Off topic abit, I was fiddling about with the new adbrite new BritePic facility that allows me to embed my pictures with adverts. How cool I thought so I gave it a try, and then I stumbled upon my old stash of pictures, pictures of the mess I made at my garden.

Yes, those are tomatoes, which my wife almost ripped out of the garden thinking it was weed. So I thought so myself, but it turned out to be so huge, and it never started to ripen on the plant. Hmmn. I was at my own wit’s ends to make it ripe, without the need to introduce the carbite as an inducer for the tomatoes to ripe prematurely.

Well, I did say I left it to a mess right? Those plants were all grown in the ground without any protection from ground frost or whatsoever, at the mercy of the typical gloomy wet English Weather.

I just let them grow wild, with nothing to help them grow except loads of weed killer and sometimes, the salts I get cheaply from Tesco, supposingly to be a fertiliser. Huh? I never followed the instructions, poked a couple of holes using the rattan sticks into the ground and fill them up with those salts. Well, it was suppose to infuse the soil better. So to speak.

Well, I did say it was a jungle out there right? My landlady let it into a huge organic compost heap, if you get what I mean. Rubbish and stuff burnt out there..and left to rot, leaving me alot of grief to clean it up, with loads and loads of glass all over the place.I did what I can, but can’t blame me yeah?

An odd wild poppy flower growning here…..(Yeah…I did experiment to try and get the sap out, aka cocaine or Opium to no avail, did get the dried seeds though)

The stash of spuds (potatoes to those who are not local to England) sprouting about in my back garden,some I transplanted them,cos spuds were cheap here, especially those baby potatoes and Jersey Royals and by the time I am about to finish eating em, they would have bud out. Yucky bitter greens, nah…so I dug and chuck the lot of them into the patches.

And my shallots (actually it’s onion seeds which grew too big…and so I just dry them off and made a pickle out of them) …and I found out that they were pickling onions. It tasted nice though with the Shish Kebabs we made during summer.

Chilli seeds that sprouted wild as those were too hot for us to make into sambal or chilli sauce. They were the Hot Indian Dried ones too…only way to use them was to deseed them and then blend them into a paste. Still…boy they were flipping hot. Spicier than those Halapeno Chillis.

I did not manage to get a harvest out of this, cos I was rushed home a month later for family matters. I was on a very tight budget too.

Tia Baby, after causing alot of mischief…and had her dinner…and gotten her way, getting to wear my socks….and well, you know how it is. Think she was mad cos I did not want to play see-saw with her.

And this my friends …is a daily harvest of my tomatoes. Can imagine how bored I was ..having so much to fruit from just ONE SINGLE PACKET. Yeah..it’s not Harvey Thomsons or Suttons but something I grabbed at TESCO, or was it B&Q…think it was TESCO.

Talk about being organicly self supported.

And that my friend is a typical day in England, with the gloomy weather making us so …moody. That is on a clear ’sunny’ sunday at Folkstone Harbour Pleasure Beach. Talking a breeze walk across the pebbly beaches beside the Sunday Market,after me having my fill of my whelks and mussles and hairy crabs…yummy (to me!)

Me with the Che Tun King Tia Baby…. ever happy to get herself out…everyday is an adventure. Really…there is always something to try.

That …my friends…is how a typical Sunday FLEA Market looks like…and that is just beside the beach…literally.

How I miss my life in the United Kingdom.Except the wet and cold weather.And the Taxes.