Saying goodbye to summer

I don't mind that summer is gone. Honest. But today I saw on Lolly Knitting Around some photos of her zucchini and cucumber seedlings; tiny little sprouts in morning sunlight and I felt a sigh of nostalgia sweep over me. Then I remembered I have my own seedlings (see below), which are now closer to plants.

Just because the sting has gone out of the sun, doesn't mean we've abandoned the garden.

First up, I need to rescue my basil plants this weekend before the frost turns them black.


Pesto anyone?

Basil butter?

There's a bunch of stuff I have to do in the garden to get ready for the notorious Canberra frosts, including saving my chilli plants from certain death, that is, putting them under eaves until spring.

These are my favourites - serrano chillies. We eat meals with these in them at least 4-5 nights a week at the moment. They're incredible.

These are tabasco chillies. Nice looking plant, but they're so tiny that I don't find them that useful. I'm going to chop up what I've got and make a chilli jam out of them, with a bunch of the serranos. Tomorrow.

I've had a constant supply of these and other sorts of chillies for a good part of summer. What have I been doing with so many? Handing them over to my pregnant chilli loving friend, Georgie, of course! She can't get enough of them. Baby #2 is going to come out begging for tabasco sauce in his/her bottle, no doubt!

Elsewhere in the garden, the winter veggies are bedded down. These photos are a few weeks old. They veggies are thriving and much bigger than this now.

Here's the broccoli.


And here are the brussels sprouts.

I'm desperate to see the brussels sprouts fully grown. I have seen photos of them and they have these tall stems with beads of sprouts studded down the length of them. Worth growing for that alone. Isn't it amazing how things you hated as a kid become appealing in adulthood?

Nearby, there's chinese cabbage.



It's much larger than this now. If you are local, a friend, and wanting chinese cabbage, I'll be handing some over when the time comes. It's prolific and huge!

Tomorrow, daylight saving ends. No more coming home in daylight and watering the veggies. But oh, life is going to become so much more cosy! Like tonight. There's a chicken roasting in the oven, a bottle of wine in the fridge, a glass at my side and Friday night British crime on TV. We are such reclusive types in winter.

Have a good one everyone!

Bells