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.

Hard Slog

Autumn is the perfect time of year for us to get out in the garden and do some of the big garden projects that have been on our To Do list since we moved here six years ago.  We love the garden the previous owners created. But like most new owners, we want to put our own touch on the house and garden.  The glorious warm days offered up by Autumn, along with the promise of rain, motivated us to get out and get working  

Our garden is around two acres in size. So, we've split it into sections and given each section a name.  Just so we both know what we're talking about.  One of the first big projects we completed was in a section we call the bank.  It's basically the section of land that was left at the back of the house after they excavated to make a flat area to build the house on.  The olive grove is planted on the bank and we created a new garden at one end, called the Manchurian garden (because we planted a Manchurian pear tree there).   There is a row of red bottle brushes (behind the olives) which are on the neighbour's land.  We've added a bunch of natives at the opposite end of the bank to the Manchurian garden.  Around the middle there was a rosemary and two westringias which we decided to take out. 

This first picture shows the rosemary plant.  It was a good two to three metres across.  The second picture shows the two westringias, both decent sized plants.  In behind them we'd planted a sandpaper wattle.  We planned to keep the westringias pruned to create a view to the wattle.  As you can see from the photos that plan didn't quite work out.  Hence the decision to make a more permanent change. We are not short on rosemary or westringias in the rest of the garden so we're not going to miss out on enjoying everything they have to offer.

I don't think we quite realised the enormity of the job when we started out.  It took two days just to prune the rosemary.  Rosemaries create new plants by layering so there were three very well-established plants.   I suspect we'll be digging up small rosemary plants for some time to come.

This is what the rosemary looked like after a day's work:

After two days of slog, we had five piles of prunings to deal with:

And the bank looked like this:

I'd have taken a photo of what we looked like after all that work, but I suspect it would have been too alarming to look at!  We're not getting any younger and it's fair to say we were both feeling sore and sorry for ourselves after we'd finished pruning.  Then it took us another two days to put everything through the shredder to turn it into mulch. More feeling sore and sorry.  The resulting piles seemed way too small for the amount of effort that went in.  Better mulched for use around the garden than taken to the tip or burned though.  And it's cheaper than going to the gym. I may have said that about gardening in previous blogs. 

This is a pic of one of the piles of mulch. Tiny huh. Well compared to the huge pile pre-mulching at least.  

After all the hard slog we got to do the fun bit, put the new plants in.  I did take a photo of the bank after we'd put the new plants in.  It looks just like the photo of the bare bank above though.  The new plants fade into the background.  So, I took photos (albeit not great ones) of the individual plants we put in.  

They're all grevilleas but I'm not completely sure which ones we put in each spot.  Anyway, we planted a Grevillea Molly, Big Foot, Apricot Tingle, Molonglo and Winter Delight.  We've added a few other plants since.  I can't wait for them all to get bigger so I can post some pictures of a stunning looking patch of garden.  Guess I'll just have to.

Check out ....

 .... our Manchurian pear in its autumn colours.  The photo really doesn't do it justice. It looks stunning in real life.  It positively glows.  We've planted this wo we can see it when we're sitting inside the house.  I'm looking forward to being able to put a seat under it's shade.  In another ten to fifteen years!!

This hakea has burst out in flower and the bees are just loving it.  Hakeas are probably one of my favourite Australian natives. Again, I need to improve my camera skills. 

And what about this Peaches and Cream grevillea.  I love grevilleas and we've planted dozens of them since we've been here.  The Peaches and Cream is one of my favourites because of it's big, showy flowers.  

We're so lucky to have plenty of room to put in lots of lovely plants and then to have the time to appreciate them.  

Autumn

Autumn is probably my favourite time of year here in our wee patch of paradise.  I especially love the cool crisp mornings, warm days and cold nights.  I love that there is enough rain for the garden to flourish but not enough to keep one indoors for too long.  And I really love the smell of the Australian bush after the first rain cools everything down from the heat of Summer. There's pretty much nothing I don't love about Autum.

We know Autumn has settled in at our place when the chestnuts are ready for the brave (or foolhardy) to pick:

Yup, we were foolhardy enough to pick several kilos. I just can't bear the thought of the nuts going to waste.

The olives, quinces, figs and cumquats (Mum's) are ripe:

Those kept me busy in the kitchen. This year I made slow roasted quinces which I preserved using my trusty Vacola.  I made quince jelly to keep my lovely partner happy (it is fair to say he is addicted to quince jelly), quince liqueur, quince paste, dried quince, pickled quinces, quince BBQ sauce (thanks to my lovely sister and brother-in-law who got the recipe for me) and a really delicious quince and chestnut cake. Chestnut puree was required for the cake so, given the number of chestnuts we picked, I decided to make my own.  I am never doing that again.  Far out, my fingers are still recovering from peeling a kilo of chestnuts, twice!!  It took a couple of hours of work to peel them. And then another hour of cooking in milk to make the puree.  I don't mind the work, but it is really hard on one's fingers. I also made fig liqueur, fig paste, dried figs and glace figs. We had roasted figs stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in prosciutto and Fig and Raspberry Bakewell Tart.  I pickled Mum's cumquats and made cordial, which was a little too sweet for my liking. I'll reduce the sugar next time I make it. 

Autumn is also the time of year when mushrooms pop up all over our garden.  We're not brave enough to pick any for cooking. We're happy just to admire them. 

There are a bunch of changes in the garden during Autumn too.  The Japanese windflowers start blooming in Autumn and really cheer up the garden which always looks a bit shattered after summer:

I love the way the windflowers wave about in the breeze (hence their name).  I suspect the bees are slightly less happy about that aspect as they try to land on the flowers to collect the pollen. 

The natives we planted over the last few years start to burst out in flower:

And the deciduous plants start wearing their Autum colours before shedding their leaves for the winter:

These grapevines belong to Aylesbury Estate wines. They're Chardonnay grapes.  Of course, we had to do a taste test of the wine, given the grapes are just there.  It is a truly superb Chardonnay.  If you can get your hands on some you won't regret it. Unless you don't like Chardonnay of course. 

Every day the garden looks just a little more spectacular.  We have a carpet of different coloured leaves on our drive, as they trees shed.  I'm grateful that the previous owners of our home were amazing gardeners who creates such a delightful garden.  I just love living here. How lucky are we. Now we get to build on the garden to make it our own.