Home Grown

I woke up this morning to a messy house; the dishes were strewn across the kitchen sink, the boys had dragged half of their room out into the hall, lounge room and kitchen and there were no home made baked goods in the cupboard for school lunches. What with facebook, my blog, work and running around from swimming to football I decided that I have become a terrible housewife!

Feeling quite bad and sorry for my family I decided I'd try to improve...but I had a few emails to answer first. Ok with that done I popped on a load of washing, yelled a lot for someone to pick up the toys and paper floating about the house and then told the boys I would be more than happy to put it all in a garbage bag and toss it in the bin (I have been known to do this so Max wasn't taking any chances before he set off for school) if I trip over another Ben 10 alien!!!

Twelve o'clock hit and I was due at the school for reading groups (this also made me feel better about my parenting duties, never mind the fact that I get introduced as Mrs. Baker and start looking around for my mother-in-law). Once Alex and I return home for lunch which was leftover chickpea and spinach for me and a ham and cheese jaffle for Alex, the sun was shining so we decided to go out the back and soak up a few rays while eating a late lunch. Alex being Alex wanted to push all our fruit scraps into the compost heap we have out the back (something I started when we first moved in but as my housewife skills deteriorated so did the compost heap!).

Making sure he scraped the apple cores and orange skins onto the right place and buried them so we don't get every cockatoo this side of Sydney I noticed green plants all over the compost.

"Dam weeds Alex" was my response but when I pulled one of them out to my surprise there were two little potatoes sitting at the bottom. I was so excited I started to root around trying to find more, indeed we found a large potato just under the surface and Alex and I were beside ourselves.

"Did we grow them all by ourselves mum?"

Yes we did Alex was my response. I decided to leave the others in there to grow a little longer and see what we will harvest in a week or so. I have no idea how long potatoes take to grow, I read in a kids book that the leaves turn brown and die then you get the potatoes??? If anyone knows please let me in on the secret of happy compost gardening.

Anyway I thought after producing my very own potatoes I should be redeemed in the housewife stakes. So what if the ironing is still sitting in the laundry basket and the table has newspapers all over it......I grew my own potatoes!