I was wide awake at 5 am today and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the early morning, until my mind began racing so I got up.  I enjoy being the first one up.  I like to potter about on my own while I make tea and tidy up a little.  I am so rarely on my own, I enjoy the few minutes when I am.  I love the light and also the coolness of the air in the early morning.  I wished it was the weekend because it was sunny and I would have liked to relax but no such luck so I was at my computer working by 6am.

I made a fantastic smoothie for breakfast.  This one was good enough to have its own recipe.

Strawberry and Goji Berry Smoothie

Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1/2 punnett strawberries
• 1 banana, peeled and frozen the night before
• 2 tbsp natural yogurt
• 1 tbsp Flax seed oil
• 1 tbsp goji berries
• 1 tbsp Acai powder
• 1 tbsp Chia seeds

You know the drill – place in blender and blitz until smooth 🙂

This was completely delicious and I will definitely make this again.  I blended it for ages until it was really smooth. It was a lovely orangey-red colour with a great flavour.  And so good for you too!

We have a good routine going on a work from home day.  I tell the kids when I am on a call and they know to be quiet or go out and give me some space.  When the dining room door is shut, Mummy is not to be disturbed.  They both had friends over today so when I needed to stretch my legs and have a break, I popped in to the garden instead of having a quick chat with them.  I picked these pretty sweet peas.

Love the smell and bright colour of these little flowers.

For lunch I went and picked green beans, broccoli, 3 types of kale and spring onions plus nasturtiums.

Harvey and I made a chicken and vegetable stir fry which was yummy.  Apart from the chicken and onion, I grew all that myself 🙂

It only made 2 small bowlfuls which was not quite enough so I did give in to temptation and have a little bowl of cherry pie and custard that Lara had left on the side 😦

I couldn’t manage my garden on my own and once a week Adrian comes to work his magic.  Look what he harvested today!

Yes, garlic.  I am so pleased this grew in my garden.  Real garlic bulbs.  I was so excited!  Particularly because they looked like they had rotted so I wasn’t expecting any of them to have grown.  Adrian laid them out in the greenhouse to dry out and tomorrow I will snip off the roots and scrape off the mud and then store them :-).

I was so glad to finish work this afternoon, nearly 12 hours after I started.  I am completely fed up with my job at the moment so was hugely relieved when it was time to log off.  The sun was out again (we had torrential rain in the afternoon) so we went for a long walk in the woods over the road in the early evening sunshine.  Well, Lara and the dogs ran and Harvey ran one lap and then walked with me.  It was nearly 7pm when we got back and I got on with making dinner.

In 2 large sacks on the patio, I have been growing some potatoes and tonight I harvested my first crop.  Look how perfect they are !

I also checked out some other crops such as the tomatoes which are coming along nicely.

The blueberries turn blue and then get eaten.  Not sure if it’s birds or my resident fruit bat who can never resist a piece of juicy fruit!  I only have about 10 berries on this bush – I don’t think the local C0-Op needs to worry about the local competition 🙂

A lot of my lettuces bolted but some are ok and the seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are doing well.

I enjoy growing and eating a variety of lettuces so picked several leaves from 3 different lettuces.  What do the supermarkets do to our food to make it so tasteless?  This lettuce tastes fantastic.

Super time.  Harvey helped me choose what to have.

I asked him to choose food that was different colours, tastes and textures and he did a great job.  On our colourful plates we had tuna in mayonnaise, pomegranate, avocado, red grapes,lettuce, tomato, cucumber, home grown new potatoes (served with butter and salad cream) and half a corn on the cob each.  The potatoes were excellent.  They have so much more flavour when they have just been dug up and the texture was lovely – firm and dense, not watery like some I have had recently.

It was a delicious dinner, which I have just washed down with a Corona beer with a slice of lime in the top.

Cheers and have a great weekend 🙂