A day of surprises

Today seemed to be a day of discovering new things. For starters I went to make Apricot and Pumpkin jam and discovered that although we can't get any radio reception in our house, the new kitchen gets perfect reception! A good start followed by a good jam making session with my new gas. I would have to say it is fantastic! About three times as powerful as a normal kitchen one so it is perfect for making jam. Now I just need to invest in a few larger pots....
Next surprise... I started on the big task of weeding my vegetable patch to discover that I had in fact become a rice farmer! Until last year my garden was a rice field and there must have been quite a lot of rice within the soil as it is all through my garden! I have left a section of it beside the tunnel house just to see what happens. I guess with the amount of rain we have had the ground was in a flooded state most of the time.
The third surpise was when I started weeding around my dried up cucumbers and discovered that they haven't actually dried up at all. Well the ones that I had growing up the poles had all dried up, but the offshoots had found some shade in amongst the weeds and were growing well. I've trained them up the poles and hopefully they will produce some more before the cool weather strikes.
The final surprise was when I took out the compost and discovered a pumpkin plant growing up our olive tree! The garden in our bottom section is totally overgrown with pumpkins. They are all self seeded and I have just let them go wherever they want - which is exactly what they have done. I think I'd better get this one out of the tree before the pumpkins get any bigger and break the tree!
The only thing that didn't really come as a surprise to me is that after a month or so of no weeding, you get really tired after a day in the garden! I probably got about a fifth of the big garden weeded today though so it was a good start. Now it's time for a foot massage - any one willing???