Intro | Wombat News | Recent Awards
New Books | Schedule for this Year
The October Garden | A Time to Wash Jumpers and Ugg Boots
A Few Recipes
Cauliflower Custard
Beetroot, apple and walnut salad
Hot Egg and Asparagus Salad
Carrot and Date Muffins
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I have the flu. The flu? A flu, one of the 10,397 varieties, with various complications that have me barking like a Great Dane after a burglar. Whatever it is has lasted through most of the past six weeks – note to everyone I’ve spoken to in that time, the doctor assures me that I stopped being infectious about the same time as I began to really feel ill.
Anyway. I seem to have missed most of the past month lying on the sofa and looking at the apple and pear blossom out the window, and the wallabies munching the grass between the fallen petals. Plus, it has to be admitted (including to the doctor who laughed then gave me lecture no 46) writing parts of a book and giving talks on the days when I thought that the flu – or whatever it is – had flown. And then, of course, it came back again. Moral: rest, do not work and you will recover faster. (One day I might even take my own advice).
Now my brain has almost come back to life and so has my breath. And in another few days hopefully the chapters will be flowing and I may even get out and prune back the winter’s red hot pokers and get rid of the spring weeds in the vegie garden and get some planting done.
Meanwhile another dose of pre-1970 sci-fi short stories (very therapeutic), ten more bowls of minestrone and twenty mugs of celery and ginger juice. And I promise to everyone whose letters are in the four great piles on the dining room table (there’s no more room on my desk) that some time in the next month I’ll manage to answer them …
Letters
It’s been a good season for avocadoes, a glorious season for blossom – and for mail. The letters have flowered like the cherries trees – more mail each week, manuscripts, requests to speak ... and there is only one of me. Please forgive me if I can’t answer at once, or even for a month or two if I’ve been ill or away, and/or if I can’t come and speak. The only way I can answer every request would be to solve the problems of human cloning uploading all the memories at the same time. (I have been reading too much sci-fi. Blame the flu.)
I will get to the letters as soon as I can, will send all the books that I’m able to, and speak to as many conferences, schools, groups and festivals as I physically can. But there comes a time when energy vanishes, just for a while. But by the time the cherries are ripe – I hope – I’ll have caught up (mostly).
Wombat News
The new wombat and her baby are still in Mothball’s hole under the bedroom. And Mothball still hasn’t returned. Yes, she’s an old wombat now – but only in years. When I last saw her she was grey, but still built like a sumo wrestler, not skinny, like an elderly wombat. And if Mothball had been dying, as I’ve seen other wombats die, I think she’d have come back to us for her last weeks, just like Smudge, Chocolate and all the other wombats did who have shared their lives with us.
It would be just like Mothball, of course, to leave us wondering forever. But I suspect that as soon as the grass browns off in summer and the springs up on the ridges dry up, she’ll be back, bashing at the door, hot and hungry – and blaming us.
Recent Awards
Nanberry: Black Brother White and Flood (with Bruce Whately) were named CBC Honour Books this year. (I wish I had been able to be there – the night clashed with my niece’s engagement party.)
Flood was also a Highly Commended book in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Pennies for Hitler has been included in the ‘Fifty Top Reads’ booklet.
What I am Working on Now
The Girl from Snowy River will be released on December 1st – if I manage to finish the corrections in the next two days. It is the sequel to A Waltz for Matilda, the second in what will be a series of five books.
This book, too, looks at the women left out of both our history books and the poems and ballads. What did happen on the real ‘Man from Snowy River’ ride? What became of the Banjo Patterson and Lawson characters when World War One tore so many men away? The Girl from Snowy River opens in 1919, when the men of the Snowy River March have returned – except for those who still lie in France or Flanders. But for Flinty McAlpine, her brothers and for the man she loves, the beat of war still lingers in all their lives.
Queen Victoria’s Christmas, with the wonderful Bruce Whatley, is out now, too. It’s the story of the tree that made Christmas trees part of our modern Christmas celebrations, told from the point of view of Queen Victoria’s dogs and parrot. And yes, the dogs and the parrot were at war with each other, just as they are in the book. Just like Queen Victoria’s Underpants, this book is based on a real event.
Schedule for the Year to Come
It’s unlikely that any more talks can be fitted into the next eighteen months, unless they are next to somewhere I’ll be already, and a large part of next year has been pencilled in too, though not confirmed yet.
It may look like there are gaps where I can give more talks, but there are other commitments not listed, like writing books, sleeping, birthday parties, weddings, watching wombats and having lunch with friends – though not much of any of those till the end of November.
October 13, 14: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
October 20: In Sydney to see Hitler’s Daughter: the play, before the company heads off to tour the USA and Canada next year.
October 24: Children’s Day, ACT, and a literacy workshop at Marymead, ACT.
October 25-27: Fremantle, WA for the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre’s Celebrate Reading conference.
November 17 and 18: Four Open Garden workshops here, on the Saturday and Sunday morning and afternoons. Bookings are essential and bookings and details need to be arranged through the Open Garden Scheme. (We leave it all to them – I’m not even sure how much they charge. Participants are brought here by bus as there isn’t room to park here.)
November 21 and 22: Talks in Lithgow, NSW. Contact the Lithgow Library if you or your school would like to be part of the visit.
2013
February 20: Literary lunch in Narooma, NSW.
February 21: Talks at Moruya High School.
March 12- 16: Somerset Literary Festival, Queensland.
Late March onwards: Hitler’s Daughter: the play, by the wonderful Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People tours the USA and Canada. At this stage I don’t know which openings we may go to.
May: School days at the Sydney Writer’s Festival
July 23-25: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen at Speaker’s Ink for bookings and details.
9-11 September (probably): Ipswich Festival, Queensland.
13-14 September, 2013: Celebrate Reading National Conference, Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.
The October Garden
Some Ideas for Spring
(None of which I’ll be doing, due to the aforementioned flu.)
Pumpkins in grass
Place a large spadeful of compost on the grass, at least 30 cm high and wide. Plant a pumpkin seedling in the compost. Water well and keep the grass mown until it gets big.
The vine will gradually sprawl all over the place. As long as the soil is moist and fertile it will grow strongly enough not to be intimidated by the grass. I find that grass-grown pumpkins mature a week or two earlier than similar vines in a nearby garden bed.
Hanging gardens
These are for anyone who can’t bend – for anyone with arthritis or high blood pressure, for anyone who’s confined to a wheelchair or just wary of slipped discs. And hanging gardens are for people who do not have a garden, but who do have nice, sunny walls on their patio, balcony or paved terrace.
The hanging garden is also good for frost-tender plants in cold areas. Hanging gardens can be hung in the warmest place you have: the wall will absorb and hold the heat. The higher up a plant is, the less liable it is to be affected by frost.
Starting small
Hanging gardens can be enormous but it is best to start small until you get used to them. Hang a little garden on the windowsill or doorjamb: one metre wide by one metre long.
Step 1. Buy some weed mat (see above).
Step 2. Cut it into metre-wide strips. The length depends on the height of your wall and how high you can lift the garden.
Step 3. Sew the edges together – bottom and sides, but not the top. If you’re lazy or can’t use a needle, staple them instead. Use lots of staples. (The staples may rust in time but then you can staple up the holes.)
Step 4. Hang up the mat.
You can:
* nail it to the top of the wall – use several nails, as it gets very heavy;
* fasten ropes to the top and fasten the ropes to the other side of the wall – this is good for brick walls where you can’t hammer in nails;
* hook it on to the top of the wall with several pieces of bent wire (again, use a lot as it’ll get heavy);
* nail it to a post; or
* hang it on a frame (see diagram – this is a good way to have several hanging gardens at once).
Less glamorous but more productive than the hanging gardens of Babylon: pierce holes in old cans and nail them to fence posts or walls; fill them with soil and plant them with strawberries, cucumbers or anything else that likes to trail. Paint the cans if you don’t like the shiny metal (although they will turn all sorts of artful shades of rust if you leave them alone).
Step 5. Stuff the garden with potting mixture or silt or compost if you have some. Don’t stuff in too much or it’ll spill out later.
Step 6. Cut small horizontal slits in the weed mat. Holes should be about a hand length apart.
Step 7. Plant one seedling in each hole.
Step 8. Water. This is easy. Just stand back – or sit back – and spray the whole thing with the hose.
What to plant in a hanging garden
Almost anything can be planted in a hanging garden, though I’d avoid things like carrots that take up a lot of room without much crop. Strawberries, raspberries and loganberries are excellent. So is silver beet – just keep pulling off the leaves. Try any of the lettuce varieties that you can harvest one leaf at a time. Broccoli is good – as long as you keep picking it, it will crop for years.
Grow nasturtiums, convolvulus and other trailers. Plant a miniature rose at the top, climbing beans in the middle and a pumpkin or cucumber vine on the bottom. (Always plant heavy yielders like vines on the bottom so the watermelons or rockmelons etc can rest on the floor or ground and not weigh down the garden.)
Slip in dahlia bulbs, geraniums, passionfruit vines, mint and basil. Try a potato at the bottom: when the plant dies down, feel round inside with your fingers for the potatoes.
Feeding the hanging garden
Feed your hanging garden with a watering can or with a pump-action sprayer – you can buy these at most hardware stores. Just pump it a few times and it’ll reach about six metres up. Use any of the liquid manures that you can make up by soaking manure in water for a few weeks before diluting and watering your crops with the resultant tea-coloured fluid. There are also some proprietary organic liquid fertilisers on the market. Feed your garden at least twice a week: the plants will grow quickly and need regular food.
Watering
Make sure your garden is near a hose. Hanging gardens dry out quickly and most have to be watered every day in summer. If you need to go away for a while, get a friend to help unhook the garden and take it home to babysit.
Styrofoam hanging gardens
Collect styrofoam boxes and wire them on top of each other in steps and stairs so that the ones below support the ones above but are not quite overshadowed. Angle the boxes to get the sun – you may have to move them a couple of times a day. This is a lot of work, but the styrofoam garden is a space saver and plants can grow very quickly if it is set up properly. It can also be taken with you when you move house. Fill the boxes with soil and compost and plant them with your favourite plants.
Hanging gardens from the supermarket
Collect tin cans or plastic ice-cream containers. Wire or staple them together and punch a few holes in the bottom. Lean them against a bank or stake them upright. Fill each with a little compost and plant herbs or strawberries. These are for cool areas only, as they can over-heat – or just use them to get a strawberry crop through winter.
I have used these heat-collecting gardens to grow lettuce through winter on the shed roof. Watering was easy – I just sprayed the roof – but picking wasn’t. Make sure all the cans have a hole in them or the water will collect and the plants rot.
Box gardens
These are neat and productive. They don’t need weeding and can be taken with you when you move. Even if you only have concrete and gravel you can have a box garden.
Step 1. Fill an old box with compost or potting mix. Any box will do as long as water can drain from it. Punch some holes in the base if needed.
Step 2. Plant ‘thickly’, as these beds will be well fed and watered. One styrofoam box could contain a cucumber plant, three lettuces, two silver beet plants and a few radishes.
Step 3. Water and feed well. Any liquid manure can be used in a box garden, or try mulching with lawn clippings, lucerne hay or cow manure.
Vertical gardens
Vertical gardens save space – instead of growing out you grow up. Two metres of vertical space should give you the same crop as two metres of garden – but as the plant roots only take up a small area there’s less watering and weeding.
Vertical gardens also get more sun and mature faster; they need less mulch; and are slightly more frost resistant (cold air sinks, warm air rises).
If you search you will find many climbing varieties – not just beans and peas, passionfruit, chokoes and berries, but climbing tomatoes (one plant feeds a family). Train broccoli, eggplant, capsicum or ordinary tomatoes up a trellis – cut off the lower shoots to encourage more top ones. They’ll fruit faster and take up less room. Let cucumbers, melons and small pumpkins grow up a trellis instead of sprawl over the ground: you’ll get more fruit and the plants will be more mildew resistant because of the increased air flow.
Trellises
You can buy wooden trellises – expensive but neat. We mostly use steel reinforcing, held up with steel star pickets. You can also use:
* an old bicycle wheel on a stake;
* wire or string strung between posts;
* wire netting;
* old mosquito net tacked onto posts (this only lasts a year);
* an old wire bedstead on its side; or
* anything your imagination can put to use.
Plants for fences
A bare fence is a waste. Try:
* perennial climbing beans;
* chokoes;
* hops – hops die down in winter and ramble all over the place in summer: eat the young shoots, make beer from the flowers, or use them to stuff hop pillows;
* passionfruit in frost-free places and banana passionfruit in cold areas;
* loganberries, marionberries, boysenberries and other climbing berries;
* perennial sweet peas, pink or white - they come up every year;
* grapes – there are hundreds of grape varieties in Australia, suitable for any area from snowy winters to tropical summers;
* flowering climbers like clematis, wonga vine, bougainvillea, jasmine, rambling roses – to attract birds, predaceous insects and for pleasure;
* edible Chinese convolvulus;
* sweet potatoes (temperate areas only);
* use your fence to stake up tomatoes, peas, or broad beans.
Some Fruits You Can Still Plant now
Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera)
These are plants suitable for almost every area – including cold ones. They tolerate high wind (cyclones and tornadoes) drought, salt and limited flooding.
Date seed will germinate but seedlings are variable; suckers are more reliable or commercially cloned trees. Protect all young palms from frost. Must have male and female. They survive cold climates but grow very slowly. Date seed will germinate but seedlings are variable; suckers are more reliable or commercially cloned trees. Protect all young palms from frost.
Feijoa
Feijoa bears fruit in three to ten years. It is an almost maintenance free tree, very hardy of heat, drought and frost but not high wind. Accepts dappled shade but you get most fruit in full sun. We grow ours in a mass of citrus and ginger lilies. A good mulch once a year is plenty. Too much nitrogen means less fruit. No pruning is necessary, but you can prune them to keep their shape. You may need two feijoas for fruit set.
Figs
Figs bear fruit in one and a half to five years. Will grow in dappled shade but you get less fruit – though still quite a lot. Good hedge tree, though deciduous. I grow grapes through ours.
Fig trees grow from Tasmania to Queensland, but protect them from heavy frost: grow them against a wall in cold climates. Mulch them or keep them in mown grass as they are shallow-rooted. They tolerate drought, grow fastest with plenty of moisture, but cannot stand waterlogging. They grow easily from winter cuttings.
Kei Apple
Prickly, incredibly hardy, good hedge to keep stock in or out, sweet plum-sized fruit. Not suitable with young kids because of thorns. Good ‘base’ tree for groves in difficult dry conditions.
Finger Limes
Finger limes (Microcitrus australasica) come from the subtropical or warm rainforests of Queensland and northern New South wales, but despite this our finger lime grows quite well in our frosty climate in the shelter of other trees – like most rainforest shrubs finger Limes prefer dappled shade.
Finger lime branches are very thorny, with longish leaves a bit like a lemon's that will fall in cold or very dry conditions then regrow and fragrant white flowers. The fruit is small, oval and slightly curved, about 6 cm long, green when they are young then ripening to yellowish green or purple or blackish green when ripe.
Finger limes are slow growers to about six metres and bear after about four to five years. Like most plants they grow faster with plenty of moisture and feeding, though ours has survived two years of heat and drought!
How to use
Finger limes taste like very slightly bitter, slightly oily lemons (I prefer the cleaner taste of round limes). You can squeeze out the juice or use the fruit to make the cordial or vinaigrette dressing below. They make very good, if slightly unusual, marmalade.
Desert Limes
Like many desert plants, desert limes tolerate baking heat, endless drought and searing cold. They grow up to six metres, with thorny branches and narrow little leaves. Some trees are incredibly thorny and sucker to form big impenetrable thickets, but if you cut off suckers and keep the lower branches trimmed you'll get a well-shaped tree. The leaves will fall in very dry times, but will grow back again, so don't panic.
Desert limes do best in full sun but will also tolerate dappled shade. They fruit incredibly quickly after flowering (the trees naturally flower after rain). It only takes eight weeks from flower to ripe fruit!
How to use: You can eat desert limes whole, like knobbly cumquats, if you're brave enough – their yellow green skin is thin and they are very juicy. But they are also very, very, sour – they really need sugar to make them taste good.
Make a sweet syrup of one cup sugar to one cup water, boil for five minutes then add thinly sliced finger limes and simmer for ten minutes then cool in the syrup. Store in the fridge for up to a fortnight. These sweet treats are stunning on ice cream, as cake decorations or on lemon tarts.
Medlar
A medlar bears fruit in two to five years.
They are hardy trees and take any amount of neglect and lack of feeding. Pick the fruit after the first frost when they turn soft. They grow well surrounded by hungry bushes like blueberries.
PS Medlars used to be known as the ‘open arse’ fruit – have a look at them from underneath and you can see why. And the ripe fruit looks like dog turds, all brown and squishy. But they are one of the most fragrant of all fruits and the make the most wonderful jelly I know. Stunning gold autumn leaves.
Olives
Olives bear fruit in three to seven years.
They are the classic drought-resistant tree. They require some chilling for fruit set and are best with cold winters and hot summers. The more you feed your tree, the faster it will crop. However, I planted ours on a stony, dry hillside and ignored them – they are bearing, but only half the size of other, better tended ones lower down. Once olives stop bearing after twenty years, they should be lightly pruned to stimulate new wood. Harvest olives when they turn light green or black. Excellent base to grow grapes or passionfruit on.
Jumper and Ugg Boot Washing Time
Eucalyptus Wool Wash
This is jumper washing time, to get them clean before you store them – clothes moths love the scent of stale human; also time to try to get the stains out of my ugg boots (and remind myself not to wander through mid-winter mulch in my uggs).
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.
A Few Recipes
Cauliflower Custard
(Both delicious and filling as a main course)
Serve these hot, with a beetroot, apple and celery salad for crunch.
Ingredients:
6 eggs (five of which are shop bought – the hens are off the lay)
1 cup cream, or natural yoghurt to feel virtuous
1 cup cauliflower, boiled till soft and mashed into small pieces, though not a puree
half a cup of grated parmesan cheese
1 bunch of chives, optional – ours have died back for the winter and haven’t yet reshot with the warmer weather, but we do indulge sometimes in ones from far away
Mix. Divide into 4 ramekins, or coffee mugs if you don’t have stylish ramekins. Bake for 40 minutes at 200º C or till firm on top and slightly puffed. Eat hot.
Beetroot, Apple and Celery Salad
1 bunch beetroot, baked or boiled then peeled – with gloves on if you don’t want pink fingers
2 Granny Smith, Lady Williams, Democrat or other firm crisp winter apples (not a Delicious apple that the supermarket is pretending is recently picked) peeled, cored and sliced
2 stems celery, the tops cut off for soup, the strings peeled off, the rest finely chopped
1 tbsp lemon or lime juice
Combine all of the above and toss the juice gently through the vegetables.
Egg and Asparagus Hot Salad
(Serves 4)
4 eggs, boiled for four minutes
4 bunches asparagus, hard stems snapped off
1 bunch chives, chopped
5 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp honey
1 tsp French mustard
4 tbsps lemon juice
2 tbsps flaked almonds or toasted pine nuts
2 cups cherry tomatoes
Spread 1 tbsp of olive oil on an oven tray. Spread out the cherry tomatoes. Bake on the highest heat your oven will reach for ten minutes. They’ll split and the skins will shrivel – perfect.
Boil the asparagus for 3 minutes. Arrange on four plates. Scoop out the eggs and scatter over the asparagus, then add the cherry tomatoes. Scatter on chives, almonds or pine nuts. Mix olive oil, lemon juice, honey and mustard and pour over each salads. Eat hot or tepid, or even cold.
Carrot and Date Muffins
½ cup dates, chopped
1 cup orange juice
1 cup grated carrot
half cup brown sugar
2 cups SR flour
half cup olive oil
3 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
Optional: half cup white chocolate buds
Soak the dates overnight in the orange juice. Mix everything the next day; plop into a greased muffin tray or paper cups. Bake at 200º C for about 15 minutes till risen and rich brown. Eat hot, cold or tepid.
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