Hi from Highfield

Today is the first day that we 'own' our new property - Highfield.  The last week has been a flurry of 'ings'-  sorting, wrapping, packing, boxing, stacking, driving, unstacking, unboxing, unwrapping, re-sorting,  cupboarding. My hands are sore from paper cuts and cleaning fluid but we are content if  tired.

Soon, I will introduce our new home to you. But right now I want to introduce you to some of our neighbours. This was the first little fella that waved to me on arrival - a lovely big praying mantis. Don't you love his topnot?



Then, I quickly noticed the willie wagtail nest being built. Right outside our front balcony, a pair of conscientious willies are constructing a beautiful nest in a hakea.  The books say that willies build their nests from mud and soften it with a quilt of spiders web. Indeed we see these little, bright birds return to their 'cottage' under construction with beaks of white sticky fluff.  They beat their little heads and chests over the edge to transfer the web and smooth it off, creating a felty home. There seem to be a few galah chest feathers in the wall of the nest, little specks of gala-pink against the pale grey of web - very pretty.

It feels right that we are nesting in our new home the same time the Willies are.

We are on Wiradjuri land, a large country of the original indigenous owners. The Wiradjuri call the Willie Wagtail  - dirrijirri - which, if you have ever heard a Willie's calls, is onomatopoeic.

We are tempted to call our little cottage Dirrijirri House.

A glut of lemons and wildlife

Picked

a big basket full of lemons

• eggplants
• chillies (just a few)
• lots of lemons (most gathered from the ground)

Planted

• broad beans in and around the broccoli

Took out

• some of the weaker eggplants to make space for some cabbage seedlings
• chilli plants that have finished flowering

I have another lemon glut. It is a wonderful thing, I don't want to make it sound like a burden, but I am exhausting my options.

I dealt with my first summer glut of lemons before this blog started by making jars and jars of lemon butter (or lemon curd), some of which I gave away, but I still have jars left over.  My second glut  was demolished by basically making lots of  lemon tarts and taking them to friends' places over the Christmas / New Year period and by making lemonade.  I also have enough preserved lemons in jars in the cupboard to keep us going for a good while so there is no point in making more of them. So I am kind of  struggling to know what to do with these.

The glut is  going to go on for a while too - the tree is loaded and I am not even picking the lemons, I am only collecting the ones that have fallen from the tree! Does anyone have any good lemon recipes they can refer me too?

I could make a favourite cake - a nice Lemony one -  but there is already a cake in the fridge a lovely banana and chocolate one that David made yesterday and you only need one cake in the fridge at a time. So tonight I will make Roasted Lemon Chicken.

Roasted Lemon Chicken
This is a real favourite and comes from a mini book that came with a Gourmet Traveller.The little book is called, 'Comfort Food'. I have made it so many times I cannot count. It's one of those one pan dishes that are so easy to make. Here is my version below, it does really benefit from lots of garlic. * from the garden

olive oil
potatoes cut into small chunks
lots of shallots
chicken pieces
lots of garlic
lots of rosemary leaves*
thyme sprigs*
2 lemons*

Prepare the oven at 200C, put in a roasting pan olive oil, the shallots and potatoes. Cook the veg for about 20 mins. Tuck in the chicken pieces among the potatoes and shallots and scatter with garlic and rosemary and tuck in the thyme sprigs near the chicken. Cut lemons in half and squeeze the juice over the chicken and then cut into quarters or smaller if you have large lemons, and tuck in around the chicken.  Drizzle some more oil over and roast until chicken is cooked and golden. This is so yummy and lovely with a simple green salad.

a big green grub with pink antenna

David is going to make pastry -  he has the hands for it -  and so I will make another Lemon Tart as well. I am afraid I never get sick of them.

During this  morning's garden inspection I came across quite a bit of wildlife.   Does anyone know what this amazing grub is? It's on one of my espaliered Tahitian lime trees and seems to be getting ready to make a cocoon.

another type of praying mantis

On the same lime tree there was a little green praying mantis - not like the giant bee and house fly eating ones. I guess all living things are enjoying the sun.  What did they all do during the massive rain storm?

Another lemon tart?

Post script -  Fresh from the oven, ANOTHER lemon tart. It is possibly the 6th  since 1st January. This one is a  little cracked on the top -  perhaps I left it in a little too long. Could this be called an addiction?

In transition

the snow peas are up

 Picked

• yellow-green chillies
• lemons (gathered fallen ones)

Planted

• lettuce seedlings
• cauliflower seedlings

With a  bit of sun to inspire, I inspected the garden to observe goings on. The garden is in a real transition phase. Some of the summer things are still powering on, some of the winter crops have gone in. Unfortunately I am not picking very much at all - bad planning.

The snow peas ARE ok.  They are all up, every single one -  they didn't rot in the soil like I had thought.

broccoli with self seeded sunflower

The broccoli is going well but getting the first of the cabbage moth visits.  I will need to check under the leaves each day and wipe of their eggs from now on and watch out for the first of the green grubs.  I find this surveillance works well enough for me.  I might have ragged edges to my plants but I always have lots of veg.

Some sunflowers have self seeded - strange time of year for them to to that.  I am leaving them in for the moment to see what happens.


The eggplant seem to have a second wind and are flowering furiously. Same with my brown berry tomatoes. They look like they think its October or November. They are green and upright and setting flowers -  will they set fruit I wonder?

a lime crop after all

the eggplant just keeps coming

I AM going to have a lime crop.

praying mantis eating a house fly

The giant praying mantis was spotted eating a house fly - go praying matis!

Giant bee-eaters

giant bee-eating praying mantis

Picked

• long cayene
• tomatoes - 2 punnets of berries and cherries (unsplit)
• tomatoes - 1 punnet (split)

Planted out

• punnet of baby basil ( raised from seed)

Other

• a tidy up in the patch 

What a beautiful day, warm and sunny, not too hot, just hot enough. A bit of light pottering in the patch was the order of the day.

Some of the tomatoes had sprawled a little too much and I removed the sprawling bits so that other things wouldn't get smothered. Needed to do a bit of weeding, what with the rain things were a little out of contol but soft damp soil made for simple removal.

long cayene

The long cayene needed a bit of staking -  it  too had got a little too leggy and needed some support, but in staking it I accidently broke some branches that were heavy with fruit. Damn! Serve me right for delaying the staking!  Anyway I have saved the fruit and will probably make green curry paste next weekend.  In the meantime they are in the freezer. Its such a shame - I would love to have seen them red.

Today's unsplit  tomato pick

praying mantis in rosemary

More wildlife?  We get the most amazing giant praying mantis in our garden. I saw one again today. One year when the lomatia was flowering heavily I sat and watched a giant praying mantis hunt the bees that came to the blooms. It would freeze near a flower head and wait patiently (what anthropomorphism - how do I know it was patient!) and then stike with its barbed long front legs and quickly snap the bees onto its barbs. It would then eat the bee head first. What would it do with the barb at the end of the bee, we wondered? Surely it would throw that bit away? No -  the praying mantis ate every scrap of the bee.  I watched it facinated for at least half an hour as it, one by one, ate bees.

Since then, each spring and summer we have spotted numerous giant praying mantis in the garden and noticed its egg cases positioned on those plants that have prolific flowers across the garden.