Green potato curry

The garden is just spectacular at the moment - not too hot, and all the spring veges ready to pick; new potatoes, zucchini, masses of coriander about to seed, and thai basil coming on.

Time for curry. I use a commercial brand of curry paste - Mae Ploy - because it is delicious and requires no pounding of spices. I'm particularly partial to the green. I always have garlic, onion and kaffir lime leaves on hand and the necessary bottle of fish sauce, and still working my way though last year's ginger crop. Just about everything from the garden goes into one of these babies.
Not long now till capsicums, aubergines.

It's been a flat out effort to get the garden ready for the wet season which, they say, will be on again this summer. A smaller El Nino this year, but El Nino neverthless. Wonder what it was before they tagged 'big wet' with that name? All the paths are relaid, G-Man's gorgeous compost spread on all the beds prior to planting and enough for a second helping before the wet turns the piles sour.

The Wivenhoe and Somerset drainage channels are in place and it may not even be a problem this year since there is a big shiny new drain across the road from us where it usually floods, courtesy of the new neighbours who are putting up a hill top ponderosa on the block above our trees.

They will be building for an entire year! 80 loads of concrete so far, semis that can't get up the step hill, so they have to off load materials on the road side, and dozens of tradies' utes parking us out. It's not too bad. The young site manager could get a job as a first AD on a film - very conciliatory and helpful and has convinced us he is on our side since the delivery of a dozen loads of clean fill into our front yard (gully). He even arranged for a bobcat to smooth it all down and now, we have an extra parking space at the top of the drive so there'll be no complaining from us. Very sneaky of him. He did it all down the road, so at least a half a dozen residents won't be complaining about noise/dust/traffic.

Only one more sleep now till lunch with JB, PB, NB and MY at the Spirit House. Though it's only just down the road, I've never been there - mainly because there is so much food here on the block, seems silly to go out to eat. I can dine here with G-Man any day of the week, but at table with fine company, food and wine, I can be tempted out. Woohoo.