My favourite vegetable...

Has to be Garlic. Soooo yummy roasted whole, rubbed onto bread, fried with kale. And also very satisfying to harvest and pretty to plait.

I've been doing lots of gardening over the last week at a community farm just north of Dunedin. It's been a fantastic week of discovering new things about gardening, such as comfry being a fantastic mulch, apart from for potatoes who prefer pine needles, that some people like to garden using lunar calendars which indicate when a plant is drawing energy into its roots or pushing energy into its leaves/fruit, how to make a wormery, that radishes provide a good growing mulch for brasicas and that guinea pigs are the best lawn mowers, and that buttercup and convulvula are by far my least/most favourite weeds depending on how you look at things.

This is the view from the garden on a misty morning -


Many exciting new discoveries have been made in the kitchen as well - the most peculiar by far being that marmite and strawberry jam make for a very tasty mix! Crazy I know. I was skeptical at first too, but just try it... (I also hear that they are bringning out a new flavour marmite in the UK made from Guiness - is this true?) People seem to love marmite here even more than they do in the UK - I've not been to a house yet that doesn't have at least one jar.

Other kitchen discoveries are date and cabbage salad - yummy I promise just try it! And the best ever vegan chocolate brownie recipe ever made with raspberries picked in the garden.

The place I'm staying is an intentional community called Volco (short for voluntary co-operation) that was set up well over 20 years ago. There's about 8 residents and a fair few more people who contribute their time and energies to the garden and other stuff too. It's been really interesting to see how the folks here make things work. Everyone seems to be very thoughtful about how they are interacting with others which makes for a very interesting time. Lots of creative play going on - including this mother oven -


Dunedin itself is a great little city. Sister city to Edinburgh so they say. It even has an Arden St, Princes St, The water of Leith running throught the Botanic Gardens etc etc...

Here's some pictures from the Botanics - this is a crazy fly eating plant - the picture should technically be the other way up, but I quite like it like this...


And a beautiful raindropped rose from the sweet scented rose garden -


I had an awesome time on Saturday night celebrating the Chinese New Year here. There were dragons and singing and all sorts of food stalls and bits and pieces going on. Then fireworks at midnight (typical though that as soon as I got my camera out it all finished... humphh). This all conincided with freshers week shenanigans - so lots of very young looking people running around doing silly things, making me feel very old, but I also got IDd 3 times making me feel ridiculously young - I think it was the pigtails and wooly cardy that confused them.

And the charity shops here rock!! Look NEW SHOES! Well, now that I have a car I may as well fill it with something!

Here's some piccies of the Otago peninsular, which is pretty. The boat house with an interesting colour choice is actually at Portobello Bay (Scottish namesakes continue).