Playing With Water (5 page)

In the same program Dr Miriam Rothschild appeared briefly, talking about the meadow she had taught people to make. She has a particular mixture of seeds she calls ‘The Farmer’s Nightmare’ which comprises red poppies, daisies, grasses and other wildflowers. Her own garden and house, she says, cause some to say that it is so wild nobody could possibly be living there. It is naturalness and wilderness that she is attempting. Now in her nineties, like my other hero Mrs Judd, Dr Miriam gardens with great originality and passion in a way that others copy.

For Australasian conditions there is a fabulous Wildflower Carpet Mix of seeds, containing white
Alyssum,
blue love-in-the-mist, blue Chinese forget-me-not and red Californian poppy, which Digger’s Seed Sower’s catalogue offers. They also sell another mixture called Wildflower Meadow Mix, which flowers from spring into summer and contains red Flanders and orange Californian poppy, blue cornflowers, rosy Silene and alfalfa.

Today, while I was mulling all this over, Jane rang from Adelaide and said, ‘I have the Digger’s catalogue here and I am going to order their cosmos called Yellow Garden and their green and white zinnia seeds.’

In one of those coincidences that some friendships mysteriously breed and flourish on, I said, ‘Well, I’ve got it too and I’m going all out for their Wildflower
Meadow Mix.’ I privately thought, ‘I’ll have some of what she’s having.’ Because Jane’s been gardening a lot longer than I, she knows more so I often copy her. And the yellow cosmos sounds unusual.

It is hard to find cleomes and there’s a pink cleome seed offered in the catalogue and I’ll order that too. The address of Digger’s Seeds Club is PO Box 300, Dromana, Victoria, 3936. Their Garden of St Erth is open to the public and has a nursery attached as well. The garden is on Simmons Reef Road in Blackwood, Victoria. You can phone them on (03) 5368 6514 for opening times.

I thought of building a wall of old bricks right across this back garden, splitting it in two with a beautiful mysterious doorway leading through its centre. Gardens need private, secret areas and the wall, on both sides, could bear roses. It would be a radical thing to do and could be wonderful. It would certainly be original. From Sydney to Nowra there is almost a continuous line of Hills hoists running as a steel avenue along the sea. Washing on the steel trees is like a flower flapping and billowing in the wind and can be beautiful. At least it is quick to dry, but I will never have one.

It’s been raining since Thursday night. Suddenly this morning it stopped. A high wind is blowing the leaves
from the Tree of Heaven. More and more sea is coming into view.

Today I realised I can’t just keep shouting the names of annuals into the storm like Lear, and then race out to sow the seeds while the rain pelts down. I must lay out compost and feed my flock.

Yesterday I went to Sydney to see my grandson, Jack, for his birthday. I took a report on the garden he planted full of roses named for the American presidents. We put a mottled pink rose of not much virtue among them called Princess Grace of Monaco. Philippa snorted when she saw this rose. I admit it is strange with its cream frilled lolly-pink petals. But at the time I was desperate, and bought it in a bundle from a supermarket.

In the city, almost a gale was blowing, umbrellas blew inside out. Great cream camellias were in full bloom in Edgecliff. I saw how immense jacarandas can grow. Some, in a row going down to the sea, were as big as two-storey houses. Morton Bay fig trees alongside did not dwarf them. The jacaranda in the back garden has doubled in size since I came here. Glorious purple bougainvillea is beginning to climb more thickly through it, and beyond this a glimpse of sea.

Perhaps birds just open their mouths and drink when it rains. Each drop, like a grape falling into their open
beaks. I think this, because I have not seen any at the birdbath since Friday. In the rain, the birds neither sing nor bathe nor eat, they merely sit and seem to dream, swaying on a branch in the wind.

This is the cake Jack always likes for his birthday.

1
³
/
₄
cups of self-raising flour

1 cup of coconut

125 grams of butter

1 tablespoon of lime rind (or lemon rind)

1 cup of caster sugar

3 eggs

¹
/
₂
cup of yoghurt or cream

¹
/
₂
cup of milk

Method:

Beat together the lime rind, butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add the beaten eggs. Fold in the rest of the ingredients in two batches.

Bake in a moderate oven (180°C) for 45 minutes in a spring-form pan which is greased and floured.

Syrup:

¹
/
₃
cup of lime or lemon juice

³
/
₄
cup of sugar

¹
/
₄
cup of water

Method:

Boil this mixture for 3 minutes. Allow to cool slightly.

Stand the cake on a tray or plate, to catch the syrup, and gently pour the mixture over the cake, pricking with a fork as you go.

It’s hot and the wind has dropped. Philippa is pulling snails from daisies and removing leaves with rust on them from geraniums. Today she is digging up the last of the buffalo grass from the drive. She sits, wearing her floppy blue hat, digging with a garden fork she’s just mended, tearing out the deep roots and flipping them into the overloaded wheelbarrow. ‘None of this can go into the compost,’ she says, ‘it must all go to the tip or it will grow again.’ I hate the waste of the good dirt on the roots, but I know she is right, and I’m grateful.

The sea is bright blue, the blue of the tiles on the back table. Red geraniums are blooming in pots leading down to the jacaranda which is almost bare now. Sometimes I wish for a bright garden. These wan vistas of green, grey and white, which I have been so keen on, seem a bit insipid. In a magazine somewhere I read of a professional woman gardener who said she grew all the bright colours—red, orange, yellow—at home
because all her clients wanted white gardens. Her own garden in the photographs looked beautiful.

Nasturtiums, red geraniums and the masses of lemon chrysanthemums with blue salvias are in full bloom now and give a lot of pleasure and some of the brightness I want. The real trick is, I think, to have these colours when the weather isn’t boiling hot.

Learning about gardening without doing a course is hit and miss. Yet some of the greatest gardeners, Rosemary Verey for instance, like some of the great cooks, did not have formal training. They learnt from their mothers and then they taught themselves. Maggie Beer, Gay Bilson, Stephanie Alexander—none was formally trained. Peri, is bringing me some
Hortus
magazines from London. My son and daughter-in-law are giving me a subscription to
Gardens Illustrated.
I ordered a whole year of the 1997
Gardens Illustrated
as well. I want to learn quickly.

Rosemary Verey said something about beginning to learn by making her own famous garden which still amuses me every time I think of it: ‘I knew that there was no hurry.’ (Oh, here is a knock and here is the year’s copies of
Gardens Illustrated
magazine held out in a man’s palm.)

I simply cannot imagine being given a huge piece of land with a house on it where a garden was needed and not feeling hysterical with the wish to plant. Rosemary
Verey sat and thought, consulted gardeners, went to the Chelsea Garden Show, and began very slowly. In that time an olive grove could have been planted and already be three metres tall.

Mothers’ Day has been and gone. A million chrysanthemums decorate headstones and dining-room tables. Mine are on this dining-room table that I am writing at, three white blooms, each as big as a fist.

This morning I pulled out all the spent annuals. Terry said, ‘It’s the shortest day next month.’ This surprised me because it is still warm. No bulbs are up yet. The garden feels like a loaded gun. Lying bare and forsaken-looking. Yet at any minute it could explode.

‘Well, I’m off to buy some Lady’s Mantle.’ Jane said on the telephone this morning. I asked what it is. ‘Its real name is
Alchemilla mollis,’
she said, spelling it for me as I scrawled the letters down. I’ll have some of what she’s having, I thought again.

Botanica
says this plant is a herbaceous perennial, low growing and ideal for ground cover. Jane said it is often found on the edges of perennial borders in English gardens. Raindrops are caught in the wavy, slightly cupped and frilled leaves which make a sparkling look. The flowers are like
Gypsophila
and are greenish-yellow.

Still no sign of shooting from the seeds of that Floral Moonlight white
Datura
Jane sent me. I posted three lots off to friends in Bathurst. Helen, the tree grower, might have success. I sent some to the two girls on the farm at Peel where we planted all the trees. Big rains there, as here, so the trees are looking good, Ruth said on the telephone.

Lord, I long for the day I walk up their curving drive and see the swerve of trees leading to the house, all waving in the wind and higher than our heads. If trees will grow in that arid rocky soil, they will grow anywhere. It is strange that it seemed to make utterly no difference whether we planted a tree with compost, or with sheep manure, or with just a few rocks around as compost, they fared much the same. At first, shocked by the look of the soil, we ardently packed rich homemade compost around each sapling. Then, after a day or so, I remembered native trees do not always flourish with compost. So we desisted and simply scraped rabbit droppings around the base and dropped a few rocks on. Some in the end got nothing but the soil dug from the hole. Others got a spadeful of sheep manure, aged and matured, brought in from under Len’s and Helen’s shearing shed. So there it is: the trees are, as far as we can tell, flourishing and of equal size, or dead. It may be that the effects of shock and the amount of water are the only important factors. I enjoy a good conjecture, as you see.

It takes ten years, I heard today, for an orange tree to reach its full potential. On the River Murray, the orchards are being ploughed up because the Valencia oranges which had been planted for juice are not selling because of cheap imports. Fresh oranges now sell best, so navel orange trees are being planted instead.

To dig up a fully grown orange or lemon tree is horrible. Once, when we built something in our back garden in Adelaide, a great sprawling lemon tree had to be taken out. It was like killing an animal. My baby had lain in the pram beneath that tree, gurgling, looking up into the branches. The smell of the blossom was beautiful. And then we tore it up. I cried, but it had to go. A garden should have lemons so one day, years later, I rode home on my bike from university with a Lisbon lemon tree in the basket behind the seat. Its leaves were in my ears. It seemed to be singing to me. Its branches were around my waist. It felt like a lover. I put it behind the front gate and it grew about two metres a year. Great oval lemons came from that tree, yet you couldn’t exactly park a pram beneath it, as it stood between the side fence and the drive.

But we got lemons alright. Ever since, I have made it a habit to plant a tree when a lover leaves me. (And no, I don’t have a forest.) The lemon tree had been for that reason, and later I couldn’t remember his name. But he had big feet.

Bitter breast

of the earth

I’ve picked this one

from a dark green laden tree

this is a cold hard

obdurate fruit

yet one swift act

releases the juice

enhancing oysters

fish and almost everything else

the acerbic aunt

of the orchard

beautiful in youth

yet growing thorny

in old age

irritating

irritable

when I move house

the first tree I plant

is a lemon

biblical

dour and versatile

I much prefer it

to those cloying salesgirls

the soft stone fruits.

This is an old recipe so it uses imperial measurements. I’ve not changed them to metric in case it spoils the soufflé.

4 eggs, separated

4 ounces of caster sugar

¹
/
₂
ounce of gelatine

2 lemons (when doubling the recipe, which is sensible to do, use only 3 not 4 lemons)

¹
/
₂
pint of cream

¹
/
₂
pint of warm water

Method:

Whip the egg yolks with sugar and lemon juice. Place over a pan of hot, not boiling water and make sure the water does not touch the bowl. Beat the mixture until thick, which takes about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and beat until cool.

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Whip the cream. Gently fold both these into the cooled yolk mixture.

Dissolve the gelatine in the warm water. Gently add this to the lemon mixture. Chill, covered with a plate or film of plastic.

Serve with whipped cream and strawberries spread on the top.

Bulbuls. A pair of bulbuls have come to the water bowls. There are blue wrens too. They were here last year, went, and now have come again. Whether the grey Persian cat, Carmel, who visits the garden ate the wrens, or whether they come and go regularly, I do not know. One day I did find grey feathers on the lawn. Terry said, ‘If you feed birds in grass, they can get caught.’ So now I throw the bread and scraps into the centre of the lawn, so the cat can’t easily creep up.