It stuck me this afternoon, as I picked lemon verbena branches to dry for winter herbal teas, that I was completely, utterly happy.
And yes, I also had 5 billion things at least to be worried about, from the personal to the global, but none of them impinged this afternoon.
I was happy for all the cliché reasons you find in a garden: sunlight and birds singing and green and growing things. I was happy because after three years I am finally able to stand, sit, squat and bend enough to do some genuine gardening, as opposed to pottering.
I was happy because three months ago the sages, roses, camellias, apple trees, the bush and almost all around me looked dead. The garden was a hundred shades of brown and now, such a short time later, it is a thousand shades of green and flower dappled.
I'm a gardener and I'm an historian. Both disciplines teach you that there are hard times, but hard times pass.
I was also happy because for the last few weeks I've been craving ''fresh''. Not supermarket fresh, or from the freezer fresh, but ''just picked'' fresh, the cherry tomatoes that are beginning to ripen now, four months after they'd usually start fruiting; freshly picked peppermint tea; salads made of a dozen types of leaf that can be picked as babies and drizzled with salad dressing, or quickly stir fried.
There is still time to get a crop if you plant now. Hunt out seeds of ''baby lettuce'' or ''baby spinach'' varieties, or just plant any spinach, silver beet or ''cut and come again'' lettuces like the red frilly ones or Cos or rabbit ear varieties, and pick when the leaves are worth nibbling. Keep feeding and watering them, and they will grow more leaves, quickly in autumn and slowly in winter, then fast again in spring till they go to seeds.
Plant mini bok choi and watch it speed to full size in a sunny spot, or the Italian broccoli that is grown for its tender leaves, or spring onions, so you can chop their leaves through winter. This is the time for collards, the southern USA veg that is grown for its cabbage-like leaves that like kale, only turn soft and sweet after frost. I've also just sown red cabbage, for spring, and a new variety of red mustard that promises to be sweet, tender and not mustard-like at all, with crisp red leaves that grow in cold winters. We will see.
This is also the time to plant broad beans, for an early spring crop. Bryan thinks he doesn't like broad beans, but he does love the minestrone soup that has peeled broad beans cut into quarters, soft and deeply sweet. (Do not tell him its ingredients).
Small red radishes will also crop if you plant them now. Some people love radishes washed under the tap and crunched. Others prefer them thinly sliced and stir fried. The only way I really like radishes is pickled, because then you taste pickle, not radish. Recipes abound, as does radish seed you can order online.
This is the time to plant a daphne bush, or even two. Plant them by the front door where you will smell delicious whiffs all winter long, even from a small bush. This is also the time to plant poppies, so they will bloom in winter and spring, and if you hunt online you will find truly spectacular ones. This is even (still) the time to plant spring bulbs like daffodils and tulips, freesias and anemones, again, all still online and can be delivered, as well as thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and winter savoury, to eat during winter and watch grow again in spring.
Plant today, and smell the sunlight, and know that for the next five months, at least, you can watch what still seems magic growth, even after all my years of gardening.
This week I am:
- Pulling out seedlings from the Melia adzerach that has decided to become a weed after growing innocently in our garden for 30 years. Melias are one of Australia's few deciduous natives, with bright red berries for the parrots in winter, except somehow last winter those berries passed through the parrots and began to germinate for the first time here. Never think a native plant can't become a weed.
- Feeding the birds. Toilet paper may be a legendary treasure, but stores still seem to have plenty of bird seed. There is something deeply peaceful watching birds, even if they are eating your apple crop at the time. Maybe it's because we all secretly wish that we could fly, to at least hang upside down while holding onto a branch with our feet while trying to pick the fattest mulberry.
- Eating afternoon tea outside, because food eaten out of doors tastes different. Maybe sunlight adds a subtle flavour, or the scent of grass and leaves. A muffin that is tolerable indoors tastes delicious eaten under a tree.
- Doing a nightly anti snail patrol, which the wombats see as a nightly ''feed your wombat a carrot'' opportunity.
- Trying to think what of 100 ways to use the only lavish crop we have this year: rhubarb. Rhubarb jam? Rhubarb crumble?
- Making fragrant bundles of mint and lemon verbena, for herbal teas when they die down in the cold, and just possibly, getting around to picking soft young grape leaves, blanching them for 10 seconds in boiling water, then freezing them for mid-winter stuffed grape leaves.
