A new life for an old bathtub

A few weeks ago, after much harping by myself about my (lack of) vegetable gardens, my husband moved the old bath tub from the house into the garden, where we had talked about putting the raised beds.
This idea was good for me because it gave me the opportunity to see if this was the best place for growing vegetables without too much commitment. For my husband, no doubt, it worked for him too, thinking that the vegetables would fail to grow, thus, I'd end up losing interest and move onto something else.
To everyone's surprise, the vegetables we planted have really taken off. The soil is some we had left over, it's turf underlay and apparently it's quite sandy with water absorbing crystals and lots of chicken poo.
We've planted different lettuce, spinach, beetroot and some herbs; coriander, basil, mint and parsley. It's going gang busters!
The seedlings were tiny when we put them in. These photos were taken at the beginning of the week and already they are noticeably bigger.

Must rush, I'm madly trying to finish Jonathan Franzen's Freedom in the next week. The Corrections is one of, if not my favourite book, but I'm not loving Freedom as much. Has anyone else read it?
Seven days!

Smug earthy types

Yesterday we went to the organic markets at Downey Park. I thought it would be a very pleasant thing to do. I'm not sure if I was a bit grumpy because I got up so early, or if it was my imagination, but I seemed to be met by some very smug earthy types flogging their wares. They obviously had me pegged as a petrol-guzzling consumer at first sight.
Enquiring about the price of produce if it has no label is apparently a no-no, this means the price is too obscene to be printed, ie mushrooms for $24 a kilo.
Anyway I got this beautiful spinach which was the find of the morning.

It was also an invaluable exercise to press upon my husband a sense of urgency to get our vege gardens up and running. I've been using the tried and tested technique known as 'nagging', but it doesn't seem to be getting me very far.

I've been studying the whole vege garden thing. I've watched an entire series of Jamie Oliver, can't think what the show is called but he digs up beautiful vegetables from his magnificent kitchen garden and cooks with them.

Jamie has a Brian to look after his garden full-time.

 I won't have a Brian, but then again, I don't think our garden will be on a scale that requires someone full time.

Brian does amazing things like growing strawberries in a hanging basket, and planting a single potato only to dig up three tonnes of them six months later.

I made this little purchase recently on Ebay. The cane bookcase will be given a coat of paint soon, and fits neatly between two bedside tables. I think it's cute.

If you're squeamish look away now.

Theodore Buttons has grown into quite the stealth hunter and regularly brings us trinkets like mice, some still alive, and rats, like this beauty. He brings them into the house from outside and takes them directly to the pantry, I think because this is where we keep our food?

I'm not sure if you've ever spotted friend-material amongst the celebrity elite, but I have. I wish I was friends with Nigella. I really like her.

She has her own talk show you know. I didn't know until I found a dvd of it at the library. It's hard to watch at first, then it grows on you.

Yesterday I took Peaches to a birthday party. Three hours early. Turns out it was on July the 10th, but not at 10am as I'd written on the calendar. At least I had the right day, and we hadn't missed it all together. We went back three hours later and had a lovely afternoon.