Discontinued washing machine

Just a quick note for any Aussies looking at new washing machines:

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was looking at a new washing machine, in particular the 8kg capacity front-loading Electrolux Ultrasilencer EWF1495. This machine was top-scorer for large machines in the most recent CHOICE magazine tests, with an overall score of 80%. It had a recommended retail price of over $1600, but two blog-friends let me know that they had scored this machine for under $1000 recently, which made me wonder if it has been discontinued. Of course, it has!

I looked up the new model which has replaced it and although it is more water-efficient, it seems that the water-efficiency has come at the expense of energy-efficiency, and the new model uses a huge amount more power! I don't really understand why? Nevertheless, the older model seemed to be a better option and we were able to buy one for $895 from one of only two stores locally still stocking it - the new model retails at over $1450 by the way.

So, a heads-up for those out there (who do a lot of washing) looking for a bargain on a new front-loader.

Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup

Ever since I decided to eliminate as many processed foods from our diet as possible, I've been looking for a homemade version of this tinned soup, as I use it regularly in my crockpot cooking. Since the tinned version contains things I'd rather not have my children eating (artificial flavours and MSG, anyone?), I was really happy to finally find this version after several attempts that weren't as good. This is really close to the "real" thing, and to be honest, I think it tastes better :-)

Ingredients

1½ cups homemade chicken stock*
1 small onion, finely diced OR ¼ tsp onion powder
1 clove garlic, minced OR ¼ tsp garlic powder
1/8 tsp black pepper
¼ tsp salt, or less to taste
¼ tsp dried parsley or 1 tbs fresh parsley
dash paprika
1½ cups reduced fat milk
3/4 cup plain flour


Method

1. Boil chicken stock, 1/2 cup of the milk and the seasonings, for a minute or two (longer if you are using fresh onion and garlic).

2. In a bowl, whisk the remaining milk and flour until smooth. Add to the boiling stock and continue whisking briskly until the mixture boils and thickens.

3. Cool and refrigerate or freeze in portions until required.

Notes:

* You can obviously substitute bought stock but you won't be able to control the additives, fat or salt level as you could for homemade stock. Refrigerating freshly made stock and skimming off the fat when it is cold, will greatly reduce the fat content.

**This mixture makes around 3 cups, which is the equivalent of about two cans of condensed soup, so freezing it in 1.5 cup portions makes it easy to use in recipes. I make double this and freeze in four small, labelled containers.

Recipe from tammysrecipes.com

Guess what I got for Christmas?

Yup. My very own domain name :-)

Which, of course, I felt deserved a makeover for my blog layout ;-)

Do you like it? The new banner reminds me of summer and makes me smile every time I see it; I hope it makes you smile too!

I may not be be blogging this week but there are other changes afoot around here in preparation for a new-look New Year. I can't help myself - once I started tinkering, there was no going back!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful and relaxing break :-) See you again soon! Until then, you might like to update your links:

My blog is now at www.towards-sustainability.com.

Quick and Easy Ice Cream

This recipe is incredibly quick and versatile. The basic vanilla recipe below is great, but by adding any number of different in season fruits, or other ingredients you have on hand such as coffee, chocolate syrup and/ or chopped nuts, you can vary it enormously.

Ingredients

1 cup cream
1 cup milk
1 tin sweetened condensed milk, or equivalent homemade
2 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1. Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until well combined. Do not over beat, as the cream will start churning into butter which will affect the taste of the ice cream. Chill mixture well in the fridge.

2. Add chilled mixture to an ice cream churn/ machine and process according to the instructions, OR freeze for one hour in a suitable container. Remove and beat again to break up the ice crystals. Freeze again for one hour, then repeat the beating and freeze once more. This will ensure that the ice crystals forming in the ice cream are as small as possible, and hence the ice cream will taste creamier.

Suggestions

To the basic mixture, you could try adding one of the following:
* The flesh of one peeled and roughly chopped fresh mango when blending;
* One punnet of fresh stawberries;
* Around 100ml of cooled brewed espresso coffee, and a handful of chopped hazelnuts, if desired;
* A good drizzle of chocolate syrup;
* One punnet of whole blueberries added after the mixture has been churning in the machine for 5 minutes.

No-Cook Apricot Coconut Balls

No-Cook Apricot Coconut Balls

These are delicious as an easy alternative to chocolate truffles or rum balls at Christmas time.

Ingredients

1 x tin sweetened condensed milk (purchased or homemade)
1 x packet plain sweet biscuits (such as Arnott's Milk Arrowroot)
1 cup dried apricots, finely diced
Dessicated coconut for rolling

Method

1. Mix together the sweetened condensed milk, apricots and crushed biscuits. Roll spoonfulls into balls, and roll in coconut.

2. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.

Lemon Cheesecake

An oldie, but a goldie. This is a such a classic, been-around-for-years recipe, I think it originally came off the back of a Philadelphia Cream Cheese package.


Ingredients

185g sweet biscuit (cookie) crumbs*
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
90g butter, melted
1 can sweetened condensed milk, or equivalent homemade
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
zest of ½ lemon
250g cream cheese, softened

* Such as Arnott's Nice biscuits or homemade shortbread.

Method

1. Combine the biscuit crumbs, butter and cinnamon in a bowl. Press into a greased pie plate and chill for an hour.

2. Beat the cream cheese until smooth. Gradually beat in the condensed milk, and then the lemon juice and zest. Pour into the chilled base, smooth the top and refrigerate until set.

3. To serve, sitting the dish in a shallow sink or dish containing an inch or so of hot water briefly, will soften the butter in the base and make it easier to slide the slices out of the pie dish.

This cheesecake can be frozen for up to 6 months.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

There are many things I want to blog about but - for now at least - I've completely lost my blogging mojo. I just want to bake yummy, waist-expanding treats and hang out with my family playing Junior Scrabbble, clapping loudly at the girls' puppet shows, or just admiring the Christmas tree :-)

So I'm going to be taking a break from my blog over the coming couple of weeks, but will be back in the new year, ready and raring to go again!

All the very best to you and your families for the festive season! I hope 2009 brings you all much peace, love and simple happiness :-)

See you next year!

RECIPE INDEX

This is a list of the recipes I have posted on my cooking blog, and which I will be progressively transferring over to this blog. Click on any live link to go to the recipe. Any recipes without a live link will be posted in the near future in my Recipe of the Week posts on Fridays.


VEGETARIAN
Cheats Spanokopita (Spinach and Ricotta Pie)
Roasted Red Capsicum (Pepper) Sauce
Warm Roasted Kumara, Rocket and Feta Salad
Spinach and Potato Crockpot Curry
Potato Kugel
Low Fat Spinach and Lentil Lasagne
Spicy Rice Balls (Mock Meat Balls)
Quick Bean Patties
Wild Rice and Mushrooms


NON-VEGETARIAN MAINS
Spinach, Bacon & Feta Quiche
Calzone
Zucchini Slice
Sausage and Lentil Crockpot Casserole


SOUPS
Tomato, Bacon and Lentil Soup


BREAKFAST AND BRUNCH
Bircher Muesli
Honey Toasted Muesli
Buckwheat Pancakes


BREADS AND CRACKERS
Basic Cracker Recipe
Lavash Bread Crackers
Breadmaker: French Bread
Breadmaker: Naan Bread
Breadmaker: Bagels
Flour Tortillas
Beer-based Pizza Dough

DRINKS
Ginger and Turmeric Tea
Ginger Beer & Ginger Beer 'plant'
Fruit Cordials, including lemon


CONDIMENTS
Chilli Sauce
Mrs Burt's Tomato Sauce
Hummus
Basil Pesto
Rocket and Walnut Pesto
Microwave Lemon Marmalade
Lemon Butter (Lemon Curd)
Fruit Cordials
Savoury Red Onion Jam
Homemade Dry French Onion Soup Mix
Homemade Taco Seasoning Mix
Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup


DAIRY
Homemade Labneh
Homemade Organic Yoghurt


DESSERTS
Lemon Cheesecake
Quick and Easy Ice Cream
Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk
Freezable Apple Pie Filling


SNACKS, CAKES AND SLICES
Bliss Balls
Choc Peppermint Balls (or Slice)
Healthy Date Slice
Low Sugar, Low fat Muesli Bars
Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
No-Cook Apricot Coconut Balls
Hot Chocolate Mix

Back To Basics Challenge Update #3

I'm early/late again with my update! Ah well :-)

Sowing Seed or Planting:

Sowing:
* One punnet of Jalapeno chillies in the hopes they might ripen before autumn.

Observing:
* That the female kiwi fruit I almost killed has re sprouted - phew!



Harvesting:

* The remainder of the garlic - unlike the rest of the crop, these actually have decent sized bulbs, so I got about 20 decent bulbs (or about 3 weeks worth LOL).


* My first tomatoes of the season! These are the self-sown ones that came up out in the front yard, so I have no idea what variety they are with their pointy little bottoms - they are small, but tasty :-)



Planning for the Future:

* Looking back at the green/simple living goals we have achieved in the previous two years, and setting new ones for the next 12 months.

* Researching ceiling fans for the lounge and dining rooms (two of the three remaining rooms without fans). We're hoping the ones we like might come on sale after Christmas? This time we aren't going to be caught out buying fans that only take energy-hungry halogen bulbs (which is nearly all of them)!

* Researching new 5-star water-efficiency (WELS) rated tap fittings for our bathrooms to replace the original fixtures which were cheap and nasty, and are now almost beyond repair. We found some really nice ones at our locally-owned plumbing supplies store (tick #1), which are - shock! horror! - actually made in Australia (tick #2) and have a 5-star WELS rating (their flow rate is 4.6 L/minute = tick #3). Our current crummy taps leak constantly despite having had the washers replaced several times, and their flow rate is around 9 L/minute according to my calculations. Therefore the new tapware should save about 50% of our water use in tooth-brushing and hand washing in the bathroom - something we do constantly around here with three grubby kids!

* Researching new water-efficient washing machines with a view to replacing our 12 year-old not-very-water-wise top loader that is on it's way out. My current 6.5kg capacity top loader uses about 130 litres per load on the "eco" cycle (or 20L/kg) - new smaller capacity front loaders use as little as 52 litres per load! Having said that, with the amount of washing I do on a weekly basis, I am heavily leaning towards an 8kg capacity machine. I am vacillating between an 8kg top loader which uses 76 L per load (or 9.5L/kg). It has a 3.5-star energy efficiency and is manufactured in New Zealand. According to Choice magazine, the best performing 8kg front loader has a 4-star energy efficiency (but according to Choice costs more to run per year than the top loader?) and uses 73 L per load, but costs $450 more, has a cycle time of 108 minutes (versus 58 minutes for the top loader) and is manufactured in Thailand.

Either way, we would be more than halving our water use for washing, which has to be a great thing!

* Gratefully receiving my grandmother's Singer treadle sewing machine.

* Have found a great recipe for zucchini marmalade, which I plan to cook up this weekend.

Working for the Future:

* Purchased a good quality weatherproof Dynamo wind-up AM/FM radio (as a Christmas gift for DH, shhhhhh ;-).

* Sewing reusable fabric gift wraps for our Christmas presents.

* Made Christmas cards.

* Made our annual donation to Oxfam Unwrapped in lieu of Christmas presents for most of our adult family members.

Building community:

* Birthday party tours of backyard fruit and veg.

* Sending out the annual snail mail letters in the Christmas cards to friends and family, including details of our greening and simplifying adventures.

* Donation of another box of books to the Salvos.

Learn a new skill:

* Learning how to use a treadle-operated sewing machine - which has no reverse!

* Sewing (on my regular machine) a notebook and pencil holder (Christmas gift for Miss Seven), using fabric from my stash and felt scraps, and learning about different grades of interfacing! The one I used here is way too stiff (after my first effrot was too flimsy), but the rest of the interfacing will be OK for the fabric baskets I want to sew next.

100 Things.

This list seems to be doing the rounds of the blogosphere at the moment and I can't face cleaning up the giant mess the kids have made in the playroom today. The ones in bold are the ones I have done.

100 Things.

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars.
3. Played in a band. Um, yep if you count the school band ;-)
4. Visited The Great Barrier Reef.
5. Stood under the stars in the outback, the real outback – think Uluru. Lots of places, including Uluru.
6. Given more than you can afford to charity.
7. Been to the Gold Coast’s theme parks – any one, you take your pick. Seaworld and Dreamworld... although in my defence it was in 1986!
8. Climbed a mountain. I reckon Mount Kosciuszko counts.
9. Held a praying mantis.
10. Sung a solo.
11. Bungee jumped, jumped out of plane, been paragliding or hang-gliding, hot air ballooning – you get the idea, you’ve been hundreds of metres about earth in a seemingly flimsy contraption. Para-gliding and hot-air ballooning - bungee-jumping and sky-diving on are on my "Bucket List".
12. Visited Melbourne.
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea.
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch.
15. Had a child. Raised a child. Worked with children.
16. Had food poisoning. Who hasn't?
17. Been to the Snowy Mountains. See #8
18. Grown your own vegetables.
19. Visited the Brett Whitely studio in Surry Hills, Sydney. Although I've seen plenty of his work at other galleries.
20. Slept on an overnight train or bus. Don't recommend it.
21. Had a pillow fight.
22. Been backpacking.
23. Taken a mental health day.
24. Been buried in sand with just your head and toes sticking out.
25. Held a possum, kangaroo or koala – or any other native Australian animal. All of the above, plus many others.
26. Gone skinny dipping. Er, I was fifteen and was with all girls ;-)
27. Been in a fun run.
28. Been on the Blue Mountain cableway.
29. Seen a total eclipse.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset.
31. Played, or watched, summer cricket.
32. Sailed, kayaked or canoed our beautiful waterways. I assume whitewater rafting counts :-)
33. Seen the Daintree. Sensational.
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors. Which ones?! Mate, we're from everywhere ;-)
35. Visited an Aboriginal settlement or mission.
36. Learned a new language. French, 20-odd years ago. Now very rusty ;-)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied.
38. Toured the Sydney Opera House.
39. Tried rock climbing (indoor or outdoor), abseiling or just simple bush walking. Abseiled and bush-walked a lot - rock climbing is not something I aspire to doing however.
40. Visit Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art.
41. Been to the Tamworth Country Music Festival. Given I grew up in Tamworth, this one was hard to avoid unfortunately.
42. Sunbaked at Bondi.
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant.
44. Visited Broome.
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight.
46. Been transported in an ambulance. Yep. Between hospitals whilst heavily in labour (i.e. pushing for over an hour) with child #2 in order to have an emergency c-section. I don't recommend it.
47. Had your portrait painted. Does having my silhouette cut out of paper count?
48. Gone fishing. Blerck. Rather pleasant until I actually caught something and had to deal with it.
49. Seen Tasmania’s old growth forests.
50. Been to the top of Q1, on the Gold Coast.
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling. See #4. Awesome.
52. Kissed in the rain.
53. Played in the mud.
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre.
55. Been in a movie.
56. Driven the Great Ocean Road.
57. Started a business.
58. Taken a martial arts class.
59. Visited Norfolk Island.
60. Served at a soup kitchen.
61. Sold Girl Guide biscuits.
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Got flowers for no reason.
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma.
65. Gone jet boating.
66. Visited Port Arthur.
67. Bounced a cheque.
68. Flown in a helicopter.
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy.
70. Visited the Australian War Memorial.
71. Eaten Caviar. Yuck. I also hate oysters.
72. Pieced a quilt.
73. Stood in Federation Square. I haven't been to Melbourne since they built it!
74. Been on the Murray River. On a paddleboat steamer and all.
75. Been fired from a job.
76. Travelled, or climbed, over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Climbing it is also on the Bucket List.
77. Broken a bone.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle.
79. Seen the Three Sisters at Echo Point, Katoomba.
80. Published a book.
81. Visited St Mary’s Cathedral, in Sydney.
82. Bought a brand new car.
83. Been to Hermannsburg.
84. Had your picture in the newspaper.
85. Read the entire Bible.
86. Visited Parliament House.
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating. A chicken at my grandparent's; Dad cut it's head off with a tomahawk.
88. Had chickenpox. With a big crater-scar in the middle of my forehead to prove it.
89. Saved someone’s life.
90. Sat on a jury. I've avoided it twice so far, so I guess next time I'm out of luck ;-)
91. Met someone famous. Several at functions but none socially, unless you count Sophie Lee, before she was an actress.
92. Joined a book club.
93. Lost a loved one.
94. Saved a pet.
95. Been to the site of the Eureka Stockade.
96. Swum in The Whitsundays.
97. Been involved in a lawsuit. Involving a car, a horse-and-sulky and laws dating back to the 1800's giving horses right of way, even if they are driven across four-lane roads directly in front of you and you don't have time to stop. My car was written off. And no, I didn't kill the horse. But it did run off with parts of the sulky still attached and ran amok through the nearby golf club carpark, damaging numerous cars, for which I was supposedly responsible. Sigh.
98. Owned a mobile phone.
99. Been stung by a bee.
100. Read an entire book in one day.

I guess 72 out of 100 isn't bad ;-)

5%? You're kidding, right?

One word sums up my response to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's announcement on Monday of a paltry 5% reduction in emissions by 2020: Disgust. The Garnaut report on climate change commissioned by Rudd himself recommended a 25% reduction by 2020! I still can't compose a reasonable post about it as I get too cranky.

If you feel as appalled as I do, visit the ACF's website page about it here, and follow one or more of their recommendations, such as calling your local MP or writing to your local newspaper.

I've already emailed my local MP (Labor minister Sharon Grierson) letting her know my disappointment, and I have drafted snail mail letters to the Minister for Climate Change, Senator Penny Wong and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

What an enormous environmental disappointment this government is turning out to be :-(

It's beginning to look a bit like Christmas

Spotlight currently has 50% off their range of Christmas-themed fabrics, so I took the opportunity to duck in and grab some this week. I have been wanting to make our own reusable gift bags but hadn't had the chance yet, so this was a good excuse to make the time! I hadn't worked out exactly what I needed yet, so I just picked out a few fabrics I liked and bought a metre or so of each.

I used three of them to make large, very simple draw-string 'Santa sacks' for the girls using some gold cord I also bought. I hope to get the time to embroider their names on the front at some stage before Christmas, but they know which one is theirs anyway (as soon as I told them what I was doing they took dibs on their favourites :-), so it's no big deal if I don't get it done until next year. They are folded up in the photo below, so they are actually a fair bit bigger as I knew I needed to get a T-ball kit into one of them this year! LOL.

I was going to make similar drawstring bags of various different sizes for the rest of our presents. However when I was experimenting with what sizes to make them with some of the presents I have stashed away, I very rapidly discovered an important lesson - drawstring (or tie-top) bags aren't child-proof! My kids would be under the tree in a flash, poking their noses into every bag, sussing out all the presents, LOL!

I really like furoshiki - the Japanese art of using fabric to wrap parcels and gifts - but after a little experimentation I discovered that I really need to use much less stiff fabrics than the ones I had bought. So I compromised and decided to use flat rectangular pieces of fabric, held in place with some of the masses of wire-edged ribbon I have been saving from previous gifts over the years.

Most of the fabric was see-through - not a desirable feature when a surprise gift is desired! - so I hit upon the idea of lining the rectangles with a plain fabric, which also then made them reversible so that we can use them for other gift-giving events as well! As you can see below, I just sewed the rectangles right sides together (leaving a gap in the seam), then turned them right-sides out and topped stitched around the edges.

Then I wrapped the presents as you would with paper, and held it in place with recycled wire-edged ribbon from my stash.

And if I use the plain reverse side, I can dress it up with non-Christmassy ribbon for a different look:

It was certainly quick and easy sewing! Now I just need to finish them off with simple gift tags made from cut-up cardboard cereal boxes, and I'm all done :-)

From now on I will also be searching thrift stores for large silk-style scarves, because I'd love to have a go at some of the furoshiki wraps with presents where I won't get the fabric back again. If you are a visual learner like me, you might like to check out some of these cool YouTube videos showing furoshiki wrapping. Neat, yeah?

I love a good Kurma

I prefer to buy second hand books where I can but some are hard to get - I think the owners hang onto them because they are 'keepers' :-)

One is Cooking with Kurma. I've been thoroughly enjoying Kurma Dasa's website for a couple of years but his books retail at over $40 new so I've been keeping an eye out at second hand bookshops and garage sales. Finally, one popped up on eBay recently, yay!

Despite his fondness for yellow asafetida powder in his recipes (which I can't source locally but can get online), I'm very much looking forward to trying many of these recipes out.

But wait, there's more! My second eBay score this week is an out-of-print book by Aussie self-sufficiency icons, Keith and Irene Smith (founders of Earth Garden magazine), The New Hard Times Handbook (the updated version of The Hard Times Handbook).



Needless to say I was stoked to finally get hold of a copy! It's a pretty valuable little book if you can get hold of one. It contains suggestions for what should be included in a stockpile, heaps of frugal household tips recycling and repairing, cheap meals, managing your food supplies and growing your own, and heaps of recipes for home made meals and supplies such as glue, polish and soaps. Good stuff :-)

Harvest: Potato Cage #1

On Sunday I finally had time to deal with one of the two potato cages I planted out earlier in the season. As you can see, the spuds have all died off in this cage after being attacked by nasty, leaf-eating 28-spotted ladybirds (as opposed to the beneficial, pest and mildew-eating regular ladybirds).

When I tipped the cage over, I could see a few small Kipfler potatoes in the bottom, which was encouraging,


but as I started to collect them from amongst the compost and sugar cane mulch, I discovered - much to my horror - dozens of these horrible, fat curl grubs amongst them all.

Needless to say, they were having a fine old time amongst the baby spuds :-(

So, between the 28-spotted ladybirds attacking the leaves, and the curl grubs eating the roots, no wonder my poor spuds all died off! I can't take a trick with 'taters it seems; last year the ones I planted in the ground were also attacked by 28-spotted ladybirds, and then mostly rotted in the ground after really, really wet weather. Sigh.

Anyway, in the end I collected a colander full of teeny tiny Kipflers from the cage, which we will get probably two meals out of. What was encouraging though, was the sheer number of spuds in the cage. Many people growing spuds in cages, tyres or bins don't seem to end up with a very good harvest at the end of the season, but if all the spuds I collected yesterday had grown to full size, I've no doubt we'd have had a bumper harvest from the five tubers I planted out.



So, I'll be interested to see what we get from the second cage, although those spuds aren't growing anywhere near as vigorously as cage #1 did; possibly they are also under attack from the curl grubs? Hurrumph. Despite this though, I will definitely have another go next year, they are certainly an economical use of space in my small garden where space is at a premium. I just need to do some more research on the organic control of curl grubs and leaf-eating ladybirds!

Everything old is new again.

When my Mum and Dad came to visit for Miss Seven's birthday last weekend, they bought a couple of extra gifts with them :-) One was another large asparagus seedling (mmmmmmm), one was an old study desk we will fix up for Miss Seven's room, another was a box of sewing patterns and a series of 1980's 'How To' booklets for repairing and restoring household items (a great find which I'll talk about in another post) and the last was this unassuming little cupboard.


It was my grandmother's, and for as long as I can remember it stood just inside her back door (which was, like most older houses, actually the 'front' door by which everyone entered the house), and was used as the phone table.

It isn't just a table however, it's much more. If you unfold the top like so....


...It reveals her glorious, old treadle-operated Singer sewing machine.

Isn't it gorgeous? They sure don't make them like that any more.

The attention to detail...


...on even the simplest of parts, is quite wonderful.


According to the serial number and the Singer website, this machine was manufactured at the Kilbowie factory, Clydebank, Scotland, in February 1939, and it's a model 15K.



It comes complete with the original instructions luckily, so I have some reading to do :-)

And, as an added bonus, inside the drawer were these well-made manual hair clippers, which my grandmother used to cut my grandfather's hair. Mum kindly let me have those as well, and I'm looking forward to having them professionally sharpened so we can ditch the horrible cheap electric clippers I am currently using for DH's hair.



I'm not sure who did better out of the weekend present-wise, me or Miss Seven! Frankly, I think it was me ;-)

Growing Challenge Update #14

In the Greenhouse:

Not a single seed germinated from the punnets of salad burnet, slow bolt coriander, cumin or caraway seeds I sowed some weeks ago, which is disappointing. I'll have to investigate what happened there, too hot perhaps? I vaguely remember reading that sticking some of those seeds in the fridge before sowing might help, although I can't remember which ones they were LOL. Any other suggestions?

In the Vegie Garden:

The root vegetable seeds I sowed some weeks ago into the new dog-leg bed are looking pretty tragic unfortunately, a fact I put down to the highly alkaline soil. I have treated it with powdered sulphur, and the buttercrunch lettuce seedlings are coming along OK, albeit slowly, but the root vegies are not really responding at all. The row of White Icicle radish below should be almost ready to harvest by now, the carrots and beetroot are looking even worse and what silverbeet seeds germinated are very stunted :-( Not worth persisting with I think, so I will dig it all over with more sulphur, heaps more compost, blood and bone and potash (and rock minerals if I can find some), and have another go, although it is getting late in the season now. Live and learn!

Of the other Growing Challenge vegies, the Rouge de Marmande tomatoes are getting bigger:


And the first butternut pumpkin is growing nicely.

With any luck these three will be pollinated as well :-)



The Listada da Gandia eggplants are beginning to flower (below), although I have now lost all of my Jalapeno chillies, two more of my capsicums (peppers) and another Udamalapet eggplant to pests or the hot weather :-(

Elsewhere in the garden the leeks are bolting to seed,


As are the mustard greens:


However, more Heritage raspberries are coming along nicely, although only one of the three bushes are growing well. Despite planting them where they are shaded from the afternoon sun, I think they are having trouble dealing with the heat lately? The one which is doing well was more established than the others when I planted it, so perhaps it was able to get growing more quickly before the really hot weather set in?


The potted Black Sapote tree, or Chocolate Pudding Fruit is flowering. The flowers are very unusual aren't they? You can see young green ones on either side in the this photo, and when they come out the tiny petals are white underneath. Then they go black as you can see in the middle flower, but so far they have all dropped off, unpollinated, which makes me wonder if we don't have whatever insect pollinator is required in our garden? Another issue for research ;-)

Also unfortunately, every tiny mango on my potted Bowen mango tree has dropped off. Bummer. There was one left, but yesterday I noted that it has dropped off also :-( I was hoping to get a taste of just one this year, but it's not unusual for immature trees to drop their fruit, so it looks like I will be waiting another year.


I've also been missing the rocket (arugula) in our salads and have been eagerly awaiting volunteers. There are large numbers of seedlings, but - typically - so far ALL of them are between the pavers, right in the middle of the path. Couldn't I get just one of them actually in the garden?!


Remember the aloe vera plants I decided to use reverse logic on? I stuck them in a corner and forgot to water them for a couple of weeks, then shoved them in a planter with no fertiliser and ignored them for a bit longer. Well, what do you know? Today I noticed new growth popping up ;-)




Deliveries:

Since my last update I ordered - and received - a box of (early Christmas present) plants from Daley's Nursery: a male and female kiwi fruit, black passionfruit, lemon grass, a thornless blackberry (because you can never have too many berries, right?) and a Black Genoa fig tree. I was delighted to note that the fig tree has figs on it!

Sadly they arrived in the middle of the frenzy of pre-birthday party preparations and DH shoved them behind the shed to get them out of the way of the birthday guests. And we forgot to water them again until I remembered them a few days later... I think my female kiwi fruit may be beyond redemption :-( :-( Sigh. I'll keep it moist in the hopes it might reshoot from the base, but it looks pretty grim. I'll put it in the 'sick' corner with the licorice plant from Shiphards Herb Farm that arrived infested with aphids, and now looks equally as dead. Double sigh.

Harvesting:

Look, my very first onions! They are Hunter River brown onions I planted as seedlings some months ago. I'm very impressed, they bulbed up nicely, and are now drying a little in the shade on my back verandah before they come inside for storage.

I also harvested most of my garlic this week. Sadly, they didn't do nearly as well as the onions :-( I had a bumper crop last year which lasted me for months, but this year I think the unseasonally hot weather in spring stopped the bulbs developing and for the most part the bulbs are very small and sad looking, despite using my biggest, healthiest-looking cloves from last years harvest to plant with. Quite depressing considering how much we *love* garlic around here...



...Still, I was able to dig up some rather delicious - but strangely bumpy-looking - Kipfler potatoes from a self-sown plant in the front garden yesterday. I vaguely remember reading something about bumpy spuds being the result of over-fertilising, and since these grew in pure home made compost plus blood and bone, that could certainly be the cause of their weird shapes LOL. Since the plant was a volunteer I wasn't hilling it like the ones I purposely planted, so unfortunately over half of the spuds were green from exposure to light, but we still had enough for a roast dinner last night (along with home grown carrots, squash, beans and onions - yum):


Have a great week in your garden :-)

My house.

Aaaaaaaaaah. Thank goodness it's the weekend again! Another insanely busy week has gone by, complete with DH developing a nasty full-body rash plus pneumonia and having (three doctor visits, one set of chest x-rays, two different lots of anti-biotics and) three days off work. Plus he's not to ride to work for another week, so that means a week of negotiating drops offs and cadging rides with co-workers (who don't live nearby). At least school for Miss Seven has finished for the year now (though preschool has another two weeks), so that's one less thing to sort out.

Speaking of which, is it really December already? I've forgotten to read my meters. I always read them on the first of the month and it seems to be the 6th already!

So, clearly, I need to be mucking around on Google Maps instead of doing something constructive.

Can you tell which house below is mine?

I'll give you a hint.

Since this was taken, over half the backyard (sideyard actually, since it's next to the house, not behind it) is now vegie gardens (the half to the left of the steps, which is the brown sticky-outy bit in the middle).

I think we win for having the most trees though.

Phew...

What a week it's been!

Between doctor's appointments, blood tests and various end-of year meetings and functions, fabric bunting was sewn and hung;


Party guest gift bags were constructed (using a smaller, modified version of this pattern - I bought fabric remnant and folded it up until it looked bag-sized and then cut it into equal pieces, two per bag; one outer, one lining) and filled with stickers, coloured pens and lolly pops;


Preschool Christmas Plays were attended;

Card stock was cut and folded;

And craft supplies gathered;



Birthday girl ears were pierced with little gold hearts (a surprise present, and one extremely well-received);

Then, on party day, cards a plenty were made, pass-the-parcel played, the (made by Nanny) birthday cake was cut, gifts were opened, a towering pile of lollies and bottle of homemade chocolate sauce disappeared in record time during "make-your-own-ice cream sundaes",

...and finally the artfully constructed cards were packed up in their gift bags to take home.

This morning, apparently my social standing amongst the party-goers has been elevated, as I was informed by the other six and seven-year-old party-goers at school that it was "the best party ever!".

Nice to know that a cheap, at-home party can still compete with McDonalds et al :-)