Many years ago...or once upon a time...the dear man and I bought our very first house in Edgemead.
He spent a long time examining which way the sun would shine at a certain time, which wind would blow where and when and how much ground we had to do all sorts of things with!
While I, well I was plotting which wall to chop down, which room to extend and what colour to paint the house eventually!
We were, and still are, a very good team.
The dear man was delighted with our large plot. In those days the powers that be were very generous with the piece of ground you got with your cheapish house. They seemed to understand that you would not always be broke and perhaps later you could do something with your little piece of ground.
Peter chose to garden.
We started with the grass and with ripping out all those horrible Port Jackson trees that seemed at the time to invade every inch of ground in Edgemead.
Then he made a vegetable garden. So we grew radishes ( by far our finest crop!) and have you never noticed how very little one can do with radishes? Just little additions to a salad or side garnishes to a platter. If you were very clever, you could make roses out of them which today is very passe. And one could plant them in between all the other things to distract the insects. They were a kind of bait, as it were, which I think is quite nasty to a humble radish.
The dear man also grew tomatoes, and gem squash, melons, carrots and leaves that I think were meant to be lettuces.
He also, long before it was fashionable, believed in organic gardening. He had a compost heap and eventually compost bins which were sort of upside-down black bins. The bees loved them for they made perfect hives. Unwittingly we almost became beekeepers as well!
We even had our two-week-at-a-time gardener digging telephone directories straight into the garden beds because they were 'bio-degradable', you know. I thought perhaps they should at least have been shredded or something, you know, but the gardener man would have none of it.
My pet peeve was when the gardener would go forth into the fields and pick his 'crop' which he would then dump, dirt and all, into my kitchen sink. Duty done, he would then piss off and leave me to make sense of the mess.
Now here in Plattekloof the gardening took a back seat for a while because the dear man was far too occupied with his career, but once that came to an end, he resumed his interest in gardening.
And so, as most of you know, I have a wonderful herb garden and a glorious grape-vine covering our pergola.
But the nutty gardener is back and he keeps planting all sorts of seeds for all sorts of veggies, which is great but bear in mind our house is up for sale! We might never reap the harvest of his efforts and perhaps the new owner will not particularly want a vegetable garden!
And now the dear man wants an earthworm farm!
He really does! The very idea gives me the creeps. And what if we sell the house? It's bad enough having a dog to worry about and now I must fret about the worms?
And we have gone one step further than the telephone directories.
We need to keep the birds away from our grapevine. Apparently, old CD's, hung on thread from the pergola. will do the trick. They catch the light and so scare the birds away! How elegant!
Do you know any gardener who keeps digging up his beetroot crop to examine the beetroot, and then if they are not big enough, well then he just replants them until they are?
And my blender has been hauled out of the cupboard because some woman who has written a book says your compost decomposes more quickly if you blend all the waste first.
The dear man was demonstrating this to Rodwell, our gardener, who remarked quite correctly: " It looks like sewerage!"
Say no more!

So many posts buzzing around in my head! Which one to choose? Every day a new thought pops up in my head and it's ( please note the correct use of the apostrophe!) so difficult to decide what it is I want to say today. So most days I don't say anything.
Sometimes I think I should just write a magazine post which I think would be a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Other times I have this great big post in my head with all sorts of things to say, unfortunately some of which would upset a few people. But I've been down that road and am reluctant to repeat it!
The dear man says: "*%$@# That! Perhaps he is right and I have earned the right to say what I feel and, what's more, what I know is true because I've learned the lesson and I've walked the road.
My dad used to say: ' What I've forgotten, you still have to learn!'
My dear nail lady and I had a lovely session the other day when she was talking about Christmas presents and her problems about how to choose just the right one for the right person, and she has a few extra people to think about right now because she has met a very special man whose family now features on her gift list.
So I gave her a few ideas and she was so delighted and made copious notes and exclaimed:' How do you know so much?"
Well, after 62 years I should know a few things about gift-giving!
My tickey saga continues. The site that I visited and unthinkingly e-mailed turned out to be very larney. Mint coins in fancy boxes and all sorts of details and information that I only read later ( after I had e-mailed). Thank goodness I didn't follow the dear man's suggestion to 'clean them up a bit". You know, a bit of Silvo and a lot of elbow grease and they'll look as good as new!
Apparently, that's the worst thing you can do.
So here I have a man phoning me from Jo'burg about my tickeys and I am so embarrassed. I have 400 tickeys dating back to the 1920's all thrown together into a Black Cat peanut butter jar. As the dear man observed: 'The peanut butter jar is probably worth a fortune!' Interestingly, all it has is a label that says ' Black Cat peanut butter.' No warnings ( Contains nuts!), no nutritional information, no list of ingredients.
The tickey has occupied my thought for a few days now. Young people have no idea what it was.
When South Africa converted from imperial measures to decimal we used to have a song on the radio that played over and over until we all knew it off by heart.
It went something like this:
'Decimal Dan, the rand cents man changing cents for pennies whenever he can.
One for one, and two for two
And two and a half for a tickey!'
A tickey was used in the public telephone box to make a call, hence the name 'tickey box'.
When I was a Brownie, we had the mantra which we recited before we left for our Brownie meeting. ( By the way, I am not talking about those delicious chocolatey biscuit things!).
It went: 'Hankey, pencil.notebook, string. Tickey for subs and a tickey to spend.'
Why we needed the string I have yet to figure out.
The tickey to spend was up to us. We could use it to catch the bus home from Sea Point, or we could walk home along the Main Road ( I kid you not! We could walk home along the Main Road on a Friday night!) And then we could pop into the Greek cafe and spend the tickey on sweets!
And there was a dear old lady who lived just down the road from us who grew the most wonderful parsley in her front garden. Organic too ( although that was not a word we were familiar with at the time!) And she sold it to her neighbours for a tickey a bunch.
And then there was the friend of my older sister who went off to the UK on a holiday. She wanted to send some postcards home and asked at the post-office for three tickey stamps. The clerk looked at her in bemusement and replied, in a typical British way: " Madam, all our stamps are sticky!"
While Googling away about tickeys, I saw them described as ' South Africa;s most beloved coin.'
Small wonder then that on the bidorbuy site I saw a 1943 tickey sold for R255!
And we have 4 rolls of them!
Anyone want to buy a tickey?

I have always believed that I was born on a Thursday. So I have gone through life bemoaning the fact that Thursday's child has far to go. That conjured up images of battling away, sweating away, working my arse off like forever! And probably getting nowhere!
Today, the dear man and I were trying to de-clutter our lives a little bit.
I found an envelope with a lovely laminated certificate, written by my big sister, and some photo-copied editions of the Cape Times and the Cape Argus, as published on the 11th April 1947.
The day I was born!
And it was a Friday!!!
Well! Fridays child is loving and giving! I have always thought that I have been given short shrift!
Some headlines from the newspapers on the day I was born:
Farmers refused right of grazing.
Cause of flabbiness in Cape fish
Gold Key for Princess...City's 21st birthday present.
Garlicks offers rayon blouses for 14 shillings and 5 pennies!
Ok bazaars sells wine glasses for 6d each ( so do the maths!)
So here I am, loving and giving!
The other thing is that we found a jar full of tickeys!
The dear man's Grandfather had collected them and rolled them into little rolls, according to the date, and each roll adding up to 10 shillings. We are planning to sell them if we can find a buyer. Unfortunately, there is not a 1931 tickey in the lot. That would be worth about R35 000 today!
However, the point of this post is that something I have always believed about myself has turned out to be untrue.
It will take a while for me to accept that I am Friday's child!

And I thought you were in my imagination!
The dear man and I attended a wedding on Saturday.
It was a strange wedding in that the main people involved came from different backgrounds and different cultures. And they also spoke different languages!
But it was beautiful in that love knows no culture or history. The language of love is universal!
Two young people who gaze into each others eyes and who speak only to each other at that moment?
There are no borders here nor any rules that intervene!
I have said it before and I will say it again.
Weddings always make me cry.
Because it is a beginning. And those two beautiful young people do not know what lies ahead.
However, that is another post and that is not why I am here.
I was totally entranced because I have never before seen in one place at the same time so many lovely young men!
When I commented to the dear man, he said, rather drily, that he wouldn't know as he had never fancied young men!
BUT! I found my Timothy Simmons, almost as though I had conjured him up out of my imagination!
You see, he is a character in my chapter of 'Chain Story", the book that Caroline and I are writing as a sort of joint project.
And there he stood, totally as I had imagined him!
I almost felt like going up to him to ask his name.
He was so much my character that the dear man did some skulking with his i-phone and took some ( unobtrusive) photos all in the interests of research, you understand!
And there was another divine young man, smartly dressed in a 3 piece pin-striped suit, wearing a pair of brown leather shoes with no laces! That really intrigued me. Before I left ( having had several glasses of wine), I made it my business to go up to him and ask, out of interest, why?
He laughed and gave me some silly sort of explanation, something to do with two pairs of shoes and one pair of laces, and he seemed to be totally amazed that I had even noticed! His name was Joshua.
I know it sounds stupid, but I found these young men just so interesting and attractive. Where, I wondered, were their young women?
Oh, to turn the clock back!
However, it was just wonderful to meet a figment of my imagination.
And when the dear man showed the photos to my co-author tonight, she agreed.
It was exactly as she imagined Timothy Simmons to be! So! do keep up with Chain Story. And meet Timothy Simmons.
That is, if Caroline allows him to exist.
She might just wipe him out with a stroke of her pen ( figuratively speaking, of course!)

This isn't a recipe so keep reading!
In the latest Food and Home three well-known people wrote about their food memories. It sparked my interest and I spent a few happy minutes remembering my own.
It has always occurred to me that cooking is an amazing thing. We have a finite number of ingredients at our disposal. Sure, occasionally someone will come up with something new, although somewhere in the world it is not, and that becomes the flavour of the month or the 'must-have' ingredient in any restaurant worth its salt ( pardon the pun!)
Take pomegranates for example or quinoa or preserved lemons, balsamic vinegar and rose-water. All 'new' ingredients.
However, I digress.
With this finite number of ingredients we manage to do new, delicious and wonderful things with them. At least some of us do.
My mom was a great cook but she never used a recipe. She made it all up as she went along. She cooked basic food and simple recipes but she actually disliked cooking, so she was very happy when her 'girls' got old enough to do a stint in the kitchen. My folks seldom went out to eat. It wasn't big in those days and anyway, they couldn't afford it.
My mom's once-a-year treat was when my dad would take her out on their anniversary. He would take her to the Railway Buffet on Cape Town station.
Don't laugh. I'm sure you are conjuring up an image of a sort of down at heel canteen serving baked beans and bangers, and stewed coffee in thick chipped mugs!
You would be wrong. The Railway Buffet was actually quite up-market for the day. It was a 'silver service' restaurant with crisp linen, heavy silver cutlery and an extensive menu of well-cooked food. Those WERE the days! And I do wonder whatever became of all that beautiful silver when the restaurant eventually closed its doors!
As the youngest in the family I was still at school and then college when my sisters were already working. So it fell to me to do the shopping and cooking when my folks went away on holiday. That is how I learned to cook.
I always maintained that anyone who could read could cook. Today I am not so sure.
Recipes take a lot for granted and many of them assume that the reader is already familiar with cookery terms and basic methods, which often they are not. Many aspiring cooks fall apart if they do not have one or two ingredients and lack the knowledge and confidence to simply substitute them with something else. But that's how new dishes get created, isn't it?
My mom used to be very impressed with me and loved it when I cooked. I introduced her to mushrooms, the canned variety...ugh I can't remember when last I have used canned mushrooms but fresh mushrooms were virtually unobtainable then...and she thought them very posh. She felt they lifted food from ordinary to sublime.
I always laugh to myself when I remember coming home one day and asking what she was making.
"Carrot stew," she replied and then, seeing the look on my face, hastened to add, " It's got mushrooms in it!"
Gus Silber, one of the people who wrote in the aforementioned article, said the worst day of his life was when his mom discovered Wenresepte in the Huisgenoot magazine. He felt that his mom's culinary skills declined from that day.
I can't help agreeing with him. I have always hated recipes of that sort.
You know: Mix crushed cream crackers with some margerine and make a crust, Mix 1 tin of pilchards with a packet of brown onion soup and 3 tablespoons of custard powder and put into the crust. Sprinkle with grated cheese and some dried parsley and bake for 20 minutes.
OK so I made that up. Please don't try it!
But I'm sure you know what I mean.
I hope I'm not stepping on any toes here, especially if you own a copy of Wenresepte!
I'm not a food snob. I'm all in favour of a clever cheat when it's called for.
But Wenresepte isn't cheating. It's disgusting!
On the other hand, there are recipes around that are also awful simply because the creator is just trying too hard. Taste magazine has a lot of those. I love the magazine. It is a veritable visual feast but I seldom find myself saying, " I really must try that." And then when I do find something I fancy it is usually a 'cheat' recipe: 'Take 1 WW ready-cooked chicken, 1 packet of WW mushroom sauce...etc, etc!
I wonder what my children's food memories will be. They often ask my advice or want a recipe so I think I've done ok.
I spend a lot of time talking about food with both of them. Caroline shares her successes with me and Richard tells me on a daily basis what he will be cooking that night.
Then he helps himself to some fresh herbs from the kitchen before he goes home.
If you think about it our lives are inextricably linked with food. We celebrate with it and we mourn with it. We plan most of our life around it.
Someone once said, and I think it is the only sensible and decent thing I ever heard him say:
' The good Lord made sure we would enjoy all the things we have to do to survive, Sex...and eating!'

We went up to Langebaan last Saturday.
I spent most of the weekend in the company of unicorns, panthers, pirates and I also met the Munsters, which turned out to be a whole lot of fun.
I'm very much afraid that I forgot about meatless Monday and found myself halfway through a Knysna pizza at Pearly's when the penny dropped!
OK! It was just a bit of ( you guessed it!) bacon, but meatless my meal was not. The dear man couldn't care about meatless Monday, but he had chosen fish anyway which is often his meal of choice.
I felt too dreadful. Perhaps like a Roman Catholic of the past when meat could not be eaten on a Friday. And if you did eat meat on a Friday, to confession you would have to go!
I felt so guilty and thought I should indeed rush off to confession!
It put me in mind of the programme Father Ted, which I love and which pokes gentle fun at the church and its followers.
Dougal is Father Ted's assistant.
In one particular episode, he asks a bishop about the meatless Friday rule. In those days, if one ate meat on a Friday, straight to hell you would go, and apparently a great many meat-loving Catholics went that route.
Then, you see, the church changed the rule and suddenly it was OK to eat meat on a Friday!
Whatever, enquired Dougal, became of all those folk who had gone to hell because they had eaten meat on a Friday?
Now that the rule had changed?
He was just wondering!
I have decided that I simply cannot live with this rule.
I will do one meatless meal every week but what that day will be will be up to me and my mood!

For the past two Sundays we have had a showhouse.
I have tried very hard to avoid it but was persuaded that it was a good thing. So the boards went up outside and suddenly the fact that our house was REALLY for sale hit me.
Viewing was meant to be by invitation only but I know for a fact that at least two people just rocked up to 'have a look'.
It's an uncomfortable feeling knowing that strangers are wandering around your home, peering into all the rooms and looking at all your possessions.
We had to disappear for 3 hours on each occasion and take Winston, our dog, with us. Fortunately the Avnits were kind enough to have the three of us for the afternoons in question.
Preparing for a showhouse or a private viewing is not a lot of fun.
The cleaning and tidying is exhausting. Fresh flowers every time is expensive.
Clearing the clutter is annoying as I hide things in cupboards and drawers and then I can't find them afterwards!
Suddenly you are aware of that little stain, this little mark, the wonky doorknob and all those other little things that we learn to live with and eventually don't notice.
And as the viewing process at the moment is ongoing, we feel as though we are living in a museum, afraid to bring out all the evidence of habitation because it will all have to be packed away again.
Even my kitchen looks as though it is never used. I have to think about what I cook as fishy smells are not very appealing and a messy hob and splattered tiles are a pain to clean up. I would like to live on toast at this stage but then the poor toaster has to get packed into a cupboard each time. Apparently people in showhouses don't make toast!
It's called 'staging' your home.
People get put off if it is too obvious that someone lives in the house. Silly, isn't it?
We are having portfolio photos done today for a prospective buyer who lives far away.
After that we have another private viewer coming around.
The latter I only found out about after I had started cooking...being 'meatless Monday", guess what it was?
Fish!
So today I have to spray Oust in my kitchen in the hopes of getting it smelling sweet again.
My fingers are crossed that we find a buyer.
I am very tired of living in a showhouse.