Back to normal (whatever that is)

If you've been afraid to open your web browser or email for fear that there would be another of my "Rewind" pieces sitting there like an overly persistent pet wanting a pat, rest easy folks, the "Rewind" is over. 

And thanks to the kind people who have contacted me by email to say nice things about the Rewind in general. It has been fun doing it over these last few weeks.

From now on, this little Garden Amateur blog will return to "normal" (whatever that is), which I suspect will be just a few postings every month, whenever something crops up that I think is worth blogging about.

But before I leave you in peace, I just wanted to round off the whole Rewind season by telling you how the blog itself got started ...

It all started back in 2008 because a pair of good friends, Michelle and Evan, were leaving Sydney to live in the centre of Australia, in Birdsville, a tiny but legendary town in a very arid, hot spot in inland Queensland. Evan is a writer, and his mission was to live there for a year and write a book about Birdsville, which he did (and did very well). Many of the tourists passing through Birdsville — and there are lots of them — buy a copy of Evan's book, and it's a wonderful read. Here's the cover.

Michelle told me she planned to start up a blog on life in Birdsville, and that it was going to include their attempts at gardening there, as they are both good gardeners. So, I decided to start up a Sydney gardening blog, partly to amuse Michelle and Evan while they coped with searing heat and the odd dust storm, and also to bring some cool greenery into their sandy-coloured lives.

And so that's how the whole thing started. A bit over 700 postings later, it's still going, if at a much reduced pace compared to the Golden Years from 2008-2011, when I was blogging like a man possessed. 

As the Rewind attempted to show, this blog is mostly about gardening, sometimes in a practical way, but more often in a tone of amused fascination with nature and life itself. Here and there I like to toss in some travel, cookery, Pammy's artworks, a few book reviews and whatever else takes my fancy. And that's what it is going to keep on doing.

Finally, a very big THANK YOU to everyone who bothers to read my ramblings, and an even bigger thank you to all you wonderful commenters as well. Every word you write is encouragement, even if you are merely pointing out another of my lapses into folly.

Onward!

Babysitting

Purely by coincidence, I've suddenly become a babysitter for a few plants. In one case it's more of a 'nursing back to health' kind of plant babysitting job, but for the other two temporary residents it's simply a matter of looking after two perfectly healthy plants for a whole year, while friends are away on an interesting journey into the very hot, dry and dusty Australian outback.

Pictured above is the Thai lime leaf tree that's being nursed back to good health. I'm hoping the person for whom I'm nursing it also bounces back to good health at the same time. My sister-in-law is slugging it out with breast cancer. She's up to the twelfth round and she's still fighting hard, and her corner is crowded with supporters. Unfortunately her illness has meant that her potted garden hasn't been getting its usual good care lately, and recently she had to move house, and the little potted lime tree ended up in a cold, dark shady corner and promptly dropped all its leaves. It was reduced to bare sticks, so it's now getting some much-needed R&R in a sunny spot in my backyard. A drink of liquid Seasol (not a fertiliser, but a soil conditioner and root-growth promoter based on seaweed), some mulch and lots of sunshine seems to be working. Pictured above are some of the first babies, pictured shining in the early morning sun.

The leaves of this thorny little tree (also called the Makrut lime or Kaffir lime, but Citrus hystrix to the botanists) look like double leaves, joined at the waist. The fruits themselves are knobbly and not very juicy, but the grated zest has a dazzling tang, and the leaves are one of the essential ingredients of Thai cuisine. A Thai beef salad just doesn't taste authentic without super-finely shredded Thai lime leaves as part of the mix. Hopefully I'll soon be able to make a nice, spicy Thai beef salad for my sister-in-law, using leaves from her rejuvenated tree.

This may look like an ordinary rose bud, but it's actually an awesome responsibility in a pot. It's the middle of winter and roses should be snoozing now. But not this standard 'Friesia' yellow rose. It just keeps on sending up big, beautiful, fragrant yellow flowers. Admittedly, it has slowed down the flower production a bit lately, but only a bit. The leaves remain glossy and green and the plant is in fabulous good health. I've been babysitting this plant since early May, when my good friends Evan and Michelle headed out of Sydney, for a year of living in the baking hot centre of Australia, in the tiny but, for Australians, culturally important town of Birdsville, in far western Queensland.

The other plant I am babysitting belongs to Michelle. It's this cumquat, pictured here. You can read all about what Evan and Michelle are up to in Michelle's Birdsville blog, which is linked to at the bottom of this page. Michelle and Evan are also taking on the heroic task of trying to grow fresh vegies out there. It's sandy, dry and gets ludicrously hot in summer. So far so good in their vegie patch over the winter, though. Potted plants like roses and cumquats wouldn't stand a chance of surviving in Birdsville's heat, so they're staying here in Sydney with me. Michelle's cumquat is every bit as healthy as Evan's rose, so I have a simple task ahead, hopefully. I also have a potted cumquat tree, so whatever I do to my cumquat (food, water, spray, mulch), Michelle's cumquat gets it too. They don't need much care, fortunately. Water's the main thing, plus mulch. I use slow-release fertilisers for most of my potted plants, but maybe a bit of Dynamic Lifter (chicken manure) in spring for good measure. And the only spray is an organic oil called PestOil, which keeps the scales,leaf miners and aphids miserable, hopefully.

I had a cumquat harvest a week or two back, and had enough fruit to make four jars of marmalade. Hopefully the first of Michelle's two jars will arrive in good nick at Birdsville, courtesy of Australia Post and the cushioning comfort of bubble-wrap. This is my second year of marmalade making, and I think it's going to become an annual tradition. Those little potted trees certainly produce a good amount of fruit. It's a bit of a worry seeing how much sugar is needed to make the stuff, but I only have it on toast about once a week, so that's not too bad for moderation!

And so that's the babysitting report. Oddly enough, it's much more fun babysitting a sick plant and seeing it recover. The best you can do with an already-healthy plant is not stuff things up, and the plants Evan and Michelle handed over have certainly come from a good gardening home.