It's That Time of Year

Spring has sprung in our beautiful part of the world.   That means it's perfect weather for bush walking.  Not too hot, not too cold, just right (as Red Riding Hood famously said). So, in between gardening and other less interesting chores, we decided to avail ourselves of one of the many fabulous walking trails around Collie.

We chose to do a four-kilometre stretch of the Wiilman Bilya Trail. The whole trail is a four-night, five-day walk that starts and ends in Collie and takes you via the Wellington Damn.  Just out of Collie though there is a short loop along the walk.  This takes you across the Kaniyang Wiilman Suspension Bridge.  The bridge is named for the Kaniyang and Wiilman people who are the Traditional Custodians of the area.  Once you're across the bridge there is a short one-hour walk through the bush which runs along the river to start.  We found it an easy walk although it is fair to say, I'm not a fan of suspension bridges once they get a swing up. And that was without R jumping around like he would normally. We were both walking quite calmly.  We did work out eventually that if we both walked exactly in the middle there was less swing.  

The wildflowers were just starting to burst out which was a joy to see.  We did stop to pull a few weeds on the way.  Sadly, there were lots of Watsonia plants, which were thriving, and a small number of Freesias.  The Freesias are no more, at least for this season. 

I took some pics along the walk.  I was going to take my camera, but the battery was flat, not that the camera would improve my photography skills at all. I wish.  These snaps were taken on my phone which has got a really good Leica lens. In the hands of a skilled person the phone would probably take great shots. I'm not that person.  But I hope the photos will still give you a bit of an idea of how beautiful the bush is near Collie. 

The first three pics are of, or from, a look out along the roadside, before you get to the start of the walk.   Come to think of it, you could probably start the walk from the look out if you wanted to. 

The remaining photos are of the river (taken from the bridge or the trail), bridge or wildflowers.

We might have to do this walk again in a week or two. I'm pretty sure there will be an abundance of wildflowers by then.  

A Wee Brag

It's time to confess (to those who haven't already sussed it out), we love plants that are native to Australia.  We've heard all the rumours about them being boring to look at and difficult to care for.  But we've ignored those and have been furiously planting all kinds of native plants.  They've burst out of the garden bed we set aside and are steadily taking over the olive grove.  The end of winter, going into spring, is when most of the plants are at their best.  This year, some of them have flowered more profusely than any other.  Hence the wee brag.  We are super pleased with our efforts and how well the garden is growing.

This year, one plant stands out above all others.  Literally, it is planted on the highest part of the bank. It is our sandpaper wattle.  All the hard slog we put in earlier this year, to take out the rosemary and wisteria plants out, has definitely paid off.  We can see the wattle every time we walk out into the back yard as well as from many other parts of the garden.  It is quite a difficult to plant to get a good photo of because of its growth habit. And I'm certainly not that good at taking snaps.  But here it is, in all its glory:

A Project

Now that we've retired (yay) we have plenty of time on our hands to complete our list of projects.  What we don't necessarily have is the skills required to complete each of those projects. So, we're learning on the job and making our fair share of mistakes along the way. So far, the results have been just fine. As long as one doesn't look too closely.

Months ago, we bought a bunch of pine poles with plans to build two pergolas (or arbours?) in our shade house.  They've been sitting in a pile in the shade house waiting for us to muster up the courage to do some construction.  We finally got brave enough to have a go.

Firstly, we assembled the equipment we needed: one petrol pole digger (very handy for getting through clay), a measuring tape, spade, gloves, drill, screws, a ladder, the poles (of course) and water to keep us hydrated.

After a bit of measuring, a bit of discussion and some more measuring we dug our first hole and put the first pole in.  

Turns out, the first pole was the easiest.  After that we had to get all of the poles in line and level.  We discovered that isn't as easy as we thought it would be given the poles are round and all different lengths and thicknesses.   But with lots of grit and determination (read swearing and frustration) we managed to get three poles in:

I'm really glad we didn't cement the poles in though because several had to be taken out and redone.  They looked perfectly even and level when we knocked off for the evening.  They definitely didn't look that way the next day though.   Eventually we got the hang of it and put in a total of ten poles, six in one pergola and four in a second one. 

We were going to halve the remaining pine poles to use across the top.  But we don't have the right kind of saw for cutting them in half and didn't want to shell out for one. Luckily there were several jarrah beams lying around the place (left by the previous owners) and we were able to make use of those.  Wullah, one finished pergola ready for grapes, or passionfruit. Or both.

The second pergola was built around the seed raising table.  We've still got to put the beams across the top of that one.  We're planning to grow grapes over that to give the seedlings shade in summer and sun in winter.  We've also installed a sink so we can wash the veg that we pick before we bring it inside.  I gave it a test run with some leeks that I picked.

Instead of going down the kitchen sick, all that dirty water now gets collected in a tub and can go back on to the garden.

The pergolas are not perfect by any stretch but we're happy with them and they will work.  Now we just need to find some grape vines and passonfruit to plant.

Camellia's

On our way home from a recent trip to the city to visit R's lovely Mum, we decided to stop in at John Cole Nursery in Banjup.  This nursery specialises in camellias and azaleas. We'd heard rumours that they have the biggest range available anywhere in this fair state of ours.   We have some shady spots that we wanted some shade loving plants for. Camellias are ideal.

When we first entered the nursery, we were underwhelmed by the range of camellias on offer.  There were maybe half a dozen varieties. Lots of azaleas but we weren't looking for those.  Luckily, we spotted a sign that said, "More camellias and azaleas this way".  We followed this sign and came across probably two or three acres (or maybe even more) of camellias and azaleas.  It is fair to say that we were both completely overwhelmed by what we saw.  The photos below show just a tiny part of the nursery.

Needless to say, our quick stop turned into about an hour and a half as we struggled to choose four plants from the dozens of beautiful varieties on offer.   We chose a Crimson Belle, a Bushfield's Yellow and two prostrate varieties, a Marge Miller and a Blush.  It was very tempting to buy loads more, but we managed to restrain ourselves. It wasn't easy but we did!

We'd been planning to plant camellias along our drive, under the plane trees, to replace some grevilleas we removed. I know, I know.  Grevilleas are one of my favourite native plants, so what am I doing taking them out?  Sadly, the grevilleas in question don't like the shade and were very straggly and dying.  I still didn't like taking them out.  Putting plants in the ground is way more fun.

It took us two or three days to prune out the grevilleas and then mulch the prunings, so they didn't go to waste. Hopefully you can see from the pictures below how badly they were doing. 

We ended up with three lovely piles of mulch.  Although, I'm always surprised at how little mulch we get given how big the piles of pruned branches are.  But the mulch will be good on our garden (once we've let it sit for a bit) and will save us buying any.

The remaining pictures show the newly acquired camellias planted in the garden.  They seem to have settled in. The taller varieties are flowering nicely.  There are three as our friends P and C had gifted us one some time ago to plant in honour of my lovely Mum. 

We are enjoying planting shade loving plants in our garden here.  Our garden in the Perth hills was full sun all the way and, apart from some fruit trees and the veg patch, was fully planted with natives. We loved that garden and will always remember it fondly.  It is nice to be making our stamp on this garden and to have the scope to plant a bigger range of plants.

Oh, and tonight we had some fresh dug spuds for tea.  Humans one, slugs nil!! 

Its War

We love to grow our own vegetables here in our little patch of paradise.  We always get plenty of veg from the garden in Summer but really struggle to get Winter veg established.  The main challenge is slugs which appear out of nowhere as soon as we start putting the Winter seedlings in.  Usually, we manage to save most of the veg seedlings by picking the slugs off the worst affected plants.  This year the slugs have either been much hungrier than previous years or there have been more of them.  We persisted with picking them off until they crossed the line.   When they ate all of the pea seedlings (my favourite!!) to the ground, the slugs threw down the gauntlet and declared war.  Challenge accepted!

In our battle against the slugs, we didn't want to use any nasties like pellets to control them.  We decided on a three-prong approach; picking the slugs, slug traps and copper tape. My lovely Mum told us, one time when we were helping weed in her garden, that beer traps work really well on slugs.  We don't drink beer. We prefer wine and there's no way I'd be wasting that on slugs, even if it did work.  But it is the yeast in the beer that the slugs are partial to, so we substituted Vegemite dissolved in water and kept our fingers crossed.  

We'd read that when slugs crawl across copper tape, they get a little zap.  It doesn't kill them, but it keeps them away from the plants.  Clearly lots of other gardeners know this about copper tape because sourcing some was easier said than done.  We managed to get the last two rolls at the third hardware store we visited.  Then we spent a good hour putting copper tape around our four raised garden beds and lots of plastic pots that we'd cut the bottoms out of so we could use them as collars to protect the seedlings in the ground.  No sooner had we finished than a slug, as bold as brass, slithered right across the tape.  What the?  We did a bit more research and learned that the tape only works when it's wet. Phew. Not a complete waste of our time then.   

We checked the Vegemite traps the following day to find them full of floating slugs, which hopefully died happy (I really don't like killing things even when they are eating all my plants).  It took a little longer to see if the copper tape worked.  I planted some new pea seedlings, with trepidation, and put one of the copper ringed pots around each plant.  Within a week the plants were peeking over the top of the pots and there wasn't a single bite out of a leaf to be seen anywhere. 

We also saw a dramatic improvement in the seedlings we'd previously planted in the ground and in the garden beds:

They've still a way to go (uh oh, we're just over halfway through Winter already) but we hope to pick peas, potatoes, parsnips, carrots, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts which we planted for the first time this year.   If all goes well I'll have some photos of our bounty to post on a future blog. 

Old Recipes

My lovely Mum passed away a little over a year ago.  We all miss her, and our equally adored Dad who passed away many years ago, greatly.  One of the many things I miss (and I'm pretty sure everyone else in the family does too) is her cooking.  Mum made the best soups and mini beef pies and try as we might, none of us can get ours to taste quite the same.   Even when we follow her recipe.  I say recipe, what I mean is loose directions from Mum.  When we asked, Mum would tell us she doesn't use a recipe and that she just knew to add little bit of this, a pinch of that or a handful of the other.  But she did have some recipes, gifted from friends and family, which she used regularly. Mum also gathered new recipes to try from magazines (I definitely take after Mum in that respect). Recently I found myself going through one of her recipe books.  An old exercise book, falling apart of the seams, and made up a mix of handwritten recipes, clippings from magazines and recipes passed on by others on bits of paper.  Amongst the recipes I was very excited to find this well used one:

The reason I am so pleased to have found this is that it is Aunty Gipsie's recipe for pumpkin fruit cake.  I have very fond memories of Aunty Gipsie and her fruit cake, which she would bring to family gatherings or Mum would make.  I've tried other recipes, but they've never stacked up to be as tasty as this one.  Of course I had to have a go at making this one.  Luckily, I had some leftover steamed pumpkin in the fridge. One happy husband, who got to lick the bowl, and about an hour and a half later we had a delicious fruit cake.  I'm pleased to say it tasted exactly like the ones Mum and Aunty Gipsie used to make for us. 

R was especially happy as he got to have this cake all to himself, as opposed to sharing it with all and sundry.  He did share it with me though.

The handwritten recipe is a little challenging to read. I had to guess the size of the tin because, like many old recipes, it wasn't included. I wonder if there was just one size of tin for fruit cakes.  Anyway, here is the recipe for Aunty Gipsie's Pumpkin Fruit Cake:

Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound butter
• 1 and 1/4 cups of sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup SR flour
• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 cup of cold, mashed pumpkin
• 1 tablespoon custard powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 pound mixed dried fruit

Method:

Sift the SR flour, 1/2 cup of the plain flour and the custard powder.  Cream butter and sugar. Add beaten egg and the half cup of plain flour, before adding the mashed pumpkin (to prevent curdling).  Add the remaining flour, dried fruit and vanilla.  

That's the complete recipe.  The rest I had to guess based on my own experience of cooking cakes.  I used 23 cm cake tin and baked it in a moderate oven (180 degrees celsius) until a skewer in the centre came out clean. It took about an hour and a half all up.  I did put a bit of paper over the tin towards the end to stop the top burning.  Delicious served with a cup of coffee or tea. Enjoy!

I was also really pleased to find this recipe for savoury cheese biscuits which B and I made often when we still lived at home.  I haven't made these yet but I'm planning to very soon:

The following pics are of the recipe book.  It's a lovely piece of our family history:

I'm looking forward to trying many more of Mum's collected recipes.