Wireless

I am now totally wireless.  I explained some of the IT misery I have suffered recently. The third time my desktop crashed, I ran out and bought a laptop, a router and an external hard drive.  I then proceeded to set up a home office network,  I was almost there when,,,guess what....my desktop crashed again....fatally!!!

So I am now able to work in the comfort of my living room  which is nice for the kind of work I do.  But the niftiest thing is the wireless capability.  I have an HP iPAQ that we use to collect the water meter readings every month.  It has wifi capability and I can use it to check my email and to access the web wherever I am,  I am increasing degrees of freedom dramatically.

I have so far managed to do without a cellphone but I will be getting one this year to create total freedom.  I am my office!

How Does Your Garden grow?

Finally I am back to my blog.....but what a journey!!  I have suffered four computer crashes in the last six weeks culminating in the purchase of a new laptop.  The continuous rebuilding has been debilitating.  The "upgrade" to Windows 7 has presented a succession of incompatibilities that have been both annoying and disruptive.  I have yet to see the advantage.

When I attempted to upload photos to my blog it just would not happen.  I wasted hours trying, retrying and reading help files to no avail.  Just when I had reached the point of moving my blog to another venue, I clicked the appropriate radio button and lo and behold I can now upload photos.  If I could remember how I got there, I would post the solution but, unfortunately, I can't...it was done in total desperation.

But here we are and this is my little raised-bed backyard tropical garden.  It has come a long way.  I have a bumper crop of basil and hot, hot chili peppers.  Lemon grass is doing well and it looks like eggplant is coming on.  All this is new to me so I am hoping to learn as I go. This is our rainy season so there is minimal maintenance.  I had to do a lot of weeding early on but everything is established now and it doesn't seem to be as urgent these days.

I must say, though, it is awesome to have edible things growing in your back yard that can be harvested and brought directly to the table (or the pizza).  I am very hopeful of the eggplant.  It is flowering now and I am interpreting that as an attempt to generate fruit,  So all in all I am declaring the raised-bed garden experiment a success and I think I will build another next year if I can get more seeds to expand the variety.

On the weekend I made my first ever batch of pasta...of course whole wheat pasta.  It really was no big deal at all.  I mixed the dough and rolled it out on my kitchen island.  Then I sliced it as in the photo.  I was amazed at how quickly the pasta cooked...pretty neat...2 to 3 minutes and they floated to the surface when done. 

I used the pasta in one of my favourite recipes - fat burning chicken pasta...awesome!!