Not much work done

My poor husband has had to revert to doing the gardening as our dysfunctional family who should be doing it are not putting in the work required.

They get free accommodation, free water and power plus they are using furniture we have in excess to our needs but they do not want to put even an hour a day into the garden! Our agreement was that they run the garden and get our facilities free plus as many vegetables etc that they need.

If they have work - landscaping etc - they are up and out by 7 in the morning - if they have nothing to do except help us out they don't get up before 10 - it is very frustrating as weeds are now sprouting up everywhere and what was starting to look like a well run garden is reverting to a wilderness!

I hope we can get some work done as I have spent a lot of time and money on obtaining plants which now sit in sleeves waiting for planting.

Oh the joys of living in Africa!

Tomatoes and African Cucumbers

We have harvested our first good tomatoes and some African cucumbers - spiky to look at and sweet to eat. So salad is on the menu again as our lettuce is also big enough to pick. Good red and variegated lettuce that tastes like butter.

Starting the new herb garden

Herbs have always been my passion and some years ago I had 173 varieties.

The Vumba Botanical gardens took plants from me for their herb garden.

With draught and lack of time and staff the herb garden was no more but now i am starting it up again!

Here a bed is being cleared - we had day lilies and roses in the bed - now we have herbs - lavender among the roses and a selection of culinary herbs as seen in the

second photograph below.

The dining room and outside dining area look over the bed and so I have placed mainly culinary herbs here - it is also near to the kitchen for ease of picking what I need for my meals. This is just the start - 30 more seedlings have been obtained and are now ready to be planted. What a joy to have a really good selection of herbs again!

I managed to get hold of four Wilde Als plants to replace my old plant that was being eaten by white ants. One will go in this bed - close by the kitchen for easy of cutting and making herbal tea - the other three will go in a wild garden which will be where the original herb garden was situated.