Picking my first red capsicum

Doing: Getting seriously bored with this unseasonable weather. Whilst I don't particularly like the normal stinking hot weather in January, we haven't had one sunny day for three weeks now! It's been either overcast and/or raining. Again, I am loving having the rainwater tanks full to overflowing again, but day after day of drizzle is starting to get a tad depressing.

Still, the lawn looks good for a change, and the crocus bulbs have exploded into flower:

The vegies are either going great guns, or are in the process of giving out their last gasp, this ridiculous weather having pushed them over the edge. The cucumbers are almost finished and the tomatoes are ready to be pulled up, and some strange mite is affecting the leaves of the eggplants - must go and investigate that further. I've planted numerous cucumber seedlings over the past few weeks too, with the aim of having new vines producing as the old ones needed ripping out, but some bug or another has dealt every last one a mortal blow, *sigh*. Lucky I now have a large stock of bread and butter cucumbers in the pantry to draw upon I guess!

Speaking of vegies though, a lovely lady emailed me wanting to know more details about my vegie patch, so here are some pics from today, sorry that they aren't very clear. As I said, it really is very small! There are two raised beds around 2 metres long by 1 metre wide here in the foreground (below). Bed one is tomatoes, lettuce, capsicum and the cucumber trellis. Bed two is yacon, potatoes and sweet potatoes.

Bed 3 is 1.5 metres long by 1 metre wide and there is a 1m x 1m asparagus bed, off to the right of this photo (below). Bed 3 is silverbeet and zucchini. In the retaining wall behind the vegies are my dwarf citrus trees - Tahitian lime, Meyer lemon, Washington navel orange and Emporer mandarin (all except the mature lemon are one year old) - a Pink Iona grape vine you can see growing up the post (there is a second, smaller one on the other side of the steps), and herbs.

Plus I have a series of beds along the front fence, with ginger, turmeric, ruby chard and various mints in them, and another small 1m x 0.5m bed with beans and carrots at the top of the slope of this pic:

I have eggplants planted amongst ornamentals in another area of the garden, and a big strawberry patch further along.

Making: Fench bread sticks. Hazelnut coffee ice cream.

Picking: Cucumbers, eggplant, silverbeet and my first red capsicum (sweet pepper)! Last year bugs got to most of my capsicums so I barely got a green one or two off my bushes, but this year I've been carefully checking them over and watching the first ones slowly darken from green to brown to, finally, red! Now to decide what to cook with it - at this stage, char-grilled, and adorning my pizza tonight is sounding like a pretty good option ;-)


Dinner: Homemade pizza.

Reading: The January 2008 Kitchen Gardeners International newsletter.

Contemplating: Vegetarian options for tomorrow's Australia Day BBQ.