Garden!

 

Snapped this yesterday after I'd repotted some individual basil plants - seem to be having great success with these, and I grew them from seed, which is even more exciting - and I was sitting out there taking the time to really look at my plants. I realised that my cape gooseberry has grown significantly. I had this weird idea that the plant I bought would just stay the same, that the berries that were on it would be the only ones there would be and that would be that. So, I've been surprised to see the plant has taken off, there are new flowers and new berries, including tiny baby ones. I've just been reading about this plant and have harvested some seed, so I might just see if I can grow one myself!

The same thing has happened with my pepino plant (not in this picture), which is so lovely and bushy and green now - not the tired looking little plant it was when I bought it.

Similarly at the plot, my broccoli has taken off, the cabbage is looking good, the onions are growing and there are random little pea plants sprouting all over the place. Mostly I'm just leaving them where they are, unless they are competing with something else, and I'll just see how they go. The strawberry is so happy and content - you can tell just by looking at it!

Water and care, but mostly water, is really all it has taken.

Yesterday I planted red pak choy seeds and kohlrabi seeds - don't even know what this second one is so it will be interesting to see it come up! I also planted some sweet pea (flowers) into a pot. Busy, busy.

Jobs to do: plant out beetroot in the plot and I've got one little spot left in there so I'm going to buy a kale plant and see what happens to that.

I just want to spend all my time doing this stuff, it makes me happier, or more content than I thought possible.

Modern horrors

I've just started reading The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton and usually I wait until I've finished a book before I talk about it but I was so horrified by what I read last night in the first two chapters that I thought it was worth writing about now.

I really enjoy Alain de Botton's work - in particular The Art of Travel. I read this before travelling, while travelling and after I returned and will still return to it for its truth and beauty. de Botton is so clever - he just gently points things out, doesn't get upset about it, doesn't rant and rave, just gently draws the reader to the conclusion and, sometimes, if you aren't paying attention, even that can slip by unnoticed.

The first two chapters of this new book describe logistics. Shipping, freight, warehouses, trucks, delivery and all that fairly unremarkable stuff. Only, it turns out, it really is quite remarkable. While I found it physically confronting to follow the journey of a fresh tuna steak from being part of a tuna in the sea in the Maldives to a plate in suburban Bristol, it was in a way also graceful and incredible. This fact, however, did not deter my decision to stop eating anything that did not come from my local area.

The amount of concrete (the worst sort of building material in terms of energy), fuel and waste that went into that tuna steak dinner was astounding. Not only that, the idea that de Botton came across a very familiar label (one he sees in his local Sainsbury's) in the packing factory in the Maldives also shocked me. I thought about all that is in my freezer and where it came from. I just can't be a part of that anymore.

I already try really hard to buy things made here - food especially, but sometimes I'm hungry or there isn't much of a choice or it is expensive, or I'm addicted to bad things that come from elsewhere. But this resolves me to try harder.

There was another part of this section that really got to me, he writes:

That we are each surrounded by millions of other human beings remains a piece of inert and unevocative data, failing to dislodge us from a self-centered day-to-day perspective, until we take a look at a stack of ten thousand ham-and-mustard sandwiches, all wrapped in identical plastic casings, assembled in a factory in Hull, made out of the same flawless cottony-white bread, and due to be eaten over the coming two days by an extraordinary range of our fellow citizens which these sandwiches promptly urge us to make space for in our inwardly focused imaginations.

So really, how can this work any other way? How can we, as the large, industrialised society that we have become, even hope to reject the place we've found ourselves in. There are simply too many of us. This means for our work (the real topic of the book) and for our environment? These are huge questions. Too huge. Too scary to really think about.

I listened to de Botton on Radio National this morning and he was talking about Smith, the economist, who pointed out that yes, it is terrible that we have this huge machine that turns out ham-and-mustard sandwiches and biscuits and tissues but if we didn't have it 10% of our western population and probably a lot more from other parts of the globe would die of starvation. Not because they are eating the ham-and-mustard sandwiches, you understand, just because they are making them.

Fucking scary stuff.

Glorious quince paste

Two posts in one day is a little much, I agree, but this is just too exciting to wait to write. Let me just start by saying that I LOVE quince paste. Love it. The taste of quince paste on a lovely chedder on a cracked pepper water cracker (Oz made only - check you aren't buying the ones made in China - Arnott's is best) with a glass of Bacardi and coke with ice just as the sun goes down is one of my all time favourite things. LOVE IT.

So, it was perhaps brilliance on my part that I chose to begin my experience with preserving, jam-making and all associated concoctions with quince paste because if I'd started with something I wasn't in total love with I might have given up. Suffice to say that the directions I followed (from the brilliant A Year in a Bottle by Sally Wise) were deceptively simple and certainly didn't indicate that it would take an entire afternoon. I'm proud of myself for sticking with it and have been enjoying the fruits of my labour this evening. Yum.

In order to make quince paste you need about 8 quinces. I bought mine from a farm shop in Margaret River and really you won't find quinces for sale at Coles. My personal tragedy is that I used to have a quince tree and composted every single fruit from this prolifric tree which survived despite the severe drought. I didn't taste quince paste until a few months after I sold that property. Quinces are not for eating off the tree, so if you can find someone with a tree chances are they will be glad to give you the fruit.



Once you have carefully washed and chopped up the quinces, you put them in a large pot with a cup of water and the juice from one lemon.



Try to cook them slowly - for about 30mins or so. I cooked mine too quickly and have a large pot with burnt quince to clean up and I also suspect burning them dry made the next step unnecessarily difficult. When they are very soft, strain them through a colander and then through a sieve. This took me about two hours to do.




Don't give up if it does take time. Remember this is an old craft and our experience of having things immediately (buying them at the shop, for example) is not a good grounding for this sort of activity. During this time of exhausted arms and blistered hands, it was the love of quince paste that kept me going and a belief in something unknown that got me there as I shoved what looked like stewed apple through tiny holes - the belief that it would eventually become something I loved. Eventually you end up with a fine puree.



Put this into a clean saucepan with sugar - one cup of sugar for each cup of puree. Bring to the boil slowly and then cook over a medium heat. Now, if you did get away with an easier straining experience than me, your patientence will be tested next. The paste will take about two hours to be ready but you MUST stir it every few minutes during this time. I put a stool next to the stove and read then brought the laptop into the kitchen to blog. But you must stay in the kitchen and stir. When you start the mixture is quite wet and sloppy:



Very slowly, over time the paste dries out and begins turning a more richer colour. I never got my whole batch to be that beautiful crimson colour of the paste you can buy in the shop, although there were spots here and there like that. In fact, I probably left mine on the heat too long waiting for this to happen. But in the end it didn't matter. You end up with a paste that doesn't move on its own.



Just a pause to explain the sterilsation of the jars the quince paste will go into. You will need to wash them by hand or in the dishwasher then put them on a tray in a cold oven. Turn the oven up to 110degs and as soon as it reaches this temp, turn the oven off and leave the jars for 10mins. They should be warm when you put the paste in them, so try to time it right. The lids need to be simmered in water for 2 mins. Don't buy Ikea jars like I did which have plastic lids that buckle in boiling water and break when you try to push them onto the jars - this means I'll have to eat my paste quickly as the jars aren't airtight, but that shouldn't be a problem!



When all is ready, spoon/shove the paste into the jars and seal.



And finally, you could wait for the paste to cool before you eat it, but as mine was ready just on sunset, I had biscuits, a lovely Capel Valley chedder and the required drinks, I couldn't wait!



Delicious and virtous, home made, hand made and I know exactly what went into it.

For a "gormet" product like this this was cheap. $4 for the quinces, two cups of sugar, a lemon and an afternoon. Not a lot for one of my all time loves in life! Cheers!

No plant left behind and other sundries

I'm such a sucker for the last, sad, lonely plants in a nursery. You know, the one left, abandoned by its mates or one solitary kind of plant sitting at the back of a shelf, the price tag peeling off and the roots sticking out of the pot. I just have to take them home. This time it was a lavender eggplant. I'd seen photos of these and can order seeds, but never seen one for sale. This was the only one there and it had a tiny eggplant hanging from its tiny branch. Cute!


(You can see the 'proper' eggplant behind it in this shot)

I potted it today, along with a red centre lime (a plant developed by the CSIRO!) and the fig I pulled out of the garden and quite likely killed in the process. It is certainly looking sad at the moment. I hope it will be okay.

My house has turned into some kind of weird scientist's den. I have a little greenhouse of sprouting plants, some potatoes on the shelf waiting to be ready to plant, the mushrooms in the cupboard doing mysterious things, the bread starter on the bench (more about this in another post), the worms eating their way through strange worm food in the laundry and currently I'm hopping up every few minutes to stir the quince paste on the go on the stove (this also deserves its own post). Not one to do things slowly, I must admit that I'm perhaps reaching my limit of learning curve velocity.

I should change this blog's name to 'things I've learnt from books' as that is where I get almost all my information from!

Easter jobs

I've heard many-a-time that easter is a great time to "get those jobs in the garden done". Now I believe it. I had friends staying who have helped me get the plot ready by digging in the compost, spreading the pea straw and planting out my first vegetables. There is a strawberry plant as well as peas, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, onion, beetroot, garlic, english spinach, bok choi and the potatoes are almost ready to go in. I also have at home a mushroom box (yay!) and I've set a starter for bread. All very exciting and enjoyable!


Katrina and I digging in the compost


The planted plot

It is lovely there in the early mornings when I go to water. The roosters are crowing and everything is damp from the overnight dew and quiet - the world around seems to disappear when I inspect the plants, excited and impatient to see what will happen, but knowing I have to wait.

A battle of wills

My poor broccoli.



It is so chewed and munched that almost no leaf has survived. The other day I was peering at it, looking for whatever could be eating so much when suddenly into view came a little green slug-thing. As soon as I saw it, five more popped into view on the leaves. It was an astounding moment - like they had zapped into existence in a second. I pulled them all off and squashed them (they exploded satisfiyingly into a mess of little green balls of poo). The next day three more were there, the next three more and this morning another one. My poor broccoli!

I finally looked up some of my books to find out what this little slug was - it is the larvae of the white cabbage moth "particularly pesky in warm weather". Hmmm, it has been over 30 for days now. There is something I can spray on it (an organic pest control thing) or I can pick them off by hand and cover the plant with netting so the moth can't lay its eggs. I will have to do something because when the broccoli goes into the plot I won't be able to keep such a close eye on it.

For now, however, I check the leaves every time I think of it - even brushing away a white cabbage moth itself earlier - and hope that it recovers.

Community Plot

Today I went to my community plot (I've had it a few weeks now) to attend a workshop on starting the year's planting (autumn being the end/beginning of the seasons for gardening). It was fascinating. I learnt more about how to create the right soil environment for growing veges than I have in all the reading I've done put together. I think it was the hands on experience of actually spreading manure and all the additives the soil there needs (it really is as simple as throwing it on and digging it in but now these terms have a lot more meaning for me). Also, I didn't have to guess what kind of soil I have and what it needs - the lady leading the workshop just told us exactly what we needed to do.

Afterwards, mum and I went around buying all the bits and pieces we would need and we'll start on it one afternoon this week (we have to wait for one more additive to be available on Monday). Can't wait. I have also planned out my crop rotation system - important for building up the correct nutrients in the soil for specific types of veges - and am just about to order the rest of the seeds I'll need. Now I have been given a direction to start off on I'll be happy to try things out and play around.



The bare plot. Mine is the one with the triangular bit.



You can see a bit more of the community garden surrounds in this one.

New lens

Monday, after an aborted attempt to be at work, I was peering at my plants (in order to feel better). I noticed that not only had my pea plants shot up significantly (weird that I didn't notice this before) but that little bud-like things were appearing. As soon as I saw this I realised I couldn't put off buying the macro lens for my camera any longer. I marched straight inside, got dressed, got into the car and drove to Bunbury (40mins away) and bought a lens. Then, for good measure I went to Officeworks and got the computer I've been trying to order off the net but that hasn't yet worked out for various *very* boring reasons. Came home in debt, not happier, but with new toys.

I ran around taking shots with the lens first and realised that I really needed to spend some time practising with it, but got at least a semi-decent shot of the shoot that inspired it all:



And, yes, I'm aware that buying these things may very well be a sign of depression, but I'm embracing it, and I have new toys. Plus, I went to the doctor and got some drugs yesterday. Back to work today...feel...more normalish.

Eggplant and Pepino

At the local market today I discovered a pepino plant. I'd never heard of one before. It had three yellow balls of fruit (a little bigger than a golf ball) with purple stripes running down them. It was $3.50 and the guy said they taste like a rockmelon (I don't like rockmelon) and were ripe and ready to be eaten. So I bought it.

I also bought an eggplant with a fruit already on it.




When I got home I pulled the ripest, largest pepino off the plant, cut it, peeled it and ate it. It was sweeter than a rockmelon and, I thought, nicer. It had the texture and colour of mango flesh. I looked it up in a few books I have and discovered that if I could manage to produce a large crop I could make pepino and strawberry jam, or that I could serve it fresh in a fruit salad or with cheese. Yum.

The eggplant is exciting too - I'm not sure my eggplant seeds are going to grow and anyway it will be at least a year before they yield anything, so a small plant with a small fruit on it and others on the way is a good idea. Can't wait to eat that too.

Book Review: Trail of Crumbs

Trail of Crumbs: hunger, love, and the search for home, by Kim Sunee was a surprise. Usually books with recipies turn me off - I find recipies difficult to read because I can't visualise what the dish will look like, let alone taste like (this is my issue, of course) and they seem random and often get in the way of the story. But Sunee has weaved the recipies into the story. They are at the end of all but the most traumatic (for her) chapters and were so much a part of the story that I read them with delight, often almost able to taste the dish. Often the recipies are the dishes she has served during the chapter and range from fancy french, simple Korean to lazy pasta and intricate southern dishes.

Once I got over this issue - by the first chapter's recipie of 'wild peaches poached in lillet blanc and lemon verbena' - I fell into her story easily. Born in Korea and left by her mother in a marketplace at three, then adopted to an American family, she grew up in New Orleans, learning to cook from her grandfather. Unable to feel she belonged anywhere she drifted around Europe until, at 25, she met and fell in love with Olivier - the founder of L'Occitane - and became responsible for his house in Provence, including the gardens and, especially, the kitchen, and for entertaining his wide circle of friends while juggling the demands of his young daughter. As she comes to the realisation that she doesn't belong in that world either, she struggles to escape and find her own place.

Kim Sunee examines the dishes she serves as closely as the emotions she can't control and the links between them are palpable. Her long journey back to herself is haunting - some of the book seems to swim past in waves of emotion - but ultimately there is a sense of hope that she may yet find her home.

This is a lovely book, I read it in a weekend and would recommend it to anyone who is aware they are searching for something that is missing - Kim's story is incredible and uplifting and on occassion horrifying.

Warm, bitter, beautiful

"Together we stooped to pick up fallen wild peaches. Blood peaches. It was the first time I had ever seen a wild peach. I held one up to the light, broke it in two to study the scarlet veins running through the flesh." - Kim Sunee, Trail of Crumbs.

The idea of plucking something from a plant and popping it into my mouth is very alien, scary even. I have a long held fear of poisonous plants from my mum's paranoia over a large bush with red berries that grew in our garden. I find it sad that I've grown up to believe that food is not food until it has arrived at a shop, gone into a plastic bag, been paid for and brought home. When I was reading Trail of Crumbs it was her descriptions of the wild fruits and freshly grown produce that really captivated me. Could you actually bite into a peach picked up from beneath its tree? What a wonderful idea! It seems romantic, natural and strange all at the same time.

Today, however, I ate something straight from the bush. It was a gooseberry. I did some research and some sources indicated that the berry was green and as I was looking at the plant today (on my twice daily visit to all of them) I thought I might try one and see if they were ripe and, perhaps, if they were, in fact, edible. I pulled open the soft little pod that are like intricate tear-shaped balloons and pulled the little green ball out. It was a little bitter, but not much, it was warm from the sun, it tasted like a berry and I didn't die. It was liberating, in fact. Exciting even.

I also realised that I have seen this plant before. It grew at the little farm in Sweden where I housesat one winter for six weeks. The little pods captivated me then, brown and dry and covered in snow and I wondered what on earth this charming little plant was, never believing that I'd know, let alone have one growning in my garden. It feels reassuring - it is a gentle reminder of one of the very best times in my life. Exactly the sort of thing I need right now.


Green gooseberries in my garden


Dry gooseberries in Sweden before the snow


Snowy gooseberries in Sweden waiting for the spring

Planting my way out of misery

A bit dramatic, I know, but I am miserable, generally, and I am planting. I hope that somehow the meshing of those two things will lead to goodness, light, happiness...I said, hoping.

Anyway, I think I will try to now turn this blog into a place where I can record my attempts at feeding myself. This means I will be able to record my successes and failures in this change I'm attempting (and I really must remember that I am, above all, attempting a change and that that in itself can be...well, difficult and stop beating myself up about the way I feel).

I started planting last weekend. Down at Bunnings (the only nursery here that I can find) I bought a whole lot of seed packeds - which I knew at the time was the wrong thing to do, but didn't know how to find out what the right thing was! - and potting mix (well, I attempted to buy potting mix, I mean, that is what I intended to buy but came home with 'garden soil' which, I suppose is different somehow - it looks different - chalk that up to serious mistake number one), and some long planters with fancy 'self watering' thingys in the bottom which I doubt do anything that a few rocks wouldn't do, but as I don't have rocks in this place.... I then had a merry time putting soil into planters and emptying seed packets into soil. I found out later that I could have saved some of the seeds. But it was fun.

I also bought some little broccoli plants and some bean plants. I planted the broccoli into the garden bed near the existing spinach (yuk!) and the beans into a planter with a trellis to grow onto. I also, against my better judgement, bought a little all-you-need thing for tomatoes. Now, even I with my limited knowledge of vegetable growing know there is something about being able to grow tomatoes - it is not as easy as tipping in soil and wacking a few seeds in. Still, the little pot it came in was a cute bright red and, hey, I'm learning. The tomatoes plants have not poked their heads up yet - are they just teasing or will it really be a total waste of money?

I also planted into 'seed starter' (as far as I can tell, special nutrient rich soil) capsicum and eggplant in a mini-greenhouse. This is a plastic box with a lid and four punnets of eight thingys (you can imagine I'm sure). It has instructions on the side that says, basically, put the seeds in and close. So I did that too.

I didn't actually have to wait long. By Thursday there were little herbs poking their bright green heads up (not sure which ones as I don't remember where I planted anything - they're herbs, it will be obvious at some point I assume) and in my mini-greenhouse the capsicum has shot up impressively. It has been exciting to watch these things happen.

Today, I went back to Bunnings, again, against my better judgement, in search of fruiting trees. Now, it might seem a leap to go from herbs to an apple tree, but I have a book that is very reassuring and inspiring and I decided that the only way I was going to learn was to just go for it. I bought an apple tree, a lemon tree, a lime tree and a gooseberry bush (it was just there, all on its own and I couldn't leave it behind).

I also found a local market on the way and bought (and I was much happier about these purchases) a strawberry plant, a bell pepper plant (with 'fruit' already on it) and a small rosemary bush.

This afternoon I planted the lemon and apple trees and the gooseberry. The gooseberry has pods on it that contain the berries. I opened one, but they are still green. It seems like the completely wrong season for them to be growing so they'll either ripen up in what's left of the early autumn heat of they won't, I guess. I'd like to taste one though - I've never had one. All the plants look very new and spiffy in their pots (yes, you can grow them in pots!). I also put the bell pepper inside (it likes the warm) and made a list of other things I need. I'll get those tomorrow and plant the lime.

I think I'll finish there, there is more to tell, but that can wait.

culture shock

I wasn't prepared for the shock of arrival at the place I'd planned for, dreamed of and struggled to get to. After packing and cleaning the house in Ballarat - stuff of nightmares and to raw and horrible to describe - and an aborted start to the drive, leaving Tom on the street in Adelaide and dashing with Dad across the continent in three days, the unease of Perth and the shopping for furniture, all of it came with me when I arrived here and undid me.

Looked at objectively this house, while on the highway and noisy, is cool, clean, small, within strolling distance of the beach, a perfect ‘Bess’ backyard and very little to do to maintain it all. But when I walked in here I was utterly traumatised by everything that had happened and had the strongest urge to flee as I’ve ever had. I was on my own and I just had to calm myself down, find the positives here and concentrate on them. But I wasn’t really able to feel okay about it all until Bess and I walked down to the beach that evening. The walk is along a tree-lined road, past well maintained houses whose reticulation sprinkles the footpath. At the end of the road is a parking area with a clean toilet block and a boat launch straight onto the beach. The beach – on the shores of Geographe Bay – is calm and warm. The water laps gently against the white sand and that first night, the almost-full moon was rising over the water. I walked east along the beach first, Bess in the water hoping a ball would miraculously appear, then when I turned back westward the fishermen were silhouetted against the setting sun. I was overwhelmed by how stunning it all was, how tranquil and relaxed, how much it felt like a holiday place. I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that I will live within bare feet walking distance from all this for at least 12 months, will get to see it in all weather and time of day. I haven’t taken my camera down there yet – like perhaps if I start sharing it, it will cease to be so beautiful – but I think I might tonight. I find myself looking at the clock, waiting for that magic time of the evening, but actually now I think about it, I can go anytime and then go again.

Today, for the first time on my own, I took Bess around to Dunsborough – some 15kms around the bay. We found an almost deserted swimming spot and dipped into the warm water – a lovely temperature from the heat of the day. I didn’t even have a towel; just air dried a bit then drove home. I ate biscuits and dip in my bathers on the back patio with a sandalwood stick wafting over me. Is this my life now?

…later

I did take my camera down to the beach and ended up getting there just after the sun went down. I knew a huge moon had to be rising at some point but all was dark on the eastern horizon. I took some photos (below), walked along and then gave up and turned back. Halfway back something made me turn and I was just in time to see the pregnant-orange moon plop over the horizon and swim above the faint lights of Bunbury. It was huge and dominating but silent and serene at the same time. I stood and watched it but it was also getting dark and I had to make it back along the beach and then home so we left. And now I’m home again – my first night on my own and it seems I’m going to have to get used to that again.