This weekend we spent Saturday over at the Village Hall, helping out with the clean-up, maintenance and garden building.
Janine did a lot of pruning and mulching of the existing garden beds, while I helped with the wheel barrowing of several tonnes of road base , then gravel to create new paths, followed by filling the new garden beds with another few tones of topsoil and mulch. The final part , was to plant out all the donated plants to fill the new beds.
A terrific effort from a lot of the Village residents.
Janine shovelling mulch
Road base spread to level out under the gravel paths along the tennis court.
Next we filled the garden beds with top soil and then covered it with a thick layer of mulch before planting out the flowers and shrubs.
Janine watering in the new plantings. It’s a lovely feeling to be part of a communal group activity.
We finished up with a BBQ. A great day of work, that wasn’t too onerous, because everyone turned up and got stuck in.
Many hands = light work.
Today, Sunday morning, Janine and I spent time communing with nature.
Janine engaged deeply with nature by walking into the muddy dam fully clothed to hook some very heavy load chain around the dead tea trees bushes that were killed by the fire, and have been sitting in the water, standing dead and ugly for 3 years now.
We decided that today was the day to snig out as many of them as we could reach safely, and drag them out of the water and up onto dry land, then cut them up for fire wood for next winter.
It has been raining so much for the past few years since the big fire, that we couldn’t even get close to the dam bank without getting bogged. This has been our first opportunity to get this long-term job started.
We have cut about half of the wood that we will need for the next winter so far. Cutting and splitting fire wood is an on-going job all year.
We have achieved as much as we can at this stage. We will come back to it when and if the dry weather continues, so that we can walk further into the dam safely to get to more of the branches.
This small dam used to be our most reliable swimming dam in summer, because it was the deepest, and therefore held water the longest. The largest dam is beautiful to swim in, but only when it is full, as it is quite shallow and the water soon seeps and evaporates down to a waddling level.
Once the dam dries out once more, we will get all the dead tree branches out of the small dam, we will clean it out, so that we can swim in it safely on the hottest summer days once again.
Everything worth doing takes time. This is a long term plan.
A new tomato crop is developing. I managed to get a few early tomato plants into the ground in September. I cheated and bought a punnet of seedlings. September is long before our own naturally germinated ‘wild’, self sown tomatoes seeds emerge. I bought a punnet of seedlings from the garden centre. In the past, if I got them in the ground in early September, then we might get a ripe tomato in the week between Xmas and new year. The past decade had been unusually hot and drought ridden here up until 2019. The extra heat allowed the tomatoes to establish so early.
This past year however, it has been cooler and wet in comparison, so the season is delayed somewhat. We do have tomatoes climbing up the tomato stakes, the tallest being about one metre high so far. There are even a few small green tomatoes developing now. However, I doubt if there will be a ripe, red tomato for Xmas, never mind in the next 2 to 3 weeks.
I have planted 4 beds so far, around 10 plants in each bed. The earliest ones are all flowering well now, so it promises to be a good crop in the new year when the warmer weather develops. Well, I’m hoping so anyway. I like to make all the jars of ‘passata’ that will last us all year, as well as all the tomatoes that we will consume in salads and ratatouille dishes over the summer.
Tomatoes need a warm soil temperature and longer daylight hours to thrive. Our own naturally germinating ‘wild’ tomato seeds are just now emerging in among the other beds. So the soil temperature must now be more or less OK. The ‘Diggers Club’ guide tells me that the soil temp for tomatoes must be above 16oC, but I’ve never bothered to go out side with a temperature probe to test the soil temp to find out. Early September seems about right and the plants grow, albeit quite slowly at first. In years gone by I even started the young tomato seedlings off in late August under a sort of home made ‘cloche’ made by wrapping the industrial sized ‘glad-wrap’ that I used to have in the old kiln factory for delivering kilns, and wrapping this around the old wire mesh frames that we used to cover the garden beds before we built the bird proof enclosure. This early frost and cold night protection worked for the important first month, until the weather warmed more, or until the plants got so tall that they out-grew the height of the temporary cover.
Yesterday I went into the garden after lunch to do a bit of tidying up and weeding. I ended up hammering in tomato stakes and tying up the tallest tomatoes. One thing led to another, then I suddenly realised that the chooks had put them selves into their house and were ready for bed as it was after 6 pm. The afternoon had just slipped away while I was being busy.
Tying up tomatoes is such a great job. The season is still early and there is no hope of seeing a tomato any time soon, but just touching the tomato leaves or even brushing against them gives off such an appetising smell. It makes my mouth water with anticipation. I don’t know what chemical is in the tomato leaves, but it is delicious to smell. So spending a few hours hammering in the wooden stakes and tying up the leaders with lengths of soft cloth is a wonderful experience. It promises so much. There is so much optimism tied up in each of those soft little bows.
My go-to reference about my vegetables and fruit growing info is The Oxford Book of Food Plants. It tells me that Tomatoes, ‘Lycopersicon esculentum’ are a native of the lower Andes, and are valued for their high vitamin content. It is part of the solanum family along with deadly nightshade, datura, petunias, the potato, capsicum, chilli and egg plants. In fact eating green or unripe tomatoes can make you sick. Unripe tomatoes contain a toxic alkaloid called ’tomatine’ which is an insecticide, fungicide and has anti microbial properties which are there to presumably protect it from predators, but are easily broken down by cooking, so it is OK to eat them in chutney. No one I know eats them raw when green. However, I did see in ‘wikipedia’ that tests have been carried out and you would have to eat more than half a kilo of tomato leaves, where the tomatine is more concentrated, to get a toxic reaction, which wouldn’t be lethal. I love the smell of touching tomato leaves, but I have no inclination to eat them.
It also tells me that it needs a minimum temperature of 55 to 60oF or 12 to 15oC. This is considerably less than that stated by ‘Diggers’ and may explain why I can get away with starting them in a closh in August here.
The Oxford also tells me that the tomato was originally called ‘pomo-d’oro’ or golden apple, presumably because the earliest varieties brought back from the Americas were a yellow variety? Quite possible? I don’t know. I did read online on a New Zealand web site that only the yellow tomato can be digested properly by humans and that all the red coloured varieties are only digestible by animals!!! Something to do with different forms of lycopene as I remember. However, I have grown a few different yellow tomatoes and they were universally bland and lacking acid in the flavour profile, so I have avoided them ever since. Not worth the trouble to cultivate. I seem to be able to get all the lycopene that I need from the tasty red ones, but do I need any at all?
Michael Pollan, in ‘Defence of Food’ (p67), advises that red lycopene can be easily digested when cooked in olive oil. Italian cooks have always seemed to have known that. Dr Norman Swan in his book, ’So you want to live Longer’ (p 81). Lycopene reduces oxidative stress in the body from free radicals. “There’s a multi-billion dollar industry which sells this idea in a bottle. – Trouble is that they don’t work.” “you’re on much safer ground betting on what’s on your stove”. He consistently returns to the idea that tomatoes cooked in olive oil are really good for you – as part of a Mediteranian diet, low in meat and high in coloured vegetables and whole grains.
I have read elsewhere that all domesticated tomato varieties today are descended from the red-fruited wild tomato, Solanum Pimpinellifolium. Perhaps named after the scarlet pimpernel? One of the other early names for tomato, besides ‘love-apple’ and ‘golden-apple’ was ‘wolf peach’. Which accounts for the latinised name ‘lycopersicon’ used by Linnaeus to describe them in 1753, and still in use today. Tomatoes first appeared in Europe in around 1535 on the return of the Spanish conquistadors from Peru, It took over 150 years for the tomato to be integrated into everyday cuisine, starting in Italy, then slowly spreading across Europe. It’s acceptance was rather slow.
John Ray, The English Botanist, son of a village blacksmith, went on to study at Cambridge, Trinity College, He became the college Steward. He travelled widely in England and Europe, and while in Italy in the 1660s he wrote. ‘The Italians cook tomatoes with marrows, peppers, salt and olive oil’. Perhaps the first ever reference to ratatouille?
It’s Sunday, the day of rest. So I’m taking my rest in the vegetable garden doing a little bit of weeding and planting out some seedlings that I bought yesterday.
I usually prefer to grow nearly everything from seed, often from our own self saved seeds, but when we came home from our little break away down the coast, I found that the lettuce seeds that I had planted a few weeks before had mostly all dried up and shriveled in my absence from lack of water and too many hot dry days.
I gave in and bought a punnet of seedlings. I don’t like to buy seedlings unless there is a very good reason. In this case it is because we will run out of lettuces for our salads in a month or so if we don’t have a follow-on crop coming along. So I planted out the seedlings and sprinkled out a few more seeds alongside to come up in the same bed and take over the spaces as the seedling crop is harvested as sunlight and space allows the the new seeds to flourish in the same spot.
I often do a mixed planting of lettuce and radishes for the same reason, as radishes are such a quick crop, they mature and are removed as the growing lettuces need more space and light.
I also spent an hour plucking out small emerging grass seeds from the leek bed, the carrot bed and the beetroot bed. All these three beds were planted out at the same time about a month or so ago. But the grass seeds germinate so quickly and grow so much faster that if I don’t get down on my hands and knees this weekend and pluck the little buggers out now, with my finger tips, they will out grow and crowd out the vegetables. Pulling them out later, when they are bigger, isn’t an option, pulling them when they are larger and more established with a larger root system will disturb the soil and lift out the tiny, fragile vegetables seedlings in-between them. It’s a job that just has to be done NOW. So it’s done, early on, before the sun gets too hot. I also whipper-snippered the edges and mowed the centre of all the paths. I feel proud of my effort when it’s all done. It’s looking good and loved, well cared for and productive. A great way to begin summer.
We spent a bit of time before lunch picking blue berries and young berries. We will have the blue berries with our yoghurt for breakfast and I make a agreeable fruit tart with the youngberries.
We now have our breakfast berries picked and in the fridge, our dinner of zucchinis and squash picked, and now desert is taken care of. Time for a little afternoon nap.
There are still loads of weeds germinating in the paths in-between the rows of veggies, but they can be dealt with using a hoe at a later date. That’s a job for another day.
Tiny basil seeds just germinating.
Small parsley seeds germinating and just showing their first leaves. Sown in-between a few purchased early seedlings.
We have new plantings of Sweet basil seeds, coriander seeds and curly parsley on their way. They all need to be precisely finger tip weeded to allow them to thrive. Just a bit of TLC goes a long way. We all need it to thrive. Even me.
During the week between the two Open Studio Weekends, I ventured out to check out the mulberries. The crop wasn’t good, but there were quite a few coming on. Possibly ready to pick in a week or so once they ripened up a bit more.
After the last weekend sale, when I found some time to get to the orchard again, I realised that the birds had eaten all the mulberries. ALL THE MULBERRIES!
Recently, we have had quite a good number of wattle birds, Dollar birds, Frier birds and the constant regiment of endemic bower birds
There were just a very few immature pale hard berries left. So no mulberry tarts this year.
Instead, I decided to make a youngberry tart, using last years Youngberries that I preserved and bottled on the 4th of December ‘21.
It’s a lovely tart. It isn’t quite so good as when I use fresh berries, as fresh berries retain a lot more texture and structure to the substance of the tart.
This years berries aren’t ready yet, but the pantry has a few bottles of last years berries that have survived the hungry gap. Principally because we are trying to cut down on our sugar intake.
I don’t add any sugar to the preserved youngberries. They are sweet enough, and every little bit of sugar adds up. But they are wonderful, so rich, so lively with that special mix of acid and sweetness. I love them. They are so special, really unique to this time of year. I really look forward to their season. They follow the mulberries and preempt the cherries.
I couldn’t net the mulberries, the tree is too old and too big, so they are all gone, but I can net the youngberries, as they grow on canes at ground level.
I blind-bake the pastry first to cook it through and then add the fruit, and bake it again to set the fruit.
As soon as we could find the time, we were out in the garden and netted the youngberries. Safe for this season now.
The chickens come out to see the new Tesla Battery. Perhaps they want to know what it is like to be a battery hen? They don’t appear to be very impressed. Battery hens! What’s all the fuss about?
In the garden, we have picked the last globe artichokes. They are a bit past ‘best’, so need to be cut in half and have the ‘choke’ taken out.
I cut them and trim them down to the essential core of flavour and drop them in lemon juice acidulated water, eventually to make a pasta sauce out of them with our home-made tomato passata sauce from last summer and some little zucchinis and broad beans from the spring garden.
I stuff the zucchini flowers with broad beans, olives, cheese and some chopped gherkins. Not my filling of choice, but I am committed to use what we have in the garden and live with the seasons. We have a lot of broad beans at the moment, and
the last of the winters cauliflowers.
We eat the cauliflower raw with just a little bit of mayonnaise. It makes a lovely entrée.
Over the past week, since the first Open Studio weekend, I have managed to do a bit of catching up in the veggie garden, mostly watering and weeding.
I pulled out half of the ‘Flanders’ Poppies. They are really beautiful. I love them to bits, such a great explosion of bright colour. They self sow every year and fill every space where I don’t weed them out. I need the space now to plant out more summer vegetables, so out they go. Well, half of them. I still want to keep the rest as long as possible.
The French beans are all up and doing well. I have no idea where I found the time to plant these during the hectic work load that we had up to the opening of the studio sales?
Half the poppies are gone to the compost heap to make space.
In their place there are now sweet basil, tomatoes and spinach, Further back, there are cucumbers and pumpkins.
I took a little bit of time out from gardening and weeding this week to glaze the last of the bisqued pots and get a stoneware firing done in the bigger electric kiln, fired entirely on solar energy from our new PV panels and battery. The results are good, just a few more lovely pots to refill the gaps in the gallery shelves from last weeks sales.
We are open this weekend each day from 10 till 4 – ish. on Saturday and Sunday , and also for the rest of the summer by appointment. Please ring or email first to make sure that we will be home.
This time last year I wrote ‘Give Peas a Chance’. This spring it’s all about broad beans.
Peas and beans are the same family of plants, legumiosae.
Broad beans are also called Fava beans and have a long history of cultivation. My ‘Oxford book of food plants’ tells me that it is one of the most ancient of all cultivated vegetables, and traces have been found among Iron age relics. Fava beans have been found in Egyptian tombs, so we have been eating them for a long time.
Ezekiel mentions them in the Old Testament (Ezekiel 4:9) as Pythagoras (570BC) does also, he hated them. Pliny the Elder also talks about them saying that they are as good for the soil as manure. One of the earliest realisations of nitrogen fixing properties of legumes? He recommended ploughing them back in as a green manure crop.
Eating raw fava beans can be highly toxic to some individuals – even fatal! About 30 million people world wide suffer from a disease called Favism. They suffer a specific genetic trait where they are deficient in a gene that produces an enzyme called D6PD. Just inhaling the pollen without actually eating the raw beans, cause the rupturing of red blood cells. However cooking them neutralises the G6PD enzyme and other toxins that are present in the raw beans.
Thousands of years of careful plant selection by farmers have reduced the levels of the more harmful toxins, so todays crops are less toxic. I love eating them raw out in the garden as I work, just as I can’t resist shelling a few peas while im walking past them.
Apparently, there is a genetic recessive disorder known as ‘Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydronase Deficiency’ that causes favism, and it is the result of an evolutionary development in some humans for resistance to some types of malaria. Which may be why it is most commonly prevalent in people from countries where this disease is endemic?
Maybe Pythagorus suffered from this disorder, such was his distaste for them. There is an account of Pythagoras being pursued by his enemies, who were out to kill him. He had the chance to run through a crop of broad beans to escape, but instead decided to turn and face his attackers and was slain. Bad bean!
Maybe his attackers were the first fauvists? 🙂
I love to eat them raw straight from the pod with a glass of chilled dry white wine while I prepare dinner. The season is so short that I can’t help getting stuck in and enjoying every last little bit of them while they last. This year I planted two types, ‘Windsor short pod’ and ‘Early long pod’. The flavour doesn’t vary much. I try and plant at least two different varieties of vegetables each season just in case one of them isn’t suited the vagaries and challenges of the climate.Who can tell if we are about to get huge deluges of rain or a hotter, dryer spring 4 months in advance? Right at the moment I’ve planted out 6 different varieties of tomatoes for the same reason. Some will do better than others. I’m just maximising my chances of getting some sort of crop in return for all my efforts.
Tonight we had tiny 3rd pick shoots of broccoli, sauteed in a little olive oil with ginger and garlic, served with a dash of fish sauce and lemon juice, along with pan fried flat head fish fillets dusted in a little semolina to crisp up the skin. But the star of the meal for me were the broad beans quickly stir fried just until they were warmed through, but not really cooked. If the skin starts to break open, then they are over cooked. I dress them with a pinch of our dried, powdered chilli. A tbsn full of last seasons dried sweet basil and a grind of black pepper. This is my absolute favourite way to eat them – after raw in the garden or course. I used to cook them in butter, but with my advancing years and rising cholesterol levels, these days I use EV olive oil.
Fish and two veg, quick and simple, couldn’t be better.
We have been hard at it in the pottery preparing for the Arts Trail – Open Studios and the TACA Open Studios weekends coming up very soon. It starts next weekend. We have just managed to squeeze in one last wood kiln firing. But this will be the last for some time. Mainly because I’ve just about run out of dry glazed pots, but also, because from now on the weather will be getting too hot for safe wood firing over the summer.
This firing seemed to go very well, just 11 1/2 hours to cone 10 down, not quite so hot on the top back shelf with cone 8 over, but cone 10 just starting to bend. Probably cone 9, close enough. I changed to pack again this firing just see if I can get a better understanding of how this kiln responds to subtle changes of setting. Life is endless learning.
I got a very good control of the ember level with this firing. I’m pleased about that. We have been getting rather too much ember build-up towards the end of the firing in the last few firings, so I opted to open all the mouse holes right from the start. I can’t remember ever doing this before, but it was just right and worked well, kept everything under control. I’m a slow learner, but I get there in the end. I recon that this wood firing lark is quite good fun. I’ll probably have another go at it 🙂 We’ll see how it has turned out in a couple of days.
We have also lifted the 2nd planting of garlic. This bed of garlic was planted at the same time as the previous batch that had split into individual cloves. This variety has taken a few weeks longer to mature and has stayed as complete bulbs. This bed of garlic has delivered around 50 knobs. The last bed lifted out 45 split knobs. We still have one more double sized bed to go, maybe in a few more weeks? It may have up to 100 plants, but we’ll have to see what matures and lifts and dries successfully. Not all our garlic plants mature to a full supermarket size. We get quite a few small knobs that are a bit tedious to peel, but the flavour is still all there. We can get through up to 300 knobs of various sizes of garlic in a full year, and that isn’t always quite enough to see us through till next years harvest. This year we ran out of our own home grown organic garlic about a month ago and had to buy 4 or 5 knobs to get us through to a time when we could start to ‘snaffle’ or ‘steal’ a few very early plants from the edges of the first bed. I love fresh, wet, early, fragrant garlic. I have to have a couple of cloves sliced on my homemade rye bread, with a twist of fresh ground black pepper and a tiny sprinkle of salt. Tonight it’s just not my fingers that smell of garlic. Keep your distance!
The first lifted crop is now all dried, plaited and hung in the kitchen ready for use.
This weekend we fired the wood kiln again. The third firing in 3 weeks. One firing each Weekend. This firing went very well.
I’m starting to get the measure of this new kiln and my endless supply of pre-burnt wood fuel. For the first of these 3 firings, I altered the firebox and made it deeper, which helped. Before the 2nd firing, I changed the flues. For this firing I changed the setting and adjusted the flues slightly. more fine tuning than major change. All these adjustments have come together now and this last firing was even from top to bottom, with cone 10 over on each shelf, as well as the floor.
There is still an issue with the wood. The flame is quite short and although cone 10 was over on the front of the top shelf, we only got cone 9 over at the rear of that same shelf, just 400mm further back.
Still, everything is well melted and looks good. We have plenty of pots fired and ready for the two open Studio Weekends coming up.
It was a very foggy and misty dawn for the firing.
All of our specially developed home made wood firing clay bodies have taken the fire well and are flashing up with good toasty colour.
This is one of Janine’s bowls with her home made cobalt infused pigment brushwork and her ash glaze made from the ash out of our kitchen slow combustion cooker. This bowl has picked up a little bit of carbon inclusion around the rim. Janine doing her bit to remove carbon from the atmosphere permanently and counter global warming.
This is one of my bowls that I decorated by trailing Janine’s opalescent ‘jun’ style ash glaze over tenmoku.We have just harvested the first of our 3 garlic crops. This year I planted two different types of garlic, one breaks up just before it’s ripe and ready to harvest, sending up multiple new green shoots. The other variety continues to grow as normal. I planted these two varieties last year as well and they did the same for me then. Very odd. The cloves are perfect, just separated into individual cloves.
The multiple stem variety is on the left.
We lay it out to dry for a week, then Janine plaits it into bundles and we hang it to dry until we need to use it.
This week I have been making baking dishes in 3 different sizes and latté cups for the wood firing kiln. All this is leading up to the Australian Ceramics Assn Open Studios weekend, which also coincides with the Southern Highlands Arts Trail Open Studios weekends, so pencil in the first two weekends of November 5th, 6th and the 12th, 13th. We will be open for visitors on both days of both weekends.
If you can’t make it on any of those 4 days, just give us a call or email us and we can arrange to be open by appointment any time up until Xmas and over the summer.
Janine packed and fired the little portable wood fired kiln with some of her work a couple of days ago. It was the first time that we have fired this portable wood kiln since the fire. This kiln was burnt in the fire, but survived only because I fabricated it out of good quality Stainless steel sheeting. Spot welded together into a monocoque frame. We had to replace a few broken anchors and fit new wheels, find the stainless steel firebox grate, then build a pyrometer system from a broken thermocouple, that I cut the end off, shortened back to clean metal and re-welded back together. This kiln has only 100mm thick walls, so a short thermocouple is ideal. It was a first experimental firing to test out new settings, kiln shelfs, T/C, glazes and timber fuel. It was only partially successful, but good for a first firing, so many ‘firsts’ in combination. We will fire it again next week to build on what we have learnt. 4 1/2 hours to stoneware in reduction, cone 9, she got a little nice flashing on the exposed clay and nice glaze melt on her ash glaze and pumice glazes. Next time we will try a slightly longer firing, maybe 5 or 5 1/2 hours?
Because she was dedicated to the kiln all day, first packing, then collecting the wood and finally firing, I made her lunch, delivered to the kiln. Home grown smashed avocado on home made rye bread toast. We already own our home, so can afford to eat such luxuries. I put sliced tomato and home made mustard pickles on some and served it with a side salad of home grown lettuce leaves. The other half of the avocado I filled with lemon juice and sprinkling of ground black pepper and served it as an entrée, with a tea spoon for scooping it out.
I got no complaints.
We have finished picking all the red cabbages, both the first large cabbage, and then the 2 or 3 heads of secondary cabbages that follow. Now the plants are going to seed, so I don’t want to waste the mini red broccoli-like flower heads. They are picked, washed, blanched in boiling water for 2 mins, then pan fried in sesame oil, with slices of garlic and ginger and served with a little freshly ground black pepper and a squeeze of lemon.
This was just a side dish to Janine’s main event – a duck egg soufflé. 6 duck eggs couldn’t be put to a better use.
Served in one of my wood fired baking dishes. A perfect combination. Thanks to our garden, eat well. We live on a low income by choice, but we enjoy a rich life due to our hard work and creative endeavours.
Yesterday we had the local organic gardening group here for a few hours. We actually spent the first hour and a half having morning tea, a chat, talking catch-up and plenty with plenty of cheese and crackers, then moving on to coffee and cake, etc.
We did an hour or so of weeding in the vegetable garden and then a leisurely lunch for another 1 1/2 hours, before people eventually all went on their various ways. We meet once a month in one another’s gardens and do a bit of work, but mostly we swap seeds and seedlings over coffee and cake, and then share a meal and chat. The day passes very congenially. Views are shared, seeds are collected and offered, weeds are pulled, news is passed on, reviews are opined, compost is spread, cuttings are taken and seedlings are swapped. It’s a very pleasant way to spend the middle of the day.
The day was cold with a bit of a wind, but by midday, the sun came out and it was very pleasant in among the vegetables pulling weeds. I even took my jumper off! Fortunately it didn’t rain until after dark.
The garden is looking loved again!
The vegetable patch has always provided us with all our green food. Nothing has changed. A lot of the plants were burnt in the fire, but I watered everything very thoroughly straight away in the days after, and we were able to keep our selves in green food at all times. It has recently been a bit neglected, while I have been concentrating on getting the workshop back into production. So now that the Sturt show is up and I have started on the delicate work for the PowerHouse commission. It’s time to do a lot of catching up.
The orchards are now pruned, mowed and fertilised. The prunings are all burnt, the weeds are all composted, and thanks to our lovely friends the vegetables are looking good with their composted mulch. Many of the tiny seeds that I planted a month or so ago, were starting to disappear in a thicket of wild Flanders poppy seeds that are very energetic growers. The next big job in the garden to prepare the fallow beds for the spring planting of the summer veggies.
Tonight my Fingers Smell of Garlic 
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