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.

Fremantle

My amazing colleagues very generously gave me a gift voucher for Garde when I retired.  Garde is a new, multi-story boutique hotel that is built on the site of the old courthouse and warders' cottages. Being lovers of everything historic, we decided to use the voucher to stay in one of the warders' cottages.  The cottages were built in 1852 and each has been transformed into very comfortable guest rooms.  The original wide wooden floors have been retained, the fittings have been chosen carefully and all the mod-cons like aircon have been hidden away.  They've managed to keep a bit of the feel of the old cottages and create some luxury at the same time. The cottage was super quiet and just perfect for a lie in. 

Garde has made an effort to tie in the new with the old.  I'm not completely sure how successful they've been. I've included some pictures so you can decide for yourself.

They have created some lovely garden spaces (which I didn't photograph) and dotted wee possum statues all about the place. They're almost as cute as the real thing.

  

 

One of the highlights of the Garde is Emily Taylors which is situated right next to the Fremantle markets.   We didn't have dinner there, a decision we deeply regretted after having a very average Italian meal at one of the many Italian restaurants in Fremantle.  But we did have dessert there which saved the evening. Their desserts are amazing.  I had whipped yuzu cheesecake which was served with citrus salad and lime sorbet. Divine.  R had baked ganache, dark chocolate, pandan parfait and blueberries.  He said it was seriously good.

Breakfast is included with the room price. Garde does a really good buffet breakfast with plenty of choice. I'm sure even the fussiest of eaters could find something.  There were several different yoghurts and fresh fruits, Bircher muesli or house-made (which was delicious), pastries, different types of breads and a selection of jams and other toppings.  The spiced pears were a standout.  If I'd just had those I'd have been happy.  

Overall, we had a very pleasant stay. I could get used to that kind of luxury without too much effort at all.  So, a huge thankyou goes out to my former colleagues for their very generous, and very humbling, gift.

A Conga Line

We go for a walk most days of the week.  Our walk takes us through some beautiful Australian bush and, somehow, it seems different every day with the different light and weather conditions. If that wasn't enough to keep us motivated, every day we get to see kangaroos and a range of birdlife, including red tailed cockatoos, the occasional deer and even emus (a dad with his chicks once).  Recently the insects have been getting in on the act too. We saw a couple of things we've never seen before, a conga line of caterpillars slowly making their way across the road:

Seriously, this was the most laid-back conga line I've ever seen.  Those little furry creatures were taking their time crossing. Luckily for them it's a very quiet road.

A couple of days later we saw these in the middle of the road:

Not the cutest insects for sure.  They're the larvae of Eucalypt Sawfly or wasps.  They also get called spitfires. We've seen the adult wasps in our garden but didn't know what they were.  Now we do.   They feed on eucalypt trees (no surprises there right) and are pretty harmless.  We have no idea what they were doing hanging out in the middle of the road, of all places. Hopefully they made it across safely. 

Can't wait to see what our next surprise will be. 

Getting Organised

We moved into our patch of paradise in April 2020 and since then we've been making changes to the home to make it work better for us.   One of those changes has been to the laundry.  It's fair to say the laundry that came with the home is the biggest laundry we've ever seen.  We could probably fit three of the laundry from our old home in and still have space to spare.  We even toyed with the idea of splitting it into two rooms and using one as a spacious walk-in pantry.  That was cost prohibitive though so we tried using the space, including four floor to ceiling cupboards, more flexibly than just for laundry stuff.   Despite all the space and storage, and trying different ways to use it, the laundry just hasn't been the most functional for us.   The work bench was a little low and very narrow and became a kind of half-way house for stuff we didn't quite have a place for or worse, that probably should have gone in the bin or to the charity shop.  Also, we found ourselves constantly moving the clothes drying racks around the place, along with the ironing board.  So, while we had Travis and his team from Bunbury Designer Cabinets and Furniture out here doing the kitchen we got them to tackle our laundry as well. 

The first photos show what the laundry used to look like, after we cleaned out all the guff ahead of demolishing the bench.  

The bench actually looks great in this state.  It was never in this state though. It always had clutter over it and stacked underneath.  I should have photographed it but trust me when I say, that's not something anyone should see!

The next few photos show it in progress.  We had the fun of taking off the old tiles.  A messy but satisfying job. Thankfully most of them came off quite easily. 

                                                          

      

                                        

                                        

And here's the final result.  We move have a lovely wide bench, three drawers (finally I've got the junk drawer out of my kitchen) and some useful cupboard space for things like toilet paper and fairy lights.                              

                                   

We even have a place to store our shoes when we come in from the garden and to sit down while we take them off.  

The junk drawer.  I say junk but it's actually things like matches, batteries and other bits and bobs that are useful but don't have a proper place to live. 

                                       

And there's room on the bench for some indoor plants (which to my astonishment have survived under my care for nearly two years now) and a lovely piece of Mum's pottery. 

                                                     

We transferred some of the stuff from the existing cupboards into the new ones. They're all small items so they fit much better in the smaller cupboards and are easier to find and access.  This freed up some space in the tall cupboards though.  Which means I can now store my Vacola preserver and jars where I can get to them easily.  And we've also got some larger kitchen appliances that we don't use often (like the ice-cream and bread machines) in there as well.  And I've also created a space, next to the towels, for our seeds where they'll be nice and cool all year round. As opposed to baking in the garage. 

Most importantly, from R's point of view, is that there is now more room in the hall cupboard for storing homemade pickles, jams, sauces and chutneys.  Or more specifically, for quince jelly.  Sadly for R, I've run out of empty jars to fill!!  I've sorted everything by type and date made though to make sure that, when he creates more empty jars, R starts with the oldest produce first. I love things to be sorted properly and it's nice to have the time.  Mum told me that I totally rearranged her kitchen cupboards - literally took everything out and put it back the way I liked it - when I was two.  She never did tell me if I improved them or not, but I've been organising cupboards ever since.    Now let's see how long we can keep them organised. 

                                 

Anybody want some jam?

And Now For The Hard Work.

We were lucky to get an abundance of fruit from our apricot, peach, prune and plum trees this year, which kept me busy in the kitchen.  The figs are finishing (thank goodness, it's hard to know what to do with 30 kilos of them and there are only so many one can give away it seems) and we've picked our first lot of quinces.  Now that the trees have stopped fruiting and are getting ready to go to sleep over winter, and we've a wee reprieve from preserving their bounty, it's time to give them all a prune.  

In previous years pruning has felt like a mammoth chore because we've had to squeeze all the pruning into one weekend.  Now that we're not working, we've been able to take our time and prune a few trees each day.  This also means that we've been able to pay more attention to how we prune them. Not that we actually know what we're doing. We have learnt a lot from my lovely Mum (who grew up on an orchard) by watching videos, reading ABC Gardening Australia magazines and listening to Sabrina on the radio on a Saturday morning. This year we've been able to utilise what we have learnt more effectively.  Hopefully that means we'll get lots of fruit again next season.

Because we grow our trees in a shade house (we call it that but it's actually constructed from bird netting, not shade cloth) we prune the summer fruiting trees twice a year.  Once at the end of Summer to control their size. This is vital so they don't grow through the roof of the shade house.  And then again at the end of winter, when they've dropped their leaves, to remove dead wood, create the nice vase shape all the experts talk about and take out any branches that are crossing each other.   This year we paid particular attention to the fruiting spurs as we pruned them to size.  And, because we've got bacterial canker we sterilised our pruning tools between trees, and between cuts on the already badly infected trees. 

This is how the trees looked before we pruned them:

                                    

                                   

                                                   

They were growing right into the roof of the shade house and there wasn't a lot of room to walk through them.  They were lovely and shady while we were picking the fruit though.

Now, they look like the ones in the pics below. Or variations thereof. The amount of pruning depended on the type of tree.  The loquat (in the first pic) can be cut back quite hard and will bounce back and still fruit.  Some of the others needed a less drastic haircut. 

                                                       

                                                       

                                    

The late apricot had a very drastic prune.  We're not sure if it will fruit next year but, everything we read said to prune below the canker as much as possible.  Even if we don't get any fruit for the next couple of years, hopefully we will have saved the tree.

Now we just have to do something with the branches that were pruned off.  This pile is just from the loquat.  Those will be put through the shredder and used as mulch or in the compost.  We can't do that with the ones affected by canker though.  We will do a bit more research and dispose of thoses in the safest, least wasteful way we can.

All in all, it took us about a week to prune the trees. Although it is quite a lot of work it's very satisfying because we know (or at least hope) the trees will reward us with lots of fruit next Summer. Fingers crossed. I guess we better start eating some of the produce we preserved this year and make room for next year's crop. 

Oops, Missed That One

We were out raiding the veg patch after spending a few days with R's Mum in Perth.  We go over to the shade house every day to pick anything and everything (or so we thought) that is ripe. So imagine our surprise, on returning home from the big smoke, when we found this:

We're pretty sure this zucchini didn't grow to a size of 1.6 kilos and 40 cms long in the three days we were away.  So we must have missed it during our daily visits to the shade house.  I've no idea how.  It's not like it was actually hiding!! It took up a lot of room in the trug. And the fridge.  Lovely problem to have right. 

We've been picking zucchini all summer, mainly when they're small, and eating them sliced in salads. I also made Belinda Jeffery's zucchini slice which is really delicious and freezes well.  I make it a lot because it's quick, easy and all Belinda's recipes are reliable and scrumptious.  Mum used to love this with a bit of salad on the side:

Zucchini, Feta And Dill ‘Pie’ — Belinda Jeffery

But, after a whole season of eating zucchinis, we're feeling a little ho hum and ready for a change.  The thought of eating 1.6 kilos of the veg was just too much. The thought of wasting it was worse though, so I trawled the internet and came across some recipes for relish, pickles and chutney.  I've already made a double batch of fig chutney this summer, so I settled on making some relish.  I used this recipe from the Australia's Best Recipes site:

Zucchini relish recipe | Australia's Best Recipes

Luckily R was on board and we both chopped the zucchini, capsicum and onion.  Rodney used our Dreamfarm Corpeel for the corn.  Designed in Australia this little piece of kitchen kit really does get the kernels off the husk without any mess. Just like they show in the video on their website:

Dreamfarm Corpeel | The World's Best No-Mess Corn Peeler

I don't normally spruke products, but Dreamfarm utensils really are worth spruking.  One doesn't even have to peel the garlic before using the Garject.  I hate peeling garlic, I always end up with bits of the skin sticking to me, so I just love this press.  Anyway, that's enough sales talk.  After chopping everything we then cooked everything for an hour or so and sealed it in sterilised jars.   

Hopefully it will last a good ten years because we've already a cupboard full of preserves. If you're visiting and give me a gentle reminder (because my memory is appalling at the moment) you're very likely to score a jar or three.  I did manage to give away a jar while it was still hot, to the tiler who was finishing the tiling in the laundry.  He commented that it smelt good and that was enough to get a jar.