A fleeting moment of abundance...
Wowsers! Skipping a whole fortnight of activity to update you with has caused me to quickly refer back to see where I trailed off, and we’re seemingly engulfed here in a whole new realm! That single ‘early’ blossom I led the last post with exploded very quickly after, into a froth of coconut-ice like beauty; and it’s all one can do to not just sit underneath it and gaze upwards, entranced at each and every puff-ball petal!
I hope you’ve all had a good couple of weeks? Here, I seem to have been a whirl and I need the images I’ve clicked along the way to remind me of what on earth I’ve been doing (writing the second Field of Flowers post aside…at this rate my bottom is going to spread alarmingly!).
But truly? I seem to have been moving a lot of furniture!
It goes with the territory! I may have alluded to it before, but the thing is, not only do I enjoy the process, but it is an absolutely integral part of not just event prep in a practical sense; but as a way of tuning in my thoughts, wiring my brain and encouraging the focus required to flow - it’s a means of mentally weaving my way in to the event or workshop ahead.
Aside from the trestle tables which do need two peeps to manhandle them (Thalia has become an excellent trestle table-moving companion!) I like to move everything else myself…each and every chair, the small tables, the old sofa (thank goodness its on castors!), the old sisal rug. As I move and position each piece physically, in my head the event or workshop is taking shape, complete with food and people. I likely haven’t thought about it in this kind of detail since correspondence with whoever is coming to share their story, or since I put together the newsletter and booking form - which is likely months before the big day. I won’t have yet decided on a menu…as the garden will dictate that as the day draws closer. So moving the furniture is an opportunity to truly think…not just on the practicality of how the day will unfold, but on the person or people who will be the centre of attention, as well as the guests who will sit in each chair.
And last week, my thoughts were devoted entirely to partners Jeremy Valentine and Grant Francis and J’s glorious presentation on the garden they’ve created together at The Stones, in Central Victoria. As the day came to pass, how enraptured we all were! I knew we would be. I’ve had the good luck to visit the garden and even to stay with the boys for a night enroute to giving a talk in the Western Districts of Victoria a couple of years ago. Like many others, I follow Jeremy’s poetic and engaging descriptions alongside the lovely images he posts on instagram, and was so thrilled when he accepted my invitation to put together a presentation of their garden making journey. He hadn’t done it before and I know how much effort he’s put in all year, between the frantic life he and Grant lead with their enigmatic vintage store SHAG in Melbourne and restoring, gardening and nurturing The Stones. They are treasure hunters, historians, artists…and every ounce of their combined creativity and personalities are a vital component of the garden they’ve made at The Stones.
There’s a knack…to creating something that looks as though it simply could not be any other way. As Jeremy well knows, when it comes to a domestic garden (my favourite kind), central to my interest is how an interior interacts with the garden beyond and how the entirety sits in the landscape; thereby creating a ‘whole’. I had asked him to please include photographs of the interior of the house to underpin his talk, to amplify that connection, which he very kindly did! Of course the other piece of the puzzle (without which none of the former is possible) are the hands and minds of the garden and interior maker or makers themselves. In this case, the personalities of both Jeremy and Grant are sublimely interwoven with both, and for peeps to be able to see the visions projected onto the wall, and to listen to Jeremy story-tell his way through the images, ensured we were all treated to an intimate, romantic and hard working narrative of eleven years of toil. Oh but what an outcome they’ve achieved!
It was upon all this I was thinking as I moved the chairs, hung the hessian to darken the glass at the doors to the Loggia, and the canvas blinds over the windows too; did the usual pre-event dishwash and stack, made the bed for their imminent arrival, picked a posy of flowers and baked and simmered and whizzed up a storm. What fun it was to have them both to join me in the early morning setting of tables (I included as many aloe and agave pups and leaves to display as I could find!).
On days of this kind, where the scale is of a greater number of peeps than a workshop, the whole races by at such a rate that there is nought to be visually shared and all that food prep I did in advance cannot be represented here at all! The four loaves of pumpernickel, the fennel frond pistou; the chèvre sprinkled with poppy seeds from their pods. Malou and Emily brought together my fennel and lemon risotto beautifully and I’d managed to scavenge just enough radicchio leaves for a smattering of leaf salad on everyone’s plates (we were 27 in the end!). There was a Chestnut Flour Cake and also a Lisbon Lemon one. With a flurry of animated conversation and whirlwind bout of shopping in the Barn…everyone floated away. There were hugs and thanks and swapping of gifts and last minute cuttings…and then the boys too, were gone.
Then on Monday, as I did the whole in reverse…with each piece of furniture moved I could dwell on their story, the delight of spending even a little time with them, immersed in their world and all the snippets of conversation with our enthusiastic attendees. The putting away is a time for reflection, just as the setting up is one of anticipation.
And then it was time to do it all over again. This week, my focus has been all about Colleen Southwell, The Garden Curator, who is coming to immerse us in her topic ‘The Neighbourly Garden’ on Sunday, about which I’m very excited. So all thoughts now (this post aside!) are swirling around Colleen and how I might frame and support her workshop.
But always, it’s moving the furniture that kicks off the process; and then, as the day draws closer, my attention tunes to the garden…to what it’s suggesting we might eat…so the next chapter can begin.
Serendipity is such a curious thing. One can’t cause it to occur…it just sometimes does and two things I couldn’t have predicted played out last week in the most serendipitous manner! Perhaps even three! Last year, Jeremy was asking me about Cape Gooseberries. I sent him some seed. He had no luck with germination. Then by pure chance, mine began to ripen the week before J & G’s imminent arrival. More about Cape Gooseberries below!
A few years ago, J sent me some seed of something I’d never heard of: Tangier Fennel. I sowed the seed but had no luck. Curiously, it came up this year, and although not yet in flower, it had formed into a substantial mound, just in time for J to see!
The third serendipitous moment was that lovely landscape garden designer Michael Cooke (who has also long enjoyed a correspondence and occasional plant swap with J) came to meet the boys. You’ve heard me mention Michael before, and the few (for no particular reason!) orange flowering specimens I’ve had from him over the years…in particular the one that began that collection that I bought from his then-nursery when we were so new to gardening. It flowers sparsley…not every day even when in season, which is now, but how thrilled I was to be able to show him that sweet flower last Friday, holding forth in the spot where it’s brought such huge delight to my eye at this time of year for almost thirty! Full circle…how I love full circles!
But back to the Cape Gooseberries! They make the messiest plants in the garden to grow…and I gave a good segment to that point in the Podcast which, incidentally…if you’re new to growing a kitchen garden, makes now a very good time to begin listening to it - I began recording the monthly instalments one September and although some (surely it can’t be but I think…six? years ago now…good grief!) I only stopped because I’d be repeating myself month in, month out, year in, year out forever more!
How I love the crinkly paper lanterns that form a protective case for the little fruits to form inside. If you leave them long enough, the fine wrapper will turn to a delicate, lace-like filigree. Collect enough and, pressed gently in your hands, they will crackle in a rather pleasurable way…which makes them fun for children to collect. The downside of collecting is that they usually don’t like to come away from the stem until they’re ripe, and are inclined to fall to the ground when they are, so collecting is not so much a question of ‘picking’ but searching underneath that rambling, shambles of a shrub for the very best ones.
Some years we have an absolute bounty, whilst others, they’re a bit thin on the ground (sorry!). This year is a bit so-so. But…I was so excited to have enough to cook for a little dessert for the boys last Thursday! And to have enough for them to take home so they can try growing them again as it’s now…right now that they’re falling off the parent plant that is the best time to sow! How I hope they’ll have some luck this time! Even though they’ll be cursing me…poo bugs and all - sometimes everything in the garden is not loverly! (ref. podcast episode 4!).
I’ve never looked up how to ‘cook’ them. The first time I recall seeing one was on the side of a plate as a little flourish in Amsterdam (I’m not going to dive down that burrow today but I’ll come back to it another time!). I can’t remember if it was ‘cooked’ or not but it was still in its paper lantern and I’m honestly not sure how you might cook it and present them still encased!
If you eat them raw, you’re very likely to screw up your face as they’re quite sour, although delicious. I’ve baked them with rapadura sugar, which is delicious. And you can then enjoy them then with cream or yoghurt - which is completely yum. But…this is what I tend to do most:
Baked Cape Gooseberries
Gather as many as you can find - you can do this with as few or as many as you do!
Pre-heat oven to 180C
Pop the golden fruit from its case - I tend to combine colours from green through yellow to golden (but preferably fewer green)
Spread onto a baking paper-lined baking tray
Drizzle with olive oil and give them a good swish around
Bake for 10 - 15 minutes…just ‘til they wrinkle if you press them with your finger
Done this way without sugar, they’re more versatile to add to different dishes. I love to scatter them into a leaf salad or to pop a little spoonful next to roast chicken. For breakfast, they’ll be still be just as delicious with a spoonful of yoghurt; and if baked this way for a dessert, they’ll still be moorish too. To make Cape Gooseberry Crumble, just sprinkle over the same crumble mix I gave you the recipe for for rhubarb crumble. If you’re lucky enough to have a whole lot to cook…they’ll keep this way in the fridge for a week. And…I discovered this time last year when I made some as an experiment…that they make into the most delicious ice cream! (I then went all out and made about eight batches in one go for the event we had with The Land Gardeners! That recipe will be coming soon!).
As we’re on the topic of eating…the kitchen garden is flourishing! How quickly the transition occurs - on the one hand I’m trying to keep up with the picking and on the other I’m plugging holes in what could be a ‘hungry gap’, which is always the challenge as the seasons cross over.
We’re eating a bounty of fresh peas, but not as many of the ones we were a couple of weeks ago - the sugar snaps and shelling Telephone peas which were the first I sowed on the wigwams at the beginning of the season.
The peas that are prolific now are these ‘golden pods’ which I have to admit, have taken me a few seasons to figure out! I had rather stupidly assumed they were a shelling pea and thought their peas to be rather hard and floury (I only continued to grow them because their almost luminous mauve/purple flowers are spectacular and their lovely yellow pods make for a pretty contrasting vision in the garden!). But then I cracked it…they are for eating young, pod and all! They’re super fine…and simply delicious. Just don’t let the inside peas swell up into bullets!
We’ve entered the transitional time of the season…and there is much to be done as crop rotation looms. I’ll leave the main peas on their wigwams for just long enough to collect enough seed pods to replenish my all important seed bank. They’re taking up valuable space now, but these things can’t be rushed and whilst we’re betwixt and between, I’ve been on a mission…planting little short-term infill crops, so we don’t go hungry.
In fact I spent all last weekend long doing just that! I sieved enough of our compost to go into each little hole I dug for each seedling sown and enough to surround them too - a gentle replenishing of the soil as I went and a couple of dozen seedlings were squirrelled away!
I took the opportunity to sow some half-rows of root crops on the lunar-cycle appropriate day, after replacing the shade canopy (with Clemmie’s help) that had protected two seasons of cover for the lettuces overhead. So quietly…in the kitchen garden, things are on the move.
I urgently potted on the tomato seedlings that had exhausted any remaining nutrient from the seed-raising mix in their punnet cells. I’ve never found any benefit to planting tomatoes out early here, so I’m content to allow them to grow on in these long root-training tubes for now where they’re getting stronger every day.
It’s in this way that during the past couple of weeks the emphasis has shifted: where there was little to do in the kitchen garden for several months but pick and eat (well…aside from tying-in peas!) for the autumn-sown, winter-grown with a steady trickle to eat all the way through to a burgeoning spring harvest. All the heavy gardening had been taking place in the ornamentals. As a result, the ornamentals are now flourishing, and my attention must return to the kitchen garden…it’s the natural sequence of events. It means that during my comings and goings, wherever I am inside or out, I can revel in the delight of the ornamental garden…as each highlight in turn fleetingly comes and goes….
The Viburnum plicatum mariesii I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that was still tinted green rather than pristine white soon developed its evening glow-in-the-dark attribute and now its companion, the snowball bush Viburnum opulus has almost reached the same ephemeral moment.
Nearby, the newly-minted leaves of the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas are growing by the second and new buds are beginning to form: and as the Viburnums fade from glory, it’s the Oak Leaf Hydrangeas that will extend this almost bridal vision of spring beauty in the courtyard into the weeks ahead.
I find it near impossible to capture the true impact of the tall peony poppies at the orchard, where just now, they surround each and every tree. All I can tell you is that they are visually kind of wild…and drinking them in with the eyes anywhere in the vicinity of the little orchard is accompanied by the sensation of gulping great quantities of orange blossom into your lungs, for the remnant flowers of those nearby trees continue to infiltrate the atmosphere. The whole experience is quite mesmerising.
The peony poppies themselves are transfixing…at each and every stage - from swelling bud to the first glimpse of colour as the sepals burst to reveal the burgeoning flower about to unfurl; the dazzling flowers in full flight - whether single, double or ruffled and then, as the petals drop to reveal their little oriental hats and the swelling seed pod. At the moment, all the pods are still bright green…and no-one has yet popped its hat - when they do, I’ll show you!
I’ve already relayed the story of Walter Duncan sharing the seed with me all those years ago, and in turn I’ve done the same over and over again. How glad I am though, that the year we ran a quite glorious botanical illustration workshop with artist Rose Colbeck, I chose the date according to years and years of their traditional flowering: two weeks hence. Both last year and this, they’ve flowered a fortnight early which seems bizarre but on that magnificent day, each participant was able to choose the stems they wished to capture in pencil and watercolour and we displayed them all down the centre of the tables set especially for the purpose in the Dairy. It was a day of pure magic!
The wisterias are over, the jasmine too (though the perfume of both still lingers in the air). The lilac was short-lived but enchanting. And now…the first philadelphus buds are opening, the lemons are in blossom, as are the Seville orange, the still immature blood orange and cumquat and the old mandarin too.
Spires of Acanthus mollis line the path to the Dairy door and spill out and into their neighbouring swathe of Perovskia that’s still recovering from its hard winter prune; and long, careless branches of the original specimen I planted of the Damask rose Quatre Saisons sway in the breeze, scattering pink petals all around as they do.
But here I’ll leave you as I’ve been told for paragraphs past that my post is too long! Preparation for Colleen’s arrival and Sunday’s workshop beckon and the basket above suggests I have some cooking to do! As a result, I’ll have a timely recipe to share with you next week!
I hope you have a chance to read through the extra post I published on Wednesday - completing the tale of the Field of Flowers! I’m sorry it’s so long (winded!). But those two posts - the Field of Flowers one and two combined with the earlier one on Botanical Water, account for not just the extension of the garden and impact on the landscape here, but also a huge chunk of life; that since working my way through the learning and implementation, I’ve had the great joy of sharing. It’s in seeing the smiles erupt and connecting peeps to that child-like sense of joy that results in pure immersion on those days where we combine the field, the flowers and distillation, that the pure magic lies.
Catch you at the next post! Mx
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Lisbon lemons, rhubarb (sparse but stems come in waves), parsnip. Leaves of all kinds - spinach, kale - cavolo nero (now the weather has turned it’s leaves are a quite different consistency and although perfectly edible, there is a distinct difference between kale leaves that have been deeply chilled and those which haven’t!). Leeks, lettuce, radicchio (going), wild rocket, warrigal greens. Fennel bulbs (going). Plentiful peas and abundant broad beans. Fennel fronds, parsley (going), mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, coriander (going to seed), nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers. Cape gooseberry, mulberry (new)!
And…the dried Speckled Cranberry Borlotti Beans!
Going / gone: Navel and Valencia oranges (the Valencias were short lived as sadly the birds took quite a few and where we have two Navels, we have only one Valencia as one of the original pair died some years ago and the replacement is still catching up). Mandarins, Jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, pumpkins, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, red elk mustard leaf, giant red mustard, radicchio, fennel bulbs. Parsley is going to seed…more on that below.
Seed saving: peas
Sowing: beetroot, parsnip, carrot, Cape gooseberry! As soon as the parsley seeds ‘dry’ I’ll scatter them for the next round. Time to sow my favourite basil ‘Genovese’ into punnets and to tentatively sow the first bean seeds. I’m turning the tomato seedlings around to face towards the north each day.
Planting: lettuce and although I think it’s early for here, I couldn’t resist a pair of Lebanese and a pair of Apple cucumbers when I was at the market last Saturday!
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: Viburnum (I couldn’t resist!), leaves of choc-mint Pelargonium (the large, furry, blotched ones) and bracts of Salvia africana-lutea (posy for the boys when they stayed last week and still going strong on my dressing table!). Solandra trumpets, philadelphus, early Mme Isaac Pereire roses and courtesy of the wretched cockatoos, sprigs of the native flowering Frangipani tree Hymenosporum flavum (probably my own fault for thinking what a shame I couldn’t reach them!).
Perfumes and aromas: are vying for olfactory attention at every turn…orange blossom, wisteria, jasmine (even though ‘over’), solandra, broad bean blossom, Port Wine Magnolia, lemon blossom and now…philadelphus! Even the Cistus ladanifer has begun to emanate its resinous aroma during the last week.
Pruning and other: I suggested in the last post that I’d need to do a lot of work with the courtyard pots and so I did…I took to them with glee! I also finished mulching the field and pulled a great many yellowing lower fronds from the fennel in the kitchen garden - it’s a constant job but at its worst at this time of year. Thalia made progress with spreading compost to the worst affected area of lawn but really…the entire lawn could do with top-dressing! There was a lot of windfall and gutter tidying before The Stones visit and this week general weeding and tweaking. After Colleen’s visit on Sunday, when the garden will be the focus for the afternoon session…I intend to work with Thalia on some big spring pruning jobs!
ps a note on pests! I captured the first stink bug on one of the citrus trees this morning as well as the first 28 spot ladybird: both are annoying so be vigilant. Where it comes to aphids on roses…I’m simply holding my breath - the good ladybirds will come and I’ve already seen a variety of different shapes and sizes and colours appearing so…hold your nerve and remember…if there were no aphids, there’s probably be no ladybirds…so we need both!
As always a delight to read, and great information for those who can get out and about in their garden. Thank you Mickey