The Restory Retreat Centre

  Seasons As Companions The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music May you find joy in the warmer, greener days. In this serason. With our love. George & Matilda

A lush portion of our vegetable garden Our first winter in this valley is fast approaching. I watch with hawk eyes for signs of frost. My young Zulu helpers and I had gotten carried away when we started the vegetable patch and once the first little seedlings raised their heads late January, there were no end to what we tried to crowd into the beds. Never before in my life have I had such perfect conditions to realize a dream: to have a kitchen garden. Winter seemed far off. I now know that most of what grows so abundantly at the moment, had been planted or sown too late in the growing season. We will not see the pumpkins maturing and even the strawberries have trouble blushing up their fruit. I'm not even sure that they ought to be fruiting at the moment! The gooseberry and tomato trellises are covered in frost cloth. I am hoping to at the very least get most of the beautiful bunches of cocktail tomatoes to ripen on the vine before the frost claims my beloved annuals. I han...

On a stroll down to the river I was amazed at the change since our last walk. Autumn is blazing all around us. Matilda

Bounty of first crop figs from our kindly landlady I tried my hand at Green fig preserve and I am rather pleased with the result. It being fig season in the Southern hemisphere, I share my recipe with you. It is a combination of recipes sourced from recipe books and the internet and adapted to the availability of ingredients in my pantry.  Ingredients: 2 kg green figs, nicely swollen but not hollow. Also it is suggested that figs from the first crop be used as it gets too ripe and bitter later on in the season.  2,5 kg sugar 2 liters of water 40 ml lemon juice 1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger root, peeled 6 young fig leaves, rinsed(it enhances the fig flavor if boiled with the figs) Method: Wash figs and prick all over. Soak overnight in a solution of 30 ml bicarbonate of soda to 3 liters of water. Next day, rinse the figs well and bring to boil 3 liters of water. Add figs and boil for about 20 minutes until tender. Drain. Bring the water, s...

After reading George's post yesterday, Feeling of all ordinary human life , I was reminded of a piece I wrote around the same time, five years ago, August 2008, that is. My youngest son was still in school, but other than that nothing much has changed. And winter still gets to me just as it did then. This year's jasmine galaxy against the bluest sky                                            Sometimes, there’s not a thing in my head that seems to be worthy of putting words to it. And sometimes there are things in my head that are much too abstract to envelope them in words and post them to where my consciousness can receive them and go: “Aah! So that’s what this is all about!”        Today seems to be one of those not-worthy-of-words days where I sit around inside my head, shifting restlessly from one un-noteworthy thing to the other: Washing ...