Potatoes

We love a really good roasted potato. Or maybe a steamed, freshly dug one, with lashings of butter.  This year we decided to have another bash at growing our own. It's fair to say we've not been all that successful at growing spuds in the past.  We get some but not enough to really justify all the hard work.  After seeing an article on Gardening Australia about growing potatoes using the layering method we thought, why not give that a go.  If nothing else, it will save an awful lot of digging.  And we had our lovely, homemade orange pots just waiting to be filled with something. 

Two varieties of seed potatoes duly purchased, we made up a mix of compost, soil and cow, chicken and sheep poo.  Following the method on Gardening Australia - well, loosely following it is probably more accurate - we put a layer of the mulch mixture in the bottom of each pot and then a layer of spuds followed by another layer of mulch mix.   And then we waited.  And waited.  And waited a little bit more until, at last, some lovely green leaves popped up through the layer of dirt.  So, we added another layer of the mulch mix.  And then we waited. And waited. And waited a little bit more until some green leaves popped up again.  We repeated this process until we reached almost to the top of the pots.   And then the real waiting started. Weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting.  Until last weekend when we decided to bust out the hand trowel and dig down into one of those pots to see what we could find.  And this is what we found:

Four and a half kilos of lovely spuds.  Not bad considering we only planted half a bag (or about 300 gms) of seed spuds (the other half went into Mum's garden).  Can't wait to see how the other pot went. 

Needless to say, we cleaned two up straight away and roasted them in the oven for dinner that night. I don't know if it's just because they were fresh, or because we were full of the glow of having grown them ourselves, but those were the best jacket spuds we've had in a long time.  Lovely crispy skin with really fluffy,light insides.  Yum. Barely needed any butter to make them just perfect. 

I've lost the label though, so I have no idea at all what variety of potatoes we planted.  Is there one called Delicious?????
 

Kurliny Tjenangitj Trail

There's a walk we've been wanting to do ever since we moved down south.   And what better time to do a walk then when one is on holidays.  So we got into our walking gear (just jeans and joggers, we don't have any proper hiking gear), jumped in the car and headed off to Honeymoon Pool where the walk starts.  If you've not been to Honeymoon Pool (which is near the Wellington Dam) it's well worth a visit.  There are plenty of campsites, bbqs and toilets and a lovely natural pool in the river for swimming.  And it's a great place to start several walks, including the Kurliny Tjenangitj (which means 'come and see' in the local Noongar language) Trail.  

The walk starts out with a relatively flat trail along the river.  I took some pictures of the water. Of couse I did. I always take pictures of water.   The lovely D had showed us his beautiful photos of one of his trips in America.  He used filters to get a range of different effects.  Filters? There are filters on mobile phone cameras?  After seeing D's photos, of course I had to give the filters a go.  This is the result: 

I like the black and white filter and think I'll be able to use that quite a bit.  I'm not sure I like the filters that alter the colours.  The last photo is the one without the filter.  

Back to the walk.  The first part of the trail runs through the bush, along the river, past some rapids.  I love the sound of rapids and waterfalls. It really cheers me up, I'm not sure why. 

After about 15 to 20 minutes of walking you can either take a left, which we did, to head up the Kurliny Tjenangitj trail to a look out, or keep on straight, which will take you to the kiosk at Wellington Mill Dam.  There is a helpful map at the junction to help you decide which way to go.  We thought the loop to the lookout looked like the shorter walk.   Which it is, by 3 kilometres.  What we didn't understand from the map, is that it's a pretty steep old climb.  It took as a good hour and a half to reach the lookout.  And it was all up hill.  And some of it was really steeply up hill.  But we were rewarded with stunning views and our first orchid sightings for the year.

I took lots of shots along the way.  I haven't included all of them. That would be just plain boring. Like our footage across the Grand Canyon. Those of you who have been unfortunate enough to see even a few minutes of that will know what I mean.  The rest of you, don't mention it lest R drags it out and makes you watch it.  Instead I've pulled out a selection which I hope highlights some of the beautiful bush we were lucky enough to be walking through.

I really like the way they deal with trees that have fallen across the trail. 

 

Just look at the view from the look out. Isn't it just glorious.

This is R standing on the wrong side of a sign warning of the dangerous cliff.

This is me being cross because R is not only standing on the wrong side of the sign, but wandering about in a cavalier manner and making grand statements about it being perfectly safe.

Although, not cross enough to take my sunglasses out of my mouth. 

It's fair to say we were both feeling a bit knackered by the time we hit the look out.  This is the first really properly long walk we've done in ages. So, we stopped for a wee break and some fruit at the, very thoughtfully provided, picnic table. R did point out that the picnic table was in line with the dangerous cliff sigh. Oh well. 

We were also very pleased to find this map which showed we'd completed most of the walk. In fact, it's fair to say, we were feeling pretty chuffed with ourselves. Who'd have thought we could walk this far without feeling too exhausted. 

We were also very excited when we came across the down hill marker.  After lots of up hill it was nice to be going down. Or more across, then gradually down a bit, then gradually up a bit, then gradually down a bit more.   About an hour into the down hill part of the walk, I realised I had partially slipped a disc in my lower back (probably clambering over one of those logs).  I don't know if any of you have done that before. If you have you'll know that walking across flat ground kinda hurts a bit.  Walking uphill hurts more. Walking down hill? Well, that is the worst.  So with every new gradual down hill slope I was getting sorer. But I consoled myself with the fact that we were nearly at the end of the walk.  That is until we found another map which showed that, actually, we weren't even halfway through the walk.  Seems the first map was for walkers coming the opposite direction than us. Darn!! Shortly after that, we came across the sign warning of the steep descent ahead. Double darn.  I spent the next two to three hours walking with very small steps and in a lot of pain.  Poor R had to dawdle along with me and wasn't able to do anything to help with the pain at all.  He did carry my hat and water bottle which actually did help quite a lot because they felt like enormous weights to me.  And the last part of the trail, back out along the water, the same way we came in, took probably twice as long to do and felt like it took ten times longer to do.  Triple darn!!

We did finally make it back to the car and headed home for hot showers, a coffee and recovery.  We did some googling and found that the first up hill part of the trail was only two and a half of the nine and a half kilometres that make up the trail.  Far out. We thought we were just going for a nice, short bush walk.  At least I didn't get any blisters this time (I ditched the Skechers and wore proper joggers).  Note to self though, google first, walk second. 

Of Thrombolites and Giants

Our most wonderful friend G, who happily had his holidays the same time we had ours, came to stay for a few days.  After lots of loafing around and general relaxing, we decided to get out of the house and take a day trip to Lake Clifton to see the thrombolites.  We had heard about the thrombolites but didn't really know what to expect.  It is a bit of hike from our little patch of paradise but well worth the travel.  We were lucky to have a lovely, warm, sunny day for the visit to Lake Clifton which is such a pretty spot. They've built a wee jetty so you can walk out and get a really close look a the thrombolites without stepping on them and breaking them.

The thrombolites look like very large, oddly shaped rocks in the water.  

They are actually made up of lots and lots of living micro-organisms.  The ones at Lake Clifton are about 2000 years old.  But scientists believe thrombolites resemble the earliest forms of life on earth and date back 350 to 570 million years (depending which website you look at).  Thrombolites produce oxygen and scientists believe they made all subsequent life possible.  That includes us.  There aren't many examples so it's nice to have these ones nearby and so easily accessible. 

Even without the thrombolites, the walk around Lake Clifton is well worth doing if you're looking for something to fill in a few hours. And you can also squeeze in a visit to the wooden giant. He is a three kilometer return journey from the thrombolites. 

He is one of several giants created by Danish artist, Thomas Dambo.  He is called Jyttes.

Sadly I didn't get to see Jyttes.  We knew the walk was a 3 k round trip. An easy walk and we were enjoying the bush and chatting with each other on the way.  But we missed the path to the giant because a couple tending to their crying baby were blocking the sign.  And because we were chatting so much we'd walked almost 3 ks before we realised we were on the wrong path.  By the time we got back to the fork in the path we'd missed, I had huge blisters on both feet which felt a wee bit like they were on fire.  And we didn't know how far in the Jyttes was so I opted to hobble back to the car while R and G went on to see the giant.  Turns out my Skechers are rubbish for doing long walks in.  Note to self, get new joggers and carry band aids.  Never mind, I will go and see Jyttes another time. 

We had a great day out. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for something to do one weekend.

Holidays

Yay, we're on holidays.  For four whole weeks.  Which means I will have something to write about other than gardening.  Lucky huh.

This year we decided we'd start our holidays with a brief holiday in the Perth hills.  We hired a delightful little fibro and weatherboard cottage called Edenside, in the Bickley Valley.  Not too far from our old home (which we didn't go anywhere near for fear it would make us sad!!).  I suspect it was a group home originally. It was made up of four rooms and the bathroom and third bedroom were in the closed in verandah.  Edenside was comfortably fitted out and had everything we needed. Including a good supply of wood for the fire.  It sure was cold up there in the hills.  

 

I'm pretty sure at least one of my sisters will love the colour scheme in Edenside.  Apart from making the inside of the cottage so lovely, welcoming and comfortable, the owners have created lots of lovely places to sit an enjoy the sunshine.  We had a couple of gloriously sunny days and were able to spend time loafing on the front verandah with the paper and a cuppa.  From the back there were lovely views across the valley.

A perfect spot to enjoy a couple of glasses of wine, which we did, or a cuppa and pastries. In our case, it was hazelnut scrolls which we bought at The Little Home Bakery.

Don't they look just amazing!  The Little Home Bakery, for those of you who are lucky enough to live in Perth, can be found in (of all places) a factory unit in Morley.  It's a very unassuming place and it's fair to say that R was a tad suspicious about their claims to make sourdough when we first went in.  But, when he asked how old their starter was, they were happy to tell him that it's 15 years old.  They also talked about the different proofing and fermentation times they use for each of their styles of bread.  So, we walked away with scrolls and some pretty darned amazing bread!

One of the reasons we stayed at Edenside is that we planned to catch up with all our friends over lunch at La Fattoria, a ten-minute drive from the cottage.  La Fattoria offer a lunch they call Nonna's table.  The family hails from Sicily originally (three generations ago) and they're happy to invite you into their home (which is actually a lovely, decked area next door to their home) to share lunch.  There is a set menu (five courses) and they just bring you a range of dishes that are made from whatever is locally available and in season.  We've been wanting to try Nonna's table for years, so we were very excited to be able to do this and share the experience with our friends. 

On the menu was, for starters, a buckwheat, cheese stuffed pancake which was served with a really simply dressed rocket salad. Oh, I should just point out that I kept hoeing into the food before photographing it.  So, you'll see that lots of the dishes have already been attacked.  I'm not sure how interesting food photos are in any case. But here they are.  If you're not interested just skip past. 

  

Next came antipasto. On the platter were olives (Sicilian of course), roast capsicum, salt (for dipping), a range of cured meats (I suspect these were made inhouse), a seriously delicious cheese and....I can't remember that the "and" was, other than it was yum!

Next up was Pasta e Ceci. It was orecchiette with chickpeas, crumbled sausage, parsley oil and chillies and anchovy panagretto on the side (so you could add as much or as little as you liked).  And of course, extra parmesan.

I don't know about everyone else, but I was actually getting quite full by this stage of the proceedings.  But I managed to find a little more room for the main, which was amazing.  Main was Agrodolce Braised Chicken with cranberries and pinenuts.  This was served with lemon risotto cakes and winter pumpkin, fennel and cabbage salad dressed with toasted seeds and sage butter.  Oh, my goodness, that was one seriously good main.  They suggested placing the chicken, and a couple of spoons of the juices, on top of the rice cake.  The rice soaked up the juices and all of the flavours complemented each other perfectly.  This is the kind of food I love. Simple but packed full of flavour and texture. 

Dessert - Warm Sicilian Apple Budino with butterscotch sauce and pecan praline and whipped cream - was mercifully small.  I was just about done in by the time we got there.  It was also delightfully light and not at all rich. A perfect end to a perfect meal.

All up we got to spend a very pleasant few hours with our friends eating good food, drinking okay wine and chatting.  Just the way I like to spend an afternoon.

I've just remembered the "and".  They were anchovy and cauliflower patties. Light, fluffy and full of flavour! Yum.  Nonna's spring table includes lamb.  I wouldn't mind going back to try that!!