April 2005 . . .
Intro
New Books
Awards
Schedule This Year
April in the Garden
A Few Recipes
. Faster than Pizza
. Chocolate Peanut Butter cake.
. French Toast
I woke up this morning to find two small furry wallaby faces about a metre away from me, peering through the bedroom window. They were was a mum and her baby, just old enough to clamber out of the pouch and still looking more rat like than wallaby like. They were having breakfasta bite of apple, a munch of apple leaves, a chomp of grass then back to the apples again.
The apples are Lady Williams, which don't ripen here till July. There are plenty of other apples ripe now ... ahem, too many apples ripe now, unless we start bottling apple juice. But the ripe apples are probably too sweet for a wallaby's tastes. Wallabies are gourmets. Wombats will much grass all night for months and never hanker for another taste. But black tailed wallabies like to browse.
The baby wallaby has been hopping about by itself now for a month- mum has been showing it which rose leaves taste the best, and how to pull down peach branches so they crack and you can guzzle the whole lot. As I write this Mum is outside my study window, eating my chocolate lilies, saffron and cumquat tree. There's no sign of the baby- It's off having its own adventures. Probably with my lettuces.
It's truly autumn here now; not just red and yellow leaves, fluttering down like exquisite butterflies, but the chokos are fruiting finally, the avocadoes are fat, the chooks laying so many eggs that even Bryan is sick of baked custard, rice pudding, soufflés for lunch and egg rich fruit cakes.
Apples, pomegranates, the first of the quinces, tiny chilacayote melons that we have to grab every morning before they turn into monsters by midday- those things are fast. Passionfruit, pears, including the beure bosc which are my favourites- hard and crisp if you at them fresh but firm then melting when you cook them. Cape gooseberries in their paper cases, feijoas, tamarilloes, lemons, the first of the lillipillies just about ready for me to make a batch of lillipilly cordial, though I don't think I'll get round to lillipilly jelly this year- haven't even made enough apple chutney yet to see us through the winter. (Apple chutney- the good home made stuff- is a cheat's way of cooking. When too bushed to cook bung just about any meat in the oven, covered in apple chutney and a bit of stock or water. Bake slowly, and throw a spud or three onto the rack as well. Grab chicory or lettuce from the garden, and you have dinner.
Ps If you've only ever tasted supermarket apples that have been cold stored, try to hunt out an orchard now. Fridges and chilling are the greatest crime ever perpetuated against apple trees! Cold stored apples lose most of their flavour and all lots of their texture, and anyway most are picked too green to be good. So many parents have told me their kids hate fruit- but when the kids come down here they guzzle bags of it. The poor things had never tasted decent fruit- I wouldn't eat cold stored apples or oranges either!
Book news
'They came on Viking Ships is out! (And has been snapped up by Harper Collins in the UK, USA and Canada too.)
It's been exciting seeing the text I worked on finally turn into a book. The cover is wonderful, and the story ...
Well, it grabbed me about five years ago. I was reading some of the Icelandic Sagas, the history poems written about eight hundred years ago. The sagas told the stories of Erik the Red, founder of the Greenland colony, and his son Leif, who sailed to 'Vinland' or present day North America.
But there too was Freydis, Leif's sister, who according to one saga also lead an expedition to Vinland. Why do we remember Leif, when Freydis is forgotten?
The more I read the more fascinated I became. Only two of the sagas mention Freydis. In one she is a total villain, who murders the rest of the expedition to get all the profits for herself, and who takes her husband's axe to kill the other women. But in the other she is a modest dutiful heroine, who saves them all when the skraelings- the native Americans- attack.
The men flee, but Freydis is nine months pregnant and can't run. So she takes up the sword of a fallen Viking, rips her bodice open, slaps the sword against her breast, and charges them, and saves them all.
Which makes sense if you think about it- bows and arrows only work at a distance. Up close an iron sword would win.
So what happened to Freydis? Why has this extraordinary women been forgotten?
Mostly, I think, she was just too strong a character for later poets and historians to cope with. By then the Roman Church had taken over from the Celtic, and they were trying hard to wipe out references to strong women, (St Brigid, for example, was a Bishop, but that but was mostly forgotten too).
'They came in Viking Ships' tells Freydis's story from the point of view of Hekja, a Scottish thrall, or slave, and her dog Snarf, as they are captured by the Vikings, taken to the Greenland colony, and then to the new colony in Vinland. The book was picked up by Harper Collins UK, US and Canada too, even before it came out here. It's an extraordinary story, though that is due mostly to Freydis Eriksdottir, not me.
Other books:
. The most recent Phredde is 'Phredde and the Vampire Footie Team. The next one, Phredde and the Haunted Underpants, is due out in November
. The latest Wacky Family (Just taken up by Sweden too) are my Dad the Dragon and My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome. My uncle Wal the Werewolf is due out soon- just hilarious illustrations by Stephen Michael King
. The best general gardening book of mine is still Best of Jackie French- large and covers how to grow and use just about everything.
PS Just had the most fabulous book launch down at Harrietville with the teacher librarians. Wigs, swords, an (almost) genuine Viking ship that slowly fell to pieces, a puppy who whined at all the right places and more hilarity than you'd think would fit onto a room. Thank you for the most wonderful launch ever!
Pps Just saw Bruce Whately's draft illustrations for The Secret World of Wombats, due out in August. They are magnificently incredibly wombat like, some so real you feel like crying- or I do anyway- and others so hilarious that tears come for quite another reason.
Awards
To the Moon and Back has just been shortlisted for a CBC award- Bryan is delighted! We wrote the book together. It's the story of Australia and man's journey to the moon. It was a labour of love for both of us, and the Harper Collins team who worked on it too - definitely worth it!
Schedule this year so far:
April 10th 13th, ASLA Conference, Canberra, including a 'Meet the Wombats and Have Lunch' tour down here. (Wombats not guaranteed, but you'll certainly see lots of wombat holes! Plus hear the true history behind the books.)
April 23rd and 24th, Conflux Sci-Fi Conference, Canberra.
May 9-11, Talks and workshops at Bowen, Qld. Contact Susan Conolly at Queen's Beach State School, 07 4785 1255.
June 6-12 Storylines Literary Festival in New Zealand
June 22nd and 23rd, Gardening School at Toowoomba, Qld.
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.
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 welcome 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
April in the Garden
Gardens need colour in winter, plus decent garden smells. I'm serious; there's a theory that SAD sybndrome can be triggered as much by the lack of summer smells as too little sunlight (Which is yet another reason to get out into the garden, yours or someone else's!)
1. Buy two strawberry 'planter pots' (tall pots with holes down the sides as well as on top) for either side of your front door, and fill them with bright pansies and two fragrant daphne bushes, so the scent wanders in the front door.
2. Make a new round bed out the front and fill with primulas, violas, patiolas, pansies, Iceland poppies, polyanthus and other winter annuals- plus daphne or Earlicheer jonquils
3. Line your fence with a hedge of camellias, michelia, cumquats, or early fruiting bright mandarins.
4. Plant a perennial bed of non-invasive ornamental oxalis, brilliant red flowered sage or coloured flax.
5. Shine with silver: fill bare spaces with silver foliaged and strongly scented curry plant, wormwood, Italian lavender
6. Brighten up shady spots with abutilon, correas, arum lilies (beware- they can go wild) or bare sunny spots with wintersweet, or winter blooming red-hot pokers, or winter flowering grevilleas.
7. Plant some thryptomene. The flowers are tiny, there's no perfume, but for some reason it's the cheeriest winter bloomer that I know
Ps several wattles bloom in winter too- hunt out ones that suit your area
Do you have a friendly garden?
Score (1) for each 'yes' answer!
Do you have:
. Outdoor chairs for nattering to friends?
. A bird bath or small fountain for feathered visitors?
. A place where kids can play without being told to 'be careful of my petunias!'
. Rocks, walls or logs where lizards can sun bake?
. A tall tree to keep possums and birds happy?
. Flowers, cuttings, surplus tomatoes or spare bulbs to give away to friends?
. A green and blossoming front garden that helps to sooth and refresh passers by?
Score: 4 or more ... your life is full and generous- and so is your garden!
Jobs for April
. Plant winter savoury. This much-neglected herb is really fragrant in cold weather, and great with any tomato dish, with carrots, new potatoes, with cheese in quiches
. Give your indoor plants a holiday outside in dappled shade for a few days
. Feed all flowers and veg to encourage lots of blooms over winter.
. Keep an eye out for attractive seed heads- burdock, Echinacea, Eryngiums and sunflowers look great, but there are many others too. Pick them with long stems and hang upside indoors down till fully dry. Use them in dried flower arrangements. A spray of gold paint will really make them glow, but I love the natural cream- brown shades best.
. Prune lavender, lavatera, buddleias, curry bush and other shrubs that start to straggle frost free areas; in very frosty areas wait till early Spring as the plants can die back where they are cut.
. Feed and water camellias well for a good long flowering season
. Trim hedges- they may look straggly with a new flush of growth in autumn
. Wriggle your hand under clumps of dahlias and remove surplus tubers. Give to friends or make another dahlia bed. (If you do this now while there are still a few blooms you can tell which colour dahlia you are digging up!)
Looking glorious now: autumn leaves, tibouchina, asters, nerines, Autumn crocus, storm lilies or Zephyranthes, Kaffir lilies, crab apples, Japanese anemones, early camellias, orange fruit on the persimmons
Useful tip: if you are planting a new lawn now, or repairing an old one with new soil and scattered seed, cover with clear polythene for a few days to speed up germination, so the grass is well established by winter
Useful tip: if your lawn has any of those compacted areas where grass refuses to grow, water them with Wettasoil, to help retain moisture so new growth can get a good foothold, or dig gently and top dress with good fresh soil or compost. Then put in a path or stepping stones to keep feet from compacting it again!
Useful tip: don't point a strong jet of water at a plant- it may wash soil away from its roots. Use a sprinkler, even if it seems to take longer!
Useful tip: Wipe plastic garden furniture every few weeks with a damp cloth, to get rid of grit and debris that might scratch the finish: bits of grit left on
Money saver
Collect seeds from summer flowers. Most annuals give seed that can be planted next year. (Some won't grow true to type as they come from hybrids or may have cross pollinated with other colours, but it can be fun to see what you get next year!)
Money saver
Grow your own sprouts! All you need is an old jar, seeds and water. Look for packets of sprouting seeds (don't use ordinary ones as they'll be treated with fungicide). Follow the directions on the packet
Money saver
Many bulbs will be on special now as it's past the prime time to plant bulbs. But as long as they feel firm, not squishy, bulbs can still be planted now- and you may find some real bargains.
Useful tip
That cheap punnet of yellow seedlings or wilted pot plant is not a bargain- sick plants rarely do well later!
For Kids
Buy a wide shallow pot and let kids plant lots of tiny succulents (Check the labels of each plant to make sure they won't grow too big.) Or plant bigger succulents in old joggers, teapots, Spiderman or Barbie mugs filled with a mix of half sand and half potting mix.
Succulents are very forgiving if kids forget to water them, but they do have the most amazing variety of shapes and flowers.
A 'Name Garden' for Kids
Make a new garden bed and let kids 'write' their name with pansy seedlings. Then fill up bare spaces with alyssum seedlings. In six weeks their name will be blooming!
What to Plant in April
Hot climates:
Plants for beauty: coleus, gerberas, impatiens, nasturtiums, petunias, zinnias, ornamental shrubs, plus all the cooler climates flowers below.
Plants to eat: Just about any veg can be planted now, plus fruit trees, choko and passionfruit vines.
Temperate:
Plants to eat: Cumquats, calamondins and lemons for winter fruit; seedlings of beetroot, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chicory, leeks, lettuce, leeks, spinach, seeds of broad beans, peas, snow peas, winter lettuce, spring onions, parsnips, fast maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: daphne for stunning winter scent, plus annual flowers to bloom all winter, like primulas, pansies, polyanthus, Iceland poppies, alyssum, viola. Plant sweet peas, lunaria, nemophilia, lupins, Californian poppy, evening primrose, gazanias for spring.
Cold climates:
Plants to eat: Seedlings of broccoli, Brussel sprouts, chicory, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, leeks, lettuce, spinach, seeds of broad beans, peas, snow peas, winter lettuce, spring onions, fast maturing Asian veg like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba.
Plants for beauty: potted roses, daphne for stunning winter scent, plus seedlings of annual flowers to bloom all winter, like primulas, pansies, polyanthus, Iceland poppies, alyssum, viola, and lunaria, nemophilia, lupins, Californian poppy, evening primrose and gazanias for spring.
Harvests
In colder regions autumn is the harvest season, frantic with bottling. Here most harvests are in summer. Autumn harvests are gentler: late apples, late pears, pomegranates, medlars, and quinces. The fruit is full of summer sun without that almost frantic fermented sweetness that crops get in high summer.
This is the time for gathering up whatever will be spoiled by winter cold- green tomatoes to ripen on newspaper indoors or make into green tomato pickle, immature cucumbers and pumpkin to slice and stir-fry or hang by their vines in the garage to keep ripening for a few weeks. Dig up tomatoes and capsicum bushes with as much soil as you can, and try to pot them for a continued crop.
Ripening Immature Vegetables
Pull up tomatoes, capsicum, vines etc with as much soil as possible. Hang them in a shed or veranda. The crop will continue to ripen.
Even green tomatoes will keep ripening on newspaper indoors- check for bad ones often. Don't dig root crops till you're going to use them- they'll be sweeter for the cold. If the ground may freeze mulch over them, or try to shelter them with tall plants around them (move some potted plants next to them- I use a prolific climbing geranium in pots to protect small vulnerable plants.)
Other jobs
This is the time to think about last minute seed saving. Transplant any carrots, parsnips etc you may be saving for seed into a less used part of the garden if they are going to be in the way where they are. Transplanting them now will only make them go to seed quicker. Stake them well- they'll get top heavy when the seed heads form and may fall down, causing the seed to rot or sprout prematurely.
Mulch soil well before it cools down to keep plants growing longer (black plastic and aluminium foil can be used to increase heat to plants). Once frosts start, however, thick mulch can mean more leaf damage- it may be best to rake it off.
Dust wood ash over areas where you're going to plant broad beans, or in between the rows to help prevent brown spot
Think about green manuring unused ground to prepare it for spring, clearing weeds, fixing nitrogen, adding hummus - lucerne, broad beans, peas, field peas.
Pests
This isn't a bad time of year for pests- the great population explosions have been and gone and predators should have built up to cope with the remnant.
If you have winter maturing fruit keep up your fruit fly traps and orchard hygiene. Otherwise just make sure that you don't have any old fruit in nice warm slowly decomposing compost heaps or pits- places where fruit fly can cosily over winter.
Check any late maturing apples like democrats or grannies or Lady Williams every few days for the sawdust like deposits from codling moth larvae. If you find any pick off the apples and either feed them to the animals or stick them in a plastic bag to anaerobically compost over winter.
Remove any old ladders or boxes near the trees where codling moth can hibernate, pick up any windfalls or let the chooks do it for you.
If you're troubled with harlequin beetles in the garden- sometimes called push-me- pull-you because of their active sex lives- stick some broad pieces of cardboard on the ground around the garden. Check each afternoon for sheltering beetles. This should reduce the numbers in your garden next season considerably.
Stick hens or other animals under fruit trees now if you can, and in the old tomato patches- they'll help clean up any fruit residues that might help fruit fly over winter.
Early broad beans sown now will be susceptible to aphids- but you can just nip off the tops, steam them and eat them, and that will be the end of the aphid problem. Early broad beans may mean an early winter harvest, instead of waiting till spring to eat them. Plant them very closely together, so they can protect each other from the frost, which will nip off the flowers. As soon as the weather warms up the plants will start setting fruit again.
Early onions, like flat white, can be planted now, and the ground prepared for later main onion plantings. Onions don't like weeds- as they grow slowly they won't take competition- so make sure the ground is clear.
A Few Recipes
Faster than Pizza
For each person:
1 large spud
1 tb chopped parsley
1 chopped onion
2-3 eggs
1 tb olive oil
Line a tin with baking paper, or even a coffee mug or three.
Put oil in fry pan; fry onion and potato till onion is soft. Add parsley towards the end. Turn off heat. Beat in eggs. Pour into baking paper.
Put oven at its hottest and bake till firm- about ten minutes per serve.
Turn out onto plate. Peel off paper. Eat.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
100 gm dark chocolate
125 gm butter
125 gm chunky peanut butter
1 and a half cups brown sugar
2 eggs
three quarters of a cup SR flour
half cup plain flour
half a cup milk, or light sour cream, or buttermilk
Turn the oven on to 200 C. Line a cake tin with baking paper.
Melt butter and chocolate; take off heat when JUST melted and beat in sugar, then peanut butter, then the eggs one by one. Now add the flours and milk and mix gently- don't over beat. pour into the cake tin and bake for 45m- 1 hour, or till the top springs back when you gently press it and the top is mid brown, not pale or black!
Take from oven. Leave in the pan for 20 minutes to cool a little and firm up, then tip out and peel back the baking paper. When cool ice with plain chocolate icing, or caramel choc icing:
1 cup icing sugar
1 tb melted chocolate
1 tb caramel topping
Enough milk to moisten enough to mix. . . add a tsp at a time so you don't make it too moist.
French Toast
10 slices white bread, or fruit loaf, or brioche
3 large eggs
half cup cream
half tsp cinnamon
1 tsp grated orange rind or 1 tb Cointreau
3 tb orange juice
butter
Mix all except butter and bread.
Heat a frying pan; when hot throw in 1 tb butter
Quickly dip the toast in the mix then fry in butter till brown on one side; flip over and brown on the other. Add more butter as needed.
Repeat till all done.
Serve French toast as it is; or with icing sugar; or with maple syrup, with or without a sausage and bacon