Picking violets always reminds me of Mum. In fact, the feelings I have for some of my favourite flowers and plants, e.g., freesias, sweet peas, roses, jonquils, pinks (Dianthus caryophyllus), pansies, pineapple sage, spearmint, fragrant rhododendrons (‘Fragrantissimum’, and luteum), and the flowering cherry, ‘Mount Fuji’ (Prunus serrulata ‘Shirotae’), can be traced back to the flowers, shrubs and trees we had in our home garden in Upper Hutt. It was Mum who would show me the flowers and talk about them, and one of my earliest memories is of sitting beside her on a hot day, on the lawn beneath the kitchen window. She was weeding the pinks that grew in a border along the edge of the house and encouraged me to lean down low and smell the cute bi-colour flowers. Their fragrance–sweet‑smelling and musky, somewhat similar to the taste of smokers, still transports me back to that day, and to the feelings of security associated with being there with Mum. Of all the flowers I love, I don’t remember sweet peas growing at home, but when we visited Grandma and Grandad in Kilbirnie, Wellington, Mum always pointed them out to me, growing in a brilliant and heady tangle along the fence alongside their gravel driveway.
Two of the roses from my childhood were ‘Crimson Glory’ and ‘Peace’ and I liked them because Mum liked them. There was also a pink standard and a couple of floribunda varieties. A few years before she died, Mum gave me her crystal rose bowl, and I treasure it. Roses don’t seem to grow as well up here in South Head–I’m sure that the summers are too hot and humid, but it gives me a great deal of pleasure to use that vase and I always think of Mum when it’s there, displaying my roses.
Freshly picked sweet violets (Viola odorata)
Anyway, back to the violets. When I was gathering these somewhat scruffy looking violets earlier today, and when I held them to my nose to inhale their sweet scent, I thought of Mum and the way she’d always ask me to pick some for her when I was tiny. I remember it being an important and difficult task, requiring special attention to part the leaves and look for the flowers, taking care to snap the stalks off as close to the base of the plants as possible. Mum would always put my bunches into a small vase, and place them on the kitchen windowsill, just as I’ve done today. You could smell them when you were working at the bench.
The smell of violets is distinctive. Evoking memories of old ladies’ perfume, and also bringing to mind childhood riverside explorations beside the Hutt River. This river has now been given back its original and much more appropriate name, ‘Te Awa-kairangi’, which means, ‘precious river meandering through the valley’, but I grew up only knowing the unoriginal Pākēkā name.
Te Awa-Kairangi runs close to where I lived as a child, the house situated in a group of streets in a brand new 1950s subdivision named after English poets, and therefore known as ‘Poet’s Block’. In the late 60s and early 70s, I came to know the nearby section of river, intimately. I wasn’t allowed to go there alone until after the stop bank was built, but I had a neighbourhood friend, Sue, and she and I could just walk to the end of our street and squeeze between the wires of a fence, then scamper to the river along a well-trodden path running along the edge of a horse paddock. In winter, the track would be boggy with long wet swathes of grass so we’d have to wear our gumboots, but in summer, the meadow grass would be tall and we’d be surrounded by the sounds of cicadas and crickets, and the grasses would be alive with small blue butterflies (Zizina otis ssp. Labradus).
In the place I especially liked to explore, there were the crumbling foundations of an old stone house with an overgrown garden, and that’s where my memories took me to today. One day I’d discovered a sheltered dell with a huge patch of violets–it was almost completely hidden by a ring of flowering plum trees. After that, I’d always go there from May/June onwards, to find the first violets. I especially liked the way the small flowers lay hidden under the green leaves, and the fact that you had to search for them.
To me, plants with fragrant flowers are the most precious of all, and yet these days I often overlook my shy violets. I may glance down and see a flash of amethyst beneath the leaves, but I don’t always take the time to stop and gather a few.
I’m glad I did this today.
Whakatikei River
Bare toes on wet rocks
Light reflects in amber pools
Dragonflies hover
Spring is in the air and bursting up through the soil
A kotare sits on the washing line (Sacred Kingfisher, Todiramphus sanctus)
In the past two weeks the weather has finally turned. It rarely gets very cold in Te Korowai-o-Te-Tonga. For example, we never experience anything close to a frost, but in August and September, after enjoying a number of mild days, we were frequently knocked out of our reverie by a harsh wind change, or days of heavy rain. In fact, there was so little sun from June to September, that I was beginning to feel despondent and to wonder if I’d ever be able to weed my precious flower garden. And yes, we’ve had a spell of rainy weather again, but now when the sun escapes from behind the clouds, it’s hot.
Garden Musings
Tomato and flower seedlings, raised indoors.
This spring I’ve repeated my experiment from last year. To give my vegetables and flowers a head start, I’ve sown the seeds in trays indoors (to be specific, on a table in our living room) using seed-raising mix.One of the zucchini plants about a week ago, and yesterday’s small harvest
This has proved to be very successful, to the extent that our new season’s plants (now planted out) are almost at the point of providing us with vegetables—in fact, we picked our first small zucchinis (Zucchini ‘Costata Romanesco‘) only yesterday; babies, I know, but the plants are bursting with flower buds and fruit.
In the left photo, the lettuces have run amok. In the right, garlic in the foreground and Egyptian Walking Onions in close pursuit.
We’ve had lettuces all through winter and there’s a another crop on its way, thanks to a new scattering of seeds. And as per usual practice, we replanted our regular Egyptian Walking onions (Allium proliferum). They are such an amazing onion. Reliable and useful, and I think they look very attractive with their topknots of little bulbils. Along with the garlic, we managed to get these onions into the soil not too long after the shortest day and they are doing really well.
Sweet Onions
The patch of Sweet Spanish Onion seedlings. On the left, most are still struggling amongst the weeds, badly in need of thinning.
And on the topic of onions, when I was in Asahikawa earlier this year, I was fortunate to be invited to a couple of Japanese-style barbecues. One of the vegetables I especially enjoyed was the sweet white onion, sliced thickly and cooked over charcoal. I’d never tried a sweet onion before – I have no idea why, as they are delicious! I was glad to discover that Kings Seeds have two varieties, so I raised a few seeds inside to get them started early, and then sowed seeds outside as well. Many more germinated than I expected, and I’m sure it’s long past the time when I should have separated them all, but it’s a slow task and I’ve only moved a few. I’m hoping for a day next week that’s fine but not too sunny, and I’ll try to get the rest of them sorted out.
In the foreground, the lush, netted row of Spinach ‘Winter Giant’. Behind, is a densely-sprouted row of Beetroot ‘Detroit Dark Red’.
The heirloom Spinach ‘Winter Giant‘ seedlings I raised from seed indoors have literally ‘taken off’. Last year I tried out this amazing variety for the first time and was incredibly impressed. Each plant produced a huge head of strong leaves, and yet it was so green, so tender, when steamed. This year we’ve had to protect the plants with netting as the blackbirds also think they’re pretty yummy. We’ve been eating thinnings from our row of Beetroot ‘Detroit Dark Red‘ in our salads, and hidden between the rows of beetroot and spinach is an equally-dense row of the carrot ‘Kuroda Improved‘.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes ‘Black Krim’ are growing well. The first photo was taken on the 15th, and the second on the 29th October. Excellent growth in two weeks.
I’ve raised so many tomato seedlings this year. Most of them the heirloom tomato, ‘Black Krim’, which I have to admit is my favourite tomato. This year I’ve also raised the cherry tomato, Tomato ‘Sugar Plum’, as I wasn’t happy with the variety I grew last year. After battling huge unruly tomato plants over many seasons, we’ve decided that Waratah standard fence posts are the best garden stakes. They are easy to drive into the ground, they never move, they never break and are so strong. Black Krim tomato plants can grow really huge, with many heavy fruit dragging down their stalks. You need something sturdy to avoid catastrophes.
Root Ginger
Left: Ginger roots; Centre: Prepared ginger prior to simmering in sugar syrup; Right: Cooked ginger being coated with sugar.
I finally got around to using the ginger roots I’d dug up a few months ago. I’d been storing them in the fridge until now, and they’d kept well. I chose three roots to plant back into the garden and cleaned up the others. It’s a pretty straight-forward task to crystallise ginger. You clean it up, slice it, boil it for about 30 minutes in a little water and a pinch of salt, then drain and simmer it again with sugar and some of the original water. After this you let it dry off for a couple of hours, then toss it in sugar as a coating.
Home-crystallised ginger is far superior to anything you would buy packaged in a supermarket. And there are a couple of useful byproducts. (1) ginger syrup – you can guess what that’s good for, and (2) you can also consume the water that the ginger was originally simmered in. Ginger, of course, has many health-enhancing properties.
The Birds and the Bees
A fine looking Kotare sunning itself on the washing line. On the right, our attempts to deter the birds from perching there. I hasn’t worked!
This Spring we’ve had terrible problems with Kotare flying into one of our bedroom windows. There’s been a pair that likes to sit on the washing line. And when they fly off, they see the trees reflected in the window and fly in a bee-line for it. Bang! So far this year we haven’t had any birds that have knocked themselves out, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time. The photo above shows that we’ve tied some cloths to the line, hoping that the flapping (when it’s windy) will deter the birds, but that hasn’t really worked. We’ve also put masking tape across the window, and so far, this seems to have helped. Fingers crossed.
A cleverly constructed nest, squeezed into a gap in the timber.
A pair of Warou, or Welcome Swallows ((Hirundo neoxena), have once again built a nest in the barn – this time it’s the new barn. The photo shows the second nest they built. For some reason they didn’t lay any eggs in the first one, but we peeped into this one with a camera a couple of weeks back and saw four eggs. We don’t wish to go too close now, as the parent birds are sitting, and they get annoyed if we hang around. Sometimes you can see an adult head peeping out from above the nest.
Checking the hives for AFB. On the right, our lovely Carniolan queen is circled.
We recently removed the varroa strips from our two hives and I also took the opportunity to check for AFB (American Foul Brood). This involves shaking the bees off all the brood frames, and scrutinising the brood cells. The bees looked healthy and we spotted the lovely Carniolan queen in Hive 01. They’ll be glad to have the honey boxes on top now, as there are many trees and plants in flower at the moment. We were disturbed to discover a herd of tiger slugs slithering up one of the inner walls of hive 03. And Hive 01 looked particularly damp on one edge and had an extended family of woodlice that we had to brush out.
Flower Garden
A view of the fence surrounding our vegetable garden.
The flower garden is still going strong, but has been somewhat neglected. Mostly because of the inclement weather in winter which meant I couldn’t get out to knock back the weeds in the way I’d liked to have. There are many plants in flower as I write, but most are from last year, or are Aquilegia, Dianthus, Lavenders, Viola, etc., that have self-sown.
I removed all the lovely dahlias we grew from seed a year ago, and have only recently replanted the tubers around the place. This year I grew a different dahlia from seed, and I’m really looking forward to see what colours I end up with. Growing flowers from seed, in particular, is very rewarding, I think. Especially the varieties that could be anything from a range of colours.
The exquisite Amaryllis, ‘Apple Blossom’.
Finally, I have to include a photo of our Amaryllis ‘Apple Blossom’. This plant is so beautiful. And she’s tall as well, nearly up to my waist, definitely up to my hips.
Happy Gardening!
“In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.” (Mark Twain)
Entry to the vegetable garden is through the hidden gate in the stick fence.
Time has scooted by. I last wrote in June and since then, South Head has experienced days, weeks and months of disappointing weather. Strong winds that have swept branches off trees. Downpours so heavy that gutters have overflowed, whole sections of the garden borders have been submerged, and fragile seedlings have been battered. We’ve had numerous power cuts and the gravel road outside our property has been chewed up by logging and stock trucks, or on the rainless days (I hesitate to use the word ‘sunny’), clouds of dust have drifted onto the solar panels, propelled by any car that takes the slope down past our place a little too fast.
While I can’t do anything about the vehicles going past, November is in the air, and perhaps the weather will finally settle.
The garden, overall
The easterly gales of the past few days have done their dash, allowing the sun to finally slip out from under her korowai of clouds. After lunch today, the temperature climbed from 17 to 24 in the space of 30 minutes. I was intending to study, but instead of once again putting blogging on the back burner, I chose instead to defer my study . 🙂
Spring blossom: Feijoa between apple
Of course the gardens don’t care about the miserable weather, they’ve just carried on doing their stuff. In fact everything is horrifically lush, and it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the weeds and the lawn mowing. Nothing holds the natural world back; last time I posted we were still collecting feijoa and now they’re back in bloom for the next season of fruit.
Two seasons’ avocados.
It’s the same with the avocados. We’re still harvesting the crop from last year’s flowering, while alongside them on the tree, the new baby fruit are starting to set. I guess this at least shows we had some windless days. It’s difficult for bees to pollinate flowers when its blowing a gale.
More blossom: Cherry, lime & pear.
Fruiting cherries don’t do so well this far north, they like a hard frost, but our two struggling trees still manage to produce some blossom. The same can’t be said for limes. The two lime trees are smothered with flowers, despite being afflicted badly by citrus borer. And there’s nothing nicer than seeing the first plump buds on the pear tree.
This year I was determined to raise all our flowers and vegetables from seed. I’ve had some disappointments – baby plants being dug up by blackbirds, or chewed by beetles, slugs and snails. Some have failed to germinate, but I haven’t give up. Some I clearly put out too early, even though we don’t experience frosts this far north. My earliest gherkins, zucchinis and squashes just sat in the ground looking sorry for themselves before finally curling up and dying. But, I’ve had many more successes than disappointments.
Things we can eat
Broad beans
Broad beans – towering in the garden, and puréed.
The broad bean plants were only a few centimetres tall in June, but now we’re consuming their crop. I like to nuke the beans into a paste with a little butter and miso. The plants themselves have grown far taller than we expected. The seed packet suggested staking them at one metre, but they’ve kept on growing, and now reach to over two metres. Every time a wind has howled in from a new direction, we’ve had to scurry outside to re-tie them.
Tomatoes
Some of our 25 tomato plants. To the left is our first ‘baby’ bloody butcher.
Our tomatoes are many. I think I counted 25 out there. The three varieties I chose to sow this year are Black Krim (a delicious heirloom variety), Bloody Butcher (a good all-rounder) and the cherry tomato, Indigo Blue Berries. The first fruits are forming and I can’t wait to have fresh outdoor tomatoes again. Proper tomatoes. Through most of winter I’ve resisted buying store tomatoes as they just aren’t the same. Tomatoes are just about my favourite plant to grow. They’re so easy, and so versatile, and after having lived in Dunedin for 25 years, I still haven’t quite gotten used to growing them outdoors.
Garlic and Egyptian walking onions
The garlic and onions are going well. This was one of the patches we completely covered during winter.
It was April when we put down the groundcover on a complete length of the vegetable garden. This activity certainly paid off and the patch is now home for garlic, onions, lettuces and tomatoes. We’ve mulched them with compost a couple of times already, but it’s already difficult to see where it was. Compost mulches will be critical as the days grow warmer. They protect and feed the plants, and keep the moisture down in the soil when the summer sun is doing its best to evaporate it off.
Grapes
Grape, Albany Surprise
This grapevine has been slow to get established, unlike the white variety that grows rampantly on the northern side of the barn. The grape is Albany Surprise and in my opinion is far superior to the white grape, due to the sweet and spicy flavour of its juicy bunches. The vine is looking really good this year, with numerous clusters of fruit.
Gardens new and gardens relocated
The new melon bed, with our first seedlings, a dozen rock melon plants.
Ben has dug me a brand new garden – a bed for melons. We’ve tried to grow these before and we just put the plants in the back paddock and left them, assuming they’d survive. Well, they didn’t. Or actually, they did, but I think all they produced was a couple of tiny, tiny fruit. This year we have a dedicated bed filled with compost and in sunlight for most of the day. I’ve raised seedlings of rock and watermelon, and am hoping for the best!
The bed is in the middle of the lawn close to the house so we can easily keep an eye on it, but already the sparrows have been in and have tossed the compost around. Fingers crossed the plants will get their roots going and dig in before they, too, are evicted. Only the rock melons are planted for now; I need twice as much space to fit the watermelons in as well.
Strawberries
The strawberries stand a better chance of producing a crop, away from the vegetable garden.
Another task we achieved since June was to dig up our congested bed of strawberries. We selected a few strong plants, and replanted them beneath the lemon verbena. We’re hoping that they’ll do better there, especially with the netting cover. Usually our strawberries get picked to pieces by the blackbirds who nest in the trees near the vegetable garden.
Beehive update
The olive trees are covered in flowers. Bees collect pollen and nectar.
One of our three hives failed over winter. We lost the queen, and think that she most likely died of natural causes; she was never a strong queen. We weren’t completely surprised, as even before we confirmed the loss, the hive had very little brood. So we cleaned up the hive and surrounding area and last weekend added the honey boxes to the brood boxes.
The two remaining hives are buzzing! And on days like this the bees are out and about collecting pollen and nectar. There are so many plants in flower this time of year that there’s nothing to hold them back. Standing beneath one of the olive trees, earlier today, all I could hear was the satisfying hum of the bees.
Plants of the flowering kind
We cleared out the garden by the pathway using our own compost. Lettuces are sprouting everywhere amongst the dahlias and poppies.
My new project has been to clean up and tidy the strip of garden alongside the pathway in front of our kitchen window. It has always been a problem due to a nasty weed (a bulb) that I haven’t been able to eliminate. I’ve been trying for years.
Ben became so fed up at the hours I’ve spent in this small area, that he suggested digging out and removing all of the soil, and replacing it with compost and new soil. It was the best thing we could have done.
I love this new garden and even though it’s still early days and there’s not much flowering there yet, I can see it from the kitchen window and it always cheers me up. An amusing extra is that the compost was filled with seeds from the vegetable garden. Lettuces, dill, coriander, even a couple of tomatoes have sprouted. I doubt that the dill can stay there for long, but I might leave a couple.
I’ve planted the majority of my basil seedlings there, as well as pinks, dahlia, zinnias, poppies, bellis, and viola, so it will be a cottage-cum-kitchen garden. I’m looking forward to posting some photos once the seedlings begin to mature.
A trio of flowers: Bird of paradise, aquilegia and Emma’s rose.
Despite the shambles in my various flower beds, it’s still lovely to see the spring flowers. Every flower gives me a good feeling.
California poppy, Thai Silk Mixed
Whether it’s the poppies I’ve raised from seed, or the blossom on the fruit trees. Each flower is a promise of something… a pure splash of colour, a beautiful aroma, or a juicy piece of fruit.
Native Garden
Our small ‘native garden’ is lush with ferns.
I thought I should mention our small native garden. This is situated in an area that was just weeds and junk when we first bought the property. It’s got to the stage now that trees self-sow, and our original specimens are reaching up to the sky.
Not bad for less than ten years of growth!
Garden reality and reminiscing
View of the garden looking north-west. Kumara mounds in the foreground.
The garden is still untidy and there’s always more to be done. Sometimes it feels that for every step forward, there are two steps backwards. Once the weather begins to warm, which it’s doing now, everything just takes off.
This time last year I was staying at Mt Maunganui with Dad, and regularly visiting Mum in the rest home. While I was there, I was yearning for my garden, so I can’t complain about the work now.
My love of gardening and of having a garden began when I was a small child. In the early years Dad kept a vegetable garden, and we had fruit trees. From Mum I picked up a love of the beauty of flowers and trees. I regret that Dad never made it back to my garden. I’d always imagined a time when he would see out his last few years here, pottering around doing the outside things he liked to do.
On a garden rake
Dad tows me between the rows.
Moist earth, a bird cries.
It’s been windy over the past week or two, with several drenchings of heavy rain. Each morning I wake up to the sound of the noisy sparrows in the totara outside my window, and try to guess what the weather is like outside. I part the curtains and see the early morning trees dark against the bedroom window, the thin first rays of light filtering through. I get up and start thinking about what I have planned for the day.
Despite the inclement and changeable weather, when the sun does appear, it’s unseasonably warm, often reaching 20 or 21 C. And once the clouds peel back, the washed-out blue of an early winter sky reveals the bright sun, scattering a saffron veil over the fields of maize husks, and polishing the freshly-mowed lawns to a luminous lime green.
Gingko tree with leaves turning.
Last week’s persistent Nor ‘westerly has gone. Such a wind buffets the house, rattling the windows and clattering seed pods and dried leaves onto the corrugated iron roof. It shakes the Gingko by the front gate, causing it to shed its yellow leaves in a spectacular manner; they rise up into the air on a puff of wind, only to be tossed over the wire fence and onto the gravel road beyond.
It’s definitely been time to get the wood burner cranked up and we’re really appreciating the work done over Summer to cut and stack firewood and kindling. Getting the fire to the best temperature can be a challenge… too hot and we have to start peeling off clothing items. This somewhat defeats the purpose.
June! It’s hard to believe that we’re so far through the year. Sometimes I wish that we had the occasional frost, but everything just keeps on growing up here in the ‘winterless north’.
The Garden
Growth in the ‘vegetable’ garden (or should I say, ‘weed’ birthing unit) has slowed down quite a bit. Of course this is normal with the shorter days and cooler evening temperatures. The recent rain has left the soil too wet to work – thank goodness we are on a hill and it will quickly drain away.
Vegetables
The carrots and slow-bolting coriander sowed towards the end of April, have sprouted. But the same cannot be said for the golden turnips. These members of the Brassica family usually pop up through the soil within a week, but alas, there’s no sign of them. It really perturbs me when this happens to fresh seeds… when not even one germinates. Why would that be? Is there a creature in the soil that really loves turnip seeds and has munched them all up?
Left: Detail showing aphids on the broad beans; Right: Broad bean seedlings in a range of sizes.
The additional broad beans I added to the row alongside the three baby plants have also struck well. This is something I’m really pleased about as there’s nothing nicer than a velvety broad bean puree, blended with a little butter and generously seasoned with freshly-ground black pepper and sea salt. I also love the look of the mature plants with their pretty white flowers with their black ‘eyes’, and the way they attract bumble bees. I noticed clumps of aphids on the tender leaf buds… was happy to wash them off with a stream of water.
Fruit
A bowl of Feijoas, recently collected.
I’ve been surprised at the size of the feijoas I’ve seen for sale in the supermarkets. They’re so small!! Ours are almost finished, but there are still a handful falling heavily onto the grass each day. And while we do have small ones, our larger ones weigh about 100 grams and most of our fruit weigh over 70 grams. Our two feijoa trees are so deceptive – in March we peered up into the branches and we really thought that this year was going to be a ‘rest’ year. I guess the fruit were hiding amongst the leaves.
The two avocado trees. Fuerte on the left, and Hass on the right.
It’s always rewarding for someone who didn’t even see an avocado until around age 19, to see them fattening up on the trees outside. I was introduced to this luscious fruit by Tina, the mother of my Chilean friend, Ceci. Tina spread some avocado flesh on a slice of toast for me to try. I really didn’t like that first taste – it seemed too bland, and the texture was unusual. I was living in Wellington at the time, and later moved to Dunedin where I resided for the next 25 years, and you certainly don’t see avocado growing outside that far south!
Our two avocado trees are the reason we started with our bees. We had a couple of years of many flowers and no pollinators. Fortunately (thanks to the bees) don’t have that problem now, and while our trees don’t have as many fruit as last year, this a good thing, as the trees are still young.
Left to right: Mandarin, Tahitian Lime and orange ‘Navelina Flame’.
The fruit on our citrus trees is also ripening well. Ripe limes have been falling, and the first mandarins are definitely ready – I’ve eaten a few. The juvenile navel orange has a handful of fruit, finally. Can’t wait to taste those!
Fig ‘Mrs Williams’, resting after a productive season.
Some of the fruit trees are taking a well-deserved rest. For example, our fig tree; it looks like a sun-bleached skeleton amongst all the greenery. It’s hard to believe it was so productive last season, with its plump pink-fleshed fruit. Or that this tree was driven over in reverse by Ben on the ride-on mower when it was a mere toddler. It’s so tall now that we’ll be challenged when it comes time to protect the new fruit in Spring/Summer.
Flowers
Because I was away for most of last year, and for part of this year, the flower garden is in a bad state. The annual weeds have formed a dense carpet on the bare soil, and the perennials are well-established, BUT, even so, I’ve found some bright and cheerful offerings amongst the jungle.
Bromeliad circle – always colourful
Ben’s Bromeliad circle brightens up the entrance as you come through the gate. He’s planted them on the stump of a Redwood that used to grow adjacent to the driveway.
Hibiscus rosa-sinensis ‘Erin Rachel’
And in the corner of the garden that we are letting revert back to native plants, a hibiscus that I’d forgotten about completely, has produced a couple of flowers. We recently cleared away a lot of dead branches and that most annoying noxious weed, ivy, and the increase in light must have been beneficial for this beautiful flower.
Still harvesting the chilis. In amongst the Habanero is a solitary Bhut Jolokia.
Winter Thoughts
The garden is mostly at rest, but the signs of new life are everywhere. I have the feeling that I’ll have to get a wriggle on and get things organised… so much to do, so little time. For starters, the shortest day is traditionally the time to plant garlic, so I’ll have to get those beds ready. There are perennial flowers that really should be dug up and divided. The roses need pruning. And what about writing, when on earth am I going to get on to that?
Dad’s in care, living out his last few weeks, day by day, hour by hour. My focus on gardening is (I’m sure) the way I’m managing the range of thoughts that go through my mind. Dad has always loved the land and growing things. In fact, one of my early memories is of standing on the end of the rake while Dad earthed up the potatoes in the vegetable garden. I remember sun, and the complex smell of the warm soil, that it was fun and I felt happy.
I wrote this on Sunday as I lay in bed, trying not to think about the huge thing that wants to be thought about…
Chasing Sleep
Tonight I feel sad. Dad’s by himself. Tossing and turning even in his dreams under thin covers on a plastic-sheeted bed. His body leaks fluids and his brow is hot. Alone, and maybe lonely. I wonder if he thinks he’s in a hell of some kind.
Mum’s gone on ahead and us kids are in our own beds tonight.
I’m by myself, too, but this time there’s no chance that Dad will come home after dark having walked from Wallaceville Station, to quietly push my bedroom door open, his silhouette shaped by the hall light, to sit on the edge of my bed and wish me goodnight.
Monday of Anzac Weekend is drawing to a close. A three-day weekend, based around April 25th, Anzac commemorates the New Zealand and Australian forces ‘who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations’. The first Anzac Day commemorated the Aussies and Kiwis who served in the Gallipoli Campaign in World War I.
The weather has been the best kind of Autumn weather – sunny and calm – the perfect weather for garden and hive work. Because I was away from home for such a long time last year, our vegetable garden has fallen into an abysmal state. Weeds, weeds and more weeds. I was beginning to despair about what to do, where to start.
The garden plot prior to putting down the weed mat.
Vegetable garden
Last Wednesday I heard a very informative and interesting podcast on RNZ, “The Abundant Garden, Niva and Yotam Kay“, which inspired us to purchase a large piece of weed mat, the aim being to suppress and kill the weeds on a designated section of our vegetable garden. If we leave this in place for an appropriate period of time, all the nasty weeds underneath should, in theory, have died. Goodbye to Convolvulus arvensis and Kikuyu grass, as well as to a myriad of annual weeds.
The plot after stapling down the weed mat.
It’ll be interesting to see what’s underneath (hopefully nothing) when we lift the mat in a few weeks. For now it’s an instant tidy-up of a large section of the garden. I like it very much!
My straggly Ginger (Zingiber officinale) prior to digging up. Asparagus in the background.
I also had to dig up some Ginger rhizomes. I planted these a couple of years ago, maybe more, and have done nothing more than weed around them, and apply the occasional bucket of compost. Recently, I researched on what you’re supposed to do with these plants and discovered that I should lift them, clean them up, keep some for using in the kitchen, and hold some of the new rhizomes back to plant for the next season. Because they’ve been almost completely neglected, the rhizomes are very small, but I feel optimistic that i can do better next season.
My somewhat feeble ginger crop. Definitely going to do better next season!
The other minor task I achieved was to clear a small bed and sow three rows of seeds. This patch was a jungle of weeds, mostly Fumitory, Oxalis and Fat Hen. Buried beneath were some sad-looking dwarf butter beans with dried pods. The soil was in really good nick – evidence of the amount of compost we’d applied back when the beans were producing. I cleared it all and sowed slow-bolting Coriander, Golden Turnip and Carrots. I’d had the seeds sitting around since last season so will be curious to see if they’re still viable.
My newly sown plot.
Habanero chili
Thank goodness we planted a few Habanero plants in Spring!
Preparing Habanero chilis for drying.
April seems to be the most favourable month in South Head/Te Korowai o Te Tonga for harvesting chili. Habanero are our all-time favourite peppers; they are satisfyingly hot, but also have a delicate, floral flavour. Each year I grow as many as I can and either dry them for adding to just about every dish (even my lunch-time rolled oats), or freeze to make Bob’s Habanero Hot Sauce, a recipe I discovered a few years ago, and a family favourite.
The dried Habanero chili product.
Last Winter we ran out of dried chili and it was a very sorry state of affairs. Nothing I can buy from a store is even remotely as good as our own dried chili powder.
Honey bees
Ben holding a healthy brood frame.
As well as garden work, I needed to check our three beehives for American foulbrood disease (AFB), prior to Winter. This is a regular task for which I have undergone training and refresher courses.
The complete eradication of AFB is the aim of the NZ honey industry. Fortunately our hives are clean, but if I’d found AFB in any of them – even in just one frame of one hive, I’d have been legally required to destroy all three hives. Every last bit of them. Hives, bees, frames, the lot!
Hive A’s Italian queen can clearly be seen in the top left of the photo.,
The bees are looking good for heading into Winter, with plentiful supplies of honey and pollen. We even sighted the queen bee in our first hive – a beautiful Italian lady.
Musings
The weekend has ended with some tasks completed but many still written up as ‘To Do’ on our kitchen whiteboard. I do feel satisfied that we’ve completed some of the long-overdue activities, but there are so many more. I often feel that my gardening practices are ‘all over the place’. That I dart from one job to another and never quite complete anything.
I guess the secret is to enjoy the task at hand – the process of preparing the chili, or checking the bee frames, of sifting the soil or picking out the tiny Oxalis bulbs – and not to worry about what I cannot complete on any given day. Tomorrow is a new day. I’ll have plans for what I wish to achieve, but something will come up and I’ll go off on another tangent. But perhaps this is okay.
A very special rose. This gift from a friend holds the memory of someone taken much too soon.
Record rainfall followed by hot sun
After a late summer of seemingly endless blue skies, South Head received an unseasonal 124 mls of rain between 08 and 14 March. On the first soggy day we were grateful as the water tank was getting low, but by the end of the second day the novelty had worn off. The rain followed by sun has turned the vegetable garden into a jungle through which I can barely navigate.
A carpet of green
A tangle of kūmara, melon and squash.
In early November, we planted three rows of kūmara tupu. ‘Tupu’ are the rooted shoots that grow on a kūmara tuber. The vines are very vigorous and are spreading all over the garden. I’m very excited about this. We’ve had mixed success with potatoes and I’d much prefer to grow kūmara if possible. We’ll have to wait until the leaves start to die down before seeing what’s hidden in the soil. This could be any time from the end of March onward and looking at our plants I suspect it’ll be more like April.
After harvest (assuming there is actually something growing underneath all those leaves) we’ll set the best aside to start a new crop next October.
Left to right: Basil jostling with carrots; okra; rhubarb; kale and silver beet (chard, to those of you from the northern hemisphere).
Our one surviving rhubarb plant is gigantic. The stalks are fat and juicy and despite baking them into Rhubarb Tarte Tartin and adding them to cereals and desserts, many will go to waste. We also have more than we can eat of basil and silver beet, and I’m curious to see how the okra turns out. Growing okra is another ‘first’ for me, and in my ignorance, I allowed some pods to grow too long, so have cut them all off and am hoping that more will be produced before it gets cooler.
Left to right: Limes; habanero peppers; ‘Big Chief Butternut’ squash; bell peppers.
Continuing with the green theme, it looks like we’ll beat our record for limes as both trees are very well-endowed this year and also have a decent crop of new flowers. My favourite chile pepper, Habanero, is looking very fine, with each of the plants laden with flowers and young fruit. I also sowed a handful of seeds for a different squash, ‘Big Chief Butternut’, which apparently grows to 2 – 3 kg. And it is HUGE. And the capsicum (bell pepper) plants have become so large that we’ve had to support them with sturdy wooden stakes.
Zucchinis and tomatoes
This summer we’ve had the heaviest crop of both zucchinis and tomatoes since living at South Head, with green beans, coming a close third.
Left to right: Pretty Cleome spinosa (Spider flower); a tomato fruitworm tucking into a green tomato; the disturbing sight of a grub inside a tomato; same grub after removal.
Scattered around the vegetable garden are self-sown Cleome. I planted a half dozen a few years back to attract green vegetable bugs and the Tomato Fruitworm, Helicoverpa armigera ssp. conferta. The Cleome attract both insects really well, but there haven’t been so many green vegetable bugs this year, and I’ve been picking off the damaged tomatoes when I come across them. The hens like drawing the fat green caterpillars out. I must admit that when I overlook one, and the tomato goes rotten from the inside, I can’t bear to look at them, let alone touch them. All that ‘goopy’ decay turns my stomach.
I’ve been freezing tomatoes in 400 gram packs for use over winter; the neat thing about outside-grown tomatoes is that they are easy to peel, which saves time later. And I’ve also bottled a batch of tomato sauce. I’ve used the zucchini for pickles and we’re eating them every other day. My favourite recipe is to slice them thickly before sautéing them with mashed garlic in a little olive oil. At the last moment, to throw in a few sage leaves. Because the Costasta romanesco variety of zucchini isn’t at all watery, the sage leaves quickly go crispy and add a delicious flavour.
And still there’s more…
There are some vegetables I haven’t really bothered with… lettuces, for example. We rarely get around to eating them and while I do have a row growing and gradually aging right now, there are several earlier plants that I’ve let go to seed; the fuzzy down drifts around the garden with the slightest breeze. Lettuces are unlikely to become a problem if they sprout everywhere… I allowed a golden turnip plant to go to seed in Spring and we now have them growing in a couple of the pathways. There are only single rows of beetroot, carrots, parsnips, golden turnip and rocket – not that you’d ever need any more than one row of rocket!
Left to right: Asparagus still sending up shoots; zucchini Costasta romanesco; parsley; bulb fennel.
Grapes and honey bees
Yet another amazingly productive crop we’ve had this season is grapes. The vine stretches along the sun-drenched, north-facing wall of the barn and I’ve never seen as many. We can’t keep up with eating them, so they are all beginning to split and ferment on the vine.
Honey bees (Apis mellifera) gorging on the over-ripe grapes
Grapes are particularly attractive to honey bees – more so in the morning, and in the evenings I’ve seen the German wasp, Vespula germanica hovering around, so I’m hoping to observe them at dusk at the end of one of the fine Autumn days we have ahead of us, to see if we can ascertain the location of their nest.
The picked grapes are sweet and juicy.
Northern Japan in springtime
In about a week’s time I’m heading to Asahikawa in the north of Hokkaido for about five weeks. The contrast in weather will be a shock, I’m sure – going from the mid 20s to low 30s Celsius to close to 0 degrees (at least, for the first week or so), but I’m very much looking forward to my very first visit to Japan and am planning on writing about my impressions while I’m there. Because I won’t have the distraction of the garden, I should have much more time to write, which will be something I’m really looking forward to.
The maize along the fenceline is ready for harvest. It’s a visual reminder that summer is over. The days are slow to lighten and early to darken, and the grass is thick with dew when I make my way to the barn in the early morning. The gravel road is dry and whenever a large truck rattles by, great dusty clouds drift across to settle on our solar panels.
It’s been several weeks since I’ve written about South Head. Or about anything, for that matter. It’s been difficult to knuckle down to writing after taking time off over the Christmas/New Year period.
While it’s been a very long and hot summer, we’ve also had a decent amount of rain, which of course has meant that everything has just kept on growing. We’ve created enough gardens here to keep us busy every daytime hour, and for the first time I’ve been wondering if it’s too much. What with the dead-heading, the trimming, the watering, the sowing, the harvesting… not to mention the tying, the squashing (caterpillars), the sampling, the digging and the weeding, always the weeding. (It’s making me exhausted all over again, writing about it.)
Kumeu A & P Show: curious alpaca & disinterested rooster
So… we’ve mostly been home over the weekends slaving away in an attempt to keep everything under control, with a couple of diversionary breaks visiting the local A & P Shows – I like to check out the poultry while Ben looks longingly at the tractors. 🙂
Bounty from the Garden
A selection of home preserves, from left to right: Beetroot; ‘Look Alike’ Lemon Curd; Spicy Tomato Sauce; Zucchini Pickle; Greek Tomato Paste
Since I last blogged we’ve harvested a parade of fresh produce, including grapes, lettuces, carrots, rhubarb, cannellino beans, sweet basil, garlic, cucumbers, peas, beans (green, yellow, purple), main crop potatoes (Agria), beetroot, silver beet, shallots, buttercup squash, tomatoes, butternut pumpkins and LOTS of of zucchini.
A selection of produce, from left to right: white table grapes; cannellino beans; Rhubarb Tarte Tartin
To use up the rhubarb and zucchini I’ve made several Rhubarb Tarte Tartin and a few jars of Lemon Curd Look-Alike, as well as some zucchini pickle. But the neat thing about this year is that we haven’t had too much of one particular vegetable. Everything we’ve grown we’ve either eaten fresh, or I’ve cooked up, preserved, frozen or baked into something.
Tomatoes and Zucchinis
Left to right: tomatoes & onions ready to be cooked for Tomato Relish; red and yellow habanero slices, arranged for drying
The tomatoes have been great, but I picked the last one yesterday and I know I’ll miss having them on hand at meal times. I’m glad that I preserved a good amount this season (Spicy Tomato Sauce, Tomato Relish, Greek Tomato Paste) and that I also froze about a dozen packs of frozen skinless tomato flesh for use during the cooler months.
Recipes
One of the easiest salads to throw together involves mixing chopped tomatoes with a handful of fresh basil (made into a paste), a generous squirt of extra virgin olive oil and finely sliced or diced zucchini or cucumber. I read somewhere that raw zucchini helps you feel ‘more full’ than some of our other salad vegetables, and it’s lovely and light when sliced thinly.
I love cooked zucchini, too. It’s such a versatile vegetable. My favourite quick recipe involves slicing the zucchinis thickly, then sautéing them in a small amount of olive oil along with crushed garlic and sage leaves. The sage leaves turn crispy and add a delightfully fragrant ‘crunch’ to the dish.
Habanero
3 stages of habanero peppers – fresh to dry
Our habanero chiles are ripening as I type, so I’m picking them each day, drying them, then nuking them in a small food processor. We’ll use the chile powder all through the year to jazz up our meals. One of my favourite uses is to sprinkle a liberal amount into cheese toasted sandwiches. Yum!! (It’s very hot, though – not for the chile uninitiated.)
I’ve also raised a pink variety of habanero this year. It’s currently at the flowering stage, so, no fruit, but I can’t wait to see what they look like!
Pears
Autumn pears & the finished product
March in New Zealand is the month for pears and melons. Our old pear tree has produced a good amount of sound fruit this year and yesterday I bottled a small sample in a light syrup. Not sure why I haven’t processed our pears this way before – I usually freeze them for desserts – but I do like to see the finished product in our pantry. And it’s so easy to preserve them using the water-bath method.
I didn’t remember until after I’d finished that you’re supposed to pack the fruit tightly into the jars to avoid having them float to the top of the syrup… oh well… next time!
Melons
Melon, ‘Collective Farm Woman’ (Cucumis melo)
I sowed seeds for a different melon this year,Collective Farm Woman. It’s a small Ukrainian melon from the Black Sea area, about the size of a honeydew, with pale flesh, the flavour delicately sweet and slightly evocative of bananas.
Bantams!
Our new bantam hens (left) and Charlie
We picked up a trio of Bantams at the recent Helensville A & P Show. They’ve settled in well and having Charlie (the rooster) crow loudly at 5.15 am hasn’t been too much of a shock.
When we first let the bantams join the rest of the flock, they kept to themselves, but they’re now walking around alongside the others. They choose to sleep outside – the rooster up high in a branch of one of the feijoa trees, and the two girls on the fence below. Not sure if they’ll ever voluntarily join the hens in the barn. Perhaps we’ll have to manually move them there in Winter when it gets cold at night.
That reminds me… feijoas! They’re growing plump on the trees. And just now I can see two fat kereru perched up on the yellow guava, eating the first of the golden yellow fruit. The kereru started visiting again a couple of weeks back – I guess our garden is part of their seasonal food cycle, too.
The usual nesting choices. Top left: The new nest in the kindling pile (preferred by Honey, and the older hens, i.e., Lottie, Lulu or Leila); Top right: Pompom’s choice is under the edge of the barbecue cover; Bottom left: Francesca, Pearl (in situ) and Hannah use the nesting boxes in the hen house. Bottom Right: Fatima always lays in a nest box in the barn.
As much as I love our hens dearly, sometimes they can be very annoying. This particular tale concerns a couple of our ‘saved’ hens, Honey and Perky.
Honey
Our saved hen, Honey.
In mid-September, Honey went missing for almost a week. Then on two mornings in a row, Ben spotted her eating pellets in the barn with the other hens – as if she’d never been away. Then she’d disappear again.
After some sleuth work (which involved spying and following), we found her in a grassy hollow in the back paddock, sitting on a mountain of warm eggs. She’d been sneaking back to eat at intervals, then returning to the (impossible) task of waiting for the eggs to hatch.
She was well into broody mode, so we had to remove all the eggs and separate her into the back hen enclosure for a few days. When we tested the eggs using the ‘does it float or not?’ test, they all looked a bit borderline so we disposed of them. (Ben later remarked that they didn’t look good when he broke them, so I’m glad I wasn’t involved with that process.)
Honey has stayed around since then, and has built a new nest in amongst the pile of dry kindling in the barn. And for a time, Perky, and our older hens started laying there as well. So there were generally 3 or 4 eggs in that particular nest when I’d check them each day.
Hens don’t usually lay an egg on every day of the week, so when the number of eggs in that nest dropped down to 2 or 3 on most days, I didn’t think too much of it.
Perky
Our saved hen, Perky.
Yesterday, I was deliberating on the fact that our total daily egg tally still looked a little low. I’d still have expected to see 4 eggs in that nest every so often. And we remembered that the week before last, we’d had to rescue Perky when she got herself stranded between two fences along the edge of the back paddock. (I still have no idea how she got there. It was raining and she was as wet as a shag.)
Missing eggs + Perky behaving suspiciously in the back paddock = one conclusion.
Testing the Theory
Last night, Ben shut the gate to the hen enclosure and let the girls out early this morning so that he could see if any of them ran off somewhere.
Believe it or not, there are 19 eggs in this pile!
Sure enough, Perky headed out (the long way) to the back paddock and settled herself down amongst the long grass. Ben found one egg all by itself nearby and left her there to finish laying. When he went back an hour or so later, he found a nest with an additional 19 eggs! Not again! So he brought all the eggs inside and left a fake egg in their place.
At least we know to look there now, and at least Perky hasn’t shown any signs of broodiness. It seems she’s been content to lay an egg on that huge pile, then join her sisters for the rest of the day.
Eggs in a bucket.
I’m going to check the 20 eggs for freshness, and I may end up discarding a few of them, just to be on the safe side. And if I do… well, that will be the annoying part. The waste of all those beautiful big eggs.
Molly is generally oblivious to the goings-on of the hens.
or… how to wile away an afternoon instead of working on your current writing project.
The finished product
This week is Te Wiki o Te Reo Maaori, hence my attempt at dual headings. The macrons don’t seem to always display that well, so in same cases I’ve reverted to double vowels.
My Road to Chiles
Tāku Ara ki Ngā Hirikakā
From the day I first tasted a pickled jalapeno on a pizza, I’ve always loved chiles. Very early on I was a member of a chile pepper Usenet newsgroup – this was back in 1994/1995, and a time when the internet as we know it now, was still in its infancy. You weren’t able to browse gazillions of web pages then, nor purchase unusual chile seeds online. A friend sent me some Habanero seeds by snail mail, all the way from the US. Of course, it was probably illegal to do this, but I didn’t think about such things back then, I was just so keen to try them. I nurtured the precious plants under plastic in my (then) Dunedin garden.
Habanero
Ngā Hirikakā Tino Kakā
The Habanero is still my absolute favourite pepper. In my opinion, it is the most floral and fragrant of them all and I love the heat. I use Habanero everywhere; in curries and pickles, sauces and pastes, even in a Hot Martini! 🙂
A chile plant in July at South Head.
I have grown Habanero, Jalapeno, Serrano and other assorted peppers continuously, since moving to South Head. In fact, my plants are still bearing chiles, out there in the cold, wintry conditions… They are so prolific that by the end of a season, I get somewhat lazy about harvesting them.
Keeping Chiles for Later Use
Hei Rokiroki ngā Hirikakā
My usual practice has been to pick the chiles when they are fully ripe, wash and dry them thoroughly, then freeze them whole. This is an excellent way to store these jewel-like fruit as you can just take one out and slice off a chunk when you need it. The problem is, we can never keep up with eating them and there are bags of them in the freezer – some going back a couple of years. They don’t seem to deteriorate.
This year I thought I’d try preserving some by drying. I’ve seen those neat little jars in home ware shops – the ones with a glass body and a stainless steel screw-top lid with holes. Dried chile is such a beautiful colour, how nice it would be to have our very own flakes or powder, to use as a condiment.
Drying Chiles
Hei Whakamaroke ngā Hirikakā
Chile peppers strung up in the barn.
I wouldn’t say that my technique was completely successful. I diligently harvested a mixture of Habanero and Caribbean Red Habanero, threaded them on strings, and strung them up in both the barn and the hot water cupboard. I kept a few back to use fresh – they were in a rourou on the bench, then forgot about them. Amusingly, a few weeks later, I noticed that these were starting to dry quite well, so I put the rourou into the hot water cupboard as well.
Today I decided it was high time to do something with these peppers. Every time I went to put some linen in the cupboard, I had to push it behind the chiles rattling on their strings. Interestingly, I discovered that the peppers that had dried the best, i.e., had no mouldy-looking discolouration, were actually the ones in the rourou.
The End Product
Te Mea Whakamutunga
I discarded any that didn’t look good enough for my high standards (!) This reduced my stock by at least 50%. I then trimmed the stalks off the others and nuked them in my blender/grinder.
The result is a lovely HOT product – a chili powder/flake, which will be ideal to sprinkle on foods, or to add at the cooking stage – IF YOU DARE. I was using a pastry brush to sweep out the last powdery residue from the grinder – didn’t want to waste any – and inhaled some. Yowsa it was hot, and I coughed for about five minutes.
Recipes
Ngā Tohutaka
Hot Martini
This is the recipe that we use, but I can’t find where I sourced it, unfortunately.
I also found this recipe on the net. It sounds much hotter – perhaps we’ll check it out tonight.
Ingredients
½ habanero pepper
60 mls agave tequila
15 mls dry vermouth
Ice
Instructions
In a cocktail glass muddle the habanero to release some juices. Do not pulverise. Keep the pepper in the glass, or remove it for a (slightly) lesser heat.
Combine over ice the tequila and vermouth. Shake well. Then pour the mix over the muddled habanero.
It was foggy when I awoke this morning, and a rather chilly 7 degrees Celsius.
The paddock next door glowed a mellow brown against the leaden sky. It had been freshly-plowed a couple of days ago and the rich earth bristling with broken maize stalks reminded me of a rough slice of dark rye bread.
I walked a circuit of the property several times (my usual practice). This combines exercise with the chance to see the myriad changes in the garden from the previous day.
Spider Webs
What captured my attention today was the texture of the light through the mist and the way it picked out the delicacy of the tiny things it touched.
For example, I saw the work of countless orb-web spiders. Their intricate webs are strung from fence wires, dangling from branches and woven between the leaves of the harakeke and other native shrubs.
This morning, each web was heavily laden with tiny drops of water.
The Colours of a Misty Day
At first glance, the garden appeared to be clothed in muted greys and pastels.
Paradoxically, as I drew close to them, trees and shrubs seemed somehow fresher. They appeared to loom up out of the grey and stood out with greater clarity than I’d noticed on days where there is no mist.
All the while, the sun was trying to break through the moisture-laden air.
Tahou
Zosterops lateralis lateralis (Waxeye or Silvereye)
A tiny Tahou fed on small insects on the lichened branch of the old plum tree.
I was interested to read in Lynette Moon’s Know Your New Zealand Birds that this pretty little bird is protected.
Waxeyes are classified as native, which means they are either naturally found here, or self-introduced; large numbers migrated to New Zealand from Australia in the 1850s.
Who is the specimen here?
When I came back indoors, several of the hens were on the terrace, looking in at me through the living room window. Sometimes I have the distinct impression that I’m a specimen in a zoo.
Molly joined me. She looked at the hens, the hens looked back. Then they walked away. Slowly.
This always amuses me. Had she stared them down? What is the pecking order here?
On rainy days when the hens are sheltering near the window, Molly often looks out at them. Sometimes she goes right up to the window and just looks. I’d like to be able to read her mind.
Reference:
Moon, Lynette (2006) Know Your New Zealand Birds New Holland Publishers (NZ) Limited, Auckland.
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