Toasting Marshmallows

A cold autumn evening was the perfect opportunity to try out one of our fireplaces.  And toasting marshmallows on sticks proved to be an activity that everyone was keen to join in.

The kids are sitting on the floor partly because the grate is very small and they needed to get close, and partly because the room still doesn't have much furniture.

Although an outdoor campfire is a more authentic place to toast marshmallows, we were happy to shelter from the rain and chilly air.

Autumn Rain

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. ~Henry Ward Beecher

After the long, hot summer these late autumn rains are sheer delight. Nothing is more reassuring than lying awake in the middle of the night listening to the rain drumming on the roof.

Thanks to the rain of the past few days, some of the vegetable seeds I dry-sowed last weekend are starting to germinate and my new citrus trees look very happy indeed.

This cool, wet weather makes me feel like nesting. I have the urge to knit, but don't know where to buy yarn in Adelaide (apart from Spotlight). I'd love to find one of those cosy, over-crowded little family-run stores where anwers to my questions are supplied along with yarn and patterns. I also feel like baking and sleeping and curling up in front of an open fire with a book.

What do you enjoy doing on cold, wet days?

Neighbours

I baked the orange cake for Mr Marco and Violet but it came out a bit burnt around the edges - the perils of working with a new (to me) oven.

The kids devoured the cake but I have promised myself I'll try again on Friday, when I don't have to work.

After meeting Mr Marco and Violet I have been thinking a lot about neighbours, and how important they are.

In Sydney, I lived in the same suburban red brick house my whole childhood. I knew almost everyone for streets around. Every day during the school holidays the kids would congregate in a nearby cul-de-sac and play street cricket or any number of games that we made up, including the pole game and brandings (don't ask!)

In summer we would all head for somebody's backyard swimming pool where we would play Marco Polo unsupervised - fortunately above ground swimming pools are usually pretty shallow. We were expected to play outdoors unless it was raining. Late afternoon the mothers would call out "tea-time' and we would all head home to eat, dirty and happy.

Later in Melbourne, my husband and I had wonderful neighbours. In particular, Sue-next-door (to distinguish her from Sue-two-doors-up and Sue-across-the-road) and I raised our children together until I moved to Adelaide in 2008. Sue-next-door's daughter Kate-next-door (to differentiate her from me), was my daughter's best friend from babyhood and they still write, ring and text each other regularly.

I hope that we will become friends with our neighbours here in Adelaide. It is difficult with so many mothers working (including me) to have that easy give-and-take that existed in the past. However, I am sure we will build relationships over time.

What do your neighbours mean to you?

image is from www.tripodgirl.com

Mr Marco and the Oranges

I think I am really going to like my Italian neighbours.

Just as I popped my head over the back fence last week and introduced myself to Violet, a couple of days ago her husband Mr Marco poked his head over and introduced himself to me.

He told me he likes what I am doing with the garden. This is high praise from a man who has been growing backyard fruit and vegetables for over 56 years.

His speech was hard to understand - the combination of a strong accent and some slurring (a stroke maybe?), but like his wife he said my garden was once full of fruit trees that were cut down when the house was renovated.

He said a friend gives him a very good fertiliser for lemons and he will give me some next time he has any.

This morning he put a metal hook over the fence and hung a big bag of oranges from it that he had just picked from his tree. Soon after his big smiling face came over too, and I thanked him.

I think I might make an orange cake and take it around there. What do you think?

Saturday Musings, 22 May 2010

celebrating: my new (very bare) vegetable patch. It's compact but should work well. I am going to try a four bed rotating system based on the one recommended by Peter Cundall in my favourite gardening book, The Practical Australian Gardener.

This week I planted three new citrus trees: a Washington Navel orange; a Tahitian lime; and an Emperor mandarin; so I am also celebrating that there is no fruit fly in Adelaide.

thinking: that I am going to have sore muscles tomorrow from all the digging I have been doing in the garden

planning: to sleep in tomorrow morning, and have an early night tonight

reading: the Diggers' Club catalogue, but strangely not feeling like buying anything at present

eating: mixed berry and ginger crumble with cream

Growing Garlic

Earlier this week my little boy and I planted out two rows of garlic. Applying the principle that in a small suburban garden every inch of space should be used, we planted the garlic in the strips of dirt in front of two low box hedges just outside our back door. We used Australian garlic purchased at our local supermarket.

Before planting I consulted several gardening books about when and how to grow garlic, and here is the information that I gleaned.

When to plant: There is much conflicting information on when to plant garlic, with various sources advising from late summer to mid winter. The most common advice is to plant in the autumn when soil temperatures are cooling. However, an adage I came across several times was "plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest".

Soil Preparation: Garlic likes slightly alkaline (limed) soil and grows plumper cloves if given a top dressing of blood and bone. If you have a worm farm, diluted worm juice can be watered on throughout the growing season.

How to plant: Break the 'head' into separate cloves. Plant the cloves pointy side up about 7 cm or 3 inches apart.

When to harvest: The garlic 'scapes' or greens can be harvested as soon as they grow. If you want to harvest the whole bulbs for storage, wait until the tops begin to yellow and the garlic develops a papery outer layer, then dig up and hang to dry. For a traditional farmhouse look, you can braid the stems and hang the garlic in your kitchen.

Cleaning Out the Fridge

When I was growing up we had a magic fridge. It was always spotless. There were never any spills or strange smelly things up the back.

Imagine my shock on leaving home to discover that my fridge did not stay clean all by itself. Someone (me) had to clean it for it to remain as pristine as my mother's always was.

Theoretically, we should all clean out our fridges once a week, just before grocery shopping. Well, even better would be to maintain our fridges daily so that they don't need weekly cleaning, but I'm not organised enough for that, and I suspect most other people aren't either.

Last week the state of my fridge was so dire that I took all the food and shelves and cleaned everything. I washed all the shelves, discarded anything that looked inedible or old, and wiped out the interior with homemade spray cleaner.

The image below is, of course, an 'after' shot. No one needs to be inflicted with the sight of my fridge before it was cleaned, least of all my lovely Mum, who reads this blog and knows what a grot I can be.

If only my fridge still looked like this!

Mantelpiece Decorating

Having seen the fabulously creative ways that other bloggers decorate their mantelpieces, I am almost ashamed to show mine. I don't so much decorate as display a few of my treasured possessions in a way that is meaningful for my family and me.

In the picture below you can see the fireplace in our formal living room. There are photos from my brother's wedding and mine. The three little girls on the right are my nieces and the baby in the oval frame is my Mum. My husband bought the vase on the left in China and many years ago his father bought the vase on the right in China too. So as you can see, my mantel brings my family together. One day we will buy a mirror or painting for the wall over this fireplace, but it's not a priority at the moment.

The fireplace below shares the same chimney as the one above and is in our dining room. The photo on the left is my husband as a little boy and the one on the right is my brother and me when we were about 3 or 4. I did the daffodils cross stitch and the glass vase in front was a gift from my husband when we were visiting my parents in Toowoon Bay, NSW several years ago. I bought the two little pink candle holders in a Melbourne op shop.

The fireplace below is in our main bedroom and is really very minimally decorated at this stage. However, the fireplace itself is so pretty that not much decorating is needed. I sewed the cross stitch sampler and the other items were either thrifted, bought inexpensively, or, in the case of the green candles, found out the front of a neighbour's house during a hard waste collection.

Yellow Roses on Red Gingham

I know they're a touch garish in a French-bistro-circa-1975 kind of way, yet I rather like the combination of of yellow roses on red gingham. They smell divine and make me smile every time I walk past.

Decluttering Books

Of all the things I find hard to declutter, books are the very hardest. I am deeply attached to my books.

However, we have limited space for bookcases and limited funds to pay for them, so I am going to have to donate some of my (hundreds of) books.

Our red house in Melbourne had fabulous storage. There was a wall of bookcases with cupboards underneath in the Family room and each of the kids' rooms had long built-in desks with bookshelves above. We gave most of our freestanding bookcases to friends and charities because we no longer needed them.

The house we rented for our first 18 months in Adelaide had almost no storage so most of our books lived in boxes for 18 months. We have now bought two tall bookcases for our new house but at least half the books are still in boxes.

While rationally I know that I will never read all these books again there is the chance that I might. I love knowing that my library is at hand should I think about something in a book or remember a quote and need to be able to find it. I know I could use the internet but books are just better. And they feel good. And I love my collection of old second-hand books that are filled with other people's memories as well as my own.

I now have a box of books that I am planning to give to the Salvos - if only I can bring myself to part from them.

What possessions do you find hardest to declutter or give away?

Meeting Violet

strawberry seedling


Violet is an elderly Italian lady who lives in the house that backs onto our (new) red house. Having admired the fruit trees that I can see in her garden, I poked my head over the fence this afternoon and introduced myself.

When I told Violet that we moved here from Melbourne she said that she likes Melbourne: she visited there in 1953 just after she got married.

Violet told me that she has lived in her house for over 50 years. She used to be great friends with the lady who lived in my house and they had a gate between their homes so they could pop in and out and visit each other. However, the next owners of my house didn't like the gate and put up the high metal fence that is there now.

Many years ago my own garden was full of fruit trees, Violet says. There were figs and olives, oranges and plums, but they were mostly cut down when the house was renovated and the garden professionally landscaped. When I told her that I was hoping to plant some more fruit trees she smiled.

Violet's garden is the kind that we expect from the older generation of Italian migrants, with many fruit trees and a large vegetable patch. She said she has plums for jam and green apples for apple cake.

Sadly, one of her plum trees died over the summer. Violet explained that she and her husband are pensioners and can no longer afford the water needed to keep her trees alive. They have a water tank but it was empty long before our hot summer ended.

According to Violet they once had a much larger vegetable garden but her husband can no longer do the work required. Even so, their vegetable patch is much bigger than most that I have seen.

It is a great tragedy that folk like Violet and her husband cannot afford to water trees that they have nurtured for over 50 years. At a time when we are being encouraged to cut our food miles and live sustainably gardens such as theirs should be encouraged.

So much seems to have been lost in Violet's lifetime: the kind of neighbourliness that meant you could drop in on a friend any time without an invitation; the kind of thriftiness that quietly grew as much as possible at home and that tended the earth with love so that it would provide year after year.

I hope that we can all make small steps to ensure that that world is not lost forever.

My Autumn Garden

It is such delight to have my own garden. I feel like I am becoming myself again.

Autumn in the garden is filled with wonders: burnished leaves; overblown roses, ripening citrus fruits.

After work today I spent a couple of hours in the garden. I raked and pruned. I planted a plum tree and some strawberry runners. I checked the worms in my worm farms and harvested some of the rich liquid they produce for my garden.


I sang Louis Armstrong's "It's a Wonderful World" as I went and none of the plants minded my awful singing. Plants are so much kinder than children!

Cows, Catastrophes and Coping in an Emergency

Have you ever imagined yourself as a fighter pilot, an earthquake survivor, or someone sifting through the rubble in a war zone?

Obsessive reader that I was as a child, I 'lived' through wars and other historic events many, many times. In my mind's eye I was not one of the hysterical masses running around in blind panic. Instead, I was calm, unhurt and unhurried, heroically dealing with the injured and helpless.

These days I am more realistic and am aware that I could well be hopeless should a real disaster strike. For example, despite having done several first aid courses over the years I'm not sure that I would remember how to perform CPR.

Only because I looked it up 5 minutes ago do I remember what DR ABC means:

DANGER

RESPOND

AIRWAY

BREATHING

CIRCULATION

It is worth regularly reminding ourselves and our children how to act in an emergency. No one ever knows when a disaster might strike or someone may need our help.

A few weeks ago my little first-grade son learnt a really useful acronym for young children in an emergency.

SQUEEZE AND SHOUT

C Can you hear me?

O Open your eyes?

W What's your name?

S Squeeze my hands.

All my children were taught the triple 0 emergency number (911 in the US) at a young age. We also taught them to 'stop, drop and roll' and never to hide if caught in a fire (even if they caused it). We never lock our doors in a way that would prevent our younger kids from getting out of the house in an emergency.

One thing we still need to do at our new house is plan a fire drill, with several possible escape routes and a meeting place outside.

What skills have you taught your children for coping in an emergency?

image is courtesy of www.allposters.com

Mother's Day 2010

You know your children are getting older when breakfast in bed on Mother's Day becomes something to look forward to, rather than something to politely swallow down.

This year's breakfast was one of the nicest that I have ever eaten, anywhere.  Thanks to my 13 year old daughter I enjoyed French toast with maple syrup, berries and cream, along with a wine glass filled with freshly-squeezed orange juice.  I think I may have a potential food stylist on my hands.  If only my early morning photography was up to the same standard!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.

Saturday Musings

celebrating: that autumn appears to have arrived in Adelaide at last, bringing cold nights, warm days and even some rain.

thinking: that my family generates far too much plastic waste.  As I am the family's chief buyer I need to do something about this.  But can I make a difference?  And is there any way to buy milk without plastic?

planning: my spring vegetable garden.  I know it's only autumn, but I need to think ahead.  There are existing plants in the spot I have chosen for my vegie patch, so I have some clearing to do.  I'm also considering  whether I have room in my small backyard for a couple more fruit trees (I already have an orange and a lemon tree).  Local readers, does anyone know of a reliable source for bare-rooted fruit trees in Adelaide?

reading: (actually re-reading) Peter Cundall's The Practical Australian Gardener.

eating: Cote D'or 70% chocolate with raspberries.  Heaven.

A Mouse in the House

Tomorrow my house will smell of peppermint. And wormwood. And lavender. It will also be very, very clean.

This afternoon I was sitting on the loo (yes, I know, too much information) when I saw a brown tail slide under the bathroom door and into my bedroom. My bedroom!?!

There is a mouse in the house.

I have never lived in a house with a mouse before. Cockroaches (shudder) and ants, yes, but no mice.

I googled mouse deterrents and apart from reading that a pair can breed up to 100 offspring in a year (yikes!), I also learn that the most effective approach to getting rid of them is to spring clean and declutter as you have never done before and fill the house with peppermint, as mice don't like the smell.

So tomorrow I'm off to buy peppermint oil and I'm going to scent a new batch of my homemade multipurpose cleaning spray with it. And then do a heck of a lot of spraying.

As it would happen, tonight for the first time I attended a local sustainability group. Some of the folk there suggested that mice also dislike lavender and wormwood.

I think I've found the mousehole - there is a broken tile in my bedroom fireplace that looks like its been pushed aside. That hole is now stuffed full of wormwood.

Tonight I will be sleeping with the blankets over my head and lavender under my pillow.

Maybe I need to get a cat.

Stitches of Friendship

June 2008 was a very difficult time. After months of uncertainty we were about to make the decision to move to Adelaide, a city where we knew no one. After ten years we were about to say good bye to our dear red house - although at the start of June I didn't know that yet. And at the start of June I won a sweet little stitchery from Tracy from Beyond My Picket Fence.

Tracy is one of those bloggers that I know would be a true friend should I ever meet her in real life - and I believe we will meet one day. She has prayed for me, laughed with me and even cried with me over the past two tumultuous years. At a time when I was having to say goodbye to friends of a decade, it was good to know that friends like Tracy were there by my side.

When we moved to our rental house in Adelaide, Tracy's stitchery went on the table near my front door and reminded me daily of the meaning of friendship.

Now we live in a home of our own and I finally feel free to spread my wings and put down roots (pardon the mixed metaphors) in Adelaide.

And Tracy's little stitchery sits on the table just inside my front door again.

Licking the Bowl

When I was a little girl I thought the best thing about my mother baking was being allowed to lick the bowl.

'Licking the bowl' did not literally mean applying my tongue to the bowl, although I'm sure I would have given the opportunity. It meant eating up whatever was left over once the cake or biscuits went in the oven, whether on bowl, spoon or beaters.

When the electric mixer was on, my brother and I were sure to hang around waiting for Mum to say, "who'd like one of the beaters". The reply was always "Me!!!". Then would follow the argument about which one of us got the most batter on their beater.

While the world has changed in many ways since I was a little kid, wanting to 'lick the bowl' is one of the things that appears to have stayed the same.

Party Plan Etiquette

Over the past couple of weeks I have attended a couple of party plan gatherings.

The first was a Tupperware party held by a lady in my street. She kindly invited me as a way of helping me to meet my new neighbours. I gladly went along and purchased two things, although I was astonished at how expensive Tupperware is these days.

The second party was a lingerie party. The company was delightful and the food delicious. (My contribution was a batch of my very wicked chocolate brownies.) However, while I liked the clothing that was for sale, I couldn't justify the expense. One very simple wrap-around top cost about $120, for example. While I felt that I should buy something, in the end I decided not to. Although no pressure was placed on anyone to buy, I felt like a really bad guest when I decided not to place an order.

I have been wondering about the etiquette of sales parties. Is a purchase the appropriate exchange for the hospitality shown? Or should we look at party plans the same as shopping at a store, where there is no obligation to buy?

What do you think?