Early Summer Fruits & Pickled Walnuts

We picked the first of our Brown or Sugar figs on the 3rd of December this year, which is amazingly early. They are big at this stage and not numerous as the major crop won't start until about mid January. By that stage there will be that many that I can start making jars of sticky figs to enjoy during the winter months.
at present though we are enjoying them for breakfast or lunch sliced with cheese. I may also do some in vodka like I have done with the cherries we picked up from a local grower.

On the right is a bowl of walnuts , pricked ready to soak in brine for ten days, refreshing the brine once. I did that ten days ago and now had them out in the sun yesterday to turn black. It got so hot though, yesterday, I had to rescue them otherwise they would have been cooked.
we have had the hottest start to December on record, we were 40C yesterday while Adelaide was 42C and Pt Augusta a massive 45C....

So on the left are the walnuts all turned black and ready to be put into jars and spiced vinegar which is made with various spices and herbs. They then have to sit in the jars for a month before eating them either whole (if you are a pickled walnut fan) or thinly sliced with cheese or meat. I also have a rather nice casserole using pickled walnuts. If anyone is interested I could put it in my next blog. It is a matter of either liking them or hating them. In the 1960ies we had a blacksmith who used to come to Hughes Park and shoe our horses as we still mustered on horseback.

Harry used to organize the shoeing so the
blacksmith could join our Christmas party for the men when he was finished with the shoeing . We would send him home later, feeling full of good cheer with a large jar of pickled walnuts as he loved them. We would see him going down the garden path furtively dipping into the jar and eating one....We had three walnut trees there so there was always plenty to pickle and pick later in the autumn.

I had been watching the young Murray Magpie or Piping Shrike, by our pond two days ago and wondered if something was wrong with it. It hardly got out of my way and sure enough I found it last night , dead by the plum tree with its beautifully marked feathers blowing in the wind.
So sad really, we seem to have had quite a few young birds snuff it this year....
On the left is a series of mulga vases I suppose you could call them. The were offcuts from posts our friend David was using to make yards in the Sandstone Western Australia area where they had a sheep station.He was trapping feral goats. I brought the off cuts home and a young wood turner in Victor Harbor made them int these lovely shapes. Australian hard woods can be so lovely, I adore the Sheoak's wood as well and many more. I have  friend who used to do amazing scroll work in native woods......that may be another story.....

Early Summer and Christmas Break Ups

 Our Book Group meets on the first Friday of each month after lunch. The first Friday in December though, we meet in the morning to wind up the year and have a discussion on the last book we have read. Then we go off to lunch at a previously booked restaurant or pub.
This year however, we had a treat in that Catherine and Sue gave us a mini concert first off. Both women are accomplished musicians so we were privileged to hear some very fine music indeed. It helped to put us in a good mood before we tackled the book discussion.

The book we discussed was Nora Webster
by Colm Toibin, a fine and well known Irish writer. Most of us however were not enthralled with his social realism in this rather boring and lengthy tale of a young Irish widow finding her way after her husbands death. She was left with two young boys still at home and grown up daughters living away from home in the big city.
We were glad to escape to our chosen pub, high on the hill overlooking the beautiful Aldinga Bay. On the right you can see we enjoyed ourselves immensely despite the fact we had to wait over an hour for our food to arrive.......

We've decided to do something different next year...all going well of course.....
Remember to click on the photos to get a better look.
Our summer has started to affect our gardens rather early as we have had so little rain over the past three months. We did have 4ml of rain two days ago and it never ceases to amaze me how the Jacobean Lilies respond to quickly and show their elegant forms above the dry and brittle mulch.

 We were also delighted to see we still have a yellow water lily and since putting some bacterial stuff in the water the pond is starting to look so much better.
The white faced herons are hanging around again and looking to see if any fish are easy targets.
The birds some times land on the roof of the house and you'd think an army of clodhoppers had arrived. We had some rock pigeons land on the roof yesterday and they will get short shrift from me if they persist....

 The summer garden is just that, beige and dry.
I am trying to get a few Holm oaks going along the drive way, they have been in for three years now and are hardly making any headway.
The other plants are hardy geraniums and even they are finding it hard going.
I hope if and when when I get to the Pearly Gates
and asked what I might like to do in eternity, I can say I would like a garden with easy to work soil and unlimited water......

Brian's vegies have been an absolute disaster this year for unknown reasons... the seedling are eaten the moment they pop their heads up, the strawberry plants died in that terrible heat,
(the ones on the right are some I planted in the ground where as Brian's were in raised baskets )
and his tomatoes sit and sulk....
Never mind, the black birds are having a ball scattering the mulch and finding the bugs and the gum leaves rain down in great profusion......

New Veranda and Spring Flowers

We had decided we had better do something about our front veranda....we live on a reactive clay soil which means when the dry weather comes huge cracks appear in the soil. These are also translated to our veranda bricks which were a total mess and very uneven and a danger to our guests especially those who might be dependent on walking sticks. So we asked our trusted building friend if he could correct the problem for us and he did.

Meanwhile of course all the pots and garden furniture had to be removed first....
we put every pot in the corner near the sheds which faces east and is pretty well sheltered from the north winds and even the gully winds from the east and shaded by the big Ash trees. They seemed very happy there and flowered profusely, it seemed a shame to shift them back again now the veranda has been finished.

 The old wheelbarrow sits under a gum tree with a mast like trunk and is full of cacti and succulents. It was a lovely surprise to see the cactus flowering one morning, the flowers only last for a few days but they are truly spectacular.
The two gum trees in this particular area are self sown, usually I pull the seedlings up but they were in a useful position so I let them go. They have shot up straight and tall which is unusual in gum trees other than the Lemon scented trees but these are not lemon scented trees. A mystery.....

The garden sculpture on the right was made by asmallartfactory.com.au and the lass Anna who runs this with her husband gave it to me as a present.Their metal sculptures are out of light steel and are just great. Do visit their website....
The rose in the background is Gold bunny and the green in the foreground is myophylum, a water weed which decided to take over the pond so with great difficulty we have managed to remove most of it. It forms a dense mat underneath though it looks great it was preventing the birds from getting their much needed drink.....

On the left you can see the veranda much improved and we won't trip over the bricks which were so uneven. Now all I have to do is wash the windows especially the one the White face Heron has been attacking , knock, knock who is there? I'd go out and find the bird admiring himself in the reflection of the window despite the fact a lot of it was made grotty by him... a housewife's work is never done.....

Magpie Kills again...Red Kardinal rose

How sad to come back on Saturday after visiting the Artisan Market and getting olive oil from the Quarry Market where Brian also bought six tomato plants, to find the young Magpie stone cold dead in the drive way... In my earlier blog I told of how this male Magpie was bullying the youngster which was quietly sitting by the pond.
It did have a wonky leg but surely it wasn't killed because of that?  We will never know...I buried it next to the Willy Wagtail under the Walnut tree..

Then yesterday, while looking at yet more gum tree branches chewed off by the Black and Yellow tailed Cockatoos , I came upon this large Magpie nest blown down in the ferocious winds the other night. If you click on it you may see the pink plastic binder twine used as lining material.
The nest next to it for comparison is a tiny Greenies nest and the golf ball in it is merely there to stop it blowing away in the wind.....
The greenies did nest under the patio vine last year but this year when they came and had

a look, they must have decided it was too much like suburbia with the Black bird already established (it is sitting on eggs now the nest just above the patio door) and the Wagtails busy constructing their nest a few meters away. The Wagtails have been building this nest for three weeks now and have not occupied it, so we are wondering if it is a rental property or even a spec home and no one is interested in paying high rents in this upmarket position.....

Above is Kym's twig installation....as mentioned before the Yellow tailed Black cockatoos chew through the thickest branches and litter the ground with them. It is all very well to have plenty of kindling for the fire next winter plus all the eucalyptus leaves but it is a constant job to gather them up and store them. At least they don't make as much raucous noise as the dreaded Correllas which can be here in their hundreds making a mess of the gum trees as well.

Above is the Kardinal rose and it is interesting that the colour reproduced here is much more orange than in the garden. It is a lovely rose and among the first to bloom this season.
The variety of flower shapes and sizes and colours never ceases to amaze and delight us
The Gerberas on the left are doing so well this year too. They originally came from Brian's mother's garden and they are quite different to the ones you buy now . I thought they were drought tolerant but they do need watering in summer.....

The other delight is the Callistemon or bottle brush, such an intriguing form when you compare it to all the other flowers in the garden
with delicate golden tips on the ends of the brushes.....
Well, the mower wouldn't start this morning so instead there will be weeding to be done.......
Meditating on the vagaries of modern machinery.....while pulling things out by the roots......

Spring with Flowers, Baby Birds & Quondongs

 After a seemingly wet and dreary winter we are suddenly into the warmer weather and all in the garden are busily flowering or breeding
young things. The yellow bearded irises have been the first to show off their colours and form. These came from a friend in Tasmania originally and among them is a tan coloured iris which I have not seen anywhere else. It is inclined to flower in March for some reason and can get lost if I am not careful about giving it a little water during the hot summers we have here. The others are dark blue or pale blue with white falls, a pink one with white falls, a buff one with white falls and one that was almost black but we seem to have lost that one.
The bees are busy in the quince and apple trees and the apricot which was threatened with the chop early last year, but then got a reprieve and produced a bucket full of apricots, that too has flowered and set fruit.

 The grey blob you see on the vine branch on our patio, is a nest being built by the Willy Wagtail. Both male and female have been contributing to this nest for well over a fortnight now. They seem to mainly work in the mornings and then we don't see them till late afternoon. I was wondering if the male uses some of the latex from the fig tree to bond the fibers into a sturdy sort of a nest and it is beautifully shaped as he goes along. Remember to click on the photos to get a closer look......

 You can see him trying the nest out for size in the photo below....
I have been cutting off all the glory vines bunches of grapes as they make an awful mess and the little berries which result if I don't trim them first, are a nightmare when the blackbirds decide to eat them in the autumn. He hasn't seemed to have minded me being up a ladder to do this.

 The photo above is of a young Magpie which I was trying to get away from the pond before he wandered into it and were to drown. It has a wonky leg and is quite lame. this afternoon an adult Magpie came along and started abusing it. It was upside down with it's little legs in the air like they do sometimes in play as well but this was serious abuse and it did get up quickly and got away....

The Nasturtiums next to the pond are a bright and cheerful lot and the pale pink flowers at the back belong to a succulent which is a great ground cover. They originally came from Brian's grandmothers place and he remembers them well from when he was a little boy. His stepfather grew vegetables which were picked too late and so were not very nice.
The Nasturtiums are good to eat and I quite often have them in sandwiches or under a poached egg on toast.

The Quondongs are very good this year and quite a good size as well.
I de-stoned 400 grams yesterday and deep froze them to do something with when there may be a few more.  I believe you can make them into all sorts of preserves, chutney, jams, pies.....
Otherwise they are very nice fresh, thinly sliced and put into a salad.

The white rose is the first one off my "Tineke" rosebush this season. It is a very good cutting rose and will last for well over a week. I twas obviously bred in the Netherlands and the rose book says its' parentage is unknown....now there is a slur on a well bred rose......

Magpie accused of Murder.....

This magpie hotly denied he had killed the
Willy Wagtail, "I did not do it " he said "you must be mistaking me for another bird"
I had seen him though, the Wagtail flew onto the patio and the Magpie swooped in after him snapped his beak and hit Wagtail on the side....
You can see the evidence below, dead as a door nail and his feet in a defensive position on the bricks of the patio.....

If we put the local mob of Magpies in a line up
how would we recognize the culprit... they all look the same don't they...black and white...
The Magpie's defense was quite compelling: Wagtail had indeed been swooping him relentlessly as he was feeding on the olives which had appeared after mowing. Wagtail did not let up because he saw a threat to his chicks lately hatched in a nest close by in the Holm oak.
The case was dismissed and I gave the Wagtail a decent burial under the Walnut tree...

What a surprise it was too, to find the Quondongs ripening and falling on the ground, we were able to pick the first few to put in the blue dish. Quondongs are rich in vitamin C apparently, so they are a good addition to our diet. They are quite tart, raw and I do prefer to lightly steam them. I'll shred them finely raw and put them through the salad tomorrow and see if they are more palatable that way. I have steamed them with broad beans and they are delicious that way.

The other surprise was to see the first Waterlily for the season, the white streak at the side is the fountain splashing in the pond.
The white faced Heron is still around too, poking his beak into the water weed and looking for the frogs or the goldfish. He is not so shy anymore as he will stay where he is, despite the fact I have appeared at the kitchen window. The Black ducks have disappeared so I hope they are busy hatching and raising their many eggs. Ducks do seem to lay an awful lot of eggs....

The Alyogyne huegelii or native Hibiscus which is a native of South Australia , mostly of the Eyre Peninsula, never ceases to amaze me. It has the most intense blue/purple flowers at this time of the year and will last in a vase without any water for a fortnight at a time. The only problem is that the stems are very,very short. I find it best to pick them and then tie the stems with string or wire to keep them together in a small vase.
The garden is starting to look just great and I feel perhaps I need to put on a peasant lunch of breads and cheeses and local reds and ask all my friends around for a walk around afterwards to see and admire what is flowering .......

Shoulder Bag & view from a Window

 Perhaps some of you may be interested as to how I mix the colours of the yarns for this bag that I have been making. As you can see on the photo, there are several cones of yarn in various shades and one lot becomes the main colour and the other the fairisle contrast colour.
It is an interesting process deciding which tones and shades to use together.
It is all a case of personal taste of course but in the main I prefer to not have one colour dominating in a mix like this.

 To make the gusset for the bag, you sew across the corner of the bottom of the bag which will then give a flat bottom for the bag after you cut off the surplus material and turn it back to the right side.
You do the same with the lining of course and it will fit in nicely together and add strength to the bottom of the bag. I decided not to insert the Xray template to give it some body as it crackled horribly so next time I may use some pellon instead.

 I made a cord for it so I can have it over my shoulder or ,as I have found, it is quite good to use it as a clutch bag. Inside are all the pockets for mobile phone, glasses case, diary, pen,
lip gloss and car keys plus of course in my case room for a visual diary in which to Zendoodle away in Doctors or hospital waiting rooms....
The cord isn't actually very comfortable so may try a thicker one or even a knitted cord which will be softer.

 The fairisle pattern is a design which is actually in my Brother 970 electronic knitting machine
and I like the abstract look of it. There are lots of other patterns to choose from and you can make up your own as well and insert it into the console.
The yarns are mainly cotton with a little man made fibre as well , but very little....

The tree on the left is the Japanese rain tree I was told but it comes from China originally and is commonly called Golden Rain tree or its latin name is Koelreuteria paniculata. It has developed this amazing lichen on its branches and I have been using some of the little branch sticks for my book binding of the artist booklets I have been making. They are attractive little sticks and seem to hold the lichen quite well even after 12 months.
The photo below is a view of the garden from the Studio window. We have a South Australian garden, which is green in winter and yellow in summer...
 The black ducks were wandering around here this morning, I worry that they may be wayward parents as they must have a nest somewhere judging by the number of ducklings they have been making, but they seem to spend the day here lazing around the pond......

Shoulder bag project

My project for this week has started out as a shoulder bag large enough to carry a visual diary.
This I intend to carry with me when we go to Doctors and hospital appointments so I can Zen doodle or practice some drawing...at present I am fascinated by eyes for some reason and trying to get a look of aliveness to them. It is just beautiful how some artists are able to get that shine and life into those globes. When we go to Flinders Hospital the waiting rooms are arranged now with the chairs all facing the large TV screen ...

We never watch TV during the day so it came as a bit of a surprise to me to see the morning shows on this large screen and drawing will be a more interesting thing to do during the endless waits.....
So above you can see the lining of the bag with its pockets pinned ready for glasses case, mobile phone (yes I do have an ancient clam type) small diary and various other articles we carry with us, comb, pencils and keys for PO boxes and other cars....

Above shows they have been sewn. Th material is quite a heavy twill cotton someone gave to me some time ago...amazing how thing you keep for ages will in the end come in useful.
On the right I have knitted a piece of fairisle to be the cover for the bag.It is a mixture of thin yarns in various colours and the pattern is one that is sitting in my electronic knitting machine.

On the right are the two pieces I knitted
the first being too small and I wasn't all that pleased with the orange colour dominating.
It is interesting how measuring the paper pattern against the needle bed and allowing what I thought would be enough needles proved quite wrong and so had to allow an extra five needles both sides on top of the five already done in the first piece.I now have to get it all together....

This morning the cherry plum tree looked so good in full bloom with the magpie to give it some perspective I took quite a few photos of it.
The wormwood bush next to it will have to have a severe haircut soon as it is trying to take over the other plants next to it.
The grevilia Wynpara Gem on the other side of the cherry plum is always in flower and attracts a lot of honeyeaters. I see in the paper we are not the only ones bothered by the increase of the hysterical noisy miner....

I couldn't resist taking a photo of the Shasta Daisy, they look so much like young girls with their hair tossed in the wind with gay abandon..
the paint brush lilies  next to the daisies, with their huge leaves are going to have to be dug up when they die down and divided up and planted in new spots...
A gardeners work is never done....

Rainy Sundays

Yesterday was a fine day and I got some good pictures of the white faced Heron with its reflection in our pond. It really is a regal sort of a bird. I fear for our frogs though, what with the goldfish eating the frog spawn and now the heron lurking around and able to poke its sharp beak into the nooks and crannies of the rocks and slate surrounding the pond....so I am not fussed if the goldfish are food for the Heron because it will give the frogs a better chance to survive. We did at one stage have a special frog pond next to the big pond but it was not a good design and used to dry out too quickly....could be another project....among the hundreds a of other projects I seem to have on the go...in my head anyway...

It is raining again this morning which is great but had to come in and stop the weeding in the front part of the garden near the pond. Did manage to plant out some dark Agapanthus plants

 in places I thought may suit them.
Yesterday too, I caught the ducks busy grooming themselves after their usual mating session instead of having a cigarette and I love the way the teal flashes show up under their wings. No idea where their nest is or how many eggs they have laid so far. It could be that their nest is near the euphemistically called "Wet Lands just up the road from here......

 They then went and stood on the rocks almost as though they were waiting for their Olympic Medals.
They are back again this morning investigating the heaps of weeds I haven't yet cleared away.
I haven't hear the blackbirds starting their spring songs yet but did wonder why the female was making the warning noise while I was weeding..
is there a nest nearby in the climbing rose?

Getting back to Studio matters, perhaps it may be of interest to some of my readers that the group of the garments made earlier this year were also there during the SALA month and I sold three of them which was great. Most were knit-woven but the butterfly design was a fairisle knitted one and one was done with the garter carriage.
This afternoon may be a good time to go into the Studio and start on a shoulder bag I want to make so as to be able to carry a visual diary with me for when we have to sit in doctors and hospital waiting rooms...
Doodling mostly....

SALA is over and Spring has Sprung....

Well, SALA finished last Sunday after a month of interesting and interested visitors to the Studio at the weekends during August. We did our own visiting of artists studios and galleries during the week. Someone remarked they admired the generosity of all the artists participating during the SALA month for opening their studios and workplaces so the public could see their work which otherwise would not be seen.
I particularly admired John Lacey's studio & Green Tank Gallery at Mt Compass.

Uta Mooney's Art of fiction at Signal Point Goolwa was very intriguing
and gave a great idea of what to do with all the piles of books we have accumulated over the years.
The four little textile art pictures above, have found a new home which is a great thrill.
Even greater thrill was the fact that one of my artist booklets called "Dwellings" has also found a new and much appreciated home....
The bonded fiber on a background of fairisle knitting with embroidery and fine wire knitted pieces on the right, called "Pathways of the Mind" is staying home....

The pair of Black duck which have again returned to our pond this season to procreate their species are a pleasure to observe from our kitchen window where I also take the photos, hence the clarity may leave a bit to be desired.
They cavort around and do a little swimming dance display before deciding to create yet another duckling and she nearly drowns in the process....then there is a lot of splooshing about and grooming to resettle their feathers...

The white faced Heron is also a frequent visitor now, as he (or she, how can you tell?...) has discovered our goldfish and I watched a fish being caught but it must have been too big or strong as it plopped back into the water and hopefully has learned not to get too close to the edge of its domain. This morning the heron chased off a magpie which was mooching along under the olive tree sampling the Kalamatas ...

This photo is a sunrise, from a couple of weeks ago, we generally seem to always take sunsets
but this is a sunrise even though you can't tell it is looking East instead of West. The colours are so fantastic at times they can be unbelievably beautiful and almost unreal...
Feel free to leave a comment and also remember
to click on the photos to get a closer look.....