June 2005 . . .
Intro
Wombat News
Book News
The June Garden (including how not to have a boring garden and growing medlars)
A Few Recipes
. hot pot pourri
. winter fruit salad
. cherry scones
. spiced popcorn
Intro
It's cold. The wombat droppings have white furry whiskers every morning, there's frost on the grass, the shadows are dark purple and I'm up to two hot water bottles a nightŠmuch nicer than an electric blanket as you don't get dehydrated and they're still warm under the doonas in the morning.
It's been a lovely month of pottering: making cumquat marmalade, lots of reading, a bit of writing, much lunching with friends, walking every afternoon. I'm officially still recovering, but part of the time I feel a heck of a lot more energetic than I have for years. (Obviously the heart attack had been brewing for a long time ... on reflection, decades.)
Still no rain, apart from a few showers, about 7 ml in all- which is enough to keep the grass green, even though the trees are wilting. The cumquats and calamondins and first of the navel oranges are ripe. So are the medlars, and chokos and chilacayote melons are dropping from the trees (beware of falling fruit), a few blood oranges, masses of avocadoes, a single ripe custard apple and lots of white sapotes and a few varieties of lillipilly, the odd fig, kiwi fruit, still Lady William and Sturmer Pippin and John Downie apples to pick and Himalayan pears and a single pomegranate the birds haven't been able to reach, limes and lemons and bell peppers...and at this stage I'll stop, or I'll feel guilty I should be out there picking.
But winter's crops are gentler than summer ones. They don't get fruit fly, and they don't all ripen on the same day then drop off all squishy if you neglect them. Winter fruits just sit there till you're ready ... or till spring comes, whichever arrives first.
Wombat news
Mothball is digging. And digging. And digging. So is her son Grunter. Bryan's had to cart away two barrow loads of rocks and dirt from Mothball's hole behind the bathroom, and Grunter is digging a new hole underneath our new 10,000 gallon tank. It's only half a metre deep so far- will be fascinating to see if it actually turns into a real hole (few wombat holes actually work. Most collapse or the wombat loses interest. Wombats are great diggers but lousy engineers! But Mothball is not bad as an engineer- not great, but passable- and it looks like she's passed the genes to her son.)
Ps I mentioned a giant brown snake a few months ago, that slithered up the pergola onto the hanging baskets outside my study window and struck at me through the glassŠwell, I thought it was, anyway. Have just read a fascinating bit of snakes' ability to hear. They can hear a much deeper range of sounds than we can, and I'm now wondering if it wasn't striking at my computer, instead of me. A snake with a hatred of technology, at least the deep whirring noise sort- noisy if you're a snake, anyway.
(My son has a story of touring in India, wading into a wild river when something long and grey reached down out of the jungle, ripped his watch off and flung it into the trees. It was an elephantŠit then marched back where it came from. Luckily the watch was a cheap plastic one on a flimsy band or his arm might have gone with itŠhave always wondered if it thought it was a small snake or a symbolic rejection of Western societyŠ)
Schedule for this year
I'm not sure about this yetŠ and I won't be adding much more to the list for this year either, not even for an incredibly good cause.
But hopefully I'll still be going to:
July 18, 19, 20 talks in Brisbane, contact Helen Bain at Booked Out helen@ngi.com.au for bookings
August 15th, 16th and 17th, Sydney Book Week talks. Contact Lateral Learning on bookings@laterallearning.com
August 22nd, 23rd and 24th, Melbourne Book Week talks. Contact Booked Out on lauris@bookedout.com.au
Sept 30th - October 1st, Bega, NSW Rural Women's gathering.
Sunday October 2 Kid's Universe, Sydney: talks
October 21 Open Garden Seminar at Taree. Contact Lynne Walker at the Open Garden Scheme at nthnsw@opengarden.org.au
25 October Talk for Canberra Organic Growers
27 November Garden Workshops. Bookings essential – there are only forty places in each workshop.
Each workshop will go for three hours and will include morning or afternoon tea. There will be a general talk for about an hour with questions, then a tour around the garden explaining how we can grow 266 types of fruit here, including tropicals like avocadoes, bananas, sapotes, coffee, cinnamon and how we use groves to protect our trees from frost, heat, drought, possums, birds and winds like the breath of hell. Kids over eight welcomeŠ but be aware that there are water hazards and machinery so it isn't suitable for kids under eight.
Contact the Open Garden Scheme for details at act@opengarden.org.au or call 0269 432666
PS. still hoping to get to Bowen..had to cancel that last month.
New Books
Have just been doing the final corrections to The Secret World of Wombats ... and gloating over Bruce's final illustrations. There are some Diary of a Wombat type ones, and some hilarious cartoon ones, and some that are just basically beautiful.
The book is about 30 years of living with wombats and studying them. All the dirt on wombats you ever wanted to know: why wombats bite each others bums, how to speak wombat, and how you can get close to a wild wombat, plus tales of Bad Bart the Biter and Moriarty and Mothball and many of the others. It's out in August- can't wait.
Uncle Wal the Werewolf should be out now- the fifth in the Wacky Family series, and Stephen Michael King's werewolves are just glorious. It's a slightly, um, ruder book than the others. Well, it has to be, what with widdling on doorposts and the embarrassing problem of what covers the dangly bits when you lose the furs and become human.
Plus of course they Came in Viking Ships, with no rude bits whatsoever but adventure and romance and that other worlds feeling you get when the history is accurate, so it really takes you back there.
The June Garden
How not to be BORING (in your garden, that is)
Take a bit of land, bung a house in the middle, put in a garden bed along the front, add a couple of shrubs and a tree or three and, whacko, you've got the average Aussie garden.
Most people put more thought into their hairstyle than into designing their garden. And gardens do need to be designed, not just planted out, because without a bit of forethought gardens are (I'll say this in a whisper) very, very boring.
A fascinating garden is one that tempts you to wander round it, to gaze at it for hours till you finally appreciate all it's got to offer. It's NOT one that you can glance at, blink, then think right, that's the garden checked out. And even a small block of land can be made rich and complex.
How do you transform a boring garden into an interesting one? Okay, I'm not going to promise it's easy - it'll take time, sweat and, above all, THOUGHT. But like any hard task, the more you put into it, the more stunning the result will be.
Idea 1 - Add height
Few gardens are entirely flat. You can make your garden look larger - and much more interesting - by exaggerating whatever slope you have with terraces - small ones for small slopes, larger ones for larger slopes.
Terraces can be formal ones, with neat rock or brick or sleeper walls, or informal ones - a few sleepers here, a cluster of rocks there, with the soil behind scooped down to them.
Any dingbat can put in small terraces. (Larger ones need muscle or machinery, and a nice knowledge of exactly where to put the drains so that water doesn't accumulate behind the wall and cause a landslide.)
Start at the bottom - put in your retaining wall, then dig the earth back till it's level with the wall. Then continue this up the slope and just believe me, when you're out there with slope, dirt and sleepers or rocks in front of you, it'll all fall into place... or you'll laboriously dig in into place anyway.
Don't ever feel you have to terrace ALL your slope. In fact long even terraces all along a slope can look pretty boring and predictable too. Try dividing the slope into sections - this bit can have three terraces, this bit two or six or eight - it'll look more complex, more informal, far more natural.
If you don't want the hassle of terracing, think of breaking up your slope - or accentuating it - with stairs, curved, rustic or otherwise attractive as well as useful.
Idea 2 - Add a rock garden
Rock gardens are another great way to break up a boring flat bit of ground. Another word for rock garden is 'big pile of dirt with rocks attractively arranged in and around it'. Try a mound at the front of your garden, to help keep out traffic noise, or a formal 'wedding cake' design in the middle of the lawn. In fact just buzz off to the library and get a book on rock gardens for masses of ideas to choose from.
A whisper of warning though – rock gardens can be very difficult to weed if they are not well made. Once couch grass, oxalis, wandering Jew, onion grass etc get amongst your rocks they can be nigh impossible to remove. Get rid of the weeds before piling up your rocks and soil, and well before you introduce your little alpine darlings!
Raised beds are another great way to add complexity to the garden, especially in small courtyards. These beds are literally waist high - no bending to weed, plant or pick and great when your knees no longer do exactly what you want them to. The plants - whether they be flowers or great trusses of ripe tomatoes - are also far closer to eye level, more or less yelling out 'Here I am. Admire me!'
Idea 3 - Add paths (and I don't just mean a strip of concrete to the clothes' line)
My grandmother's garden had almost no lawn at all - just an irregular little semi-circle by the front door. The rest of the garden was a wonderful maze of paths between rock edged gardens and clumps of camellias, and I've never forgotten it. To my childish mind it was enormous. I realise now it was probably just the standard suburban garden, but as you wandered round the paths you were never quite sure if you'd covered all of it - or if another camellia in full bloom or tiny birdbath might be round the next curve.
Paths can transform the most boring garden into paradise. Get some string or wool – or even better the garden hose. Use that to outline where the paths will go. Now use bricks, sleepers, stone or prefab garden edging to outline the gardens on either side. Remember, the more twists and turns the greater the garden fun.
Idea 4 - Go wild with shrubbery
If you don't want the effort of building edged gardens, just plant LOTS of trees and shrubs - not just the standard two at the front and three at the back. Mulch around them and plant ground covers in the mulch. Now pretend you are a wombat and make your own paths through the shrubbery. Or do the string/wool/ hose trick above, and mark out gardens that will simply be shrubs and mulch.
Idea 5 - Get rid of the straight path to the front door!
Straight paths are bad feng shui anyway. Good luck runs out or the dragon of unhappiness charges in or something like that anyway. But they also look boring.
Instead have curved paths to your front door, because this way the dragon of unhappiness gets lost (dragons of unhappiness are pretty dumb). Or if the idea of digging up ten metres of concrete is a bit daunting, put two half circles of garden on either side of the path somewhere towards the middle. This will break up the straight boring look, and the dragon of unhappiness will be so busy admiring your lavender or petunias he'll forget to gallop up the front stairs.
Idea 6 - Banish the driveway!
You don't have to have boring parallel strips for your cars wheels to perch on either i.e. a classic driveway.
Try paving a gracefully curving area which incorporates the driveway, rather than relying on strips for the wheels.
If you become really carried away with the idea you can end up with an interesting series of shapes as you sweep off to the front door or enclose an island bed. Add a flight of steps with pot plants perched on them, or small ground hugging plants in any tiny gaps – really there is no excuse for the two parallel concrete strips.
If you already have the concrete strips you can lever them out, break them up into large rectangles, turn them upside down for a more interesting texture (rough) and lay them like enormous Aztec paving stones elsewhere (believe me it looks great!).
Idea 7 - Add curves
Be honest. How many horrible straight gardens have you got? So fatten them up. Take the string or wool or hose mentioned above and outline a nice fat curve on the outward edge of your garden and dig and plant it out. Curved gardens look prettier and are easier to mow around.
Idea 8 - Be adventurous!
Don't feel you have to have a garden like every other garden in the street. This bit of land is YOURS, and there's no point mortgaging half your life to buy it if you don't feel free to turn it into exactly the house and garden you love. If you want to fill your garden with topiary dinosaurs, go ahead! A Tuscan courtyard, Spanish water garden, a modern Mexican rock, sand and cactus garden or Tarzan-type jungle - they're all possible if you've got the courage to go ahead.
If you want to try your hand at sculpture or introduce wild, bright colours using paint – do it. If you really want a slice of bush with your house as a bird hide in the middle of it all – feel free. Quiet and contemplative with the sound of water or wind chimes – be my guest. An overgrown, riotous flower, fruit and vegetable based cottage garden – it's yours for the planting.
And if you LIKE neat rectangular gardens and neatly trimmed lawn edges make all the rude comments you want to while reading the advice above, and go and do exactly what you want to.
Because that's what a garden is for. It's a place for you to live in, according to you dreams. And once you've achieved your heart's desire, it's never boring.
What to do in June
. DREAM: this is garden fantasy month - the time to add the fish pond, pergola, gazebo or rockery of your dreams
. PLANT dormant trees like apples, persimmons, plums, as well as dormant roses and shrubs like wigelia, crepe myrtle and lilac.
. FEED winter blooming flowers every two weeks to keep them flowering well and pick off dead blooms.
. WATER indoor plants often, as heated rooms really dry out plants
but DON'T water succulents much now. Let them partially dry out in cool weather, but prune off large branches and paint with an antifungal spray.
. PRUNE large branches now and seal wounds with an antifungal spray (but don't prune roses yet, as you might encourage frost sensitive new growth).
. SPRAY dormant roses and fruit trees with Bordeaux to help prevent black spot and other fungal diseases.
. BUY a few camellias in flower - this is a great time of year to wander round and fall in love with some.
. PICK sweet scented daphne and jonquils and keep a nosegay on your kitchen table and office desk - winter depression is sometimes linked as much to the absence of summer scents as to the lack of light.
What to plant:
Cold to temperate areas: Nothing much - but put in onions, artichoke, asparagus and rhubarb crowns if you're desperate to plant something.
Flowers: Any pots of 'bloomers' like pansies, primulas, polyanthus, alyssum, calendulas. Pots of well-grown dianthus or foxgloves to bloom in spring.
Frost free areas: Asian veg, beans, beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, capsicum, carrot, cucumber, eggplant, garlic, parsnip, potatoes, radish, rocket, rosella, spring onion, sweet corn, sweet potato, tomato, zucchini.
Flowers: Seeds or seedlings of all your favorites.
How to Grow Medlars
There are some fruit that look shiny and colorful and just scream eat me! eat me! when you see them in the supermarket.
And then there's medlars
Medlars are the world's ugliest fruit, brown skin and brown flesh, a bit like squishy doggy doo ... if fact the medlar used to be known as the open a*** tree (I'm being tactful here) ...not because it gave you the runs, but because it looks like... well, you know what.....
Just shut your eyes though, and take a bite..and then another bite and another one..because a good ripe medlar is delicious.
Medlars are quite small trees- perfect for small gardens, especially in colder areas. They don't need pruning, grow in just about any soil- and will still bear for years even if you forget to feed them, though feeding will give you bigger fruit. Medlars have gorgeous blossom in spring- quite late, after the frosts have finished in cold areas. They also have the most stunning gold leaves in Autumn- worth growing even without the fruit.
The fruit swells up all over summer... and it's still there in winter till the birds eat them or you pick them. Medlars don't ripen till all the leaves have fallen..and a few fruit start to fall too. They'll be squishy and seem over ripe...till you taste them. It's a bit like a pear slowly simmered in good wine, soft and very very fragrant.
According to tradition, the medlar is the best fruit to eat with vintage port...it's not bad with a cheese plate after dinner too, for sophisticated eaters...or just cover slices with rich cream, for dessert. The medlar in fact is definitely a tree for the discriminating...those who love the blossoms, the golden autumn leaves... and the good life generally....
A Few Recipes
I love winter...the trees may be bare but you're warm inside...along with the smells of old joggers under the sofa and last night's prawns and all the other smells that get trapped inside because it's too cold to open the windows.
Which is why I like hot pourri... it's a wonderful way to make your house smell fantastic.
All you need are some hankies or bits of cloth, ribbon, whole cloves, rosemary leaves, either fresh from the garden or dried from the supermarket, whole black pepper, lemon rind that's been left to dry for a few days in the sun, and cinnamon sticks, and bay leaves- they can be fresh or dried too.. If you can't get all the ingredients, just use what you can.
Mix it all together; package it neatly; tie on the ribbon.
And when you want to freshen the house, just drop one of these into a saucepan of water, and let it simmer for half an hour or so.
Just make sure kids can't pull it off the stove, and that the saucepan doesn't boil dry.
After half an hour the scent will have seeped through most of the house. Take the pot off the stove, scoop out the now rather gluggy sachet, and leave it on a rack to dry out.
You can use each sachet about four times if you dry them
Winter fruit Salad
Once there was a Chinese emperor who demanded that the finest fruit in all the world be found and bought to him. He judged peaches to be the best, and declared that from now on only emperors were allowed to eat them. For centuries it was believed that eating peaches gave you everlasting youth.
Not sure if that's absolutely accurate. But they definitely get you headed that way.
Ingredients
half a cup dried peaches
half a cup dried apricots
half cup water
half cup apple juice or strained (pulp free) orange juice
3 tb rum (optional)
3 whole cloves (optional)
one strip orange peel(no white pith)
1 orange, peeled and sliced
1 banana, peeled and sliced
Place everything except the orange and banana in a saucepan. Simmer till the fruit is soft. Add more water if it seems to be too dry. Stir only to stop it sticking- it shouldn't need much.
When the fruit is soft you can either leave it in the fridge in a sealed container for a day or two before going any further, or do the final stages now: add the orange and banana, simmer for half a minute. Take off the heat and eat hot. Needs large amounts of cream, icecream or natural yoghurt. Great cold with yoghurt for breakfast the next morning. (The cooking will have evaporated the alcohol from the rum...all that will be left is the taste. But this is still good without any rum at all)
Cherry Scones
1 can cherries, or 1 cup stewed cherries, with stones removed
2 cups self raising flour
2 dessertspoons butter or margarine
half cup cherry juice
half cup cream or buttermilk OR
1 full cup cherry juice
Turn the oven onto hot (275C) NOW
Rub the butter into the flour; add other ingredients and roll the dough out on a board sprinkled with flour till it's smooth. Cut into rounds with an upturned glass, or cookie cutter if you have one (A heart shaped one is you want to go all romantic).
Place scones in a greased pan, just touching. Brush them with a little milk- if you don't have a pastry brush the tips of your fingers will do.
Now place the pan on a baking tray, so the bottoms don't get too hard before the tops are brown; bake 15 minutes.
Take them out of the oven, and cover AT ONCE with a clean tea towel. Leave for ten minutes. This will give them that lovely soft scone like texture.
Eat hot with butter or jam and cream, or toast them for breakfast or reheat in the microwave(Though they won't be as good re heated)
Spiced Popcorn
half cup popping corn (from supermarket)
4 tb olive or other oil
4 tb butter or margarine (or more oil can be substituted- I prefer to use oil)
1tsp turmeric
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
half tsp ground chilli OR a good grind of black pepper if you don't like fiery popcorn
salt- optional
Take a thick bottomed pan with a lid. Heat for 30 seconds. Add the oil, wait 10 seconds, then add the popcorn, stir well so it's all covered in oil then put the lid on. Turn the heat down about half way. keep shaking the pot till it's all popped- will take about three minutes. Take off the heat but leave the lid on.
Place butter or oil in another pan with the garlic and spices, but not the pepper. Heat for about three minutes, stirring all the time. Toss through the hot popcorn. Add pepper now if you are using it instead of chilli- adding the pepper too early can make it taste a bit bitter.
Taste the popcorn and add salt if you like, but you probably won't need to.
Serve with you favourite video