After yesterdays rain the sun has been out all day Sunday. Not quite clear blue skies – there has been the occasional cloud to send a chill back in the air – but not too bad and with it the garden has taken on a different pulse. It needed yesterdays wet to take on another spurt and now the trees are green with leaves . This also means that the beds are thick with weeds and ground elder so a large part of the day has been spent going through them trying to at least clear the worst of them.

In between doing that I planted out the nine tomato plants I picked up yesterday afternoon, the three chilli plants and the six geraniums. I also planted out a further set of beetroot seeds as the ones I put into the ground a few weeks ago don’t seem to have taken.

If I had known that the sun would shine as it has today I would have prepared better and we would have been having a barbeque this evening. Instead we are having a chicken rendang. Onions, chillies, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, bay leaves, tamarind paste, fermented prawns and turmeric all cooked down with a few tins of coconut milk for an hour until it turns into a thick paste. It is doing that now and the kitchen i

s filling with the heady smell of it all.

Shortly I will cut up a chicken and cook for another hour. By then then sauce will almost have cooked away and for the last few minutes I will be frying the cooked chicken in the oil that is left over.