My Winter Garden ....

As you can see in the photo above, my garden is looking rather dry & brown at the moment - a real African 'winter' garden. The big fig tree at the bottom of our garden is losing it's leaves, too. Even the blue African sky is now a wishy washy white colour ....

In some parts of the garden, it is still a little bit green. But only just. I feel extravagant - wasteful - switching the sprinklers on as I watch women carrying buckets of water on their heads on the horizon ... drinking water for their families. And here I, the 'mzungu', waste water in my garden as drinking water for - flowers ! So I guilty switch them on at night, sometimes. Just to keep the flowerbeds around the house looking lush.

When I got back from South Africa, most of my vegetable garden had gone to seed. I told the staff to take what they needed whilst I was away, but they have no need for things like rocket (below). No matter. I will dry the seed and use it for my next planting. (The crudely made wooden frame had shadecloth over it at one stage, to protect the young seedlings from birds).

The only thing I have left in my veggie patch at the moment is red lettuce. Quite a lot for a family of 3 - as you can see. So it's salads every day for us - for a while at least. It's not as though you can freeze lettuce ! In the safari camps, when supplies were VERY scarce, we could not waste a thing so used to make lettuce soup *ugh* I never really got used to it though. So you won't be seeing any recipes for lettuce soup coming up soon .....

Winter is my favourite season .... but I must admit, I'm looking forward to Spring .... which is usually at the beginning of September. If we're lucky. I mean, you can't really count on anything happening on time in Africa. There's never any hurry. Not even when the seasons change. So I'll let you know - for sure - when Spring has definitely sprung in the foothills of Kilimanjaro.