Restoration Complete

Well we finally completed the restoration of my grandmothers dressing table.  The delay wasn't in the amount of work it took it was just that other things have taken priority over the last couple of months.

I posted the original photos in this blog on the 2nd of October.
http://two-days-at-a-time.blogspot.com/2011/10/restoration.html

Here is one of the photos I posted but to see them all click on the link above.

And this is the finished product.   It turned out exactly the way I had pictured it in my mind.  I knew we wouldn't get rid of all of the green as the silky oak absorbed the colour into it's grain.  I like that the green lives on in a more subtle way..................

I'm very pleased with the end result.

Baba Ganoush

It's time to do something with the last of the eggplants.  As well as making some Rum Balls today I plan on making Baba Ganoush.  Not very Christmasy I know but I'll still enjoy it.

I found this recipe on the Gourmet Worrier blog http://www.gourmetworrier.com/2009/08/one-of-those-happy-kitchen-accidents.htmland thought it sounded a little different so I'm going to give it a go.  Will post a pic of the finished product.

We picked around 16 eggplants off 4 plants.  We planted another just a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not sure if it's too late in the season but I guess we'll find out.

Harvesting Corn

We planted our corn mid September and this is a photograph I posted 8 weeks after planting.  This would be my 3rd attempt at growing corn but up until now I hadn't grown any that were worth eating

I took this photo just before we harvested.  It's only 5 weeks after the photo above and 13 weeks from planting.  Amazing how tall it got.

The reasons my corn hasn't been successful in the past I think was due to picking it too early or too late.  This time I did a lot of research into the right time.  The silks need to be brown right to the end.  There were a few of the smaller cobs that weren't at this stage so we just picked the larger ones.

 We got 9 great cobs from 6 plants.

You can see here that some of the cobs didn't have kernels right to the tip.  I'm still trying to find out why but it could be a nutrient problem.  Apart from putting lots of mulch and chook manure on when we planted, we didn't fertilise after that.

This level of success will certainly have me planting more next season.  This time probably twice as many and I'll look at feeding them a bit more.

A Night of Rain

We've had a bit of rain during the week but last night we had a lot of rain.  Our water tanks have gone from nearly empty to overflowing.  You can see our dam has overflowed and our camp fire and wood pile are now surrounded by water.

The brown grass from a week ago is now a luscious green and I'm sure if we have a dry week, next weekend will be all about mowing :-)   This weekend however, is all about study :-(

Levels of Success

Today's harvests demonstrates a couple of different levels of success. 

Not so successful carrot growing.............................

Pretty good success with the basil, tomatoes, eggplant, beetroot and even a potato that we didn't plant !