We had a pretty uneventful week here in Swaziland, but here are a few highlights.
Last week we decided that we would partner with Joe and have a garden together. We all wanted a garden, but none of us wanted to do the work by ourselves…enter teamwork! The ground is very hard at our garden plot (right outside of Joe’s house), but we were able to dig about 1/3 of it out and prep the ground. Basically you dig a big ditch and then alternate filling it with manure, straw and dirt. This helps to aerate and enriches the soil. We hope to finish digging in the next week or so and then plant by July. We will see! We worked again this week and were able to get three of the four berms finished. One more weekend and we should be about ready to plant.
Ben and Mikayla hanging out in the ditch before we filled it back up to make our berms.
We have always known that we had a condiment obsession. Most of the time our condiment shelves in the fridge are overflowing. Since arriving in Swaziland and restocking our fridge and pantry, we have also developed a "heat" obsession too. Particularly a hot sauce and chili obsession. We pulled these gems out of the fridge and spice rack. We also have a bag full of frozen chilies in the freezer and a whole rack of chili’s drying in our laundry room. Do you think we have enough?
From left to right: Ben’s homemade Peri-Peri sauce, homemade chili paste, dried bird’s eye chilies, Peri peri sauce (sweeter), Tony’s Cajun seasoning (our favorite), a Mexican seasoning we picked up here, Chili powder, Ben’s homemade hot sauce, dried and crushed chilies, Nando’s Peri Peri seasoning (Nando’s is a local chicken food chain), Black mamba hot sauce (delicious), Nando’s garlic Peri Peri (also delicious) and in the front row we have Black Mamba chili paste and Cayenne pepper. I guess you could say we love some heat!
Sometimes Ben comes up with the best inventions and sometimes they are just plain silly. He would call the following a "best invention", I call it just plain silly! Instead of pouring Mikayla a glass of milk he took two straws and put them together to make a large straw so she could drink milk out of the box/carton. By the way, have I mentioned the milk here before? It is what they call long life milk and you buy it off of the shelf. It will last for months in the pantry and then three days once you open it in the fridge. I hate the taste of it, but for convenience sake it is nice because we don’t have a grocery around the corner to purchase milk from when we need it. I am looking forward to a nice glass of real milk when we head back to the states (along with some Mexican food and a few other staples)!
Don’t you just love her mischievous face here?
Early in the week we were painting some rocks for our learning time and I ran inside to get something. When I came back out this is what I found.
Turn your eyes for five seconds and this is what a toddler does with paint!
After Mikayla found out her friend Lylah could draw people a few weeks ago she decided she wanted to give it a go. (Do you think she gets the competiveness from Ben or me?) We have been working for a couple of weeks on drawing stick people and she has finally caught on (sort of). Here are some snapshots of her people from this week.
Can you see the tiny feet at the bottom? She hasn’t quite got the hang of drawing the feet yet!
Ben caught the stomach bug I had a couple of weeks ago at the end of the week so we laid low. Unfortunately I came down with something on Friday and Saturday we were both pitiful! Good news though, we are both feeling better today!
Here is a bird for Steve. I think we have posted this bird before, but it was before he had his Swazi bird book! These birds look really cool when they are flying because of their long tail feathers.
