Little green fingers...

Not much has been happening on the gardening front of things lately. We've planted, we water daily and we spend a lot of time checking and waiting. Everything's growing nicely and the garden's looking green and gorgeous. We're also really enjoying the odd bits that Jake's already harvested. It's nice to know that his goods are totally organic and I've been making quite a point about trying to teach him about being "green". I think it's going to be our kid's generation, that's going to make the changes we should've made years ago.

We've had a really good crop of baby marrows and patty pans recently and Jake has really enjoyed watching these grow. They seem to grow so quickly too. We discovered that we have to help the birds and bees a little as far as pollination goes, so we make sure we fertilize female flowers (the ones with the fruit) with the male flowers. Otherwise the fruit attached rots before it gets very big.

So, we had this baby marrow that we somehow overlooked during our many garden patrols and it wasn't picked. Jake discovered it about 2 weeks ago when it was already quite big and we decided to leave it to see just how big marrows actually get. A bit of a garden experiment, if you like. Needless to say, the gardener has been dying to pick the marrow and we agreed to pick it yesterday. Jake was hugely excited and was quite obliging in having his photo taken with his veggies. When we picked the marrow, he also discovered 3 patty pans that were pretty much enormous and so we picked those too.

I've heard that marrows don't taste so good when they're bigger, but we don't really care, it's all about appearances when you're 4 1/2 years old. Apparently, when we cook it, the best thing to do is to cut it down the length, hollow out the pips, stuff it with savoury mince, sprinkle it with cheese and bake it - sounds yummy enough to me and we'll be having it for dinner tomorrow night, so I'll let you know how it turns out. I imagine the patty pans will be quite divine cooked the same way as the marrow. We normally just chop them up and fry them lightly with onions, mushrooms and garlic and we love them that way. Jake included. He's always been pretty adventurous as far as food goes, often enjoying things I'd never dream of touching. Surprisingly, though, he's never really been a big veggie fan. This said, he loves his own veggies and is always super proud to see us all enjoying his food.

Here are some photos of Jake and his "baby" marrow. Too many, I know, but he's also just too cute and I can't help myself...

Check out the deformed carrots - don't know where those came from. Can we blame the mole???

Checking his blackberries' progress...

I love this cheesy smile. He was posing for a picture for my dad...

And check out that patty pan in the front! I still can't believe how big it is...

XXX