BBQ, beach & other treats

We brought our next set of students over to our little island shack to show them a different view of Australia. These two have been an unusual pair for us to get in that they were only 10 years old, and so a much different view of what was exciting. It was a day of new things for them. I particularly loved it when Susan spotted fruit on my lemonade tree and cried out."Look, look, this one has oranges on it. This is my very favourite tree, can we eat them." Unfortunately it wasn't to be as they weren't quite ready for picking & eating yet. They had great difficutly in believing that my potatoes were in fact potatoes as they couldn't see any growing on the little bushes and immediately wanted to dig them up & find potatoes when I explained that they grew under the ground. Again timing wasn't yet right to accomodate them. However they did get to see & pick some little cherry tomatoes, and took delight in chasing my poor chickens around the yard.

I think we were all relieved when it came time to take them down to the beach. Here they seemed determined to strip the beach of any possible shells. The locals are very protective of the few shells we get on the beach here and do discourage people from removing them. To allow a little excitement I brought some prepurchased shells (please forgive me, this is before I was really aware of how enviromentally wrong it was to take away possible marine life homes, and was having a major craft session upon first moving into the shack & celebrating my seachange)

and conveniently hid them amongst the holes the girls were excavating along the tide line. I explained that because the shells were important for the health of our marine enviroment they would be limited to taking only four shells each, so 'luckily' they just happened upon four beautiful shells each and any of the 'real' ones were left to stay, except for one. Amazing how beauty is perceived. One of the girls discarded a particularly big curved shell for a broken part of a mussel shell much to my surprise.

The other big highlight of the day for them was their first Australian barbeque. As we hadn't really prepared for this in advance & the island butcher isn't open on a Sunday, we had to buy meat from the local supermarket. To my horror the girls were thrilled when they discovered some sort of 'meat sticks' (mince of some variety covered in herbs & spices that were so colorful you knew they would be full of colour & preservatives). I tried to discourage it, but they were actually labelled as ,"BBQ sticks" and as the girls were so proud of themselves for having found the 'right' thing for a barbeque I gave in & let them have them, to this we added some prepared meat patties & set off to make hamburgers, tomato sauce & all.

You'll notice their matching set of socceroo hats, bought for them, along with a set of thongs each by hubby as an "australian" gift to take home. I didn't have the heart to tell him the first thing the girls noticed was the 'made in china' labels on the inside, oh well, something rather humerous in them making a return trip to where they came from.

The day was completed with a dog walk at the other beach joined by my mum and a play in the park. In all I guess a pretty perfect day for your average 10 year old, and not an altogether bad one for us either.

Ginger

I've been patiently waiting for what seemed to be the appropriate time to harvest my ginger. I bought a Thai ginger plant some time last year & following the instructions stuck it somewhere where it wouldn't hurt for it to become prolific, sat back & Googled some directions on what to do with it. According to one source (I'm sorry I can't quote it as it was some time ago now, and at the time I never dreamed I would be writing about it) I could "harvest" it anytime from about April through till almost September, but leaving it longer apparently results in the ginger being hotter. The tell tale sign of when to dig up the fragrant roots coincides with the leaves yellowing off & turning brown. I'm not one for overly 'hot' dishes, so I didn't want to wait too long, but my leaves didn't seem to want to change colour either. So I've been waiting & waiting for a sign. Today was the day! Yellow leaves from the tips. And then, it poured rain!!!!Not one to be detered, especially after waiting forever, I took the opportunity presented by a break in the downpour & off I went.

Wow, nothing could have prepared me for the amount of roots I got from my one little plant, all hidden under a canopy of leaf fall, & just waiting to be snapped freshly off. I washed the excess dirt off, and ideally would have liked to dry them out in the sun, but it's not to be today, so instead I brought them inside to rest on a teatowel & dry out.

In addition, today was special as we had our new home stay daughter (high school children who come to study english from overseas) and her sister come to stay at the shack overnight. Today, regardless of the rain, we went for a walk along the beaches, and had a pasta for lunch topped with fabulous tomato & herb mixture(basil, parsley, rocket, garlic chives) picked fresh straight out of the garden. It's moments like these I feel rewarded for the work that has gone in and look forward to making it a larger part of my everyday life.