tomayto, tomahto

When we moved in to our new house, Andy and I set up a bit of a garden. Even though we are renting for only 7 months, we wanted to grow some things, for a few reasons. One, to give capitalism the middle finger. We don’t like buying things that we can make ourselves (especially buying them from the gigantor supermarket corporations… the farmer’s market is a different story), and in the tropics, you can grow almost anything. Sure, we’re not exactly revolutionaries, but these are the things we can accomplish right here and now. And we’re tight-asses. The other reason was to make this place more like home. When we lived here alone for two weeks (those were the days!) we got seeds and seedlings, tried to grow pineapple tops, dried out the seeds from our chillies and planted them, planted an onion that was starting to grow leaves when we bought it for half price…. Neither of us is very experienced in gardening. We know the basics, but that’s about it. But we gave it a shot, and it’s come out quite well. Here are our tomatoes, who started out so tiny, and ended up becoming massive, tipping over the stakes, and sitting green on the vine for 4 weeks. We ate our first red tomato last night, and I can see little patches of pinkish-orange that mean we won’t be buying tomatoes this weekend.

And the little herb garden off the patio. We started with two Thai basil plants given to us by our old housemate and a bunch of seeds. Now it’s a bushy little semi-circle filled with basil, Thai basil, parsley, and coriander (cilantro). We also have heaps of herbs planted between the tomatoes (supposedly they keep bugs away), and we’ve got baby chilli plants scattered everywhere as well.

And here’s our Vietnamese mint, mild at first bite but with a tongue-numbing spiciness when you eat it straight off the plant.

We bought it at the market for AU$2, and a month later we’ve already had to move it into a flashy new home (ie a bigger pot).

Despite the negative atmosphere of the house (I know I sound like a hippy, but seriously, this house is miserable), life seems to be thriving. Aside from all of the plants taking over our mini-garden, I opened the window a week or so ago to find these gecko eggs. The picture is really blurry because they were so small; that’s a 2 cm long picture hook next to them! Aside from the two in the picture, there were broken shells all around, which leads me to believe that others had recently hatched. The morning after I found them, one shell was hatched open on the floor beneath the window sill. We went away for the weekend, and when we got back the final egg still hadn’t hatched. I don’t know gecko gestation periods, or even when that thing was laid, but we had a feeling it was a dud. We didn’t get to find out though, because that evening Andy watched as a big gecko came and ate it. I know, circle of life and all that crap, but the idea of tiny baby geckos is so freaking adorable…