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My camera seems to be perpetually flat, and I really want to show you all the garden and awesome things like vintage tea cosies and tasty food I’ve prepared. So apologies for the recent lack of photos.

A while back I found a few very awesome studio photographs of my grandmother dressed up. Minnie was born for the stage, but marriage and kids got in the way instead. Up until she died she was still quoting poetry.

Yesterday, in between rain showers, I pulled out three of the smaller shrubs from the garden bed which will be the site of the initial vegetable patch. I say initial vegetable patch because I have long-term plans to setup the entire block as an edible garden – that doesn’t mean neat rows of carrots, peas and tomatoes, but to use the food plants as landscaping elements, such as in a potager garden.

The current vegetables I have growing are red orache, purple cabbage, brocolli, kale, mizuna, mustard greens, bok choy, rainbow chard and broad beans. I’ve also planted some garlic, and have strawberries, mint, basil, rhubarb and a very sad looking gooseberry bush in the ground. I’ve already got a list of fruit trees I’m going to plant this winter, but luckily my grandmother or my great-grandmother had the foresight to plant a loquat tree and a very sour mandarin tree too.

The ground was deliciously damp, especially after the 18 months of drought that we’ve been suffering from. Luckily, I spent most of the drought in relatively soggy Finland, but the last two months of dry, dusty soil and drooping leaves have made me very aware of the impact the drought has had. For the last two days it’s been raining and raining – now the entire garden is glossy, the earth smells healthy and while the snails have come out of hiding, it is much easier now to pull up weeds.

Unfortunately though, I managed to stand in an ants nest while I was removing branches from a dead tree which meant that I smeared mud all over myself as I tried to wipe the ants off. I’m sure that as a child I must have sat in an ants nest, because I have a healthy hatred of even the thought of insects crawling over my body. In the end I just pulled my trousers off and ran around the garden in my pants swiping at the ants which by that point were sinking their formic acid laced fangs into my derriere.

I also assembled a compost bin and spent a second day braising lamb shanks for a second group of parentals. On Thursday, my father and his girlfriend came over for dinner – but the lamb shanks were too tough as they hadn’t cooked for long enough – so they made do with leftover ratatouille and homemade, self-saucing chocolate chai pudding. After a second day of cooking (6 or so hours) the meat was really falling off the bone, so I invited my mother and stepfather over for to eat lamb shanks, pumpkin and potato mash, green beans and baked bananas with passionfruit and yoghurt. We talked about gardens and I made them look at seed catalogues. It kept on raining all night.

Today it’s still raining, and the ground is so soggy that my gumboot-less feet would get lost in the mud. Even a year ago I’d have been sad at the thought of being overshadowed by a leaden sky, but with some freaky newly arrived maturity I approached today with the thought of “I can clean the bathroom and wash the kitchen floor too!” So, inspired by the lovely Sew Green bloggers, I used vinegar and borax to clean the floor*.

There must be some remaining grandma essence in the air, because I’m turning into such a nanna. I could be sleeping or watching bad tv, yet after cleaning the floors I remained motivated, and sorted through the dining room sideboard, for fun. I swear, this house is like the very best op shop in the world – I found vintage tea cosies and sent thankyou thoughts off to Minnie in thanks for her great taste and unwillingness to throw anything away.

* More environmentally friendly cleaning recipes can be found at The Ecology Centre’s website.

I suppose that by obsessively weeding I am procrastinating something. It’s true that I haven’t lodged my tax return from last financial year, and there are many other things I should be doing. Though weeding, and getting the garden growing productively are things that need to be done too, but probably not just right now.

There’s something so meditative about weeding. You get to focus on a task over and over again, searching for things which shouldn’t be where they are, isolating their stems from the good plants, pulling them out of the ground, shaking the dirt off and adding them to a rapidly increasing pile. It’s physically demanding work, so you get exercise and there’s that pleasant feeling of destroying something for a purpose.

Soursobs and buffalo grass. They were my obsession last week. But today as I weeded near the broadbeans, I decided it was time to tackle the aloe ciliaris which had taken over a nearby tree.

Weeding is chilling me out and it’s giving me a new found respect for the plants I am trying to destroy.

This climbing aloe is such a very clever plant. It primarily spreads by sending out runners. But it doesn’t just send out runners, it also propagates through stem cuttings, and one of the features of the aloe ciliaris is its segmented stem. So, as I pulled at stems that had woven their way through the tree , the segments and leaves fell apart, allowing plenty of opportunities for new plants to grow. The very act of removing the plant could give it more opportunity to spread!

Oh, and ivy. It spreads in a similar way, the leaves will come off as you pull it from the ground or walls, and you can’t add it to a compost pile straight away it as it will magically grow from your compost!

It turns out that the solution is to place such tough plants into black plastic bags, and to leave them in a sunny area area until the heat kills the plants and they properly begin rot, and then months later, add them to a compost pile.

So, more procrastination – it’s off to the store to buy weed killing plastic bags and some food for the ANZAC Day breakfast.

Back in the day my father was working on the extension to his house in the hills, Mum would usually make a batch of scones as morning tea for anyone helping out with the building. And so, when Dad and brother Alex came to teach me about the basics of plumbing (washer changing, tap reseating etc) I figured I should make them scones as a thankyou feed.

Alex is notorious for acting just like the 18 year old boy he is – this involves grunting, demanding food, grunting some more and leaving the table. So it was only when Mum reported back how much he’d like the scones that I knew I’d had a success – Alex ate 7 of the 16 or so that made up the batch.

I love cheese, but sometimes I’ll rashly buy too much normal cheese which gets ignored while I use fresh parmesan for pasta, or fetta for salads. Because of this impulse buy I had some very strong cheddar cheese hanging around in the fridge which worked perfectly. A stronger cheese, or a combination of tasty cheese and parmesan would work well to compliment the flavour of the onion in these scones.

:::…

Preheat oven to 200°c.

In a large bowl mix 1 cup of Self Raising Flour, a pinch of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking powder.

Rub 60 grams of butter or margarine into the flour mixture. The mix should feel a little like damp breadcrumbs.

Add in one finely chopped small onion, and 60 grams of grated cheese and a teaspoon of mixed herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, thyme).

Mix 125 ml of milk with 1 teaspoon of mustard or a pinch of chilli powder. Add into flour mix.

Using your hands, combine until the mixture is soft and sticky – you may need to add a little more self raising flour.

Don’t overmix the scones batter – this will make the scones very heavy.

On a floured board flatten out the scone mix and cut out into circles or squares.

Place on a floured baking tray and brush the tops of the scones with beaten egg.

Bake in the oven for about 10-15 minutes.

Serve the scones wrapped up in a teatowel and provide cups of tea to drink and proper butter to spread on the scones.

I have aching legs and shoulders from yoga and a wheelie bin’s worth of weeding.
I accepted a four day a week job back in the games industry.
I read , and thought about going to Italy to learn how to cook.
Today I made cheese and onion scones for Dad and Alex.
Yesterday I made delicious cupcakes for Alex’s 18th only to have teenagers throw them at a car.
I registered a new domain for a top secret awesome project.
I just started to do some writing to show Seamus.
I love listening to audiobooks.

• writing lecture for tomorrow’s class, sending sms about paris roubaix to ianto, getting ready to sleep.

• getting ready to go to Really Good In Theory at Urtext.

Next Wednesday Sorry, on Wednesday April 25 (the week after this) it will be ANZAC Day. Of all the public holidays we recognise, this is the only one that I feel is important to pay attention to. It relates to how we, as Australians, have come to identify ourselves as a nation, and allows us to reflect on the positives and negatives (too many to link to) of our nation’s military involvement.

I attended the dawn service on North Terrace a couple of years ago and really want to go again this year.

Who wants to come along?

State National War Memorial : North Terrace : 6.15 am

I’m happy to provide breakfast back at my place after the service. I’ll bring out my great uncle’s photographs and letters from WW1 and maybe I’ll even find a copy of Gallipoli to watch. I also own a copy of The Great Escape, which is semi-topical as it paints a rosy picture of how prisoners of war are meant to be treated. Oh, and Steve McQueen looks “hott”* in it.

And if we’re feeling really keen we can draft out an idealised vision of the future Australian national identity.

Come on. It’s a public holiday so you can catch up on your beauty sleep in the afternoon.

* Since when have people started writing hott instead of hot when describing attractiveness?

I woke up early with the radio this morning and as I lay dosing to the sounds of 24 hours news reporting, heard the scratchy sound of leaves being raked. So I took coffee out to Angelo, the “aged family retainer” who mows the lawns and whipper snippers what ever lies in his path.

Angelo’s one of those guys originally from Greece whose backyard is filled to the brim with edible plants: walnuts, lemon, olives he processes for oil and eating, tomatoes, cucumbers. Based on the beautiful fruit and nut trees in their backyard (combined with the mountains of food Mum provides) I sometimes think my mother and step-father must be Greek too. But I digress.

Angelo and I had a really good talk about the garden. He seconded my desire to put in more fruit trees. I’ve been a little hesitant about removing any original plantings, but he pointed out that a lot of the shrubs have outgrown their “pretty” stage and are now just leggy and ancient looking: “If this was my garden, I’d pull them out and put in something you can eat. You can’t go wrong with fruit”.

The garden bed that he thought would be best initially for a productive, yet decorative vegetable patch lies just outside my bedroom. Taking up the bulk of the patch is some ancient plant that because I can’t eat it, I can’t identify. The shrub is pretty, but the thought of a healthy sunny food filled garden overrides one month per year of flowering. Already resident in the garden bed is a self sown wild olive, which Angelo promised he can use as root stock for a Kalamata olive graft. He told me that he’s already grafted an oil producing olive variety on to another wild tree by the driveway (last year he harvested half a ton from two olive trees to make 60 litres of oil).

Growing my own olives for oil? That’s dreamy. And apparently realistic.

Joel, who has put in dibs to be a housemate should the opportunity ever arise, has already worked out the best place to put in a chicken run.

Chickens? Even dreamier.

After talking to Angelo, I read Joel’s latest zine*, which as always was beautifully written and illustrated, as well as being entertaining and informative. Part travel diary, part Food Sovereignty 101, the zine follows Joel’s experience representing Oceania at Nyeleni 2007, the World Forum For Food Sovereignty in Sélingué, Mali.

“Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to determine what they eat, who produces it, and how it’s produced”. Paul Nicholson (Basque Farmers’ Union, La Via Campesina).

That sounds like a good thing to me.

*Joel can be contacted at madhorsemanofmarrakesh [@] yahoo [.] com or PO Box 108, Unley, SA, 5061, Australia

• getting ready to make risotto with homemade chicken stock. i’ve also preparing some chickpeas to make a beetroot, potato, ceci, lemon dip.
• thanks for the joost invite – that was sweet of you… but i have an old powerbook, there’s no intel inside
• posting blog posts about cities and heartbreak. watching kermit sing N.I.N. postponing sleep.