Helen Lehndorf

Tag: nature

  • taking stock: late October

    Keep reading for more about my old church trestle table.

    I don’t feel like I have much cohesive to say so I’m going to use a template from Pip at Meet Me at Mikes called ‘taking stock’ which has a list of prompts to get you thinking about what you’ve been doing and coveting. I’ve been reading Pip’s blog since the OG early blogging times of the early oughts. I love that, unlike so many blogs from back then which are long gone, Pip has carried on. It means I get a soothing, familial feeling from reading her posts – even though I don’t know her IRL.

    But first, here’s a photo (thanks, Anthony!) of an event I did with Airini Beautrais at Unity Books Wellington last week. We talked about the use of humour in New Zealand poetry and chose poems from each other’s recent collections to read. I had a great day out in Wellington, did the event, had a walk along the waterfront, explored the revamped library, went to see the Cornelia Parker exhibition at the re-opened City Art Gallery.

    Here’s my responses of Pip’s Taking Stock list

    Making: ferments with the last of the winter vegetables in the garden. I made a chunky ferment with these vegetables (below) and it smelled truly TERRIBLE while it was fermenting but is tangy and tasty now. I don’t use recipes as such but here is a method for a similar one if you’d like to try it.


    Getting: osteopathy for a crunchy, sore back. Yeowch! I’ve been hobblin’.

    Cooking: lots of springy frittatas and quiches in which the last of the winter vegetables and exciting spring things like asparagus and broad beans commingle.


    Sipping: last week in Wellington, I stopped in at the restaurant attached to the City Art Gallery. I ordered the strawberry shrub and it came with a sprig of thyme as a swizzle stick. The pairing of thyme and strawberry was genius! So now I’m sipping strawberry cordial with a thyme swizzle at home. I want to have a go at making strawberry shrub but in the meantime I am drinking a reduced-sugar strawberry cordial from Barkers.


    Reading: Because I just did a mini-book-tour with Airini, I’ve read her new poetry book Salt Quilt lots of times and heartily recommend it. It’s by turn ‘salty’, sweet, funny, sad, and she has a breathtaking lyrical voice.

    & I’m re-reading Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer (for the third time!) I’d like to attempt some garden writing in a similar vein so I am re-reading with a writer’s eye this time…trying to work out why I find his nature writing so particularly compelling. It’s something to do with: a working-class voice (so much gardening writing is by posho’s), dry humour, excellent plant knowledge and descriptions, and an emphasis on the best ‘stuff of life’ being the simple things.


    Waiting: to hear back about the last of the arts application I did back in late winter. I applied for three things, missed out on two so far. Maybe third time lucky?

    Looking: a lot of dandelion art. I have a whole sketchbook dedicated to dandelions so I like to look at other people’s paintings and drawings to get inspired.


    Listening: to Stella Donnelly. I googled ‘music like Lucy Dacus and Courtney Barnett’ (because I’d run out of new music by those two) and she was the top result.

    I especially like this song because of her strong Aussie accent. She sings ‘tattoo’ just how I hear my friends saying the word. Plus there’s something very southern hemisphere about her music videos.


    Wishing: I was more courageous. I am brave in some ways (writing, public speaking) and a total mouse in ways that hinder me. I also take forever to make decisions. I drive myself mad.

    Enjoying: watching the blooming of these little daisies I dug out of the lawn and planted into a flower bed. They are flourishing and growing the most beautiful, surprising colours; check that bright pink in the middle pic.

    I hope these pictures inspire you to transplant some lawn daisies, spare them from the lawnmower and let them do their thing. Plus, easy FREE FLOWERS!

    Appreciating: the great op-shops here in Palmerston North. After visiting some op shops in other places (slim pickings! so much fast fashion crap and Anko landfill) I am, once again, grateful for our terrific op shops. I don’t think I could live somewhere with bad op shops.

    Eating: a lot of homemade muesli with rhubarb cooked with orange zest and a dollop of Greek yoghurt. I usually cook rhubarb with ginger but I saw an episode of River Cottage where Hugh cooked it with fine orange zest and a bit of juice. Its an inspired pairing and a new favourite. Here’s Hugh’s recipe however I don’t like to cook honey (because it diminishes the medicinal properties) so I use jaggery instead which is a dark unrefined sugar.

    I eat this for breakfast, yes, but lately also sometimes for lunch. I go through phases of muesli-fixation. Here’s my go to muesli recipe off another long-time blogger and friend, Melissa Wastney.

    Liking: the way my young friends are getting offline and into ‘analogue’ life. Especially physical media (DVDs, CDs, etc) and journaling. I dig it and am enjoying the contact-high of their newfound delight.


    Loving: my subscription to On The Land magazine. Speaking of analogue, there’s just something so great about getting a tangible magazine in the mail. This magazine used to be called ‘Lifestyle Block’ and I read it then, too, but always felt a little fraudulent because I don’t have a lifestyle block. I have a small urban garden. With the new name and new focus, I feel much more included in its new kaupapa of permaculture, kai sovereignty and regenerative food systems. Great storytelling and inspiring photographs within.

    Buying: Princess Highway tops and shirts off TradeMe. (Yay for saved searches!) They fit me well, are good quality and I like the muted colour palette and vintage-y vibes.


    Managing: to stay kind of sane in election-year madness. I can’t wait until it is over. Feels like the whole country is holding its breath.


    Watching: way too much gardening YouTube. Here’s one favourite. I should be gardening more and watching less! Can’t wait for my back to come right.


    Hoping: to go overseas for the first time since 1998 (!) next year. (See above comment re: scaredy-mouse and decision-making.)

    Wearing: I have a t-shirt from Black Lodge press with this design on it. I wear it everywhere. It’s my favourite t-shirt.


    Following: ‘Weedy’ (David Trood, from another favourite gardening YouTube account, ‘The Weedy Garden’, has just moved fulltime to live in his garden, living in a lotus belle tent… and he’s made a garden kitchen. I’m following along with great curiosity. I’d love to do the same but I fear the mercurial ManawatÅ« weather is not quite as ideal as where Weedy lives in Australia:


    Noticing: how now that I’m 54 (much) younger people (in their teens, early twenties) often look straight through me as though I am invisible. 54 is not even that old! I imagine this just gets worse as time goes on. And no doubt I did the same to anyone over thirty when I was young.

    Getting: excited to go and see Wicker. Looks like daft good fun and I could use a bit of that. Plus I would watch Olivia Coleman read the dictionary such is my love for her work.


    Bookmarking:     I have this free online class about making ‘wild herbal sodas’ bookmarked. Looking forward to watching it and making some. I don’t drink alcohol so I get excited about shrubs and sodas in summer.


    Coveting: some handmade summer sandals from Soul Raglan but they only sell their shoes in-store so I guess I will have to head up to Raglan sometime this summer. Oh no! 😉

    Feeling: a bit lost…but/and still finding beauty in everyday things.

    Hearing: right this minute? a LOT of tui in our backyard. Over the last couple of years we have put much more effort into encouraging birds (bird baths, feeders, keeping cats outta the yard) and the ‘reward’ is a tui chorus that makes me so happy.


    Anticipating: eating outside when the weather settles a little. I have an old wooden trestle table that used to belong to a church. In the warm seasons, it gets dusted off and used in the garden for meals.

    Is there any greater pleasure than having friends over to eat under the sky? Here it is…a few summers back:

    So there you go, there’s a snapshot of my consciousness. I’d love to hear what you’re reading, watching, dreaming of, thinking about if you feel like saying hello.

    x

  • Winter is a great time for harvesting volunteer ‘microgreens’ from your garden (or local park)

    (Above: today’s bounty from a little wander around my own garden.)

    Do you buy sprouts, bags of mesclun mix or microgreens from the supermarket?

    Winter is a great time to find volunteer (‘weed’) microgreens, or young greens, around your garden or local park for FREE!

    Because of winter’s rain and damp, the young weeds will be beautifully bright green, healthy and not heat-stressed.

    To share some likely contenders with you, I took a walk around my small urban yard and here’s what I harvested.

    I took care to only harvest volunteers/weeds and nothing that I’d planted intentionally. (Violet grows like a weed in my yard.)

    The trick is to just harvest the young leaves, or the tips in the case of the dead nettle.

    These wild ‘microgreens’ can be used in a salad, or chopped and sprinkled on top of soup, or in sandwiches, or blended into a smoothie…the same as you would use supermarket or homegrown microgreens.

    I numbered the plants for ease of ID-ing them:

    1. Nasturtium leaves. These are peppery in flavour so great in salads and on sandwiches, not so great in smoothies.
    2. Dead Nettle tips. Great stand-in for lettuce.
    3. Young violet leaves and flowers. Use in salad or cook as your would spinach.
    4. Young ribwort plantain leaves. Important to pick the young ones as the older ones get stringy. The young leaves have a nutty flavour.
    5. Chickweed. Such an enthusiastic garden volunteer. Use the young growth and chop finely.
    6. Young dandelion leaves. These add a nice bitter element to a salad or sandwich. Not so great in smoothies.
    7. Oxalis (known in the UK as ‘wood sorrell’ and the USA as ‘sour grass’) Has a sour, lemony flavour similar to sorrell. Use just a little at a time as it contains oxalic acid. Treat it more like a herb than a main vegetable.
    8. Young mallow leaves. Mallow (also know as ‘Malva’) is a much-used vegetable in Middle-Eastern cuisine and parts of Italy. You can make dolmades with the leaves in place of grape leaves, making it useful during the winter when there are no grape leaves about. Young leaves are good in salad or cooked like spinach.

    & of course, these plants have medicinal properties as well, (most plant food does.

    I hope this inspires you to have a close look at what might be growing in your own back yard and save yourself a little money (or time) by eating some of the weeds around you.

    Let me know in the comments if you have any questions.

    Do you eat any of the weeds in your garden?

  • witch sticks & autumn harvests

    (Above: Our kitchen table is a busy surface with often-changing bowls and baskets reflecting what is going on in the garden and the foraging season: things drying or waiting to be processed.)

    Autumn is my favourite season and, as a permaculture household, a busier season than summer with our labours to ‘capture and store’. There’s lots of picking and gathering and then kitchen work processing everything.

    (Above: Last sunday morning’s harvest chore was bottling a box of apples from our friend Bev’s orchard. These will turn into crumbles or top our porridge this winter.)

    Last week I gave my potted white sage plant a prune, ready to overwinter it in the greenhouse. White sage is a desert plant, native to the American southwest and Mexican northwest, so it doesn’t love the ManawatÅ« winters.

    In the summer, I put it outside in full sun then prune it down to almost sticks at the end of summer and put it in the greenhouse where it sulks the winter away…but it (just) survives. Mine is about six years old now.

    (Above: white sage prunings, cotton thread. It’s on the sofa because I made the witch sticks while watching something in the evening. I do a lot of processing tasks (this, peeling fruit, cutting up herbs for tea, seed saving jobs) on the sofa…which might seem a bit odd…but I don’t see it as much different from knitting or hand-sewing in front of the TV. Does anyone else do this?)

    The prunings can be turned into what I call ‘witch sticks’ for burning by folding up the leaves on the stalk, weaving and rolling them longways and then tying with cotton thread. (Never use synthetic thread: it will melt and emit toxic smoke.) When the leaves have all burned down, you can burn the stalks, too.

    (White sage is a plant sacred to Indigenous people in USA and Mexico, so if you want some…have a go at growing it rather than buying imported sage. White sage is overharvested in the USA particularly. In ‘A Forager’s Life’, I write about alternative plants to white sage for making cleansing/burning sticks.)

    (Above: I got eight decent witch sticks, plus some smaller bits and pieces of stalk…all of which can be burned. Here they are drying on my fire top.)

    I see a lot of ‘how-to’ articles about making cleansing/burning sticks around…but they often forget a detail which I think is important. For them to burn well and safely, don’t wind the string around and around the bundle, securing only at top and bottom. This will mean your stick will fall apart as the thread burns and you could have a higher risk of embers dropping off it. Instead, tie it tightly with small pieces of string at regular intervals, like in this photograph:

    (Above: please forgive my ‘dirt manicure’ as garden writer Gayla Trail calls it. I scrub* my nails regularly but folks who ‘touch soil’ (which is ilke ‘touching grass’ only more grubby) every day struggle to have photogenic hands. ((I have to buy a new nail brush every couple of months…so intent is my endless scrubbing.))

    Do you have a favourite season or are you one of those calm, rational people who loves them all equally?

    I’d love to hear what kitchen or garden chores you’ve been doing lately. Let me know below.

    “As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas or colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see.”

    -Vincent Van Gogh