The Great Lemongrass Battle - just one of the exciting adventures from our weekend in Paradise

Paradise is currently a marvellous weight-loss centre (or it would have been had not a certain Jeanie filled the fridge with baked delights because its "pick the emotion" week here and I needed to have placatory options in case a simple "Well, sorry" with a snarl would not do).

The temperature is a balmy 28 Celcius - or for the more old-fashioned victims, pushing 84 Farenheit with a very light breeze and good cloud cover. According to my weather vane (otherwise known as Yahoo), it is only 64% humidity - of course, that is 16km away at the airport, because I can assure you it is about 94% where I sit in a pool of sweat!

I call my sitting here sweating away proactive in my quest for physical perfection (I have just vacuumed, so moving around sweating away has been tried - and it sucked!). Of course, over the weekend, I attempted much, much more and I will use some of my energy in conveying how much fun it was to be us over the weekend.

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Saturday dawned, and we were determined that the garden would not be left untrammelled by the day. V and I took our coffees for a tour of the backyard in an attempt to visualise all that we hoped to achieve.

Then we realistically cut our goal in half, because by 9am (come on, its Saturday and our days start early every other day of the week) - as I said, before that seed of perceived judgement distracted me, by 10am it was already quite steamy - especially as an early morning shower had held us back and was evaporating as we surveyed the potential mayhem.

We decided to start on the chillies and lemongrass - of course, we were well into our task before the official photographer had arrived, so I am having to get you to imagine this photo here




With all of this photo here still attached. (and yes, that is a rare sighting of the Jeanie in the previous shot...)




Please note that behind the lemongrass (or rather, stump of lemongrass) is that nasty bushy thing that I decimated last year. It ain't there any more...



V and I (okay, V with me shouting encouraging words) then set about freeing the lemongrass from the hold that planet Earth (or a large chunk thereof) had of it
Planet Earth won for a very long time. After my (ahem) cheering had spurred V into shattering garden tools, my more placatory methods (and a smaller fork) were put in (I think V might have lent me a hand with a crowbar) and voila -



the great lemongrass haul of 2008!!!

Our photographer then officially retired, so you do not see the blood, (mud), sweat and tears (and axes and handsaws and swearwords) used to pull this beggar into smaller bits - for me to put back in to the ground, give to friends, neighbours and unsuspecting passers-by (or would of if a: V had approved AND b: I had remembered) and use in cooking.

Okay - its still all over the back yard, as we went on to have many more adventures and I forgot to hit up the unsuspecting passers by - so, anyone have a recipe for pickled lemongrass? Or want some fresh? Otherwise, we may just have the sweetest smelling mulch pile in Paradise.