It's all in an image...and yet...
this one's all wonky but I'm going with it anyway!
I know not where to begin! Do I send you a single flower? Or a meadow? A path so overgrown with pumpkin vine it’s impossible to penetrate? Or the calm and mesmerising vision of a lone stone standing in a paddock of sweeping grass? Do we continue with the ‘thread of red’? The fleck that pops up with recurring regularity (this morning in a pomegranate, though also in the developing seed head of a canna lily that resembles a chirping baby bird)? For at each and every turn there is something…that could be the starting point of a narrative.
If there’s one negative about this platform, it’s that I can’t send you a multitude of images! Because there would be 20 at least of Zinnias…each and every one at a different stage of development…and oh to choose between a multi-ruffled beauty or the variety that has but an elegant single row of petals? Even the one I have chosen above, has three rows of petals, so she is completely different to the aforementioned. The crimson or the salmon pink? The ones that display a fairy-ring of pollen-tipped glory? Or the ones still held in bud so tight, their calyx (or should I say individual sepals that make up the calyx?) resemble the fishtail scales of a mermaid?
Besotted! I am, I admit, quite besotted with Zinnias! Some years I’ve grown them by the hundred - I’ve filled one of the ‘floating’ beds on the way to the Field a couple of times, and several years, one of the compost bays ‘down the back’. Generally I have at least two rows in the kitchen garden growing through the summer and into the autumn months, though I do find them temperamental in their early stage, to persuade to germinate. This year there are not so many and I was in mild despair, though even their decision to grow in just a clump here, or patchy row there, has lent the kind of disorganised, romantic atmosphere to the kitchen garden that I so aim to coax to fruition each season. So…as we near the end phase of the season just past, I’m happy with what has come to pass; and I’ll continue to work around the last ones standing ‘til they’re literally on their last legs, because I do not want to miss the unfurling of even one potential bud!
It does occur to me that I must sound like a complete fruitcake, with nothing better to do than go around all day looking at views or unfurling flowers! But it’s in the writing down of it…that the focus is drawn; which truly ‘til more recently I’ve not been in the habit of doing. Writing it, that is. As a rule, these observations are but an acknowledgement at a general glance, in the passing by, or during a moment up close when at or about another task. It’s only because I’ve taken to writing it, that the detail has become a lengthy description. In reality, each of these things noticed is nothing but a nano-second in time, that just happen to bring me a flicker of joy.
Anyway…we must begin somewhere. And as we’re in the pink, I have an idea!
Again…which image to choose? Justicia’s fully blown flower head? Or her tightly held bud…in the form of a cone? That would be the stage before the image above, and whose colour and texture I find equally enthralling as the culmination of a full flower. Justicia wasn’t a plant with which I was familiar…’til gosh, I don’t know…maybe ten years ago. I wish I’d found her sooner although…if one knew it all, there would be no surprise element, no journey. As it is and as things developed over time, she may have slipped in late, but did so to become a very favourite focal point. A dear friend once mentioned her name in passing…as we were standing in her courtyard. I don’t recall that specimen being in flower or I’d certainly have paid more immediate attention; and although I’d never even heard mention of her before (and nor am I aware of having seen a previous specimen), for some reason the name lodged in my head. Then one day, I unexpectedly spotted a label (when gravitating towards to a small pot of beautiful dark, crinkly leaves in a nursery) that read Justicia carnea, Brazilian Plume. Well that was it…home she came! Based on the colour and texture of her leaves alone. Where to put her though, I could not imagine. But like all plants that come home, eventually (and it can be a long haul)…they find their place.
Justicia’s place became a large terracotta pot ‘between the wings’. No doubt she would like to be in the ground somewhere to sprawl. But I don’t have the kind of garden where that behaviour of a shrub would be appropriate. Out in the open, she would look out of place, lost. Where she is, is a bit secretive…hidden from view; and in turn, she’s become a star performer!
Set against a dark green painted timber window shutter, Justicia is ‘well-framed’…
Then a couple of pots along, green but with the deepest of red-edge-leafed Cannas, send out an occasional stem topped with a fine, dark red flower, that evolves into a prominent, beak-tipped, rounded seed capsule; the colour of which is amplified in the crimson red spine of the banana leaves, another couple of pots on, towards the front of this little almost tropical enclave.
Interspersed with flowering white gingers, this collection offers elements of visual surprise along with heady late summer/early autumn perfume that becomes trapped in the narrow passage between the walls and spills inside…though none of it (scent aside) was exactly planned. As with most things, I’m inclined to begin with an open mind…open to spontaneity and it’s then I find, that serendipity is inclined to intervene!
As it turns out, the individual specimens ‘between the wings’ have, not exactly by design, come to reflect the entirety of what lies inside…behind the window…
It’s not like I said “this goes with that at Sussan!” (Sorry…dreadful catchy ad…from the 70’s I think! - nope, checked, 1989!). I did the exact opposite. As I’m inclined to do…for someone who is really very disciplined, I am perhaps also quite obstinate (stubborn?) and…choose often to break rules quite deliberately! If you were to go to design school, you would likely be taught to begin the concept for a room ‘with a rug’. I can quite honestly say I have never, ever…(OK, so now I’m thinking…and racking my brain…has any client ever had a very fine carpet I’ve needed to work around????) begun any room design…with a rug! Goodness, I would find that so utterly confining. The rug…(if not the floor) has always been the very last thing on my mind when pulling any kind of scheme together. That last minute opportunity to drop something unexpected in at the end - a tantalising carrot of an idea that will both upset and unify all that has come before, brings with it such a rush of possibility. Above all - the choice of a rug can be utterly wrong. In order to make everything seem right!
Had I begun with this particular rug (a flat weave of Uzbeki origin with stylised flowers and dark ground) I would never have chosen the Spanish cotton print for the curtains. They clash so dreadfully…the only unifying detail…is the repetitive splash of red in each.
With the curtains in mind, I might wonder why I was even tempted to bring that rug home from Robyn Cosgrove all those years ago. All I know is that my heart skipped a beat when I noticed the spacing of pattern in relation to dark ground, as it neared the top of the pile; as one of Robyn’s team removed rug after rug and I dismissed each out of hand, (you can tell even when a rug is folded in a pile if its pattern is too busy, its colour or texture not what you’re seeking…even if you don’t quite know precisely what that is!). “That one” I pointed! “You want me to open it?” he asked. “Yes please” - my heart was racing. I knew that one was coming home with me even before the ‘right’ side was revealed. (I’m often guilty of preferring the ‘wrong’ side of a rug to the right!). The colours, the pattern, were so wrong…they were absolutely right!
Then somehow over the years, the plants directly outside the window came to reflect, just in intermittent splashes, the colours of the rug, as well as the curtains. In reality, it’s all a nothing really, except it’s also everything. It’s all these things that combined… make a house…a home. And again…they’re not something upon which I’d dwell, if I wasn’t explaining it in writing. But these are the things that anchor. That settle…the interior to the garden…and link to the great accumulation of thoughts and ideas…that light one’s imagination.
While I’m momentarily on floors (because someone asked me a few weeks back on instagram about our parquet floors which appeared in an image when we were mid-chaos and I promised I would) - a little tale from the ‘building’ days (but all means skip!):
This is the kind of story that had Jane Price, who edited The House and Garden at Glenmore, telling me I must have the dates all wrong cos it surely couldn’t have taken that long to build! I was, I assured her, absolutely right! When we finally got around to building the additions to the original stone house, we were (as ever!) strapped for cash. Somehow we’d managed to get the shell of the building up with some plumbing going in, but we were otherwise balancing on the floor joists to inspect progress from room to room. I was under pressure though, to select boards for the floor, and wanting real ones, it was an expense we were deeply concerned about at the time. Then one day, I had a flash of a possible idea! Part of me had been worried about laying bare boards (all be they with rugs down the track) - given the new-build was raised considerably (by council stipulation) ‘off the ground’. I had a feeling we might not feel (although we were building in double-brick) well insulated - and we do experience howling gales here from time to time and plenty of months of chilly weather. The idea of all that ‘cold air’ under the floorboards was giving me goosebumps at the very thought! At the time, it just so happened I was working on a truly beautiful job in Woolloomooloo, for which I’d suggested (and ultimately we selected) Tallowwood parquetry for the floor. The result was exquisite - my lovely clients and I as excited as each other with the outcome. Then one day as all this was going on it dawned - if we were to do the same, unlike floor ‘boards’, parquetry would require a sub-floor over which to lay the individual pieces of timber, providing a more stable, better insulated overall, longterm result. The style of a parquet floor would equate to the general direction in which the ‘decoration’ of the new build was going and…if we were to go down that track, it would mean we could install an inexpensive sub-floor quite quickly, which meant that we could move in and use the space of the shell almost immediately - pushing the need to afford the final floor down the road! Still, it was a huge gulp even then, to contact the Greaves brothers, who had laid that job in Woolloomooloo so beautifully, and another couple of jobs between…to ask them to quote for our own floor here. But eventually…after another couple of years of indoor ‘glamping’; another baby, a puppy and a kitten…at last, we had not just a proper floor, but a working kitchen too!
I do so want to take you outside, because we’ve had rather a lot of interior speak lately, and I want to catch you up…but maybe just because I’d like to dismiss the ‘thread of red’ for now - get it out of my system while it’s top of mind perhaps - just one more thought? (Although there will be more of a tale to continue because there is more…but maybe I can let it slip ‘til the spring when the Epiphyllum next flowers!).
But the Shell Ginger outside the bedroom wing is currently sending out a whole new flush of pendulous blooms…which keeps it in my mind…
All it takes, to continue the thread, is literally a spot…in the form of a fruit or a berry, (real or thread-work) to draw the eye. To connect. The raised cutwork of this textile (that makes one of a pair of cushions on the big stripy sofa) somehow manages to absorb and reflect the entirety of the foliage of the trees that make up the pockets of garden we refer to as the Persimmon Lawn and the Park - just outside the window of the Sitting Room in which this cut-velvet resides. The blotches of red, quite accurately suggest the minuscule, irregular splashes of that colour in the wider, overall scheme of things. They are nothing but a splash, a highlight…in a sea of neutral, blue/grey and sludgy green…
I thought the other day, when I took one of our postcards to write a little note, that perhaps this illustration might amplify in your mind…the context and significance of foliage in the wider picture, as seen from the Sitting Room (and our own Bedroom); and the verandahs that connect those rooms and their respective views…how the dominant factor is of green in all its forms - bright to dull, leathery to olive. And so when I speak of a thread of red…it really is no more than that. A stitch in the wider scheme that is a calm envelope of peace and tranquility.
And I just can’t resist including a snapshot of a fresh Agave americana leaf with a clinging raindrop or two…whose colour is reflected back into the Sitting Room in the stripes of the sofa, but whose newly unfurled imprint is as soft to the touch as the cutwork textile above, though textured as embossed stationery.
Now… can you believe the banner at the top is already telling me I am near my limit for this post? Err…maybe you can! But oh good grief, I’ve hardly yet begun!
Whilst we’re in the greys and olive blues…a big job that’s been undertaken these last couple of weeks has been to prune the olive trees. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times in the notes at the bottom of the posts, but it’s something I wanted to mention up here in the body too. Because those trees create such an impact, from so many areas of the garden, as well as through so many different windows and buildings open to the elements. Once the tiniest of saplings, they’re all over thirty years old now and their impact is substantial.
Clearly as far as this platform goes, I need to restrict the number of images (which I find incredibly frustrating so I’ll forgo it this time), but one of my favourite views of all is from the kitchen verandah (which is also the one I have from the kitchen sink), looking across the hedges towards the Hayshed and beyond, where the foliage of the olive trees makes for a happy visual resting point, before the bronzed leathery foliage of the now enormous Port Jackson Fig tree dominates the view, then the eye takes in the haze of eucalypts that fill the creek and Big Hill looms in the distance. I seem to photograph that view so regularly though, that I feel that you too, must already know it so well! Whether in the early morning pink of dawn, the apricot of sunset, the mist of fog or drizzle, or the build of a thunderstorm…it’s a view I find captivating and energetic…leaping as it does over hedges of differing heights, through their gaps and onwards…
Anyway, there I was marvelling at the olive trees’ feathery, silvered foliage dancing in the sunlight just a few short weeks ago; in the knowledge they were next on the list for a severe prune.
Now…they’re all clipped and sparse and tidy. This year I’ve been so distracted, I encouraged Thalia to tackle the job all by herself. And she’s done such a fabulous job too. We’ll make a second pass - sometimes you just can’t see the wood for the trees, as it were; and the view from the ground is different to the one from up a ladder. But I’m so thrilled she’s more than broken the back of a job that was huge.
To be honest, we don’t do olives well here (although over the years we’ve had a crop from time to time, generally the flowers fall off in a random storm). We’re humid in mid-summer; and unlike Mediterranean climates where summers are dry and traditionally, winter rains can be expected, we are the precise opposite - with likely crispy dry winters (of clear blue skies and golden sunshine though chilly nights) and…if we’re lucky…good summer rain, which more often than not, comes in the form of thunderstorms. It’s really not the kind of climate olives enjoy. Although that said, in the right spot with the right variety, well chosen for the purpose, good fruit can be achieved; and hardly a hop, skip and a jump from here, lovely Anna produces her beautiful Monks Lane Olive Oil that’s like liquid gold. Her trees are on a slope, just one valley around from us; planted before she and her family took tenure, they tend them well and her luscious oil tells us so - they are the right variety for the position, planted with the intention of a proper productive orchard.
Us? We were reminding ourselves…perhaps pining, in a way, for the arid beauty and light with which we were so enamoured at the time we found ourselves here…instead of Mallorca! Our trees are just plain Olea europaea…
I know I’ve failed to fill you in on the progression of the autumn Borders, the colouring of the sedum, the afternoon light on the perovskia and…
The feathery plumes of Macleaya cordata, whose whispy spires deepen from flaxen to russet as the sun dips low in the sky but….it’s in the kitchen garden where most of the real activity has occurred.
Given I think the green banner at the top is threatening hysteria at the length of my continued tapping away, I might have to just expand the ‘productive notes’ at the bottom of the post to incorporate all the other information I wished to convey! Just to keep those of you who are growing on track!
Something I do want to say though is…please focus now on completing the bulk of your rotation to autumn/winter crops! I’m running behind (two wet weekends - fair weather gardener…me?????? but there are so many indoor jobs that just never get done here and so I took the opportunity to at least make a stab at some of them!). I haven’t even built the broad bean structure which I’m horrified at and I will complete it in the next week. Please refer back to last year’s posts for a clue, or to the podcast notes if you’re trying to build yours and need a reminder of how to. You can take a little tour of the kitchen garden via instagram, where I uploaded a video yesterday (uggghhhh though, knowing it must be timed and squished, my brain goes into spasm knowing I can’t dwell on everything and miss out half of what I really want to say and say ummmmm instead which I know I don’t in real life!). All this is why I run full-day workshops, so there is no stone left unturned…and with time to delve deep, without umming!
If the app will permit me though, without exploding…here come two images!
This first taken on Sunday, just after I dropped a whole lot of saved seed capsules of the mustard variety called Red Elk and enclosed them with a cage of pruned twigs from the espaliered fruit trees - partly to protect them from birds (although I know this isn’t foolproof!) and partly as demarcation, so I know where I’ve sown, as in the Guild Beds, where there are no straight lines, it can be hard to recall just what one has done. I leave the husks that contain the seeds behind too…they were mostly closed when I dropped them, but ping open with the sun, scattering their seeds as they would do naturally.
The second image, above, snapped just this morning, shows germination. How positively thrilling. Another few days and I’ll begin to pick - micro-greens at first, by means of thinning out, and they’ll be scattered over all manner of things - from salads to chicken, omelettes to sandwiches - anything really. As they grow on, the bulk of them will make a handsome vision, tucked in as they are, next to a threesome of Black Tuscan Kale…so tonally and texturally they will make a happy complement to each other. Ultimately, the ones we don’t eat will explode into a profusion of yellow flowers to attract bees to the garden in the spring, just as the fruit trees come into blossom and require pollination. That cycle, that full cycle, was begun once again with just a sprinkling of seed, on a grey and showery afternoon. Now that’s gardening. It’s what I so enjoy and my goodness ‘tis the reason for writing to you here…to encourage!
Of course the truly ultimate reason for sowing these mustard greens is that they are but one component of our seasonal diet. Not only are they vibrant and delicious to eat, but being bitter, are good for our digestion. But health…is a whole other story!
It’s time to complete the productive notes below…and to make a planting plan for the weekend ahead! How I hope you…have had a good past week.
Sending you happy wishes for the one to come. Mx
ps dreading the clock-turning end of daylight-saving (from an evening perspective, though I’ll be very glad to have morning light once more!)
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
The very last potatoes. Onions, garlic aubergines, zucchinis (trombonchino), tomatoes, coloured chard and spinach, lettuce, rocket, red elk mustard (is back…popping up all over - ahead of what I sowed purposely last Sunday). Basil, lovage, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives. Calendula and nasturtium petals have returned and…a flush of fine, new, pale green nasturtium leaves. Rhubarb is back! Early beetroot and a few carrots…but I’d like those to grow on just a tad more…Ooooh and a lovely flush of tiny amaranth leaves…at the stage I so love their contrasting leaf colours and delicate taste!
Going / gone: beans, potatoes
Seed saving: parsnip, bean
Sowing: peas, broad beans, cima di rapa, carrot, beetroot, parsnip (if we ate them, turnips but I decided a few years ago to skip growing them). Could plant garlic…I usually wait for Anzac Day but I’m a bit tempted to try earlier this year - no panic!
Planting: brassicas (kale, cavolo nero, cabbage, broccoli, kohl rabi, cauliflower), lettuce, radicchio, fennel (bulbing) and bok choy seedlings, leeks. With round one of all these in the ground for a month, I planted the next round a fortnight ago. And I did plant out the leeks that formed in the head of leek that flowered late last year - at last! (see that insta clip, above!). I intend to sow the flowering Stock tomorrow - the lunar calendar says it’s a ‘flower’ day, but it does mean I’ll have to say goodbye to the flowering parsnips…unless I have a better idea!
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: frangipanis, tansy, dahlias, Cottonwood hibiscus, amaranth, ginger…a few roses
Perfumes and aromas: frangipani, nicotiana, more buds of white flowering ginger have opened, and yellow flowering ornamental ginger too, but I haven’t been anywhere near the pool to know if the Osmanthus fragrans is still doing its thing!
Pruning and other: Thalia has been on Park tree weeding most of the week, alongside a light prune to the pomegranate hedge and removal of spent stems of Shell Ginger, making way for new flower spikes and thinning out the ratty leaves after last weekend’s wind caused many to shred. I did all the kitchen garden tweaking and tying on Sunday (after Saturday’s Hat escapade!) but I have a great deal to do this weekend!
I'm delighted to hear that you too, are a Zinnia fan Sally! And an adder of rugs at the last minute! x
🙃😊