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NOVEMBER 2009 JACKIE FRENCH NEWS

In this month's news:

• Introduction: Wombat news
• Book News
• Schedule for next few months
• The November garden
• Great looks for impossible spots in the garden
• A Few Recipes
  • Strawberry and passionfruit Crunch
  • Bee Stings
  • Avocado Sauce
  • Christmas Biscuits

Introduction

There’s been a wombat revolution.

Most people think wombats just eat, sleep, and dig. No way.

In the last fortnight, Bruiser - the small shy wombat who was too scared to live alone - has finally moved out of the burrow under the house. He now has a palatial hole way down the orchard, under the avocado trees, with two entrances ... or rather three, as I fell down one of his ‘side tunnels’ yesterday. Bruiser now has a leaking ceiling and I have a wrenched ankle.

The new wombat under the bedroom is Bounce, Mothball’s first baby, now about eight years old. I’m pretty sure it’s Bounce. She’s deep brown, like her father, Totally Confused (and how he got that name is another story). She also has the U-shaped scar on her rear end when Mothball led her up the mountain eight years ago, and returned without her.  The scar looks suspiciously like a wombat bite. Mothball wasn’t much of a dedicated mum.
Mothball and Bruiser still turn up for late afternoon feeds. They don’t get much from me. The grass is green and thick, and they’re both fat. I just pour enough into each bowl so that they get a taste, which stops Mothball yelling a metre away from my computer when I’m trying to work.

Mothball has a faultless ability to start screaming just when I’m at a crucial bit. The bushrangers are attacking, the horse rears up … and suddenly: ‘Screeeeechh! Screeeeech!!!!!!!!!’, which doesn’t stop 'til I go out and feed her.

Bounce gets nothing. In fact Bounce doesn’t even get a chance to come out of the hole until after Mothball has eaten. Mothball drapes herself down the small stone wall outside Bounce’s hole, stretching out to about a metre and a half of long, smelly wombat. Poor Bounce peers out, with only her nose and whiskers showing, like Pooh Bear in the rabbit hole, giving tiny whimpers of terror.

It’s a good spring here. (except for Bounce … but at least she has finally inherited the family hole).  Roses sprawling over the trees, the white cedars (tall Australian native trees) spreading carpets of mauve blossom over the ground, passionfruit hanging from the vine. Part of the passionfruit vine collapsed last night as a particularly fat possum ran across it and then landed on my foot. The same foot that got wrenched in the wombat hole.

I saw the first brown snake of the season this morning, too - about a metre long, still strongly banded like someone had tied coloured ribbons around it, in  brown, red and black. Some of the young brown snakes keep their banding for two or even three years. It didn’t see me, just kept wriggling through the grass looking for a lizard breakfast, and I decided to go back the way I’d come. One wrenched ankle, one bruised foot … okay, I was wearing tough jeans and tough shoes and socks, but two animal-related injuries in a week are enough.

Book News

Look out for these recently published titles in your bookstore now!

Baby Wombat’s Week
At last – the sequel to ‘Diary of a Wombat’. Illustrated by Bruce Whatley
What is even funnier – and stroppier – than a wombat? Her baby.
A book for every child … and every mum, too.

Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior
The first in a new series and very funny indeed. Follow Boo, a werewolf puppy and wannabe hero, and his friends at the School for Heroes, as he takes on the Ghastly Greedle. Andrea Potter’s fabulous drawings of the characters, not least the Greedle and Gloria the Gorgeous (superannuated, but still a super hero) add so much hilarity to this book.
            Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior is crammed full of universes, where Rabbits are deadly predators and zombie spaghetti may be the most fearsome weapon of them all.  As one reviewer recently said: ‘it’s like no other book out there.’

The Night They Stormed Eureka
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels at Eureka in 1854 have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, and the people who live there, discovering that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.

Schedule for the next few months

I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are always many more than I could fit into a year. NSW Bookings are done by Lateral Learning; Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speakers’ Inc., and for other bookings contact me at jackief@dragnet.com.au. I can only do one trip away from home a month though, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200, and where it will take six hours travel or less each way (except WA).

The November Garden

Jobs to do:

Plant!!!!!
Also feed and water. In cool or temperate climates most plants do about 85% of their growing now.
It’s been a good spring here - the rest of the year has been dry, but lots of small showers in the past few weeks have left the world damp and green. You can almost hear the trees stretching up and filling the sky.

Other jobs:

• Prune spring flowering shrubs and climbers once the petals fall;
• Splash out on slow release fertiliser pellets for the whole garden - great for busy people who don't have time to cosset their plants;
• This is the best month to buy hanging baskets of annuals, to enjoy them for the whole summer;
• Remove all fallen and ripe fruit so you don't attract fruit fly;
• Trim hedges before they get too leggy; and
• Try to water often - hard baked ground repels water.
• This is THE gorgeous time for gardens. Treat your self to a weekend looking at the Open Gardens in your area, to get great ideas for yours.

Summer luxuries (a few of many…):

• The scent of freshly mown grass
• The smells of a summer garden at dusk as you water the garden beds
• Birds splashing in a bird bath
• Kids painting the garden chairs a dozen different colours.

What to plant:

Flowers:
Lots of vivid annuals for Christmas! Just about any seeds and seedlings can be planted now. Look for pots of blooming roses – but do check the label to make sure they’re suitable for your garden, even if you’ve fallen in love with the blooms.

Vegetables:
Cold, temperate and sub-tropical: artichoke, asparagus, beans, lots of basil and parsley, beetroot, capsicum, chillies, carrots, celery, Chinese cabbage, celeriac, cucumber, eggplant, gourds, corn, lettuce, silver beet, spring onions, rhubarb, parsnips, tomatoes, zucchini, capsicum, chilli, radish, pumpkin, rosellas, salsify, sweet potato (not in cold areas), parsnip, mustard, melons.
Tropical:  climbing snake bean, corn, chia, capsicum, rosellas, sweet potato in well drained areas, tomatoes, lettuce (try a heat-resistant variety like Darwin lettuce) radish, zucchini, pumpkin, gourds and melons where they'll mature before summer humidity zaps them.

What to harvest:

Vegetables:
Most winter crops will have gone to seed; broad beans and peas will be fruiting; early silver beet can be snipped small and young; mignonette lettuce sown in August will be ready; parsley will still be plentiful; dandelions will be leafy and sweet; and you can gorge on asparagus and artichokes.

Fruit:
Cherries, early peaches, early nectarines, early apricots, small early plums, Joaneting apples (late November to December), loquat, orange, lemon, lime, grapefruit, strawberries and raspberries.

Flowers:
Roses should be glorious and summer annuals are beginning in warm areas. Gladioli will be starting to flower, and so will miniature gladioli – delicate and lovely. Watsonias will be spectacular and summer natives are just beginning – there are too many flowers to list for November.

Pests:
Start spraying fruit with chamomile tea or seaweed spray every week if you are worried about brown rot. Thin the fruit, too, and keep bad ones picked off. Put out fruit fly and codling moth traps.
Spray pear and cherry slug with debris or pyrethrum spray – or leave them alone if they’re not killing the tree.

Great Looks for Impossible Spots

Got a spot where nothing will grow, except maybe moss or dog droppings? Don’t worry – a plant exists to turn ANY spot into paradise. (Note: The trick with any problem spot is to plants LOTS. One plant gets lost – a massed effect is stunning)

Problem Spot:  Dark and dreary along the side of the house.
Stunning look: Go for ferns – tree ferns if you’re feeling extravagant and the area is wide enough for them or any of the gorgeous ones you’ll find at the garden centre.  Interplant the ferns with the native violet (Viola hederacea) and allow the ferns and the violets to sort out who’ll be boss. Or try japonica camellias for winter flowers, hydrangeas for summer beauty or variegated shade-loving irises like the Japanese iris (Iris japonica) and Iris pallida ‘Variegata’. The beautiful variegated hostas are shade lovers too, or the lovely soft, floppy grass Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’ which is bright yellow and green in full sun but is a delightful lime colour when it receives more shade.

Problem spot: Hot, dry and horrible bank.
Stunning look: Go for gazanias, all bright and cheery, massed marguerite daisies in white pink or yellow; African daisies, kangaroo paws or agapanthus in their dozens of forms, phormiums or flaxes, red-hot pokers (in a range of colours such as red, orange, pink, yellow, lime green and ivory), prostrate grevilleas, wattles or rosemary or lots of carpet roses!

Problem spot: Under the tree desert.
Stunning look: Azaleas, Japanese anemones, prostrate camellias, a carpet of lamium.

Problem spot: Colorbond (yuk) or other boring fence:
Stunning look: Well, Colorbond does give you privacy – cover it with year-round greenery: Chinese jasmine, passionfruit, Chinese trumpet vine, clematis (make sure the fence isn’t in too hot a spot as the clematis will look burnt and unhappy if it becomes scorched – remember that the fence may be heated to char-grill temperatures if the other side isn’t also clothed in plants) … and in true desperation, a never fail potato vine, as long as you can mow next to it to stop it wandering!

A Few Recipes

Strawberry and Passionfruit Crush
(One of the most delicious deserts ever, as long as your strawberries are full of flavour).

Ease of making:    simple
Serves:                  4-8
Time taken:          about 5 minutes. You can prepare most in advance but assemble it just before serving.
Calories:                not as many as you'd think, as the cream is whipped- far less than say a serve of sticky date pudding.

Ingredients
3 cups strawberries, as ripe and sweet as possible
Half to one-cup passionfruit pulp - about ten - twenty passionfruit, or use strained canned passionfruit
1 cup crushed meringues - this is one time commercial ones are fine
 1 cup cream, whipped
1- 3 tbsps castor sugar, optional- if the fruit is sweet you won't need it
1 tbsp cointreau ... leave out if kids are going to eat this ... and if they are around, they will.

Whip cream and sugar and cointreau. Cover and leave in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Hull and chop berries; add to passionfruit. Leave covered in the fridge for up to 8 hours.
Just before serving, mix them both with the meringues. Serve in glasses or glass bowls- the pink, gold and cream colours are divine. So is the taste.

Bee Stings
200gm butter/margarine
1 tbsp finely grated orange rind
½ cup yoghurt
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 cups self-raising flour
½  cup or a little more orange juice

Syrup
½ cup honey
1 tsp finely grated orange rind
1 cup water

Cream butter, rind and sugar; add eggs one by one; add flour juice and yoghurt. Mix gently. Place in greased tray; bake 30 mins or till golden brown at 200C.  Remove from oven. Pour hot syrup on at once. Slice into squares and store in a sealed container, away from bees.
Note: If you want to be really luxurious, cut slices in half and spoon on honey sauce as well.

Syrup: combine ingredients. Boil for 3 minutes.

Avocado Sauce
1 small or half a large avocado, mashed
2/3 cup virgin olive oil
1 third of a cup white wine vinegar or lime juice(lime juice is best)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon French mustard
½  teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon brown sugar
good grind black pepper
2 tbsps finely chopped parsley or coriander (optional)

Throw it all in a glass jar. Put the lid on. Shake well. Keep in the fridge for up to a week.
Pour over shelled prawns, yabbies or cooked salmon. Makes a great hot potato salad, too. Boil new spuds; stir in a little sauce. Serve at once. Not bad on pasta either, with a few prawns, yabbies or semi dried tomatoes.

Christmas Biscuits
(Note: These are crisp and very good)

125g margarine or butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsps rum, rum essence or vanilla
1 large egg
1 and three quarters of a cup of SR flour
½ cup chopped macadamias or pecans
½ cup chopped crystallised cherries
½ cup choc chips
Yummy extra: ½ cup chopped crystallised pineapple, (My favourite at the moment!)

Cream butter and sugar; mix in the egg and essence; fold in other ingredients. Bake at 200C for about 10 minutes or till pale gold.

For more information from Jackie, please go to her website: www.jackiefrench.com

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