Home Grown

Our little garden in the inner city is working overtime this summer. We've just picked a basket of white nectarines off our tree which produced exactly zero last year.

I love white nectarines .... and these are a juicy and sweet and fleshy and luscious.

I love the way the juice runs down your arm and drips off your elbow. I've learnt from experience to eat them straight from the tree in the garden, or over the sink.

Last year summer was blisteringly hot and dry. So far, we've had a cool summer and lots of rain so the fruit is about a 4-6 weeks behind.

And there's lots more to come.

We've got a tree full of apricots not yet ripe, the olive trees are laden, our tomatoes are green but looking good, the lime and orange trees have set their fruit and we've got an abundance of apples and crab apples.

I need to check out what to so with crab apples (and what they actually taste like).

We planted the tree a couple of years ago - mostly for the spring blossom, but this year the tree is heavy with fruit so I need to think about what to do with it. I've heard of crab apple jelly ... so I'll see what recipes I can find in my collection or on good old google. What do you serve crab apple jelly with?

So as summer stretches before us, we're looking forward eating our fruit ... and preserving and bottling and making jellies and jams and curds.

Blooming beautiful

We hit 27 degrees today and it was all blue sky and sunshine in Melbourne.

The crabapple in our garden is in blossom.



And the colours are gorgeous.

I love the pink and white combination and the way the sun shines on the leaves.

Daylight saving means it's still light when I get home. Yay.

Time to enjoy the garden with a glass of wine.

Home grown

There's so much pleasure in eating something you've grown yourself and pulled straight from the garden.
We've got a small plot in a community garden, quite near our house in inner Melbourne.
Last year the garden didn't yield much because of the drought and the water restrictions.

It was all a bit depressing.

But this year ...

Ta daaaaaa!

We've got silver beet, cabbage, beetroot and carrots with loads more to come.

Eliza loves these tiny carrots in her lunch box.

Sweet, crunchy and delicious!

It doesn't get any fresher.

Retro Parsley

I have been moved to write about a humble herb.
A herb that, in my opinion, has fallen out of favour.
Word on the street is that it's not as flavoursome as it's fancy cousin from Italy.
"Common" has been used to describe it.

So I feel compelled to stand up and shout
I've fallen in love again with curly leaf parsley!



Sure, I tried the flat leaf stuff ...
And for a few years I felt pretty cosmopolitan and
pretty darned sophisticated as I gayly added Continental parsley to my dishes,
like some European gourmet.

But that little affair is over.
I've moved on.
I wish it had never happened.

I'm back embracing those tight curly emerald leaves.

(Sorry I ever left you ...)

I love, love, love the sculptured effect of parsley growing in my garden.
It's crunchy
It's springy
It's fun
And it's sooooo 70s.

What's not to love?

Retro is back and so is curly leaf parsley.
Spread the word.

The Zing of Spring

I fancied some spring lamb for dinner, but I didn't want the traditional trimmings.
A recipe in the Good Weekend caught my eye.
Perfect !

I love it when magic like that happens.

A salad of spring vegetables.

I whipped it up in no time.

Ta daaaa .....

A springy, zingy salad with broad beans, fennel, peas, asparagus and feta with a handful of mint and parsley from our garden. The lemony dressing (made with our own lemons) and a tiny dice of preserved lemons (again from our tree) topped it off.

And it tasted as good as it looked.

A bright, bright, bright sunshiney day

Another sunshiney day in Melbourne ...

(After a long cold winter days like this are still a novelty!)

Eager to make the most of the warmth, my sister and I packed up our girls and visited an Open Garden on the fringe of Melbourne.

Um .... Wow.
4 hectares of garden including a lake.....


We picnicked in the garden before having a look around.

The girls loved exploring (and pretending that this really was their garden!)

There were plenty of gorgeous garden vistas ...

And a jazz band which really added to the atmosphere. But the moment can only last so long .....

The girls were tired and hot and bored and grumpy.

Time to go!

Spring blossom

Today was just one of those perfect spring days.
Sunshine
blue sky and
blossom.



Our weeping cherry tree has put on quite a show this year.

When we renovated our house there was quite a lot of talk about removing this tree from our garden to open up the view.

I'm so glad we didn't.

Looking at the tree on a day like this gives me so much pleasure.

Worth bottling

Look at these beautiful olives James picked from a couple of trees in our garden.
We had about 10 olives in total last year, but this year the trees have flourished after we freed them from the pots and gave them their own space in the back garden.

Aren't the colours gorgeous? Like jewels I think.

James soaked them in a water - changing it every day for a week.
Then I came home tonight ... and voila.


















We've got five precious bottles.















James bottled them with fresh herbs and bay leaves from our garden plus garlic and celery.

The bottles are in the pantry now while the flavours infuse.

We'll serve them in a couple of months, slightly warm, drizzled with olive oil and served with some crusty bread and a glass of wine...

Definitely worth bottling.

James, too, I reckon!

Pumpkin Patch

What's the collective noun for pumpkins ?

One word comes to mind .... but I don't think I should type it here.
Eliza has a 'swear jar' and I'm already in debt to the tune of $11.20.
So you get the picture .... we have a heap of pumpkins - actually a mountain of pumpkins that our tiny inner city back garden has produced. We harvested them yesterday.

We picked 15 pumpkins altogether and they're huge.
We've given a couple away already but if anyone has some inspiring ideas for pumpkins .... let me know.

We have a s***load of them!

In Rushed Autumn

It's been so long coming and then this morning it came in a rush.

Autumn is finally here.

The poor trees are so confused. We're almost at the end of April and one day last week hit 31 degrees.

We had rain overnight so this morning the garden was lovely and drippy. The leaf litter formed a golden carpet (look closely and you'll see the sheep poo we tossed on the garden last weekend).

The white crepe myrtles we planted last year are giving some lovely colour in the front garden.

So the season has changed as the year hurtles on.

Autumn is here and I'm into my cook books looking for inspiration for quinces, apples, pears and chestnuts. I'll also need to find some exciting things to do with pumpkin .... but more on that later.