A Year (almost) of Reading | Wombat News
What I’m Working on Now | Recent Awards
Schedule for the Year to Come
The September Garden | Delicious Slices
A Year (almost) of Reading
I’m sitting here tapping this on my laptop overlooking the estuary at Metung, in Victoria. By the time you read this I’ll be home, washing my own towels again (i.e. not using two fresh ones every day). But just now two nankeen kestrels have flown across the lake, the pelicans have glided across the tree tops, and it is almost time to put on shoes, lipstick, coat, scarf and check myself for tomato sauce stains before I head off to give another talk.
It has been a month of talks. Actually, make that eight months – the Year of Reading has meant the Year of Talking for most authors. I’ve spoken to over 3,000 people in the last six days – not counting any who were listening on radio – and the year still has three conferences and Floriade and a visit to Lithgow to go.
It has been inspiring, hectic, throat rasping; have put on five kilograms from the all too yummy cakes and slices and muffins brought in as treats – please, please, please don’t bring me slices or muffins, as I feel guilty when I don’t eat them, but really shouldn’t.
If I were to try to add it up for the year, I think I’d have spoken to over 30,000 kids, over a hundred schools (including those online) and there are still three intensive months to go.
Every day I have been more and more awestruck by how a library – and the librarians and teacher librarians – can be the heart of a school, creating not just a love of books but guiding research or creating that great cliché – the ‘school family’ – which, in good schools, really does exist.
I’ve also eavesdropped on a conversation in a school where I arrived accidentally (long story) where bored teachers discussed how teachers really made no difference to the kids they taught– it was the family background that mattered.
No way. I’ve been to schools from the lowest socio-economic communities this year (and in the past few decades) where both students and parents have been motivated by teachers who not only care, but dedicate large chunks of their lives and imaginations to their work.
A child spends more of their waking life at school than they do with their parents. A good teacher is worth rubies and footrubs … come to think of it, perhaps this is the place to once again acknowledge the extraordinary debt I owe to the teachers of my childhood: Mrs Pauli, Mr Sullivan, Miss Collins, Mr Atwell and Miss Davies, who taught me for my first two years at school and was possibly not quite twenty, fresh out of teacher’s college with a class of over forty barefoot kids, yet still realised that a kid who couldn’t read ‘Run, Spot, Run’ but could read ‘Black Beauty’ had a reading problem, long before the term ‘dyslexia’ was coined. We loved her – literally and wholeheartedly – and she gave us all confidence that – somehow- we could read and write and do our sums.
This year has made a difference to so many children’s lives. Yes, much would have been done anyway. But it seems almost every community group in Australia has done something to celebrate the Year of Reading, reaching and inspiring kids who may otherwise have been left out.
I have just worn through my last pair of stockings, am sucking ice each night to try to keep my voice, am longing for just one fortnight of continuous time to write, tend the garden, reacquaint myself with my husband – and I probably won’t get that till December.
But I wouldn’t have missed this year for quids.
Wombat News
The baby wombats are out – small round brown balls racing after Mum or romping among the tussocks. I don’t know yet how many there are – due to so many trips away this is the first spring where I haven’t been able to keep a continuous tally of who is doing what in which hole. But every bush seems to bounce with a resident baby.
This summer will be hot, I think, and dry – and while there are lots of wombat babies, tellingly there are few ‘roo joeys. We’ll see if there is grass for them all – and water too. But just now, it’s spring, and they are springing and, as I watch them, so am I.
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, which was a. wonderful, b. compulsory and c. I think we had even more fun cleaning up the next day, especially as ‘cleaning up’ involved eating the leftovers, which were as stunningly delicious as they had been the night before and HAD to be eaten which meant we had to eat a lot …
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.
Schedule for the Year to Come
It’s unlikely that any more talks can be fitted into 2012, 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.
September 15, 16: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
September 22, 23: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
October 13, 14: Talks at Floriade, Canberra.
October 2-4: History Teacher’s conference in Perth.
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 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.
July 23-25: Talks in Brisbane. Contact Helen at Speaker’s Ink for booking and details.
9-11 September (probably) Ipswich Festival, Queensland.
13-14 September, 2013: Celebrate Reading National Conference, Literature Centre, Fremantle, WA.
The September Garden
What to plant
Vegetables
Spring crops can be planted when the soil is warm enough to sit on bare-bummed.
Frost-free climates
Good tucker plants: Fruit trees like limes, tropical apples, avocados, grape, choko, sweet potato and passionfruit vines, seeds of amaranth, artichoke, asparagus, basil, burdock, carrots, celery, chilli, corn, celeriac, choko, collards, eggplant, gourds, kale, leeks, lettuce, mustard greens, okra, onion, parsnip, parsley, peas, pumpkin, radish, rockmelon, salsify, shallots, silverbeet, tomato, watermelon and zucchini.
Plants for beauty: Any ornamental shrub in the nursery! Seeds or seedlings of alyssum, California poppy, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, helichrysum, honesty, impatiens, kangaroo paw, marigold, pansy, petunias, phlox, salvia, sunflower, Swan River daisy, torenia and zinnia.
Temperate:
Good tucker plants: Any fruit tree, vine or shrub, bare-rooted or evergreen, seeds or seedlings of baby carrots, beetroot, lettuce, parsnip, peas, radish, swede, turnips, celery, celeriac, leek, lettuce, onions, mizuna, mitsuba, seed potatoes, rocket, silverbeet and spinach. Pots of tomatoes or chilli plants can be grown on a warm sunny patio.
Plants for beauty: Seeds or seedlings of alyssum, calendula, heartsease, lunaria, California poppy, English daisy (Bellis perennis), evening primrose, Iceland poppy, love-lies-bleeding, primulas, pansies, polyanthus and viola. For a touch of early colour pots of petunias or impatiens should stay warm on a sunny patio.
Cold:
Good tucker plants: Last chance this year for bare-rooted fruit trees, gooseberries, currants and grape vines. Plant seedlings of onions, cauliflower, collards, kale, mustard greens, peas, salad greens like mizuna, mitsuba, spinach, also rhubarb crowns, artichoke suckers, asparagus plants and seed potatoes. Plant early tomatoes, zucchini, melons and pumpkins in pots on a sunny windowsill to give them a head start.
Plants for beauty: Seedlings of alyssum, Bellis perennis, calendula, California poppy, Iceland poppies, lunaria, primula, pansy, stock and sweet peas
Avoid pale straggly seedlings in nurseries that may be left-over from autumn. Otherwise, buy seed and sow it in pots indoors – take them out during the day. Restrain yourself from planting camellias or azaleas in flower – they will be badly set back, even if you plant carefully. It’s best to leave them in their pot till flowering has finished.
Fruit
Deciduous trees can still be planted now – with care, as they may be shooting. Evergreen trees do well if planted when the fruit trees are blossoming.
Ten reasons for growing flowers
1. They make the world more beautiful.
2. They attract predators that will help kill the pests in your garden.
3. You never feel poor if you have bunches of flowers to give away and masses through your house.
4. Flowers like sweet peas can fix nitrogen and help fertilise your garden.
5. Flowers lead to seeds – to replant your garden.
6. Flowers help hide the shapes and scents of your vegetables, making it harder for pest to find them.
7. Flowers like chamomile, borage and foxgloves appear to make the plants they grow with more vigorous.
8. Most flowers have ‘cottage kitchen’ uses – you can eat them, make wines with them, make calendula ointment if you cut yourself in the garden.
9. Flowers can help weed control – marigolds repel couch grass, dahlias will stop grass intruding in your garden, a thick crop of poppies will help clean up weeds, cornflowers stop some weed seeds germinating, thickly sown sunflowers will stunt weeds and choke them out.
10. Any sourpuss smiles if you give them flowers.
Water Chestnuts
The Chinese water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) is a great crop – I gather that in China they crop up to fifty tonnes per hectare. They'll grow in brackish water by ponds etc, but they're best grown by sowing them in sandy soils in spring, keeping them moist, then flooding them with about 10 cm of water when they are about 15 cm high. If you really want to maximise your crop let the water drain away in early autumn, so that the tubers get larger in damp but not wet soil. Feed them with organic manures and compost etc during summer. Harvest them in late autumn.
Waterchestnuts look like thin rushes, with thin round leaves to about two metres. I grew mine in a wide deep dish; friends grow theirs in an old bathtub. But true water chestnuts need about seven hot months to get a good crop, and we're too far south for that, so I've never got a really good crop.
A better crop for cooler areas is kuwai (Sagittaria sagittifolia), which is also sometimes called water chestnut. The tubers are much the same as Chinese waterchestnuts, but they should only be eaten cooked. (Chinese waterchestnuts can be eaten raw, with the thin brown skin peeled off, or cooked).
Kuwai won't give you as big a crop as true Chinese waterchestnuts, but kuwai is a lot more tolerant of cold weather and drying out if you go on holiday. Ours are totally dry for months most summers, but come back when we get rain. The leaves are a bit like fat green arrows – quite pretty in a glazed waterproof pot outside. Unless you are incredibly keen on waterchestnuts a bathtub full of kuwai will give you masses. Again, plant in spring in damp soil and flood when they have pushed their noses up above the soil, or plant in soggy soil around dams, ponds etc. Harvest in late autumn.
Store waterchestnuts or kuwai on racks in a cool, dark, airy place like you would onions or potatoes or ginger root. I've also stored them in water in the fridge and I've seen them stored in unglazed pots of water in South-east Asia – I suppose the water seeps through the unglazed pottery and keeps the pot cool as it evaporates. They can also be grated, dried and pounded into flour, or pickled. (Both kuwai and Chinese waterchestnuts are very good indeed pickled.)
Kuwai can be left in the ground over winter and harvested when needed. Waterchestnuts can only be left in the ground in frost-free climates or they may rot.
PPS Chinese water chestnuts are good for you – particularly high in vitamin B6.
Natural Herbicides
Some plants produce phytotoxic substances – either from their roots or washed down from their leaves – that inhibit plant growth. Use thickly grown poppies, oats, cabbages or mugwort to clean a weedy area.
Try a barley, oat or other grain ‘green manure’ to clear a patch of weeds. Slash it and let it decompose on top of the soil. All grains suppress weed germination. Oats works particularly well, but wheat, buckwheat and rye will also help ‘clean’ an extremely weedy paddock or garden bed.
Potatoes suppress the germination of many weeds around them. Many of the ‘stately home’ lawns were first planted with potatoes by gardeners who knew their value in ‘cleaning’ weedy ground.
Weeding with brassicas gone to seed
This is the most effective natural herbicide I know. Let brassicas go to seed – cabbage or caulies, though I prefer broccoli. As it goes to seed it will suppress the germination all other plants around it – and the growth of those already growing. When you need the space, pull them out. The roots will 'dig' the soil for you and you will have a relatively weed-free spot to plant carrots, onions etc.
I let most of my winter broccoli go to seed – then as I need the space for spring planting, I haul it out and bung it on the compost. A couple of weeks later I plant - or straight away if the seedlings are ready, but be warned – after a crop of gone-to-seed brassicas, seedling growth can be slow till the residues in the soil break down.
Gladioli as herbicides
I use gladioli to clean up grass and weed infested areas before I plant them out. I dig roughly lay gladdie corms on top THICKLY, then rake. Most of the gladdies grow, though a good few die: but I buy them by the thousand as small bulbs so they are VERY cheap. The gladdies multiply over the next two or three years - and at the end of that time I have a bed of gladdies that can be easily pulled out after they flower and turn brown, leaving bare soil behind. Or I can leave the gladdies in place, thinning slightly so I have new gladdies to clean up other spots, till I need the land.
Dahlias as herbicides
Dahlias are thick and tough growing - and not really so very ugly if they are growing in masses of other plants. I grow them at the edge of the garden to keep out weeds or plant thickly as above to clear up grassy or weedy patches. Like gladdies they multiply FAST, and sprawl so well that there is a good bare patch around each clump in winter.
A Few Slice Recipes
I have been fed so many slices this month – or, rather, managed not to eat them as a heart problem and butter-rich slices don’t mix well – that I am slightly fixated on slices.
Here are some gorgeous ones that you may be able to eat, even if I can’t. (NB But I can at least make them for friends.)
No-Bake Cherry Slice
2 packs of biscuits, crushed to crumbs (about 250 gm. Can be gluten-free ones)
250 gm copha
250 gm butter (ie one packet butter)
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
8 cups shredded coconut
4 packs red glace cherries, finely chopped
3 cups dark chopped chocolate
Melt the copha, then add the butter. As soon as it’s melted add the other ingredients except the chocolate. Mix well, then press into two trays lined with baking paper (or non-stick trays).
Melt the chocolate in the microwave – you can use good chocolate or chocolate melts, but pulse for 30 seconds each time as it’s easy to ovecook it. Overheated chocolate turns grainy and yuck. When JUST soft spread it over the slice. Leave to set, then cut into small squares. Keeps for about a fortnight in a sealed container in the fridge.
No-Bake Lemon Slice
As above, but leave out the chopped cherries and add 4 tbsps finely grated lemon zest. Ice with lemon icing: 3 cups incing mixture, 6tb lemon juice. Add a little more lemon juice if the icing is too dry to spread. Again, leave till set, and cut into small squares and store in a sealed container in the fridge.
Date and Ginger Slice (can be made without the ginger)
1 cup SR flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup dried copconut
1 cup chopped dates
half cup chopped crystal;sed or preserved ginger (or not, if your husband hates ginger too)
half a cup chopped walnuts (or other nuts- I sometimes add up to 3 cups to make it a very nutty slice indeed)
1 egg
125 gm butter
Melt butter. Stir in other ingredients. Press ito a grased or non stick tray, or line with baking aper. Bake at 200C for about 20 minites, or until pale gold on top. Cool in the tray before you cut into small squares.
This slice can also be iced with lemon icing, as above, or spread with melted cholate, as in the Cherry Slice recipe.
Apricot Slice
Substitute chopped dried apricots for the dates; add the ginger or omit, depending on how much you like (or hate) ginger.
Peach and Macadamia Slice
Again – as above, but use chopped dried peaches instead of dates, and macadamias instead of walnuts.
Gluten free Slice
Substitute ground almonds for the SR flour, and add one tsp baking powder. This makes a more solid slice, but it is extremely good.
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