The Boys, Chocolate and Blogging

Photos by the fabulous Tessa

Rarely do I indulge the boys and their boundless enthusiasm for all things sweet and chocolately...

Except when I do.

Luka is on school holidays for a little while and so I am going to take a little blog holiday and make sure to indulge him and his brother in a whole lot of marvelous things like building cubby houses and jumping on the trampoline.

And perhaps another little visit to that most fabulous chocolate cafe.

Keep well fellow bloggers, talk to you all soon.

Ali.

What a Goose

Did you know that cement and concrete are not the same thing?

I had no idea. Anyway, I went to buy some (I thought I wanted one but actually needed the other), and walked past this plant. I had no intention of buying anything green at all, but I felt like a right goose after my cement/concrete faux pas, and it seemed rather fitting.

This, is a gooseberry. Never tried one. Never actually seen one either. No idea what they taste, look or smell like. But Gooseberry Jam seems to like them, and the name would suggest that you can make jam from them, so that sounds pretty good to me.

From what it says on the little ticket, they grow into a small bush, and like full sun.

So I thought I'd put it in a sunny spot big enough for a small bush.

Winter Wednesdays - The Future's So Bright...

Are we there yet?

I'm inside now, and lovely and snug and warm, but earlier on my toes were numb, my poor lips chapped, and I was cold, cold, cold. And the day - where have the days gone? I looked at the sky earlier on and thought, yes must start thinking about getting dinner on - only to look at the clock and realise that it was only 2.30 in the afternoon! 2.30 and getting dark! Oh it's getting harder and harder to wax lyrical about winter days...

I wouldn't have even been outside on such a cold windy day, except that Hazel is making me appreciate winter. So off I trotted into the garden this morning, dutifully trying to find something to appreciate. Luckily I didn't have to trot for long, and I pulled up to a halt in front of our lovely winter flowering Snowflake Bushes.

In my humble opinion, these snowflake bushes are a warm climate answer to snow laden trees. They are a real show stopper, a spectacular burst of colour in a stark landscape... quite marvelous, I could have taken photos of ours all day.

But then I got distracted trying to see if I could take a photo of the sun, just to see if I could.

So there you go, another Winter Wednesday. Now last week I did say there was something that I really and truly appreciated about winter, and there is, I am just trying to figure out how to photograph it.

Wish me luck, and sunglasses on for the next photo.

p.s. although I am trying to make Hazel pay for her sheer cheerfulness in the face of winter, for the purpose of full disclosure I must say that I would have been outside even if I didn't have to take winter photos.

If I stay inside I feel like I should be cleaning.

Where's Wally?

You know how sometimes you are on the verge of sleep, when all of a sudden you remember something of vital importance?

I had one of those moments last night...

Blissfully drifting off, lovely and toasty warm under my doona, when all of a sudden I am sitting bolt upright, eyes wide open, one thought on my mind - I hadn't seen the bay tree.

Earlier on in the day I had been admiring my strawberries. I usually have a fairly mild success with strawberries, I grow enough for the boys and I to enjoy straight from the garden, but never really any more than that. This year though, I am hoping it might be a little different. After all that rain we had last year the strawberries had a huge growth spurt, and now I'd estimate they cover an area around seven metres long and one metre wide. The garden is absolutely chockers with strawberry plants, and I spent some time pulling some up and clearing them away from the base of the fruit trees.

But what I didn't remember, at around 11pm, was clearing any away from my teeny tiny bay tree. The one that is so small it only has around five leaves. I knew it was in there somewhere, but I couldn't remember seeing it.

I couldn't remember seeing it at all.

I somehow managed to get back to sleep, but was outside at first light, eyes sweeping back and forth over the strawberry patch, anxiously searching for my teeny tiny bay tree.

And I found it. It took a quite a while, but I did.

Can you?

Up The Garden Path: The Great Chicken Coop Coup

A few months ago, it struck me that after three years of kitchen scraps and chicken manure, the best soil to be found on our house block was to be found in the chicken coop.

So I kicked the chickens out, and proceeded to cage the veggies instead.

And I planted...

And planted...

And planted!

After 8 weeks of growing, things are really starting to come on. It was definitely a good decision -these vegetables are by far the healthiest in my garden, and I've really been able to plant a lot of winter (for us) vegetables. Most of the things in here are not permanent, because when we get our heavy summer rain the coop will flood and be more suitable for ducks than anything else.

Apart from the existing lime tree, and the lovely ornamental potato vine (pictured above), here's what is new and growing in the coop now:

curly kale

cos lettuce

radishes

cabbage

broccoli

cauliflower

green zucchini

black zucchini

parsley

celery

bok choy

pak choy

carrots

eggplants

banana plant

mustard

beans

peas

silverbeet

beetroot

spinach

potatoes

tomatoes that popped up

and of course, several as yet unidentified subjects.

The chicken coop garden is in the back right corner of our yard, and in winter gets full sun in the mornings, then dappled sun until the afternoon when it gets full sun again. In summer it doesn't get too much sun at all, with the poinciana tree providing dappled shade.

And that's it - the chicken coop garden.

Oh and the chickens! Don't worry, they got themselves a brand new shed to sleep in and are now allowed to free range in the rest of the backyard.

When Your Neighbours Give You Oranges...

Make orange cake!

If the mess we made making this cake is any indication of the amount of fun we had making it, well then this was one fun cake to make.

We chose a whole orange recipe, which basically means that you process up the whole orange, skin, seeds and all. Which all made perfect sense to me at the start, but I don't have a food processor, I have a stick blender. So much to the boys delight, we spent half an hour jamming the stick blender into three cut up oranges, in an entertaining attempt to puree them.

While I don't think we quite made a puree any self respecting baby would eat, we did manage to jam those oranges up into a pulp, and invite our neighbours over for afternoon tea...

Yum.

I followed the recipe fairly loosely, doubling the quantities because when I make cake, I make cake.

Whole Orange Cake

from best recipes

1 orange

180ml melted butter

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups self raising flour

Icing

2 1/2 cups icing sugar

2 tablespoons melted butter

orange juice and zest

Method

Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

Process the whole orange in your food processor. Or really enjoy your experience and take your time trying to do it with a stick blender. Add all other ingredients and mix, pop into pre-greased and floured cake tin into preheated oven.

Cook for 45 minutes.

To make the icing, mix it all together adding orange juice until you have the consistency you want.

Invite the people over who gave you the oranges, and offer them some cake and a cup of tea.

A Tuberous Obsession

Alongside bananas, I think that potatoes are the most fabulously exciting things that I have ever grown in the garden. I adore every stage of the potato - the first peep of the foliage from the soil, the beautiful fat green leaves in full growth, and of course, the digging around for treasure at the end of the journey. Every vegetable gardener knows the great thrill of the potato hunt.

And for some reason, where in my garden many, many, many, other vegetables fail, potatoes triumph. And so, this year, I have gone absolutely wild and have now planted around 60.

By my calculations, at around 5 potatoes per plant, we could end up with around 300 potatoes.

And I am not finished yet.

As you can see in the photos, I have staggered my planting. The top ones only just emerged a few days ago, whereas the bottom ones are only around a month away from harvesting I would say. The middle ones shot up so fast that I haven't had a chance to mound up the soil around them.

I also plan to plant out another 15 - 20 in a space I have along the side of the house, and then another 10 - 20 as an experiment to see if they will help to break up some particularly hard-packed soil.

I think it is quite clear that I am a dead serious potato farmer.

And because I know that Mark will want to know, so far I have planted 3 different types of potatoes. Purple ones, cream ones and white ones.

Oh boy that's funny.

Winter Wednesdays - This Is More Like It!

So I am not entirely convinced that I'll be able to keep this up for the entire season, but today, I am able to post about something that I genuinely enjoy about winter.

You've all heard me complaining about it being cold; I'm cold, it's cold, the house is cold, and while I haven't started complaining about it yet, I'd really like to add that my workplace is blooming cold too.

Now I know that most of you think I'm a little nutty, but when nothing is heated properly and we don't wear the proper clothes, well, it's cold.

But not today. Up until now we have had quite a few cloudy and rainy days, and my complaints have been louder than ever, because that's just not what winter is here. It doesn't rain in winter. What's the weather thinking, here it rains in the summer months

And while it's true that it really does get a little chilly here from time time, mostly what we get are lovely clear warm days... blue skies for as far as the eye can see, warm and mild temperatures, and a sun that toasts you up and shines all day long. Over 300 days a year if the tourist brochures are to be believed.

So there you go lovely fellow bloggers, that's my Winter Wednesday Without Whingeing.

Embracing the Inner Rogue

Well I have decided not to question a gift horse, and embrace my rogue tomatoes.

Today I counted over 30 tomato plants that have popped up in various places, and they are just blooming with health and well-being, and absolutely lording it over my poor, drooping deliberately sown ones. They are growing all over the place - in corners, out of cracks, under the trampoline, and like this one, they are all full of flowers and ready to fruit.

So it's not quite like I had planned, but it does look like I will be getting an abundant crop this year.

I'd just better not start looking after them.

A Not So Empty Nest

The ladies have stopped laying.

This has come as no great shock to me, as their eggs were fewer and further between for several months, before stopping completely a little while ago. I thought they may have been taking a little break, and I also know they often stop laying with the shorter days, but to be honest, I think the egg laying part of their lives has come to an end...

Our lovely ladies, two chickens of some description and a silkie bantam, are a little over three years old now. They all laid fairy regularly, our bantam a little less so, but all good things do come to an end, and I think three years might be our end.

Fabulously luckily for me however, not all my eggs are in one basket, and I have a lovely supply of eggs from another (very generous) backyard chicken lover. And these eggs are HUGE! Much bigger than mine ever laid, and much more reliable too.

And the other silver lining to this egg white cloud, is that come spring, I get to herd the family out fancy chicken hunting.

Sputnik Has Landed

Well it's still blooming freezing - 15 degrees outside as we speak I believe, which is 59 degrees fahrenheit if my google conversion chart is to be believed. So yes, freezing, however, I did promise that once we hit the teens that I would venture outside once more, and so venture outside again I did.

And how fabulous that I did, because the kohlrabi is kohlrabi-ing.

Now I have never tasted kohlrabi, but I love it already, because clearly, it does not need labelling. A baby kohlrabi looks exactly like you would expect one to look like - a baby kohlrabi.

Unfortunately, out of the bazillion seeds I planted, only five plants germinated, and I am not sure that they are exactly blooming. They have taken a long way to get to this fattening stage, and I'm not sure they are going to reach their full potential.

It is slowly dawning upon me now that my soil is not very rich, which is possibly something quite a few Australians could say about their soil. I don't know why I didn't realise this some time ago, but I can be a bit obtuse in my sheer enthusiasm for doing, and tend not to notice the obvious.

However, have no fear my blogging friends, for I have a plan. Several plans in fact, and hopefully once implemented, I'll have further paved my way towards the garden paradise of my dreams. Where everything flourishes and is labelled, where there is corn in winter, and where whatever is eating my bananas turns instead to a strict diet of weeds...

I Know They Didn't Freeze Off, But...

It was 12 degrees celsius today.

Twelve degrees.

12 of them.

It's not a lot of degrees, is it?

Subtropical my bottom.

If you'd left me hanging outside mid-air without my thermals, I'd definitely have dropped off.

However, these bananas did not just spontaneously jump ship. Oh no... something has CHOMPED them off. My bananas! Can you see the whole hand that's missing? Or rather not see it, but see where it should be?

Now I know I should be jolted into action, up in the tree bagging and setting up all sorts of defensive structures. Spikes and cannons and things. However, it's 12 degrees.

A sort of inertia has come over me, and it's not going to depart until that thermometer reaches its teens.

Winter Wednesdays - Colour

Well, here we go - Winter Wednesday.

Before I even start, may I say that sharing what I enjoy about winter was not my idea... I don't enjoy winter. I live in Queensland for a reason, if I loved winter, well Tasmania is reputed to be really quite spectacular.

But Hazel and Veggiegobbler are all enthusiastic about it, and they support my blatherings on, so here I am supporting their mad winter-loving attitudes.

Mind you, living in Victoria, as they both do, I'm pretty sure it's find something to appreciate about winter, or complain for several months.

So for this Winter Wednesday - I bring you colour.

This is some lovely, lovely rainbow silverbeet that I put in a while ago. Isn't the beetroot red colour just spectacular? Unfortunately it was an overcast day, I was really hoping for some sunlight to really set the colours off, but alas, it was just not to be.

It's not really doing as well as I think it should be, but it's the first time I've grown it so I'm quite the proud grower regardless.

No idea when to pick it, or actually what parts to eat - can I just cut off a few leaves at a time, or is it a pull up pant?

Oops, plant.

Hey, how serious is this post? All about the veg, no blathering.

It must be Hazel's mature influence.

And Yet Again...

I Planted Without Labelling.

There honestly should be some sort of vegetal law about this, or at least some signposts in my garden.

Stop.

Look.

And Label.

They were planted at the same time as the ones we now know are radishes... I thought these ones were radishes until the other ones revealed themselves, which just goes to show that I should not be let out in the yard without a licence.

So once again, I present you with: Guess That Vegetable.

Man v Wild

This year, I vowed to myself that I would grow tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. Too many tomatoes, a veritable abundance. I wanted to be able to pick and eat them fresh from the plant, to put them in salads, to cook with them, to can them, to make them into relish and jam, and to be able to share them with my neighbours.

I have the space, and I have had success with tomatoes before, my tomato dreams were really not impossible.

But somehow, something has gone wrong. Above and below, the lovely sprawling healthy tomato plant that you can see, well that's a rogue tomato that popped up in the winter vegetable bed. Doing well as you can see. In fact, doing spectacularly well. It's enormously huge and hasn't got a mark on it. It reliably offers up a ripe truss of fruit every two or three days without fail, and it requires absolutely no looking after whatsoever - I don't even water it.

And now, please, let me direct your attention to the bed below. This is my dedicated tomato bed, one that I have cultivated and mulched and fertilised. I planted both seeds and seedlings, and have cared for these babies since the day they came into my life. Watered them and fed them and loved them.

And a more sorry bunch of tomatoes you have never seen. They are wilting and spotty and weak. The leaves are yellowing, they have not produced one flower between the lot of them, and I have a feeling they are ready to topple over and cark it at any given moment.

And they are literally one metre away from the self seeded, healthy, vigorous plant that I had nothing to do with putting there.

Ali v Nature

Ali: 0

Nature: 1

A Winter Essay

So I told you all yesterday that the bananas banana-ing had given me a marvelous idea.

But it's not only that the bananas are banana-ing. Or even that the fig is figging.

It's also because the chillis are chilli-ing and the capsicums are capsicuming and that next door, the pumpkins just will not quit pumpkining.

I have already mentioned that here in Brisbane, winter is not really the right word for what we experience this season. Sure, it's a whole lot colder than usual, but colder than usual when it's usually sweltering hot doesn't really mean a whole lot. When it's winter and you can quite comfortably be outside during the day in shorts and a t-shirt, well, let me just say that it's not freezing. It does get cold, and I would be the first to complain about that, but it doesn't frost over, and the sun shines bright and warm all day long.

And I guess the plants feel that too.

Which is why the banana produces bananas, and the chillis and the capsicum and the pumpkins are all doing so well. Along with strawberries and tomatoes and eggplants, and all the other things that like warm weather.

Which is why I would like to try to grow warm weather vegetables this winter. In fact my fantabulous idea was that I would like to try to grow them all year round. I am already dreaming of, "My Year with Sweet Corn".

I'll pick sheltered, sunny spots, and in will go corn and pumpkins and watermelon, along with cucumber and rockmelons and eggplants. Actually, in will go everything that I can think of, because after a big vegetable planting break - I am ready to get growing!

And if things don't work, well, at least I'll know that for myself, and not just be going on what sowing calendars tell me.

Fat Roots and Bananas in Winter

Do you remember these? Well our Unidentified Growing Vegetables are getting fat roots... but I still don't know what they are. Are they radishes?

Whatever they are, they are most certainly a pretty colour, and what's not to like about a pink vegetable? Eat your greens kids. And your pinks.

But fat roots are not the only exciting development in the garden. Much to my surprise, a much shaded banana plant is banana-ing... at the beginning of winter. Although winter is a pretty inaccurate term for the magnificent sunny days we have been experiencing recently. There should be a different word for winter in the subtopics.

Sumnter??

Anyway, the flowering banana has given me a most fantabulous idea... but I do like to keep you all in suspense, and I know that fruit and veg get you all pretty excited, so I'll post about it tomorrow.

That is if the plague has finally left our household.

Thanks so much for all your well wishes :)