Fading to brown

Anyone who has grown the fussier Australian native plants knows how it goes. One week it's apparently healthy and green, defying the experts who said it'd never last. Then one morning you notice just a hint of brown here and there. Oh no! And few days later the browns have taken over, and then this morning, this...

After four years of loyal service, our Acacia cognata 'Limelight'
has lost its glow, and is on the way out. This is one of Pammy's
plants and so I'm under strict instructions to go get another one.
She loves this plant, so do I, and it's a bit of a mystery why it
has curled up its toes now. Maybe the long, hot summer and the
humid hot start to autumn was too much for it? 

Across the pathway is another picture in brown tones, but this
is exactly how Sedum 'Autumn Joy' is meant to look. It started
out pale pink several weeks ago and slowly but surely it has
faded to these rather pretty browns. In a garden full of greens,
grey-blues, reds and more greens, this patch of brown pom poms
has been an eye-catching delight for me every morning when I
look out from the house to the garden. I never thought I'd like
a bit of brown the way I do now.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but I'm off to buy our next Acacia cognata 'Limelight' this morning. The first one was planted back in April 2009, so for this notoriously fickle native, a career of four years is pretty good going. As for the Sedumn 'Autumn Joy', its next stop is to die off in all its deciduous glory, withering down to the ground for a winter sleep, then awaking to do it all again next spring. 

In a garden, life always goes on, even though beloved plants come and go.

Good cheer

Of all the silly things a usually sensible person could do, I updated our accounts on Saturday, and delving into inconvenient financial facts always has a slightly depressing effect, doesn't it? And so yesterday, Sunday, was a low point for me, a cheerless day in the garden where all I did was pull out weeds and cut back a rampant ground cover in the front garden that likes to accost pedestrians in the street.

Not the greatest weekend, but it did end well with the first good downpour of rain in ages, and then this morning, Monday, wandering out into the garden had an amazingly uplifting effect on me. Everywhere I looked I saw positive signs, pretty colours, sweet scents – it was full of good cheer. 

And so, dear readers, I present a simple posting designed partly to cheer myself up but also to celebrate the benefits of slowing down and taking stock not only of the pennies in the jar but also the beautiful, natural riches around you.

This is what started it all off this morning. While gathering yet
another colander full of cherry tomatoes, the air was wafting along
on sweet tropical frangipani scents. I stood up, looked at their
lovely simplicity, inhaled another breath and my mood changed.

 

For the record, this is my favourite typo, cheery tomatoes.

Just as I stepped away from cheery frangipani
land I smiled at a conversation I had with an
expert gardener about how impossible it is to
grow Acacia cognata in Sydney. 

The rain brings out the scents and the colours;
this pot of mint was spicy with its tangy scent.

The mint is in flower now, a happy plant in semi-shade provided
it's given outrageous amounts of water and fertiliser.

Next door to the mint, the French tarragon is a contented low
forest of foliage. Medium water, slow-release fertiliser is all
it needs, plus one hell of a cutback in early spring.

My first go at growing Florence fennel is doing
OK. I have a whole packet of seeds here, but
only planted a few in late spring, as I had
missed the boat for the earlier spring sowing
it prefers. This autumn, I'm sowing lots more.

The strawberries just keep on coming. We started
harvesting breakfast bowls full of these back in
early October and they aren't close to finishing
yet. And to think I didn't even plant anything
there! They came up out of the compost, just
like monsters come up out of black lagoons.

And while I'm counting my blessings and
spreading the good cheer, let me recommend
radishes to you. These are French Breakfast
long cylindrical radishes, and I sowed the
seeds for these on Thursday. I'll probably
be eating some of these by early February.
And I've learned to like their flavour, too.
Super-finely sliced, not too much either, added
to a green garden salad, they are pure zing.

The Thai makrut lime fruit is ready for grating
into dressings, salads and sauces, but the only
hard thing is removing them from the tree,
simply because they look so good there, all
knobbly, deep green and just a bit weird.

There's a party going on in the succulent patch.

The Tiger Grass which is meant to become a
tropical look screen to hide the boring metal
fence is finally growing fast, now that the
heat of summer is here. That's what it loves,
apparently, heat and water, just as if it was
growing in the jungles of Thailand. One of
these days a tiger will jump out of that foliage!

If you're still with me after this marathon 'cheer up' to myself, thanks. There really is nothing quite like a spin around the garden on a cool morning after overnight rain. Quite magical, its effect.

Dripping wet

Lovely sound, gentle rain on a tin roof. And the changes a bit of morning rain brings to the garden are so tempting. No matter how much it rains, I just have to go out there and soak it up (the imagery, not the water). One delightful thing that rain does to the garden is that some plants actually look their best when they're wet, such as this weeping Acacia cognata, pictured below.

Though this is a wattle it doesn't flower in a
wattley way. It's a foliage plant that has come
into vogue in recent years, but it's a tricky
thing to keep happy in humid Sydney.
Somehow mine has survived (maybe that's
because it's one of "Pam's plants" of which
there are several here in the garden). When it
rains it becomes sparkly with raindrops held
in place against the laws of gravity.

You'd never notice this tiny spider web on top of the Acacia
when it's dry, but in this morning's rain it's a foam of rain bubbles.

I was almost going to leave my morning's posting on raindrops at simply admiring the lovely little weepy Acacia, but with little pocket camera in hand, everywhere I turned there was something which looked a bit lovelier in the rain. So here's a few more...

Looking almost waterproof, Sedum 'Autumn Joy'.

This other succulent sedum looks as if someone has hit the
'pause' button. Raindrops which should be sliding down the
smooth sides just hang onto the side as if they're blobs of glue.

Still green and young, these will grow up to
become Turkish Brown Figs one day.

I think the PestOil which I sprayed onto my Thai makrut lime
leaves (to deter aphids and citrus leaf miner) has played a hand
in making these leaves so water-repellent.

And lettuce always looks more delicious in the rain.

It hasn't really rained here enough during spring, so the garden needs a good drink. No matter how well I attempt to water all the plants here during the dry periods, they always prefer a drink from the heavens rather from the end of a hose. There's magic in rainwater: if you go outside in the rain, sometimes you can see it.

Too much basil

It was just one lousy punnet of the stuff I bought, about three bucks' worth of laziness. And now I've got an almighty great glut of basil to deal with. In fact I have another glut on my hands. Who would have thought two tiny cucumber seedlings could pop out a fridge full of cucumbers - well, they can. Anyway, back to the basil. Not only did I have too much, it was starting to be a nuisance. Let me explain.

Here's the trimmings, destined for the kitchen. Gosh they smell nice!

And here's the reason the trimming had to be done. Our resident delicate petal, Acacia cognata (in the foreground), otherwise known as Cousin Itt, is a perfectly healthy foliage plant that has an unfortunate tendency to suddenly cark it. Anything not quite to Itt's liking and it's 'hasta la vista, baby'. Terrible track record, this plant. Prior to the trimming, the basil behind Itt was about a foot or more higher than it is now. Itt now gets all of its morning sunshine back, restoring it to a full day's worth of the stuff, which is one of its precious needs. The others are only occasional watering, lowest possible humidity levels (and the basil was crowding Itt, too), fab soil drainage, and sheer good luck.

As for what to do with the basil, the first part of the answer is easy. Some of it is going into a tomato sauce, where these banana capsicums will also feature, and that tomato sauce is going to go over thin, lightly grilled slices of these delicious-looking purple Lebanese eggplants. The eggplant-tomato sauce combo will then be alternately layered with some spicy, cooked minced lamb, to form a moussaka-ish invention which I will be making up as I go along tonight. I like moussaka, but with all that gooey, heavy bechamel sauce in between each layer it's not right for summer, too heavy. As usual my experiments are done on live human subjects, and so that's what Pam and I are having tonight, along with some steamed greens on the side.

As for the rest of the basil, that's both easy and predictable: pesto. I love pesto, and when I make a batch I then freeze it in tiny little Tupperware containers that each only hold about two tablespoons of the stuff. Pesto freezes easily and keeps for months. Of course I like pesto with pasta, but I prefer the pesto-and-pasta combo in smaller doses, as the 'carb side dish' offering instead of potatoes or rice, in small servings on the side when you're presenting something else, such as chicken or veal.

My thawed pesto dollops are also lovely as a quick and tasty sauce to go with a grilled or pan-fried chicken breast, for a mid-week meal.

My pesto recipe is the one from Stephanie Alexander's 'The Cook's Companion' best-seller book, with the raw garlic toned down. Such vicious stuff, raw garlic. It's like loud metal music. I don't like too much of either.

1 cup well-packed basil leaves

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

30g pine nuts

1 clove garlic, crushed (Stephanie adds 2 cloves, which is three times as much as 1, as raw garlic behaves exponentially)

salt to taste

60g grated parmesan cheese

Whizz the basil, oil, pine nuts, garlic and salt in a blender, till it's a green sludge. Pour and scrape this into a bowl.

Stir in the parmesan cheese, in batches.

This makes a lot, so aim to freeze at least half of it, for later use.

As usual with such simple recipes, the niceness of the ingredients counts for everything. Nicest basil, nicest oil, nicest cheese. I can't afford the nicest oil or cheese - mine's more middle-class, like me. But my basil is the best that money can buy. Three bucks a punnet of seedlings, home-grown the organic way in Aussie sunshine.

Quiet achiever

There are several plants in this garden which are, essentially, Pammy's. It's my job to care for them, but they're Pam's plants. Pictured below is one such plant, looking good.

One day early last year Pam came home from an art course at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and said "I want an Acacia cognata - it's really cute, very hairy, just like a pet animal." There was a nice specimen growing at the Botanic Gardens and so I had to find one, grow it so it was just as nice and, for ever and ever, keep it alive. (In ye olde days of yore way back when, brave knights rode out to slay dragons for their fair maids. These days, with dragons an endangered species, dragon-slaying is definitely out. And so I have to ride out and grow fussy natives.)

Fussy natives? Well, I only discovered this 'fussy' reputation after I read up on them, and then spoke to one of the gardening experts with whom I work, and the conversation went something like this...

Jamie: "I've just bought an Acacia cognata for Pam. Any tips?"

Expert: "Good luck."

Further enquiries revealed that this plant needs excellent soil drainage, light feeding, steady watering but never too much, and probably some nursing during humid weather (which it hates, and of which we get stacks in summer). Knowing all this, I decided that it would almost certainly die if I tried to grow it in the ground, so I opted for keeping it in a pot as its best chance of survival. Pots aren't perfect, but you can control soil drainage better with them, and you can move a plant to a safe spot during terrible weather.

This is how the new guy looked on Day One, early April, 2009. The first job was to put it in a better pot.

The potting mix was a specialised native potting mix, combined 50:50 with coarse propagating sand. A few weeks later and, in its new pot, it's putting on good growth. In fact this good growth continued all through autumn, then really took off again in spring last year, and by late spring I was sure it looked like it was getting too big for that pot. (What's all this 'fussy' malarky – it's a weed!) Nevertheless, concerned that it might grow too much and get pot-bound in mid-summer, I potted it up into its new (and current) larger, white pot.

And here it is this morning, green and long-haired with good health. So far so good. I think it likes me! This white pot has its own built-in pot feet, so the base sits off the ground by about 2cm.

So why call this post 'quiet achiever'? Well, this plant doesn't flower. It's just a foliage plant. It doesn't do much else. As it gets bigger the foliage should just keep growing all the way down to the ground. There's one form of Acacia cognata marketed as 'Cousin Itt', named after the very hairy character from the 'Addams Family' cult TV show from the 60s. So you get the picture. Apart from being cute and hairy, that's all it does. (Edit: this one is called 'Limelight', by the way.)

Well, its other trick is to put gardening knights in shining armour on permanent watch. Any moment, any time, it might just sag, then sigh, and say "I feel sick, mystery illness I'm afraid old chap, I think I'm on the way out." Until then, there's really nothing to worry about. Growth is good, foliage green. What could possibly go wrong?