COOL THOUGHTS

The impatient gardener.

I pulled out all my carrots today. I want to plant purple tomatoes. I am now in turbo-charged organic mode. Besides, the carrots were the founder members of this garden 6 months ago. They were starting to look untidy. Time-to-be-eaten.

I plucked out and washed 2.6kgs of wonderful home grown, un-contaminated carrots. I noted they were an astounding R45/ 5kgs at the supermarket – a huge increase from R18/ 5kgs (US$1 = R10) not so long ago. We juice every day and scream through a packet of carrots with great ease.

So, you do the maths – 2.6kgs (give or take a few that have come out already) over 5 months – oh, and factor in a swimming pool. Great value? Perhaps not.

You see, the verdant, fertile, happy place, where all this is grown, is in an old swimming pool. It is an engagement present from the one I love. Our neglected pool was transformed from a ‘mosquito breeding project’ in July 2013, and within a couple of months we were harvesting beetroot, salads, spinach, tomatoes, green peppers, and two artichokes!

Rob was diagnosed with prostate cancer mid-2012 and I was determined that nothing was going to happen to him on my watch, so we adopted a strict regime of juicing every day, with carrots being the base ingredient. Despite the constant eye-rolling from his Professor his PSA has come down from a terrifying 400 to less than 0.1.

I confess that the oncology treatment may have played a part.