Sequential planting is such a lifesaver! This whole year seems to have been routines-out-the-window so far. I love routines. Once you have worked a system down to the point where it just works and you turn it into a habit, it just gets done in incidental time, and incidental time doesn’t count.
All in about an hour. I couldn’t bear the amount of citrus sitting around so I found an hour this morning to make preserved lemons (on the right), lime pickles (back left), lemon cleaning vinegar (at the back), lemon vinegar (tall bottle), and at the front, kumquat marmalade.
Guavas are in glut right now and I keep seeing unharvested trees everywhere. Guava jelly, which can be made as jam to spread on toast (just by using half the quantity of sugar) but is spectacular as a firm jelly to eat with cheese on crackers is the only really good thing I know to do with a glut of guavas, but it’s a really good thing to do with…
Life goes back to normal. Or will never be quite the same. This morning the Petroleum Exploration License for Metgasco to frack for gas at Bentley was suspended and referred to ICAC.
One of the things I like about planting advanced seedlings is the instant gratification of it. This is the garden bed I planted out today – advanced seedlings of lettuce, raddichio, parsley, chinese cabbages, cauliflowers, leeks, silver beet, spinach, celery, red cabbage, broccoli, kailan, plus some parsnips, broad beans, peas, and snow peas.
It’s the southern hemisphere Halloween, and I totally get it why Halloween features pumpkin lamps. Halloween is the final harvest festival, and marks the start of the season of gathering in – firewood, mulch, water, pumpkins, passata, preserves, warm clothes, books, tribe and wisdom.
I had two recipe successes at the beach, and this is the other one. I live with a bloke whose idea of bliss is standing thigh deep in ocean on an overcast day using all the sensory skills of a hunter. We were at a good fishing beach, there was a nice east coast low making perfect conditions, he spent many hours at it. And still, we ended up at…