It’s been a while but in the life of a quilter that means that work has been done (not necessarily) and in the life of a gardener work has been done (oh yes).
Actually I have decided that I am more of a cook these days than a quilting gardener or was that a gardening quilter.
All that work put into the garden has come back at me – my top pantry shelf is groaning and I am not sure whether I have done too much or Jared hasn’t called in for a while.
Recent additions include:
Quince paste made from quinces that the above-mentioned Jared bought me. Now I am looking for a replacement quince tree – that last didn’t survive the planting.
Chilli sauce - which is based on apples (that I discovered growing in the abandoned school over the road) and a big pick of my chilli, garlic and tomato sauce.
Cauliflower chow chow – made from an exchange of NZ spinach and parsley (both of which have gone berserk after self-seeding themselves around the garden) for a large cauli.
For some reason J my computer is not liking my convoluted sentences!
Crab-apple jelly made with another exchange.
Hopefully the last of the jalapeños have now been pickled.
I am inundated with feijoas, rhubarb and persimmons and the occasional strawberry - yes still! My mustard greens are waist height (I know that that is not particularly high given my stature) and I am eating every day after reading that mustard is great for asthmas and other related breathing problems. The parsley in the garden is your common garden variety parsley. You know, five or six stalks, but the parsley that has helped itself to space between bricks or in the middle of the pumpkin patch is half a metre high and wide and so-oo green.
Golf-ball shaped carrots, long skinny carrots, long fat beetroot and jalapeño chilli are all ready for picking as are the potatoes.
Have to tell you a recipe I put together from my garden last week:
I cooked up onion and garlic, added a swapped leek, the last of my tomatoes, a couple of chilli, an inch of chorizo sausage and then a huge bunch of mustard greens and a tin of chickpeas. Yum! Definitely have to have a go at growing chickpeas or soy beans next summer.
I must add that recipe to the brown recipe book which is slowly being put onto the computer to avoid a custody dispute when I am not longer the quilting gardener.
I told you about the school over the road. I was out foraging for mushrooms (the warm weather has meant a bumper crop of them over the last two weeks) and found an old Granny Smith apple tree with really good unmarked fruit AND two black walnut trees. This time of the year is great for black hands after picking ‘shrooms and walnuts.
‘Shrooms have been eaten, frozen and dehydrated. Jared has bought me a food dehydrator (bless him) but I couldn’t wait so the fungi have been drying in my oven for the past 24 hours and now fill a jar on the pantry shelf.
The walnuts are drying out alongside the harvested buttercups.
Last week the local beefies went through the paddock next door to me so I followed them with my wheelbarrow and have dug cow poo through a garden ready for garlic planting in the next month.
On the quilting front …
I have been in designing mode – an ANZAC banner and an herb-themed quilt to enter at Queenstown symposium next year.
Have finally quilted the ‘monster’ quilt that Nina designed several years ago and am preparing to start quilting another monster (as in large quilt) for a special coming event.
