pretty paws

My neighbours were trimming the flowers off their gorgeous kangaroo paw plants last night so that more can grow. I stopped them in the street and asked if I could take flowers from their bin. They laughed and snipped me a beautiful branch full of perfect flowers to take home. I can't stop looking at them - they're just so sunny and furry and lovely and uniquely Australian. I mean just look at those gorgeous furry paws! Aren't they beautiful?

These neighbours don't know how much I covert their front garden. They have lots of healthy clumps of red and yellow kangaroo paw and a lovely weeping gum tree too. Top all this off with a stylish black wrought iron fence and you have one pretty special inner city front garden.

Will it ever stop raining? Everything is so damp inside and out. And we haven't even been flooded like our poor fellow Aussies up north.

snapshots

Sumi ink illustrations...work in progress.....

Hurtling between hot, sunny days and humid, wet ones.
Cold glasses of white wine in the evenings.
Throwing snails from the vegie patch onto the shed roof. Trying to protect the young seedlings.
The tomato plants are growing tall and strong. Will we have a bumper crop this year?
Fantasising about my first summer swim in the ocean and the long days of sunshine ahead.

the art of figgery

Some good honest figgery went on in our neighbourhood last night. What's that you say? Haven't heard of figgery before? That's because I made up the word just now.

figgery (n) - the art of pilfering ripe figs from neighbourhood trees, preferably those that hang over onto public land.

We managed a colander full but there were thousands on the tree we were figgering. No need to be greedy is there? And you have to leave some for the birds and bats.

I'm making a fig cake with these this morning. Kind of like apple cake but with fresh figs instead. It will be our second fig cake this week. It's wonderful served with cream.

With last week's figgery bounty I cut them into halves and stuff them with blue cheese, drizzled with olive oil and put them under the grill. Once cooled I tossed them with rocket, more olive oil and a little lemon juice. Wonderful, end of summer goodness.

a study in chillies

All picked from the garden this morning. There are plenty more to come from a couple of healthy looking chilli bushes we have happening. Crazy curly looking things, some of them.

The tomatoes are almost fully ripe. Amazingly one plant has 17 full size tomatoes on it! It's loaded down and has made it through the heat wave without too much damage.

We had a friend drop off some super sized plums from her tree last weekend and then another friend dropped by with apricots from her neighbours' tree. That same friend also gave us home made ice cream flavoured with cardamon and apricots from her garden. Delicious! It's a regular locally grown fruit bounty swapping session around here these days.

Ah summer...........

new thoughts, new intentions, new year

Hello twenty-ten!

I've been washing away the stresses of 2009 with delicious daily swims in the ocean and discovering the joys of pink (pink!) seaweed.

I think I'm ready for the year of the tiger. Are you?

garden surprise

Can you believe this garden marvel? A small round green not overly pretty succulent plant that can produce such an enormous and utterly lovely white flower. That stem is about 12 cm in length! I've been watching it grow over the last week or so. This plant only blossoms about every 1-2 years so finding it in full bloom this morning just made my heart sing.

plum lucky; plum grateful

Last night we headed off down a back laneway near our house to a plum tree loaded up with fruit that the owner seemed not to want. Branches were hanging over into the laneway and in Australia it's legal for the public to take that fruit. As I was picking the plums I could hear the wings of fruit bats near my arms. We were in competition for these luscious red morsels! I plan to make jam on the weekend with that big bowl in the first pic. There is nothing quite like a liquidy plum jam drissled over dessert 7 months from now in the dead of winter. Behind the plum tree was an apricot tree also loaded with ripe fruit. It was well in the man's yard so sadly we could not pick any. We're considering knocking on his door and asking if we can fill up a few bags and pay him for them. I just hate seeing fruit rotting on the ground.This one little plum is the first and only fruit produced by our young plum tree this year. We planted it 18 months ago so were surprised to see she had produced already. Just one but delicious! I can't wait to see how many she gives us next year. It's plum crazy around here at this time of year. So many fruit trees to choose from! Figs galore in another 6 weeks or so, plums, apricots, lemons, limes, the list goes on. All because 50-60 years ago when immigrants from the Mediterranean arrived in Melbourne they planted fruit trees all over the inner city suburbs where they lived. Am I grateful or what?

take a stroll

Allow me to take you on a little tour of what's happening in my back garden. The spring onions flowered. And then we ate them all up.
The succulents are looking quite handsome. Some have flowered. Some are looking very busy and stripey.Others are looking very pretty. Almost edible.
Some are lovely and green. They make me feel cool on a hot day. And ones like these have a lot going on in their homes.Some are looking very soft and gentle.And others all perky and bright.

cooking with jam

We've been picking plums from trees all over the neighbourhood and had so many that I had no choice but to make jam. For the first time ever. And I'm no Martha, as I've said before. So out came Steph and I cooked up a storm (well 2 jars actually). And the cat waited patiently through it all, ever hopeful that the flurry of activity in the kitchen was about her, and ultimately her bowl.

My favourite way to eat this plum jam? Poured over vanilla ice cream!

snake bean

This incredible-looking curly flower belongs to a beautiful vine growing across the entrance of our front veranda. I've heard someone say it's a snake bean vine but I don't know if that's true or even the botanical name for it. At this time of year it's heavy with flowers like these, so curly and smooth and very sweet smelling. I've been asked many many times about this vine and the flowers by people passing on our street. One woman even asked me for a cutting so she could try growing it in her garden. I don't know if she ever succeeded. Very soon, as autumn decends on us the vine will drop everything - leaves and flowers - and will look half dead and very scraggy when winter comes. Each year in winter I look at it in its sad state and wonder if it will regrow. And each summer, without fail, it does. This year we've let it grow and grow and there were days when I arrived home and parts of the vine had reached out and extended its arms to the house walls, the front doors and windows. Like "The Day of the Triffids". It hides and protects the front of the house from the world like in the wonderful children's book "The Secret Garden". It rained last night (a rare but wonderful thing) and today the flowers on the vine are damp with droplets of water.

patterns of kingyo

I have a shirt I bought a few years ago covered in little kingyo (goldfish). It's a summer shirt and is sleeveless and given we're in the middle of another heatwave (38 degrees celcius yesterday and today) I decided to wear it the other day. When I first bought it, that shirt got a huge reaction from people in Japan. Goldfish or kingyo as the Japanese call them are a big part of the visual images connected to Japan. Like kimono, tea, sushi, and geta, for some reason goldfish are high up on that list too. All kinds of people came up to me and told me they liked my kingyo shirt. So when I decided to wear it a few days ago it made me 'homesick' for Kyoto and everything my mind associated with Japan and out popped this little kingyo card as a response to that mood. It also felt like a very Japan printmaking moment as I printed this, sweat rolling down my body as I rubbed the baren disc across the paper and wood block. I've spent many a sweaty day printing in the incredible humidity of a Japanese summer. Fortunately, Melbourne is a lot drier, but in 38 degrees you can still get pretty hot!