A touch of green. Some inspiration for you

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in - what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

* I'm not ordinarily a fan of embroidery as art on the walls, but I'd make an exception for these little vegetable bouquets

* What a lovely alternative to flowers in vases

* This spring salad looks beautiful and sounds delicious

* I've never seen an office organiser like this. So pretty!

* Such a pretty expanding origami pot for plants

* Always walk on the grass

* I would like to live here, please

* Really love these lazy season pots

* Sweet little mini vertical garden made from vintage jars and bottles

* Where to find free botanical artwork

* Potted plants in Taipei

* Wouldn't these edible terrariums be wonderful for a garden party!

* So much inspiration for your indoor plants

* Nature bingo looks like fun!

* Gorgeous waterfall of leaves

* Perfect for summer nights: caramelised pear salad with goats cheese toast

* The Forest Feast for Kids: Colorful Vegetarian Recipes That Are Simple to Make

* How to make natural dyes from plants and flowers in your garden

Image credit: photo by Jaime Spaniol, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

What's going on?

In breaking news, I made homemade bread AND homemade butter. Colour me smug!

This is a kind of "taking stock" post, inspired by Pip from Meet Me at Mikes. The idea is to stop, or at least slow down, and put some thought into what has been taking up your time and dwelling in your thoughts of late. Only, I wanted to make my list a liiiiittle bit shorter and I really liked the prompts created by Michelle from Daughter of the Woods, so I borrowed hers...

Carousel of Life // More than 12 months after my first letterpress lesson, I have finally saved up enough to get another lesson, and to buy some supplies to start practicing. I can’t wait to begin making beautiful, printed things and hopefully, if they’re good enough, to send them to you guys!

Heart-moment // On the weekend the children and I wandered up to Lygon Street, and we didn’t do anything special but with them it was all special. Walking together up a hill, looking in on everyone’s gardens; catching a tram (“A tram with STAIRS, Mummy!”); smiling at all the people outside Readings Bookstore who were wearing Griffindor scarves and round, black-rimmed spectacles; introducing the children to chocolate cannoli; trying on a shirt and hearing Scout breathe “You look lovely, Mummy, that really suits you!” for all the world as if she was my girlfriend and not my four-year-old daughter.

Moment of Tears // Poor little Ralph is sick. Not only that, but just before Mr B and I were about to go out two nights ago (and trust me this is a VERY rare occurrence), Ralph dislocated his elbow. Driving him to the hospital was the most heartbreaking experience, with the poor little man clutching his arm and sobbing “too bumpy” at every twist and turn in the road. He followed it up with a fever that night, and all the next day, and his suffering is all just too sad.

Looking forward to// A healthy family. And also, a trip to Tasmania that we are planning for spring. I am dreaming of clean salt-sea air. Of seagulls and forests and fruit-picking and smooth river pebbles.

Pieces // I had to buy a ball gown for a gala ball I will be attending on the weekend, so I used the app The Real Real to find something pretty great at a budget price. I got a call from the couriers yesterday: my dress had arrived, but they were holding it until I paid $278 in duties and taxes. Whaaaaaat!? Suddenly my budget dress is not so budget, and I don’t really have a choice as I can’t return it to get my money back until I actually have hold of it. Lesson bitterly learned.

Music // I am bereft. Bereft of music! I can’t get the SONOS to work with my new phone, it’s very frustrating. And if I have to hear "Let It Go" from Frozen one more time…

Series/Movies // Oh my gosh Manhattan. Have you seen it? I love how real the characters are, how they grapple with fear and secrets and ambition and love and family and the ethics of it all, of what it meant, in the middle of World War II, to build an atomic bomb.

How about you? What's going on?

Rituals: the first cup of tea

What do your mornings look like, first thing?

Mine start before the sun. I tip-toe into the children's room and turn on the AC to take the chill out of the air before they wake up, then I walk downstairs and, before anything else happens, I fill the kettle and flip it on.

All those little morning tasks: letting the cat out, turning on the downstairs heat, finding the kids' clothes for the day... all performed to the whoosh-and-hum soundtrack of rapidly boiling water.

Click. Kettle's done. Steaming water over tea, a dash of milk, that first sip so hot it's almost painful but oh so good on the back of my throat.

I take my tea and sit down. Sometimes I write, sometimes I draw. Or I write letters, read letters, listen to podcasts, read a magazine. But always, there is the first cup of tea of the day. The early morning is my special, quiet time, while the rest of my house sleeps, and I could not imagine starting it without tea.

I didn't always keep this ritual. For many years I was a "breakfast first" kind of gal, only moving to tea or coffee mid-morning. But many years ago, while visiting Melbourne on a work conference when I lived in Sydney, I stayed with my good friend Deb in her home. I was feeling a little (a lot) lost in my new job, but I mostly remember that week as a wonderful time of celebrating my friendship with Deb. She was an extraordinarily generous host. She chauffeured me around the city for my conference; took me to different pubs and restaurants every night (where we were ridiculous and believed we were hilarious like only old friends can be); and every morning, as soon as we woke up, she made me a cup of tea. The first cup of tea of the day.

All these years later, I can still picture the corner of her share-house where a tall, gas radiator was attached to the wall, like so many other old houses in Melbourne, pumping out new heat. I can still feel the warmth of the tea Deb had made me, as I cup the mug in my hands.

And every morning, when the scalding hot tea soothes my throat and kick-starts my day, I smile a little smile, and think about Deb.

What about you? What are your morning rituals?

Pistachios and eggs

Recently I purchased a time machine. It was humble to look at: a recipe book, printed in 1893, called Cakes and Confections à la mode by Mrs de Salis.

You know how scent and taste can transport you to a moment in your past? Take you right back to that first bite, and to everything that happened around it? This book represented someone else's food memories (Mrs de Salis' food memories), and I knew that her words on the page, if I followed them, had the power to carry me backwards 123 years in time.

Mrs de Salis was a famous home-cook, the Nigella Lawson of her time, with a best-selling range of "à la mode" titles covering everything from "Dressed Game and Poultry à la mode" to "National viands à la mode" and even "Floral decorations à la mode," among many more.

But that was a long time ago, and her techniques are foreign to me, and some of her ingredients even more-so (angelica? alum? greengage? ammonia!? pyrogallic acid!?). How were these cakes supposed to taste? I have no idea. What did they look like? Again, no idea. Mrs de Salis leaves no hints, assuming that her readers are already familiar with these types of dishes.

But if I attempt these recipes, and follow them faithfully, I will be stepping into a late-Victorian kitchen. Cooking by the light of the window, squinting over the words on the page as the afternoon shadows gather, by candle-light or maybe, if I am lucky, gaslight. The fire burning in the cast-iron AGA stove keeps me warm. There must be hens in my yard because many of these recipes call for copious numbers of eggs. For the same reason, I imagine I will be serving up smaller slices to my family than my 21st-century counterpart might do; these recipes read heavy! Victorian-era Naomi will have wonderful muscles in her arms, patiently grinding almonds or pistachios into meal to be used in place of flour.

In the process, lost flavours are rediscovered, forgotten meal-times reignited. This is time travel.

Pistachio Cake (Mrs de Salis, 1893)

Blanche a pound of pistachio nuts and pound them in a mortar with a little orange-flower water. Then add the beaten white of an egg and a little grated lemon-peel, six ounces of castor sugar, the yolks of ten eggs beaten lightly, and the whites of eight beaten to snow. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly, have ready a buttered mould, and bake for an hour in a moderate oven. When cold, ice it with pistachio-nut icing. 

Ten eggs, my friends! Yeesh! Also, as far as I can see in my book, Mrs de Salis doesn't actually supply a recipe for pistachio-nut icing. She does however provide a general icing recipe, which I have copied out for you here:

Icing for Cakes (Mrs de Salis, 1893)

Take some icing sugar, mix twelve ounces of it, and mix it in gradually to the whites of four eggs whisked to a stiff froth, beating it well to make it smooth; mix in the strained juice of a lemon and two drops of pyrogallic acid*, and lay the preparation on the cake with a very broad knife. Put it in a cool oven to harden, but be careful it is not hot enough to discolour it.

Let me know if you bake this. I'd love to know how you go.

* NOTE: Please skip the pyrogallic acid if you try this recipe, as it is apparently poisonous!

The first of June

Last night I had a dream that it snowed in Melbourne.

I was awake before the rest of my family and I looked out into the still-dark garden and saw whorling white. Raced upstairs, and woke everyone up. We played in the blanketed garden in our dressing-gowns until we were all wet and frozen, and then came inside for hot baths and hot chocolate.

The mornings are growing colder. My garden is gathering into itself for the coming winter dark, and thick steam from the shower in our cold house has more than once set off an over-enthusiastic smoke alarm.

Comfort-food cravings. Warm, oatmeal porridge in the mornings. Hands wrapped around steaming mugs of tea, cold fingers tingling against hot porcelain.

I return inside from training climbing roses, tending straggly gaura, pruning back salvia, and wash my cold-stiffened hands. Boil the kettle for a cup of tea. Sit down to write another postcard, and make tiny envelopes out of century-old transparent paper.

(Smells like old books).

All in good time

Pulling out towering, still-flowering cosmos, taller than my head. Shaking the soil from the roots. Lopping dead flowers and seed-heads from a hundred different plants, tossing them into the garden bed to nestle and rest and seed to grow again another season.

Cutting away the dead and decomposing once-green things that had suffocated beneath the cosmos’ enthusiasm. Gently tending, trimming, clearing, watering, anything that had somehow survived in the floral dark. Training the climbing roses up and over fence and pole, and cutting back the potato-vine, inviting flowers.

Tending, training, trimming, trusting. It is a precursor to the big winter cut-back, settling the plants for rest and eventual rejuvenation. The autumn harvest, the garden clean, planting and sowing for fresh new blooms in spring.

And in life, the closing off of long-worked projects, the handing over of harvest, a preparation for hard-earned rest (learning to say no!) and hopes of new growth to begin again. All in good time.

Sickle moon

It was a sickle moon last night. Did you see it? Wavering and watery, paper thin, I stopped to greet it on my way back across the road, with a $12 bottle of rosé in my hand. "Good night moon," I said (good night stars, good night air*). That was a little bit embarrassing because it turned out I said it out loud without realising, and two people coming out of the bottle shop with wine that probably cost a lot more than $12 looked at me kind of funny.

Anyway I have been absent from this little blog for the past few weeks, while I finished the photography for my book (eek!) and the illustrations for Wendy's book (woot!) and another big pile of letters to send to you folks (coming soon!). I always miss this space when I am away, but I have learned to (try to) be more realistic with my time and with what I can and cannot do.

But then I saw the moon last night and I thought of you.

I thought about how strange and magical it always feels to learn that people are reading my blog, reading it from all over the world... Melbourne and Bendigo, New York and Illinois, Russia, the Ukraine, France, Germany, Portugal, Singapore, Mexico, Argentina, and so many other places. Last night, when I looked up at that sickle moon, I thought about how maybe you were looking up at that same sickle moon (or that you would, in just half a world's rotation's time), and I felt strangely close to you.

(*Good night noises everywhere)

Image credit: sickle moon by Nousnou Iwasaki, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons

Morning thoughts

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?" "What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?" "I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said. ~ A.A. Milne

Made me grin today.

"And autumn garner"

"I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time." ~ Robert Browning

Keeping within yesterday's botanical mail art theme, here are some links "of beauty and utility" that you might enjoy:

* Decorating with houseplants - Taipei style

* Lovely fern-pressed jar DIY

* Gorgeous gift: seed bombs!

* The most beautiful self-watering pot I've ever seen

* How to incorporate plants into your home

* Make a mini green wall out of old jars

* One plant three ways

* How to keep your house plants alive

* Good idea for Mother's Day? DIY marbled hanging planter

* Love this forest-on-a-cake!

* Plant your herbs in old teacups and milk jugs

* Stunning art made out of petals and leaves

* The right plant for your home

* Invites you in: urban jungle in Antwerp

Dusk & stuff

As I write this the dusk is settling over Melbourne on what was an absolutely glorious summer’s day. We have just returned from a lazy stroll out for family dinner, and then home to put two very tired kids into bed, wiping chocolate ice cream from their faces and hands (and necks and elbows) and not even bothering with baths. I’ll wash the sheets tomorrow. Le sigh.

I am sitting at the dining table typing while Mr B sits opposite me signing letters for work, and he is looking very smug because he has just found a channel on the Internet radio called “Always Elvis Radio.” Lord give me strength.

Next to me is a pile of research for my snail-mail book, and some wonderful interviews with amazing “mail heroes” that I need to write up, plus a fantastic tutorial on how to make envelopes from magazine pages, without using a template.

Also I’m intermittently flicking through my Internet browser because I’m half way through researching a particularly interesting “fact” about mail that I need to verify before I share and expand on it in the book. Also, I am reading Tavi Gevinson’s earliest blog posts (she is only 11) and they are fascinating! She is so small and sweet and vulnerable but also so smart, and it’s really interesting watching this little girl trying to find her way in life through fashion and the fashion-blogging community, knowing how she and her writing will grow and where it will take her and all of us…

All in all this has turned into a rather pleasant but not particularly focused evening, and then I figured why not spread my attention even further afield, and write to you.

So this is just a little letter to say hello to you, dear friends known and unknown, to say thank-you for reading this little blog of mine. I hope you are having a lovely evening, too.

Naomi xo

ps. Mr B and Emily just went out onto the grass verge at the front of our house to play Uno, so I have taken the opportunity turn OFF Always Elvis Radio, and the silence is golden.

GOLDEN.

Image credit: pug pic by Matthew Wiebe, licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons