My Lovely Garden

My beautiful Thanksgiving cactus flowered this year.  I am delighted.  

I love my garden. ❤️ It's very small, but it's amazing, and really does save us a lot of money, and provides organically grown vegetables and herbs, so, it is better for our health too.  It mostly supplements my strict diet needs and the occasional fresh vegetables for our meals.

The freshness and taste of garden picked produce is also far superior than bought foods.  Vegetable gardening and harvesting does take more time and work than buying stuff already cleaned and packed at the store, but the work is well worth it and also gets me out into the sunshine and fresh air occasionally... something I probably wouldn't do otherwise.  

I'm also trying out new ideas for expanding the area for planting... I want to encourage others who have tiny gardens to try some of the ideas, but need to see for myself first, how the new ideas work and if they are worth the trouble.  One idea, is bottle-planting for the bedroom window, and the other is bottle-greenhouses for early planting of summer vegetables while it's still too cold to plant summer vegetables outside.

I have also been trying out dried vegetables and herbs in a biltong drier... very slow going, but it does work. 

Intrepid-Shem has been coming the last two weeks to help me dig Door Garden's... If anyone wants the pattern for this, please write to me on pattyskeys@gmail.com  It's a big job to prepare the gardens, but when done well they can last a long time, with only small-added preparation of beds needed each following season.  We only ever did one door garden originally, and it has for a good few season's now, produced the biggest and best crops.  Definitely worth the extra work to prepare the beds well in the first place.

The biltong maker and it's air-extraction fan are small and it therefore takes ages to dry a small batch of vegetables at a time. It is also a very week and easily broken design and not worth the amount we had to pay for it. 

I feel an urgent need to dry faster and therefore made a request for donations recently to buy a proper vegetable dryer.  I had no response to my donation plea.  I am going to buy the dryer anyway, but will be using money I had put away for my youngest son's inheritance. He has Asperger's syndrome, and if I died, I'd want him to be properly cared for.  This is also extremely important to me and my peace of mind. 

I feel anxious and desperate to prepare for harder times, so I really do believe we need the good dryer right now.  Please see the post written on the 5th of this month, with the donation plea and banking details on it if you feel you can help.  I would love to replace at least some of that money in my son's inheritance account if at all possible.  

Yesterday, on my Greek Name Day, by littlest sister passed by with some yummy gifts for me.  What a lovely surprise.  My dad also called to wish me a Happy Name Day, and I was so grateful he never called me Pat when he called.  My true name is NOT Pat.  I AM PANAYIOTA.  It was so wonderful to be treated and remembered on my Name Day.  Some of my Facebook friends also referred to me as Panayiota when they wished me yesterday, so that was also very special.

Some photos from a recent video call with my dad and littlest sister.  I love these snapshots I did during our WhatsApp video call... they are so much more natural than posed photos and capture expressions that make it real for me.  I love my family so much ❤️ 

Some of my beautiful orchids that are flowering at this time

Thank you for sharing with me, some of the people and things I LOVE.  I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into what I've been up to lately and our beautiful garden and that I've inspired you also to grow and save too.

~ Panayiota