around 6 months worth of chillies, all from little pots that you wouldn’t think would be worth the effort.

Harvest time.

When you have a veggie garden, there’s always a glut. Every year it seems to b different. The best years are when we’re drowning in tomatoes and zucchini. I freeze little bags of chopped servings for bolognaise sauce that in a good year, we eat from all year round. But El Nina summers don’t seem to like tomatoes and this year, for the first time ever, we have only grown ONE zucchini.

But the basil? Plentiful. So lush that I’m trying out something for the first time – chopping and freezing it in ice cube trays topped with water. I figure that I can drop a cube into pasta sauces and save on using the bought dried basil. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

We’re knee-deep in beans, which seems to be the norm around here. I’ve decided to alternate years between Lazy Housewife and Purple King beans. I have saved seeds of both, so doing this will stop the seeds from getting too old. We’re eating the young beans and I’m chopping the bigger, tougher beans into small pieces and freezing them, to be used in soups and stews later on. This saves me from using frozen peas for some greenery.

I’ve also harvested heaps of waratah greens and silver beet, chopped them up in the thermomix with water, and froze them. I did this last year when we had an abundance of parsley. I put a cube into soups, stews and pasta sauces as a ‘green goodness’ cube for some extra nutrition.

Can’t hurt and it might help, hey?

For the second year in a row, cucumbers are growing like mad. We’re eating a tonne of salads this summer, so this has really come in handy. Being so fresh, they last for ages in the crisper.

This year, I’ll be back from my trip just when it’s warm enough to start planting. This year, I was away just when the young plants needed nurturing, and Ryan28 was a bit stingy about watering them. I’m hoping that next summer will give us a more productive garden.

It’s now day 12 out of 50 of the days I’m working this term. I’ve put these pictures of my upcoming trip to England and Ireland all over my desk in the staff room to help keep my spirits up when I get glum about my lost freedom. It’s starting to happen and the pictures have definitely helped. It’s good to keep in mind that there’s a selfish purpose to doing this. Last year it was all about helping the boys – this year it’s about ME.

I still have Jenny’s elderly dogs here. It’s been 3 weeks now and they’re slowly settling in. I could do without getting woken at 4:30 Am most mornings with Elizabeth waking up and (presumably) looking for her Mum and yipping. Silver still can’t be trusted to keep his leg down in the house, so we’ve closed off every part of the house from the lounge/dining room, so we can keep a close eye on him.

Having said all of that, they’re very sweet-natured little things and have settled in remarkably well, especially considering that moving here was a total disruption of everything they’ve ever known. Jenny rang me last week and is progressing well with rehab for her new knee. I’m assuming another week or two and I’ll be dropping them back to be reunited with their mum.

Dad joke of the day:

What do you call a shoe made out of a banana?

A slipper.

Back in the trenches.

I’m sitting in front of a year 8 English class doing their grammar work for the week, so I have a little window of opportunity to catch up with you. I always make the first lesson of every week a grammar lesson, so it’s easy for the kids (and me!) to remember which book to bring to class.

The room that I’m sitting in is a ‘modern’ room in a modern building. It only has walls on 3 sides, so that my class is lucky enough to hear noise from the similarly built classroom next door. Why on earth any architect worth their salt would think that this is a practical thing to have in a school of nearly 1,000 kids is beyond me. I’m teaching 4 periods today and all of them are in this room. Lucky me.

I shouldn’t whinge too hard, though. The guy who I’m replacing is a student manager so he has a 5 period time allowance to do that, which means that instead of teaching 5 classes – with all of the marking – I only have 4. I’ll be getting extras every week to make up the difference but after a year of teaching CRT, that’s just fine with me.

My classes are all really nice kids. A small part of me was hoping that they’d be awful so that I’d never do this again, but this way is vastly better for my happiness. I’ve covered my desk with photos of England and Ireland so that when I start getting sad at my lost freedom, I’ll be able to look at the photos and remind myself of the reward awaiting me at the other end of this.

My garden is starting to produce many, many purple king beans. I was leaning over the garden bed to harvest them and my nose was buried into a basil plant growing in the same bed. Basil is one of my favourite scents in the world. Talk about an unexpected treat!

It’s been nearly 3 weeks since I drove 3 and a half hours to Mooroopna and picked up Jenny’s dogs. They had a difficult first few days, being utterly traumatised and bewildered as to why they’d been uprooted from their home, but they’ve settled in quite nicely now. I’ve discovered that they don’t like to get their feet wet when it rains, and as a result we are now closing the hallway door leading to the back of the house. It does my head in when adult dogs wee inside. Thank god for hardwood floors!

Dad joke of the day:

What do you call a cult that’s hard to get into?

Difficult.

Everything’s coming up roses.

Last year I got an unexpected parcel in the mail. My friend Deana, who I met in person when she invited me to stay with her during my trip to London in 2015, sent me a bare-rooted rose called something like “Lady Educator”. I procrastinated pruning it until the beginning of September, and when I walked up to it a couple of weeks later, I saw that aphids were sucking the life out of the tender new growth.

Not on my watch, baby!

I rummaged around the laundry and found a bug spray and doused the rose bush in it. A week later I went back and did it again.

Look at it now!

The first of many roses this summer, I’m sure.

I love the hue of this maple. My sister and I were wandering around Frankston market 3 years ago when I saw it.

I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep the water up to it. Every spring it starts off looking glorious, but then the leaves die around the edges and it looks a bit raggedy until autumn.

Yesterday I was at home (yay!) and I finished the crayon quilt top for my friend at work. I’m going to aim to have it completely finished by the end of the weekend, because I have another baby quilt I want to make for another girl at work.

I’ve decided to not go anywhere crowded for 2 weeks before I leave for Antarctica. I’d be devastated if I had to cancel the trip because of covid two years in a row! Incidentally, I bumped into a woman I’ve known for years who’s suffering from long covid. Eleven months after catching it, she still has no sense of taste or smell, can only work a couple of hours a day because of debilitating fatigue, and she looks as if she’s aged terribly. It reinforces my determination to wear a mask. You just don’t know how your body is going to react to the virus.

I snapped this shot of Scout when I was on the phone with Tom30. I’ll be trimming her beard soon, for summer, but I love how the light catches it in this shot.

She’s a good girl.

Dad Joke of the Day:

Bits and bobs.

I’m making a baby quilt for a friend at work and I needed to learn how to do FPP – Foundation Paper Piecing – to make the tops of some crayons.

Look at that block. It really couldn’t get easier. Yet last week I was trying to make these and I kept on mucking it up. The difference between normal piecing and FPP is that you sew the colours onto a piece of paper, then rip the paper off once you’re done. You kind of work backwards… it’s hard to explain… but I made 2 blocks perfectly and then mucked the next 3 blocks up.

I have no idea what I was doing wrong, but it got to the point where I walked away from doing it and didn’t sew anything for a week. That tactic worked. Yesterday I came back to it and everything worked like a charm.

Hopefully, I’ll have the quilt finished soon, then I can start on another baby quilt for another friend at work.

Then – Antarctica!

On Tuesday Helen and I were sitting in the staff room before the day began. The Daily Organiser sent me a text, directing me to take my class to the same room Helen was teaching at and we could teach together. I sent her this photo.

She replied, “LOL. Now, you two behave yourselves!”

Scout is the only dog who’ll willingly go into the sea. Poppy will race right up to where the sea starts and then veer away, as she’s doing here. Jeff, on the other hand, won’t go anywhere near the water unless I go in.

I received a nice little gift in the mail the other day. Linda from The Witch’s Kitchen sent me some tromboncino zucchini seeds after I mentioned that I didn’t have any growing this year. I prefer the tromboncino to ‘normal’ zucchini because they have fewer seeds and you can train the vines upwards to save on space. Plus, they sometimes grow in interesting shapes.

Gardeners are the loveliest people! Thanks, Linda. I’m sure by late January I’ll be grating and freezing many bags of zucchini for my winter stews and bologneses.

Dad joke of the day: