Signs of Christmas and holidays

I start anticipating Christmas when cherries from our local orchards come into the shops.

This year I'll be working right up to Christmas Day.

I am planning a simpler celebration, but I will make my Stained Glass fruitcake

It has glace angelica, apricots,cherries, peach, pear, and quince, brazil nuts marinated in rum and apricot jam and dates.

You cut it in thin slices and the fruit makes the slice look like a stained glass window.

I might make a pudding and ginger bread and shortbread too.

Right on cue the last of the iris, the ones with the hint of brown in their colouring, are flowering among the weeds and the mint. The weeds have greeted the recent rain with joy.

Clearing up for summer.

Jasmine fills the house with its creamy scent tonight. I pruned back the vine covering the letterbox and have filled three buckets with the flowers. I love its heady perfume.

The flower scent is particularly strong as I've closed all the windows. Outside the evening is thick with smoke. People have been burning off the past couple of days, getting ready for summer and the fire season. I have pruned and cleared and mowed, getting ready too. Wendouree Fire Brigade came round on their annual fundraising and I've got my calendar up by the door.



And just for Suzanna here's a link to the picture of the trees at Trentham - you can see the flammable material that accumulates around them.

Bare foot weather

 

Breakfasting in the gum tree in the park 

Egrets visiting again across the road. The grass is just humming with insects now.

This evening I went barefoot walking the dogs. My feet were happy on asphalt and cement and grass and warm, dry clay.

Clouds

A tide of wind is bringing clouds from the south. I was weeding and looked up into this, looming over the back garden.

I read recently how massively heavy these clouds are, although they seem to float so lightly, they are great galleons of water.

Then I went out the front and watched this coming towards me, over the parkland.

 The dogs hate this blustery wind and were barking to get inside, so I retired to the kitchen and cooked gnocchi. Lovely stuff, so easy to make and so light and delicious to eat.

The gnocchi were as light and fluffy as the clouds seem to be.

Good things this morning

Rain on the nasturtium leaves.

I found my  purple iris in bloom.

The lilac I picked from over a neighbour's fence

while walking the dogs this morning.

My new set of tin badges.

The artichoke forest. It is so gloriously huge, the leaves stand taller than I am, and it is getting huger.

And breakfast.

Breakfast isn't a thing, it is an event. I got up slowly this morning and I pottered and I made the bread and walked the dogs in the rain and I visited the iris and the artichokes and the nasturtium.

I had passionfruit to put on the yoghurt and Yin got me a cuppa from Espresso. I took a very long time over brekky, and I wore the green beetle badge, the one with the red eyes.

Spring vegetables

A basket of globe artichokes and rosemary from the garden.

I forgot to look into the artichokes this week so some of the artichokes had become a little larger than I prefer, but it is spring  and everything is wildly growing.I cooked the artichokes with lamb in a slow simmered stew.

 

Delicious.

And these are not dandelions, they are yam daisies or murnongs, the staple food of the first people to live here. Cattle and sheep and agriculture and mining have just about wiped out a plant that once covered the basalt plains.

A friend who cares for a native vegetation reserve to the south west gave me these and they are flourishing. Next year I'm letting them out of the pot and into the garden.

Good timing

I want to try knitting cotton this summer, and luckily my neighbour wanted to clear out some stuff including a few balls of cotton yarn. 
I have three baskets of knitting yarn now - but I'm not hoarding. I am finishing off the blanket! One basket will be empty very soon.