Monday, August 18, 2008

The Rains Clear, The Oven Begins...Well Sort of Anyway

It has rained on and off ever since my last post. When my hubby was at home, it rained, when he went to work it stopped. But FINALLY yesterday it was dry and clear. So my hubby got out there in the sunshine and pretended it was warm.

First he had to clear the piles of sand and gravel that he had dumped in what turned out to be the 'perfect' spot for the wood fired oven. I donned gloves and pulled up all the overgrown nettles out and gave them to the chooks. It's a shame they were just too big to cook up and eat, because nettles are one of my favourite greens. But now that they were longer than my arm, they would retain their grittiness, even when cooked for a great length of time.

Now my hubby started digging down to level the spot. Our entire block is on a gentle slope, so no matter where the oven was to be positioned, there would be digging involved. Five minutes into digging he hit a problem - concrete. Now here's the irony, the concrete would have to be removed so that we could lay the slab for the oven?!

So what did we do? Well, after much discussion, we decided that the oven would be better off in the spot I first suggested. aThis spot is closer to the house, right next to our pergola. The reason it didn't go here originally was because my hubby took one look at the spot and decided that it wasn't big enough for his moster of an oven. Now it was a matter of measuring the spot - yep, it was just the right size. Imagine that. I promptly gloated and my hubby decided that I had never offered up that spot - it was all his idea! Hmph!

The only teeny little problem with this 'new' perfect spot was that it is also our current potato patch. So out came the shovel (maybe I should not have gloated so much earlier - it was now my job to relocate three seperate batches of spuds.

In the process of all that digging I managed to find three brassicas. It would be nice if they turned out to be Brocolli, I so miss the flavour of homegrown...

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