backyard moments

We had cake for breakfast out the back today. Serenaded by the strange sounds of nexdoor's washing machine/dryer (?!) it was delightful nonetheless.

hanging gardens

My new blue/green hanging pots. Chain of hearts and misc. grey succulent in one. Mistletoe cactus and string o pearls in t'other. 

Plants are cuttings and snippings. Cactus from Heathcote holiday house and grey succulent from Carol, the keenest gardener I ever met. Pots from typo. Originally strung with UGLY white, cotton rope, restring w recycled gear cable by handsome husband. Wish the pots came in pink or yellow or orange but otherwise perfect. 

this guy

i heart pickles

Botticelli sunrise

Expecting to see Venus riding in on a clam shell at any moment...

occasional verse #7

Equinox has come and gone,

Days are shorter, nights grow long.

Apple pancakes, golden hours,

Pomegranates, dahlia flowers.

Tis winter in a little while,

But Autumn mornings make me smile.

occasional verse #5

Watering the orchids and what do I see?

New, green flower spikes,

One, two, three!

Wait a moment, here's one more...

Altogether, that makes four.

Best of all, way down low,

One orchid flower, smiling hello!

First day of Autumn

Popped down to the plot today to do some staking of late tomatoes and tomatillos. And got some nice surprises. Aphids have plagued summer broccoli, but luckily the calvelry flew in and the little buggers are being gobbled up by some good tempered ladybirds and their offspring. 

The tomatoes and eggplants are kicking on, tomatillos are flowering their heads off, the sunflower heads are ripening and there are all sorts of self seeding surprises popping up - cucumbers, more tomatoes and teensy, baby love-in-the-mist. Quinces are swelling on the tree and all in all, Autumn is looking promising.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

How does our garden grow?

Like this, y'all! Photos going back approximately a year show how our plot, and my taste in hipstamatic filters changes over time.

Strange but Wonderful Green Tomato Saucy Pickle

I'm quite compulsive about not wasting produce. Slightly obsessive, in fact. And so when the lovely Ingrid was turfing the last of her cherry tomatoes at the busy bee last weekend, I couldn't resist setting the plants aside until I (actually, my darling husband) had a chance to pull every last green or orange tomato fruit off the leggy old stems.

My plan was to make green tomato pickle. But when snoodling around on the internet this morning, all the recipes seemed to require allowing the fruit to sit and drain overnight, which was out of the question because today is Sunday and everyone knows, preserving on a Monday is a recipe for nothing but disaster. To get around the problem I tried a search for "green tomato sauce" because then I figured I'd be able to boil the moisture out instead. Anyway, I managed to find a couple of recipes that were a bit inspiring, including this Jamie Oliver recipe. I decided to blitz all my ingredients, then cook them up for a bit before bottling. I set about collecting ingredients and somehow I ended up with a whole lot more (green) things than any of the recipes asked for. Here's the full list:

a kilo of mostly green cherry toms,
a few tomatillos,
two green capsicums,
two onions, 
several cloves of garlic,
a bunch of basil and parsley from garden, stalks included,
two sticks of celery,
a couple of fresh curry leaves,
a lemon myrtle leaf,
a couple of green chillies,
a slice of lime peel,
juice of half of the same lime,
200ml of white vinegar,
70g of brown sugar,
salt,
pepper, 
coriander seeds,
and
whole allspice.

I wasn't sure it was going to work but it seemed worth a shot. So I crushed the coriander and allspice then dry toasted them. Next, I whizzed everything else (in batches) in the blender before boiling it all up for an hour or so. I skipped the step where you strain it to smooth saucy consistency because aside from being a finicky waste of time, removing all the good fibre and making your sauce less healthy seems like a stupid idea to me, but I did push it through a sieve for a bit which may or may not have increased its smoothness.

The result, after all that, was a strange but very lovely, olivey-green, sweetish sourish tomato pickle-y sauce. Perfect, I imagine, for spreading on sausages, fish, roast beef, chicken sandwiches or even eating as an accompaniment with Easter Bunny Pie. I'm very pleased with it but before I declare it a success I'll wait to see what Ingrid says. I've got a bottle with her name on it.

jars of green tomato saucy pickle,
plus chipotle sauce far right and a combo of the two on the left