Onions are strongly day-length sensitive, so you need to choose your onion variety not by your climate but by your latitude.
The actual solstice is not until the early hours of Wednesday morning, but since this is the closest weekend, we celebrated last night, and I had to share my gift with you. I have been grumbling so relentlessly lately about the turkeys and bower birds raiding my garden, that it inspired Henry, a most magnificent scarecrow.
I try to remember the permaculture principle that a glut of anything is a feast for something, but I don’t really know that I want the population explosion in snakes that would logically follow this mouse plague. I am trying to keep my imagination focussed on lovely storybook owls feasting!
If you’ve visited here before, you will know my thoughts about kangaroo as the red meat of choice for Australians. The recent controversy about live cattle exports has brought it to the front of my mind again.
We are coming up to the winter solstice in about three weeks time, but until then the days are still getting shorter. So leafies planted now will not want to bolt, but rather wait until their lovely fine tuned endocrine sensing system tells them the days are getting longer, spring is on its way, and it is safe to set seed.
The basis for this is very much like my Everyday Sourdough recipe. The fruit and nuts though inhibit the rising, and I like it best when it’s chokka with fruit and nuts.
For perfect poached eggs, you need very fresh eggs. You can add vinegar to the water, get it swirling into a little whirlpool, do whatever you like, but you won’t get perfect poached eggs without very fresh eggs. Fresh eggs cook in one little mound with the white all staying together and a yolk that is high and has a glaze of white over it. The white sets while the…