Of Healthy Noodles, Seeds, n More

Six Minute Noodles
This is Wendyl Nissen's version of 2 minute noodles, which although it takes 4 minutes longer, is not full of fat or too much salt or MSG or the other additives. It tastes pretty good too.

1 cake of Highmark Egg Noodles fine cut.
These take 6 minutes to cook in the microwave per cake.

Sauce
1/2 cup of low salt soy sauce
2 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of chilli sauce
1/4 teaspoon of sesame oil

Keep the sauce in a bottle in the fridge. Wendyl Nissen says add 2 tablespoons to cooked noodles - but I found 3 teaspoons was enough.

Growing Our Own Mulch

banana grown from seed - ready to plant out

We can't seem to get enough mulch at this time of the year without resorting to buying it - and it is essential here.
We think we have solved the problem. The ornamental banana palm that we took out after it had flowered has provided us with hundreds of new plants which we are going to make a jungle out of over the soakage field. At present that is covered in thigh high kikuyu, so we hope the bananas will crowd this out, whilst growing quickly and providing lots of vegetation to mulch.

Seeds
I've had really good success with growing seeds that I have saved. It has given me heaps to give away, mainly of parsley, basil, hanging basket flowers, coleus, pumpkins, lettuce, sunflowers, rengarenga lilies and calendular.

First sunflower out today - grown from saved seed.

I'm about to replant the asian greens that went to seed before I knew what to do with them too.
From now on I will be trying to buy only heritage seeds that I can save productive seeds from, as opposed to hybrid seeds that are sterile.

Unusual Goings On
The other day I heard voices across the valley and the sound of tools clanging and a weedeater in the bush. Having read that police are expecting cannabis growers to be busy planting now I was alert to this possibility, so was covertly checking them out with the zoom on my camera, but could see nothing. 
A little later I heard vehicles leaving so zipped out and got a photo......note the hives on the back of the truck.....not so illegal after all haha.

No wonder we have a lot of bees around here.

So Cool
We love old books here. Derek collects 'em, I use 'em for art - but not his books. So I just love this - sorry can't credit it to the artist as I found it un named.

Village of Books