And first up this week…following the series of bloopers I made in last week’s post (see below!) I would really, really love to encourage you to please read these tip-tappings of mine in the Substack app…rather than in the email that lands in your inbox! First reason…the layout is so much more attractive - the text size is larger and the entire experience is more…well…spacious! For those who are worried about doing so; reading in or subscribing to the app does not cost anything - it just gives you a better experience and I suggest you use the email merely as a prompt…to go to the app to read!
But here’s the main reason why and it’s likely to happen again in the future!
Last week, boy did I write some bloopers as I struggled to find the words to describe that glorious Solandra trumpet! Clearly there was a disconnect between brain and fingers (not unusual!) hampered by a (lovely) phone conversation at the pivotal time of my editing process. Then my Mum called! Even as I hit ‘send’ to you all, I realised something was not quite right…but too late…
So I apologise for appalling sentence construction! As I said at the very beginning of this writing escapade…it’s just me here - no editors and definitely no AI! I’m beginning to think Fridays have become a bit like sitting for an exam (though much more pleasurable!) with a time-deadline. I then switch from student to teacher-mode - taking the keyboard equivalent of a big red pen to my words to correct my slip-ups, my misshapen thoughts and tongue-twisted nonsense! But as long as you get the gist of the thing, that’s what matters (I’m not trying to win the next literary award!) and I just know there will be dozens of mistakes in the future too.
No doubt last week some of you were sitting there thinking ‘what on earth is she trying to say?’ But I did, as best I could, correct the nonsense in the app version, whereas I cannot correct what landed in your inbox! So for an altogether better read, please:
!!
Whilst on housekeeping, thank you to everyone who has indeed subscribed properly, for free…and especially to those who have kindly put their faith in my scribblings and paid a year’s subscription too. I’m enormously thankful for your support and there will be some special posts coming up for you soon that only you can view.
How I love the golden hues the Chinese Tallow is now displaying. Although sadly most of the colour is now on the ground, I hope the top image (if you refer back a couple of posts) indicates the passage of time over which those leaves draw attention and glow in the winter sky, making the jade beads and decorative painting on my dressing table mirror sing! Once the leaves disappear…the focus of that connection that daily delights my eye will dissipate, as another year goes by.
The colours are on repeat in the Chinese Elms who are always the last to completely lose their tiny leaves, so a speckling and smattering of green and gold is threaded all around. Whilst the Philadelphus leaves are doing something similar in the Barn garden, how I actually wish they would just drop off! I know they won’t…they will just cling all winter long, looking less and less attractive as the weeks progress. Because Philadelphus flowers in the spring, it’s straight after that one must prune it back, as it will then flower on this year’s growth. So of course one wildly encourages as much of this year’s growth as possible, for the flowering of the Philadelphus is one of my absolute favourite things in the garden of all. But well beyond the pruning time of everything else in that bed (you can see I still haven’t finished the Perovskia…but why would I when its silvery spikes are making such a valuable contribution?) the Philadelphus leaves will cling, even as it puts on fresh new leaves. We’ll compost and mulch all around it, so all is neat, tidy, fresh and beautiful for the big spring advent…and then it will drop its ugly leaves as the first blossoms begin to open! Maddening plant!
It was only in the rejig of the Barn Garden a few years ago that I decided to plant a Smoke Bush. To be honest, I’ve always shied away from those burgundy colours here…at least in the past. My sense is that they belong in locations with more established, cool climate gardens - the Southern Highlands, Blue Mountains and Victoria perhaps. The very atmosphere of Glenmore is not that and so I’m inclined to avoid those plants entirely. But there are two that always draw me in - one is Smoke Bush Cotinus coggygria, and the other the purple leaved Elder, Sambucus nigra. So in a flash decision a couple of years ago I added a Smoke Bush to a mail-order list I was building and when it arrived, planted that tiny twig into this position in the Barn Garden. I could say it’s taking awhile to establish but in fact it’s quadrupled or more in size, and now…I’m just beginning to see a hint of how it may look in the future. Even at this young stage, I can see a conversation forming between the tones of its leaf colour and the Cottonwood Hibiscus that I mentioned a few posts back (the one whose foliage I picked for our event with Paul Bangay). They are a good distance from each other and yet…diagonally opposed…a link has formed…registered, unmistakable in connection. What may have been an odd addition, is beginning to feel right. I opted for the Smoke Bush over the purple Elder because of the likely future size as well as the leaf form - those of the Smoke Bush are soft and rounded - indeed they too, reflect the Hibiscus which is not a thought that consciously registered at the time of choosing or planting. I also took into account the fact that Elders are inclined to run - although without first hand experience of the purple one, I’m not sure if it does the same as the common white!). It doesn’t mean I don’t still hanker after a purple Elder…maybe…one day!
And therein lies another tremendous joy of gardening…the pondering of possibility is almost as good as the real thing…
And here is another possibility to ponder! The Abutilon…or Chinese Lantern. At the very beginning of garden making here, Larry and I once enjoyed the most thrilling of days - we took a weekday off work, put Granma in charge of collecting Clemmie from school (her kindergarten year in Sydney) and went on a plant-hunting expedition! It was the first such day of its kind for us, so well-imprinted in my memory. Despite the fact that other such days have followed, though rarely weekdays! (and the thrill of them never diminishes although by now I really don’t need more plants, so they are increasingly rare) that day, it was all new! Although we had already planted many trees and I’d tracked down various plants through specialist nurseries, that particular day was freewheeling…completely open to surprise! In fact it included only two nurseries. One was Michael Cooke’s (his first) which for memory was maybe in Belrose…I know we crossed the bridge to get there! We’d met Michael briefly at a small plant fair in the Botanic Gardens where he had a fabulous stall of plants on display and I determined to track him down for a more timely investigation. It was a happy collection of plants that greeted us, but the only one I now recall buying, or at least that has survived all these years, was one labelled Greek Orange Poppy. I’ll show you when it next surfaces (by chance each of the plants I’ve had from Michael over the years, has by some chance had orange or at least burnished flower tones and also by chance I’ve felt the need to plant them in close proximity to each other). They are true stayers - they belong here. But I was in my early learning stage.
The other nursery I was so determined to visit that day was a well known one to Sydney-siders at the time: The Colonial Cottage at Dural. The owner, Mary Davis was a much esteemed garden designer and had written a book that I’d read cover to cover (I think everyone back then who was gardening in the Sydney environs did): Creating Cottage Gardens. This was our first visit. It was mid-spring - hence our timely visit and to my delight, so many of Mary’s plants were in flower. I went a bit bonkers! This, I thought, was the style of garden I so craved…there were foxgloves and delphiniums and all manner of things that delighted my eye and my heart. The boot of the car was filled without any difficulty and back in our little courtyard in Sydney (we were only weekending at Glenmore for a couple of years…and what a nightmare that was!) they enchanted, sitting in their pots where I thought I could keep a close eye on them ‘til we could get them in the ground.
Needless to say none…of those charmers, as it turned out, were remotely suitable for Glenmore! Except one, that survived a good ten years. It was a pale but clear-pink Abutilon. How besotted I was with those flowers! I recall the moment in the nursery when my eye first fell upon them! With Clemmie around five years old (Bonnie yet to be born) we were already on peak ‘fairytale’ time and it didn’t take me long to declare those flowers to be akin to fairy’s ball gowns.
I planted that original outside the girls’ bathroom (just as soon as that area was no longer a building site) and it grew to a substantial size. How I loved that the setting sun would catch those shapely flowers (each as though supported by an invisible crinoline) setting them aglow like a magical fairy party if I got ‘bath-time’ right! The vision accompanied all their young years. And then…it curled up its toes…sigh.
In the intervening years, as I got to better grips with our microclimate and increased learning set me on a path to more sensible and substantial planting choices, that old spot was gobbled up by a band of Shell Ginger. And yet I couldn’t let the idea of the Abutilon go. Unable to track down a specimen of the same colour, I found a strawberry pink one and planted it near the old Stables. For many years it produced beautiful flowers, although the shrub itself was spindly…and then, a couple of years ago, it too died. Although I loved the colour of that one, in my mind I was always sorry that it wasn’t the colour of the original that had so swept me off my feet.
At the last Collectors’ Plant Fair that I told you about in April, I noticed a stand displaying several Abutilon specimens. Amongst them, the strawberry pink variety we’d had. So I enquired as to whether it might be possible to find one in the more pale pink, to which the stall-holder said yes. My heart beat a little faster. ‘There was one here just a minute ago’ he said…but I’d missed it. He could get one for me, he suggested. I hesitated…afterall I really have nowhere for it to go! But I couldn’t let it rest…
A few weeks ago, when I went off with Clemmie to view a small collection of Indigenous works at an exhibition at the Castle Hill Powerhouse, we called into the Mother Earth Nursery at Kenthurst, to pick up one small plant, with one small bud. Now it’s opened, I think the original was just slightly darker in tone…perhaps halfway between this and the strawberry pink! Or perhaps as this fragile plant matures, and the weather warms, so too will the strength of the flower colour! But really? I don’t mind! What matters is the rush of thoughts triggered, that spill one after another, of place, time, people and life. Abutilons come with the sound of laughter at bath-time, little fists full of bubbles to be blown in the air, of fluffy towels wrapping wee bodies before pyjamas were donned and hair brushed.
And if I hadn’t gone down this path today, would we be thinking of Mary Davis and all the joy her plants brought to so very many gardeners? (I don’t blame Mary one iota for my early choices and as I’ve alluded to already so many times…learning the limitations of our microclimates and soils comes with time…it’s a journey and all the plants along the way play their part). Mary once brought a garden group to visit…many years after our nursery visit. It was Mary who told me to ‘lay out a long hose’ to play with the shape of areas we were thinking to make into garden beds. The dedication at the beginning of her book reads: To my daughter Anne and all who are on the brink of discovering creative cottage gardening for themselves. Sadly, I’ve long lost touch with Mary, but her book stands testament to the encouragement she gave to so many would-be gardeners and no doubt, to gardens in the correct climate that contain her glorious plants! As for Michael Cooke, a landscape garden designer I much admire, we shall return to him another time!
Forever more (to me and the girls) Abutilons will be fairy’s ballgowns. And where I will put this plant I have absolutely no idea!
Down in the kitchen garden, growth is well underway…the season’s veg have hit their stride, we’re eating well and those that tend to grow through the winter for spring eating are making good headway. At the beginning of the week I was tentatively thrilled the peas had got this far advanced up their wigwams and that the broad beans are mostly well up through the second rung and pushing towards the third…when…
The birds became equally excited! Grrrrrrr……and now the lovely effect is spoiled! At least for the moment. Sometimes it’s just a question of temporary tactics…with any luck, something else may attract the attention of those pesky winged creatures. The white nets are just loosely binding the pea tendrils - it will be easy to unpeg to continue the weekly tying-in process and any early flowers (as I showed you last week) will, all being well, do what peas can which is self-pollinate. What I don’t want is for any bees to get trapped inside the net but I’ve left the bases and the tops free…so fingers crossed.
Although the broad beans were as yet untouched…I’ve been growing here long enough to know what happens next, so I’ve thrown over the black net to avoid the next drama: as the broad bean tips reach ever higher through the top rung, they will be oh-so vulnerable….and as I want to eat the tips (make no mistake about that!) I want to protect them as best I can! I like to encourage the broad beans to grow up to the point that is half way between the top rung and the top of the stake before I pinch out the tips - that way, when I take the tips, their stem will still be tall enough to be held in place by the top rung. Pinching out the tips (aside from the fact I want to eat them…their taste is a tantalising precursor to the beans that will follow!) is necessary as it will encourage more basal growth and side shoots to form, strengthening each plant by the by and increasing the opportunity to produce more fava beans!
You are going to be so enchanted with broad beans by the time I’m through! If you’re not growing them yet, I hope to have you doing so next year…because it’s only those who grow…who know the joy of the broad bean!
Anyway…I’ve used the black net here because already there are some early flowers and I do not want to trap any bees. They are able to pass through the open-weave of the black net with ease and they seem to be particularly attracted to broad bean flowers.
On Saturday I tossed a whole lot of out of date seed into this patch down the back - one of those wild sowings I like to do! It freed up some seed bank space, getting rid of a whole lot of old packets. I’d like to have emptied my collection even more (it’s rather voluminous in size!) but I’ll wait ‘til some of those plants currently in the ground have produced the next generation, hedging my insurance policy! As this earth is now simply smothered with seed, I won’t mulch - one of the rare occasions I leave the soil exposed and I’m hopeful there will be snappy germination. I have covered it with net though - otherwise those wood pigeons would no doubt scavenge every single seed before it has a chance to get a grip!
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Before the seed-play, I spent a good hour, first pulling out that trusty San Marzano (saving the last toms to ripen on the kitchen bench) and getting to work with a few buckets of compost, bringing in the one spare tunnel I had on hand and planting a couple of rows of oakleaf lettuce. Whilst I’d prefer to be planting my favourite hearting mignonette and butter lettuces, I know they won’t grow well during the winter months, whereas the oakleaf, with its more loose habit, will. So I opt for the loose lettuces in mid-winter in order to keep up with all those leaf salads we so love to eat.
I also sowed peas - one seed to each upright of the tunnel rods. With these two beds filled (and a bit of extra pea sowing in the kitchen garden proper) I now consider this rotation to be complete!
With successional plantings growing on all over…we’re wrapping up the eating of some of the first planted - I’m thinking this last fennel bulb of the first sown will find its way onto our plates tonight. We might then need to take a couple of weeks’ break from fennel bulb eating - a shame…but as the season progresses, so too the cold slows growth, so there will be a gap ‘til the next ones are ready.
When to pick is always an issue - I think especially for those new to growing. It’s easy to be greedy and think…another few days, another week…but then you just might lose the opportunity to eat something at its very best! We all learn. And I reckon this fennel has grown to its optimum size. Leaving it any longer will not make it better, so tonight’s the night! (Rod Stewart…sorry, I know…you weren’t expecting that to accompany the topic of fennel were you? Me either!!).
It’s so often the way that the self-sown beat the intentionally sown in the seasonal race. I’m really not expecting pea pods quite yet from any of the seed I’ve intentionally sown…but with the seed-flinging episode I carried out with my late summer/early autumn kitchen gardening participants, a few Purple Podded Dutch Peas got into the mix. Although not supported and flopping all over the place with the Cima di Rappa that’s going to seed down the back, a handful of glorious flowers have indeed produced early pods. If you catch those inner peas at this early stage, before they swell too much…when they’re just petit pois, they are deliciously sweet.
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And just look at those purple markings…the blotches at the stem, the fine lines that vein outwards across the leaf structure! Anyone would think I have a one-track pea-brain…
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The kale, the leeks, the successionally planted and sown…the beetroot, the rows of parsnips, coriander and love-in-the-mist, the coloured chard…all of it is growing, making for a good winter season thus-far. Which means it’s time to begin tinkering with thoughts of the next.
Though not quite, for me anyway. Although I would…were we not going to skip this scene for just a couple of weeks. Which has me rather torn, if not slightly distraught (as leaving here always does!). It may sound silly but really I can’t bear the thought of missing one little thing…one day’s growth, one opportune treasure, one morsel to taste, one perfume mesmerisingly trapped in a protected winter corner.
But things beckon. There are things to see and things to learn. As well as people - old friends, family and just a little gallivanting that will make for more to tell - especially as I intend to visit several unique gardens - each distinctly different from the other, and which I will look forward to sharing highlights of with you here…for highlights there will be and I think each will provoke thought.
But to keep you on track, especially if you’re growing…I would sow my tomato seeds - probably not this weekend, but whenever the next optimum seed sowing day is this month (according to the lunatic calendar!). Perhaps there may not even be a designated lunar-seed-sowing day ‘til I’m back (after all I’m not gone for long!). But I am keen to be on time with my tomatoes this year and usually aim for a mid-July sowing into punnets.
As it is, I’ve done the stocktake, tidied up the decorating jobs and made a huge batch of chicken broth that’s divvied up into containers in the freezer (the idea of returning to a broth-less house does not amuse me one bit!). I’ve collected the rolls of Essential Dress linens, delivered them to the laundry for pre-shrinking, collected them for the second time and taken them (along with a huge basket of sweet oranges!) to the dressmaker accompanied by a concise list of pre-orders that I’ve agonised over for hours on end! I’ve tidied up the website, instigated conversations for upcoming late winter / spring events and released the first of them about which I am so excited: Thankful for Soil, a screening of two films here on Sunday 18 August.
I’ve washed the socks I fear I will probably need in the northern hemisphere! And tomorrow, we will turn the compost…
There hasn’t been any ‘special’ cooking this week as I’m trying to run down what’s usually on standby in the fridge. Hence no recipes this time but I’ll aim to complete and release the index of recipes thus far…if I can, next week.
May your days be filled with winter sunshine (at least those of you in this hemisphere!) ‘til I catch you at the next post.
With warmest wishes,
Mickey x
ps GALAH. Issue number 10 was released yesterday and my copy has literally just arrived in the post. With a huge thank you to Annabelle for including me in this issue (I cannot begin to tell you how in awe I am of that woman who took it upon herself to launch into the world of magazines with her very own independent contribution such a short time ago and has taken the publishing world by storm); to photographer Luisa Brimble who has captured so many beautiful images here during her photographic years and to writer Sarah Turnbull, who both came to share a very special Field of Flowers Day with me late last year, especially for Galah. If you don’t subscribe to Galah, how I encourage you to do so - Life beyond the city; a modern voice from the bush are the kind of bylines that sum up the content - which takes a very down-to-earth, contemporary approach to living in this wide and colourful land! You certainly can’t miss the cover of this issue - it’s by Jenny Kee!
pps I haven’t yet read Sarah’s words…getting this post out to you is more important! I’m guessing the issue should be in the shops any day now but you may need to look for a list of stockists if you don’t subscribe.
And remember to…!!
ppps Burglars…don’t even think about it - Glenmore will be well inhabited and cared for in our absence!
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Navel oranges, clementines, Meyer lemons (going, whereas the Lisbons are coming!), rhubarb; tomato (going), Jerusalem artichoke, parsnip, sweet potato. Leaves of all kinds - spinach, kale - cavolo nero (Red Russian is still growing on) lettuce, radicchio, rocket, red elk mustard leaf, warrigal greens. Cauliflower, broccoli, cima di rapa (rapini or broccoli rabe), fennel bulbs, radish (new - I don’t usually bother as we’re not huge fans but I popped some seed in and they’re a colourful addition to the pick!). I could pull the first Savoy Cabbage…but I won’t as it looks too beautiful! Fennel fronds, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, coriander, nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers.
Going / gone: garlic (I’m still going through the last bunch of tiddlies I found!), Meyer lemons, tomatoes (on this score the Wild Sweeties are tiny and inevitably drop a localised fruit or two which germinates the following season…they tend to fruit late - hence we still have lots of little tomato sweeties coming into the kitchen on an almost daily basis.
Seed saving: tomatoes - just one more variety to save - I’ve set one fruit aside on the kitchen bench, it’s not quite yet ripe which I believe it ought to be for seed collection. It just may be that it sits there for a couple of weeks ‘til my return…we shall see!
Sowing: complete for now but tomato seed into punnets will be the next to sow. And if you intend to sow from seed, then aubergines, capsicums and chillies too.
Planting: complete for now
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: random stems from the kitchen garden, still surprise winter roses
Perfumes and aromas: orange…the navel oranges exude the perfume of sunshine, whilst the intoxicating scent of both osmanthus and winter-flowering honeysuckle are spilling from one particular sheltered corner at the old stables
Pruning and other: Thalia is still on tree circles…it’s a big job! She’s also done some weeding in the kitchen garden paths and just begun the same down at the Field. Yesterday we took delivery of a big load of Forest Fines, which Thalia can gradually put around the trees to suppress the weeds she’s worked so hard to remove. I’ve made a very long list of all the pruning tasks that lie ahead!
Every time I read your post I miss our big garden even more, but know darn well there is no way we could manage it anymore. Like you I love fennel, it isn’t necessarily my husbands favourite, but too bad I cook it anyway. And that purple pea, gorgeous! As we don’t have a large garden for flowers it pretty much only has standard roses and lilac with a couple of Salvias along the back fence, but when the time comes the dahlias will get replanted in between the roses. I have two bags of Zinnia seeds and also a packet of gorgeous pale apricot Cosmos seeds. Maybe I will be daring this year and plant them both and see what happens.