Busy time in the back garden

As we've been harvesting potatoes, broadbeans, garlic, silverbeet and onions, we've been dreaming of summer veg.

That's cinnamon basil (we cheated and bought seedlings, then carefully separated them and crossed our fingers they'd survive outside of their nice, cosy greenhouse) and there are tiny tomato plants in the other pots.

At the back are some divided oregano for friends, and the other pots are seeded with cavalo nero, corn, beetroot, rosella, zucchini and pumpkins.

They're planted in a mix of our clay and the muckings-out from the chook pen.  No seed with any skerrick of life could resist bursting into green!

Digging up our dinner

Sort of experimentally, the practical reinventor had a look at the spring garden this morning.

Here's three plants' worth of potatoes - sapphire and kipfler.  The sapphire ones are purple on the inside too.

Despite the destructive efforts of the chooks and the canine apathy around gardens, this is the first of the garlic harvest.  While we know it should be plaited attractively, with the creative reinventor having broken his thumb in a motorcycle accident and the practical reinventor having done chronic nerve damage to her arms from too many years and kilometres on a motorcycle, neither of us is able. 

And we don't care that much either. 

The garlic is very heavily, erm, scented.  It's hanging up in our outside laundry, which is also pretty fragrant.  We're not sure we'll be patient enough to leave it there to dry out for long term storage.

Eating our greens

Here is proof it's spring:  the first broadbeans of the season.

 

In a salad with broccoli and fetta from the local farmers market, lemon from our neighbour's tree and parsley and dill also from our garden.

That's an Alfred Meakin salad bowl c1930s and a silver plate serving spoon we found in an op shop.

It went very well with steak and an earthy shiraz.

She's all grown up!

After the departure of Horace the Rooster last weekend, we started to wonder when our last remaining chick, Shirley, would start to lay.

She's about six months old, so it's time.

And then today, we found this:

The picture doesn't really show it, but it's really small and a bit blotchy.  It was also in an odd place.  Like a chook had been caught by surprise.

We do think it's her first egg.

We're rather proud.

First ever!

At least, we hope so!

This is passionfruit lemonade marmalade.  Made from lemonade fruit (a hybrid lemon/navel orange) and passionfruit.  It tastes great (although not at all like Passiona).

We might enter it into the marmalade section of the Swan View Show.

Decision time

Just lately, Horace, one of our two surviving chicks, has started to asset his masculinity.  He's quite a magnificent creature - tall and glossy and his comb and wattles are getting bigger.

He's also started to experiment with crowing, luckily not too early, but we don't expect that to last.

He sounds like a teenage boy whose voice is breaking.  The hens are picking on him less and less.

If we don't find him a new home soon, he's going to be too tough and stringy to eat.

Unexpectedness

Last year, the practical reinventor went to rather a lot of trouble to use this horrible old bathtub that had been dumped in the backyard for, oh, about 10 years.

Our preferred crop: water chestnuts.
They struggled and died off, and we got busy, so they got left.

They're supposed to grow through summer, then you harvest the corms (the water chestnuts are a sort of root vegetable) in Autumn, then plant the next lot in spring.  Since we didn't harvest them, we figured they all died and rotted away.
Except they hadn't.  Some had started to shoot, but most were crisp and added a definite sharp crunch to a coleslaw.
We've planted half a dozen in new potting mix and hope for a larger harvest next Autumn.

If we remember to harvest them...

A remarkable recovery

You  might remember how sad Joan and Joyce looked when we rescued them - beaks clipped, frightened and missing most of their feathers.

Joyce started feather-up almost immediately.  Joan, well, didn't.  She improved, but still had bald patches and didn't seem to be as healthy as Joyce.

Then, rather suddenly, and for no discernable reason

they are indistinguishable.  Both luxuriantly feathered and rather gorgeous.  We now have no idea who's who.

Upgrade

After a year of mostly managing with the free-off-Gumtree stove, the reinventors decided it was high time we got a decent one.

For $1000 off its original price and with very good reviews, we have this:

A full 900mm of Belling range.  Getting it installed involved some quite intense conversations about what should go where in the kitchen.  Gas fitting regulations mean that each burner has to be at least 20cm from any ignition point.  In our case, it was the 100-year-old jarrah window sill. 

So we moved a bench and free-standing shelves to the other side of the kitchen, took some shelves off one wall and put them up on another wall, had some new power points installed, shifted the kitchen dresser and rethought the whole barista bench.

And had this put in:

It casts very interesting shadows.

In case you were wondering,

it bakes a magnificent banana cake.  We've yet to have a disaster.  Although there are a lot of other oven settings we've not yet explored...

Spring is springing

Waaaaaaaaaay back in the beginning, when the romance was very new, the creative reinventor mentioned that he loved the smell of jonquils.

Since then the practical reinventor has planted him jonquils in every garden they've had.  About 10 of them.

This is the latest lot.  

There will need to be a Decision

The reinventors are members of Transition Town Guildford, the practical reinventor working with another two members on an off-shoot group, the TTG Kitchen Gardeners' Society.

Last weekend we hosted a chook workshop in our backyard.  We sent the neurotic kelpie on a play date with the golden retriever two doors away and let the chooks loose.  They were remarkably unperturbed by the 40-odd people who invaded their backyard.

As well as discussing the ways of chooks, hen house construction, general chook health, the joys of rescuing battery hens and eating scones, cakes and biccies, we asked lovely vet B about Florence.

Florence is a bit more aggressive than Shirley and has a more distinct comb.  We suspect her name should be Horace.

B looked critically at Florence.  Commented on the angle of her bum feathers, and agreed.  Florence is most likely Horace.

Once he starts crowing, something will have to be done.  Neither of us is looking forward to it.

Chook update

A first!  Florence and Shirley's first experience free ranging.

They picked it up very quickly.

Jam of 10 food metres

Rosella is bush tucker, also known as native hibiscus.  They're very occasionally available in markets, but mostly you have to grow your own.

Ours went in a bit late this year, but we still managed a small harvest.

However, most of the fruit is seed. Once you remove the inedible bit, this made up a whole 155g.

Which translated to

Not quite a jar of jam.  But it'll be spectacular!

We've left some fruit on the shrubs to self seed.  We hope to see lots more rosellas next year.

Our own coffee

The Creative Reinventor, it has to be said (and he wouldn't deny it) is a coffee nerd. 

He's worked in the coffee industry for years, owns two espresso machines, takes huge offence at over-roasted blends and don't even mention instant in his presence.

One thing he'd never done was roast his own beans.

But with a bread maker and a heat gun

he discovered he can roast quite a respectable batch.

Sadly we're in the wrong climate zone to grow our own coffee.  Pity, that'd be really cool.

Signature cake

The reinventors are usually not into exclusivity, but in this case, we may make an exception.

If you poach some oranges (preferably those grown by D and P) in sugar syrup, line a cake tin in foil and arrange the slices on the bottom.

Then make up a butter cake with lots of vanilla extract and a handful of coconut for texture.
Once it's baked, pour the poaching syrup over the top.  Flip it over.

And you have Marmalade Cottage Marmalade Cake.