meanwhile, back in blighty...

Oh the glamour. The highlight of my bank holiday weekend was the rain holding off long enough to catch up on the washing, mow the lawn and get on with a bit more clearing up at Pear Tree Cottage.

I'm afraid my poor hands have suffered a bit- remind me to wear gloves next time!


Today, my dad came round to help out with the gardening and brought with him a mixture of foraged bits and bobs and some potatoes from his friends' allotment. Just watch that greedy little hand creeping in to snatch an apple...


Needless to say she wasn't too impressed when she took a bite! (Don't ask what she's wearing- some sort of medley of dressing up costumes).


The cooking apples were put to good use though and went into a crumble with the blackberries- perfect for a post gardening feast for everyone. I'm afraid by the time I thought to take a picture it was all gone!


Another thrifty gift from my dad was this kitsch-tastic '70s WI preserving book that he had picked up in a charity shop. Whilst most of the recipes are very appetising, there are a few that sound decidedly dubious- mushroom ketchup or marrow and ginger jam, anyone??


It is also full of tips for entering your preserves into shows...

'Clean and polish the outside of the jars or bottles. A cloth moistened with a few drops of methylated spirit, is excellent for giving a sparkling finish to all glass containers. Handle the container carefully after polishing, to prevent finger marking.'

eep!

Whilst I hardly anticipate entering into a jam show any time soon, I used my last little bit of free bank holiday time to boil up some plum jam with the plums at Pear Tree Cottage, leaving a jar on the doorstep for the landlady. Unfortunately my little kitchen is far too poky for a store cupboard, but the shelves are rapidly filling up with our various jams and chutneys. I'm thinking my next preserving venture might be dried apple rings...

g'day gardeners

Fifteen months ago, my mum emigrated to Australia and unfortunately we haven't made it out to visit her yet. I was wondering what gardening was like on the other side of the world, so I asked her to take me on a 'virtual' guided tour and, as my own garden is looking decidely scruffy and autumnal at the moment, I thought it would make an interesting 'guest blog' ...

What does 'tropical garden' conjure- up for you? Gauguin? Palm trees? Multi-coloured birds?

Yes, we have all those, (well, maybe not our own personal Gauguin!) but add high humidity, fierce sun, 'the wet' season and bugs normally accompanied by a David Attenborough commentary and you're 'getting warm!'


So where are we? In far north tropical Queensland in our tropical paradise of Cairns… wedged between the Coral Sea and the tropical rainforest. Daily we are awoken by multi-coloured lorikeets squabbling and spooning in the frangipani trees, at dusk the sulphur-crested cockatoos gather to gossip and play trapeze artists in the eucalyptus and our daytime visitors include the local 'street-wise' gang of miner birds 'hanging' and 'breakdancing' by the pool. Add to this the blood-curdling screams of the curlews, the sarcasm-filled laugh of the kookaburra and the incessant rattle of the crickets, that's our garden.

I snapped these two kookaburras having a domestic tiff!

With only 2 seasons (wet and dry), to both words add 'very', the plants and trees tend to pick their own times to blossom or drop, with very short flowering times. I love approaching the house to be surprised by the vision of our 'bottle brush tree' having burst into flower whilst I have been at work, its profusion of large, red, furry pipe-cleaner-like flowers unashamedly sunbathing.


Growing almost wild are our numerous native hibiscus bushes offering their raunchy scarlet blossoms, interspersed with a variety of native palms and many species recognisable as common UK indoor pot plants .


Through the gate behind the pool is our fruit orchard, with paw-paw, mango, lemon and pink-grapefruit trees. Oh, the ultimate indulgence to pick a fresh lemon for the g&t! (How very '50s ex-pat!)

Where’s the lemon?

Following countless years of UK gardening, shunning gardening gloves for the enjoyment of soil under fingernails and the sensuous experience of splitting root balls by hand etc, common sense reigns here and I wear my protective suedes whenever I am 'at one' with nature. With the world's largest collection of deadly venomous snakes, 3-5 metre pythons and a whole host of very nasty spiders in the neighbourhood, I take care! We regularly see totally harmless, but fascinating fauna specimens .. giant stick-insects (30cms) on the patio and, last week, this spectacular Hercules moth on the garage door. (The world's largest species of moth). Our 'visitor' was 30cms wing-tip to wing-tip!


So, tell me, can you spot the interloper 'planted' in my tropical paradise? Yes, of course, there is a vase of daffodils lurking in the rock garden by the pool. Friday was Cancer Council Queensland 'Daffodil Day' and I succumbed to a bunch. (Well, it is the first day of Spring next Wednesday!). Needless to say they are now taking pride of place in the sitting room. I suspect they have travelled from Tasmania but a nice nostalgic trip for me, nonetheless.


Gardening the fringes of tropical rainforest brings some challenges, but I am captivated…..the sights, the sounds, the smells, the sheer 'untamedness' of it. Please bring the family to visit very soon… to Flora and Pearl I am 'Grannie in Australia' and I am in dire need of a cuddle from those little garden helpers and their beautiful Mummy !

Thank you for sharing a little of our paradise with me,

afternoon tea

Today I made a concerted effort to spend some quality time with the girls and we spent the afternoon decorating a little tea set with porcelain paints.

I love this picture of Pearl- normally she loves to make as much mess as possible, but she tried so hard to paint her cup nicely and seemed pretty proud of the finished product.

When we ran out of dolly cups and saucers I brought out some of our proper plates to decorate too- Pearl is constantly requesting that we draw tractors for her, so I painted one on a dinner plate.


Now I'm certainly no artist, but I enjoyed myself as much as they did, if not more!


As a working mummy, sometimes I feel like I only ever see them when we're all tired and grumpy, so I really must do things like this with them more often- you must all hold me to that!

damsons in distress

I know, sorry about the pun- they're getting cornier, aren't they!

Just above our little secret outhouse is a wild damson tree which is now brimming with fruit ripe for picking. I hadn't a clue what to do with a damson until this week, when Alys Fowler was tweeting about some damson vodka she had made, so I decided I needed to get in on the action.

I picked (or rather sent Steve up a ladder to pick) approximately 2 lbs of damsons which I chopped in half and pushed through the neck of a handy bottle, which had contained some Weston's cider until last weekend. I then added just over 1 lb of sugar and a litre of cheap vodka and gave the whole thing a rigorous shake.

I now need to leave it for three or four months and then I will need to strain out the fruit and decant it into bottles. In theory, I should have some lovely pink syrupy liqueur, just in time for Christmas!

I would welcome any other interesting suggestions for what I should do with the rest of the damsons- I'm going to be using the plums at Pear Tree Cottage to make jam, so I don't really think I can be bothered with damson jam as well!

wet play

reasons to stay cheerful...

1) having a fantastic time at Longleat, in spite of the rain

2) cowboys and indians taking over Stonehenge


3) playing Rummy with vegetable-themed playing cards

and, best of all...

4) spicy courgette and runner-bean chutney which arrived in the post from by bloggy-friend at Little Green Shed.

Thank you Lou!

let the wild rumpus start

I've been feeling a little bit melancholy for the last week or so, which is maybe why I've been a bit quiet on the blog front. Nothing too serious, but the relentless rain isn't helping. Anyway, Flora borrowed Spike Jonze's film version of one of our most popular bedtime reads, Where the Wild Things Are, from the library last week. Ignore what some of the reviews say about it not really being a children's film- Flora was equally as captivated by the entire production as I was and it clearly provoked some deep thought processes, as she has since been asking me some fairly sophisticated questions about feelings and friendships. She also observed that the film made her feel 'both really happy and very sad at once', so our new word of the week has been 'catharsis'- impressive eh?

I think I am in danger of becoming a little bit obsessed with this film, it's easily by far the most wondrous film I've seen in years and it's given me a few crafty ideas for Christmas presents for the girls. Flora's favourite character was KW, so I am thinking along the lines of a KW inspired hat for her, and perhaps a little Max's wolf-suit inspired cardie for Pearl. I have found some other 'Wild Things' inspired crafting elsewhere on the interweb such as these adorable crocheted amigurumi on Ravelry (shame I haven't got the first clue about crocheting).

Just look at this beautiful mobile, available to buy on Etsy and I even found these fantastic halloween costumes!


We're off to Longleat today as a 'last week of the Summer holidays' treat. I wonder what sort of wild things we'll find?

mixtape satchel

Back when we were 19, Steve had a little canvass army-surplus haversack, in which he toted about his worldly goods (wallet, 10 b&h, tube ticket, recent edition of NME etc). I went off to university many miles away and he would post me mixtapes of our favourite twee indie songs, with soppy little notes enclosed. I'm so glad that mix-tapes are now back in vogue, as there's something very special about all the effort that goes into making one, that is not mirrored in the burning of an ipod playlist.

So, as today is his 31st birthday, I decided to combine those two aspects of our teenage nostalgia and embroidered this bag for him- I figured he would need one when he relinquishes his role as professional dad and returns to the weary world of work as a special needs teaching assistant in September.

I'm really getting into this embroidery lark and have a few more projects up my sleeve.

Oh, to be 19 again....

patience

This evening at bedtime, instead of a story, Flora asked if I could teach her to knit with the little set that she got for her birthday in March from her uncle and aunt. She was so deep in concentration, I took some pictures of her various facial expressions as she practiced.

I don't think Flora really enjoyed it as much as I was hoping she would . She wants everything done yesterday!

as luck would have it

Space and storage is a bit of an issue in our little cottage and I've been keeping my sewing machine stored up in our attic bedroom. Every time I want to use it I have to lug it down two flights of stairs to set it up on the dining table. I'd been wanting to get my own crafting space set up in our bedroom so that I can sew whenever I want to, without it being a major faff. So I was extremely excited when I saw a post for a sewing table on Freecycle earlier in the week. I was the super-lucky person who was chosen as its new owner and I went to collect it this morning.

Not only is it extremely useful but it is also the most fantastic piece of vintage 1960s (?) teak and rosewood furniture. It needs a bit of tlc- stripping and varnishing, which I will get round to in time, but it fits perfectly into our bedroom and even has four handy draws for storing my bits and bobs.

Just look how clever it is- you just tip the hatch..

pull the handle..


and up pops the sewing machine, all ready to go...

It must be the most exciting thrifty find ever!