Is the inexorible rise of the tide of over catered brassicas. But they are so pretty!
Heartening...
We are chewing through sugar loaf cabbages, broccoli, broccolini and cauliflowers while trying to ignore the bok choy, red cabbages, kohl rabi, more broccoli, cauliflowers quickly exploding into maturity…
Succulent broccoli, 1/2 an hour before becoming lunch, topped with buttery leaks and roasted hazels.
We are also enjoying the squashed broadbeans, which didn’t stand up again after the snowfall, but they are producing nicely keeled over. Delicious fried up in butter with the huge spring onions we have coming out our ears, fresh green baby garlic, and a twist of salt and pepper!
Snail grazed cauli hiding in its mammoth ear leaves.
We put the tomatoes, eggplants, and some of the chillies in a bit earlier this year to catch more of the season, and so far they have survived. Melbourne Cup Day is famous around here for heralding the last of the frosts, fingers crossed we’ve made it and we have a more bountiful crop with the extra few weeks of sunshine and warmth.
There are flowers everywhere… Can anyone identify this one, which CGE grew from seed and lost the packet? It is a tall spindly bush, about 3 or 4 feet high, that we had to stake, with a greyish green foliage and the most spectacular flowers.
Perfection.
The beautiful and stinky Mexican Hawthorn has flowered, but the even stinkier Washington Thorn is yet to. I am so in love with the jam and marmalade I made with the fruit that I can’t wait for next season. Its sister, the medlar, is in full flower at the moment as well, and is full of life.
Medlar flower.
S is very keen on the garden and is often found prowling the paths, picking a leaf of broccoli to munch on while she stirs up her bucket of water (I’m sure she is potentising an imaginary Biodynamics brew).
Busy helpin'.
Saprophytes (anyone know what it is?) push domed heads toward the sun,
pink fingered orchids (Caladenia carnea) dip their sweet fingers into the breeze,
native violets (Viola herderacea) catch droplets in a sun shower,
and lyre birds fill the gullies with raucous noise.
This term the older girls are starting a day of prep a week at our local school and one day a week at a slightly larger school an hour’s drive away. Our little local one has the dubious claim to fame of being the most isolated, as well the smallest school in Victoria, with only three students. The one that is further away, is by comparison, huge – there are nearly ten kids there!
So far most of my efforts to get them to school have been foiled – on the first scheduled day, our little valley was deep in snow and without power for 24 hours. On their next scheduled day, we had a flood from the snowmelt and I couldn’t drive over the small bridge that crosses the river on our driveway. And then my car broke down. And with my partner overseas, we have no transport until I can get a child free day to limp it over a hundred kms to the garage. Fortunately the local school is within walking distance, and we finally managed to join in on Tuesday.
And the girls had a ball. Here are some photos of their first day…
The Nukatoko has blossomed, well and truly. It smells rich and nutty with hints of garlic, sake, bran, with the tangy alcoholic kind of waft of the lactic acid working away. I’ve been eating the vegies every day and am learning about how to drive it. Carrots are wonderful, as are jerusalem artichokes, celery not so good, though I think it would be nice if only left for an hour or two. Flowering brassica heads of all different types, yummy. Asparagus is to die for! Perfect! I can’t wait to try some cucumbers.
Yummilicious garden salad with sliced nukazuke tsukemono pickles of carrot and asparagus.
The sliced vegetables make a delicious tangy addition to salads and stirfries, they have bright colour and are crunchy, sweet, and mildly salty – they would make a great vegan substitute for cheese, if the vegan in question was ok with farming bacteria…(? Any vegans reading who would like to comment, I’d be interested…?). The kids are beginning to like them – I think in a few weeks they will love them as much as I do as they are already raiding my salads.
Teddies love their Nuka tsukemono too!
I’m very excited about it! I love those little lactic critters, in there, doing their little lactic thing! And I love getting my probiotics free, and fresh. I’m eating something living at nearly every meal now, and that has to be a good thing.
Morning.
And we are finally back in the market for stock. Well, a bit of stock, maybe…
Noon. Really! Same day!
After a desiccated winter, mild and dry, with rain falling every few weeks in lots of 5mm or less, we have finally hit the big time. Yesterday B tipped 42mm out of the gauge, ok, it was collected over two days, but still! Well, ok, considering we have had less than half our average rainfall this year to date (34% of annual average over 75% of the year for those of us who are counting *blush* at my bush induced OCD), and that over the next three months we need more than double the amount we have had all year to come close to the average, we might not be quite out of the woods…
Spring! No, really!
But how nice to be wet! To squelch! The joys of squelching might not be so apparent to the Tasmanians among us, those who’s computers aren’t so deep in moss that they can still read along, but up here, squelching is joyful indeed.
Horses failing to embrace the joy of Squelch.
Just a word of complaint though, for anyone who has an ear for complaint… the snow squashed our broad beans *weep* who not only were perfuming our garden in the most divine fashion (and just why isn’t there a perfume made from these fragrant if homely plants??), but were beginning to bear us some tender baby beans, as can be seen in my nuka pickle post, above. And seeing as you asked, my Nukatoko is blooming. Jerusalem artichokes and carrots are the go at the moment. Delishious!
Melting snow.
