There's beetroot and then there's yellow eckendorf!

Last autumn I sowed 5 different types of beetroot. (This time I will sow them much earlier because they did very little until spring.... but that's another interesting story.) There was an outstanding winner in the taste and resistance to bolting test and that was Yellow Eckendorf. At first glance it looked quite pretty too, having skin and leaf stems of a bright yellow and large, brilliant green leaves. The roots were also large but once cut I saw they were an insipid cream colour and did not hold much hope for a taste sensation.

 

 

However, I was so surprised at the first mouthful, after cooking them Jamie Oliver style. This was better than any other beetroot I'd ever had! The cooked colour is worse even than the fresh but every day that they sit in the fridge the flavour gets better and better. I do not want to eat the last piece and have to wait so long for more!

 

These photos are not mine; I copied them from Google Images. Sadly one of the websites where I found them was suggesting this to be animal fodder! Yes, and I know which animal is going to get my next crop!

I am going to go right now and find that packet of seeds and put it on my kitchen table to remind me to sow them soon, here in Tasmania. Anywhere hotter and I would suggest you wait until March.

Happy gardening!

The meaning of giving

Some would say that making a new life in a small, rural town, way down at the bottom of the world, far, far away from "everything",  is running away, becoming self-focused and almost a hermit. I might have even been one of those know-alls once upon a time. Small communities can be suffocating, insular, backward and treat newcomers like aliens. I understand there are such undercurrents in Tasmania and even here in Cygnet.

However my experience over the last 9 months is one I never would have expected nor dared hope for. As I sit here in my lounge, all around me are momentos of the people who have shared so generously with me and invited me into their lives. Next to my laptop is one of a whole stack of French cookbooks and vegetable gardening books, lent to me to read over the holidays by Jan of Woodbridge. Behind me are 2 big, comfortable lounge chairs given to me by Liz shortly after I arrived in Cygnet, hand-me-ons from a dear old friend of hers. Next to them is my Christmas tree, cut from Liz's block, then brought back here and decorated with tinsel passed on to me by her Bob. In the kitchen is a hand made coffee tamper and a dibber made by Rod for me as a trial before he started making them to sell. On the floor beside me Pickle is playing with a ball on a rope, given to him for Christmas by my new American gardening friends Ally and Steve who are house-sitting my friend Helen's house in Hobart. Beside the front door is a boule set lent to me for our after Christmas lunch lawn game.....on the lawn that Laura kindly came and mowed for me on Christmas morning.... and so it goes on. I cannot mention them all !

In the garden, just visible from where I am sitting, bloom the dark red, heaven-scented sweet peas which have grown from seeds given to me by Frances. Happily dotted throughout my whole acre are plants people have grown from cuttings or seeds and shared with me. I love that image of a person handing over something living, given with such care, each and every one of them with a little story to tell of how or why they are giving it to the other. In the Christmas bonbons that I made I placed some sunflower seeds which I had saved from the flowers in my garden, soon after I moved into my house. I added a little note, asking the recipient of the bonbon to take one of the seeds and plant it in my garden for me, then to be sure to return often and watch it grow with me. I hope they germinate!

Pride of place is taken by this wonderful sign which all of you who visit will see welcoming you to my Garden Shed business. Erica is a wife, mother and nurse and yet found the time to design and make this for me for Christmas..... look closely and you will even see Pickle standing in the doorway of the shed!

Thanks to the internet and blogs, on my bedside table is a delightful book Pattie  (USA) sent me and close by is a little book of poems written by Teleri (France). I have a dvd about gardening in the tropics, from Wilson (Singapore) and I now make seed packets based on the template shared with me by Laura (France).... the list is awesome.

I do not feel at all that I have escaped from anything, but I do feel I have arrived somewhere I belong, where giving includes time, thought and sharing.

The Cygnet Christmas Parade

It was such fun, such a happy occasion and such a lovely evening with no rain (evidently rain is usually a feature of the parade!). Cygnet has a population of 800 and I reckon that everyone of them was out lining the streets.

Me, visiting neighbours on the way to Liz's to decorate the wheelbarrows.	Alicia, Emily, Alex and Charlie getting into the swing of it at Liz's.
There was every kind of vehicle from little kids on little motor bikes to scout floats, a vintage car, utes and trucks, fire engines and this cute little racing car.... Oh... why were we in it? We were representing the community garden and next year we'll have a banner and seeds to throw to people......

Make your own Christmas Bonbons

From the BBC News

From my kitchen.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside is a joke, a little native Australian animal and a tiny packet of sunflower seeds. On the packet of seeds I stuck a label I printed saying.... Here are some seeds collected by me from my garden last autumn. Please go outside and sow one now. Then come back and visit me often and watch it grow. Tomorrow morning I will pick some flowers and put one with each bonbon, instead of a paper hat.

Joyeux Noel.

How to plant a garden in the snow..... and know when your garlic is ready to harvest

By Roger Doiron and family.

 

Thanks Roger, I love them!

And, if any readers were wondering, son Alex did get home. His plane left Heathrow on time, with him on it. Just plain lucky and oh so grateful.

White Christmas for gardeners?

This photo was taken in NZ in June, and I think I have put it on here before, but I can just dream about having a white Christmas.... I found the photo on Ooooby (Out of our own back yards). All the snow in the UK and Europe ..... and son Alex trying to catch a plane from Heathrow today, to get back to an Australian Christmas on the beach!

Sue of a previous garden-shed-envy blog piece sent me this very funny, clever and entertaining Christmas Story snippet:

.... and hot off the email press is this recipe from my nearly-ancient friend, Sally

CHERRY MISTMAS!

Ingredients
• * 2 cups flour
• * 1 stick of butter
• * 1 cup of water
• * 1 tsp baking soda
* 1 cup of brown sugar
• * lemon juice
• * 4 large eggs
* nuts
* 2 bottles of sherry
* 2 cups dried fruit
Method

Sample the sherry to check quality. Take a large bowl, check the
sherry again, and to be sure it is of the highest quality, pour one level
cup and drink. Repeat. Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one cup of
butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Beat again.
At this point it is best to check the sherry again. Try another cup just
in case. Turn off the mixerer thingy. Break 2 eggs and add to the bowl
and chuck in dried fruit.

Pick the frigging fruit off the floor. Mix on the turner. If the fried
druit gets stuck in the beaterers just pry it loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the sherry again to check for tonsisticity. Next, sift 2 cups of
salt, or something. Sheck the cherry.

Now shift the lemon juice and strain your nuts. Add one table. Add
a spoon of sugar, or some fink whatever you can find. Greash the
oven. Turn on the cake tin 360 o and try not to fall over. Don’t forget
to beat off the turner. Finally throw the bowl through the window
and wipe the counter with the cat. Finish the sherry and take a taxi to
Woollies to buy cake. Bingle Jells!!

As they say at Wilson's.....

Eat, think and be merry!

Vasili and Gavin..... Maresi!

If you missed Gavin on the TV show Vasili's Garden, back in November, you are in for a treat! Grab a cuppa, get everyone round the screen and sit back for a really fun and informative 3/4 hour or so.

I started reading Gavin's blog when it was brand new, back in about 2007. It has not all been smooth sailing for Gavin and his family, as they have had various health problems etc but nothing has stopped Gavin pursuing his desire to turn from a regular, petrol-guzzling consumer, to a model of green living, after watching "An Inconvenient Truth".

Now I am proud to call him a friend after a visit I made to his house on my Voyage of the Vegetable Vagabond, in 2008, and all the comments we have thrown at each other's blogs since.

Maresi, Gavin.... oh, and maresi Vasili too!