Jackie's July message . . .
Fly me to the Moon (and a bit of wombat news)
Recent Awards
Latest books
Schedule for this Year
July in the Garden
How to make the House Smell Good
Fly Me to the Moon
On the day that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon I went to school as usual. But today at school assembly the headmaster didn't give us the usual time table changes and detentions. He just smiled, as though he was excited too, and said, 'The moon walk has been brought forward to twelve o'clock. Anyone who wishes to go home to see it can leave immediately. Those who don't have a TV at home can stay and watch it in the music room. School dismissed.¹
It felt strange to leave school so early . Up at the tuckshop the ladies were closing the shutters. Teachers were talking excitedly. Even as I sat on the bus - an ordinary one, as no school bus went to our suburb - the women with their shopping and the kids with their school bags talked of only one thing.
The moon walk.
My younger brother and sister had been sent home from school too. My baby brother toddled around the living room. It was still hours to the moon walk, but I turned the TV on anyway, and tried to explain to the others that even if it wasn't going to be cartoons it was still the most important moment in the history of the Earth - for the first time a human was going to step onto a world other than our own.
They weren't impressed and went to play in the sandpit.
Like the rest of the world, I sat by the TV and waited. And down at the space tracking station outside Canberra the man I was one day going to marry was preparing to download the first pictures of man's first step onto the moon.
If you've ever seen the movie The Dish you probably think those pictures were sent from Parkes, but they weren't- the movie makers decided to change history and make it seem like it had happened there. but it really happened at Honeysuckle Creek. And the men who worked at Honeysuckle Tracking station weren't the goons who lost contact with the spacecraft in the movie either. They were dedicated professionals. But the true story is far more exciting than the movie ever was.
Bryan worked at Honeysuckle Creek tracking Station all through the Apollo programs. He was one of the first to see Neil Armstrong say those immortal words -
'That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.¹
Armstrong meant to say: That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind¹ - and mostly when he is quoted that is what people say. But in the excitement he forgot the 'a'.
It wasn't a speech made by speech writers, carefully calculated to make the greatest impact. Neil Armstrong had thought a bit about what to say on the way to the Moon, but it wasn't until they landed that the right words came to him.
They were words from the heart, and they will last as long as human history.
Meanwhile the world was watching. Honeysuckle got the TV images first, then transmitted them to the Sydney Video Centre, where a delay of several seconds was built in. If anything went wrong up there the NASA representative could cut the transmission, so that the astronauts would not have to die with the curious eyes of the world on them.
Far away in Brisbane I watched the pictures as Honeysuckle sent them to the world. . I was crying, but I couldn't explain why to my brothers and sister. If you ask almost anyone over forty what they were doing that day they will be able to tell you exactly where they were the day Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.
Bryan was there for Apollo 13 too, when the explosion on the spacecraft so nearly left the astronauts stranded in space.
Bryan and I wrote To the Moon and Back together. It's his story, and I put down the words. It was... interesting ...writing it.
Me: Okay, the Apollo 13 spacecraft has just blown up. How did you all feel?
Bryan: calm and professional
Me: The spacecraft has just blown up and all you feel is calm and professional!
Bryan: yes.
Me: Hells bells, you must have felt something else! These guys were lost in space up there!
Bryan: Well, we felt a bit concerned.
Me: You really want me to write that? 'The spacecraft exploded. Down at the Tracking Station we felt a bit concerned......'
It's an extraordinary story, and I hope we've done justice to it. And on July 21 on the 35th anniversary of the first steps on the moon dust we'll be at the Honeysuckle creek reunion, to relive that extraordinary day.
PS Mothball and Grunter are still fat and glossy from all of autumn's fallen fruit, despite the drought. And Mothball definitely has a baby in her pouch, but still haven't even seen a small pink nose poking out- maybe not for another month or two. There are so many wombats about the house now- all hunting food, I think, as the world gets drier.
Latest Books
A War for Gentlemen- for adults, about an Australian who went to fight for the South in the American Civil war- based on a true story.
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy - again, based on a true story, or rather several true stories combined, about a chimney sweep sent out on the First Fleet to Australia
My Dad the Dragon
My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome
To the Moon and Back-the true story of Australia and the journey to the moon, with Bryan Sullivan
To come:
Rocket Your Child Into Reading- October
Pete the Sheep- November
Phredde and the Vampire Footie Team- November
Awards
Too Many Pears and Valley of Gold have been listed as CBC Notable books. Hitler's Daughter has been short listed again in the Children's choice awards in the Older Readers category, and Diary of a Wombat short listed for the Bilby Awards.
Hitler's Daughter and Too many Pears have been short listed for the Cool Awards too.
Thank you enormously for everyone who voted for them and nominated them! I wish I could kiss all your toes!
Schedule for this year so far:
July 8 : free Club Cool talk at Dickson Library, Canberra
July 10: Release of To the Moon and Back with Bryan Sullivan - the story of Honeysuckle Creek and the journey to the moon. at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station Reunion to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon.
August 16,127, 18 Book Week talks in Sydney. Contact Lateral Learning for details.
August 23, 24, 25. Book Week talks in Melbourne. Contact Booked Out for details.
August 25- gardening talk at Mount Eltham 6.30- 8.00PM Contact: Narelle Liepa, Environmental Projects Officer. Nillumbik Shire Council PO Box 476 Greensborough 3088 Telephone: 9433 3214
September 14,15,16 West Moreton Anglican College Festival of Literature, Karrabin, QLD. Contact Megan Daley, West Moreton Anglican College for more details.
September 30 : free Club Cool talk and story clinic, at one of Canberra's libraries.
October: Release of Rocket Your Child into Reading- how to fast track your kids to reading success
October: release of Pete the Sheep with Bruce Whatley, a picture book about, well Pete the Sheep!
Late October: Bolinda School comes to visit!
November 11-14 Ourimbah Campus Children's Literature Festival, Ourimbah NSW
Release of Phredde and the Vampire Footie Team- a story to eat with an orange at half time
November 21. Open Garden Workshops in our garden. Bookings essential through the Open garden Scheme.
The July Garden
What to Plant
Cold/ temperate areas: don't plant veg and flowers unless you're absolutely longing to get your fingers in the dirt! Seed may rot in cold ground, veg and flowers won't grow much before they bloom and die. Stick to onion seedlings, rhubarb, strawberry, asparagus and artichoke crowns, barerooted trees, shrubs and roses.
Frost free areas: plant just about anything and keep watering! Pop in some of the new spreading petunias too, for a touch of colour
What to do
.spray 'Stressguard' on frost sensitive plants to help protect them. I put plastic tree guards on some youngsters- many plants become more frost resistant as they grow older. Both those will also help plants survive drought too.
.clean up dead palm fronds; chop them up for mulch- and bung EVERYTHING (prunings, dead corn stalks etc) under trees and shrubs to mulch them. If it has ever grown it will break down into good, moisture h olding soil- you may be surprised how fast.
. keep camellias well watered till they finish flowering, then mulch and feed
.divide clumps of perennials, for lots of free new plants
. seek out bright green frothy patches of young bindii eyes and pour on almost boiling water leftover from your next cuppa tea! Watch the bindiis shrivel.
. plan the flowers and veg you'll plant in spring, so you don't just grab the first few punnets of seedlings you see.
Useful tip: if you want to feed the small native birds but don't want to encourage mynas, sparrows, feral pigeons, starling and blackbirds, take Bryan's tip- tie a wide ball of wire netting around your bird seed balls. Small native finches can get in, but larger birds can't. And you can have a lot of malicious pleasure watching them try....
How to prune a bush, standard or miniature rose
. use sharp secateurs dipped in Detol or bleach
. cut out any dead, spindly or gray barked wood; then
. remove about half the top growth and half the centre growth
. mulch with lucerne hay or other good mulch; scatter on Dynamic Lifter or other good organic plant tucker
. don't prune roses in frosty areas till next month; don't prune climbers till after flowering; don't hard prune shrub roses, just tidy them a little if necessary
Winter Pokers
I've just been watching the honeyeaters on the red hot pokers. I think they must be the honeyeaters favourite flower- incredibly full of nectar, even more popular than the grevilleas!
I hated red hot pokers for years- too bright, too garish. Then I discovered that some red hot pokers bloom in winter, and fell in love.
Winter NEEDS brightness and vulgarity! And red hot pokers are one of the hardiest, most drought tolerant flowers in the world.
Where to plant: full sun, any climate, any soil
How to cosset: don't bother
How big do they grow: from about 60cm to 1.7 metres, depending on variety
Where to get them: mooch around your local nursery and see if any are blooming, or ask if they can order you some.
PS I've even planted summer pokers the last few years, in lovely lemon, yellow and coral colours, instead of red.
A Winter Recipe
Apple chutney
throw into a pan:
2 kilos of apples, cored peeled and chopped
1 kilo sugar,. brown or white- brown gives a stronger, fruitier flavour
1 cup sultanas or currants, or dates if you adore dates
2 tbs chopped ginger root, if you adore ginger
4 large onions, peeled and chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped, but no disaster if you leave it out
6 whole cloves, 1 tsp sized stick of cinnamon
enough vinegar to just cover the lot. I use white wine vinegar; red wine vinegar can be great, balsamic is too strong and cider vinegar makes a cider vinegar tasting chutney, which is okay if you adore cider vinegar
Simmer till thick. Bottle. Keep for three months before using- it will taste very rough till then. Older chutney mellows.
Optional additions:
1 cup dried apricots or peaches, or
2 cups chopped figs, or
2 cups chopped jam melon or choko, or
1 cup rhubarb, or chopped peeled quinces
substitute plums or tomatoes (ripe or green) or pumpkin for the apple- note, pumpkin chutney has a tendency to go off faster than other chutneys- most chutneys last a year or more, but avoid if they are mouldy, smell or look off, bubble or grow whiskers.
The Good Smells of Paradise
Human's sense of smell is possibly the least noticed of all our senses and most evocative.
I think one of the great joys in life, possibly because it is entirely unpredictable, is cool scents wafting through a window at night or hot scents rising from the garden when the bitumen is baking and all the world seems to be made of hot cement - except your garden.
The twenty first century is as rich in horrible smells as any other century though, like the inhabitants of most centuries, we probably don't notice them. No one really notices the familiar. No chamber pot smells nowadays, of course, or bubbling garbage smells or horses, but air conditioning smells and that almost indefinable concrete fragrance, the scent of nylon carpet, disinfectant that is supposed to smell of pines or flowers but never does. (Last week my cousin said to me, after a few days down here, 'I can smell where a car has been. I never noticed the smell of car before' - an omnipresent background to our lives.)
I love smells. Our house is rich in them. (Not counting the dead rat in the ceiling).
Bowls of faded petals mixed with spices - a very simplified pot pourri - on tables and bureau; lavender in cupboards (never enough lavender - and no matter how much I grow I always want more - enough to pick great bunches and not notice the loss on the bushes of blue and white spires and butterflies), the scent of plum jam and apples in the larder (I know the jam is sealed but the fragrance is still there) and the lingering scent of burnt toast and too brown biscuits, home made lemon cordial and the garlic and chillies hanging in the kitchen, hot tomato leaves or wilting lettuce in the garden and the ever present scent of grass and rocks and creek with just a whiff of black snake in the corner ....
Every person's house has a different complement of smells - most almost imperceptible - that add up to something that is entirely its own - good, bad or boring - the smell of the cat food you opened l last night, the smell of books, or piles of newspaper, the dead dog pong of teenager's joggers ...
How to have a house that smells good
Step 1. Throw aforesaid joggers out the back door; remove tin of Fish Dinner from the fridge
Step 2. Cook something - the sort of cooking where the smell lingers.
Step 3. Bung some flowers in a vase preferably not from a florist. Florists blooms rarely smell good (perhaps they are afraid of persistent hay fever). Daphne, jonquils, young blue gum or peppermint gum leaves, gardenias and lavender are good room perfumers.
Step 4. Polish wooden surfaces twice a year with something that smells good. See recipe below.
(Of course it doesn't have to be you that does the polishing. In fact if you can beg, borrow or pay someone else to do it, all the better.)
Step 5. Try to have a pleasant Whiff from Every Cupboard.
It is my old-fashioned belief that cupboards should whiff of something good when you open them. Vanilla sugar, whisky soaked fruit, cakes, sun dried underpants and lavender - depending on what's in the cupboard ...
The classic herb for a linen cupboard or underwear drawer is lavender. You don't even have to dry it - make a bundle and stuff it in, either hung from a string or wrapped in an old pillowslip (I prefer the latter - the cloth seems to catch the scent and keep it). And clove studded oranges are fragrant too - if you have three hours and 100 cloves to spare and don't mind blistered finger tips.
A cheat's method is just to scatter dried cloves at the bottom of drawers and cupboards or a jar of them with the lid off. Add some dried orange peel too (scavenged from the kid's lunch box and left in the sun for a few days, then crumbled) to add extra fragrance - or lemon peel or mandarin peel.
And for kitchen cupboards - a vanilla bean is the most luxurious; or the cloves and oranges as well or wipe them occasionally with a Wettex dipped in vanilla extract (this is the one place where it doesn't have to be the real stuff). PS If you want a whiff to keep away cockroaches, wipe the cupboard under the sink et al with a Wettex dipped in eucalyptus oil - it both repels and stunts their growth.
PS 2. If you can find/afford genuine orris root - which is truly glorious stuff, but most nowadays is fairly odourless imitation, fill little sachets (I know this sounds like endless sewing or crocheting, but a sachet is just a hanky with a blob of orris in the middle, then tied with a bit of string or wool. Though lace doilies, old brocade et al can be used by the more fastidious).
Tie the sachets on to every doorhandle, so every time you open and shut you get a glorious whiff. Place them in every drawer or cupboard - including your desk drawers, under the telephone drawers, odds and ends of cutlery drawers, filing cabinets and tool boxes.
Hanging your underpants on the lavender
If I had to choose just one plant to grow, it would be lavender. Masses of it. Lavender should never be grown as single bushes. You need hedges of lavender, hillsides of it, whole beds full below the roses ...
Lavender is one of the easiest plants to grow - as long as you give it full sun and the frosts aren't too disastrous (and even then try a sunny corner by the house) and as long as you aren't in the tropics (in such cases skip this bit - though you may manage to grow Canary Island lavender).
There are hundreds of species of lavender, though only a couple of dozen are available in Australia (in France nearly every hill seems to have a different form of lavender). I love sprawling French lavender along fences, hedges of English lavender, dwarf lavender below roses, great swathes of mixed white and English lavender, Italian lavender by the steps for winter fragrance...
Lavender does need pruning. The new growth is much hardier to heat and frost and humidity than old growth - and more compact plants are less likely to break down. Pruning isn't hard - when you harvest the flower stems, cut off a good hunk of branch. (No, I can't be more precise - it depends on the size and vigour of your bush. Just don't take more than half - or less than an eighth.)
Oh, yes, the underpants of the lavender ... well, try it. They smell delicious, and your underwear drawer will too when you open it. Hankies smell good too, if anyone still uses hankies except us, and brassieres, and tee shirts, socks and tablecloths....
A Few Useful Recipes for Good Scents
Pine gel bath freshener
In the odd moments when I am forced by circumstance (I'm not quite sure how a circumstance forces one, but it does) to watch TV (we don't have a TV, but you do get glimpses in other peoples' living rooms) every second ad seems to glorify bathrooms that smell of pine trees.
To be honest, I've never found a pine forest such a marvellous scent - they always smell a bit musty, at least where I'm standing, which is among the dead and fallen pine needles, not the branches up above.
This bath goo, on the other hand, does smell good - and not like twenty year old pine needles mixed with dog droppings. It is always a solution for 'what to do with pine cones' which I adore. I compulsively pick them up and take them home, just as I am compulsive about still pink shells and cuttlefish (though the chooks love that) and water shiny quartz pebbles with dark veins across them.
To make the gel:
Cover an equal volume of pine cones and pine needles with water - just enough to cover them. Simmer for half an hour. Strain, simmer again till thick - about another half an hour.
Use a VERY little of this in your bath - it smells wonderful (you can also add it to shampoo to make bubble bath or even detergent if your kids don't have sensitive skins - it is a VERY good way to keep the bath clean when your offspring aren't.
Lavender Vinegar Deodorant
This is for dabbing on your forehead, wrists or the back of your neck on hot days in the garden. It smells lovely, feels refreshing, will repel the odd mozzie (though not a hungry horde of them), takes 30 seconds to make - and is a beautiful pale blue.
Shove as many lavender flowers as possible into an attractive recycled bottle, pour in hot white wine vinegar, seal and finish with a few ribbons - and you've got a beautiful fragrant gift for any gardener.
Lavender Kebabs
This is a Moroccan recipe. Do not avoid it just because you think it will taste of lavender - it will but you'll like it (I hope).
Pound well dried lavender in a mortar with a little salt and lemon juice, then marinate chunks of lamb in the resulting powder. Grill over an open fire. You can toss more lavender branches onto the fire to increase the scent and taste.
Extremely Stinky But Good Wood Polish
1 cup beeswax (from craft stores or your friendly beekeeper)
half cup methylated spirits
4 cups citrus oil (or lavender oil if you are deliciously wealthy or have your own lavender distillery) or linseed oil if you are broke or a mixture of the three if you're in between.
Melt the beeswax, take off the heat and add the other ingredients. beat for about ten minutes till it begins to set.
To use: Wipe on thinly, then buff to a shine.
Note: if it's too hard to spread easily, melt again briefly and add more oil and meths - about half and half.