blueberries

Look at that! Our first crop of blueberries! It's cheating a bit, because all those berries were on the bush when I bought it. I should have pulled them off so the plant puts its efforts into growing, but I couldn't help myself. This variety is ripe when it's pinky blue, which I find a bit more appetising than the usual deep purple-blue, to be honest.

Blueberries are so, so expensive here ($4 to $8 for about 5oz/ 150g), so I thought I'd try growing my own. Apparently the low chill varieties do quite well in Perth. I got one bush berry (Sunshine Blue) good for our climate, which is the shrubby one, and one, um... taller one (high bush they might be called?) called Delite. I can't find out much about it, but the label says it's low chill. I can't wait for them to start flowing for next season.

I'd planned to plant out the garlic today, but I'm laid up in bed, sick. I got bitten by someone else's dog at the dog park, and it got a nasty infection that's completely wiped me out, which is about the strangest reason I've ever had for a sick day. My boss told me that if anyone complained to him that work from me was late, he was going to tell them that "the dog ate my employee." Groan.

Job Warehouse, Melbourne

I didn't bother to go out of my way to fabric shop while in Melbourne, but couldn't help but notice the sign in the window of Job Warehouse ('specialising in vintage fabrics', or something similar). Job Warehouse, as I'm sure Melbournians know, is a freakish anomaly. It's right in the CBD, next to an extremely popular Italian espresso bar and a couple of doors down from one of the city's finest Italian restaurants.* It is a store that by all odds should've gone the way of milk in bottles.


Here is what Job Warehouse looks like. From the back of the store looking towards the door. What you can't see is that there are several doorways on the left of the photo, into rooms filled with more fabric. Unfortunately I couldn't actually get into them, because fabric bolts were stacked chest-high across the doorways.


There are no labels, and no prices. Apparently the gentlemen that work there price according to mood. Well they liked me well enough, because I paid on average $10 p/m. For three metres of 1970s tartan acetate taffeta, two metres of (80s?) striped cotton and five metres of printed panels.


That's just half a panel I've photographed. I have no idea when these are from - ideas, anyone? The full circle skirt suggests 50s, but the print and colourway to me looks more early 80s? And the best bit - look around the panel. Along one selvedge is a printed band - for a waistband or matching button-band on a blouse. There's collar panels, and two kind of pocket panels. Pocket panels! Two kinds! I bought enough for a full circle skirt for me (too much? Should I make it only a half?) and the half panel over will become an apron.


* For those that can't afford to eat at Grossi Florentino itself (we didn't), I completely recommend the Cellar Bar - the cheaper, more casual restaurant on the side of the building also run by Mr Florentino. Most meals under $20, and absolutely fabulous. Same quality ingredients, just simpler food (spaghetti bolognaise, osso bucco, eggplant parmigiana, minestrone). Most of those dishes are under $20. Best. Value. Ever.

I interrupt your (ir)regular crafty programming...

for milk.

Sorry guys. I have to have a little rave about milk.

Noone in our house drinks plain milk, so we keep UHT on hand for the odd time I want to make a cheese sauce or a lemon delicious. Badly Coloured Boy drinks flavoured milk every morning (yep, we're grown ups). I do not.

Last night while prowling the aisles of Fresh Provisions in search of something that was healthy, 'snack-like' and only had ingredients that I knew what they were, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and try Bannister Downs milk. I knew it had won a lot of awards. I knew it came in the most awesome calcium-carbonate biodegradable pouch. I knew it cost $4.50 a litre (flavoured)!

I did not know that milk could taste so good. So amazingly, astonishingly good. Their low-fat chocolate milk has a mouthfeel creamier than supermarket full-cream. It was rich and cocoa-y, but not too sweet. The ingredients on the chocolatte flavour? Milk, dutch cocoa, sugar. No emulsifiers, or vegetable gums, or chocolate syrup! If I don't drink the whole litre in 24 hours I'm going to warm some up in a pan and have instant hot chocolate.

I don't think Bannister Downs is available outside WA, so, well, sucks to the rest of the world! More helpfully, all I can encourage you to do is to seek out a local, independent, environmentally aware dairy near you that cares about their product. I can't believe I have lived for 23 years without knowing that this is what milk can and is supposed to taste like. I must check with BCB, who grew up on a dairy farm (and an orchard, and has done time on nearly every organic farm between here and Nimbim, courtesy of his wandering mother) whether fresh-from-the-dairy milk is like BD. While it mightn't be practical for those families that go through a couple of litres a day to be buying BD, our low-milk consuming household shall be buying nothing but from here on in.

First heirloom 'failure'

Capsicums. Chocolate coloured capsicums. Another heirloom variety. Don't let the colour put you off - they're red when you cut into them (they have a sort of reddish undertone to the brown too, can you see?)
Yes, they're rivalling my tomatoes for the claim to the Lilliput-vegetable-crown. Apparently it's actually quite difficult to grow a decent sized capsicum, so I'm just pleased we got any at all.

At least I was, until we tried one. They're bitter! They're so, so bitter! They really were not something that you'd take a second bite of. So I cut them up very finely and hid them in the curry I was cooking.

I more exciting news, maybe six weeks after our first eggplant flower, there are signs of an actual eggplant. I have no idea why it took so long. Eggplants are supposed to be very quick-growing (but I'm learning my garden doesn't follow the regular rules of plants). Right now it's larger than a chicken egg. Very exciting.

The broadest of beans.

(or fava, for the Americans).


Here are my chunky little broad beans growing away. Not bad, huh? I was hoping for masses, too many too eat! I was hoping for enough that I could freeze half a kilo or so of shelled beans. But I don't think that's going to happen. Not enough growing, plus they seem to be getting some weird disease. You can see the leaves yellowing in the picture above.


We are going to get a couple of meals out of them, though. This is what I've picked for tonight. They'll go with pasta and asparagus and garlic and brie. Local asparagus is in season right now, so I'm gorging on it. We can get asparagus from Thailand all year round, but it doesn't taste as good and the carbon footprint that goes with it must be enormous! With the exception of garlic we don't buy imported fruit and veges. Yum. I've eaten a few of the little beansies raw so far and they are delicious. They're too little to have skins on them.

A note on their size: I grew Coles Prolific variety, which is, I guess, a close relatives of the Coles Dwarf. Dwarf relating to the size of the beans, not the plant. What a gyp! There's only a maximum of four beans per pod. Next year I'm going to plant me so good old-school giants.

These are probably my most successful gardening exploit so far. Now fingers crossed for my ten tomato plants, my two butternut pumpkins, and the leeks (which aren't looking so great... I think Perth is a little warm for leeks). And the zucchinis which will go in next week.

things is growing

Remember this? Well, four weeks in an things have grown.


You can tell, right? Well, in case you can't here's what that wussy little beet seedling looks like now. With some garlic to the right of it.


My knitting's grown too. I've finished the back of the Cardigan for Arwen:


Instead of whipstitching up the facing I used a provisional cast on, and just k2tog'ed when the back was the same length as the facing. Neat, huh?
Now I'm onto the cables and, uh, I never thought about it before, but I've never cabled anything more complex than Knitty's Fetching. These cables are really, really hard. Not just complex, but reversible, so I'm throwing a whole heap of unexpected purls into knit rows and vice versa.

I was disrupted from photographing the beets by Badly Coloured Boy arriving home from doing the shopping. When he saw me outside he rapped on the kitchen window and beckoned for me. When I signalled 'give me a minute' he shook his head, and made bunny ears. He bought me a bunny-rabbit! Well, no. Turns out one of our neighbours has just got two biggish kittens and they were exploring our carport. He thought I might want to come and play with them (he was dead right). I love the little kitties, and to make things worse, our lease explicitly allows cats. And one of BCB's friends is trying to find a new home for his kitties Belle (old and fat) and Sebastian (young and springy). It's so tempting, but I have to keep reminding myself I'm allergic. They're fun to play with, not to keep. Whenever BCB says 'No, for your own good' when I ask for a kitty I ask him for a bunny. Today he said 'Well, you better check with the landlord. That's the first step.' That is distinctly not a 'no'. Someone talk me out of saddling myself with a largeish rodent please. Why does 'but I could cuddle it!' seem to outweigh 'food costs money, you might want to move house or even States, it's hard to go on holiday, you're surrounded by predatory cats' on the list of pros and cons?

crafting with soil

when we first moved into our place, this is what the garden looked like. only imagine those little sprouty bits of grass weren't there. for my nothern hemisphere readers, that white stuff isn't snow. it's dead grass.

now, i don't actually care much for gardening. but i do care about my belly, and i like filling it with vegie-stuff. and it killed me to have to shell out for fresh herbs (actually, i refused to buy them). so, i zoned in on one particularly large, empty bed. i put manure on it, and mulch (lupin mulch, of course). last week i planted some rosemary and parsley and thyme that mah mum grew in pots for me. they loved it. within two days the thyme was making little baby thymes.
emboldened by my gardening 'sucess' (nothing died within the week), i went out and bought some broccoli, and some beetroot.

i was going to mail order some heirloom beets, but was a bit scared about growing something from seed. when i went to the garden centre, what did lucky ol' me find, but mixed heirloom beet seedlings! i have high hopes for them. there's a regular red one (bullsblood), a white one, a yellow one (golden something), and chioggia. chioggia beets have pink and white rings like a lollipop! i think this is probably a chioggia:


here's out little bed all up.


the brown pot has mint, the purple is a spare rosemary. the really leafy thing is the parsley, and the tall thing to its left is the rosemary. a thyme and a wild alyssium. there's an odd yellow-fruiting chilli to the diagonal right of the parsley. badly coloured boy chose it. you can also see his terrifically complex reticulation system. which will be completely unnecessary once i install the grey water recycling system i bought. all the washing machine and shower water will land on the garden! the brownish stuff in the takeaway container is an organic snail trap. sugar, water and vegemite. so far the only thing to have drowned in it is a cricket.