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Schedule  | The September Garden | A Few recipes: The very best of cakes
It’s been a quiet month. Really quiet. I lost my voice for about a month (a medical procedure that went haywire). Most of the time I had a husky Marlene Deitrich style voice for about half an hour a day, so was still able to pretend things were normal for short radio segments and the odd phone call. But poor Bryan has spent the month deciphering my hand signals.
I don’t think the wombats noticed. I smelled more or less the same, which is what matters to wombats. I still can’t speak loudly now, or for too long without going husky, but my voice is definitely returning. And a good thing too. Have just done an interview with Talking Heads. Would have been… interesting… trying to tell the story of my life in mime…
It’s a glorious spring here. Hailstorms of white and pink blossom every time there’s a breeze, and the air smells like honey from the gum blossom and the jonquils. I’m down to the last five apples and the final box of oranges from last season, so it will be good to get some spring fruit.
We get the first apples here in late November, but there’ll be mandarins and tangelos soon, and early apricots, loquats, raspberries and strawberries if we don’t have a frost. Must make a last batch of lime cordial with the last of the limes, and more lime butter – Bryan loves it on his morning toast.
And the new chooks are laying an egg a day! The old chooks are laying an egg a day too, which means about a dozen eggs a day. I eat one. Bryan eats one. I use a few more in cakes and lime butter, which leaves about six dozen to give away each week. Have started giving away baskets of limes with the eggs, to persuade all friends to make lime butter or an early Christmas cake.
But they are lovely chooks. They are Australorps, with fluffy black skirts. I don’t think they can be pure-bred Australorps, as they lay brown eggs instead of tinted paler ones – I suspect there may be some Isa Brown or Rhode Island Red in their family. But they cluck like Australorps, that lovely contented cluck that means, ‘There are leftover choc chip biscuits in the scrap bucket and a pile of gone-to-seed broccoli and the first of the summer slugs and snails to peck in the garden…’ 

Wombat News
Calloo callay – Bruiser has bitten Mothball!
Okay, a wombat battle isn’t normally something to rejoice about. But Bruiser came to us such a small timid wombat – he got his name from his bruises, not because he was a big bruiser of a marsupial. Bower birds frightened him, wallabies terrified him; Mothball only had to let out one of her ‘stinks’ for him to scramble back into his hole.
 But day by day he’s been growing bigger – which we didn’t expect, as he was already well over a year old and presumably mostly fully grown – and braver. First he started to ignore the bower birds when they tried to share his dinner. Then he realised that Rosie and Emily wallaby were not really able to follow through when they tried to frighten him away. At last he was even munching grass near Mothball.
And last night he bit her. Actually they bit each other. They were on either side of my ugg boots at the time, so I wasn’t impressed. But Mothball is the velociraptor of wombats – mean, fast and snappish. If Bruiser can stand up to her, he’s ready for anything.

Latest Books
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is out! It’s the first in the new series, A School for Heroes, and it’s funny, made even more so by Andrea Potter’s fabulous drawings of the Ghastly Greedle and Gloria the Gorgeous (Gloria’s not just gorgeous, she’s drop dead gorgeous. Or she was 80 years ago. But, hey, it’s nothing that a bit more lipstick can’t fix.) Andrea’s Dr Mussels – he’s Headmaster, a monkey and can do fearsome things with a well-thrown banana – is on the cover.

The School for Heroes in set in a volcano, staffed by the retired heroes from Rest in Pieces – old heroes never die, they simply rest in pieces. (The heat is good for their arthritis.) And for Boojum Bark, student hero and werewolf, there’s a lot to discover.
Where is the library hiding today?
Exactly what is Boo Fu, taught by Mrs Kerfuffle the librarian, who’s deadly with a well-thrown dictionary?
Why does Princess Princess Sunshine Caresse von Pewke get so upset when he sniffs her bum?
How do you face giant Rabbits, Trrroooolls, Ogres and other Bogeys armed only with a zombie sausage?
What does the mysterious Yesterday want with the school garbage?
And where do flying pigs get their little jumpers?
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is a big book. There are lots of hilarious short books around.  But the trouble with a short book is that just when you are really getting into it, it stops.  If kids can find a two and a half hour movie fascinating, why not a big book? Often it’s the big books- the entrancing ones that kids don’t want to stop reading- that really turn a reluctant reader into a book guzzler. A short book can be a giggle for a while- and it’s tempting when you don’t like reading and you’re told you have to read a book. But the books kids read then reread are usually the long ones.
‘Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior’ is crammed full of universes, where Rabbits are deadly predators (almost as bad as budgies) and fairies bite, and zombie spaghetti may be the most fearsome weapon of them all.

‘The Night They Stormed Eureka: a fresh look at the history we thought we knew.’
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings, and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.

Coming October 1.
‘Baby Wombat’s Week.’ At last – the sequel to ‘Diary of a  Wombat’.
What is even funnier – and stroppier – than a wombat?
Her baby. A book for every child, and every mum, too.

New awards
‘A Rose for the Anzac Boys’ has won Honour Book for the Children’s Book Council 2009 awards for Older Readers.  ‘The Camel that Crossed Australia’ has just been shortlisted for the QLD Premier’s Award. ‘The Camel who Crossed Australia’ and ‘How High can a Kangaroo Hop?’ have also been made CBC Notable Books for 2009.
Both ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ and  ‘Pharaoh’ have been short-listed for the YABBA (Young Australians’ Best Book Award). Many, many thanks to everyone who nominated them… and enormous hugs to all who vote for them. (‘Pharaoh’ was also a Children’s Book Council (CBC) short-listed book last year, and also short-listed for ACT Book of the Year.)
Enormous thanks to all who voted for the Koala Awards too- (Kids Own Australian Literature Awards). ‘The Shaggy Gully Times’ and ‘Pharaoh: the Boy who Conquered the Nile’ are shortlisted for the 2009 Koala Awards too.

Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are always many more than I could fit into a year. But as I have family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stop-over in Perth, too. NSW Bookings are done by Lateral Learning; QLD bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, and for other bookings contact me at jackief@dragnet.com.au. I can only do one trip away from home a month though, and that includes trips to Canberra, so mostly only speak to groups of more than 200, and where it will take six hours travel or less each way (except WA).

September 19 & 20:  EYES Conference in Perth.
Sept 5 & 6; October 3,4,5, and 9,10, 11: Three talks each day at the Floriade Festival, Canberra. Contact Floriade for details or see the Floriade programme later in the year.
October 28:  Children’s Day, Canberra, workshop at Marymead. 
November 15: Open Garden workshops at our place. Contact the Open Garden organizers for bookings, act@opengarden.org.au. If you want to make a weekend of it, there are lots of places to stay, from cheap pubs to luxury B&B’s close by. Look at the Braidwood web site. We also have a cottage that we rent for weekends sometimes – with very limited tank water, a healthy population of snakes and lots of wildlife who’ll ignore you and go on munching.
17, 18, 19 March, 2010: Somerset Festival, Gold Coast, QLD
27,28, 29, 30 April: Talks in Brisbane, as well as an address at The 3 R's - Reaching Reluctant Readers Conference. Contact Helen Bain: helen@speakers-ink.com.au.

The September Garden
This is the time of year you either congratulate yourself on what you planted last autumn, or start buying your veg from the supermarket. We still have last year’s carrots (though not enough for the wombats too – there are never enough for the wombats too) and broccoli, radish, chicory, silverbeet, Freckles lettuce, parsley and a few other goodies. The first asparagus is poking up through the soil and I’m keeping an eye on the artichokes – I love them when the chokes are small and so tender you can eat all except the tips. I simmer them slowly in a big iron pot with olive oil, chicken stock and potatoes, and the heavy lid on, for about an hour – a trick my friend Val taught me – and the result is tender artichokes with artichoke-tasting yellow potatoes
What not to plant now: almost everything, unless you are sure the soil is warm and in spring the air is usually much warmer than the earth.
 Plants that are placed in cold soil never do as well as those planted when the soil warms up. Don’t plant until the soil welcomes anything you put in: a cold bed and a cold welcome dismays plants as well as people. Tomatoes planted now will probably bear at about the same time as those planted six weeks later – but the later plantings will be sturdier and bear for longer.
Pests attack early plantings. Most pests start breeding at about 3°C, while most predators only begin to be active at about 12°C. Wait till the world is ready to receive your bean seeds and capsicum plants – don’t try to hurry spring along.
How do you know when to plant? One bit of folklore wisdom says to plant tomatoes when the soil is warm enough to sit on with bare buttocks. In suburban areas use the back of your wrist. Another old saying has you planting corn when the peach blossom falls. I do this every year, and it works – unless, of course, your peach blossom happens to be frosted off.
On the other hand, there is the ‘spring flush’. This really exists: spring-grown crops grow faster than ones planted later. You just have to use your judgment – get plants in early enough to catch the spring tides, but not so early that they’re stunted or frosted off.
 The next three months are the main planting time for the year. You’re planting the things you’ll eat all summer, as well as many of the things you’ll be eating through autumn, winter and, hopefully, next spring as well. Many crops like silver beet, celery, leeks, spring onions, parsley, beetroot, carrots, parsnips, turnips, and foliage turnips can all be planted in one go to see you through the year. If you’re short of room, however, you can plant them over the next few months as space becomes available. These are the ‘year-rounders’, the crops you’ll rely on as the foundation of your vegie garden all year round. Other crops, like pumpkins and watermelons, are also one-crop plantings: plant enough to pick and store.
Then there are the staggered croppers: beans, lettuce, peas, corn, tomatoes, and zucchini. I tend to plant a new succession when the first lot is just starting to flower. It works better than planting every two weeks as, especially early in the season, early and late planted crops tend to catch up with each other and you end up with a glut.
Quick maturers
Early summer can be a lean time when you’re living from your garden: last year’s plants have gone to seed and the next lot are still too young to eat. Try some of the old peasant stand-bys. Luckily we have a lot of peasant cultures to choose from: Australian ‘backyard peasants’ can have a much more varied diet than any traditional peasant ever dreamed of.
Mitsuba and mizuma: Skinny Asian greens, delicious in salads. They crop three weeks after sowing – or after rain moistens the vegie bed.
Radish: Round red ones are ready in about one month from seed and the leaves can be snipped for salads or steamed after two weeks – more will re-grow. If, like me, you don’t like raw radish, try cooking them – they taste a bit like asparagus.
Chinese spinach or Bok Choi: This can be eaten small and young – again, in the same way you’d use spinach or lettuce. It’s a very fast grower but resists running to seed when it gets hot.
Tampala or Chinese spinach: This is another fast grower. Use it as soon as you can bear to pick the leaves. The plant will eventually grow to about one metre tall, when you just eat the leaf tips. Tampala is very tender and delicate – much more delicate than silver beet, and it suits even conservative eaters.
Baby carrots (like Amsterdam Forcing): Don’t thin them – just pull them as soon as they’re big enough.
Cos, Red Cos or Freckles lettuce: Just pull off individual leaves as soon as they are big enough, without pulling up the lettuce, so the rest eventually hearts. You can do the same with Prizehead Red – simply harvest a bit whenever you have a salad. Cut celery: A celery used like parsley, very strongly flavoured. Seed can be sown all year round throughout Australia.
Rocket: Also called ruccola or Eruca sativa, it can be sown all year round – it self-sows with vigour. Steam the young leaves or eat them in salads.
The older leaves are slightly bitter and smoky – loved by some, but not by me. Rocket also gives quick salads, but it is a bit pungent and smoky for some tastes. Try soaking it in milk overnight before serving.
Purslane: An annual sown in spring in cool conditions, and all year round in tropical to subtropical areas. Cook it or eat it raw. Cut the leaves at 10 cm high or less, when they’re soft and tender.
Watercress: You can be eating this in a month, but beware of tiny snails that carry liver fluke – wash even home-grown watercress in three changes of water.
Silver beet: You should have your first picking in a month if you feed and water them well.
Chinese cabbage: Don’t try this in subtropical areas: it’ll bolt to seed unless you grow it in a cool, shaded place. In cooler areas you may be picking it two months from planting.
Harvest
All-rounders and winter veg may start to go to seed. Pick out seed heads regularly to delay them. Mulch heavily to keep the soil cool. This will also delay vegies going to seed. Pick broccoli every day so it doesn’t toughen or go to seed – feed and water it well. Leave your cauliflower plants in the ground after you’ve picked them: they may produce new, smaller hearts, a bit like pale broccoli.
Other jobs for September:
. Water as much as you can. Many plants do 80% of their growing in spring, so a good water now will mean a real grwoth spurt. During summer you can cut back to ‘just keep them alive’ levels, ie the odd trickle, plus lots of mulch.
. Don’t plant trees now unless you have lots of water stored – or live in town where you can use ‘second hand’ water from indoors. It’s going to be a hot summer with (I’m betting) gale-force bushfire winds. Wait till the milder autumn if you can before you plant trees and shrubs.
. Put indoor plants outside so that predators can eat the scale and other pests that have built up over winter and may be turning leaves yellow.
.  Mulch! Then mulch some more. But make sure it doesn’t
prevent rain getting through – some mulches can, so that the ground stays dry under them when you get a few millimetres of rain. Buy a little mulch then do your own test – spread it, give a spray of water and see what trickles down. The looser the mulch, the more water will penetrate if possible, only mulch onto moist soil, not dry soil – mulch keeps moisture in the soil, but there needs to be some moisture already in there for it to keep.
. Make sure chooks’ and dogs’ and birds’ water is kept in the shade, and stays cool and fresh.
. Check overhanging limbs and trees in the lawn – they may come down in summer storms. Trees planted in the lawn often have shallow roots – thin out some of the branches if you can, to make them a bit safer.

A Few Recipes
This is an admission: I rarely eat most of the cakes and biscuits I give recipes for. They are made every week for Bryan and for guests. I come from a heart attack prone family and have avoided saturated fat since I was about 14. Bryan doesn’t have a cholesterol problem; he’s also one of those enviable blokes who need to eat lots of calorie-dense tucker or they pine away.
Sigh.
But the two recipes below are food I do eat. The first is for a moist but quite delicious cake. It’s low in saturated fat; high in Omega 3 fats, fibre, vitamins, flavonoids, antioxidants and other good things, including flavour, which should not be an optional extra. (So many commercial cakes seem to be sweet and fat, with no other favour except for a vague odour of artificial vanilla.) The cake does need to be eaten fresh though – it begins to weep a bit after two or three days, then grows green whiskers.
The biscuits are good too – using olive oil instead of butter, and rich in nuts, with a low GI and also good ingredients. Both seem particularly good about three o’clock-ish, when dinner is a long way off and there’s an hour of mooching around the garden to do afterwards to burn off the calories.

Apricot Banana Cake
Note: No eggs, butter or cream etc in this cake
You may need a little extra flour if the mixture looks too wet. It should stand up on a spoon, not dribble out of it.

Time taken: 1 hour
Ease of making: Moderate
Serves: About 15-20 solid slices

1 large extra ripe, squishy banana – don't try this with a hard banana. It won't have the correct flavour or texture
20 dried apricot halves
20 dates, minus stones
2 cups water
1/2 cup almond meal
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
1 cup SR flour (may need a bit more)
Optional: 1 apple and 1 tsp nutmeg

Boil dates and apricots till soft. You may need to add more water. At the end they should be almost a purée and you should have about two cups of mixture.
Turn on the oven to 200ºC.
Grease and flour a wide-ish cake tin – this cake needs to be shallow, not deep. You can also line the tin with baking paper.
If you don't have a cake tin, try making it in two empty cans.
Mix in all the other ingredients except the apple. Pour into pan. I sometimes cut the apple into slices and press the slices into the cake, narrow side down, then dust the top with nutmeg.
Bake for 40 minutes or till the top is brown and springs back when you touch it lightly in the middle. Don't worry – if you're quick you won't burn your fingers. (But don't let kids try this in case they bump on the oven tray – which will burn them.)
Store in a sealed container when cool. Eat within three days – it goes gluggy and also grows green whiskers.

Olive Oil and Lemon Nut Biscuits
Note: No eggs or animal fats; high in Omega 3

Ease of making: Moderate but not suitable for kids
Time taken: About an hour
Serves: About 25

3/4 cup olive oil
3/4 cup orange juice – not from Navel oranges as it turns bitter
½ cup brown sugar plus another ½ cup brown sugar
2 cups crushed nuts, your choice – I like a mix of walnuts and pistachios, or macadamia nuts
4 cups SR flour

Syrup
1 cup white sugar
1 cup lemon or lime juice
Boil for two minutes, stirring well before it comes to the boil, so the sugar disolves.

Mix oil, orange juice, one lot of sugar and flour.
Now mix the nuts and extra sugar.
Take 1 tbsp of the biscuit mix and place a blob on baking paper on an oven tray. Now take a teaspoon of the sugar and nuts and press it into the biscuit. The biscuit mix will close over it, or mostly. Repeat with the rest of the mix.
Bake for 15 minutes at 200ºC or till pale brown. Take out and cool, then dip into the HOT syrup. Use tongs, and dip QUICKLY, just in and out. Let dry and store in a sealed container. These will keep about a fortnight in a cool place – not necessarily in the fridge.

Passionfruit Shortcake
No, I don’t eat this one. Or not often.
1/3 cup butter
2 eggs
2 cups SR flour
1/2 cup caster sugar

1 cup cream, whipped

Icing
1 can passionfruit – remove seeds, or 6 fresh passionfruit, with their seeds
2 tbsps butter
 1 cup icing sugar, or a bit more
Mix well. Add more icing sugar if too runny. Add a tiny bit of water if the passionfruit were dry.

Cream butter and sugar. Mix eggs in one by one. Pour into a greased and floured pan. Bake at 200ºC for 35 minutes or till pale brown on top and firm in the middle when you press lightly – see above and don't let kids try this. Tip out of pan to cool. When cool, cut in half. Ice the top of one half with the icing. When the icing is set sandwich with the well-whipped cream and serve within 20 minutes.
Keep in the fridge for up to four hours – cream doesn't keep well. The cakes may be frozen before they are iced and the cream inserted. Thaw well before icing. But they are much better made, iced and eaten fresh.

Possibly the best cake in the universe
Lemon Syrup Pound Cake
Ease of making: Medium
Time taken: 1 hour to cook, half an hour to make
Serves: About 40 slices
Keeps: In a sealed container for at least a fortnight, possibly longer.
Variations: Add 1 tbsp of poppy seeds, or caraway seeds or grated orange or lemon or mandarin rind or 1 cup finely chopped pistachios or 1 cup grated dark chocolate…

Ingredients:
250 gm butter (must be butter)
1 cup brown sugar
4 room-temperature eggs
½ cup SR flour
1 cup plain flour

Cream butter and sugar well – must be smooth and pale. Beat in eggs one at a time: lots of beating or it will curdle. It won't be as light if it curdles, though still superb. Gently add flour. Place in a greased and floured tin or line with baking paper. Bake at 180ºC for 1 hour. As soon as you take it out pour on the hot syrup. Leave in pan to cool and absorb the syrup.
PS This cake is still good without the syrup, and can be iced for a birthday cake, especially the chocolate version.

Syrup
½ cup lemon or lime juice
½ cup caster sugar
Bring to the boil slowly, stirring so sugar dissolves. As soon as it boils pour over the hot cake SLOWLY, so each bit of cake gets a good wetting. You may like to poke a fork or a fine skewer into some of the crusty bits so that the syrup really penetrates into the cake.