BACK HOME AGAIN

Coming home has never been such a strange sensation as this before.... a lot changes in 6 weeks - the weather, the world, the vegetable garden and the vibes! It was lovely to be picked up at the airport by son Hugh, the roof off his car on this sunny spring day, and make a quick dash to see my mother, who lives not far from the airport. Her mango tree is flowering, with thousands of fruits possible - let's hope she gets a record crop in April. When we arrived home I saw that our peach tree is laden with fruit again and the apple trees have been blossoming too.

Roger has looked after the vegetable garden really well but, despite giving lots away, there are still plenty of things ready to pick and lots that have gone to seed to make next year's food.

 

On my potting bench I found a foam box full of various little seedlings and next to it, a collection of magnificent plants ready for the garden. On the front door was a note.... "Here are some seedlings to give Kate something to do when she gets home.... besides the blog!  From Deb". Thanks Deb, the best welcome home present imaginable!

 

After making a salad from the garden and a cup of my favourite coffee for Hugh, Roger and myself, I headed out to pick some things for dinner...

 

 

 

 

....broccoli, a massive fennel, shallots, beetroot, French violetta artichokes, and Egyptian broad beans....and....

 

 

white shahtoot mulberries..... if you have never eaten them, you are missing a treat....much more yummy than they look. They are not just sweet but also full of flavour and quite surprisingly delicious. They are ready when they just fall off as you touch them. This mulberry is hardy to everything, grows like the wind, produces in its first year and is a prolific bearer of delicious fruit....what more do you want?

So, that's it, the voyage of the vegetable vagabond is over....but only for now. There are a lot more vegetable gardens and wonderful people out there and I would like to continue this journey and maybe spend a bit more time in some places.

Thanks you so much to all the people I have stayed with, thank you for your hospitality, friendship and generosity and don't forget you are welcome here anytime. I have had a fantastic 6 weeks and there wasn't one minute that I would change. Take care of yourselves and enjoy your vegetable gardens and please put some posts on your blogs about the progress of the vegetables that we planted together and other jobs I helped you with. Au revoir.

FRIENDS, FOOD AND FUN

First was oven-puffed pancakes with fresh blueberry sauce for breakfast at Jack's followed by some serious gardening in the vegetable garden.

 

Jack grows lots of vegetables but the thing about Jack is the number and variety of fruit trees he has planted over the years into a relatively small space.

1 plum, 2 apples, 3 pears, 2 oranges, 2 lemons, 1 feijoa, black mulberry, white sapote, avocados, a natal plum, quince, grapes, guavas, peach, nectarine, apricot, wild cherry.....is that all, Jack? I forgot the tangelo and persimon! See, I did actually do some work!

 

Then we headed over to see some old uni days' friends and catch up on renovations and chooks and travel stories, have lunch and go for a walk to a nearby school that is doing great things in their vegie patch.

Kathy's new, recycled kitchen looks great and it was terrific to see Jane from NZ....

Old friends and their families .... nice  but crazy!

Interesting things you can do with electrical wire!

 

Have you ever seen a street sign like this?

Kathy's vegetable garden is looking pretty good !

It was raining at Sunshine today!

 

There are more photos here.

THE GREETING OF GAVIN!

Today Roger and I took the train out to see Gavin and Kim at Melton to explore the ongoing journey of The Greening of Gavin. You couldn't meet nicer people and entering the gate through the high brick wall is like stepping into a food-grower's secret garden. Melton, on the whole, is a dry place with barren front yards of dying grass and sparse trees. Not only is everything lush and healthy and bursting with life inside the gate but it is also so beautiful.... and I felt just as the children in the story "The Secret Garden" felt when they opened the gate and were awe-struck with what they found inside. Just goes to show what you can do with an ordinary block.....

 

If you read Gavin's blog you will know that he has been suffering with a back problem for a year or so and yet what he has achieved here is amazing. His and his wife Kim's enthusiasm is highly infectious and finally I am actually looking forward to getting back into my garden and adopting some of Gavin's ideas, and others I have gained from my vegetable gardening friends all over the world and he certainly inspired Roger to get thinking on using some of his ideas too.

They have solar panels and produce an average of 75% of their electricity needs, as well as having lots of energy efficient appliances and water-saving methods. I think we could rightly say that Gavin has been greened, well and truly.

Gavin cooked us a quiche with his own vegetables and eggs and made us an excellent loaf of bread. Kim made  a lovely salad and we had a great chat over lunch. Kim makes the labels for Gavin's preserves which fill a cupboard.... he even has pickled eggs!

Kim is very artistic and creative and their home and gardens reflect this.....I wish I could co-ordinate things like Kim has done!

Thanks Gavin for taking the day off work to be with us today and I look forward to keeping in touch with you and Kim and hopefully showing you around my place one day....when I smarten it up!

Next stop tomorrow....home!

ALMOST HOME.....VEERING VIA VICTORIA

Now I am in Melbourne, Victoria and had a great flat white coffee this morning at The Convent Farmers' Market! It is located in an inner suburb but it is hard to believe when you look around and see nothing but bushland and the Yarra River... see the photos.

 

 

 

I enjoyed talking to the bloke from "Native Oz Cuisine" who sells several bushfoods, including my favourite, Bush Tomatoes. We bought some of his "Strawberry-gum infused pannacotta" which means a type of lovely, thick creme caramel kind of thing, infused with the amazing aroma of the strawberry gumtree leaf. His wife is aboriginal and together they have the only bushfoods company owned by Aboriginal people.

 

There was an Australian coffee stall selling coffee grown and roasted in Australia.....check out the website "Eureka Coffee".

 

Jack bought a kilogram bag of organic asparagus seconds for $4.... who says organic is expensive? When in season it should be easy to find bargains like this!

Here is a photo of coriander with its roots and stems on,  as I was describing to various people on my trip....it is always sold this way here, and you use the roots and stems in the cooking then add the chopped leaves only at the end. This is often used in Thai cooking.

 

 

 

 

We had breakfast at Lentil as Anything...a vegetarian cafe where you just pay what you think the food is worth by putting some money in a jar as you leave. They serve mostly organic food and employ refugees or disadvantaged people and now have 4 cafes in Melbourne so obviously they are doing something right. They also often have live music, featuring refugees such as African drummers etc.

 

 

 

 

I love the rusty steel cut-outs of typical Australian farm dogs which lead you along a path to the community garden and the Collingwood Children's Farm, from the Farmers' Market...

 

 

.....and the wonderful decorations on the boardwalk...

 

 

 

On the way home Jack insisted we drop into the "Pure Bread" bakery, whose selection of patisserie equalled most I saw in France! 

 

 

 

Much later we went out for dinner to a Middle Eastern restaurant called ZumZum and finished our absolutely fantastic dinner with Mahalabia...... which was these soft, nut-flavoured threads on top of a delicate, rosewater and nut infused custard..... well, somebody has to do the research!!

 

Canada

Vancouver and the Agassiz area are not only picturesque beyond comparison.....

Black squirrel

Raccoon

Salmon travelling upstream to spawn

 

The view from my bedroom window

Some local scenes

 

....but also have a nice local emphasis, when it comes to producing food....

Judy has a herb and vegetable farm just out of Agassiz...

Rosemary grows magnificent scarlet runner beans...

.....and George has a goat dairy.

Agassiz is a food bowl for Vancouver because of its rich, fertile river-flats soil and yet it faces the same "progress" issues as Adelaide and other regions in that developers are being allowed to subdivide land for housing. The best soils in western Canada are being covered with houses and concrete driveways and along with Rosemary and Garth, my wonderful hosts, I do wonder at the power given to local councils to decide on important issues like land usage for the future.

Fuel prices here and in the USA are much lower than Australia, Europe and the UK, with petrol here today being C$1.15 and there are still lots of big cars, enormous road systems and traffic like you wouldn't believe. The motorways are full of semi-trailers trucking goods around the countries and Vancouver harbour, and Seattle and Singapore are a mass of ships loading and unloading never-ending supplies of the stuff that seems to be expected, to live in a modern world today.

And yet, only an hour or so away from Vancouver people are doing what people do best....growing and producing food with a passion equal to anything I have seen anywhere. You can see from the photo above right, how much George's goats love George! He has 400 goats, farmed out here and there, and most have a name! There are several breeds, which mostly looked the same to me, but George knows how old each goat is, who their parents were and how much milk they produce! His Swiss wife makes the cheeses and they are very, very good....I didn't meet her as she was away in Italy at a cheese conference. Soon George's land could be covered in houses and George would be a rich man if he sold his property but George loves goats, there is a shortage of goat milk already and it is a crazy world.....

It is the same with the corn fields and the buffalo breeder and the cow dairies and the market gardeners.....here and the world over....and swathes of beautiful virgin Canadian forests are being cut down and making very ugly scars on the hillsides too, to make way for people and their houses....as the never-ending cancer of human greed sucks the life from its own sustenance, like a parasite, not stopping until the host is dead. Fishing fleets that once plied the rich waters around Vancouver have sucked the life from those waters too and the boats sit idle in the harbour, while the restaurant and overseas markets' demand for seafood sends the bigger ships far north to plunder those seas, without much thought for sustainable methods.

This area of Canada is so spectacular and has such rich soil that there needs to be someone to shake the decision-makers and force them to see the inevitable demise they are causing, in the name of progress. Do what they do in some parts of the UK and Europe and draw a line around the towns and say "That's it! Develop inside these boundaries and leave the outside as farmland."

Suddenly this plane has hit a turbulent patch....again I have 3 seats to myself and have slept for ages, having left Vancouver at midnight bound for Sydney and it is now about 7.30am .....about half way there then. I have just been given a second cup of tea and excellent tea it is too. This is a beautiful new plane and I can even plug my laptop in to power! Maybe the next generation of planes will have free wifi.....next stop Melbourne to meet up with Roger and stay with some friends for the weekend and then visit Gavin, from the Greening of Gavin, on Monday......the vagabond is not finished yet!

Of course there are lots more photos here.

ODD SNIPPETS FROM MY TRAVELS

Odd and interesting the way things change around the world...the English language, toilets, taps, cars, light switches, door latches, power-points, breakfasts and roads to name a few.

Bathrooms are the things I have had most trouble with and, in fact, at Roger D's I had to give up on turning on the shower and get dressed and go and ask him to show me how to turn on the water...you don't turn the tap, you pull it...hard! Toilets come in many shapes, sizes and flushing systems. I got quite a shock in the Washington airport when the toilet flushed suddenly and with great gusto, all by itself! On a train in France it took me ages to work out how to flush it.....I think it was a pedal... or was that Singapore? Toilet bowls vary enormously and of all those I have seen, I like the American and Canadian ones for water efficiency and design. There are a myriad of showerheads and temperature control methods but give me an ordinary Australian set of taps anytime!

And if you want to turn on a light, search all nearby walls carefully (and some not so near!) and then turn the switch up, for on, not down, as in Australia. Now, after all this time, I am so confused about light switches I spend some time wondering where I am and in the end just flick up and down until it all comes good! Apart from the different voltages and pins on the power points of every country, it was interesting to see that there is no switch in a lot of places.....when you plug something in, it is on. Some places have a switch so tiny any normal-sized finger refuses to operate it. On the whole, people have a lot of power points and I could always find somewhere convenient to plug in the laptop, even in 1000 year old farmhouses....better than a lot of Australian homes and hotels.

In the UK and Europe the cars drive on opposite sides of the road and people who drive on both deserve a gold medal. They can also have cars with steering wheels on either side.....I was a totally confused passenger many times. It is scary going around a round-about the opposite way the first 100 times and I have never quite mastered looking the right way before crossing the road, so I look both ways a lot. Car door handles can be interesting to use too. Some open from the middle, some from the outer edge and some are just difficult to find. And the road rules are often a total mystery.....what with some places having one flashing red light hanging in the middle of the road, some having flashing green lights and the French having traffic light poles as short as an old Frenchman, just here and there so you have to search for them to find out what you are supposed to be doing! The French also put their street signs on the side of the road where they point....so if you don't know which way you are going to have to turn you have to scan both sides of the road for a sign! Unlike in Australia, most often drivers will stop for a pedestrian who is anywhere near a simple crossing marked with white lines.

One minute European drivers have to negotiate very narrow and contrary "roads" originally made for a horse and rider and must park in spaces shorter and narrower than their cars! The next they are expected to drive at 130km/ hour on multi-laned motorways, manoeuvring between dense traffic, including hundreds of enormous trucks, all travelling at equally hair-raising speeds! They get my vote for the best drivers, in my experience. And navigating through the villages of France is an experience that requires a lot of patience and preferably the help of a GPS aid, such as Lucy who is Ian's constant companion and who gets very agitated when she tells Ian to turn up what turns out to be a one-way street, the wrong way, and Ian calmly says "No, Lucy, we will try the next street" . Meanwhile, Lucy says "Turn around....turn around ..... recalculating...recalculating..." in a very insistent English voice. Once though, Lucy suddenly turned American and made us laugh and wonder if it was all too much for Lucy and she had quit the job and handed over to an American woman who we called Billie-Jean. After a bit of adjustment though, we found Lucy again and decided the break had done her good as she wasn't quite so loud and stressed as before!

Of the 1500 or so photos in the web album, I have none of any of these ordinary things and now that I have left them all behind, I wish I had taken some. Maybe some of the people I have stayed with could take some photos for me and send them to me and I can insert them here....that would be very nice.

A WONDERLAND IN WORDS

Hello from Agassiz, an hour and a half east of Vancouver, where Kathy-from-gardening's parents live. I am writing this on their computer as they don't have wifi and I can't upload my photos so I will have to paint word pictures instead......

Trees nearly as tall as mountains, in every shade of green as well as all the autumn colours....
Even the squirrels are multi-coloured - some black, some grey and the local ones which are brown.....

Mountains soaring above the clouds, their peaks iced with galciers and snow all year round...

I have seen raccoons and walked within a metre of them...
And the sea is everywhere, just like in the phptos of Seattle that I posted yesterday....
The rivers...dotted with logs being brought downstream ..... bordered with forests and mountains ... and driven over across a green bridge that seemed to arch straight up to the top of the mountains before curving gracefully back down to the shore.
Winter ski resorts towering above the Vancouver skyline.....I wonder how anyone ever gets any work done for looking in awe at those mountains.....
Stories of local goat farmers and cheesemakers, of beans picked fresh from the garden for our dinner, local markets and walks through the forest to visit friends.....
Stories of a violent storm that brought down 400 year old trees, and swept the car of a friend off the road and over a cliff.....
And people with a conscience who seek the ethical, the real and the local and whose garden I will drool over tomorrow when it is light.....while I sit inside alone at some ungodly hour and drink my all milk coffee!

And a guest room made for royalty......

Plus 3 more days to enjoy all this.....

And to post with no photos on this lovely old keyboard, in the room next to my bedroom, wondering again how I got to be so lucky!

And wonder again why blogger puts funny spacing between the lines sometimes!

SO MUCH TO SEE IN SEATTLE

 

Today was a bright and sunny day...the first since I arrived in Seattle...just perfect for being outside. Seattle is a city of hills, a harbour and lakes, at the bottom of magnificent Mt. Rainier and bordered on 2 sides by mountain ranges...evidently....so far it has been too cloudy to really see much of them! The roads are like San Francisco, up and down and down and up....always catching a glimpse of the view from the top before diving down again and popping up somewhere else. The houses are all built on hills, much like in Sydney, and the gardens remind me of Melbourne....full of plants that thrive in cool, moist places....as well as avenues of beautiful trees, some full of autumn colour, others the different greens of pines and spruces. The dozens of P-Patches are often on top of hills and command glorious views of the city, the sea and/or the surroundings. There are markets full of local produce to be found somewhere in Seattle every day of the week and it seems to me that people here have grabbed hold of the local and are taking it very seriously indeed. If I were to want to live in the USA, I would definitely consider Seattle..... because they do have pretty good coffee, on the whole!

 

I have been eating summer fruit for days....nectarines in particular!

Melinda and I went for a lovely walk along a new trail by the sea and caught a glimpse of Mt. Rainier, looming up beyond the cranes in the harbour..... bottom right in the grid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the exit gate from the University District Farmers Market this morning there was a chef from a well-known restaurant sitting in a booth ready to answer questions on how to cook the produce you had just purchased and another ready to answer questions on growing food for yourself. I thought these were great initiatives.

There was a rainwater tank system at the University District market that was very creative. Just follow the pipe down from the gutter. left to right....

From a 3rd storey roof...down across the top of a fence to the tanks...

..then the overflow goes out via a tin rubbish bin to a series of metal mixing bowls......

...then onto a rocky outcrop and down into a drain under the surface.....

 

Thankyou so much for showing me Seattle, Melinda, it has been a wonderful few days with you and Matt.

There are more photos here.

Check out what Melinda has to say too in her post today.

Tomorrow.....Vancouver!

 

SEATTLE P-PATCHES

The Thomas Street P-Patch is a delightful mix of flowers and vegetables....

and a friendly squirrel.....

as well as lovely paths and raised beds.

 

The next one looks good as we approach....

but some of the garden beds seem to have escaped!

The dahlias are stunning everywhere.

 

The approach to the Pelican Tea P-Patch is dreadful.....

but it is ever so cute when you arrive ....

And I found Australia there....

 

The Tilth P-Patch and demonstration garden....

with  an interesting border of stones in wire cylinders....

and apples individually protected from mites

 

"P-Patches" is the name given to the community gardens here in Seattle because evidently a bloke called Picardo started them in the 1970's, according to this link from Melinda.

These are just 4 of the dozens of them all over Seattle. They are filled to the brim by the love and attention of the gardeners and each has a staggering variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers. Some are tiny, some enormous but all are beautifully cared for and open to anyone to visit, anytime.

Of course there are more photos in the link, including some of the Washington State University's herb garden incorporating lots of herbs native to the USA and to the Pacific North-west, which includes Seattle.