Swoon….
’Tis a peculiar little microclimate we enjoy here…as you can see, which took many years to understand, to get to know, and still it has the capacity to surprise…to delight, enchant, transport. These emotive descriptors are high up in my estimation, for what makes a garden, and for how a garden in turn, can bring pure, subliminal joy to anyone in its presence.
Whilst house and garden are a marriage - supporting, balancing and anchoring each other (perhaps these are the foremost, fundamental elements at the beginning of the laying out of a garden), we all know a garden should also delight the eye and the heart; provide refuge, quiet, calm and stimulate the mind, the pulse. It may be impossible to estimate the difference a little surprise can make to a day, but just one single moment of joy I believe, must release all kinds of endorphins, and why not implement the possibility of giving ourselves just that little boost, by selecting and nurturing beauty to grow?
In this way, you can see it doesn’t take much to make me happy! One flower…one glorious cornet who opened its petals sometime between dusk and dawn has truly made my day! I’ll hazard a guess it unfurled its petals at last light, as by the time I opened the curtains this morning, already its enormous bud had popped and its form was fully revealed…something that, if you happen to be present at that particular moment, is possible to watch.
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A tight fist half an hour or so earlier yesterday, I missed the actual pop that releases with it, the most intoxicating burst of tropical magic into the air! Is it coconut? Vanilla? Banana? A combination of all three that draws you in…closer. The perfume from a single flower of Solandra maxima, the Hawaiian Vine, is completely beguiling.
It’s a plant I tracked down a long time ago. Those peeps who live in warmer climes will be completely familiar with this vine that in those climates is likely to be enormous, perhaps even to take over. I suspect if you see it all the time as a common plant which I know it is in many places, you may not pay it much attention. There was a time when I didn’t. I remember one huge specimen in particular, draped over an ugly fence at the end of the little lane where Larry and I lived in Sydney when we were first married. I paid scant attention then - its surroundings were not attractive and yet, there was such a familiarity about it.
At some point, I became fixated with the colour, shape and waxiness of the flowers. Their texture carries such weight, the golden, buttery colour is one you almost want to dive into and the vanilla pod markings that bleed into the yellow are as if painted by hand. The stamens held high will, no doubt, feed some pollinator I’m not aware of…but I expect it’s a night-feeding one.
This flower is the very first of the season…which will be long. The flowering will be sporadic - as ours is not a mound, but trained by stem onto the protected, north facing wall of the old stone house, so each one is a rare thing to behold. Therefore at each opportunity between now and...probably November, a burgeoning bud will probably cause me to detour on my evening round. Something I’ve done since one day…
I was in conversation with Gillian Bell (she of the have whisk will travel moniker and cake maker extraordinaire!). We’d been wandering the garden, picking stems and flowers for Gillian’s workshop the following day - selecting for what would become one of the most mouth-wateringly delicious cakes any of us would ever likely eat! We’d got to the side of the house and whatever topic it was we’d landed upon had stopped us still, me with my back to the house squinting into the evening light with Gillian facing the house, when all of a sudden, mid-sentence, she shrieked, which made me almost jump out of my skin! “That flower…it moved”, she gestured with her hand! Her eyes were out on stalks. I spun around to see what on earth she was talking about. Both our hearts were beating fast now…(oh dear!!!!). And there it was…the huge bud moved again! The action of the petal opening is almost like the needle of an old fashioned clock ticking onto the next second. It’s almost a click. Well…we both stood there gobsmacked! I’d certainly never witnessed the opening of one of these buds before. We decided this was a very domestic kind of ‘David Attenborough’ moment and we stood transfixed as click after click the petals popped one after the other, then reflexed back, releasing wild perfume into the air. What a moment!
Of course having witnessed this bud-opening performance once, I became fixated! I do find it difficult though, to stand still and wait (especially at the witching hour when there’s so much to be done) even for the purpose of watching the spectacular opening of a bud! So mostly they come and go without witness. But from time to time if I see one on the brink, I’ll bring it inside to watch the magic on the windowsill. Even then I can miss it! I might just go and close the curtains, or nip out to pick some herbs and bingo…I come back to a room filled with perfume, the huge trumpet open and I’ve missed the moment yet again!
On one occasion, a few years ago, I asked Bonnie to please try to capture the sequence on her camera which she did on time-lapse. She then sped it up and thought to make it black and white! But anyway, all the way back then I popped it onto instagram, so you can take a peek!
There was another surprise to be had yesterday afternoon…the unfurling of the first pea flower of the season! Just a week on from the mid-winter solstice…and nature is on the move…a new chapter is beginning and it’s breathtaking.
I adore pea flowers. Fragile, complex…delicate as angel’s wings and delicious! I won’t yet allow myself the treat of eating one…that pleasure must wait until there are many. At this early stage, I will allow each new flower to develop into a pea pod, so that thrill awaits: already I’m imagining the first one, when I’ll stand in the golden afternoon sun, split the pod open and eat the delicate little sweet and flavoursome peas one by one. Those moments in my opinion, are for the gardener alone to savour. All the peas that follow can be shared!
I do love to eat the flowers though. They taste of pure pea, and as for the fat buds…well…there’s plenty of pea-time ahead to show you those…let’s not unwrap all the pleasures of the pea in one post…these are early pea tales yet!
But while we’re here…the tying-in of the peas has begun. I’ve mentioned before that my preference is to grow climbing peas - as I do beans…I love their height and structure in the garden, the billowing form of a wigwam in full pea-flight is a vision to behold (I’m just hoping the birds leave them alone this year).
Posts ago, I shared how I sow the seeds inside my copper rings, then support their early growth with pea sticks. By now though, they’re well on their way, taller than the sticks and forging on, so it’s now I begin to tie them in. This is winter’s Saturday job (rather as tying in the tomatoes was the regular summer one). It’s one I find pleasurable - especially at this early stage of the season when each leader is plain to see and there aren’t an abundance of wild shoots trying to grow every which way. As the season progresses, the task becomes more difficult as the number of shoots increases and the whole shebang gets out of control! But for now…bliss. Each fragile stem is carefully tied with a figure-of-8 knot…not too tight or you’ll break the hollow stem. During the week crazy tendrils will latch onto anything they can which is mostly for the good, but I find a weekly tie helpful to keep some semblance of order and…in the knowledge likely winter and spring gusts of wind lie ahead…a little effort put in now is likely to save the day when they blow. Believe me…I have known bitter pea disappointment…
While I have you in the kitchen garden, there’s something else I’d like to share. Most of you have been with me on this platform now since I began this season’s crop rotation and you will recall when I planted out the broccoli seedlings…tiny little things, protected by wire cylinders and net. Those have all matured and already we’ve eaten those large heads of broccoli - some just gently steamed and others as soup.
So what on earth do I want to tell you about broccoli? Well…going by the questions I’m so often asked, there are a few things! First, I always plant old fashioned ‘heading’ broccoli. Especially at the beginning of the season, when there’s plenty of time ahead for those large heads to form. There’s a trend though it seems, for peeps to dismiss the old-fashioned variety in favour of growing sprouting broccoli (to which I’ve no objection…I too, have made plantings of the sprouting variety as the season has progressed). But…the information I would like to share is as follows…because I know many peeps do this: if you grow the old fashioned heading variety, please don’t pull out the plant when you take the whole ‘head’! This is where peeps think the plant is done and dusted…but it isn’t! When you grow the old-fashioned kind, you get to have the whole head and then…with a little patience, you will also get a flush of side shoots…as in broccolini shoots.
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It’s in this way that I believe growing the old-fashioned variety rewards you with more to eat for the lifespan of the plant, than the sprouting broccoli does. Sure, the stump from where you take the whole central head may be ugly, but give it a few weeks and soon new leaves will cover it over and next…a bounty of side shoots will appear - sweet, succulent stems for you to plunder. And if you want to continue this for as long as possible…see in the top image how a tiny head has developed below the larger one? Cut the floret above the little one and it too, will grow larger. I expect these broccoli plants to keep giving well into the weeks ahead, until eventually they decide to bolt. And then we’ll look at that situation too…because still, even then, there will be more to eat!
Again, while we’re here in the kitchen garden: some weeks ago, with an eye to the fact that we’ll eat our way quite quickly through the first row of Cavolo nero (Tuscan black kale), I thought to sow rocket seed between each plant: the more leaves I take up the stem of each kale (I always pick from the bottom - the larger leaves first, working my way up the plant as the days go by) the more sunlight can penetrate to the ground. Over the coming weeks, no doubt we’ll have eaten all but the kale leaves at the tippy-top, leaving bare stems below which are not very attractive. Sure…I could pull them out (or better still, leave their roots in situ to keep the air passages they’ve created open and so as not to disturb the network of micro-organisms below) but I like to leave the tops to flower - once they bolt their yellow flowers will make excellent fodder for the bees. Equally, those gaps in the soil between them can be put to use, and rocket grown through the winter produces the finest leaves. You can see above that those rocket seeds have germinated and are now on their way to forming clumps of fabulous rocket leaves. I adore the taste of those delicate young leaves at this stage of their journey, so I might thin out a few and maybe they’ll make it onto our plates…or maybe not, if I eat them on the spot!
While I’m here, another word on successional sowing which I can never emphasise enough! As you can tell, we’re eating our way through that first row of kale quite fast, so it’s just as well I planted another row further across the brassica bed a month or so later. In this instance I interspersed Cavolo nero with Kohl rabi - more for a bit of mischievous fun than anything else! I love seeing the two growing side-by-side and in a few weeks this row should come to full effect. I’ve just taken off the net. Although we’ve yet to have a good frost, the light one seems to have put paid to the wretched white cabbage moths at last…and this weekend I’ll take off the wire cylinders too - I think this row ought to be able to fend for itself and I’m very keen now for it to grow on!
It’s next to the row of cauliflowers…and now occupying the space where that long-lived zucchini had snaked its way through this bed all summer and autumn long, making its way from south to north ‘til at last it expired, making room for the next crop.
The week’s bounty has been prolific and I do urge anyone sitting on the fence about winter growing, to think again. I know it isn’t possible in all climates, even in this vast country of ours, but many of us can sustain almost better harvests through the winter months, than the summer. Completely different veg of course…but it’s the seasonal produce to sustain us. At this stage of the winter, I still have a trickle of tomatoes making their way into my basket along with late roses. There they join the citrus of the moment, the bitter radicchio leaves, often a handful of Jerusalem artichokes and myriad nasturtium and calendula petals…amongst all the rest…which is a lot. I’ll list what we’re eating below…as I’ve fallen into the habit of doing. I do hope that table at the end of the posts is giving you some helpful clues as to what’s in season for eating…even if you’re not gardening!
And so to the eating! Midweek, we hosted an event for Allan Parker OAM, kicking off his regional ‘Brain Reset’ tour. Much as I’d have liked to have been sitting in on the action (no doubt my brain could do with a good reset!) I was out the back…making sure my ‘garden-inspired, seasonal lunch’ was on the table for Allan and his participants in good time. No stress then! (Which is what we’re meant to avoid for a healthy brain!!!).
As the day began with the Chestnut Flour, Rosemary, Raisin & Pine Nut Cake (tea, coffee or herbal tisane: thyme, lemon balm and either calendula petal or rose) and…as it would now appear the last issue of Delicious magazine that contained the recipe has now indeed been superseded by the next issue…I see no reason why not to include it for you here!
Chestnut Flour, Rosemary, Raisin & Pine Nut Cake
Ingredients
155g chestnut flour
155g self raising flour (these days I use spelt and add 2 teaspoons baking powder)
1/4 teaspoon or a good pinch salt
185g cold butter, chopped
300g rapadura sugar (evaporated cane juice)
1&1/4 teaspoons bicarbonate soda
1&1/4 cups mik
1 egg
1 egg yolk
70g raisins (soaked for 30 minutes in hot water and drained
2 tablespoons (roughly!) rosemary leaves
50g pine nuts
Method
Preheat oven to 180C
Line base and sides of a 20 x 30cm rectangular baking tin with baking paper
Blitz flours, salt and butter in the food processor ‘til just combined
Add sugar and blitz again - the mix should be combined but don’t overdo it!
Press half this mix into the base of the prepared tin
Whisk bicarb, milk, egg and egg yolk together in a bowl - I like to see bubbles froth up
Add the remaining flour mixture and still using a balloon whisk, combine the two
Stir through the raisins (now after all these years I still can’t decide if this is a better idea than scattering them after…see how you go!
Pour the batter over the base
Scatter with rosemary and pine nuts
Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean but…you might want to slip a sheet of baking paper over the top of the cake at the 30 minute mark to prevent it over-browning
Cool in the tin
I was given this recipe a very long time ago by lovely Anastasia who attended one of our earliest kitchen gardening days. At the time she was living in Bondi, just starting out on her whole food cooking workshops, having studied health, wellness and nutrition. Whilst that workshop may have ignited Anastasia’s early kitchen gardening journey; it was me who came to learn a great deal from her too. This cake is just one of several of her recipes I incorporated into my repertoire and that I would not be without. I invited her to run a cooking workshop - in fact the very first cooking workshop we ever had at Glenmore and I remember going to visit her in Bondi to nut out the recipes she might include.
It was on that day that we both really came to realise just how divorced both recipes and what’s on offer in the shops are so out of sync with real seasonal produce. It was quite a revelation to us both.
Already I was well and truly living by the garden, and as we ran through Anastasia’s proposed recipes I found myself saying “but that’s not in season…or that”. We discovered many recipe ingredient combinations (and by that I mean the fresh ones) simply could not be brought together if we were to be hand on heart honest. Yes, you might be able to buy them, but not to grow them at the same time. Anastasia was in the habit of buying the very best she could: organic, seasonal and from where she considered to be the very best sources. And yet…even she was unaware those veg were not ‘in season’ and so either being shipped from far and wide or perhaps grown under cover - not that there’s anything wrong with growing under cover but still…if you’re trying to go by what’s actually in season, and therefore likely at the peak of its nutritional value…why the deception? Especially in this country where there is so much to eat that truly is in season.
She adapted her recipes to suit and it was a big lesson for us both. It was on that day that she gave me a taste of her Chestnut Flour Cake; which she included in the first of her workshops here and the rest is history! It’s been a firm Glenmore favourite ever since. A word though on Chestnut flour…it has a short shelf life, so be sure to use it once you open the packet.
As for Anastasia…she returned to the country of her birth, South Africa, where she continues to inspire, educate and provide healthy food to happy peeps. Sadly, it’s our loss - I wish she was still here as she truly is an inspiration and how I enjoyed both her company and her food. You can read more about Anastasia at Foodology.
The cake, two loaves of Belinda Jefferey’s Pumpernickel Soda Bread, a big batch of Scented Veg Broth (another Anastasia recipe which I’ll divulge another day), all the leaves for a big leaf salad, as well as crumble and a big load of rhubarb made up my ‘day before prep’. Alongside a huge batch of Fennel Frond Pistou.
I realise I talk about this so often and whether it’s in Fennel or Parsley form (the two herbs I mostly use for it, although of course it’s often Basil in summer and if I can just grow enough Coriander….) I haven’t actually given the recipe…such as it is…it’s just a lot of guesstimating which is my usual way (except when it’s something like a cake!).
In realising I’ve omitted a guide to making this useful addition to the daily menu, I thought it might be an idea to pop an index together for you, cos a couple of peeps have been asking me which particular post a recipe was in and even I can’t recall now!
Fennel Frond Pistou (or whichever leafy green herb you fancy)
Ingredients
a big bunch of fennel fronds (stalks as well as ferny leaves) say 10 big stems
one or two garlic cloves
sea salt
black pepper
olive oil
lemon Juice
Method
roughly chop fennel fronds and load them into a food processor
crush the garlic with sea salt and a heavy blade knife, add to the fennel
pour in the olive oil…say half a cup to begin
blitz
add lots of twists of black pepper from the grinder, another good glug of olive oil and blitz again
add a squeeze of lemon juice and one more blitz
use a funnel with a wide mouth to pour into a sterilised jar
top with olive oil
If you look at the consistency in the image above, that should give you a guide as to where you’re aiming for. I tend not to taste at this stage…it takes time for the flavours to release and combine. It can taste a bit ‘bland’ after just being made. I pop the jar in the fridge and bring out what I’m likely to use an hour or so before so it has time to rest…this allows the flavours to develop in the jar (as well as for the pistou to relax after being in the fridge so it’s a bit more runny!). At least that’s on event days or if peeps are coming to lunch. For us, I use it straight from the jar - on sandwiches, in omelettes, pasta. We eat rather a lot of it - afterall, it’s really just a whole lotta green leaf!
The ‘recipe index’ as such requires a bit more backtracking…I’ll aim to release it in the coming weeks!
On Saturday afternoon I zipped up to Sydney to the opening of Matilda Dumas’ Journey to Ithaka exhibition at Maunsell Wickes Gallery…all charming depictions of sailing and tug boats, container ships and fishing fleets; reflections, moonlight and happy ports. It got me thinking about boats…and just how much of my young life I spent on the water…the sparkling waters of Sydney harbour…which I’ll save for another day…and hopefully then also have news of Til coming to visit…to tell us more about her sailing year with her husband Richard, who has written a book ‘A Year on El Oro’. Just released, I’m rather longing to read it and sail away…
Which brings me to the end of another week! Last week, there were a couple of windy days, which dislodged almost all the kapok pods from the tree. Here they are, all 73 of them mounded up on the Hayshed table along with the pumpkins cos I couldn’t think what else to do with them! They don’t usually all fall, and especially this early in the season…usually they split up high in the branches and spill their fluffy contents all around. Well…we’ll just see what happens to this lot!
I hope you’ve enjoyed these last few golden days…it sounds as if some wintry weather is ahead!
With very warm wishes to all,
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Navel oranges, clementines, meyer lemons, rhubarb; tomato, 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, fennel fronds, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, coriander, nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers.
Going / gone: onions (the very last are shooting!), garlic (I found another bunch of tiddlies!)
Seed saving: tomatoes - just one more variety to save
Sowing: I have most seeds in but will continue to sow randomly here and there.
Planting: lettuce seedlings and leeks
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: random stems from the kitchen garden, surprise winter roses and tonight…there will be a single, golden Solandra trumpet!
Perfumes and aromas: orange…the navels are singing their glorious tune all around the kitchen garden and the winter flowering honeysuckle is coming into bloom
Pruning and other: Thalia is still on tree circles! I’m so glad she enjoys jobs like these as truly…I just don’t have the time and it does make such a difference. Like us, she gets a peculiar thrill from seeing a clear ring around the base of the tree trunks…seriously, it just makes her beam from ear to ear. They look cared for, which they are, but at times jobs like these just get away from us. The next step will be to add mulch in a bid to keep them clear of grass and weed. She also raked all the lawn gutters before our mid-week arrivals and kindly lent a hand when I just did not have time to visit the garden one more time pre-lunch for calendula and nasturtium petals to add to the leaf salad! So grateful for Thalia :)