Intro – a wombat weather forecast | Book News, and what happened next in ’A Rose for the Anzac Boys’ | New Awards | Schedule for this year | The June Garden - what to plant and harvest in June; jobs for June; growing quinces
A Few Recipes: Sweet Potato Rock cakes; ‘Maybe’ Cake; A Queen’s Charlotte
A Wombat Weather Forecast
The wombats say it’s going to rain – a damp winter and good spring too. So do the black-tailed wallabies. (Just about every pouch in the valley has a joey in it, and the wallabies are mating yet again). The gully gums have decided it’s going to be a good spring too – I’ve never seen so many buds. And the indigophera and black wattles have assumed it won’t be a bad fire season this summer, thank goodness. They have hardly any seed pods at all.
Wombat weather forecasts are pretty accurate – or they have been for the past ten years, since I learned how to understand a bit of wombat. The only problem is that they are very, very local (i.e. for the northern end of the Araluen Valley). Wombats don’t worry much about what’s happening over the mountain. So there’s going to be good grass till Christmas at least here, and unless some twit does something dumb down at the camp ground on a hot dry day, we won’t have a bad bushfire either.
But weather is often a very local thing. Most of our local district is in drought, with drying dams, brown paddocks and dusty ground. And I can’t very well pick up a wombat and take it thirty kilometres away and ask it what the weather’s going to do. It wouldn’t like it.
But in the valley- well, things are pretty glorious: only light frosts, just enough to make the navel oranges sweet and the medlars soft and squishy, which is how a medlar should be, a bit like a dog dropping but sweeter. Ooops, clarification there: I have never eaten a dog dropping. Medlars taste sweeter than I think a dog dropping would taste, a bit like a more fragrant pear. And they make stunning golden jelly.
The avocadoes are fat, the limes soft and yellow, the lemons gigantic and the macadamias dropping two or three nuts a day- which makes me wish I’d planted 20 macadamia trees 20 years ago, not one. But I didn’t know if it would survive in our frosty climate, much less fruit. I have planted another couple now. But twenty years is a long time to wait for a crop.
Book news
‘How High Can a Kangaroo Hop’ has just come out, with the magic of Bruce Whatley’s illustrations. It’s a thickish book, all about wallabies and ‘roos. I’ve spent the last 35 years living with black-tailed wallabies and eastern grey ‘roos, as well as wombats, so this book is partly what I’ve learned, partly stories about the animals I’ve loved, and partly other people’s research about what are probably the world’s most incredible animal.
Why does Australia have animals that are so different from others anywhere else in the world?
Why do ‘roos and wallabies have such big tummies?
Who were the kangaroos with fangs that lived 10 million years ago?
What’s the best way to become invisible (to kangaroos, at any rate)?
Which wallaby is a ‘living fossil’ - the same as the wallabies that grazed 10 million years ago?
Why do joeys eat their mother’s droppings?
And how high CAN a kangaroo jump?
Find out in this book!
PS: What do you call a kangaroo with a flower behind their ear and a big grin?
A happy hippy hoppy.
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip
This is this year’s picture book with Bruce, due out in November and just off to be printed. It’s wonderful when a book gets to that stage- you have to stop thinking about it, brooding about it. No matter what needs changing it’s too late to do it now.
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip is funny – okay, hilarious. It’s a very very ‘Christmas’ book, about what giving can really mean. But somehow along with the carrot crunching wombat, the dancing roo, and the koalas eating gum leaves (because that’s what koalas do best) and the possums just hanging about, Bruce has made this book beautiful too – the sort of book you want to stare at for hours, just to find more in each image. I’m not quite sure how anyone can make something hilarious and beautiful at the same time. But Bruce has done it.
The Wilderness Garden (Aird Books)
This is a new and much larger edition of the book that came out about a decade ago. If you want to know how to grow all your food in your backyard, with little water and only 10 minutes work a week, this is the book you need. It should be in the shops next month. (July)
A Rose for the Anzac Boys
Many readers have written to ask what happened next, and if there will be a sequel.
No, there won’t be a sequel, unless just maybe it’s about Anne in Mesopotamia. But I’ve always known what happened to the girls after the end of the book. So for those who want to know more, here it iis . . .
Midge
Spent her first three days at the farm crying (delayed reaction to all she'd been through) – which both endeared her to her prospective mother-in-law, who might otherwise have been a bit hesitant about a strong-willed girl deciding to take charge of her son and the farm, but lost all reservations as she comforted her. Also the need to care for Midge helped bring Harry back to the present. Harry’s mother spent three days pouring egg flips into her to ‘build her up’, and for the rest of her life was convinced that Midge needed endless sponge cakes, pots of good soup and baked dinners with lots of roast potatoes to keep her strength up. All of which Midge thoroughly enjoyed, and with her active life really did need.
Within three months she bought the adjoining properties and spent most days on horseback, checking the flocks. The previous owners (whose sons had perished in the war) stayed in their homes on the farms for the rest of their lives as ‘caretakers’, lending a hand as they were able.
Midge and Harry married two months after Midge arrived at the farm. By then Harry understood that the ‘bomb’ noises in his ears weren’t a sign of madness, but a consequence of noise-induced deafness. They lived with Harry’s parents till their new house was built, up on a hill overlooking the river, and it was there that they spent their first Christmas.
Midge and Harry had three daughters, all of whom married local men and became farmers too, then one son, born too late to join WW2 till the final year, when appendicitis stopped him going overseas. By the 1930's the farm had a strong reputation for its fine wool and breeding stock. Midge returned to England only once, with Harry, for a short holiday after Anne's second child was born, returning via South Africa to look at merino breeding there. Midge lived till her late 80s; Harry died in his mid-90s.
Ethel
My one regret about the book is that I was unable to give the credit due to 'our George', Ethel's brother, Quaker and conscientious objector, who kept the cocoa flowing for his sister. Ethel organised a free medical clinic in London's East End, fought for better free schooling, raised money for free libraries, and fought for votes for women. By the 1930s she realised that her brother had similar qualities of strength and courage. Her brother continued to support her work both financially and increasingly in person, and Ethel experienced much love and fulfilment in her nieces and nephews.
Ethel worked for the Ministry of Food in WW2, organising the rationing system though her most valuable job was cajoling desperately needed food supplies for the United Kingdom from the USA. She turned down an offer to make her a 'Dame' after the war, instead successfully standing as a Labour candidate, again with her brother's support, and was one of the organisers of the national health scheme. She died suddenly from a heart attack in her early sixties, still fighting for a better world.
Anne
Anne and her Gavin continued excavating every winter in Mesopotamia until forced to stop by escalating political tensions in the late ‘30s. Her scars became far less obvious in time, till eventually they were only pale marks pitting her skin. They had two children, a boy and girl, who stayed with Anne's mother during the winter when not at school.
Gavin spent WW2 working at a military intelligence establishment out of London; Anne returned to her mother's home (Anne’s father had died and her mother now lived in the Dower House) and ran the local billeting system as well as volunteering to read to and write letters for burns victims, and to take them out to help them accustom themselves to stares.
Both Anne’s son and daughter enlisted in WW2; both survived physically and mentally unscathed.
After the war Gavin returned to his homeland Australia as a professor at the newly expanded University of Queensland, where Anne (who by now had co authored many papers and two books on ancient Sumaria with her husband) finally took a university degree in her late forties. Their son and daughter emigrated with them. Anne became a tutor in Ancient History, living in a large house on the river down from St Lucia, filled with family, students and friends. Two of Midge's grandchildren took degrees at the Uni of Qld, living with Anne and Gavin .
The three women remained close, by letter and later phone calls, but rarely met- which is why there won’t be a sequel about the three of them. Their lives were too fulfilled, too happy, too far away and too different to make meeting each other easy.
New Awards
‘Pharaoh, the Boy who Conquered the Nile’ and ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ are still shortlisted for the CBC awards – results in August. And ‘Hitler’s Daughter’ and ‘The Goat who sailed the World’ are shortlisted for the Yabba Awards, Koala Awards, Croc Awards and Cool Awards– all the kid’s choice awards. Thank you enormously every one who nominated them – and many, many, MANY thanks to everyone who might vote for them in the next month!
Schedule for This Year
I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage much more than the list below. (It doesn’t include trips away for things like dentist’s appointments, family affairs etc.) I usually receive at least one invitation to give talks or workshops each day, sometimes several. Much as I’d love to, I just can’t do them all – or even most of them. I really am limited to one trip away from home a month- I just don’t have the stamina to do more. Mostly I choose events with the biggest audience, and ones that don’t need more than four hours’ travel to get to.
Please forgive me if I can’t come to your town, school or event – it doesn’t mean I don’t want to. I wish I were superwoman and could do them all, and respond to every request for help or mentoring too.
July 25-29: 2008 Byron Bay Writer’s Festival
August 17-19: 2008 Book Week talks, Adelaide
August 25-27: Melbourne Writer’s Festival
September 16-20: Brisbane Writer’s Festival
Nov 16… Open Garden workshops at our place – contact the Open Garden Scheme (they take all the bookings and do all the arranging).
The June garden
This is hibernating season. Things move slowly in winter. It’s also a ‘bare’ time – a good time to look around the garden and plant large trees and shrubs. Ignore any gardening book that says to only plant natives etc in sporing or autumn. Trust me-winter planting is a lot less of a shock to newly planted shrubs and trees than hot and drought ridden summers.
Winter is also the time to move shrubs that have been planted in the wrong place – but most native plants don't transplant well. It's often best just to plant new ones.
. Water! Cold days – and especially cold windy days – dry plants and soil more than you think. A lot of 'cold damage' is often just lack of water!
. Prune most vines now, thinning out messy wood, but not spring-flowering ones – leave those till after they've bloomed.
What to plant
Frost-free climates
Passionfruit vines and seeds, mixed salad leaves, apple cucumbers, butter beans, huge New Guinea beans, coloured capsicum, Chinese cabbage, chillies, chokos, sweet potatoes, long, oval eggplant, melons, okra, rosellas, pumpkin, shallots, sweet corn and tomatoes. Try deep pots of parsley – the roots may rot in hot damp soil.
Plants for beauty: Alyssum, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, petunias, phlox, salvia, torenia and zinnia,
Cold to Temperate:
Plants to eat: Seeds of radish, onions, winter lettuce, silver beet, spinach, broad beans, peas, snow peas, winter lettuce, spring onions, parsnips, and fast maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba. Seedlings of beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chicory, leeks, lettuce, English spinach.
Plants for beauty: Seeds of alyssum, calendula, lunaria. Seedlings of California poppy, evening primrose, gazanias, primulas, pansies, polyanthus, Iceland poppies and viola.
Fruit
Keep planting fruit trees and berries; put in rhubarb crowns.
What to harvest
Vegetables
Year-rounders like celery, beetroot, silver beet and carrots. Winter vegies planted in January: cabbage, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflowers, winter lettuce, parsnips, swedes, turnips, foliage turnips, broad bean tips, tampala, spring onions, collards, parsley, winter radish, spinach, leek, oyster plant, celeriac and parsley root.
Fruit
Apples (Lady Williams), feijoa, navel oranges, kiwi fruit, limes, mandarins, citrons, grapefruit, bananas, avocados, late
passionfruit (high on the vine), banana passionfruit, guava, strawberry guava, medlars, olives, late tamarillos (above the frost), a very few late raspberries and winter rhubarb.
Flowers
Primulas, daisies, winter rose or helleborus, jonquils and most natives – especially grevilleas.
What to prune
Lock up your secateurs till summer. The more you prune, the more you’ll have to feed your trees and shrubs to make up for the lost foliage – and they’ll be set back in spring when they should be producing flowers. Summer pruning is far better: wounds heal quickly. Heavy pruning attracts sap suckers like woolly aphids, so practise light pruning after flowering instead.
If your apples are growing too tall and flower mostly at their tips, try weighting down the end of the branches, or tying them onto a stake in the ground. This will encourage new growth along the branch. In five or ten years, repeat the process.
Pests
In most areas there are few pest outbreaks at this time of year. But you may have over-wintering populations, especially of fruit fly and codling moth, and any remaining fruit or windfalls should be rigorously checked to prevent an early pest build-up when the weather warms. This is also a good time to think about planting to reduce pest problems next year.
If you have apple trees, let parsnips or other umbellifera go to seed now, to spring up wild around the orchard to reduce codling moth infestations. This is extraordinarily effective, though I don’t know the mechanism – whether the flowers attract predators or inhibit the moths. Tansy planted under apples is also supposed to reduce codling moth, but I haven’t found it works here – in fact, pungent tansy just seems to make fallen fruit less attractive to wombats, sheep, etc, and uneaten fallen fruit is the best way to breed codling moth.
Mid-winter is the classic time for preventive spraying with bordeaux against curly leaf (pinkish, raised blisters on peaches and almonds), rust, shot hole (small holes in leaves, most common on apricots), brown rot (exactly that: a brown, soft rot on fruit, sometimes with a furry outside), black leaf spot, bacterial blight in walnuts, and other fungal and bacterial conditions.
I try to avoid preventive spraying. Even curly leaf, which is disfiguring, usually doesn’t harm the tree unless the tree is very young or the disease is so bad that new shoots wither and fruit sets badly. But if you have had problems with these conditions in the past, or your neighbours have, or you have young trees you wish to cherish, it is probably best to give them a bordeaux spray when they are dormant. In very bad cases, spray at leaf fall and again at bud swell, just before buds start to colour. Otherwise, one spray should be enough.
Make snail fences now and put them round the beds in which you want to plant young seedlings. If you leave this till later, you may be fencing in the slugs and snails – instead of fencing them out of your garden.
Growing Quinces
Quinces are the great survivors. They take heat, frost, cold, drought and centuries of neglect and still give fruit. Their two big problems are fruit fly and birds – and fruit fly exclusion netting will keep out both.
Quince trees will start to fruit in three to four years if you plant one to two year old trees, but will be between five and ten years old before they give big crops i.e. several cases (at least) of fruit a year, and up to ten cases for a full grown tree.
Give them acid soil, lots of mulch and, at planting, a little ground-up rock phosphate. Quinces are very cold tolerant. Pick them after the first frost.
Where to grow: Full sun; almost any soil; tolerate cold heavy soils and light dry ones; will fruit even in cool wintered subtropical areas.
Which variety: Champion and Smyrna are the only commercially grown quinces in Australia. Both crop mid season and have good fruit. Specialist fruit nurseries like Bob Magnus’s in Tasmania will sell many other varieties – we have about twelve growing here. Feed in early to late spring. While neglected quinces will bear, well fed and watered ones do a heck of a lot better.
Quinces can get codlin moth and fruit fly, but usually don’t. The fruit bruises in high wind. Quinces fruit even in drought but fruit may become woody. The main problem is that some trees sucker - prune off suckers or just let your tree turn into a clump, though the suckers possibly won’t bear good fruit. Another problem is fungal leaf and fruit spots - spray with Bordeaux at leaf fall and again just as leaf buds are swelling. Spray pear and cherry slug with pyrethrum. As for birds and fruit fly – small brown wrigglers, or brown patches where they’ve been – fruit fly exclusion netting is the easiest method for dealing with them.
Harvest: Fruit ripens from March till June, depending on variety. Ripe fruit is yellow, not green, and smells wonderfully fruity when you sniff it close up. Fruit fall is a sign that either fruit is ripe or the tree is moisture stressed. While it's best to know what variety of quince yours are, you can still tell when to pick them:
. look at them once a week to see when they change from green to yellow.
. sniff once a week too - when they smell fragrant and ripe they're ready to pick.
. when a few drop naturally from the tree (i.e. not from wind, possums, drought etc) they are probably ready.
But don't wait for them to soften on the tree - quinces are still hard when ripe.
Quinces picked too early taste like mud. I've tried ripening them indoors, but they rot before they turn fragrant – I suspect they are really best ripened on the tree.
Quinces store well in the usual cool dry place i.e. a shelf. They do put out a lovely scent when stored – a great way to scent the house, but if you store spuds or apples near them they'll also smell a bit disconcertingly of quince.
Quince trees often fruit very young – just count your blessings, and your quinces, before birds, rats, fruit bats or possums eat them. You can buy fruit fly exclusion bags that will keep off quince marauders – too much work to bother with when you have a giant crop, because when you have giant crop there's enough for everyone. But they'll protect your first few crops of a dozen or so. Repellent sprays (either commercial or home-made) will also keep off possums and fruit bats by disguising the scent - but they'll also disguise the scent for you too if you're relying on the quince's perfume to tell you when they're ripe.
Store: Fruit stores for several months, and even longer if individually wrapped in newspaper.
Eating: Quinces are both sour and astringent. Very ripe ones however can be eaten raw, but only if you’ve got a strong set of chompers. If you really want to eat them raw I find them best cut into very thin slices, dipped in lemon juice so they don’t discolour, and served as a contrast to slices of sweeter fruit like plums and kiwi fruit. They can also be added thinly sliced or chopped to fruit salad, as long as they are marinated for at least four hours in the sweet syrup of other fruits.
But quinces really come into their own when they are cooked.
Stewed quinces
Cover with water; stew till soft. The slices will turn from pale yellow to pale pink. Add sugar or pale honey to taste, then simmer another five minutes for syrup to thicken. Note: You can add sugar at the start, but the flesh toughens a bit.
Baked quinces: Peel, core and bake halves in the oven till soft – about an hour in a moderate oven.
Quinces in Wine
(See pears, but quinces are stunning-er)
Japanese quinces, or Japonicas
These are small ornamental quinces. The fruit can be eaten, but is too tart to eat fresh. They do however make good jelly. The fruit are even harder than ordinary quinces, and can be left in larders or even linen cupboards for their scent. They slowly shrivel over winter, but rarely rot. (Do check each week however, in case you have a dripping staining mess.)
A Few recipes
Sweet Potato Rock Cakes
The sweet potato makes these moist and naturally sweet – as well as being good for you, as it includes sweet potato, olive oil, blueberries, dried fruit and nuts. The only villain is the sugar, which you can reduce or even leave out if you're used to a low sugar diet – it's used for sweetening in this recipe, not texture, and the fruit and sweet potato will add natural sweetness. It's also healthier made with wholemeal instead of white flour.
125 ml olive oil
1 cup caster sugar plus 2 tbsps extra
1 cup SR flour
1 cup mashed sweet potato which has been peeled then boiled, microwaved or baked
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries OR currants
1 cup macadamia nuts or other nuts (optional but good for you)
1 cup sultanas or 1 cup chopped dates
Possibly needed: 1 egg, or a little water, low fat milk, yoghurt or cream or sour cream
Put the oven on to 200C.
Mix everything except the extra sugar and the 'possibly needed' liquid.
The mixture should be moist enough to drop down from the spoon in big glops. If it's too dry to glop, add the egg or a drizzle of liquid till it glops properly. (Some blueberries and mashed sweet potato are moister than others and some flour absorbs more liquid than other flour. If yours are very dry then some extra liquid may be needed. But you probably won't need it.)
Grease a baking tray or line with baking paper. Take a tablespoon and put heaped spoonfuls (about one glop) of the mixture a little way apart on the tray.
Sprinkle each 'cake' with a little of the extra sugar.
Bake for 10-15 minutes or till firm to touch or a skewer comes out dry.
Take out of the oven, cool then place in a sealed container. They are best eaten the same day, but still great for the next three or flour days. If you've used blueberries the rock cakes may start to grow whiskers of mould or go bad after this time. If you have used currants they'll last longer.
Serves: 12- 20
Ease: Very easy
'Maybe' Cake... a healthy nut and vegetable based cake
(Also moist and quite delicious).
NB Even the fussiest kids won't realise there are veg in this cake.
1 cup SR flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
1/2 tsp ground coves (optional)
1 cup brown sugar Or 1 - 1/12 cup finely diced dates
1 1/2 cups grated raw carrot, OR sweet potato, OR pumpkin OR beetroot OR pineapple, fresh or canned
1/2 cup sultanas OR currants
1/2 cup sliced glace ginger (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, or pecans, or macadamia nuts, or almonds
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, OR peanut oil; OR macadamia oil; OR sunflower oil
2 eggs (optional – but the cake will be a bit crumbly without them)
Mix well. Line a cake tin or a loaf pan with baking paper. Spoon in the mix and bake at 160º C for 1 hour. Check at 40 minutes if you are using a wide shallow dish, as it will cook faster. It's done when the top springs back if you touch it quickly with your finger or when you poke in a skewer if it comes out dry, it's done.
The cake can be iced, but doesn't need it. It's also good served hot with cream or ice cream. It lasts about a week in a sealed container. It'll still taste fresh then, but may start to grow whiskers. Throw out if it begins to look mouldy or tastes sour.
A Queen’s Charlotte
Serves 4
Ease of making: Very easy
Time taken: 2 minutes to assemble; 10-15 to cook; longer to assemble if you stew your own fruit; even longer if you grow it and pick it, but much more fun.
NB: Charlottes used to be the dish of Queen’s – it was named after Queen Charlotte. But then cooks got stingy and Charlottes turned into gluggy fruit with stale bread on top. This one goes back to the days of luxury!
Ingredients
This is a good way to use up any bread that is too good to throw out. Use your own choice of bread – whatever you like eating is best for this recipe. We use various yummy breads from Matt the local baker, and this is great with his wholemeal fruit loaf, his dark beer bread, and his multigrain. Also great with white Italian style bread and soft Lebanese bread.
2 cups fruit – your choice: stewed apple, or apple and blueberries (no need to stew the berries and they can be frozen); stewed apricots, rhubarb…
4 thin slices of your favourite bread, crusts removed, and cut into ladies fingers i.e. finger-wide strips.
1 egg
half cup caster sugar (optional)
half cup cream, or milk
1 tsp vanilla, or 1 tbsp marmalade
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Place the fruit in an oven-proof pot.
Mix everything else but the bread and nutmeg with a fork. Now dip in the bread and leave to soak for about 30 seconds.
Now quickly layer the bread over the apple. There may not be enough to cover it – depends how wide your dish is. Doesn't matter. Pour any leftover liquid onto the bread.
Bake at 200º C for 10 minutes, or a little longer if the mixture is still liquid. The bread should just be starting to turn golden.
Eat hot, with more cream, or ice cream, or yoghurt. Not bad cold, either. Makes a surprisingly good breakfast, especially if you have used a good wholemeal or multigrain bread.
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