Busy Weekend

Wow - What a busy weekend. We got a new barbecue which took a little while to assemble. And with today's sunshine we could not resist giving it a try out. Our favourite bbq recipe at the moment is chicken souvlaki - a great taste of Greece in the sunshine!

The girls certainly enjoyed it. The leaves in the salad were from the greenhouse too. Can't wait until more of the meal is from Matt's Patch (Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes ... mmmm).

I managed to make a shelter at the end of Patch's run. What was a straightforward plan in my mind took a little longer to manifest. Once she got used to it, Patch loved it and was in and out all day long! Megan thinks it's great that Patch has a house to hide in!
Mrs Matt spent a good few back-breaking hours cleaning the paving slabs on the patio - there are a lot of slabs! She was removing any weeds and forking out all the crud that had formed in the gaps and putting in new sand. The areas that have been done look great!

On the vegetable front, the cucumbers and tomatoes were put in growbags. When we first moved in we found some plastic green hat-like things. I've since found that they look a lot like growbag pots so I put them in with some of the tomatoes. The idea is that it gives the plant a lot more compost to grow in and makes it it a whole lot easier to water. I'm sure there are some pieces missing but never mind.
While I was in the greenhouse I had a peek at the French Bean experiment where I'd covered them in damp kitchen roll after the dismal failure of my previous effort.
This is what I found - sprouted beans! I have not peeked at the ones I planted in the compost/sand mix (although I did remix the compost to about 4:1 compost/sand as I thought there was too much sand in the original mix).