Contrary to popular belief, I’m still very much in the land of the living – I’ve just been rather busy.

I don’t know why my shop seems to be bucking the trend but I’ve had more orders since Christmas than I did before!  I can only assume that people saved up for the holidays, realised that the economic crisis mightn’t be as bad as expected, stopped panicking and decided to buy themselves some goodies.  Amazing.  I’m actually into the black for this quarter and we’re only 9 days in!

Totally bizzare.

I also had a customer send me the most marvellous email.  I seldom hear anything back after I’ve send off the goods so it was lovely to get feedback (and very nice feedback too!).  It really made my day!

I also managed to survive New Years, despite my beloved sister-in-law’s lethal daquiries and my brother-in-law’s “Spam Surprise” (made in homage to our new tiki bar)(I retaliated with spam musubi, but I’m not proud).  The tiki bar worked well, partially due to the amount of booze and partially to the donation of my fathers vintage lp’s and equally vintage record player.  Totally groovy.  The daquiries were just the icing on the cake, as it were.  Man, the mango one was DELISH and her frozen Toblerone creation was just over the top.  I was so busy dealing with the ice-cream headache that I completely forgot that my legs couldn’t move.  ;)

Anywho, back to the daily grind.  I’m busy photographing the sister-in-law’s jewellery creations (fantastic stuff, BTW) and trying to book all the new stuff into the shop.  And, in the mean time, the garden is busy trying to eat the house.  I just went to grub up some potatoes for dinner and proceeded to uncover the single largest spud I think I’ve ever seen.  I weighed the bugger just then and it came in at a whopping 504 grams.  Half a bloody kilo in one potato!!  Good grief!  I can only guess what else is lurking down in the potato patch!

I’ve got corn on everywhere (SO glad it’s finished spreading pollen everywhere – The Husband and I were terribly allergic to it and were sneezing violently for the whole week!), and my eggplants are threatening to engulf the old clothesline, which is fine by me.  The beans still aren’t beaning, but I’m getting the first of my cucumbers at long last and the lettuce has gone totally feral on me.  I send The Husband out to get it – it’s just that scary.  Still getting avalanches of vampire spinach, but I hope to soon have some lovely sweet baby carrots on the plate.  I’ve been watering them like mad during the heatwave and pleading with them not to give up, and lo! – they seem to have survived.

Does anyone else talk to their veggie patch?