Edible Garden

There's such great excitement in our household at the moment, because this is the time of year when the garden comes alive. From Alfie's perspective this is good news as it means there's lots of food which is nearly ready to eat!

When we first moved into this house, we thought we'd inherited a very dull backyard....the front garden is full of native plants and is very lovely indeed, the side of the house is packed full of big Camelia trees and rose bushes - but the back garden was just green, green, green.

Green lawn. Green trees.  Green plants. A tiny bit of white here and there (mostly in the form of zillions of daisies all over the lawn, which seem to come up within 30 minutes of mowing it). But not much other colour.

So for quite some time now, my To Do List has included pulling out some of the green stuff and re-planting it with some colour and some natives - but it's quite a long way down the To Do List (coming well after Get A New Roof Because The Existing One Leaks - but that's another story!).

On the plus side, we did inherit a fabulous herb garden full of thyme, rosemary, mint, (dead) basil and sage. I use the mint, the thyme and rosemary all the time - but does anybody know what on earth to do with sage??

A couple of months ago, I planted out some lettuce, spring onions, silverbeet and strawberries in some old car tyres, and we now have a plentiful supply of salad which usually covers our needs for at least half the week. Molly often grabs a piece of lettuce to eat as she walks past and even Alfie understands that lettuce from the garden is precious and is to be eaten and appreciated without complaint!

The strawberries are the biggest source of excitement in the family though. We have two little strawberry patches in the garden, one at the top and one at the bottom (I wasn't sure where would get the most sun so I tested both), and now they're starting to turn red, both kids are bursting with excitement. I am predicting some serious arguments in the not-too-distant future about who gets there first. That's if the birds don't beat them to it (I must buy some netting this weekend).

We've got a huge mound of rhubarb just outside the kitchen, but despite being raised as a child on copious amounts of rhubarb I actually have no idea what to do with it. How do you know when it's ready to pick? What do you actually do with it (apart from crumbles and stewing it with sugar)? If anyone can shed any light on the Mystery of Rhubarb, please feel free to comment below, as I'd hate for it all to go to waste - thanks!

Meanwhile my little lemon tree isn't doing too well! I was about to give up and pull it up, but this week new green leaves and shoots have started to appear so I'm going to hold out for a bit longer, give it a bit of TLC and see what happens...

Finally, the pear tree. This pear tree was the subject of many conversations between us and the previous owners who considered it to be one of the key selling points of the house. Apparently it is going to be raining pears in our garden come the Summer. So far we have two teeny little ones growing, so we're watching and waiting with baited breath...