Sick

I'm so sorry I haven't posted and it must seem like I have just disappeared, but I haven't - I promise! I have been sick with a tummy bug and just as I woke up this morning and thought - oh yay, I think I feel better - poor little Felix threw up.

It's all been a bit overwhelming and something had to give, and unfortunately Mud Pie was the chosen something.

Thank you so much for coming looking for me, I do promise that I will be back to play again very soon.

Ali.

This Little Piggy

This little piggy will go to the harvesting basket...

This little piggy is trying to hide at home...

This little piggy we'll have with roast beef...

And of this little piggy we'll eat none...

And this little piggy is way too wee wee to be dined upon at home!

Oh dear, I am quite obviously tired. But I thought I would show off my lovely, lovely either cauliflowers, cabbages or broccoli (no I don't know which is which, but you knew that), that were all planted as seeds on the very same day.

Yep, the exact same day.

Each of these plants is in a different garden bed, and as their nurture is all the same (a bit of benign neglect on my part), the differences are purely of nature.

Interesting hey.

Mushrooms: Part Three

I just cannot keep calling this series, "mushrooms part whatever part we are up to"...

Why?

Because it in no way, shape or form even begins to hint at how blooming exciting growing these mushrooms is! It is SO exciting. First thing every morning the boys and I are up with our heads stuck in the box to see how much they have grown.

And my, how they have grown. Too big for their little corner in the box now, I chopped them out and up. Fried them with a little butter (actually quite a lot), garlic and some home-grown parsely (which I am almost equally excited about - but that's another post).

And they were yum. Just lovely... soft and fresh and fragrant, and home-grown. What a fabulous high that was. I'd never eaten a freshly picked mushroom before, and it just felt fabulous.

To make Hazel happy (and I'd do quite a bit to make Hazel happy at the moment after the terrible ordeal she had with her chickens), I weighed them and have dutifully noted it down. Here. Am about to that is. Now please bear in mind that my scales are not digital and not spot on, but they weighed in at around 300g.

So at $25 for the box, so far the cost has been $83.33 recurring (I'm not sure what they do at the shops about that pesky three, do you think you have to just keep on paying it off?) per kilo of fabulous fresh fungi.

I think... mathematics - not my forte.

If You Planted It You Should Have Stuck a Tag on It

Well the title (thanks Beyonce) says it all. I toiled, I sowed, I watered, I loved and I watched over, but... I didn't label.

And I really have no idea what this is. Do you? Rainbow something perhaps? Spinachy, silverbeety, chardy (what is chard?), leafy stuff?

Good for you stuff? Salad stuff? Cooking stuff? Foodstuff?

What do I do with it stuff?

Do you know what to do with it stuff?

Stuffing stuff?

Edited To Add

I just found a post/photo of them when they were babies: http://mudpiehomer.blogspot.com/2011/04/rowing-with-vegetables.html

Does that help?

Count Them Baby!

Have I ever mentioned here that I am a little eggplant obsessed?

It isn't because they are my favourite vegetable - as you would logically think given my obsession with growing prolific quantities of them - oh no, I wouldn't even put an eggplant up there in my top ten.

It's because an eggplant plant was the very first vegetable to thwart me.

It was pretty much the first vegetable that I ever brought home from the nursery as a little teeny tiny seedling. And I lavished all the love and care and attention on it like the firstborn that it was. And it grew... and grew, and grew, and it became big, and lush, and beautiful, but do you think I could get it to be bountiful?

Nope... it just took up space and insulted me by offering a teeny tiny eggplant the size of a golf ball every few months.

I took it as a personal affront and ended up ripping it out. And now, every time I have an auberginial success, I think to myself...

"In your FACE eggplant!"

Mushrooms: Part Two

My goodness I worked hard in the garden this weekend. I planted and pruned and dug up and moved. I shoveled and raked and above all, I cleaned up. Gosh I had let the place get messy. Piles of dead branches everywhere, waiting to have something done to them. But not anymore. Now the yard is lovely and shiny and tidy...

And when I was finally done and came upstairs to clean up, I thought I would just take one little peek before having a shower.

And look - mushrooms! A little fungal reward for all my hard work.

I am very excited... I have no idea when to harvest them, or even how to harvest them, but who cares, I have produced fungi. Ooo yes dear blogging friends, that's right - fungus in plural. Three of them to be exact, which makes them worth exactly $8.33 recurring each.

And I think there are more to come :)

That'll reduce costs!

Spuds in Jackets

Before you get very excited, I do have to tell you that the potatoes are not home grown.

But they were most certainly home cooked.

In Brisbane, I'm not sure about other parts of Australia, you are not allowed to have a fire in your backyard for burning rubbish. In the suburbs that is. What you are allowed however, is a fire in the backyard for the purposes of cooking. And my marvelous blogging friends, that is just what the boys and I put together.

A fabulous little brick fireplace, smack bang in our yard in the burbs. Custom made for alfoil wrapped potatoes.

I am, like most people I suspect, a firebug at heart. I adore camping as long as it comes with a fire, and any park with wood rather than gas barbecues, well I am just in my element. And I am equally in my element here, as we have a never ending supply of wood for the fire. The huge Poinciana in our backyard drops seedpods and branches left, right and centre. It is proving eminently satisfying feeding them to the hungry fire and watching them turn to ash.

And because we loved our alfoil spuds so much, we rushed off to the markets to buy more supplies.

These lovely spuds were labelled "Purple Sebago" at the market. A search on the Internet however, reveals nothing of the sort. I did find "Royal Blue", which they look a lot like, so either the Internet is wrong or my fruit and vegetable store is wrong. I don't really mind either way, I just want them to multiply. I bought 30 - some for dad, some for me. My planting calendar tells me I have months left to put them in - until September, so I am planning to stagger their planting and have a never ending supply of lovely purple potatoes to put on our fire.

A Purple Potato Paradise.

ps because blogger popped a valve and we couldn't post for so long, we have since had a go with the purple potatoes on the fire. And would you believe it - they lose their purple!

Shopping Therapy

I have not had the best time over the past week or so. I was woken up on Mother's Day with a bit of a shock - something had had a go at our hens. The chickens were okay; quite a few feathers missing, but our lovely little silkie bantam has had her skin torn in several places. Quite surprisingly I think she is going to be alright, she's such a quiet little thing that I am amazed she didn't die of shock.

Felix had been sick for the whole week with tonsillitis, so very much not fun, and then on Monday he came up in spots. Serious measles-like spots, so off to the doctor for some tests we went. He is fine and recovering nicely now, although he still looks like an example from a medical textbook.

"Amazing Tropical Skin Diseases". Or perhaps "Survivors of The Plague".

I have also not been feeling well and am due to have a tooth pulled out tomorrow morning. My dentist is inexpensive rather than sympathetic, so that promises to be quite the fulfilling experience.

But amidst the chaos and confusion, and brushing aside worries and responsibilities, I found 15 minutes to myself and stole into one of my favourite nurseries. Lost amongst their fabulous collection of seeds, I spent a lovely moment in time selecting the most delightful sounding vegetables I could find.

I walked out of that nursery on a high, quite thrilled with my purchases...

Perhaps I should take one as a good luck charm for the dentist's chair tomorrow?

And a Happy Mother's Day to All

One out of Five

And this is number five. Thank goodness this one worked out, because the others were enough to put you off growing rockmelon for good.

Do you remember this fruit? Or perhaps you best remember Hazel's comment about it? Oh I will never ever quite let that go... just dusting off that naughty comment and showing it off every once in a while will be quite satisfying I suspect.

So this is the last of what I think we decided were rockmelons. The others all rotted and were gross like the first one (I didn't post about them for fear of Hazel's potty mouth) which was quite disappointing. But I persisted and smelt and poked and prodded this one for days until it fell of its vine, and when I cut it open it was not without some trepidation.

The smallest of the lot, and finally, one that smelt like something you would want to eat. And eat it I did.

I had it for breakfast.

Some might be critical and perhaps think it lacked a little sugar, but after five failures this one success tasted pretty sweet to me.

Jamming Rosellas

I am consistently amazed when projects I try actually work. When I bought rosella seeds, having no idea what rosella actually was, I didn't think any would grow. When some did grow, I thought, well, they won't flower. When they did flower I said to myself, oh there won't be enough to make jam. And when I was making the jam in my mind I was thinking, well the jam won't set.

It just goes to show that I should never listen to myself, because I've obviously got no idea.

Good looking people, yes that's you - I made JAM! And not just any jam, but sweet, delicious Rosella jam. And with only 400 grams of rosella flowers. I am practically Nigella, only without all the money. Or that thing she has going on with the camera, I don't think I could do that.

Want to know how it's done?

Pick your rosellas after they have flowered. Three weeks I believe is the recommended time; I would recommend doing it when you have the time and inclination to make jam.

Separate the red calyxs (the outer part) from the seed pods. They just peel off. Cover the seed pods with water and boil for around 15 minutes until soft and kind of jelly-like on the outside.

Put your red calyxs into a large pot.

Add the seed pod water to the red calyxs, using a strainer. Because I had such a small amount of rosellas, I squished the pods right into the strainer to get as much of the water as I could, because it's the seed pods that make the pectin that sets the jam.

Discard the seed pods.

Add sugar to equal the amount of red calyxs, i.e. one cup of calyxs equals one cup of sugar. I also added two peeled and chopped apples, because I had such a small amount of rosellas.

Add the juice of one lemon (I used a lemonade, it was all I had and it worked fine).

Bring red calyxs, apples, sugar and lemon to the boil, and stir! Periodically check for setting by chilling a plate in the freezer and placing a small amount of jam mixture on the cold plate. Let it cool for a few seconds and then push it with your finger. If it wrinkles up then you have jam.

Bottle into sterilized jars and impress all your friends.

Jimmy and Flower Flower Soup

Well it was supposed to be Jimmy, Flower Flower and Cecil soup, but Cecil got lost along the way.

So my pumpkins didn't survive all the rain we had last year, but my father's did, and last weekend we all trekked down to nanna and grandpa's house and pinched some.

To get to dad's pumpkins it's a bit of a trek. Under the fence, through the gate, down the hill, past the dam, up the hill and there's the patch. Actually, it's not that far, it's just that along the way there are distractions. We have to pat the horses, look for tadpoles in the dam, listen to dad's mandatory dam warning (for the boys, not me), admire mum's whipper snipping and find suitable sticks for swords.

And think up names for our chosen pumpkins.

When Hazel announced her great pumpkin challenge, I threw my glove into the ring and laid claim to the best pumpkin soup recipe in the land. And okay, it might be a slight exaggeration, but it really is good soup.

I think that no matter what else you do to this soup, as long as you roast the pumpkin first, everything is good. I roast mine until it's lovely and soft, and a little caramelised. Skin on. I also pop in a few cloves of garlic and an onion.

So roast the lot up, with oil, salt and pepper. When it's done, squeeze out the cooked garlic and take off the onion skin, cover with chicken stock and bring to the boil. Boil it for a little bit, then whizz it all up and serve with crusty bread and butter.

Jimmy and Flower Flower - you were delicious.

Yep, I'm really not getting any better at food photography.

Up The Garden Path: My Corridor of Shame

Oh it is ugly and I am ashamed... but here it is, my dark, dirty garden secret, my ugly, uncared for "other" side passage.

So I'll go into defense mode straightaway. When we first moved in to this house, around five years ago now, the conifers that you can see to the right of the photo were lovely, bushy, picture-of-health specimens... just gorgeous trees.

And then along came our neighbour.

Our neighbour has a fondness for one of those backpack plus spray gun rigs. Now I can understand that, to be honest I could go in for a bit of backpack/spray gun power myself. The only problem I have with his penchant for dress ups, is that in the backpack he likes to put poison. And spray it all around his fenceline. Which is his perogative.

Except...

Well you can see for yourself what his love of the backpack did to my trees. It kind of killed them, but bizarrely only to around halfway. Poor things.

So why, I hear you ask me, don't I chop them down?

Well, I don't because of this.

See?

Or rather don't see. This is near the top of one of the half dead conifers. And this is the view out of my sunroom. A room that runs almost the entire length of our house. A room where one entire wall is made up of windows. A room that connects my bedroom to the bathroom.

And a view that blocks out the view of my neighbour's house, and way more importantly, his view of mine. The tops of the trees provide a perfect screen of privacy between my house and one I'd really rather not look at.

But it doesn't change the fact that the trees are not all beautiful, and it's high time I did something about it. So I have started.

If you look in the top photo, you'll notice all that lovely strappy grass on either side of the passage. That's Brazilian Walking Iris, which indeed does walk all over the place. And you can't see them properly, but I have also started to plant different sorts of palms under the conifers. My hope is that as I plant new things and they grow, I'll be able to cut back, and ultimately cut down the poor half dead conifers.

And if he poisons them again I'll topple them over onto his house :D

And the Winners Are...

Well, it just goes to show that random number generators really do work on atmospheric noise, and that certain people were making a lot of noise!

I have been sitting here for half an hour now and still can't believe who popped up first...

And I am fabulously pleased and amazed and excited and flabbergasted to announce that the marvelous winners of the fantabulous Digger's Books are:

Hazel Dene

Duchess_Declutter

and

Gooseberry Jam

Can you believe it?!

Congratulations ladies, please email me at alikxy@hotmail.com with your postal address and I will get your lovely books to you.

Congratulations again :)