And now for something completely different...

The second-last day of school holidays and our arrangements fell through, leaving us with no plans for what promised to be a cold and wet day. Terrified at the prospect of a day at home with two children who do nothing but fight, I came up with a solution that would require both a shopping mission (takes up time that might otherwise be spent bickering) and a hands-on activity (distracts children from annoying each other): TERRARIUMS.

I did a bit of research here before we embarked on a nice long shopping expedition to our local strip (which seems to have more two-dollar shops per capita than anywhere else in the world) and found a pair of fishbowl-shaped vases. Then came a leisurely stroll around Bunnings, where we picked up potting mix and sphagnum moss, and where the kids chose some shade-loving plants. I already had activated charcoal at home, and figured we could scrape up some gravel or little rocks from the garden, so we didn't have to buy those.

K and R filled up their fishbowls with the first three layers (little rocks, charcoal, sphagnum moss) and I added the potting mix and helped them with the plants. Then came the fun bit - adding decorations. K used some smooth stones from our last seaside holiday; R used the stones, plus shells, plus glass 'jewels', plus a small plastic animal whose species is hard to ascertain (is it a cat? a dog? a fox?). Both terrariums look beautiful and I really hope they will thrive. And now that I have all the gear I can hardly wait to go buy a giant fishbowl and make my own one!

Oh yeah, would anyone like to offer an opinion as to what this animal is intended to be? R is calling it a fox, but its tail would suggest otherwise... its face is distinctly un-catlike, though.

Winter harvest

Winter gardening doesn't inspire me the way summer gardening does - so many of my favourites are warm-weather plants, and the things that do grow in winter seem to grow so very slowly. My lettuces have matured at a snail's pace, the celery I grew from seed five months ago still looks more like parsley than celery and the leeks are so tiny they're in danger of being mistaken for weeds and pulled out of the vegie patch.

But the broccoli - the broccoli is magnificent, delicious and abundant. I'm growing two kinds: purple sprouting broccoli and a green sprouting broccoli (many thanks to Liz for the seeds of the green one!) When cooked they are indistinguishable in both colour and taste, but on the plant the purple is especially stunning.

It's my first time growing broccoli, as I'm a recent convert to its culinary merits, and I heartily recommend it as a winter crop. Both varieties seem to be of little interest to insects once past the seedling stage, and when mature they grow lovely little stems that resemble broccolini. You cut them off and within a couple of days new ones appear, ready to be harvested. We are enjoying eating them together with snow peas and sugar snaps from the garden, sauteed with garlic, ginger and a bit of soy sauce, with toasted flaked almonds sprinkled on top. Delicous!

Autumn harvest

Our plants didn't fare too well when we went away for a week - I had them watered every second day but it was a relentlessly hot week in Melbourne and we arrived home to some sad and wilted-looking chillies, dried-up tomato plants and parched strawberries. Luckily we were able to revive almost all of the plants - and then came the rains, giving everything way more water than it actually needed (I have picked a lot of split tomatoes since then).

This weekend I made pesto from some of our basil and tossed some halved tommy toe tomatoes through the pasta just before eating. Sadly we are inbetween lettuce crops and had to use supermarket lettuce, but we did have a delicious supersize home-grown spring onion in our salad.  I used to think it wasn't worth growing spring onions, but I've come to appreciate the benefits of having a few handy for when I run out of bought ones, and they deserve credit for being the one plant that insects, snails and birds don't attack.

My husband has been getting huge crops of chillies from his various plants, although some late-harvest varieties are yet to ripen. He has rocotos, cayennes, Thai, birdseye, habaneros, jalapenos and several others (I've kind of lost track of what they all are at this point - all I know is that they're everywhere, in little collections of pots in every corner of the front and back garden!). Here are the chillies that he and K picked yesterday:

And here is the sauce he made from them today, which he based partly on this sambal oelek recipe from Suburban Tomato (thanks, Liz!) and partly on another recipe which included coriander and palm sugar:

He seems very pleased with the results but I can't vouch for the sauce because, embarrassingly, I'm too chicken to try it - some of M's chillies are way too hot for my taste. I am, however, keeping a basket of chillies from last week's harvest to dry out and use in cooking:

Not sure if I'll string them together in bunches (tempting, because they look so beautiful) or just toss them in a jar (far more practical) but I'm sure these will provide me with all the dried chillies I need for the next year or so - while M's sauce will last him a few weeks at best. Not that he'll be chilli-less after that, because by then the rocotos will be ripening. The rocoto is a Venezuelan chilli that can grow to 10 feet in height (that's over 3 metres for those who speak metric) and is notable for having black seeds. Last year we kept some of these exotic-looking seeds and, late in the year, managed to get some of them to germinate - a very slow process; we had just about given up when they finally came up. And now M has a precious bunch of seedlings, which we really hope will survive the winter:

Far easier to propagate have been the strawberries, which sent out runners like crazy. To get more fruit you are supposed to cut them off, but as a novice gardener I found it all very exciting so I let them keep on making their baby strawberry plants. I filled little seedling pots with soil, weighed down the leafy parts of the runners with stones so they could take root in the soil and separated them from the mother plants once they had done so. I have loads of them now, and the plants are still producing more and more:

I have to admit, I have no idea what I should do with them over winter. Advice, anyone?

Hey pesto!

The other day R asked if she could have 'hey pesto' for dinner. Hey what? 'Hey pesto pasta' (I was not even aware she knew the term 'hey presto', but K is into magic tricks so perhaps she has heard him say it. Either that or she learned it from a Disney movie, like everything else she knows).

So last night the three pesto-lovers in the house had our first homegrown 'hey pesto' of the season, and now I feel like it's really summer. Our entire last summer's crop was used for pesto, and this season's will go the same way too, because if there are other uses for large bunches of basil I have not yet discovered them.

My pesto is made with basil, pine nuts, olive oil, garlic and parmesan and is a wonderfully quick dish to make when it's late and I don't have the energy for anything complicated (which, sadly, is the case just about every night of the week). I make it by picking off the basil leaves (being careful to remove the odd caterpillar here and there), washing them and blending with a few tablespoons of olive oil and a small handful of pine nuts (raw, I don't bother toasting them). Then I add a finely chopped clove or two of garlic and about 1/4 cup of finely grated parmesan. I also like to put in a generous teaspoonful of chilli - usually sambal oelek, but fresh chilli is good too. Once the pasta is cooked and drained I return it to the pot, put in the pesto and toss to coat, sometimes adding a tiny bit of water or oil to thin it out. And - hey pesto! It's done.

If you like basil but have never made pesto, give it a go - it's so easy. To give an idea of how much basil to use, when I'm not using home-grown I find a whole supermarket bunch of basil is sufficient for a 500g packet of pasta.

The perils and pleasures of gardening

It was very satisfying to get a bit of gardening done this weekend. I finally planted out some remaining eggplant and tomato seedlings that I couldn't work out where to put until now (having made space by pulling out several bolting lettuces), sowed some more carrot seeds (my last lot of carrot seedlings died after being accidentally mulched over by the other gardener in the house) and staked the larger tomatoes, some of which already have some decent-sized fruit on them:

Didn't notice those black spots til I uploaded the photo. Hmm, must check that out...

The lettuces are growing beautifully. I have one tub of lettuces almost big enough to start picking salad leaves from, and another tub with seedlings coming up, as well as a few mature plants still left in the main vegie patch. As we currently consume more than we grow I've decided to try out Liz from Suburban Tomato's growing system and sow seeds every month or so in little pots until they're big enough to transplant to the tubs or vegie patch. This way I should have a steady supply of lettuce. I'm planting mixed lettuce seeds and cos, as well as some rocket seeds from last year's enormous rocket plant.

We are also harvesting bits and pieces here and there - mostly lettuce, but also a few garlics (one large one, two tiny ones). Last week we picked most of the ripe strawberries - a small but delicious crop:

...and it was just as well we did because the few that we left were eaten the following day by birds. Now I've had to set up a ridiculous-looking netting system to keep them out, which is a shame, because strawberry plants are too pretty to cover up.

Also coming along nicely are the beans. I have personally inspected every leaf and removed several caterpillars. I am not so fond of butterflies these days... (and I have a serious gripe with insects in general, which I will get to at the end of this post).

M's chilli collection is flourishing (and yes, that is mint in the foreground, not a chilli). I have no idea what all the different varieties are, but there are chilli plants scattered all around the front and back gardens, as well as on our porch. Today he told me that one of them, the rocoto, will grow to be ten feet tall. What will we do with all those chillies, I wonder?

I'm looking forward to picking some basil this week for our first home-grown pesto of the season. Below you can see our two giant pots of basil, the one at the back doing brilliantly while the one at the front is looking totally puny. Weird. All we can come up with is that we think we may have used different soil in one of the pots.

I suffered a gardening-related injury today: an insect flew straight into my eye while I was harvesting rocket seeds. As I write this my eye is still sore and watering. What is it with these creatures? They invade my home (we had to take out a massive cockroach last night), they eat our plants, and now they are flying kamikaze-style into my face - a declaration of war if every I heard one. Tomorrow I will be stocking up on pyrethrum and keeping my sunglasses on!

Spring gardening

Spent much of this weekend working on our veggie garden. In addition to our lettuces (which we're growing year-round - we eat a lot of salad) this season we are growing:

Tomatoes. M is very proud of his home-made tomato cages - these Tommy Toes are self-seeded and we wanted to give them a chance to get some sunlight, since they're surrounded by lettuces. We are also growing Rouge de Marmandes (just because we like the name).

Strawberries, which I grew from runners (hadn't tried that before but they are looking promising).

Peas (one of the varieties with an edible pod; I like the kids to be able to munch them straight off the plant, although realistically K will probably refuse to try them and R will eat them all).

The pot above is a collection of herbs and random seedlings that were left over after sowing the veggie patch and the other large pots (including French beans and some chilli plants). Speaking of chilli plants, M is crazy about them. This year he has planted several different types (jalapeno, birds eye and habanero, among others) and still has a few from last year that survived the winter.

Basil (not pictured), which was a star performer last year. Hoping for loads of delicious pesto this summer, accompanied, of course, by some tommy toe tomatoes. We also have some garlic growing, but I have no idea when I planted it and therefore no idea when to harvest. Hmm...

Also planted last year was this amazing artichoke which grew from a fragment of root after I'd pulled the plant up because it was being destroyed by insects. Suddenly it's taken off and has two artichokes growing on it - so beautiful. I don't know if I will eat them, though, because I've seen artichokes flowering and they are stunning.

The less glamorous side of gardening is dealing with snails and slugs, but I've had to force myself to take action as my seedlings are under attack. Tonight I am trialling a 'beer trap' (thanks for the suggestion, mum) and will also be going out with a torch to see what I can catch, having vetoed the use of snail pellets where the vegies are growing. Any tips on protecting plants from predators will be gratefully accepted!

Home, sick

Fancy a siesta beneath a palm tree, while little monkeys frolic nearby? Then consider spending your vacation at the House of Virus, where germs flourish and boxes of tissues are toted about like this season's must-have fashion accessory. Also in vogue are cracked lips, sore throats and the odd bout of vomiting. Here our days are leisurely, with short activities punctuated by naps (children only!) and temper tantrums from an exhausted and grizzly 4-year-old (and occasionally from an exhausted and grizzly mother, too). 

Here's the exciting story* of how this recent episode of illness (as opposed to last week's one, because according to our doctor this is a different virus) began. I wrote this last night but was unable to post it due to R waking up crying and taking up the rest of my evening and a good part of my night, too. So it's all about yesterday, rather than today. Which was much the same anyway, only grumpier, snottier and with an even more exhausted and impatient mother. So here it is:

*Disclaimer: story may not actually be exciting.

Because K has, of late, been less than enthusiastic about school, and because he's been inventing all sorts of ailments in order to avoid going, we were skeptical when he staggered out of bed groaning on Monday morning. Sure, he had a cold, but there was so much exaggeration and bad acting going on (clutching his head, collapsing on the couch saying he couldn't walk) that it was hard to be very sympathetic. So I marched him off to school despite his protestations. 

Two hours later they called me to fetch him. He looked so obviously unwell huddled up in the sick bay that I felt like the world's cruellest mother. Fortunately (or perhaps not so fortunately) I already had a doctor's appointment lined up for R later in the day. Both children were examined and officially declared unwell with high temperatures. Vindicated, K phoned his dad and said I TOLD YOU SO (or something to that effect) and received in exchange a recap of the story of the boy who cried wolf. 

K asleep in the play-house, where he spent much of the day...

So today was an at-home day, with K sleeping most of the time (in some rather odd places, too) and R feeling well enough to play Tumblin' Monkeys a thousand times but still not eating much and looking skinnier than ever. I made some blueberry pancakes just to try and get some food into her, and we sat outside with my mother-in-law L (who risked infection to come help me out) and had a little picnic while K slept inside.

More sunshine forecast for tomorrow! I hope the kids will be well enough to enjoy it.

Post script: They weren't. I dragged R out into the sun to make a little garden for her Peppa Pig toys to play in; she cried and demanded sunglasses and a jumper. After she had reluctantly assisted with construction and landscaping of the little garden she declined to play with it unless it came inside (it didn't). Well, I still think it looks sweet...

 

...and she'd bloody well better play with it tomorrow!

Give a bear enough rope...

A clear (but cold) day, a giant fluffy bear and a rope hanging from a tree. What could possibly be more fun? Coco the bear had a ball being swung wildly about while we waited outside for my mother-in-law to arrive for her weekly play with R (she was late, so the bear swinging went on... and on... and on...).
 
When I was little our garden was a magical place full of secret and private spaces: the bamboo forest, inside which an old, broken statue could be found; the shed down the back where Polly and I used to sit on the corrugated iron roof and eat little plums from the overhanging tree; the old, overgrown fishpond whose coloured tiles could still be made out when you pushed away the plants. My friends and I conducted strange rituals, burnt things, buried things, dug up bird skeletons and made fairy hats out of the tiny caps of acorns. In my memory everything was verdant, lush and wild. 

Our garden now is nothing like that wild play-space of my childhood home. It is ordered, neat. Trees and bushes are planted tidily around the edges of the lawn; the driveway is edged with native grasses; there are no secret thickets or overgrown jungles. It's not the way I would have landscaped it myself, but it's the way it came and it does have its own kind of beauty (plus the native plants are easy to care for). Still, I sometimes wish my children could experience the happiness I felt in my old garden and the amazing possibilities that suburban backyard offered me. Which is why it was so especially lovely today to see R playing joyously with the rope hanging off our one climbable tree in the front yard. 

I'm no gardener, but my plans for our outdoor areas are informed by my childhood love of the garden and its many pleasures. I want to plant fruit trees so K and R can feed themselves as they play outside; flowering plants, for their beauty and fragrance (and for collection in bowls and baskets). I hope my children will, in time, discover some secret and special corners of the garden and make them their own.

How NOT to make cress creatures, and other gardening disappointments

Well we learn from our mistakes, don't we. Turns out cress is nothing like grass - it doesn't grow in tiny little blades that can push through a stocking, but rather it grows in a curly way with the seed bit up on top of itself til the green leafy part of the cress pushes it off (not the greatest description, I know, but my botanical vocabulary is very limited!). It's obvious now, in the way things so often are in retrospect, that the best way to grow hairies using cress is with an open container such as an eggshell (like this) or a small yogurt container. 

But what I did instead was just to cut a section off the top of the stocking where the cress was trying to escape. Out sprang two heads of lovely, curly hair! Now, after just a week, the creatures are well and truly ready for a haircut.

Another gardening-related failure - the world's most disappointing beetroot crop, harvested today:

  

How sad - all that lovely soil and devoted watering (too much, perhaps?)  produced these pathetic things with NOT A SINGLE BEETROOT AMONG THEM. These were one of the few winter vegetables I planted. At least the snowpeas have had the decency to provide us with something edible:

And the mixed lettuces have been fantastic, if a little slow growing.

A couple of cos lettuces have endured since summer and are looking deliciously green and crunchy:

I'm so looking forward to springtime when we can plant tomatoes, basil and other wonderful things.

How to make cress creatures

This afternoon I repotted one of M's chilli plants and had just started weeding the stony path in the back yard when a downpour sadly put an end to my gardening efforts. But I still felt like doing something gardening-related so I rounded up the kids and we made some 'hairy harries', aka grass heads - except we used cress seeds, so I'm calling them cress creatures. Years ago we went to a really cool birthday party where making grass heads was one of the activities, and K has fond memories of giving his 'hairy' inventive haircuts.

I had a look at this tutorial before getting started. Cress will give the hair a different look from those pictured in the tutorial, but hopefully the kids will enjoy eating the offcuts. Although K is a ridiculously fussy eater he is generally happy to try green leafy things and often picks random sprigs of herbs from the garden to eat.

These are so easy to make. All you need is some stockings/pantihose, grass or cress seeds, some soil/potting mix, glue and some things to decorate with (we used googly eyes and mouths cut out of felt). I stretched each child's stocking over a cup to make it easier for them to fill, then had them spoon a couple of spoonfuls of cress seeds into the toe. 

Then we filled the stockings with potting mix up to the top of the cup and pressed it in firmly. 

I took the stockings out and made sure the soil was shaped into a nice oval 'head', then tied a knot in each one leaving about 10cm of stocking hanging down (later this acts as a wick to draw water up into the soil). Then came the fun part - decorating. We used white craft glue, which is not waterproof and will probably lead to bits dropping off the heads later. I imagine the glue gun might be more effective but it was a spur-of-the-moment activity and I couldn't be bothered to get it out. I'll see how the craft glue goes and maybe be less lazy next time! Note: see my update before proceeding!

Lastly, I gave the heads a soak to get them started (keeping the decorated bits out of the water) and put each one in a glass of water. I recommend making the heads a little bigger than we did - cricket-ball size would be good - because it was hard to find glasses small enough for them to sit nicely on top of. These little folk just need a nice sunny windowsill to live on and they will soon - we hope - be sprouting lovely locks of edible hair.