I was getting a lot of heart palpitations lately, just looking over to my neigbour's place, as surely and slowly she was turning it into a desolate piece of semi desert! When she had destroyed all the shrubs and flowers, she started destroying the lawn that was always so green and pretty! I sighed, gave her the funny eye, asked her why she was taking out all the beautiful things, and tried not to look over to where the once beautiful garden was no more! Apparently she was going to grow only indigenous plants, but in the meantime she had started to take out all the Agapanthus, which is a plant only found naturally in Southern Africa!
In the meantime the seedlings she had brought from Natal was doing well, most of them anyway, but I was a bit worried for her sake, as she had no clue about the icy cold winters of Haarlem, where the continuous frost simply kills off anything not hardy enough! And she had planted a whole bunch of summer veggies, as Natal, where she had germinated the seeds, had a s a sub tropical  climate, where you can grow stuff right through the year. I could already feel the chill in the air, and the nights had become bitterly cold, so cold that my faithful hot water bottle was now my nightly companion! The days were still okay, as we had a lot of sunshiny days, strange for this time of the year, when it could be wet and nasty!
In the meantime I had harvested some more of my monster like pumpkins. I decided to slice them up, and to then freeze every piece separately, to see if it could be done successfully! And it really works, as I was scared that it would go all soggy like tomatoes, and a few other veggies. I love pumpkin slices that is roasted in the oven, so I tried a frozen slice, and voila, it stayed nice and firm!
I got a raspberry plant from Ronalee, a cultivated one, as my wild one is a wee bitty wayward, sending out tendrils like crazy, but it only made a few flowers that dropped off after a few days. The cultivated one however, after a very slow start, and me wanting to dig it up, suddenly produced masses of flowers, and a few days ago I found the plant covered in beautiful red berries!! Now that is a bonus, as raspberries is not often sold in our supermarkets, and if you do find it, it is very expensive.
Johan came to visit, and I introduced him to my new neigbour, who told him without even a trace of feeling bad, that she was having the 'old Willow' taken out! Poor Johan was caught unawares, and nearly swallowed his pipe from shock, as I had not told anybody that she was having that done. After a moment of coughing and eye rolling, he asked her why she wanted the tree out at all? And, he also told her that it was a very old pepper tree. But she clamped up like a bally musscle, and just did not answer him, but started talking about other things she was going to do.
I was now again very upset, as I had thought that because she never mentioned it again, she had decided not to do it! So I am one very sad woman!
I love the foto where Erna and the kids were making a cake, while my little Emil was SO wanting to have a peep!