Happy New Year everyone

Hope it is a good one for you and your loved ones. 2013 had its ups and downs for us so we are hoping 2014 is a smoother ride!

Christmas came and went in a flurry, with much time spent in the kitchen baking up tasty treats for gifts. I also made another chocolate and raspberry mousse layer cake for dessert on Christmas day:

I decorated the cake with a layer of ganache and then some fresh raspberries (from the garden), blueberries and chocolate sprinkles. Rather a lot of chocolate went into this cake but although it was rich, it wasn't sickly or too sweet. Had I more chocolate in the pantry I might have got more creative and put shaved chocolate on top instead of the sprinkles.

'Christmas' plums

 After enjoying loads of juicy sweet early peaches, we are now onto plums and nectarines.

Nectarines and plums

We have various nectarine trees, 'Queen Giant', 'Spring Red', 'Red Gold', 'Tasty Gold'. They are all good! We are trying hard to keep the possums off them, mainly by trapping. We are enjoying them fresh of course and as you'd expect I will be busy making chutney, jam, and bottling and freezing them too.

Lots more stone fruit to come as summer progresses!

The weather has been mixed, hot and sunny, with sudden tropical downpours as well. Hoping to get to harvest my 'Grosso' lavender sometime soon. I probably should have done this a couple of weeks ago before the showers started as it's better when really dry (the scent and less likely to spoil), also more flowers have opened than I would have liked but never mind, it still smells and looks pretty good!

Grosso lavender