This little orange has given us one orange. Last year. I used it to bake a “whole orange” cake for my son’s birthday, so we could all share it.
It was repotted last year, so I think it may not give us any fruit this year, but I am hoping that it will bear at least two oranges. Then I can use it to make my favourite cake at the moment.
It uses up lots of the extra eggs from the chooks, and is so simple that it can be memorised. (2 oranges, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup almond meal, 6 eggs, 1 tsp baking powder – done!).
Boil the oranges whole in a pot of water for 2 hours. (We made two cakes one day, one skipping this step and one including it, just in case it was being a bit precious…. who has time to boil an orange?? One kid much preferred the non-boiled version (more tart and tangy), while one preferred the boiled-version (far creamier texture).
Puree and ALLOW TO COOL.
Preheat oven to 160 degrees and grease and line a 22cm spring form tin.
Beat eggs and caster sugar until combined.
Stir in puree, then meal, then baking powder.
Bake 1 – 1 ¼ hours until skewer comes out clean.
Allow to cool before dusting with icing sugar to serve.
In December 2007, five months after the first iPhone was released, a year after Facebook first allowed people with non “.edu” addresses to create profiles, I wrote about my decision to try not to tell other people’s stories, in a post about Drawing the veil … .
Chiefly I was thinking about co-workers and my kids. My decision was not only about privacy for others, but I reasoned that even if the person in question had given me permission, or even wanted me to tell their stories, publishing it on this blog altered my relationship with other co-workers. Would they think I was looking at what they were doing as blog fodder? I didn’t really want to add that layer to my work relationships. Likewise, I respected my kids’ privacy, and that of their friends and schoolmates, so minimised how much I discussed them.
I didn’t tell the story at the time, but it was actually in response to an incident at work where I was extremely confronted. I’m OK with telling it now because I can anonymise it, and if it makes my current workmates feel worried that I may tell a vague story about them in 12 years time, I can live with that impact on our work relationships today. The incident made me feel about 100 years old and like the world’s biggest fuddy-duddy.
I was running a “23 Things” project that involved staff blogging, and a member of staff far younger than me was taking part. The blog they linked to as part of the staff project was used for posts other than for the project. Mentioning work. Including a conversation with their supervisor. One that revealed information about them, their supervisor and work circumstances that had not been revealed to their co-workers.
It was my job to explain to them, with the help of supervisor, why it was not on. As I tried to explain I was seeing a nodding head, with a look of total incomprehension in the eyes. What seemed obvious to me about workplace decorum and social media evidently was not universally apparent.
Even worse, this was the days before organisations had grappled with social media, so I had no idea what was a reasonable (and even legal) way to ask this person to deal with the posts. Today, it would be much clearer. Then, I tried to appeal to their better nature and explain the likely impact on their co-workers if the co-workers stumbled across the posts as I had. What I did not do was request that they remove the posts from their blog, or tackle the issue of why they should not have made them in the first place… although the supervisor and I did work toward a solution that the person in question agreed with.
THAT was what led to me trying to articulate a personal policy on my blog.
It sounds unbelievable now, but many bloggers, like me, had not thought about the issue in any depth until something like that forced us to.
I discovered among the comments for that post my speculation:
“I wonder what we’ll be thinking about my self-imposed limitation in ten years, or even five? I wonder whether I’ll seem like I was being terribly fussy and prim.?”
It’s kind of nice to look back and think that I probably made exactly the right choice for me, one that has worked to help me decide what I share in my online life.
It also makes me wonder what other challenges to privacy or communication or …boundaries??… are around the corner as work/life/social media …even government policy and governance…blur further. What other things that seem self-evident to me about navigating this world would cause a 20 year old to gaze at me with total incomprehension?
The weeping mulberry in the rear courtyard is kept trimmed to the height of the rear fence, as this is the direction that the prevailing winds come. The house is designed to catch the breeze through the kitchen window. If it wasn’t, then the tree would be much, much taller and wider.
There is a Gedye compost bin at the very base of the tree…hidden most of the year by the leaves. The chooks eat most kitchen scraps, but citrus, onion skins and eggshells go into this bin. Rather than composting, it is more a large cockroach and worm farm, full of creatures that wriggle and crawl en masse every time the lid is lifted.
I take out a top layer or two of worm castings every so often when I pot up something new, but generally the system works really well to make all our scraps disappear. The tree seems to like the arrangement too.
In summer, the tree is full of mulberries, generally on the inside branches, which create quite a cavern. I usually forget that it is near fruiting season, then spot maybe a small berry on the outside, before going under and discovering a huge harvest.
When making mulberry icecream, it is important to de-stem absolutely every berry. I learned the not-so pleasant way, when we had a batch with green crunchy bits that simply should not have been there.
You know how there are life events so big that you divide life into “before” and “after”?
One of the joys of Blogjune is insight into how other people live and think. I really appreciate the careful storytelling this year, where people like Fiona, Sean, Graeme, Cath and Hana have been sharing their journeys with ongoing health issues and the impact of big life changes and taking on a caring role.
Their posting confirms for me that I am now living in “after” time…. and I am very grateful that they had the wherewithal to share with such generosity, to help me treasure the quiet wonderfulness of my everyday, right now.
But it also reminds me that most, or all, of us are probably living in “before” time as well, so it is worth loving every minute of it and joyfully appreciating it.
I spent several years where every day I knew that the ONLY thing that would help me heal and cope with where I was now…was time.
I knew I was overwhelmed and hurting and had to just do the best I could, in circumstances I did not choose, nor want, nor really understand well. As years passed, my life would heal and grow around the scars from what was happening now, even if it would not be the life I planned.
Several times a day I repeated “this too shall pass, this too shall pass”. Sometimes my aim was to get through the next minute, then the next one, then the next … I could cope if I only had to keep it together for the next 60 seconds, hour, half a day….
One day this would be behind me and fading, loss no longer so gaping. I would be able to make future plans without waking every day wondering what fires would need fighting today, and whether I had resources to rise to it. Where I would no longer be running in ever decreasing circles trying to do what I could, with energy I did not know I possessed, to make things better. To wait for this doctor or that specialist to tell me barely-understood numbers. To try to keep people I loved safe. To make decisions about matters I did not feel qualified to make, that I did not want to have to face.
Nowadays, I can have several very uneventful days in a row and feel utterly grateful that … NOTHING HAPPENED. I can make plans and have goals other than sleep, shower, be there for the kids, perform at work. This feels miraculous and something I should rejoice in daily.
The way I look at my everyday life has changed for the better. In most circumstances, that could be upsetting to most people, I can now use the yardstick “Is this as bad as THEN?”. If it is not (and it never is), I can sail through it with ease and grace. I would, of course, probably rather not have the yardstick.. but it does infuse me with a sense of calm I simply did not possess before.
It also involves accepting that some things that I wanted, that everyone else seems to have and not appreciate, I will not have, ever. And understanding that what I see as mundane and sometimes annoying in my everyday life (like a kid leaving a wet towel on the chair in their bedroom), someone else may consider to be the height of desirability. And to not assume that, just because someone seems functional and is not talking about issues in their lives, they have capacity to do more than put one foot in front of the other.
I also am keenly aware of the temporariness of this everydayness. Of the utter arbitrariness of the good fortune to not be in crisis right now. Some days it drives me to a deserted beach to swim alone – and hang the risk of drowning by myself or sharks or my wobbly bits being visible in my swimsuit. Some days I stay in bed all day and read and snuggle with my cats – because I can, and nobody will be impacted if I do not get up and be there for them.
Ballerina apples are dwarf varieties that generally have just a single stem, but I have allowed mine to spread a little. The red is a “Pinkabelle”, which is like a Pink Lady, while the green is a “Leprechaun” which is a Granny Smith. This is their first year fruiting.
Certainly this is unseasonal, so I am not sure whether they will just keep growing until they are full-sized fruit in a few months, or whether they are getting close to ready, but will be small sized.
If you have ever travelled in India and had “nimbu pani” (lime water), the dwarf in the pot is the variety of lime used for this.
I have planted lettuce for quick cropping at the base of the lime, then lobelia (because I like blue flowers) and viola (a lovely yellowy-white variety). Both flowers can be eaten in salads for colour, but the viola is also nice candied.
You can see the tail-end of some tomatoes and basil as well.
The rosemary in the foreground is growing where I originally planted a dwarf nectarine and a dwarf peach. They didn’t really thrive, and then the fruit-fly stung all their fruit… so they were donated to friends as part of my “thrive or don’t stay” philosophy.
Rosemary for roast potatoes, soups and omlettes. It’s the second rosemary bush I have had, replacing one that was where the apple is now, that simply grew and grew until it became woody and collapsed on itself one day.
Lemon verbena to the left of the rosemary is for tea, but it goes well with fish too (must try that). The Golden Delicious dwarf apple in the left hand side of the image is about a year old and yet to fruit. Cornflowers, oregano and thyme are planted at the base. In the right hand side of the frame you can see the leaves of the Cecile Brunner rose.
And … of course…. the nasturtiums. Three weeks ago there were none there. In a month most of the picture would be nasturtiums with hand-sized leaves.
(If you looked hard, you would see some Dutch Irises and daffodils beginning to peek up, but they are DEFINITELY not for eating).
The grape pergola forms an extra green room in summer time, then lets sunshine into my office on Winter days. Grapes on top and down the sides, hibiscus to the north. Both pruned back to almost nothing in winter.
The house is built on what was the backyard of a small weatherboard cottage, and before that about 150 years ago, a diary farm. Many grape varieties were growing in the yard before it was cleared in Winter. I saved several cuttings in pots and planted them on the pergola and the perimeter of the North side of the property. I am pretty sure that I did not save all the varieties, though. I think they were probably originally brought by Italian migrants to the area, so are probably rather unusual.
Do I like to eat grapes? Nope. Do my kids? Yes … but only the seedless variety with paper-thin skins that you can buy in the supermarket.
I have so many grapes over summer that I think I could probably have a go at making my own wine one year.
The hibiscus mutabilis has flowers that open as white, then change to a deep pink. The leaves are theoretically edible, but more often used to deal with burns, like you would aloe vera. I have never thought to try eating it.
The bay tree is a “Baby Bay” variety and also kept dwarf by the pot size – otherwise it would be a full-blown laurel tree and 7 metres tall. Bay leaves for soup and stews.
The parsley is all over the yard and I let it grow wherever it chooses. In summer I grow tomatoes in the pots too. We just soak cracked wheat (bourghal) and have our own tabouli garden.
The cornflower is still a seedling at the back, but in a few weeks it will (hopefully) be around 60cm or so high with bright blue flowers. It is edible, but used more for interesting contrast in salads, rather than something you would go out of your way to pick and eat.
The green pot is growing Eu De Cologne mint, which CAN be brewed into a tea, but I prefer the peppermint and spearmint that I have growing in similar pots next to it. In baths, however, or even just crushed and rubbed on the skin, nothing can beat the fabulous fragrance. If you were a child of 1970s Australia and remember 4711 Ice Cologne …. it captures that smell very nicely.
This is WHY I changed to dwarf fruit trees. The mandarine and olive provide a lovely welcome home drive, but are kept to manageable dimensions by rather frequent pruning.
It is difficult to see in the background, but behind both trees are grape vines growing on the mesh fence. The scattered leaves at the base are from the chooks foraging for bugs yesterday.
Our suburb has a community garden and a lot of olive trees in backyards. Every year we can pick the olives from our trees, take them to a central point and then they are driven up to an olive farm to crush into oil for us. We weigh the amount of olives we contribute, provide a bottle, and then receive oil in the proportion of our contribution to the press.
