Reverie days...

A big bowl of hydrangeas on the verandah table…the centrepiece for twilight suppers…

Are those special two illuminated with the spirit of Christmas…slow days, quiet days, contemplative, a salve post the excitement of a very full year. I’ve long regarded Christmas and Boxing Day as the two most special in the year and how I look forward to them.

I must admit though, that they have been slightly peculiar here this year, in that it’s the very first time Larry and I have had Christmas on our own since the one when we set out on an adventure (Europe via far north Queensland, Darwin, Broome, Perth) two years into our marriage. That year and the one we were engaged (the high alps of Austria!) are the only two in near 40 we’ve had alone. And Glenmore of course, has long been the focus of them…the Christmases of extended family, fly-by-nighters, travellers and interlopers, to the Christmases of just we four…the early ones when I had no kitchen but somehow made pastry for mince pies on a pop-up table to the ones when I’d make Nana’s huge Christmas pud to feed the horde. They’ve trilled to the sounds of excitement and fun, of presents and laughter as children grew from tiny tots to teens and young adults. For oh so many years now, the girls have flown back from wherever they’ve been, a round trip to the airport for one of us de rigueur (alongside a house littered with half-emptied suitcases and piles of washing!). This time round it seemed like stupidity…and we’ll all be (God willing) together again soon enough. So Larry and I have been…home alone!

Wreaths of wild olive for both doors this year…plain and simple, in the name of peace…

The flurry of anticipation was no less though (just minus the midnight wrapping and making of extra beds!). Christmas Eve itself has always been a day of lists and each one (save mopping the floor!) sees me in my happiest of places. Sheets washed and baking on the line, picking bundles of lavender and armfuls of flowers too…the kind that make an enormous mess during arrangement, so consequently the kitchen floor resembles that of a flower shop! It’s the one time I care not one iota about picking any stem on a whim from the garden that I may choose (regardless how sensible or senseless they may be for arranging in a vase!) and I go happily about my play on a generous scale to indulge my every garden flower-arranging fantasy!

A batch of apricot jam bubbling on the cooktop set the summer celebratory aroma, with the first just-erupted ginger spike in the arrangement adding a note of sophistication to the atmosphere. With a big bunch of Loquat leaves set on the piano, a whirl of Aloe in a cachepot here and there, a Strelitzia leaf for good measure and wreaths of wild olive for the doors complete; a big sweep with a sturdy broom and a big bin soon had everything in order! A couple of loaves of pumpernickel baked, a pick-up and drop-off or two…and then, with crisp sheets back on the bed and all in place…it was time to settle…and save for the morning watering, settle we have!

We’ve indulged…yes…in time. And good food too! Each and every year, we take some kind of spontaneous decision about where to plonk ourselves for these blissful couple of days. Some years it’s been in Mrs R’s garden, others under the Port Jackson Fig all the way down on the croquet lawn. Some years it’s the Courtyard, and so it has been this year. A little table, a big umbrella, lots of cushions for the bench…with the tinkle of water splashing in the pond where the single white Lotus nods in the breeze. It’s here we’ve sat, chatted, eaten and read. Oh how we’ve read! (Well..Larry is still wading through a pile of newspaper articles which I refuse to tackle on these special days…save for the ones he insists - with good reason, that I read too!).

My constant companion these last two days….perhaps it should read A World History…with Citrus!

I’ve been completely absorbed (as I think I suggested I might be!) in David Mabberley’s recently published CITRUS, a World History. Of all the books teetering in piles here I just couldn’t resist! I know how significant oranges are to a northern hemisphere Christmas, and Clemmie (being in that part of the world just now) keeps sending me photos…reminding me it’s still the case! As a result of David’s enormous work…I’ve been immersed in a tangerine-tinted magic carpet ride through time….with a tantalising overview from the Indus to China, the Levant to Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Northern Africa, Spain and Italy….via the march of Empires and knowledge of the Ancients, alongside the precious, individually tissue-wrapped fruit of early trade to the European madness for Orangeries…I’ve been wide-eyed, gob-smacked, tickled pink and…in tracing the history of this comprehensive group of fruit, pieced together fragments of humanity through the ages. From BCE to CE, these fruits carry a revealing insight to the world as we know it today…particularly those lands that are currently…perhaps perpetually, in such conflict and turmoil. I’m only halfway through…and intend to get back to the pages tomorrow (after, being Saturday…a little tying up in the kitchen garden!).

Christmas breakfast under the big umbrella in the courtyard, beginning with Banana Smoothie!

But the real reason for me popping in is that I promised you a little recipe (if it can even be called such a thing!) that has long been a tradition at this time of year. I don’t quite know why or how it happened…it just did…and as far as I’m concerned, it will be part of our Christmas Day forevermore! Way back…in our very first married years before Glenmore, when I was working with Paul Arrowsmith in those Sydney decorating days; occasionally (when it was too ridiculously hot and we’d really rather have been at the beach!), Paul would whip up a banana smoothie (where we worked out of his darling little Paddington house). For some reason…I guess I must have enjoyed them so much I thought it would be fun to make one for Larry one Christmas morning. And so it has been ever since! Christmas would not be Christmas, without the smoothie…which we also have on Boxing Day and…again on New Year’s Day! That’s it…three days in the year. So you haven’t missed out on the opportunity to nail one of three if you’d like to give it a whirl!

Paul’s Banana Smoothie

Ingredients

• 3 oranges just squeezed (or as many/few as you want…depending on the size of orange, I find 1&1/2 per person works!)

• 1 banana chopped

• apple juice - enough to cover the chopped banana in the blitzer

Method

• blitz chopped banana with apple juice ‘til it’s all velvety and frothy

• pour over half-filled glasses of orange juice and you’ll find it floats gently atop the juice

Simply couldn’t be more simple! But gosh I do love it. Really it’s my normal breakfast, just presented differently and with the addition of apple juice (as a general rule I begin the day first with a glass of lemon-infused hot water, then later the juice of one squeezed orange, a banana and a caffè latte).Of course it wouldn’t be Christmas morning either, without stewed peaches (this year our very own!). I cooked up the last of the ones from the tree on Christmas Eve…so combined with the apricot jam bubbling away and the smell of pumpernickel a-baking, that afternoon was a very happy-aroma one in the kitchen!

The other special treat on Christmas morning is a slice or two of toasted Pumpernickel Soda Bread (yep…that one that I’ve been baking all year and resist for breakfast except at Christmas and Easter!) with lashings of butter and Seville Orange Marmalade; although given I’d just made the Apricot Jam from the last fruit on the tree, I simply had to sample it this time too! (Recipe was a few posts back but here’s the link while they’re still in season and you may be lucky to pick some up this weekend before they’re gone for another year).

And that as far as Christmas morning goes, was that…having already watered the garden, I now felt quite content to sit…

Sometimes it’s just one and others…I’m glad to have my hat for my collection!

Except for the occasional pitter-patter to the pool…across the grass…it’s a barefoot time now and one where each little venture yields windfall Frangipani…the air is awash with its balmy perfume…our tables littered with these happy, five-petalled flowers.

You’ve seen the gold-dust sprinkled chilled beetroot soup before!

Today though, it’s too hot to even tip-toe to the pool for a pre-lunch dip (and anyway today the atmosphere is different…it feels like a working day due to Larry having to take the car for a part to be fixed early this morning which broke the magical spell). The shutters have been tight shut since early this morning, lending a cool and romantic air inside…I couldn’t read outside today even if I wasn’t here tap-tapping to you…though I’ll be tempted to read in the dim light later this afternoon as the heat intensifies. The verandah blinds are strapped to the floorboards and billowing in the gentle breeze, their chink-chinking as they strain against their straps reminiscent of sails on a yacht (they’re the first line of defence in deflecting the heat bouncing up from the ground below).

And though there are hundreds of tangents I could pursue, really I just wanted to share the smoothie recipe so you can enjoy it too! (And I think I’ll save the poached salmon recipe for Easter which is another time we enjoy that one…though it was delicious for our twilight dinner on Christmas night!).

I wish you all a peaceful week…this one between Christmas and New Year is like no other. I hope you too, have a wonderful book to read - especially if you’re not surrounded by family and friends this time round. And just now, I do feel particularly for those in fire-stricken areas of Victoria who cannot be remotely relaxed (we’ve experienced those kind of Christmases here in the past too) and now…as I understand it, those crews and families intertwined with tragedy in what just yesterday, seemed like the most sparkling start to the Sydney/Hobart yacht race.

Every moment is precious…our loved ones dear.

As we see out the last days of 2024 I send you all my love,

Mickey x

Productive garden notes:

Eating from the garden:

Potatoes, onions, garlic, cucumbers, leaf amaranth. Parsnips (haven’t dug any but there are still a number there…possibly time to leave them to flower, see below), coloured chard - just a little, lettuce, rocket (a bit leathery now but still a good pungent addition of a few leaves to a salad), lovage, fennel fronds, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives. Fresh fennel seed and fennel pollen and basil

Going / gone: Peaches, apricots. Parsnips: there is such a haze of flowers just now, going quietly to seed under the quince tree down the back. They do this each and every year, making a vision that is one of my favourites of all. In a way, they are my guide to timing as they go happily through their cycle with no interference from me. So I’ll take it that when their seed eventually ripens, that will be the time to sow the next crop. As I don’t much feel like eating parsnips just now, I might leave those left in the row to put on a flower show and give the bees and ladybirds an extended treat

Seed saving: coriander (nibbling fresh seed on my rounds…it is delicious!)

Sowing: all done…it’s too late now though I may try another few bean seeds

Planting: all done…though I do still have some Basil Genovese seedlings in punnets that I brought on from seed and want to plant out tomorrow. Last weekend I planted out all the beans I’d successfully germinated in punnets (following the demise of the in-situ sowings thanks to the wretched wood slaters) and I am almost hovering over their every waking hour! I did also plant pumpkin seedlings and another couple of cucumbers and zucchinis last weekend

Ornamental garden notes:

Picking for the house: with glee…a huge arrangement of smoke bush, plume poppy, elderflower, carrot flower, fennel flower, puff ball branches of flowering Ash, stems of Crocosmia and one splendid early stem of yellow ginger - and then didn’t photograph it except for an insta story that has now vanished! By now the arrangement is tired but it was simply glorious! The bones are still good…I might take out the bits that have drooped tomorrow and replace them afresh! Oh but that was fun. Hydrangeas….bowls of them!!!! Roses and frangipanis…and armfuls of wild olive for the wreaths

Perfumes and aromas: the Frangipani eclipses everyone else now with a hint of fig leaf on the breeze

Pruning and other: I do my level best to not do anything but water during this special week of the year. Before we wrapped, there was a lot of tweaking - last weekend I deadheaded the roses, tied everything that needed to be tied and did a huge amount in the kitchen garden…now…it’s just time to stop!