Herb Garden Reboot

April 3, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

The herb knot in the snow a few years ago.

You know you’ve lived somewhere for a while when it’s time to replace perennial gardens you planted.

One of the first gardens we established when we moved in eleven years ago was the herb garden. That garden is now looking sad—the plants are aging, and this summer’s dry hot, weather took a toll. The beautiful Celtic knot of lavender and rosemary is overgrown and the plants are dying in patches. The clay pots we nestled into the ground to contain the mint are cracked and crumbling. A few of the surrounding shrubs are dead.

We’ve also been talking about some changes to the flower garden that flows into the herb garden. When we turned it from driveway to garden about seven years ago, it was meant to be full of annual flowers, but no matter what I’ve done to it, it still feels like I’m digging in a driveway every spring when I plant out the annuals. Perennials would really make more sense there.

It’s time for some planning!

My daughter went out there this afternoon with clipboard and tape measure and measured off the area, including features we want to keep, but ignoring everything else. I took those numbers back to the office and made a scale drawing of the space on the computer.

Now comes the fun part.

I’ll print out blank copies of the space, and we’ll scribble garden ideas on them. The pages will float around the house. We’ll draw ideas over breakfast, after dinner, at odd times of day and night. We’ll list all the things we “need” to have in the garden. We’ll take our sketches out into the yard to try to visualise them. We’ll argue about how many rosemary plants we actually need, whether the lemon trees would prefer the warmth of the northeast side of the house or the better soil on the southeast side, and how many artistic installations is too many.

We’ve got roughly 285 square metres to play with, which I’m sure will seem like not enough as we plan, but will feel like way too much once we’re in there pulling out plants and reconfiguring the space.

What do you do with a giant zucchini?

April 2, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

To the tune What do you do with a drunken sailor?

What do you do with a giant zucchini?

What do you do with a giant zucchini,

Early in the morning?

Hey, they just get bigger.

You can’t eat them all.

Cook ’em in a sauce and make enchiladas,

Early in the morning!

Hey, they just get bigger.

You can’t eat them all.

Bake ’em in a cake and add chocolate chips,

Early in the morning!

Hey, they just get bigger.

You can’t eat them all.

Hedge trimming

March 23, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

Trimmer looming out of the early morning fog. Note the circular blade to the left--he switched to that later.

Trimmer looming out of the early morning fog next door. Note the circular blade to the left–he switched to that later.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

The sound, like a helicopter crashing into a stand of trees, is unmistakable, though the first time I heard it, I had no idea what it was—a giant hedge trimmer.

Hedges are a necessity here on the windswept Canterbury Plains, and autumn is hedge trimming season.

Our hedge, hemmed in by fruit trees and the septic system, has to be trimmed by hand—a full-day job for my husband and me, and one we put off as long as we can every year.

Here’s another, snapped along the roadside on the way to town.

Our neighbours, however, have their hedges trimmed by professional hedging contractors. The hedge trimming machines they use are terrifying—giant, armoured vehicles with a long crane arm bearing any one of a number of wicked-looking cutting devices.

There are circular saw blades the size of a man, two-metre wide lawn mower blades, heavy chains that just beat the branches off the hedge. The machines must be Occupational Safety and Health’s worst nightmare. Some have an 18 metre reach, and the result is perfectly trimmed hedges the size of castle battlements.

Cape Gooseberries

March 22, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) are not something you’re likely to find in the grocery store. The plant is native to Peru and Chile, and has been introduced into most temperate and tropical climates around the world as a fruit for home gardens. It has been only sporadically commercially grown, however.

The fruit’s flavour defies categorisation. It is like a sour grape crossed with a tomato—not entirely surprising, as it is related to tomatoes. The initial sensation is the sour, and then they leave a lingering fruity tomato flavour in the mouth.

Cape gooseberries grow reasonably well here—some years they grow too well, actually. I’m still learning how to use them and how to enjoy their odd flavour. This year we got only a handful, as I wasn’t able to water them as much as they needed in this hot, dry summer.

Their tartness goes well in jams, chutneys, pies, and fruit salads. They’re also good eaten right in the garden—the papery husk acts as a handle, so you can snack on them even with hands dirty from gardening!

In temperate climates they are an annual, though here they often overwinter, if the weather is mild. In tropical climates they are perennial.

They’re definitely a plant to try, if you’ve never grown them.

Melon time

March 14, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment

They only just squeak into summer here, screaming in at the last minute, if they come at all.

Melons usually hate Canterbury summers—cool and dry just isn’t melon weather. I plant them every year anyway, because sometimes they manage.

This year has been a good year for melons. They would have liked more water, but they at least had the heat they wanted. Most of the melons are grapefruit-sized, but they’re delicious, and because they’re so small, they make fabulous lunchbox fruits—cut them in half, scoop out the seeds, then put the halves back together with a rubber band, and they travel beautifully.

And though they come in only after summer is officially over, they are still the ultimate flavour of summer.

Windfall

March 10, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 3 Comments

Today.

Thirty degrees C.

120 kph wind.

Dust clouds so thick I couldn’t see the back fence 20 metres away.

So I knew there would be carnage by day’s end.

Picking yellow summer squash for dinner, I was having trouble finding them, because they were completely coated in dust.

I studiously avoided looking at the fruit trees—I couldn’t face what I knew I’d find while the wind still howled.

Later in the evening, my husband and kids went out and surveyed the damage. Remember back in November when I posted the picture of all those apple blossoms? I knew it was too good to be true.

Every fruit was stripped off of every tree. They collected them all, tossed the bad ones on the compost, and brought the rest inside.

None are quite ripe, but we’ll make the best of them—applesauce and pie this weekend, for sure!

The Journey

March 7, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

Give thanks for the air
The water
The soil
The vegetables in the garden
The fabric
And the needle
And the thread

Take time
To watch bees
To drink tea
To listen
To laugh at bad jokes
To write awful poetry
To admire weeds
And talk over the back fence

Do not be in a hurry
To get where you are going.
One day
You will find yourself there.
Perhaps unexpectedly.
And then it will be too late
To enjoy the journey.

Summer Soup 2016

March 6, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

Eight pm, and I feel like I’ve hardly stepped outdoors today.

I remember the air was still and warm early this morning. I milked by the light of the stars and a sliver of a crescent moon.

I remember the cool drips of water in the freshly watered vegetable garden just after breakfast.

But, aside from a hurried trip to the goat paddock with an armload of corn husks or carrot tops, I haven’t been outside since eight am.

Just after breakfast, the whole family got to work making the year’s Summer Soup (which I’ve blogged about before). We spent the morning chopping vegetables and making up the soup together, then I settled in alone for the long slog at the pressure canner.

It was a hot day to be in the kitchen canning soup. I thought it was just that I had four burners and the oven going much of the afternoon, but when my daughter walked through the kitchen looking wilted, I realised it was just a hot day.

That was the closest I got to knowing what it was like out there.

But I’ll appreciate this lovely summer day spent indoors—over and over again all winter. The final tally for the day was nineteen quarts of soup and six quarts of vegetable stock. That’s a lot of summer, stored up to cheer us on a cold winter evening.

Ballistic Plants

March 5, 2016 / Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

I only just harvested the black beans before they all exploded in the garden. It was the hot sun Thursday and Friday that did it. Friday afternoon, when I realised how dry the beans were, I raced to pick as many as I could, and was able to bring in the last of them this morning, with only a few losses.

Though it can be a pain for harvesting, I love plants with explosive seeds. As much as the explosion and shower of seeds, I like the empty pod afterwards. The tension that caused the explosion is gone, and the empty pod twists into attractive little corkscrews.

We have a weed in the yard with seeds so explosive, my daughter and I have dubbed it the seed-in-your-eye plant. It’s real name is bitter cress (Cardamine hirsuta). It’s common in the flower beds around the house, and has a habit of detonating just as a hapless weeder grabs hold of it (hence the seeds in the eye).

My favourite explosive plant is touch-me-not. Where I grew up, touch-me-nots sprang up in any moist hollow. As soon as they started flowering in summer, I’d start searching for ripe seed pods. I’d give each seed pod a gentle squeeze—if the pod was ready, it would burst under my fingers, sending yellow seeds scattering, and turning into a curly work of art. I loved the feel of the deforming fruit.

Sadly, my own children only have beans and bitter cress to detonate here. Now, if I can just convince them that shelling dry beans by detonating them is great fun…