Of pictures and puzzles...
and good things to eat...
Wet…again! Truly, I almost need to pinch myself…for all the rain we’ve received these last years is so abnormal. But then, what is normal? Perhaps from time to time the climate is just so, but on balance over 36 years I’d say we’ve seen more dry…and extremely harsh dry at that, than wet; and just knowing, feeling the earth beneath our feet hydrated to the max, brings with it the most enormous sense of relief.
Of course the wet too, brings its own problems, but you’ll not hear me complain of them!
Sound warning for the following clip: don’t get a fright!
Today the creek is roaring and gushing once again, and down at the corner of the house paddock where the old watercourse spills through two enormous pipes in the convict-built stone wall into a deep pool, it’s awash with foam and choppy, swirling water. The sound draws me on, feet one-after-the-other when this occurs, no matter what other priority there may be. As I get closer, the smell of wet eucalyptus leaves fills the air and combined with the fine spray that mists my face, there’s an overwhelming sense of pure excitement and joy.
I took the long way back to the house, doing a quick round of the garden and really had to marvel at the steady growth of moss in the labyrinth. Moss? ‘Til a few years ago we hardly saw moss growing here at all!
The labyrinth has a life all of its own and now that I’m here, why not take this opportunity to relay the story?
I’ve long had a fascination with mazes…well, with any kind of path, and pattern. Give me an overhead view of a map or plan - be it of a garden, parkland (or an architectural plan of a house - same thing!) and you’ll find me absorbed. Do you recall those puzzles of childhood, where you had to make a little ball roll through a series of gaps in a raised, winding path by tilting the little container? Or those books containing page after page where you could trace your finger over a path to find the way from A to B before committing pen or pencil to show the way? How I loved them!
But it was not until Emily Simpson raised the possibility of installing a labyrinth into Sydney’s Centennial Park, that I fully came to understand the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Right back at the beginning of the garden making, I’d toyed with the idea (quite seriously) of creating a maze. The only vaguely ‘flat’ area that presented as an opportunity was the spot we’d nominated for a croquet lawn (and funnily enough when the girls were little, we used to play quite a lot…and that lawn also made the perfect place for egg-and-spoon, three-legged and sack races at birthday parties!) but as we could never figure out how to make a maintenance free maze…the idea never came to fruition!
Enter Emily and her proposed Centennial Park Labyrinth! I’d known Emily for quite awhile and was on her mailing list when she first mooted the concept, looking for support and contributions for what had become a driving passion. For her, it was a long and drawn-out process and over time, she won support from both the community and powers-that-be; brought together a wonderful team of skilled people, from those specialising in sacred geometry to architects, builders and dexterous stone-masons capable of installing the complex pattern (based on the C13th medieval design in Chartres Cathedral). When eventually came the day of completion and opening, there was a very moving, multi-faith ceremony that to this day, thinking about it gives me goosebumps all over.
But I’ve got ahead of myself! Back before Emily’s marvellous labyrinth came to fruition, both awareness and funds needed to be raised. I thought we might contribute the proceeds from an open garden. (Centennial Park was where I spent so much time as a child and the idea there might be a labyrinth for all ages to explore appealed to me enormously).
But…I thought for an open garden so far removed from Centennial Park that we would need an example, so we could explain Emily’s wonderful idea! “Might a temporary one be possible?” I asked her. “Yes” she said. Really????? You have no idea my level of excitement! “We can spray paint one onto the grass” Emily volunteered. Well…woohoo!!!!
Except then I got to thinking that wouldn’t exactly be the prettiest thing and so what might we do that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to make it attrative? I went looking at a gazillion images of labyrinths and found one in the US that had been made of pumpkins, of all things! It looked so do-able…and I got so excited at the possibility that I even persuaded our local fruit & veg shop to maybe be able to lend me a huge number. That was ‘til we did the calculations and realised we might need about 300! Can you imagine lugging 300 or more pumpkins? Even if we had been able to get our hands on them!! So that idea sadly, was soon canned! Loose lavender I wondered? But that would be expensive even if I could source it (I still think it would look and smell amazing!). And then one day it dawned…sawdust!
I remember Larry going off to the local sawmill with the ute to pick up a big load on the day before our open garden…we had absolutely no idea how much sawdust it might take to spread over the continuous line that made the pattern Emily had laboriously sprayed onto the grass! As it turned out, I think we needed no more than a couple of bucket loads!
I was convinced the pattern would last no more than a few hours…with hundreds of people walking the path, But over the two days, with hundreds of pairs of feet, only once was a tiny amount of sawdust kicked out of place by a toddler, and no sooner had he mis-stepped than his grandma raked the little mound gently back into place with her fingers. By the Sunday evening, the whole was still intact (if the grass was severely trodden in!).
“What now?” Larry asked. “Well can we please just leave it while we think?” I said! It just hadn’t occurred to me that it might still be there! And now, all of a sudden I had this path…this pattern at the bottom of the garden that had been such a long-held dream (even if the original intention was a maze) but this result was unintentional and felt like the most extraordinary and overwhelming surprise!
In the intervening months I’d learned the difference between a maze and a labyrinth and become even more immersed and beguiled. A maze is a puzzle, created to confuse, to challenge and perhaps to excite, whilst a labyrinth is the opposite…a sure path to walk, to calm the mind: it’s a meditation…you cannot get lost walking a labyrinth - put one foot after the other and you will reach the centre point, and then, turn around and retrace your footsteps quietly back to the beginning.
I began to walk the labyrinth at dusk - after the evening pick I’d put my basket of veg down just outside the entry point and quietly walk the twists and turns of the path that lead to its centre; take a deep breath, think on the day that had been and gently walk my way out…picking up my basket and heading back to the kitchen, refreshed.
After a week or so, the grass began to grow at an alarming rate through the sawdust which seemed to be acting as a fertiliser! It was then it took on a life of its own - all shaggy and filled with a life force that seemed to almost hover - I fantasised that from the air it must look like a crop circle! While I thought this was simply marvellous, Larry was getting tetchy about the whole thing and felt he ought to mow it! Which eventually he did, but still the pattern remained…it was as if the ground had absorbed the pattern into it…and in parts of my life anyway, I equate that time with a flurry of excitement…a growth spurt of sorts…a time when a host of new peeps entered my life and the breadth of things happening here at Glenmore grew.
Larry asked if I wanted to keep it, although we were still struggling with how. Also, in my research I’d seen images of ancient labyrinths amongst which one was a rectangle, which being me, I thought would suit the space better (I’d never really been a circle kind of gal!). But I was doing a lot of reading and the significance of circles began to dawn. It wasn’t surprising this circular path at the bottom of the garden was acting as a whirlpool of possibility and so as a circle, it had to remain.
This was around the time Patrice Newell (yes I mentioned her last week in relation to garlic and the Tuscan peasant soup!) came to give her fabulous presentation and at the time she just happened to be studying the benefits of Biochar to the soil (which have since become much more widely known). She relayed to me some stories of people making patterns in grass by using biochar and encouraged us to give that a whirl! Well…what an episode that was! We had a young man staying from the UK for a couple of months on his gap year, who was eager to carry out some hard work - what timing! And so it was that he dug out the labyrinth path; drove Larry’s ute to Newcastle from whence the only Biochar was available at the time (getting to see some landscape on the way…we encouraged him to stay a night or two!), returned with a big load of that dense, black material, and we all made a combined effort to load shovel after shovel load of it into the now continuous trench marking the pattern! (Actually…I have a funny feeling it was the June long weekend of whatever year that was!).
Did it work? Sadly no…and so my pattern languished for quite some time. The thing was, we’d got used to it being there by now and played croquet rarely (there was a time when the final post sat in the centre of the labyrinth which I’m sure was sacrilegious…and the croquet balls had to bounce over the rows of sawdust!).
Eventually, we dug out the pattern again, and this time laid bricks to hold the pattern in place. For some years, we used sawdust rather than grass for the path between the bricks and finally, just a couple of years ago (when doing another job propping up the Hayshed once again and this time hopefully the last, Larry over-estimated the amount of crushed stone needed to sit alongside that building to cover the underpinning of concrete that now supports steel bracing!) had just the right amount left over to fill the entire labyrinth path between the bricks! Phew….I think it’s fixed there for all time now! And do you know? These days I completely forget to walk it at all!
Last week I promised you the recipe for the Flourless Orange Cake! It’s a well known recipe that I know a lot of peeps have and yet…I’m still always asked for it! So here we go:
Flourless Orange Cake
Ingredients
3 oranges (keep one aside for the syrup later)
3 eggs
1 cup caster sugar for the cake (plus 1/2 cup for the syrup)
3 cups almond meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
Method cake:
Bring two oranges slowly to the boil in a saucepan of cold water and simmer for half an hour
Drain, cover once again with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for another half hour
Drain and set aside to cool slightly so you can handle
Pre-heat oven to 170C
Grease and line a 22cm round spring-form cake tin
Cut oranges roughly and remove any pips then blitz in a food processor
Using an electric beater, beat the eggs & sugar in a bowl until thick and pale
Add almond meal, baking powder and blitzed oranges and fold gently to combine
Pour into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour or until a skewer comes out clean
I always wash-up and clear the mess as soon as I put the cake into the oven, then prepare the syrup ingredients so they’re ready as soon as the cake is:
Method syrup:
Zest the last of the oranges and squeeze out the juice
Add orange juice, zest and the half cup of caster sugar to a small saucepan
Place over a low heat just before the cake is ready to come out of the oven…give a good stir to dissolve the sugar, then simmer for 3 - 5 minutes or so
As soon as the cake is out of the oven, prick all over with a skewer, then pour the hot syrup over the top
Truly…it’s the most simple cake to make…and a perfect one to have on hand for anyone who’s gluten-intolerant. I usually make it the day before an event so it’s ready to pop on a cake stand the following morning…releasing the sides of the cake tin and peeling away the baking paper a minute before. Of course you could eat it warm from the oven and if you feel so inclined, with a dollop of yoghurt or cream! Sounds like a pretty good idea for the coming long weekend!
A rather more spectacular cake though, I must say…was this three-tiered beauty made by Cherie Hausler for last weekend’s workshop, celebrating her fabulous just-released book A Plant-Based Farmhouse!
When we were tossing about dates for the workshop and I was reading about Cherie’s longterm love of baking cakes for friends wherever she may be in the world, I recognised that leading the day with one of her beauties would be prerequisite! That it should be ‘seasonal’ in line with our joint beliefs, led me to ask her if we could please have her Spiced Parsnip Cake! Ever since, I’ve been a-hoping and a-praying that one of my randomly sown parsnips would decide to flower on cue…and whoop whoop…I had two stems to choose from…both of them displaying flowers at all their stages…from emerging buds to pollen and beyond into the newly minted, fresh-green-seed stage…all of them utterly divine for Cherie to mound on top of her beauty!
The workshop that followed was compelling, insightful, entertaining, fun…and positively delicious! Whilst I’ve no intention of becoming vegan anytime soon, I wholeheartedly respect Cherie’s life choices, and there are many fabulous recipes and ideas she’s concocted that we can all incorporate into our repertoire, for both flavour and from a gut-health perspective.
Cherie shared a component on ‘Shrubs’…which are not something I (or anyone at our workshop) was familiar with …but I was already intrigued on reading Cherie’s book and asked her to please include one on the day. Whilst the recipe in her book is for a Rosehip Shrub (hence my table decoration!) Cherie whipped up a Quince Shrub for us all to try: “Once you’ve added the apple cider vinegar, you have a lovely aperitif to help ignite your digestion process prior to eating because of the fermented aspect of apple cider vinegar. When you consume ACV 15-20 minutes prior to a meal it increases stomach acid production and helps our bodies properly break down and digest our food. Plus it tastes delicious!” So says Cherie…so we’ve all gone off to experiment!
Already I’ve incorporated several of her recipes into this week’s cooking - not least great dollops of her ‘Wholefood Vegie Stock Paste’ which is definitely going to be a future staple in the kitchen here. But I can’t wait to whip up a batch of Preserved Lemon Hummus for the weekend! Cherie says she must consume her bodyweight in hummus each week, and this batch didn’t last long on Sunday!
Before I leave tales of Cherie behind, she has recently released a podcast called All The Things. Whilst I’ve only had time to listen to a couple of episodes so far, how absolutely fascinated I was to listen to Cherie’s conversation with Dr Vanessa Kimbell, founder of The Sourdough School in London…especially given our previous week’s sourdough workshop with the equally knowledgeable Holly Davis. All the wisdom Vanessa shared simply added to Holly’s, whilst Vanessa’s doctorate on Baking as Lifestyle Medicine is surely next level! I encourage you to listen…for this is about so much more than bread.
These are the reasons I love arranging the workshops here so much…I get to meet fabulous peeps who bring to share such insightful and curious information, but in a digestible format…of and in beauty and with a great enveloping sense of generosity.
The morning after our candle-lit event lunch…the sun shone bright!
I didn’t get any gardening done last weekend at all…Saturday was all event-prep, from moving furniture, to setting the fire, moving all the kitchen equipment to the Dairy and running all the glass, plates and cutlery we’d use through the dishwasher. But I did get to the market to buy those seedlings…at last! And this weekend, I’ll get them in the ground!
I was musing earlier this week how sometimes, winter here carries all the signs of spring before the remnants of autumn are even over! Some of our trees…are yet to even turn in colour. The Chinese Tallow is always the last, and whilst the Prunus in the Borders is well burnished (see top image), and the Chinese Pistachio is in full flight out beyond the Chinese Elm that itself is all a-speckle of yellow and green; beneath its branches golden clivea buds swell, nearby the lemon is in blossom, not far away the Datura is in bloom; there are three blossoms on the japonica (how I wish we hadn’t lost the original here) and the very first flower of the green hellebore has opened. Enormous Acanthus leaves stand sentinel in several pockets of the garden after their summer hibernation and the little peony poppies are well beyond germination under the fig trees…and growing apace!
It’s during the winter months the buds begin to form on the Solandra maxima (Hawaiian vine) on the side of the old house. I tracked one down about twenty years ago…they’re not so easy to find, and how excited I am to discover this beauty in its early bud stages today! I’ll come back to tell you more about these magnificent golden trumpet flowers as they begin their seasonal show!
While the persimmons both, are displaying a fine tracery of bare branches and beautiful lichen, the last of their once colourful leaves are no more than a puddle at the base of their trunks, but I swear the Butia capitata (Jelly Wine Palm) and Bunya, Araucaria bidwillii have grown a metre or more in the last weeks!
Trees seem inclined to do this…one tends not to look, or at least to study them every day, as one might a plant that’s coming into fruit or bud, or one that needs regular tending. Trees have a habit of looking much the same at a cursory glance, getting on with their lives with little interference and occupying their space over months, or even years…then all of a sudden glanced from a different perspective, in a different light, they’re taller, broader, more stately…causing one to gasp…as I did this morning! Both these two, were not much to look at when we planted them!
And still the roses play on the kitchen windowsill, though their numbers are dwindling!
An old image…snapped by lovely Luisa Brimble, that’s been a mainstay in representing the story of the Essential Work Dress for quite a number of years. It was just this week, when I thought to release the latest colour, alongside confirmation of a new lengthier length (by popular demand!) that I realised it’s 12 years since Bonnie snapped the first images of the prototype dress…well dresses to be precise: the very first natural was made of furnishing linen that aided the making of a template for a proper pattern (as well as serving me well longterm back then as a favourite to wear!), while the second in denim, was so stiff that wearing it felt like auditioning for the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz!
From there, I sourced a lovely pure linen, found a good Sydney based fashion workroom to make them (the prototypes were made by my longtime curtain-maker who happened conveniently, to be employing a one-time Parisienne wedding-dressmaker at the time, who thankfully evolved the pattern with me!) and over the years, well, I haven’t counted but a good many are out there walking around on happy peeps!
I first designed the dress as one I could wear here on workshop and event days, where I am both host and very hands-on-worker…which means I carry out a great deal of physical activity, so the dress needed to look good and to function under demanding circumstances. Change the shoes though, add a scarf and off the dress has gone to all manner of places! The longer length does make it look more elegant and I do hear those who are reluctant to show their knees. It goes without saying that I too, am 12 years older, so a longer length it is from hereon in!
Midweek, I added a little reel about the dress to Instagram which you can view here to see the dress in full swing…and if you’d like some more info, you can read the newsletter about the new colour and with plenty more detail here.
And with that…I should go and pick something for dinner…I might need to jump puddles! I had completely forgotten that it’s a long weekend, so what a bonus! With two event weekends in a row, I have two weekends’ worth of newspapers to read and two weekends’ worth too, of gardening! Perhaps I’ll splurge out and do something out of the ordinary…we shall see!
I wish you all a terrific weekend and week ahead too.
With warmest wishes, Mx
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Navel oranges, clementines, meyer lemons, rhubarb; tomato, aubergine, zucchini (see below); Jerusalem artichoke, parsnip, sweet potato (new). Leaves of all kinds - spinach, kale - cavolo nero (Red Russian is still growing on) lettuce, radicchio, rocket, red elk mustard leaf, warrigal greens. Broccoli, cima di rapa side shoots (I’ve been picking these for ages but they tend not to make the list as no-one else likes them and I just eat a couple raw when I’m passing!), fennel bulbs, fennel fronds, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers. Still new shoot leaves of lovage and still eating onions and garlic from last season although the last two are almost gone - oh no!
Going / gone: aubergines, zucchini, potatoes, onions, garlic
Seed saving: tomatoes
Sowing: Peas, beetroot, parsnip, cima di rapa, coriander, chervil, dill, rocket, mustard leaves red elk and giant red. Carrot, parsnip, nigella. I have most of these in but will continue to sow randomly.
Planting: globe artichokes (I really need to find two more to replace ones that died this weekend…it’s getting late now to plant!), leeks, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, kohl rabi, fennel, radicchio, lettuce and…onions! I picked up all of these at the market last weekend and fully intend to get them all in the ground tomorrow!
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: is scarce…but there’s always a little something…still a rose or two and always a stem of something you might not consider to be picking material from the kitchen garden! As everything is absolutely sodden today…I’ll see what I can find tomorrow!
Perfumes and aromas: the aroma of eucalypt and pepper leaf are both pungent in the rain.
Pruning and other: the agapanthus bed at the back gate had sprouted a good many weeds and a long, slow and tedious job also, is to weed around all the trees on the persimmon lawn and in the park. That will be an ongoing job in the coming weeks between other more robust tasks. The Solandra vine (bud shown above) on the side of the old house was out of control, with tall shoots heading into the eaves, so I asked Thalia to cut all those shoots back, which yielded a huge amount of material from a sudden growth spurt. While she was up near the old house, she kindly took down the willow panels we use for shade during the hot months ‘between the wings’ to store them under cover. This alters the character of the house enormously. I can’t wait ‘til comes the time to put them back…which is a two-woman job! Oh…and last week Thalia went right around the outside of the labyrinth with a spade, slicing through the roots of the grass that are always trying to run through the outer circle of bricks!
My favourite cake, and as you said simple to make, I do cheat and warm up some marmalade to serve together with home made lemon curd icecream. I love Hellebores and was lucky enough to have many of them under planted beneath the White Birches, as they were in a slight hill they weren’t so insignificant with their heads facing down. Thank you for telling us about Cherie Hauslers book. I have been searching out good books for two of our grandchildren who are into environmental things and are mainly vegetarian. And thank you for your lists at the end of your post. They would be extremely helpful for those who have the space for a decent sized garden, particularly growing vegetables.