i took a photo of a bird!

we visited ben's mum, who lives up in the adelaide hills, on friday night. neither of us wanted to drive home after she was extra lovely and fed us tasty champagne as well as taking us to chingari's, our favourite indian restaurant, so we made up a bed and stayed the night in her little valley.



in the morning his mum and i traipsed around the garden admiring the prettiness






while i dug up some of the self sown silverbeet and herbs from the lawn to pot up for my balcony



and very happily noted that she's letting the kale go to seed, so hopefully they'll pop up everywhere next year too...




when this little blue wren flitted past!



granted he did sit still for maybe 30 seconds...



but i'm still pretty happy i manage to snap two whole decent photos of him!

(do you think that's too many photos for that little writing?!)

kale for sale

Kale for Sale (i couldn't resist!) from the Food Forest

my favourite spot in the markets, Patlin's Garden's table of leafy greens. the piles of greens are a lot higher at 9am but i went walking through the gardens with ben this morning and didn't get there until 11am.

Mr Patlin was a bit disappointed that i wasn't portraying his produce at it's bountiful best and wanted to re-arrange it all for me!

leafy greens are my favourite veges, but until maybe three months ago i had no idea that the most delicious leafy green by far is kale/cavolo nero.

i'd skimmed through the cavolo nero section in maggie's harvest but not given it much thought... it wasn't until i read about kel sauteing it in olive oil and garlic, and noticed it looking all crinkly and lovely at the patlin's gardens stall, that I bought a bunch. after all, kel always seems to be right about these things!

i was expecting it to be a bit like silverbeet but, after sauteing it like kel does, i was amazed at just how different cavolo nero was to any other green i'd tried... and was immediatley converted!

So far i haven't done anything else with my bunches of kale... but i've saved the rind from my last chunk of parmigiano and have a bowl of beans soaking on the bench and tomorrow it's all going to be turned into a big pot of maggie beer's minestrone with cavolo nero. i wish i'd thought of soaking the beans yesterday and could make it for dinner tonight!

there are lots more people taking photos in august at The Byron Life.