|
15
Mar
|
|
AN ABUNDANCE OF FIGS
Two years ago when Barbara Buchannan offered to become my companion for five months and assist me like a member of the WWOOF organization, it was her tales of sun-ripened figs that made her European friends envious. She told them of her pleasure in standing under the tree shown below, choosing sun warmed fruit that almost melted in her mouth.
 Sun ripened figs When I established our garden at Das Helwig Haus B&B I planted four fig trees of different varieties. Ian Robertson, CEO of the Australian Open Garden Scheme, congratulated me in 1997 for choosing to use a fig tree as a specimen tree to add texture and color within our floral garden. During our cold winter months on the Granite Belt the bare branches give a surrealistic view on a foggy morning and emphasis the Japanese influence in the design of this portion of my garden.
 Fig tree amongst flowers Every year this particular tree yields buckets of small, dark skinned, red fleshed, sweet figs. Every year we eat fresh figs, I make fig jam, I dry figs and I preserve figs in syrup as a dessert. This small fig variety is not readily available from plant nurseries. I was given a sucker to grow by one of the Italian born farmers on the Granite Belt. The sucker flourished and grew into a decorative and productive tree. Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati Tags: Abundance, Das Helwig Haus B&B, Europe, fig trees, figs, garden, granite belt, Italian, Japanese, Wine, WWOOF
|
|
16
Feb
|
|
FOR CARMEN
Carmen was one of three Italian girls who came to WWOOF for me in August. Recently she wrote to ask:
Hi Fay,
I am writing a text about my experience by you. I remember a strange story about the name of a bird, which you tell us but I don’t remember the whole story. could you help me, please? could you also tell me something about the methods you use to improve your garden. I wrote something about the use of jelly, molasses, compost, fence against birds, and the practice of burning grass. Could you explain me something more about it?
Thank you very much. Best regards to Eberhard and you!
I wondered, had I told them about the Kookaburra, the laughing Jackass? The Kookaburra belongs to the Kingfisher family and as such are carnivores. They sit on a branch looking for any movement in the grass below. They will snap up a snake and beat it against a branch of a tree, or drop it from a height to stun it. Two kookaburras may even join forces, one on each end of the snake to pull it apart. They will eat the snake. In the winter time when snakes are hibernating and other prey may be scarce they will perch along my garden fence, looking for little frogs or lizards. They often frequent picnic grounds for a free handout. They will come regularly for feeding if people begin throwing them meat scraps.
 Kookaburra by David Osburg.
We have several family groups of Kookaburras on our farm. They cluster together every evening on a tree branch and laugh. Our overseas Wwoofers often think this noisy “Hoo-hoo, ha-ha, hoo-ha” type call is the chattering of monkeys in the trees, but Australia has no monkeys. Due to this chorus of laughter these birds are sometimes called the Laughing Jackass.
The Kookaburras cluster and laugh shortly after dusk and again laugh in the morning at first light before dispersing for the day.
In the spring season there is much laughing throughout the day as the male Kookaburras compete to claim territory.
Technorati Tags: Add new tag, Australia, compost, father, garden, Glen Aplin, granite belt, grapes, Italian, jelly, marigolds, nematodes, Patches, perennial, Queensland, rocks, the granite belt, tomatoes, vegetable, WWOOF, wwoofers
|
|
31
Dec
|
|
AN ABUNDANCE OF ZUCCHINIS 1
Every year when I was a child my father cleared a piece of scrub land on our farm at the foot of the Bunya Mountains and burnt off the felled scrub, before planting pumpkins, watermelons and other vegetables in the ashes. Years later he asked me if I knew why these crops flourished? By then I had become the gardening guru in the family. Dad said, that if he merely added ash to a vegetable garden he couldn’t get the same healthy result. I explained that not only was he using fertile soil for the first time, but the heat of the fire had killed all the nasty pathogens in the soil which might have inhibited the growth of his vegetables. This is a method of growing vegetable gardens in tropical countries like Papua New Guinea.
When I was a child we never ate baby vegetables like button squash and zucchini. The Acorn Squash and Marrow, as we called zucchini, were rather despised and tasteless vegetables, best hollowed out and stuffed with a savoury meat mixture. It was only after Eberhard and I moved to live on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland in 1992 that I came to have an appreciation of Mediterranean vegetables like zucchini, eggplant and capsicums. The Granite Belt has a cool mountain climate and many of the farmers here are descendants of earlier Italian immigrants. Each year this district supplies a huge volume of vegetables and fruit to the Brisbane and Sydney markets.
Disaster struck the Granite Belt community on Christmas Day with a huge hail storm that destroyed or damaged many of the vegetable crops as the farmers were about to commence the seasonal picking.
 Hail storm over the Granite Belt on Christmas Day 2008 The farmers had two choices. They could slash their damaged plants to the ground, plough the soil and replant, or they could pay workers to strip from the plants and throw away all the damaged vegetables, in the expectation that the bushes and vines would recover and begin bearing produce again. Read the rest of this entry »
Technorati Tags: Abundance, ash, ashes, Brisbane, capsicum, Christmas, cool mountain climate, das helwig haus, eggplant, farm, father, freezer, garden, garlic, Glen Aplin, Italian, Mediterranean, pumpkin, Queensland, Ratatouille, recipe, the granite belt, tomatoes, vegetable, zucchini, zucchinis
|
|
05
Oct
|
|
PAUSE BESIDE THE ROSE BOWL
FAY SHARES SOME HISTORY
On every garden tour I will always be asked, “What are those pink and red things?”
“Do you mean these?” I’ll break off a few different blooms. “These are a form of dianthus. They have the perfume of cloves, like carnations. This form is commonly called Sweet William, but the Scottish people didn’t like William of Orange, so they called them Stinking Billy.” My answer will bring a laugh. “See the variation? Although they are various shades of pinks, reds and white, each flower has a different pattern. The Dutch have another name for these – they call them ‘A Thousand Beautifuls’, and from what I’ve been told their particular word for beautiful is the same word they would use to describe a beautiful young woman.
 Sweet William Next, I’ll brush my hand over the gray foliage plant with the yellow button like flowers. “And this is Santalina, a Mediterranean herb that supposedly is a stimulant for roses. I grow it right around the rose bowl over the rocks. As you walk past, give it a brush – release the aromatic oils.”
It was an Italian born neighbour, Orris Romeo, who helped me construct the rose bowl. He brought over an old tractor fitted with a small dozer blade mounted on the
back, which swiveled in any direction. Orris used this to cut into the sloping ground at the north-western corner of the house, leaving a sharp earthen bank, and spread the soil evenly towards the house. It was in this semi-circular basin I later planted the rose bushes. Once more Orris had returned to his farm, swapping the blade for a carry-all tray. Together we surveyed the rocky outcrops around the farm gathering up boulders as large as he could roll or lever onto the carry-all. Orris dropped these into the excavation and then sat on his bottom, using the strength of his legs and back to push the rocks hard against the cut bank. Less attractive rocks were dropped down under the edge of the veranda, the tops just showing between the earth and floor boards. This barrier prevents dirt washing under the house during storms. Thus we created a terraced, rock-fringed bowl. I have so many memories associated with the Romeo family and the establishment of our garden.
 Rose Bowl
 Santalina herb
Early one warm morning of our first summer on the Granite Belt, when Eberhard was without a shirt, the sound of a motor bike brought him to the front veranda. The rider took off his helmet and requested directions. Eberhard couldn’t clearly hear his inquiry.
“What’s he saying?” Eberhard asked. “I think the cheeky bugger wants to know if I’m Mr. Australia?”
I was amused. “You might have a bare chest, but you would never pass for a muscle builder.”
Calling to the man, I asked, “Are you looking for Mr. Orris Romeo? ” He nodded and I instructed, “Go back out our entrance road, turn left and you will find that Romeo’s Lane is the next road on the left. Go to the end of the lane.”
After answering several more questions, I tell my visitors, “I’m going to cross over the walkway now between these rosa lavigata roses and lead you down through the vegetable garden.” This is one time when I have chosen to use the Latin name, as it was the first name by which I came to know this superb early blooming white rose.
 Rosa Lavigata or Cherokee Rose  Rosa Lavagata or Cherokee Rose “Have any of you read the book by Gavin Menzies – 1421 The Year China Discovered the World?”
A few amongst my audience will nod their heads, while others may say they saw a TV documentary on the subject.
“This is a very old Chinese rose, but its common name is the Cherokee Rose. It was given that name when discovered growing in the USA by the early settlers. How do you suppose it reached California? According to Gavin Menzies it was grown there by Chinese left behind to colonize the region when their ship was wrecked.”
Technorati Tags: aromatic oils, boulders, Cherokee, China, Chinese, dianthus, Gavin Menzies, granite belt, herb, Italian, Mediterranean, rocks, rose, stimulant, Sweet William
|
|
|
