Gardening

We did some gardening today. Andre did most of the work, but I was there for support!

He cleaned around the fence. We also moved the tomatoes, chillies and peppers back to the greenhouse now that it's not so hot anymore. There are quite a few green tomatoes which will hopefully still turn red. Then we'd like to plant some more roses as well as another climbing rose against the fence now that it's cleaned out there. And I'll be putting more tulip and daffodil bulbs in between the roses next time I feel like I have a little bit of spare energy!

Picked another monster marrow- a new record at just under 3kg!!

The previous one however is still not finished after serving at least 3 dinners and a batch of muffins.

A relaxing weekend enjoying home grown food

My mom and Jürgen came to visit this weekend and we made this delicious roast dinner this afternoon.

The marrow, pumpkin and carrots were from our garden. Only need to plant potatoes next year and get a cow and it will be all home grown! Mom also helped me bake scones yesterday which we enjoyed with some strawberry jam and clotted cream in the afternoon and we made zucchini muffins for breakfast.

This is the first pumpkin picked from our garden. (If you click on the picture below to enlarge it you can see the pumpkins growing in the background in front of the greenhouse.)

Andre and Jürgen planted two more roses today. We got the first pink rose from Andre's dad and Marietjie when they were visiting here and it's been doing so well. It's constantly had new flowers. Today they planted a yellow and a red one. I also got more tulips and daffodils today which I still need to plant.

Last week we had some of the first beetroot from the garden. I roasted them in the oven with some olive oil, salt and pepper. I'm not a huge fan of beetroot but they were quite good.

And to end the weekend and this post with: Today I'm 35 weeks pregnant. :-) 

34 weeks

Only 6 more weeks to go to our due date! The time is flying! I am getting slightly more uncomfortable at times, especially on days when I've been very busy doing physical things, moving around a lot as I do at work or doing a bit of gardening. On Friday my one hip joint was so so painful I could hardly walk, but luckily it seemed to improve with some rest over night and has been fine again since Saturday morning. But I really can't complain, I think I've been very lucky not to have had any problems. This morning I need to go to the doctors to have blood taken for tests and tomorrow morning we have an appointment with the midwife. Andre changed his shifts so he can come along too. 

We've been taking a picture every other week, but from now on we'll be taking one every Sunday. You never know when the last photo might be! From the photos it doesn't seem as though there's been much change size wise and 30 weeks actually looks bigger than yesterday's 34 weeks. It always depends on what I am wearing but from the start I'd decided not to be wearing the same for every photo. It's just what I was wearing on that day. I'll show you some time what happens when I wear black...

So back to work again this morning. Only 3 more weeks of work left. I am looking forward to having some time at home, getting the last bits organised and resting a bit.

Baby room and more photos

We found curtains for baby's room this weekend. We decided to go with the shorter ones for now as there were no longer ones we liked anyway to fit the window.This way they're also above the radiator and cot and take up less space in the already small room. They're black out curtains but we might have to get a black out blind to go on the window as well as some light still does come in. We'll see how it goes, might work for winter at least when she arrives. Normally I would not have hanged curtains with creases but the label said no ironing... I suppose perhaps because of the black out lining it has. The creases will now just have to hopefully "hang out".

We're still waiting for the wall stickers to arrive. They're coming from HongKong. Nowhere could I find ones I liked from the UK and they were way more expensive here too.

A couple of weekends ago a good friend took some pictures of Andre, me and bump. This was done at 32 weeks. We didn't plan to do photos as a couple but I'm so glad we did and have these pictures now. Not long to go now! Less than 4 weeks left at work!

Some people asked on fb how Andre managed to smile so sweetly on the photos I posted. Well, below is the proof that he didn't half the time and just about each pose had some funny faces first before I told him to smile! (You can click on the photos to see them larger.)

Not very flattering, but we clearly had lots of fun!

Andre does prefer being behind the camera, even if he has to take a 2year old's camera away from him!

30 week maternity photo shoot

To celebrate 30 weeks into my pregnancy and also to have a little test run doing a maternity photo shoot, Andre took some photos of me out in our garden. It was a practise run to learn what works and what doesn't and we'd like to take a walk in the forest and to a nearby field to take some more photos soon when I have the energy! Here's a few from this afternoon.

Baby bump progress - 30 weeks today!

Coming home to a full veggie garden

The garden survived pretty well while we were away and with it being so hot. I picked eight courgettes yesterday evening and the biggest weighed well nearly 900g. The other seven aren't far behind in weight either. There are still plenty smaller sized ones which I've left on the plants as we've obviously already got more than we can eat!

I've been searching for all kinds of courgette recipes now. I've made these courgette cakes which were really good. Served them with a salad.

Last night I made a vegetable lasagne. Well, it had some meat in too in the end but lots and lots of that very big courgette you see in the picture on the scale.

Tonight I made chicken enchiladas with this courgette and corn salsa.

I've made courgette bread before, which is similar to banana bread, and I'm thinking of baking courgette muffins this weekend instead of the loaf and to then freeze them. I also found this recipe for courgette fries which I'm going to try.

I think Andre might not let me plant courgettes again next year after this season!