Abundance...

and counter-balance...

Oh those aubergines! Cottonwood Hibiscus, cucumber, jasmine…

No funny business with the images this week…B’s returned to the north! Oh but what a week it was and an enormous treat to have her home…days to truly treasure. Face-time can never possibly take the place of real life hugs and heart-to-hearts. So you’re stuck with my images now, however they may be!

Abundance: you know I never quite know where to begin these posts and I just need to see where my tip-tapping takes me. Sometimes I think I should probably record as I water in the mornings as that’s when the thoughts are inclined to rush; and yet…with hose-in-hand they’re inclined to ramble and tumble all over each other (with an eye to any urgent task alongside the immersion) and perhaps (at least I can only hope!) those thoughts become more cohesive with fingers at the keyboard! The thoughts were all over the place this morning, but the word abundance has been a recurring one all week and perhaps best describes the atmosphere at this moment in time.

As cicadas intermittently thrum their stupendous song, a short walk through the garden as the sun climbs in the sky is like gulping great perfumed waves of frangipani, murraya blossom, magnolia, nicotiana, rose and summer wisteria; gardenia and jasmine, the last of which is currently smothered in a repeat flush.(Rather like swallowing a perfect, plump oyster is like diving into a heavy, salty wave; which incidentally, I have yet to do this summer! The dive, not the oyster!).

Along with that bucolic sense of abundance, comes an overwhelming sense of thankfulness.

Now here is where I hope the sitting-at-a-keyboard produces a brain-to-fingertip connection that’s more cohesive than the mind-to-hose version in the garden! And I still don’t really quite know where to begin…as I have no grasp of new-age speak. But wow the word gratitude sure pops up a lot these days. Which of course I am. Grateful. Hugely. We are so very lucky, that I know for sure. To live in this lucky country. And on top of that, to live at Glenmore, that brings with it with the opportunity to garden.

That sense of abundance I so enthusiastically relay here, has of course arrived through sheer hard work - manual labour as well as tender nurture, alongside earning-a-living kind of work and a good dose of help from the ether…in whichever shape that may take. This year the unruly abundance in the garden is thanks to the utterly divine downpours we’ve been blessed with from time to time, causing a flurry of exponential growth in which to revel and delight.

That thunderous rain also halts some things, cutting them off in their stride. Checks and balances: in the garden, as in life.

I don’t quite know where I’d be without the garden; the beauty, bounty and deep sense of connection it offers, but also the routine, discipline and sense of purpose it provides. And place. Belonging. Just as I’ve been in touch a lot this week with Anthia about an upcoming workshop we’re planning that will reflect the name of her book I am food…(about which we’ll talk more another time because that is such an enormous topic); I am the garden. The garden is me. At the moment it’s unrestrained on the one hand, but cut short in preparation for regrowth on the other. (Read into that what you will…I hadn’t thought of it ‘til I typed it!). And though I know I do go on at great length about beauty, bounty and profusion with perhaps too much enthusiasm at times (can’t help it), I can assure you it is counter-balanced.

My thankfulness is countered in recognition of those who are not blessed with daily abundance (and likely through no fault of their own). I don’t believe any of us can not be aware of the current atrocities taking place in the world. It’s not in a good place. Has it ever been?

You know my reading has covered a gamut of topics these last weeks, each of the books covering a good deal of world history (how curious that the current ABC screening of Monty Don’s latest series is running almost parallel to those topics raised in the book I mentioned being immersed in a couple of weeks ago ‘A Garden Against Time’, with its reference too, to the complex and detailed gardens in England laid out in the C17th giving way (along with the introduction of the Enclosures Acts) to the more ‘natural’ (not so!) gardens of the C18th. A time of great expeditions, world discovery…alongside trade, war and exploitation.

With the Australia Day weekend upon us, the timing mentioned above is relevant. And rather like Anzac Day, 26 January is inclined to lead me to pondering. I don’t know if we should change the date. It can’t change the fact that the First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove on that day in 1788. I’d like to think the vast majority of us do now have an understanding of what took place following that day from an Indigenous perspective, and that we not just listen, but hear that story. Check and balance…

The final weekend in January does cause me to think on what being Australian really is though. Something that cannot be denied is that none of us, save First Nations people, actually have our own ancestral, cultural roots here. None of us. Each of us carries with us some remnant of another culture, and each of us living in this country today is blessed with an abundance that our forebears could only have dreamt of, in order for them to take such a monumental step to leave all they knew behind. How lucky for each of us, that they were brave enough to do so, though I do wonder if they knew their escape…in seeking freedom, safety, shelter, prosperity (at least those who chose to do so) was at the expense of others? What story were they spun?

My own background is a muddle…of French, English, Scottish, Polish, Russian; but it’s all a very long time ago. Why and how, in the late C19th, did a young farmer in Devon, whose forebears were French, marry a lass from Scotland and choose to raise a family in Hobart? How does a Russian/Polish emigrée of the very same era find her love in England, journey to and raise a family in a newly bustling 1890’s Sydney Town? How very unlikely that any of their children (my grandparents) should meet. Had any of them stayed put in their own country of birth, it would never have occurred. How unlikely it was that my parents met! And in turn for that matter, Larry and me! All of which makes me, for want of a better description, Australian.

Something I’ve come to dwell on more recently, prompted very much by my immersion in preparation for last year’s release of Sivine and Karima’s beautiful Sofra cookbook is how, over generations of assimilation (as in my case - already before my forebears even reached this country, their own ancestral roots were broken, marrying outside their birthplace and culture over multiple generations) culture is so easily whittled away. We have nothing but threads to connect to, and like so many others, being Australian…is what we’ve become. It’s not who we were. Sivine and Karima’s book, was a stark reminder to me of the real strength of ancestral community and connection. I’m so glad they wrote the book - in effect, an ode to Lebanon, to the Levant (when they began the writing they could not have foreseen the turmoil about to unleash there yet again) and that they continue to live their own vibrant culture with such passion; whilst contributing their caring, inclusive natures to the wider Australian community. They’re Australian.

I’ve no doubt the Australia Day conundrum will continue…it can’t really not; but reckon its overwhelming sentiment is best wrapped for all of us in the words of Brian Williamson: “We are one, but we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come, we share a dream, we sing with one voice, I am, you are, we are Australian”. And that we must strive better to create abundance for all. Isn’t that what Indigenous people crave? Along with understanding from their perspective. Isn’t that what our forebears were seeking too? But I also reckon we still have a lot to learn.

These should keep us in onions for awhile…

I tied up and hung the onions…at last! (Now there’s a Polish/Russian remnant!).

I’ll wait for a flush of re-growth, then probably make a second pass…

I pruned the row of Kazanlak roses (hello eastern Europe with a backdrop of Eucalypts, a combination that makes me very happy indeed!). It was a lovely big and satisfying job and although B made a few cuts, for the most part I cut and she dragged away the mountains and mountains of thorny stems. With row one complete, this weekend I intend to do the same with row two, which is also filled with spring-only flowering old-rose species…Gallica, Alba, Centifolia, Damask and Bourbon. But I’ll need to do the carting away myself which will slow down the process!

One baked aubergine….and a head of baked garlic to squeeze in this time…

I whizzed up the very first batch of Baba Ghanoush of the season! It’s time…

Baba Ghanoush

Ingredients

• 1 large aubergine (eggplant)

• 1-2 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 clove garlic, crushed

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (I’m using my frozen cubes!)

• 2 tablespoons tahini

• 1/2 cup plain Greek yoghurt

At least use this as a guide…I’m not meticulous about the quantities…and I do often double the amount as it’s just so useful to have a bowl in the fridge…

Method

• Preheat oven to 180/200C and pierce a few holes in the skin of the aubergine with a fork. Place on an oven tray and bake for 30 minutes or so…until soft.

• Remove from oven and allow to cool, then peel off the skin and roughly chop the flesh

• Blitz aubergine in a food processor with garlic, lemon juice and tahini

• Season with a generous pinch of sea salt and a few twists of black pepper, add the yoghurt and blitz again

• Transfer to a bowl and slowly drizzle in the olive oil, mixing as you go

With basil, leaf amaranth, fresh fennel seeds and a twist of black pepper…

I like to scatter with lots of herbs and enjoy dollops on crusty sourdough, or if I have any little cooked, left-over potatoes in the fridge, to heap those with a generous spoonful and smattering of herbs and fresh fennel seeds. Those fresh fennel seeds are strewn all over pretty much everything we eat at the moment! Making the most of them while they last…

Bottling, wrapping…

I’ve been bottling and posting Botanical Waters! I sent a newsletter about them midweek (if you’re not on the mailing list, you can read the newsletter here) and if you’d like to read more about the Botanical Waters, you can do so and also place an order on the webpage here! Now is the moment when all those distillation days I wrote to you about last year come to fruition…with the annual release of the waters!

Aubergines, passionfruit - now there’s a treat! Lettuce, basil, amaranth, thyme, fennel, rose…

And each evening I’ve gathered an abundance of produce from the garden…

That first dahlia! Potatoes, onions, lettuce, cucumber, aubergine, amaranth, fennel seed…

As we enter the last languid days of holiday time I send you warm wishes as always… and wish you a thoughtful Australia Day weekend.

Mickey x

Productive garden notes:

Eating from the garden:

Potatoes, onions, garlic, cucumbers, aubergine, first zucchini and beans, coloured chard. Lettuce and rocket thanks to the rain, as well as the lovely tiny leaves of amaranth (though a few more days and their size will be beyond the way I most love to eat them!). Basil, lovage, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, fresh fennel seed, fennel pollen. Another couple of passionfruit!

Going / gone: those ones are all long gone….

Seed saving: parsnip

Sowing: If you feel inclined to grow your brassica family from seed, then now is the time to sow into punnets.

Planting: Thinking I might pot up some of the coloured chard seedlings that are popping up everywhere…I don’t usually bother and kind of wonder why I might as there are plenty in the ground and many have reached a proper two-leaf stage now, making them perfect to forage for our plates. But even so…I might…pot some up! If I have time…lots to do!

Ornamental garden notes:

Picking for the house: Roses, magnolias, frangipani, tansy (lovely to pick bunches to hang at the kitchen door to keep flies at bay). The first dahlia! Cottonwood hibiscus, jasmine. The tree gardenias are too high up!

Perfumes and aromas: frangipani, murraya, Chinese star jasmine, magnolia, summer wisteria, fig leaf, rose, Gardenia thunbergia. Nicotiana is flowering again in the kitchen garden and though night-scented, its potent scent is inclined to hang in the early morning air. The dusty aroma of fennel flowers drying to seed still permeates the kitchen garden and will do for many, many weeks ahead. There’s a tansy that overhangs my most regularly-trodden path and each time I pass, it’s impossible not to brush the leaves with my shoulder which releases the most wonderful pungent aroma into the air.

Pruning and other: It’s been a big week in the Field. I began with the row of Damask Kazanlak and Thalia has completed a refresh of all the plants in the aromatic row: the curry plant needed a big tidy after getting swamped by the gregarious rose pelargonium and the artemisia, although in flower, had collapsed into a big wild mess; so with half a dozen or so specimens of each (curry plant and artemisia), they needed work. There were plenty of self-sown or runner rose pelargoniums to weed out and apple pels too and the thyme needed a good cut back. In the indigenous row, we’ve lost a few specimens (big dry/big downpour on repeat) and the Kunzeas needed a good trim. In the Borders, the Escallonia, which has been in lovely flower these last weeks had gone berserk (the Escalatier, as Brian used to call it!) so its over-excited shoots were cut back to chest height. The Perovskia at the far end of the Borders was cut back by half too. I cut back the Albertine rose on the old Potting Shed severely and tied the remaining shoots to the ironbark slabs that form the wall. I hope that in doing so, the possums might forget about it for awhile, as how I would love to give it a breather, then get it back up and flourishing over that shingle roof! This weekend I want to prune all the roses in row two as well as another couple of very special Damask roses and then…I want to get very stuck into the Kitchen Garden!