Christmas is coming...
And on the approach it brings some beauties that have been in hiding these many months…friends I’ve been almost holding my breath for, in anticipation of their arrival! They’re the kind inclined to visit the bright lights of Sydney and the coastal areas first, making their way slowly to those of us set back in the gentle folds of the hills, where the heat is more intense and the rain falls less.
But arrive they do and I greet each and every one of them with all the fanfare they deserve! The Cottonwood Hibiscus is one such favourite. I mentioned it earlier in the year when I picked generous branches of its rounded foliage for our event with Paul Bangay (here’s a link to that post for the image!) but this is the first flower since then to unfurl. It’s been a long wait! I recall reading when I planted it, that it’s native to this land but I’ve just done a quick search and see it may (or may not be!) native to Hawaii! Hello Mele Kalikimaka! (How funny…I was longing to sneak that tune in here somehow today but had no idea how I might!). I hope you have your hula skirt on now…I need to find mine!
Some of these old friends sneak up unexpectedly. Remember last week I mentioned how the seductive perfume of one single Gardenia thunbergia on high literally stopped me in my tracks as the last of the thunderstorms trundled on its way the previous weekend? Well, another did the same yesterday afternoon. They’re the lone arrivals…a hint of what’s to come as the true summer months unfold, and in this case so high up and therefore impossible to pick and bring inside for company!
An arrival that is to be expected though, is the swathe of pendulous Crocosmia flowers. Each year in the lead-up to Christmas I am simply captivated by the formation of their buds, which begin as if finely etched in mid air…green at first but tipped with red and yellow as if by paintbrush. The first petals are just beginning to prise open now, and I expect they will develop into fully fledged flowers by Christmas day. Tucked into the side of the old house, in Mrs R’s garden, they’ve been playing a pivotal role in the annual summer speckled romp in this little pocket that fills the view from the open gallery door for a good many years, and each time I pass by my heart does a little skip of delight.
(Although they make such an impact in this spot and are a significant marker in the garden season, sadly they missed out on scoring a place in the book…all due to doing their thing for such a brief moment over Christmas!).
Still there are a few golden Burmese honeysuckle blooms lingering overhead, which make for a glorious combination of colour. But as they’re few now, one needs to seek them out to plunge in one’s nose for their olfactory impact…unlike a few weeks ago when their heady fragrance was swamping the entire atmosphere.
That deep, rich fragrance has been replaced now by the more subtle Frangipani, whose flowers from on high litter the ground below, but exude their balmy scent that’s amplified in the evenings by the day’s heat absorbed into the old stone wall. It’s then the perfume spills inside through the open gallery door downstairs…and when we open the upstairs bedroom window once the heat of the day has passed…a rush of frangipani fills that low-ceilinged space with an air of summer romance.
Just a hop, skip and a jump away, look what I spy on high…the Bunya, Araucaria bidwillii is adorning itself with Christmas decoration in the form of baby Bunya cones! Although they won’t be fully formed for a month or more, it’s time to stop walking underneath!
The friend I am most expectantly awaiting though…
Is the Lotus. Goodness it’s had a hard time this year! It’s been fending off the advances of a very bold Sulphur Crested Cockatoo, who was, for awhile, consistently visiting each day to snip off every delicate, scrolled and patterned emerging leaf with its sturdy beak. This new bout of growth has happened quickly…as if in a rush to complete its cycle before the rude bird returns. The stem and bud have emerged with gusto and I have my fingers crossed for one single, elegant, Christmas Day bloom.
Unfortunately this isn’t the original specimen I popped into the pond when we first had the hexagonal stone structure built. For whatever reason it didn’t emerge from the depths a couple of years ago. But Clemmie has a Lotus loving friend and last year, when they went on a Lotus nursery expedition, Clemmie returned with this specimen which we think may be a more multi-petalled version of my original. Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to welcoming this new one to the fold.
What a million miles all these ornamentals are from the productive garden…and actual life! They are all by the by…representing fleeting moments in the passing of a day, but they do not go unnoticed!
On Monday, with heatwave conditions and an ugly temperature predicted for Tuesday, I was in a hurry to get as much lavender inside as I could. Well…just enough for a distillation - I can only carry out one in a day and as I said last week, as I believe in distilling from Field to Still straight away (no storing in between) I can only prepare so much!
After several years of doing this, I can pretty much gauge the size of the bundle I must pick now by eye….I know how much I’m likely to get into the Still and also how long it will take me to prepare the material. I calculated I’d be lucky to get this lot into the still by 5pm…and I was right!
The ‘picking’ is the easy part. But oh how I love every quiet step of the process!
And then the anticipation…the expectant wait as the needle on the temperature gauge slowly makes its way around the clock…a gentle aroma at just 40C…slurp, gurgle, splish-splash…the struggle of steam finding its way through the criss-crossing material I’ve laid every which way in the column causing five, ten minutes to pass before we hit 60C…and a gentle ‘ssssssss’…..emanates from the pot.
Then a rush of perfume likely to knock you off your feet gushes, as the needle races to 80C and then speedily hits 100C! It’s somewhere between the last two that a single drop will fall, followed by a steady trickle…and one’s heart rate can settle back to normal!
I’m not sure I’ll be able to take another lavender distillation. I’ll see what Sunday brings but it’s not so much about my time as the fact I prefer to gather my material on the in…not the out…and Tuesday’s heat was such that those flowers that look so beautiful in the field…a haze of deep blue/mauve that is keeping the bees a-buzzing, may best be left for them to gather the pollen while they can!
A treat…and I mean a real, real treat this week has been the arrival of four ‘breba’ figs! If we’re lucky, each tree may produce one…a kind of precursor to the crop ahead. Although they’re rarely as sweet as those of the main crop, they are certainly a feast for the eye! I packed the two (black variety) which were the most ready to eat (along with some sprigs of basil) to take on a little visit to the coast with a friend on Tuesday (where we had some paintings to hang, notes to make and measurements to take).
My friend’s cucumbers are ahead of mine and she had packed a delicious batch of chilled Cucumber Soup - so what a little ‘working’ picnic lunch we enjoyed! I only picked my first cucumbers this week, so I’ll share the soup recipe with you when I make my first batch of the season.
But yesterday, I enjoyed this one (brown variety) on sourdough with philly cream cheese! Yum…truly! Curiously this one from the Brown Turkey tree (at least that’s what I think it is, was sweeter. It’s the only surviving one of a pair of young trees given to us by Zetta Moore (one of the family members from whom we’d bought Glenmore) when we began to make the garden. Of course she’d grown hers from cuttings that no doubt had been grown from cuttings across generations, so whatever it is, it most closely resembles a Brown Turkey but has long grown in the area. I was so disappointed when one of them curled up its toes. The replacement is growing slowly.
The other two though, are Black Genoas…or at least I think they are! In a similar vein, they too, came without a label, from a home grower whose little orchard no longer exists, thanks to the ever-increasing suburban sprawl that has gobbled up so much of the Cumberland Plain Woodland that was already under threat when we came here all those years ago.
But back in the days when I’d do the primary school run (drop girl/s, zip to Sydney for meetings, my round of pick-ups, sourcing and drop-offs) on my way back in the late summer months, (if the traffic hadn’t been ghastly and I had a minute to spare) I’d sometimes be tempted to stop at a roadside stall that had buckets of the most luscious figs I’d ever tasted. One day, to my absolute delight…there were small potted fig trees next to the stall…and I simply could not resist! Of unspecified Mediterranean descent, it was the only time I ever met the owner/grower and no…he could not furnish me with the precise variety of his figs! But it matters not…they were then as they are now…sublime.
Whenever I think of him though, and his figs that to this day bring me so much delight, it brings to mind the most stupid memory that still makes me laugh out loud…I just can’t help myself! You see…his house was set on a corner - the little road jutting off the main one seemingly with no name. But….on the approach from the Sydney side, there was a roughly cut, narrow piece of timber fashioned into the shape of an arrow, attached haphazardly to a tree and pointing to the right, with the words ‘birds this way’ painted in smudgy black paint! On the approach from our side, there was a similar timber arrow also attached quite high up a tree trunk, pointing to the left with the same words. Of course…clearly someone down that road must have had birds of some kind for sale (I imagine!) but I could just never get the idea out of my head, of every bird on the wing being directed by those arrows and turning either left or right to make their way to some kind of feathery haven!
Oh dear I’ve got distracted haven’t I? There must be so many sensible things to relay to you! There are indeed recipes (and that silly banner has long been telling me my post is too long). As I intend to keep writing though, through the coming holiday season, I’ll continue to share recipes as I put them into practice, as the ones coming up will be just as relevant in the weeks ahead as they are today. (Although there’s one Christmas one I’d love to share but we’re also bound to have it on New Year’s Day too, so I’ll save it for next week and you won’t have missed out altogether!).
Our produce is still in ‘pretty’ mode here. We’re in the early summer phase, and it’s early days yet, so here is a recipe I love for this time of year…a delightful inter-seasonal burst of delight that I made last weekend when we had friends for a little Sunday supper.
Pea & Lovage Soup
Ingredients
2 - 3 stems *lovage - separate the leaves from the stalks and chop the stalks
50g unsalted butter (I used olive oil last weekend!)
1 leek, finely sliced
1 onion, diced
1 litre home made vegetable stock
250g peas (by all means use frozen!)
Method
Melt butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat
Add leek and onion and cook gently for a few minutes until soft & translucent
Add the stock, season with a good pinch of salt and a few twists of black pepper, bring to the boil and simmer for about 10 - 15 minutes
Add the peas and lovage stalks
Bring back to the boil and simmer for about 5 minutes (don’t overcook the peas or you’ll lose the lovely bright green colour)
Add the lovage leaves and remove from the heat
Using a stick blender, blitz ‘til smooth then…strain through a fine mesh sieve (don’t be tempted to skip this step!)
Chill as quickly as possible in order to retain the colour (unless you’re serving warm - this is equally good warm on those odd cool spring days as it is chilled on a hot day…as long as the lovage is up!)
*I realise lovage isn’t easy to come by in the shops but it’s becoming easier to source to grow in the garden. It’s a herbaceous perennial so dies down during the winter months and re-emerges in spring. My favourite source for veg seedlings is Patio Plants, who you’ll find at the markets round and about and they usually have a pot or two of lovage, and I’ve seen pots of it at Tim’s Garden Centre…so it’s out there! If you know someone with a plant, beg a few stems to whizz this up - any stems picked at this time of year are very quickly replaced with new ones!
These are the ingredients as they appear in the book, which I went to great lengths to ensure were correct at the time of writing! Whereas I work off the original recipe which was very kindly given to me by a chef and on a scale for a larger quantity. For some reason I have endless calculations attached to the original and even then, seem to make it up as I go (so read into that, that you really can’t go too far wrong!). Last weekend I forgot it’s meant to be made with vegetable stock and made it with chicken broth instead - it was delicious. And I always seem to forget (as it’s usually a year between making a batch!) that it’s one you must ‘pass through a fine mesh sieve’ at the end, so you lose half the bulk! Which always seems like such a waste. I’ll tell you what I did with the ‘waste’ the other night though: instead of putting it straight in the compost…I swirled a couple of big spoonfuls through pasta (along with some salmon, extra wilted chard leaves & butter) and it was scrumptious!
I decided to make this last weekend purely because the stems of lovage in the garden here are at their very best. Sadly they never coincide in our garden with the peas actually growing, which is why I suggest using frozen ones (remember, fresh peas are only good when consumed within about 4 hours of picking, before the sugars convert to starch) and so I don’t mind using frozen peas at this moment in time when I have a slight ‘hungry gap’ but this is seasonality at a stretch!
There is a peculiar aside that comes with this recipe at this particular moment in time that I didn’t think of ‘til after I made it last weekend: we were introduced to this delicious soup a rather long time ago, at the London hotel at which we were staying after a family wedding on the Isle of Wight…when we enjoyed a late Sunday supper to meet up with a friend of Clemmie’s she’d been wanting to introduce us to - one with whom she thought I would share, as she does, a synergy. After making this batch last weekend, the penny dropped that by some strange quirk, Clemmie is currently staying with that same friend (a very rare thing indeed) in New York! How bizarre my lovage should coincide with their catching up…(and to be honest, I rather wish they were both here sipping chilled Pea & Lovage Soup with me in the garden here instead of trudging around NYC in the snow!).
As I hauled out all the onions yesterday (and although last weekend I finally used up the very last of our Speckled Cranberry Borlotti beans from last year’s harvest at the same dinner) I’m going to share a new recipe here and now, because it’s one you could easily have on standby over the coming weeks. I made it for our Sailing event a few weeks ago…making it up on the hop while Til was telling me how she would cater for the crew on board El Oro…making sure to always have dried beans and pulses on hand as they’re easy to store.
Lucky for us though, I also had the garden to plunder! Remember I said last week I have armfuls of leaf amaranth just now? Well….
Borlotti Bean Stew
Ingredients
Say 1 cup dried Borlotti beans (could be other varieties dried bean)
2 red or brown onions, peeled and finely sliced (I used our red ones last weekend)
cloves of one whole head of garlic, peeled and finely sliced
zest and juice of a lemon (a little more lemon juice on standby if you can - I have all those frozen lemon juice cubes so I tossed in a few more!)
a good pinch chilli flakes
green leaves - spinach, chard, amaranth - quite a lot - at least one big bunch
chicken broth, say 1 litre
olive oil
Method
Soak beans overnight (or all day)
Drain, cover with fresh water, add a good slug of olive oil, bring to the boil and simmer for an hour or so, drain again
I sometimes do this a second time, this time adding a pinch of salt and bay leaves and another glug of olive oil
Drain
Gently fry onions and garlic ‘til translucent
Add chilli flakes, a very good pinch of sea salt and grind in lots of black pepper and any other spices you might like to add (I choose not to as I really just want the zing of the lemon) so you can add the lemon zest now
After a good stir and another minute or so, return the beans to the pan and cover with chicken broth
Bring back to the boil and simmer…it will take at least an hour or maybe more for the beans to absorb the broth…keep checking
Add the lemon juice and give a good stir…keep checking there’s still liquid - you might want to add more broth and more olive oil (or even more lemon juice)
Before the liquid is completely gone, add the green leaves a handful at a time, stirring in well between handfuls so they are well dispersed throughout the beans
The beans should start to ‘give’ now…they’ll begin to fall apart so you want to stop while most still have some form, though some should have broken down completely which gives the beans a lovely gooey texture
Taste to check seasoning and lemony-ness! And probably add another glug of olive oil
I think they’re best served at room temperature
At our Sailing event we enjoyed these beans with seared tuna…last weekend it was alongside new garden potatoes (fresh fennel seeds & mint) and pink, juicy, barbequed lamb cutlets.
I’m almost including this as a way of not forgetting how I did this myself…and because now several peeps have asked what the concoction was! If it hadn’t been for the Sailing event, I might never have cooked them quite this way and I’m very keen to repeat it this time next year! (That is…if I can ever get this season’s beans off the ground…the Bower birds seem to have me beat just now and I’ve hatched another plan to get into action this weekend - I’m hoping it will be a case of third-sowing-lucky! It wouldn’t be the first time this has been the case!).
There are so many other tangents I might have taken today…and yet only so many can be included! We’ve covered but a microcosm of the garden, much of which is in full flight, other parts going over (as I sit here, out the corner of my eye I see tall spires of well-spent Acanthus standing tall and shimmering in the sunlight, though ‘dead’). At the front of the old house, the tall Agave flower spike casts patterns of morning shade over the bathroom window…something that has never occurred here before and is unlikely to ever occur again in our lifetime. Ladybirds in the fennel and carrot flowers can be found not just in pairs but crawling all over each other! There is a sense of abundance and yet…so as not to get completely out of control (a phase I love ‘til it really is!) there has been a good deal of hedge-cutting this week - the Murraya, Oleander and…the Cherokee Rose (if we delayed with the last there would be no flowers in August) but oh how I hate to see that rampant, glossy growth go!
The hydrangeas are…hanging in there and I’m just praying there are still a few ‘fresh’ blooms to pick for Christmas day. And…
At the back gate, the Agapanthus are flowering in profusion…the other ‘Christmas in a hot climate’ staple!
But I’m going to leave you today with a snap of an unexpected cloud phenomena that appeared during the visit to the coast earlier this week. Just because. It was pretty amazing, though fleeting, and I keep thinking how lucky we were to see it! As it was suggested this post supposedly went into meltdown long ago, I’m guessing one more image won’t make one iota of difference as to whether it ‘loads as an email’ or not! To read and see the images in full if it isn’t loading as an email please….
!!
I wish you a wonderful pre-Christmas weekend and promise to check in briefly before we all turn into red-nosed reindeer!
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Last two lemons! A little rhubarb. Peaches…glorious peaches and apricots - a flush of each, too many to eat fresh so peaches have been stewed in prep for Christmas breakfast and I’ll have to make a batch of apricot jam! Potatoes, onions, garlic (keep forgetting to mention it!), cucumbers, leaf amaranth. Parsnips, coloured chard, lettuce, rocket, lovage, fennel fronds, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives. Fresh fennel seed and fennel pollen. Should be eating beans and if it wasn’t for the birds we should have a glut by now!
Going / gone: lemons, rhubarb, asparagus
Seed saving: coriander (popping the odd fresh seed on my rounds…it’s divine!)
Sowing: beetroot, parsnip, carrot, beans, corn, zucchini, cucumber, pumpkin, watermelon, rockmelon, rocket, parsley, basil, sunflower and zinnia.
Planting: lettuce, tomatoes, aubergines, capsicums, cucumbers zucchini and pumpkin seedlings but really this weekend is the cut-off for planting / sowing for the season (Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are Lunar optimal root veg days)
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: random frangipanis, roses, fennel and carrot flowers. I could pick hydrangeas…but how loathe I am to do so ‘til Christmas! Very tempted to pick a stem of Shell Ginger too…but then I won’t see it through the window!!
Perfumes and aromas: Crinum lily, Buddleja and Murraya are still lingering, as are the odd flower of Burmese honeysuckle and summer wisteria. Frangipani. The Salvia turkestanica is prolific in its aroma now…a wonderfully dry summer odour that’s spilling all around the Field and the Borders and of course those sporadic, pinwheel Gardenia thunbergia blooms are intoxicating!
Pruning and other: Thalia has been edging the orchard trees - trying to keep the grass out is a constant battle and she’s been pulling grass from various other beds too…the fennel boxes and beds down the back and weeding the Field. Matt came in to whizz through the Murraya hedge, Cherokee rose and Oleander hedge earlier in the week so there is some semblance of order, and though I really do like it all looking out of control, if it gets too leggy, it’s easy to loose the shape and strength. Thalia also tied hessian to the top of the raspberry cage for me to make some shade - I intend planting the beans I sowed into punnets in there tomorrow, where they’ll have some protection from the fierce sun as well as those wretched Bower birds - I simply must get some beans on the move! I have a lot of tweaking to do - tying up and tip pruning, though I’m still slightly hampered by the wound…it’s amazing how many things one needs one’s shin for…particularly for balancing on ladders…and kneeling!
Hi Kim and welcome on board 😊 I'm sure you're living your best life right where you are! I'm glad to have given you a lovage tip - toss it through baby new boiled potatoes too - it's delicious with them and there should be plenty more of it ahead. Will hope to see you here again!
Hello Mickey. Larry introduced me to your lovely newsletter, where you are living my best life 😄. I have been wondering what I could do with the lovage that pops up in the garden bed every spring. The soup sounds delicious.