The first tomatoes

Hi. I am very excited to report that I can see my first two tomatoes growing in my garden (see above). It’s been a tiring day so this cheered me up. I have also harvested some lettuce for my lunch box tomorrow.

The bad news from the garden is something is eating my spinach..

My first thought was butterflies as there are some cabbage whites around. On googling it, it could be weevils. I have sprayed some bug spray suitable for spraying onto veg plants.. and fingers crossed!

I’m really enjoying the yellow hanging baskets we have at the front of the house. You don’t usually see these ?petunias in yellow. They remind me of primroses. I used to not like yellow very much, but these days I’m quite into it. One of my favourite summer tops is a bright lemon colour.

There is a lot of other good stuff going on in the garden. The African agapanthus is going to be great again this year.

The begonias are pretty. They have such big leaves. It feels like the flowers are too shy to show their faces, they hide underneath.

The other hanging baskets are doing well too. All tumbling down….

One of our hostas now has a big flower on it too.

Will my sunflower ever get a flower on the top? It is growing up so tall.

I still love my geraniums.

The front pots with lavender and fuschias in are nice too, if a bit messy. I don’t suppose the bees care.

Well, that concludes the mini garden tour for today. How have you all been doing? This coming out of lockdown business especially with all the extra challenges at work is doing my head in a bit. I feel like I’m wading through treacle just to get the simplest thing done.

We had some delicious sea bass last night. I bought this partly because it was British and I wanted to support British fishermen at the moment. It was so quick and easy to cook. I sprinkled a bit of salt and pepper on it, heated some oil in a pan, and then cooked the fish skin side down for 3 minutes, and then turned it over and cooked the other side for 1 minute. It was perfectly cooked if I say so myself! Really succulent and tasty. I’d left it a bit late to get the potatoes on (and they were looking a bit past their best anyway) so instead I served the fish with some fresh tortellini pasta stuffed with cheese and smoked ham and added some petits pois to this. It was a lovely meal, probably relatively healthy, ready in about 6 minutes in total and not much washing up. Tonight we are having an even lazier supper of Charlie Bigham’s moussaka, probably with carrots. I like carrots, they’re so cheap and they seem to last for ages in the fridge.

This week I’m also eating the rest of the first banana cake I made that I put in the freezer. It seems even better since it’s been in the freezer. (I think the picture below is a bit out of focus so sorry about that, but you get the idea!) So moist and delicious. I’ve been eating it au natural this time whereas last time I had it with yoghurt as below. This is definitely the recipe I’ll use from now on, if I have time for such things now that work is ramping up again. The recipe is here.

I’ll be back on Thursday as usual with more Waffle, and hopefully a little more energy!! Bye for now xx