I know it's still winter, but.............................

Cape Town had a cold front last week (I know you're thinking "it's winter, of course you had a cold front" but we've had the mildest winter I can remember and most of it hasn't felt like winter at all...) which promted mom to light the coal stove in the kitchen. This is such a treat and all of our cooking and baking happens as it would have a hundred years ago with temperatures at the mercy of whoever takes responsibility for stoking the fire.


The house is divinely warm and we all spend most of our time crammed around the kitchen table. I still have to venture outside to feed the chickens and on one such morning the gardening bug bit. Hard. I dug the seed box out of the garage and finally put to use some of the toilet roll inners that I'd forced the family to collect for me for months! I only planted a small seed tray but it's got some basics that I can't wait to get into the veggie boxes once the threat of cold fronts has passed... the tray has pride of place next to the stove but gets moved around the kitchen during the day so as to catch as much sunlight through the skylight as possible.