August 2005 . . .
I think I've worked out why kids don't eat fruit and vegies. Because they taste yukŠ.
We've been buying some of our veg this year, partly because of four year's drought and partly after my illness. And blimey CharlieŠthere's no flavour in most of them!
They all look great- nice big shiny green apples that tasted like canned mush and perfectly shaped oranges that tasted of nothing in particular and tomatoes that had forgotten to taste at all.
What kid wouldn't rather have a nice salty fatty potato chip?
I was thinking about that this weekend actually, when my son dashed home for a feed and sleep and a bit of conversation over brunch(in that order.) Thirty seconds inside the door and he has a bowl of salad in his hands- and I mean a REAL bowl, my largest mixing bowl with about 2 kilos of lettuce, a couple of sliced avocadoes and whatever else is going.
To him large amounts of salad and fruit are REAL food. His first years were mostly spent in the pack on my back as I worked in the orchards or garden. Every now and then I'd pass some food back to him- whatever we were picking, a strawberry or two, a handful of blackberries, an orange with the top peeled by my thumbs, a stem of celery or a capsicumŠ.
He ate salad as a snack after school (with a particularly macho salad dressing mostly made up of balsamic vinegar and French mustard, with a sniff of olive oil and a bit of garlic) or a kilo or so of asparagus (drowned in the same salad dressing), or frozen grapes or oranges, or lugged a box of peaches or apricots down to the swimming hole.and that's still the food he likes best now.
It's the same with the other kids of 'back to the landers' around here. I can't think of any that didn't adore fruit and veg when they were small- and still do. In fact the problem was more stopping them guzzling all the peas before the adults got there, or raiding the strawberry patch.
I grew up without a vegie patch (Dad's idea of gardening back then was to hire someone to mow the lawn). But there were always fresh veg passed over the fence by Mr Doo on one side, or Mr Lewis on the other. The rest of the veg came on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the back of a dusty ute, and the pumpkins and cabbage and peas were pretty dusty too. But they did have a taste, even boiled for twenty minutes, or longer if mum forgot about them and had to cut off the singed base of the carrots, though that particular taste is one I'd rather forget.
But those veg had been grown locally, in one of the market gardens that still ringed Brisbane. Even more importantly, they hadn't been chilled. It's refrigeration that's killed our fruit and vegetables. Chilling keeps veg for longer- and keeps them lush and crisp too. But it sucks away their flavour so all you have is an echo. (I made a soup base yesterday from a few chicken bones and lots of lovely crisp supermarket carrots. But after an hour's cooking the stock didn't have the faintest taste of carrots- they were all crunch and no reality.
Anyhow this year we are going to grow enough carrots to keep us for 12 months, even if I have to buy bottled water to keep them alive. And I've started to understand why in one drought year my great grandmother is said to have insisted her family only drink lemonade, to keep the tank water for the garden.
PS. frozen oranges are great. Cut the top off, then put it back like a lid. Freeze and eat like a sorbet with a spoon. Or try a bunch of frozen big black grapes when the weather warms up a bit. Wonderful.
The Valley in August
It's more like spring than winter at the moment, except when the wind howls down from the mountains (you can tell it was flying over snow about ten minutes earlier).
But mostly this has been a magic winter – the first for five years with enough rain to keep the soil moist, the valley green, the lyrebirds happily digging for beetles and the wombats digging too.
One wombat started three holes last night – I passed them on my walk this morning. All three had collapsed about thirty centimetres in, so he'd just moved over a metre and tried again. It's a digging time of year for wombats – most of the big holes have new piles of dirt outside them, where the resident wombat has been doing a bit of renovation.
Mothball did her digging last month. This month has been devoted to eating. She's got shoulders like a sumo wrestler these days and the fluffiest bum I've ever seen. She investigated my gumboot the day before yesterday – I looked out just as she stuck her nose into it. I'd never seen a wombat wrinkle its nose before – or run backwards. Then she very deliberately turned her back on the gumboot and sat down to think about it all. Think it's time I got new gumboots if even a wombat doesn't like the smell.
Book news
'The Secret Life of Wombats' is out. Bruce's illustrations look totally stunning – I still keep leafing through the book looking at them. I wish it could have been twenty times longer – there is so much to say about wombats. But if you want to know what really happens at night when you're asleep or down in those great wombat holes below ground, it's a good place to start.
'My Uncle Wal the Werewolf' came out last month – the next in the Wacky Families. I've just finished writing 'My Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken' which was great fun, but it won't be out till mid next year – 'My Gran the Gorilla' is next!
Awards
Bryan and I head up to Sydney next week for the CBC Award – our 'To the Moon and Back' is short listed for the Eve Pownall Information Book Award. Keep your fingers crossed for us. It'll be my first trip away since I was ill – but a nice gentle one.
'Pete the Sheep' and 'Hitler's Daughter' have been short listed for the Koala Kid's Choice Awards too – thank you to everyone who voted for them!
Timetable for 2005
The rest of the year could probably be summed up as 'walk, write and plant a few things' as I've had to cancel just about everything.
Bryan and I are still going down to the rural Women's Gathering in Bega on the 1st October and I'll be at Kid's Universe in Sydney on Sunday, 2 October. We're still having the Open Garden Workshops too, on November 20th – contact the Open Garden Scheme for bookings. (Numbers are limited to forty per workshop so you may need to book early to get in, though there are always a few vacancies at the last minute as people have to drop out.)
But that's it for the year and I'll be cutting right back on the number of things I can accept for next year too.
The August Garden
Buds are swelling – no actual blossom yet but every day they're bigger. The daffodils are out though, and the Earlicheer jonquils and the longiflora wattle. The citrus is at its sweetest juiciest best – the navel oranges are incredible this year (just ate two for morning teaŠ how do people cope with oranges in the supermarket? The wretched things are all the same size! What happens when you feel like a little orange or two, instead of a whopper?)
As usual there's an embarrassment of limes and even the wallabies are getting sick of chokos though the currawongs have discovered a taste for them and the wombats have a munch or two. The blood oranges are nearly ready – they're more a spring treat rather than a mid-winter guzzle – and the calamondin has so much fruit this year that it's stumped even the bower birds.
We have a flock of bower birds in the garden now. They've eaten one - repeat one - orange and ignored the mandarins, tangelos etc and just settled for the calamondins, but even they can't make a dent in them.
As for other fruit – avocadoes at their very best, tamarilloes, kiwi fruit, a few varied lilly-pillies, chilecayote melons in abundance, lemons, citrons, cumquats, strawberry guavas nearly ripe, macadamia nuts, rose hips, pecans falling to the ground – they are too high up to pick – the last of the medlars and hard pears.
And I think, possibly, I've planted my last apple tree. It was a Lady Williams to replace the one by the bathroom – my favourite winter apple but the leaves keep clogging the gutters. We have 125 varieties of apple now, which is probably enough, plus I'm running out of room unless I start a new orchard. Which we might, in a year or two – depends on droughts and rain and energy. But I think that is the last one around the house.
What to plant:
Veg
Cold: Potatoes, onions, peas, spinach, turnips, broad beans.
Temperate and sub-tropical: IF (and only if) the soil feels warm to sit on, plant: beans, beetroot, carrots, Chinese cabbage, cucumber, eggplant, corn, lettuce, silver beet, spring onions, parsnips, tomatoes, zucchini, capsicum, chilli and melons. If it's still a bit chilly, stick to potatoes and onions.
Tropical: Beans, capsicum, sweet potato in well-drained areas, zucchini and melons where they'll mature before summer humidity zaps them.
Flowers: Whatever is in the nursery! If I listed all the possibles I'd go on for pagesŠ this is the perfect time to plant flowers, except in very cold areas.
The Perfect Garden
I'm sitting here tapping away and looking out at a perfect garden: there are limes and navel oranges on the trees and wombats in the lettuce; spinebills at the grevilleas and currawongs in the avocadoes.
There are great fragrant drifts of various scented sages and perennial marigold that smells of spice and pineapple and a daphne and few mid-winter roses and just enough weeds to feel comfortable; there is food for the stomach all year round and food for the soul as well.
To be honest this isn't everyone's dream of a perfect garden. (One sort-of-friend, gazing round at the tangles of kiwi fruit and clematis, artichokes and thistles, murmured kindly: 'You've been away a lot this year haven't you? How long do you think it'll take you to get the garden back under control?'
This garden is a mess. A beautiful mess, a productive mess, but a mess none the less.
I like messy gardens. I can't really feel easy rolling around on manicured lawns, or pulling flowers from perfect beds, or desecrating a row of lettuces by plucking one.
(Messy gardens also have pest and weed control advantages; but that is another story – consult any of my books for the full story.)
The point I'm finally getting round to here is that everyone's idea of a perfect garden is different. This IS a perfect garden - because it's the one I've dreamt and worked and planned for.
But if I were asked for rules for a perfect garden (which I often am - for some reason many people like living by other people's rules) I'd have to say a perfect garden:
. contains something you can munch on all through the year
. has flowers for plucking every day
. smells good always
. has places to sit and dream and play
Something to eat all through the year
Okay, this bit is not for those passionate about self-sufficiency - or even for the very organised. This is a plot that you plant out once a year and then keep eating.
Take two large half wine barrels. Make sure they have holes in the bottom. Place them in full sunlight - or at least three hours of sunlight a day.
Plant a lemon in the middle of one. Prune the branches as high up as you can - you want a long stick thing instead of a trunk, that way the soil underneath will get more light.
Plant Wandin Winter rhubarb around the base, then strawberries around the edges so they trail out and over.
In the next barrel plant a grape vine. Train it UP and away as far as possible, again to maximise light – a tomato stake and lots of wire will do this (tie it up to the eaves if necessary, if you don't have pergola or nearby fence).
Now plant garlic chives around the trunk and masses of parsley elsewhere.
This will give you rhubarb, parsley and garlic chives whenever you want them (we add the last two to almost everything); lovely ripe fragrant strawberries in summer and bunches of bloomy grapes in autumn; at least one lemon every day in a couple of years' time; plus grape leaves (dip them in boiling water for 20 seconds before stuffing them, or eat VERY young ones in salad) and lemon leaves - ditto - I found this in perhaps the earliest garden book ever written by John Evelyn - he heartily recommends extremely young lemon leaves in a salad and so now do I.
Flowers for picking every day
I could go on at length here (I have already in various books) but if you've got a few Robyn Gordon grevilleas or her hybrid relatives (light frost areas only), erigeron, elderberry, cumquat and pots of geranium/pelargoniums against a warm wall you'll have colour all year round.
Add early and late camellias for flowers all through winter and half a dozen roses (we grow most of ours up posts so the wallabies can't eat them - and NOTHING, not even the grevilleas, have as many bird's nests as rambling thorny roses) and you have flowers for picking all year round as well.
And for a few spectaculars: daffs for winter/spring, tree dahlias for autumn (if you can, plant a bit of someone else's winter stems – it'll be two metres high by next autumn).
I also stick in two lots of annuals for the year in tubs or baskets out the front – impatiens (one or two colours - not the garish mixtures) for summer and primulas and wallflowers which are never garish because the mix of colours is a variation of tones of lemon, yellow, cream, deep brown and burgundy for winter – I plant them in February and they flower till late spring, when the impatiens are blooming. A pot or two of violas in lovely blues, yellows, creams and purples will bloom from autumn/winter through spring until a day of blistering heat takes them out.
Of course in less hideous climates than ours impatiens flower all year round – just hoik out the horrible orange and fluorescent pink ones and go for some of the more subtle shades.
Smells good always
Okay - Earlicheer daffodils for late winter and spring, hybrid musk roses for early summer and autumn (I love Buff Beauty - an almost parchment-coloured rose and you can smell it everywhere), curry bush for stinking hot days (our bathroom smells like a good Vindaloo as soon as the temperature's over 30º C – and it's at least twenty metres from the nearest curry bush) and a pot of Corsican mint on the garden table – tiny, extraordinarily fragrant leaves that spill out over the pot in a cool green wave - you only have to brush against it to smell it for hours.
PS If you want to eat curry bush, don't try cooking with it – the flavour changes. Chop it VERY finely and add it to salad dressing; pour the dressing over hot or tepid veg at the very, very last minute. But it may still turn so bitter you can't get the flavour out of your mouth.
Places to sit and dream and play
Under a tree, up a tree (the world looks different from up a tree), a hedge for privacy and grass or, even better, chamomile to loll on, or just paving and a pergola above with a million pots.
A Few Recipes
Ginger cordial
(for cold days – works well with hot water too)
1 cup grated ginger (don't bother to peel)
2 cups sugar
1 tsp citric acid
2 tsp tartaric acid
3 cups water
Simmer ginger in the water for 15–20 minutes, or till really gingery. Drain off ginger; add sugar; boil for five minutes and add other ingredients. Bottle. Add a little caramelised sugar if you want it to be dark brown – I don't bother.
Add ice and water for cordial, or soda water or mineral water for ginger ale. Store in a cool place for up to three weeks. Throw out if it looks or smells odd.
Eucalyptus Wool Wash
(Also good for greasy overalls, fur rugs and stains)
Ingredients:
4 cups Lux soap flakes or grated yellow soap
1 cup methylated spirits
1 tablespoon eucalyptus oil
Mix soap flakes or grated pure soap with the methylated spirits and eucalyptus oil in a jar. Put the lid on and shake well. Store till needed.
Shake again before use. Add one tablespoon for every ten litres, or small bucket, of water. Dissolve the mixture in a little hot water first
Auntie Jackie's Winter Cure-All
(otherwise known as Pear Liqueur)
1 kg pears
1 cup water, or half water and half white wine
3 cups sugar
2 cups vodka
optional: a third of a vanilla pod
Peel pears, core and quarter. Place in a baking dish. Scatter over the sugar, then water/wine and add the vanilla. Bake at 150–200º C for about an hour, or even two. Baste often and add more water if it's drying out, but not too much.
When the pears are soft take out the tray. Eat the pears with cream, icecream and extreme enjoyment.
Pour the juice into a bottle; add the vodka. Shake well till mixed. Leave three weeks in a cool dark place before using. Should last for a year (ha!) but throw out if it ferments, grows mould, looks cloudy or smells odd.
Take in small glassfuls on a cold day, or pour over icecream on a hot one, or mix equal parts liqueur, milk and icecream and drink with a straw and spoon.
PS Makes a great Christmas present if there's any left by then.
Lewis's Really Easy Chocolate Cake
185 g butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 cup self-raising flour
half a cup plain flour
third of a cup cocoa
half a cup milk, cream or buttermilk
Mix all together. If you don't have a mixer then squidge the butter into the other stuff with your fingers. (Clean hands first.) Then mix with a spoon till it all looks a nice pale brown with no lumps. Pour into a greased cake tin, or line one with baking paper – much easier.
Turn the oven on to 200º C. Put in cake. Leave for 30 minutes.
Turn off the oven. Take out cake. Leave for ten minutes then tip it out onto a rack or plate.
Wait till it's cool before you put the icing on.
Icing
Mix: 2 cups icing sugar
2 tbsps cocoa or melted chocolate
2 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon butter
You may need a few more drops of milk – but not too much!
Spread it over the cool cake with a knife. Decorate with nuts, chocolates or strawberries if you like.
Keep it in a sealed container. It's best eaten within about five days. This should not be difficult.