A blur...
A fortnight on…where did it go? I hardly know…and apologise for missing last week’s post. You’ve no idea how guilty that made me feel; even though a weekly instalment was never a promise (it seemed to occur of its own free will!); but once I’ve committed to something, even a routine…I’m inclined not to stray!
I’ll bet most of you didn’t even notice, but what a whirl it’s been; the events and all they entail all-consuming; and since I last wrote there have been two more; between days of furnace-like heat and ugly, havoc-causing winds. But today…that’s all a blur; as we woke to a dark and rumbly, thundery morning. How completely and utterly divine is the sheer relief of hearing a gentle pitter-patter on the roof, and the accompanying splish-splosh onto the big Strelitzia leaves that grow directly outside our bedroom window (not to mention the lone frog*), when we know the landscape is dry as a bone. Combined, all these things ignite a sense of hope for what may come (and just did - a lovely, heavy downpour!), followed by the desperate hope it may linger longer - please, oh please don’t run away too soon you beautiful, oh-so-welcome rain!
*Have I ever mentioned the lone frog? I’ll see how today’s post goes…maybe I might slot him in later!
I think when I left you last, I was heading towards preparation for a Kitchen Gardening Day…the most recent iteration of that foundational workshop, upon which all the lovely events and workshops have since followed. The first one, about which I recall being so completely excited and not a little anxious (now there’s an understatement if ever there was - I didn’t sleep for months before!) took place back in February 2009…which means this one completes 17 years of Kitchen Gardening Days here at Glenmore House!
In the lead-up to that moment though, were years of planning - of re-making my original kitchen garden with the purpose of it being a teaching tool; an example from which others could learn. No pressure then! It’s the only part of the garden to which I / we, turned to seek professional help, and back then, it was not easy to find someone to do so; determined as I was to implement honest, seasonal, organic practice, but in an aesthetically pleasing way. In tandem, I was hoping to find someone to teach…because at that point, I didn’t have the knowledge to do so; and anyway, the idea of me standing in front of a group and opening my mouth to say anything at all, was enough to make my heart pound as if it would explode out of my chest.
But to explain more fully, we need to backtrack to the years prior to the 2009 launch; when my life was consumed by motherhood, in tandem with a career in interior design and the making of a garden. In living at Glenmore, a decision we fully committed to after a good amount of to-ing and fro-ing betwixt city and here for a number of years; a potent reason for me doing so, was to grow vegetables; to live a garden-to-kitchen-to-plate way of life; and the setting out of my original kitchen garden plan was the first part of the garden to which I was determined to commit (well…alongside one very narrow, ornamental border!). And so we did. although we had no proper infrastructure, not even in the house! But you know by now how determined I can be, once an idea takes hold; and the idea of a kitchen gardening way of life had taken hold long before the garden everyone sees today, and thereby assumes has always been here, had evolved.
I’ve long admitted that my first attempt at making a kitchen garden was a dismal failure…a grand experiment; but how I love an experiment - it’s from them we learn. Tucked away in a cupboard here somewhere, is the freehand outline I drew, that might be scaled to fit the space behind the old Dairy; the only place we could find here that seemed relatively ‘flat’. And flat, was how I imagined this kitchen garden of my dreams to be! Not that I’d had any experience whatsoever of growing…anything. With a stone wall extension to give the garden extra length, the plan I drew (1991), incorporated a central apple tunnel, with two large, square’ish beds to either side, with each of those intersected by ‘X’ paths, thereby making a total of eight little triangles. I thought to edge the triangles in rosemary, so the whole would be a quite lovely symmetrical, orderly thing, in which combinations we enjoyed on a plate, could perform inside each garden triangle.
Well…Clemmie was not even two when all this was laid out. In those daysI was cooking on a single electric ring in a makeshift kitchen and running upstairs in the old part of the house (all that existed) with a bucket to fill with hot water to do the washing up, and…zipping back and forwards to Sydney, and around the countryside, to work. It’s hardly surprising that first kitchen garden was a failure…rabbits ate the rosemary edges and pretty much every pest known to mankind decimated the rest of my planting! Already I’d gone a step too far too quickly, at a time of life when one is stretched at best. And so…I let it go. For some years that space was devoted to the loose concept of a monastic garden: the triangles went; I planted a quince in the centre of each square to either side of the immature apple tunnel and infilled with all manner of medicinal herbs and species roses. But that garden was still always tail-end Charlie…the one I got around to tending, weeding, composting and mulching last, because somehow, the rest of the garden we were making was more visible, whilst this area was hidden…down the back…which of course is the very reason it’s so enchanting!
As the years rolled by (Bonnie arrived, the house grew wings…and taps yielded proper running water - woohoo!), I designated a small patch literally outside the new kitchen, for further veg experimentation. While I had some success on a small scale (delighting in every single veg I brought inside, which to be honest, I still do); I felt there was such a gap between the way of life I’d hoped to lead by living here at Glenmore, and how I was actually living it; as well as some huge gap in my knowledge about really growing a bounty of veg, successfully.
You might say my frustration reached a point of fever-pitch and I recall picking up all my veg growing books and magazines during a time when the Dairy was event-free for a few weeks (we did have weddings here in those days!); and taking them to that bright, clear space, where I laid them all out on a series of trestle tables, so I could clearly refer to them all, back and forth; making copious notes about each individual vegetable; the likely time to sow, to plant, their growth habits, likely diseases etc. etc. etc. No doubt those notes too, are here in a cupboard…many gleaned from English books, because they illustrated more clearly the style of garden I wanted to try to create back then. Of course there were Australian books and articles too…the crossovers and clashes of information made for a steep learning curve. Funny, how with time and experience one evolves, and the garden here now could not look further from that original intention…but one must start somewhere!
By the end, I’d compiled a handbook of sorts for my own reference - all I needed to know, about broad beans for instance - from seed to harvest; and during the process, the seed of an idea began to evolve. Surely I wasn’t the only one who wanted to grow vegetables in an aesthetically pleasing way, following seasonal and organic principles? And probably, I wasn’t the only one who had stuffed up my first attempt! Sure, we can all do hit & miss - and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I wanted more. Maybe…just maybe this was something I could bring together here? But if I did, the garden would have to be fully functioning, productive and successful. I’d need a teacher. I’d need a cook….
At that stage, I’d never attended such a ‘day’ or workshop of any kind. But tentatively, if wildly enthusiastically…I began to make a plan of how such a day might unfold: morning tea on arrival, home made cake inspired by something in season in the garden (and the kind of cake one wants with a cuppa on a real gardening day - nothing fancy!). An introduction in the Dairy (we’d need chairs!). The topics we would cover: design, layout, aesthetics, structures…the veg family groups (legumes, leafy greens, fruiting veg and roots); crop rotation. Seed - sowing, collecting, storing. Seedlings, sowing and planting; soil, compost, pests. We would inspect the garden itself, for there’s nothing like seeing with your own eyes to reiterate what your ears are hearing. We would taste as we went - picking a little of this, plucking a little of that…savouring delights on the tongue. And after a full morning of activity, we would eat - simply and from the garden…but in the same way as if participants were joining us as friends for lunch - linen napkins, pretty dishes. I wanted participants to feel they were having a treat, an idyllic day out alongside learning to grow, for them to eat well - to pair what they saw growing in the garden, with what was on their plate (which curiously, wasn’t a thing back then). I wanted them to learn, and to be inspired. I dreamed up the kind of day I really wished I could attend.
I can’t begin to convey how excited I felt at the prospect of making such a ‘day’ happen. But making it do so would take several more years. Could I find anyone in the Sydney basin at that time to help implement a kitchen garden based on organic principles? Everyone I asked just scratched their heads, until at last, a connection at Sydney’s Botanic Garden mentioned a landscaper called Steve Batley, who had set up a business called Sydney Organic Gardens. Poor Steve…coming from a permaculture background, I’ve no doubt he thought he’d met a complete fruitloop. I’ll say right here and now though, that permaculture has come a long way since those days - I completely understand that the need for something to be aesthetically pleasing is not at the top of everyone’s list and that it’s the principles that matter; but I fully believe the two can be combined and these days…they are successfully so. But back then, I do remember saying to Steve before he left here after that first meeting…”please…no rubber tyres”.
I could not have been more delighted when a few weeks later, Steve presented the plan that I share with everyone to this day; and am still more than happy to say I learned more from Steve and his concept than all my note-taking and research put together. It came about because he listened to me, and in turn I listened to him. One of my greatest concerns was that maybe the site or scale of my original kitchen garden wasn’t ideal, but he quickly dispelled that fear. “Let’s keep your apple arches Mickey”, he said “and set up two different methods of growing - your neat and tidy version on one side of the arch, and my mixed ‘guild’ style planting on the other…the two different methods can serve as a kind of experiment”. And that is the premise that underpins the way the garden still operates today. It gave me a starting block, from which I’ve learned, adapted, let loose and expanded. But that was where it all began.
For the first kitchen gardening workshop years, thanks to the very same contact at the Botanic Garden in Sydney (thank you Tim Jackson - if you’re reading along here…or if someone prompts you to see this: without you, I’m inclined to think none of the evolution of Glenmore would have occurred); a year or so after the new layout of the kitchen garden was implemented by Steve (then nurtured by me) I met Linda Ross; and from the very first minute we met, we were tripping over each other’s sentences with sheer excitement at the prospect of sharing our combined, burgeoning, growing know-how; and I’ll be forever grateful to Linda for those first years of teaching our kitchen gardening days here. She’s such a darling, a font of information, generous to a tee; and we loved those early days, when I’d kick things off, then sit in on the morning session - podding peas, or broad beans, slicing Jerusalem artichokes, washing lettuce leaves or whatever was in season…literally preparing our pickings, whatever they may have been, in the big Dairy space, so that participants could see the picked produce being prepared as Linda rollicked along through each of our seasonal topics for the day.
I’d always hoped to find a cook to do what I’d unintentionally got myself into! But somehow it just never happened…and nor have the days ever earned enough to pay for one! And so the task fell to me and over the years, those menus too, evolved.
A point came when Linda couldn’t take a class or two…she had another baby and her life became more hectic, so I took over the reins…by which time I felt comfortable in doing so, as during the intervening years, I’d implemented so much more than Linda was now seeing on her occasional visits and afterall…it was me doing the gardening between each workshop, me living it and eating from it. So by that time, guiding the days and their topics seemed like a natural extension - in tending the garden via organic methods, the garden in turn, had organically grown me.
Therein though, lay a conundrum…how to be out the front and out the back in the kitchen? Doing both? I developed menus for the lunches whereby I could prepare everything in advance, except for the actual compilation and at first Brian (who once helped one day a week in the garden), then Alex (who came to complete his horticultural apprenticeship) came to the fore in assisting, with strict instructions (poor things!) in the kitchen. Truly, they were both very competent and could stir a mean risotto, as well as being dab hands with the washing up. By the time Kim (who I’d got to know when our girls were in the same ballet class) got in touch to ask if I might need a hand, Kitchen Gardening Days had spawned a host of other events and workshops; which had changed my life entirely.
Up ‘til that point of regular workshops and events, I’d leave here every day, in the same way one would if living in the city - I was forever locking the doors and windows and shutting the gate behind me…off to work. In reality, although we’ve lived here full time for thirty years (how funny, this month - I only just realised!) it’s 37 going on 38 since we became custodians and of those first seven; the initial two consisted of day picnics and clearing (as the house was uninhabitable), then we lived here full time for three in very basic conditions, before a stint of two years ‘weekending’ whilst we got our schtick together) it’s only been since the kitchen gardening and events and workshops usurped my career in interior design that I’ve been able to properly ‘live’ here, without the need to be constantly leaving and the whole eventually became a complete way of life: garden and event/workshop-centric.
It’s a funny thing…this swapping out of one way of life for another. My desire for this way of life, of being at home, came from a place of yearning from a young age, though I couldn’t visualise the how or when or even the if. In reality, when we came to live out here I was petrified. Visually beautiful, I didn’t grow up with space around me and at the beginning I felt insecure. Not isolated…but vulnerable; with a baby in my arms and no immediate next door neighbour. It took years to unravel an urban approach to life, even though the opposite was the one I sought, and years to make a whole of all the experiences put together. But at their core, is the kitchen garden!
It’s been lovely too, to have Kim back in the kitchen for a handful of the most recent events. For a long time she had my back, when by necessity I’ve been out front…and I couldn’t have managed those years without her gentle and reliable presence.
How delighted I was, to have a little group of enthusiastic would-be, alongside already-keen kitchen gardeners here, Saturday before last! No two days are ever alike, and the takeout information for everyone is never the same. If nothing else, I sorted someone’s longterm cucumber-growing frustration - woohoo! (Don’t you just hate when a newly growing member of the cucurbit family is there one minute, gone the next?). We discussed at length; we looked, we picked, we tasted, we ate…we chatted. It was a relaxed and delightful day in good company, and plenty of ideas to implement were shared.
You can tell I’ve been rushed off my feet…there are no photos…cos I haven’t had a chance to take any!!! Also…has anyone else noticed? The latest phone upgrade (unrequested, as ever) requires a two-step procedure to take a photo now? The upgrade occurred for me last week and I find it simply maddening - it takes all the spontaneity out of capturing the moment!
From kitchen gardening, my attention turned to last weekend’s final event of the year (well…aside from a likely Lavender Harvest Workshop!). A conversation and afternoon tea with author and baker Tilly Pamment which was, in my opinion, the literal icing on the cake to end one helluva series of spring events! At some stolen moment during the previous week, I sat down with Tilly’s first book ‘The Plain Cake Appreciation Society’ which I confess to reading cover to cover, recipes and all in one sitting, when it first came into my hands a couple of years ago; and then her just published (and the reason for our event) ‘Handfuls of Sunshine’, which although suggests the delicious contents of the book, also encapsulates Tilly’s bubbly and vivacious personality. Thoughts of Tilly therefore (just as thoughts of Adelaide had consumed my thoughts the previous fortnight!) occupied the best part of my brain space in the days leading up to that lovely afternoon. I’m not entirely sure how I managed to get myself into this scrape of acting from time to time as interlocutor…in reality it terrifies the living daylights out of me! Same as cooking for all those kitchen gardening days and events…it was never part of the plan!
How divine that on this occasion, it was Tilly who baked all the treats for our guests - tantalising morsels from both books, to make a festive table in which everyone could delight. There was a good deal of finger licking to accompany a garden wander, once we’d heard all the lovely influences on Tilly’s childhood, the reason for her pairing tea suggestions with her cakes; her earlier studies in fashion design (what a coincidence…I had no idea she was a contemporary of Karima Hazim - do you recall our Sofra event with Karima and her mother Sivine in October last year? How funny these two, and I recall from those amongst the Sofra guests, several others of their cohort too, have ended up in a world of food and words rather than fashion). We skipped around the like of being an exchange student in Germany and how to this day, packages of ‘postable love’ are baked and shared - the topic of one of the chapters in this most recent book. We heard tales of Tilly’s young children alongside her terrific accumulation of happy cake ‘taste-testers’, her life in the Blue Mountains and stepping into the world of publishing, writing and photography. The photographs that fill Tilly’s books are good enough to eat - all of them styled and photographed by Tilly. She’s quite a girl, and our guests couldn’t wipe the smiles from their (no doubt sticky!) faces. It was a happy, happy day…
Which must surely bring me to the garden! I’ve had precious little time to spare - nothing but stolen moments, but when I have, I’ve put them to good use. Do you remember I suggested I’d plant pumpkins in the stubble of the experimental strip of rye, barley and oats? Well…experimental, as far as the grains go, was certainly right! I can see why the early settlers here forwent grain in favour of dairying! Just as each came to what I presumed to be ripe and ready to harvest, we were either blasted with hot winds, causing them to flatten to the ground, or some crazy thirty-second, out-of-the-blue downpour, rendering them all pretty useless. Although I got the rye inside (and still it lies, wrapped in a sheet in the dining room!), now that I’ve cut the neighbouring barley to use as a mulch in that strip, I’m thinking to just take the rye back down to where it grew to do the same. I have too many bare patches of earth where it was and it will do a good job, perhaps even self-sow, which would give a good indication of when it would like to grow, rather than have me suggest the timing for it! Already barley is germinating where it previously stood and though I’m not entirely sure about the intermingled pumpkin / grain result…I’m curious to see what occurs. I really wish I’d managed to get the rye back out before the rain…but ho-hum - one can’t do everything. Needless to say it stopped raining ages ago…and the sun is trying to break through…but it sure was a good drop of proper rain while it lasted!
I don’t know what I’ve done with the lone frog! I know I recorded him, and surely I can’t have deleted him by mistake? I’ve been trying to record him for years and I thought I had! It looks like I’ll have to save him for another day…that elusive lone frog!
I hope that you too, have had some rain wherever you are, and particularly those who have had fires threatening their existence these last days. How I hope this bout of unsettled weather is the harbinger of more to follow, as it has been these last years.
Wishing you all a very happy weekend and week ahead.
Mickey x
ps by the way…I did send a newsletter this morning to those who are on that list, with details of a Lavender Harvest & Distillation Workshop in the coming ten days or so - weather and time permitting. If you’re not on that list (and I know it isn’t a complete crossover), and you’d like more information…just send me a message via the comment section here and I’ll be happy to fill you in! For its almost lavender harvest time…a short-lived window…and how I’m looking forward to that soothing experience!
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Potatoes, carrots, coloured chard, beetroot, garlic, lettuce (is having an in-between moment - I haven’t been picking as much as usual), rhubarb. Onions! I hauled them out last week. Apricots had a huge moment, with a few more ahead from the next tree! Lovage, mint, chives, parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme. Fennel pollen, fresh fennel seeds, poppy seeds
Going / gone: asparagus, chive flowers, fennel fronds
Seed saving: Australian yellow lettuce leaf lettuce, coriander, giant black radish
Sowing: beans*, corn*, sunflower*, beetroot*, parsnip*, carrot, radish, zinnia *be sure to soak the seed before sowing
Planting: lettuce, coloured chard, tomatoes, aubergine, capsicum, cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: Blowout arrangement this time for Tilly! I took a frangipani branch which is a huge treat; and infilled with fennel flowers, elderflowers and carrot flowers - my version of handfuls of sunshine! A magnolia here and there, a gardenia or two too, a rose here and there, still a few Solandra trumpets and a sprig of Burmese honeysuckle from time to time. The agapanthus are in flower, though I’ll leave them be…and the hydrangeas too…how they’ve struggled on those furnace-like days…
Perfumes and aromas: The night-scented Jessamine, Cestrum nocturnum has opened its first sprigs of flowers - glory! Burmese honeysuckle, Crinum lily, gardenia, magnolia. The oakleaf hydrangeas I mentioned last time have lost their perfume now and the Buddleja ‘Black Knight’, though almost over, is still spilling liquid honey perfume all around the Dairy and loggia. The air is sweet with the scent of frangipani anywhere in the vicinity of the old stables and borders. The Cistus ladanifer spreads its labdanum odour when the weather is just right…always catching one by surprise and the coriander gone to seed is also highly aromatic, as are the spikes of Nicotiana in the chook run, in the evening or early morning. Just a hint, is beginning to emanate from the fig leaves…
Pruning and other: having temporarily rescued the Dentata lavender at the Dairy from looking so ugly before Adelaide’s event, by lightly pruning off its spent flowers, Thalia has almost completed the real pruning of it…down almost to the quick; which sounds savage, but it’s kept those bushes coming back for over thirty years! You just need to go back down to a tiny new pair of leaf buds. There was a lot of windfall and the Chinese star jasmine around the pool dropped all its blossom, so there’s been a lot of clean-up. I also gave Thalia the task of pruning back all the rose-scented pelargonium in the field. It truly is a thug, much as I love it, and next will be to dig a lot of it out! I’ve been on yellow-fennel frond patrol at every opportunity, and it’s yellow-acanthus leaf time too. Their spires are holding on for now, but I think this coming week will be time to denude them of all their leaves and keep only their spires for Christmas.
❤️❤️❤️
Two-step photos?? Do they involve dancing ?