Under a hotter sun; The Christmas cake.

The Christmas cake;

When the sun stands highest, when the weather is hot and muggy, Christmas is not far off. In Australia it is tradition to bake Christmas cakes or make Christmas Puddings like it is a tradition in Switzerland to bake many different Christmas cookies as in many other countries all over the world.

Country people are generally very helpful and find Christmas time also a good time to help charities

One Charity, I won’t mention which one had a special afternoon tea to say thank you to all the helpers. An old lady, she was then well in her eighties baked every year a big Christmas cake for the members of this particular charity, to enjoy.

People come together in a jolly mood to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee and a delicious piece of her famous Christmas cake.

The cake was sitting on a plate, glistening with a sugary glace waiting to be cut. The president of the club had the honor to cut the first slice.

He cut into the cake and the knife got stuck. He looked up just slightly confused. With a mighty effort he tried to cut through the cake to no avail. By this time everybody was interestingly watching him, trying to cut a slice. His patience ran out and he cried bloody hell what is in this cake that the knife can not get through it.

Everybody was now standing around him, watching and wondering what was going on.

Quite urgently he cut into the cake from the side and opened it up. There was something sitting in there. He touched it with the tip of the knife and then grabbed the thing with his fingers and tore it out of the cake.

Triumphantly he hold it up, laughed and showed the culprit to all.

It was one of those old fashioned big, hard sink stoppers, even with the little ring on top to hold it. The dear, old lady had mixed the ingredients of her cake in the sink. She might not have had a big enough bowl.

The stopper must have been caught and lodged firmly into the dough, while she was mixing it.

Well, everybody was laughing because it was so funny. Nobody had ever experienced a Christmas cake with an inbuilt sink stopper. Some were not really keen to eat the cake, just some very hungry and adventures souls had a slice.

Under a hotter Sun; Autumn is only the end of summer;

Enjoying a Watermelon.

Planting a vegetable garden, one is very much in the hands of the gods!

In autumn when the sun retreats its fierceness and spreads out a golden mellow light, is the time for new plantings.

Most vegetables do very well over winter. Some have a standstill in the coldest month like July and August. All year round vegetables are growing; harvested and planted again, it is an ongoing job.

Herbs do well, mostly all of them all year round. Basil seeds itself. Lavender and Rosemary bushes are planted in the vegetable garden for use and for beauty Italian and curly Parsley and in autumn Coriander self-seeds. A big bush of Lemongrass its long sharp leaves gracefully weeping, waiting to be used in cooking and for cool drinks.

The Flame trees on the property.

I had a very hard job to prepare the garden beds for my autumn and winter plantings. The soil had become hard and compact over the hottest summer month from the rain pelting down, compacting the soil. The unrelenting heat of the sun-baked my poor garden beds so hard, it was ready to cut clay bricks from it.

After a lot of sweat and hard work the soil became crumbly again and spread with my coveted cow pads I had collected. Then came the easy, nice tasks of planting the tiny vegetable seedlings.

Lettuce, the snails liked the tender leaves just as much as we did. Cabbages and Broccoli, the beloved food of the larvae of the white butterfly. Beans were most of the time trouble-free if the weather was not to wet. Actually with everything I planted I was challenged by a myriad of insects, birds, possums everybody wanted a slice of my plantings.

I had to learn to share, which is hard when you rely on the planted vegetables and fruit. Very seldom I lost everything and then mostly because there was a bad hailstorm. Hailstorms were rampant in this flat land area.

The flower garden.

I was scanning the sky when I saw the ominous band of blue-green clouds settling like a bruise. When the cattle started lowing and collected to wander up into the bush I was sure something was up.

I have experienced one very devastating hailstorm. The vegetable garden looked at its best. The beans were ready to harvest. Tomatoes, Capsicum and eggplants were already showing off their beautiful colours lacquer red and deep purple, plump and shiny in between the foliage. Melons were filling out, everything was at its peak looking healthy and perfect. The sky was now shrouded with boiling blue-green and black clouds. Then came the hailstorm, jagged lumps of ice. Big as tennis balls were falling from the sky hitting the tin roof of the house with a noise not imaginable. It did not relent until all the trees and shrubs were stripped of leaves twigs and flowers. The vegetable garden was devastated, everything was smashed and pulped. It is quite strange the reaction one feels seeing all the devastation of ones work happening in such a short time.

Then the sun emerged, it slashed through the clouds and eerily a beautiful rainbow stretched its colours along the horizon.