gingerbeer and hydrangeas

I started a gingerbeer plant this morning. I cooked chickpeas and made hummous and reflected again that I like the hummous made with tinned chickpeas best. Which is not what I am supposed to think. I sliced up home made bread to toast and go under poached eggs for all of our breakfasts. I noticed that it is quite hard to slice and thought that perhaps I should go back to using a recipe instead of throwing any old amount of flour and a bit of salt at the sourdough starter and assuming it will be alright. I saw a recipe for using up old bread by making a cheese and onion souffle in a recipe book not long ago. Perhaps I'll try it tomorrow. Perhaps. I've never made anything as fancy sounding as a souffle before.

In the middle of gingerbeer and hydrangeas we all went out to lunch with friends in Blackball and talked about unionism and the lost generation who don't quite know what one is. And what to do about that.

This afternoon Brighid and I collected lots of hydrangea cuttings from paddocks near the airport. Yes we have an airport at smallwettown. No you can't really tell though because it is so small. We don't have any commercial services from it anymore. The planes got sold to someone in South America.

Tonight I dipped them all in a disprin solution, stripped the bottom leaves and planted fourteen along the back fence. It is sodden wet there and the sky is grey leavened with dark grey, so they should have a good start.

Also this morning I sliced up tomatoes (halved the cherry tomatoes and sliced the larger ones) and put them in my dehydrator. I am going to make my very own sun dried tomatoes. This is the third time ever I have used my dehydrator which I have owned since at least 1997.

Also tonight I weeded around the blueberry plants. I peeked under the potatoes and saw a very small potato. So those spuds can stay in the ground until the end of the month at least.

And just to jump around more, this afternoon on the way home we went to the wood and landscape materials place and ordered lots (but not enough) of firewood and discussed options for making paths around the old chook run.

Hydrangeas

Apparently they root very easily and all I need to do is take cuttings and poke them in the ground. And keep them moist.

Moist we can do. Here in smallwettown we specialise in keeping plants moist. Without any effort at all.

Hyadrangeas, for a very long time like almost all my life until three weeks ago, were uncool elderly not at all charming kind of plants. But three weeks or so ago I happened across a comment that hydrangeas grow well when they are kept constantly moist. I think (but could be imagining) that it also said that they will grow in partial shade. So then I opened my eyes to hydrangeas and noticed that they are all over smallwettown, including growing up the hillsides and on the roadsides indicating where there was once a keen gardener and now no dwelling exists. They look glorious. They suit living in smallwettown. Then I noticed how they blended in well with native trees like pungas and cabbage trees. I noticed how they have thick bush characteristics and probably block out weeds underneath them once established. I thought about how they must be easy to propagate if they are growing up hills and on roadsides.

I started to plan. The helpful person at the garden nursery told me to stick cuttings in the ground, keep them wet and they will grow. I found a lifestyle farmer magazine when cleaning up yesterday which profiled a commercial hydrangea grower up north who commented that wherever he throws prunings, hydrangea plants pop up. Today I am taking loppers and secateurs and Favourte Handyman's pocketknife (I should get one of my own) and grabbing 20 cuttings from roadside plants. All along the back fence where nothing edible will grow because it is too wet and shady, I am going to create a hydrangea grove. Along the back of Brighid's forest where I have pungas and cabbage trees I am planting hydrangeas. If I get enough, I might even interplant hydranges with the flaxes out the front.

Two years into our garden project at smallwettown, I have conceded that some spots in our garden will not successfully grow food. Those spots are going to natives and hydrangea.

On the native front, has anyone raised rata trees from seed themselves?