The courgettes are glutting, and I’ve been trying out some new recipes.  This is from The Complete South African Book of Food and Cookery, with some amendments.  Very popular in our house.

3 large courgettes, thickly sliced
2 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
500g minced lamb
1 tsp flour
1/2 tsp dried oregano
200ml vegetable stock (or whatever you have available)
freshly ground black pepper
brown sugar
red wine vinegar
3 large tomatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
2 tbs grated Parmesan cheese
2 tbs soft breadcrumbs

Sauce:
2 tbs butter
2tbs flour
300ml milk
salt & freshly ground black pepper
100g feta cheese, crumbled
2 egg yolks, beaten 

Put courgette slices into a colander and sprinkle liberally with salt.  Leave 30 minutes to drain, then rinse and dry slices on recycled paper towels.  Heat oil in a frying pan and saute courgettes until golden on both sides.  Remove courgettes with a slotted spoon and set aside.

Add onion and garlic to the pan and cook gently until soft.  Turn up heat, add mince and cook until it changes colour, stirring and breaking up lumps with a fork.  Sprinkle with flour and oregano and stir in, then add stock and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Cook gently for a few minutes, stirring once or twice.  Taste and add a touch of brown sugar and vinegar as needed.

Make the sauce: melt butter in a saucepan, add flour and cook, stirring, on gentle heat for 1 minute.  Remove from heat, cool a little, add warm milk, stirring until smoothly blended.  Return to heat and stir until boiling.  Season with salt and pepper, then stir in feta cheese, remove from heat and whisk in egg yolks.  Stir 2 tbs of sauce into meat mixture.

Turn meat mixture into a greased, wide but fairly deep ovenproof dish.  Arrange tomatoes in a layer on top, then courgette slices on tomatoes.  Pour cheese sauce over courgette and sprinkle with Parmesan and breadcrumbs.  Bake in a preheated moderately hot oven (190′C/Gas 5) for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown.  Serves 6.

We’ve hit a snag with the installation of the Water Two valve that we’ve been so excited about.  The grey-water pipe that we had planned to fit it too is a "dead" pipe with no water flowing through it, and the pipe that carries the basin- and bathwater is too short to attach valve.  So, we need to extend that pipe, reduce the height of the hopper, and then fit the Water Two.  This won’t be happening for at least a few weeks, hence the need to start siphoning bathwater into the garden with a hose.

I have finally taken the lead from my friend Ilse and am siphoning bath and shower water into the garden to water the parched lawn.  Ayrton and I have it down to a fine art already after only two go’s.

The easy no-sucking way to siphon water from your bath to your garden (you need two people):

1. Cut a piece of hose long enough to reach well into your garden, all the way up the wall and through the bathroom window into the bath.
2. Person 1 is in the bathroom and holds the hose to the tap until the water runs through to the other end of the pipe.
3. Once the water is flowing through, Person 2 in the garden puts their thumb over the end of the hosepipe and shouts up for Person 1 to switch off the tap and submerge their end of the pipe into the bathwater.
4. The vacuum created will suck all the water out of the bath and into the garden below.

Last weekend we pitched a tent in the garden for Ayrton to spend his first unaccompanied night "in the wild".  He loved it, and both he and Piper are enjoying playing in it during the day, so we’ve decided to leave it up for a while.  It has also sparked an idea of planting a live willow rod dome for them this winter as a permanent hidy-hole feature in the garden.

Spending time in the tent with the children over the weekend gave me a completely new perspective on our garden,  and I enjoyed it so much  that I have taken breaks from hanging up washing in the past few days just to lie amongst the vegetation for a 10-minute rest while the weather is so hot. Here are some other good ideas that I found on the internet for staying cool during the hot weather.

I’ve also taken some photographs to show you what’s good to eat (and look at) in the garden at the moment.

You’ll see our pears are fattening up nicely.  As the tree is still small, I’ve reduced the number of little pears to just fifteen (we only had two last year) so that the fruit that we do get is of a bigger size.

The tumbling cherry tomatoes in pots on the (soon to be replaced with a lovely FSC hardwood deck) patio are starting to ripen.  I await the first taste with anticipation.  Apart from big beef tomatoes, cherry tomatoes are my most favourite tomatoes of all.

And speaking of beef tomatoes, it seems that last years harvest of zero beef tomatoes was no indication of my beef tomato growing skills.  The largest beef tomato plant is as tall as I am, and the tomatoes are fattening up at a most agreeable rate.   I’m already having visions of August evenings on the new deck eating the copious Greek salads that our gardening efforts will provide.

Our first grape vine looks set to have at least one bunch of grapes this year, hopefully the first of many, and we are so delighted with it that we are going to plant another vine on the trellis screen that Peter will be building into the deck.  I originally ordered a blackberry vine for the deck, but we will plant that elsewhere in the garden when it arrives.

We decided to go for dessert grapes to increase the edible fruit in the garden, and I wouldn’t have the patience for making wine when we have a great local winery in the area.

The herb spiral is looking more like what I intended since Peter helped me dig the giant lemon balm plant out of it and I transplanted it beneath the forsythia.  I’ve replaced it with some dill, and have added a Greek basil, curly parsley and sweet basil to the rosemary, flat-leaved parsley and tarragon already there.

We still haven’t seen a flower on our kiwi vine, and so continue to hope that next year will be the year for kiwi fruit, and I’m working on relieving our two apple trees of their aphid infestations.  So, with the good the bad, and lots of lessons to be learned as we go. 

Another five cauliflower plants had to come out this morning, following the two I removed last week.  I still have about 15 plants left, so I’m hoping hard that they’ll escape the horrible disease.  It seems that our allotment plot is riddled with club root, and I will have to review my planting choices next year to include more F1 hybrids with club root resistance, or give brassicas a break completely.

On a more positive note, the F1 Kilaxy cabbages that I planted (in the same bed as those pesky cauliflowers) have grown extremely well and are nearing eating point. 

Two of my cauliflower plants at the allotment have developed club root, and so I’ve taken them out carefully and sealed them in a plastic bag to deal with them later.  You are supposed to burn infected plants and so I guess that’s what I’ll do.  Fortunately, and touch wood, the rest of the plants in the bed seem to be okay.  I’ll be watching them like a hawk!

Piper and I built this little beauty this morning.  Notice the large wind turbine and solar panels on the roof, you may be required to use your imagination.  It is also suitable for building in floodplain areas as it’s on stilts.  Architect Dad was suitably impressed.

Our Water Two valve arrived in the post yesterday.  What a clever little contraption!  It is a switch that you fit to your bath/shower waste-water pipe that you can switch on and off to divert the grey water to your water butts when there isn’t enough rain.  We hope to have it fitted within the week, and I’ll post a picture once that’s done.

I finally returned the Dithane that I decided not to use to the garden centre today, and part-exchanged it for a grape vine for our home garden.  I went for a black dessert grape variety that is self-pollinating, and have planted it against the south-facing fence in the hopes that it will be warm and sunny enough there to bear lots of fruit.  I was inspired to buy the grape vine after watching Bill Mollison’s Global Gardener video yesterday and admiring the great grapes being grown in the Village Homes community in Davis, California.

We are getting to the point where there is something to eat from the allotment every day.  Today we picked a lettuce, some sugarsnap peas, a carrot and some salad onions for our salad tonight, some strawberries for our pudding, and a carrier bag full of redcurrants to make into redcurrant sorbet for tomorrow night’s pudding. 

I’d better get planning my food preserving and storing because it won’t be long before the allotment is chucking out more that we can consume on a daily basis.  Peak Veg!