One nice thing about our new home is that it has an established Kitchen garden, although at the moment it is probably what you would call `fallow'. The previous owners let it die off as they were moving so we have a bit of work to do but the basics are there. There is a large rosemary bush, some tomatoes, basil, a Curry tree, parsley, mango, orange, mandarin and lemon trees, plus quite a few other things which we can't identify but which look very interesting. One of the pluses is that we have several tall and prolific paw-paw (papaya) trees and we currently have 6 large paw paws on our kitchen bench and yesterday we gave 2 away. The problem we had though was how to pick them. Anyhow Alan has invented a `paw-paw picker' which is 2 old broomsticks joined together with a plant pot cable tied on the end. The trick then is to twist the pot so that the fruit breaks off and lands in the pot. Sometimes works sometimes doesn't but it is better and safer than a ladder and we can use it for mangos too :)
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.
Thames Sacred River by Peter Ackroyd; The Olive Route by Carol Drinkwater: The Landscape of Love by Sally Bauman; Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope;The Secret Diary of a Grumpy Old Woman by Judith Holder; in praise of slow - how a world wide movement is challenging the cult of speed by Carl Honore; Not Quite Ripe by Debra Byrne; Night Time is my time by Mary Higgins Clark; The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt; Living the Good Life by Linda Cockburn; The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton; A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle;
