Dinner Guests... BEDiM Day 24

Pronpt: If you could have 3 people to dinner tonight, who would you invite?

As a matter of fact, I have been out to dinner tonight, to celebrate my birthday (which is tomorrow).  We had a lovely Indian meal, even though two of the guests invited had to cancel due to one of them being in the Emergency Room.

Because I'm so deep in the Metaxas biography, and my own battle against the idiocy of it, obviously, Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be one of the guests.  I'd have to polish up my German, however.

I think Archbishop Desmond Tutu would be the second.  His work on reconciliation is amazing, and to have him alongside Bonhoeffer to discuss the second half of the twentieth century, and his views on forgiveness and reconciliation and the love of God for God's people would be amazing.

My third guest would have to be a woman, or else I'd be horribly outnumbered.  And I'm thinking Nadia Bolz-Weber.  She's Lutheran (like Bonhoeffer, although ELCA, which takes its heritage from Scandinavia rather than Germany) and she's awesome.  She's coming to Australia later this year for the Uniting Women conference, but a) I can't get that kind of time off work and b) gender-specific conferences kind of annoy me.  Especially from the UCA.

The Indira Challenge

via Sydney Morning Herald

Indira Naidoo is my role model.

I remember watching her when she was an ABC TV presenter, and I'm not sure whether she was ever a BTN presenter, but whether she was or not, she was a role model of my youth.  Even if it was just as the weekend newsreader for ABC.  I thought she was completely and utterly awesome, and still do think that.  And now I have her garden-and-cook-book.

Anyway.  (Should that be my catchprase?)

Anyway.

Indira set a challenge in her awesome book about her balcony garden: try to include something from your garden in every meal.

I'll focus on evening meals (I suspect Indira meant the same) and I know we don't manage to include something from the garden in every single evening meal, but I am going to try.  Particularly this summer, but from now on I'll be looking at Indira's book, Stephanie Alexander's book and the classic Yates Garden Guide, and doing my best to
plan ahea
d
(inside family joke)

and work towards having a four-seasons garden if we possible can.

That's the next goal.  The current goal?  The Indira challenge: use something from our garden in as many evening meals per week as possible.

The two Jamies (and the one and only Indira)

Yesterday afternoon was a tale of two Jamies; Jamie Oliver and Jamie Durie.

We went out in the afternoon to Trade Secret to pick up the Jamie Oliver 3-in-1 peeler (with julienne and soft-fruit blades) which we'd been looking at for a while and finally bought because summer is coming on and we want to have salads to eat during the week etc).

We also went to Big W to buy an additional wall planter, having bought two Jamie Durie 3-pocket planters on Saturday and planted them up early Sunday afternoon.  They look and seem to work well (so far), and we were impressed enough to decide we wanted another one.  Knowing that we eventually want to move back to a city at some point in time, and knowing that we're both happier in Inner City rather than suburbia, I'm keen on thinking about gardening in small/confined spaces.  It's not as though we've got unlimited space now, of course.  Comparatively, we have a fairly small growing space (although it's a lot more than we had when we first moved in - a story for another time) and these 12 (two 3-pocket and one 6-pocket) planter pockets give us more herbs (mostly) than we could otherwise have.

So, to keep up the garden stocktake begun in this post - we've now added (in the Jamie Durie wall planters)

The first two Jamie Durie planters,
hung from our fence with hooks
from Bunnings

• Vietnamese mint
• Chives
• French tarragon
• a Strawberry plant
• two petunias
• two nastursiums
• lettuces
• marjorum
• chives (transplanted from last year's attempt at home-made wall planters - I think that deserves its own post)
• mint
• coriander

The six-pocket planter.

I must point out that part of the inspiration for our wall-hung gardens came from Indira Naidoo, who I remember as a newsreader from from my youth.  I thought she was awesome then, and now that I have her cookbook/patio garden book, I only think her even more awesome.  She'll no doubt feature later in this blog (we keep saying that we'll choose a feature cookbook each week to menu plan from, but we haven't quite gotten there yet.)

Our Garden (without any actual up-to-date pictures)

Welcome.

Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen
Garden Companion

I wanted a way to document our vegetable garden as it grows, beyond making occasional notes in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden journal which I don't update on a reasonable frequency.  And so here we are.

I don't yet have decent photos of this years garden, however: so far we have planted the following -

• snow peas
• green beans
• zucchini
• capsicum
• basil
• nasturtiums
• lettuce
• cucumber
• spinach
• cherry tomato

We also (well, it was mostly me - the Other Half doesn't understand flowers) planted lupins (see more below) and a punnet of petunias are awaiting my pleasure - which will hopefully occur tomorrow.

We transplanted the mint, which was struggling in its pot; and we already had sage, rocket, parsley, and oregano.

A half-blooming Lupin (Remus)
from last year.

We have a pot given to us by my cousins with a bay tree, thyme, and some struggling chives; and somewhere in another pot should be some rosemary.   

Meanwhile, in the flower part of the garden, the Minty is doing beautifully, Coloniser (aka "White Surprise") is taking things over, and the bulbs are doing beautifully.

So, that's the garden as it stands.  

Perhaps at some point I'll draw a plan.  Also, tomorrow I will do a separate post about our Lupin family.  Because I love our Lupin family.