Soccer stars

In the centre of our community garden is the tarred court, which is most often used as a soccer pitch.

Most afternoons you will find school-aged kids having a game, but after 5 is the 'big boys' time. These are the young men of the community who come to play after working hours, sometimes until late at night, especially during summer when it stays light until almost 9pm!

Part of the vision for the community garden is that the court could help the young people, possibly by learning new games and skills along with good team spirit and self-discipline.

Winter garden

We've been having amazing weather all through July and August, when it should be raining and cold! It feels more like Spring and the poor plants don't know what to do - some are bolting and putting out seed heads, while others seem to be dormant! We did quite a lot today, but most importantly, sowed some summer crop seeds! The kohlrabi are looking good now, and so are one or two cabbages that somehow survived the snail attacks. Harvested a bunch of carrots and another of spring onions.

A Hippo in our Garden!

Ha, that caught your attention! What a shock one morning this week to find what looked like two huge hippo feet lying on top of the veggie beds! My mind squealed silently, remembering all the hard work it took to layer the trench beds, and Sandi's words: 'Don't ever put a foot in the garden bed, as you'll compact the soil!!!'

The Council had made an uplanned delivery the day before and unintentionally dumped the concrete seats together with a load of bark chips in the garden! They were very apologetic about it afterwards though.

Brinjals for Africa!

From January until late March, we harvested brinjals, almost daily, and sometimes as many as a garbage sack full!

Many were given away, some were sold, and quite a few were eaten in our house! We had them stuffed, baked, stewed and sauced. The last recipe we tried was served as an appetiser:

Slice brinal into rings, about 1.5cm thick. Rub with a little olive oil and bake at 180C for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle each slice with crushed garlic, fresh chopped herbs and grated cheese. Return to oven and bake for another 5 - 10 minutes and enjoy! Really yummy!

Rosalind... our faithful helper

Ros comes to the garden every Tuesday afternoon to teach gardening to the young ones of the community. They love her patient, gentle manner and the special time they have together. For many children, it is the highlight of their week. Thank you, Ros!

Food Garden 1 Year Old!

It's hard to believe that this is how the Food Garden looked a year ago!

Who would have thought that all these beautiful veggies would come out of a desert like that?

A meal from the garden! Stuffed brinjal and fresh salads!

Our hard work has been truly blessed.

We made ...

Basil Pesto, tomato jam!

... And enjoyed eating the sweetcorn, just like that!

Calendula Oil... excellent for massage!

We even tried sun-drying our own tomatoes, but in our excessive heat, they got burnt black instead!

... and all the produce came from the Food Garden.

103 year old visits the garden!

Aunty Annie, a legend in her own lifetime, made a special effort to come and see the gardens before she turns 104 later this year!

February flowers

Just a few photos of the stunning flowers seen in the garden during February 2011.

See the blanket of clouds on the mountain? That's a sign that the South-easter is blowing in the Cape.

School group visits the gardens

A group of about 12 youngsters came to see and learn. They helped with the compost-makings, and transplanted tomato seedlings.

Stunning Sunflowers

The happy, smiley faces of sunflowers just make one feel so good! We had a row of 5 or 6 really tall ones, way over 2m in height! Sadly, the rose beetles got hold of them, although we managed to salvage a few heads full of seeds.

Visitors from Norway

Vanessa and Torbjon made a special visit to see the gardens in real life, after watching it grow on this blog in Norway. They have been keen supporters of this project from the beginning and we are grateful to them for their encouragement, support and kindness.

Youth Group Volunteers

Several youth from the Mountainview Baptist Church volunteered to help in the Food garden one Saturday. There was lots of laughter and learning. They will NEVER forget the smell of rotten kitchen waste used to make compost!

Food Garden now

A recent picture of the food garden in full bloom.

TOMATOES... EVERYWHERE!

We've harvested tons of tomatoes this summer. This picture was taken of a tray of cherry tomatoes which we tried drying on the dashboard of our car outside in the sun. It was a nice idea (thanks to the internet!), but we underestimated our January heat... the tomatoes ended up being roasted and even burnt :-(

Harvest for all!

The Chillies that we planted months ago have finally borne fruit!

The veggies have been growing at a terrific rate and each morning they look like they have grown double in size! We have been doing so much harvesting it seems that there is an unending stream of ever growing vegetables rejoicing in our African sunshine!

Here are some of the vegetables that we harvested during December and January. We have had many eggfruit (brinjals or aubergines) and spring onions and almost every day we pick a full basket of ripe tomatoes that we have shared with the community, and now are experimenting with sun-drying them in our hot car parked outside! We also made tomato jam.

The eggfruit came in many different, interesting shapes and sizes. We even had one that looked like it had a thumb and first finger which pointed out of it!

In December we installed an irrigation system which has saved us a lots of time in the morning and evening that would of been spent manually watering the garden.

Community Garden Of The Year 2010!

We were shocked and surprised when SOIL FOR LIFE presented us with this award in December!

They have undergirded us from the beginning, and the success of the Food Garden is largely due to the training we received from them.

Thank You, Pat and Sandi and the Soil For Life Team for this acknowledgement. It means a lot to us!

The Circle is 1 year old!

On Saturday, 25th September we celebrated the first anniversary of the birth of the Woodwind Circle Community Gardens. A special birthday cake was made in honour of the occasion!

Cape Town's Mayor visits us

We were pleasantly surprised by a fleeting visit from the Mayor and Mr Morkel during the week. With newspaper reporters in tow, they quickly visited the gardens, had their photos taken, and left. Pity we didn't get a chance to talk or give him a proper guided tour (which we're getting quite good at, considering all the foreign visitors we've had over the past months). We would have loved to pull and present him with some fresh carrots or a lovely lettuce from the food garden. Oh well, maybe next time...


The flowers are in bloom everywhere. The lavender is looking particulary beautiful at the moment, and so are all the gazanias which were planted to hide the tyres a year ago. I think they've done a spendid job, don't you?