flowering fireworks...

This evening, as the sun was going down on another scorcher of a day, the last rays hit the top of a tree in our garden.

The tree is in full bloom and the effect was not unlike a burst of golden fireworks... Beautiful!

home and made not lately..

Ummm hello it's me, your absentee blogger...

A polite tap on the shoulder from a blogger friend (thanks Alicia) has brought me back into the bloggersphere after an embarrassingly long absence.

Where have I been?! What have I been doing?! A little bit, but nothing (other than having a very active 1 year old) that excuses such blogging slackness.. So I won't try and redeem myself with more lame excuses..

Instead I spent a very nice hour this morning reconnecting with all my favourite blogs, oohing & aahing at all the truly fabulous, inspired and often hilariously written stuff I've missed out on!!

In attempt to bring you up to date with my goings on and without resorting to a rambling essay,  here's a little scrapbook of what life has looked like here in my world lately...

1. Spring began with gorgeous pink peach blossoms, a gift from Cloudlake.

2. Yum! Rhubarb crumble muffins, my best yet (muffins that is, they're all I really bake).

3. This beautiful book is a typophiles dream, originally a gift for a like minded friend, who turned out     had it already and now is a worthy addition to our fledgling library.

4. Another gorgeous springtime gift.., these Queensland grown proteas & banksias are still gracing our dining table.

5. The garden's flourishing after early spring showers, especially my growing collection of spiky things...

6. A fun retro find at Woolloongabba Antiques was perfect for husband's first Father's day! I'm a really bad shot though, see E's score...

7 & 8. On a recent escape to Byron, we fell in love with this beautiful Robyn Sweeney piece at the very charming  Art Piece Gallery in Mullumbimby and picked up this colourful (and very forgiving) recycled leather rag rug at the super deluxe "Island Luxe" in Bangalow..

9. ""South of The Border", the cute beach shack with loads of personality, we called home in Byron.

10. My precious wee boag... Determined for this one to grow into a magnificent cloud of shocking pink, or at least survive this time...

11,12 & 14. Our Mexican flavour Byron lodgings also inspired Thom's 1st Birthday celebrations, maracas & all..!!

13. Sunny yellow lilies left over from the party. It's so nice having flowers in Thom's room (out of reach of course).

15 & 16. I Found these two retro treasures in my trusty local opshops, both for under a fiva too!!
17. My new (a wee bit Mad Men) Summer frock. I've got a bit of thing for orange at the moment.
18. More orange, an olde but a goode.. This bag was a gift from a friend many years (perhaps even decades ago) and it's probably my favourite Summer Bag..

Now to steal another 15 mins pouring over your blogs (before Thom wakes up).

Have a lovely weekend! xx

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

holiday inspiration part 1 - flowers en masse

If you're like me, you take about a million photographs on holidays, only to file them away on the hard drive to be forgotten...

It's a shame, because when I do revisit my holiday snaps, not only do they transport me back to that far flung adventure, but they're a wonderful source of inspiration.

Like this past weekend, I spent a couple of hours soaking up the Winter Sun in the garden, weeding and planning some pre Spring planting. It reminded me of our last Northern Hemisphere Summer holiday and the gorgeous array of flowering colour we saw...

Here's a couple of the photos that have me itching to plant lots of pretty colour this spring...

sunflowers, sunflowers & more sunflowers - Marie Antoinette's farm, Versailles

yellow in the shade of an apple tree - Cappadocia, Turkey

gorgeous colour  by the roadside - Cappadocia, Turkey

 

growing wild in amongst a temple ruin - Hanoi, Vietnam 

hanging orchids for sale - Hue,Vietnam

potted hot pink bougainvillea - Hoi An, Vietnam

unbelievably pretty, if only I knew what it was..? - on the street in Budapest

hundreds upon hundreds of festive red planter boxes - Hirmer Department Store, Munich

rows of bright red cockscomb - Hanoi, Vietnam

sort of related.. a masse of vintage floral still life paintings - window installation, Munich

What will you be planting this spring..?

I know.., it's been awhile

Hello slacko here...

Up until the past few days, the weather has been pretty much perfect, so I've been looking for any excuse to get out and enjoy it, ignoring the indoor stuff I should be doing like study, filing and tackling the mountain of laundry. This has also meant zero blogging...

When I have been spending time inside, I'm in the kitchen.  Inspired by a big basket of home grown goodies I received from the Cloudlake veggie patch, I've been cooking up a storm...

A classic winter staple Rhubarb.., always good with a little crumble and vanilla ice-cream. This time, on Mum's advice, I slow roasted it with orange juice, lots of honey and a little butter, Yum! It's made a great twist to the morning drop of porridge too..








These pretty Winter jonquils, that line the driveway at Cloudlake, sit on our dining table, making the house smell sweet..
They're doing a stellar job camouflaging the remaining odours of last night's pan seared salmon too. Another winter favourite, we had ours with a kind of salsa verde, creamy mashed potato and beans. So good but man, sooo stinky!

I've never cooked with Warrigal Greens before and had no idea how versatile they are. I used mine in place of spinach and served them as a simple side dish, blanched then tossed with lemon and olive oil and topped with with feta and pine nuts. They made a terrific accompaniment to these delicious filo pastries from my new Turkish cookbook.

A new favourite thing.. drying herbs to store.  No wastage and they look lovely hanging in bunches above the kitchen bench.

Next up, the big bowl of lemons. Lemon curd or preserved or both..!! And some study I suppose...

my father, the collector (of useful stuff)

When I was little, a favourite activity was making the tip (dump) run with my Dad.

This usually meant loading up the trailer, after a weekend working on the house, an 1880's cottage, only to reload the trailer with a hoard of new found 'treasure'. Old sash windows, doors, door knobs, the odd chair... If Dad thought it was worth salvaging, it was coming home with us.

This habit wasn't exclusive to visits to the tip. Dad was always bringing home some little (or not so little) find from an antique/record/junk store or gallery he just happened to be passing..

And now decades later, my parents home and a couple of sheds are chock full of a very eclectic and pretty fascinating collection of stuff..

I should add, Dad is no mad hoarder.., although those that know him would agree he's a tad eccentric, he's very discerning and every piece has been acquired to be useful, as well as beautiful and/or interesting.

This applies particularly to one of his most extensive and perhaps most cherished collections, his gardening tools. Actually, he's become quite well known for this collection, having had it featured on Gardening Australia and in Country Style.

Now ABC Collectors has done a piece on it too, in their latest magazine! Here are a couple of photos from the article, I wanted to share.

Another great thing about this collection is.., next time I'm in need of a hedge trimmer/Korean weeding hoe/pitchfork, I know just who to call...

succulents

There's so much I love about succulents... Apart from their sculptural beauty and being so so easy to grow, I love how they're shared and passed on from tiny cuttings from one garden to the next...

I snapped these three beauties in the garden at Cloudlake on the weekend.  Lovely, don't you think?

silvery green against a deep blue glaze

a vertical garden,  cascading down a rendered pillar

overgrown and overflowing

nice things....

Is there anything lovelier than having fresh flowers in the house, especially when they are from your very own garden...

I've only recently discovered this Ginger, tucked away at the very bottom of the garden. It's a Hedychiums or a' Butterfly Ginger' ( being botanically ignorant, I had to google it).

At the moment it is in full bloom which means every couple of days I get a beautiful buttery yellow bouquet for the house...

The flowers are also exceptionally fragrant, with a perfume very similar to jasmine.
In fact the scent is so lovely, I was actually thinking of saving a couple of bunches and trying my hand at making a perfume... I know what you're probably thinking, that sounds like an absolutely disastrous idea... However, I've found a couple of recipes on the web that seem surprisingly straightforward, so I think it's definitely worth a try. Watch this space...

how does my garden grow?

It's been one whole month since I planted my little garden and I'm happy to say (that against the odds), it's well... thriving!

Maybe as I blogged about lacking a green thumb early on, I now feel especially responsible for this little endeavour's survival... 

The tomato for example has almost quadrupled in size and even though it's not bearing any fruit yet (my little collage is a tad exaggerated), it is covered in flowers which means baby tomatoes are on the way right?

sign of good things to come... 

my asst gardener on snail watch

Now that our little patch is a bit more established, we've started to reap the rewards as well... Last night we had scrummy pumpkin and sage risotto! Now if only I could claim the pumpkin was mine as well...  

Happy gardening! 

my babies...

risotto with home grown sage

sunday lovely sunday...

Yesterday here on the bay was stunning and in my little world... inescapably pink, pink pink! 

across the street...

my lovely new shopper...

just baked rasberry & ricotta muffins yum! 

in my garden...

afternoon sweeties with friends. extra yum!

Hope your weekend was just as gorgeous...

green persimmon chutney?

Brought home half a dozen persimmons on the weekend from Cloudlake. They were picked quite green, to save them from a marauding flock of corellas.

I love persimmon's but they've got to be perfectly ripe and I'm not sure these will get there...

Definitely don't want to waste any,  so was thinking of making them into a chutney/relish. It would be very experimental though, as I can't find a recipe and am a total novice at preserving...

Any ideas on how to ripen them or recipes for green persimmons would be really appreciated...

In the meantime they make a nice little arrangement on my side table.

greening the fingers...

Both of my parents are incredible gardeners, as is my Nan... My Sister's not bad either and for my Brother, gardening is his bread and butter...

I, on the other hand, have always been absolutely rubbish at keeping anything green alive.

green inspiration at Cloudlake

However, with average to poor quality 'fresh' veg on offer  at our local supermarkets (or not, my husband went to 3 just to get coriander), I am determined to have another crack at growing your own...

So out I went and bought punnets of herbs, an 'easy grow' tomato, pots and potting mix, as well a couple of interesting succulents & a pretty ginger thingee (I know you can't eat those last couple but I'm a sucker for succulents...).

Got them home... a week went by and true to form no gardening happened (other than checking that my new little plants were still alive).

Then after spending an inspirational couple of days up at Cloudlake and motivated by a recent post about Anna's kitchen garden on Absolutely Beautiful Things, I finally donned some gardening gloves and got stuck in...

small beginnings

Voila!  Now we have (or will have with some ongoing tlc) lovely fresh herbs and the makings of a striking new 'green' centre piece for our outdoor table.

Those close to me are understandably sceptical... but I'm confident this time will be different.

Just have to remember to water...