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Got to love a tomato that sounds like the Soviet mob. I remember growing tomatoes in plastic garbage bins when I was a long-haired, bare-footed little person. Actually I should say I remember making dirt tunnels in plastic garbage bins while one of the not-then-relics planted tomatoes in the not-yet-tunneled garbage bin. Anyway, my black russians, which I have nurtured from seedlings (thanks Dad), through a three-state, three-day road trip and three Brisbane addresses, are about to deliver their lycopene goodliness!
YEEEEAAH!
I have looked after these little grommets like a mother-in-training, hauling myself out every night during a swampy Brisbane summer, shagged from work, to water them by bucket. I've hauled them round in my car from house-stay to house-sit to housebound-bliss. Frankly I've never invested so much grunt into a plant before. Well actually that's a lie... but I am not going to flaunt my criminal past here. Anyway, today I made three loaves of sourdough and am thinking the russians will go nicely with that, a little olive oil and some of the purple basil that I have unbelievably managed to sprout from seed and which is now growing like medusa on speed in my little potted garden. A perfect, if hard-won, home made lunch.
I’ve just returned from two days at Churinga, where the Relics and I lunched last week. Churinga’s guardians are part of the WWOOFing fraternity and had invited me to come back for a bit of hands-on. I was told I’d be planting walnuts. Naturally, my rose-coloured urban brain imagined me begloved, kneeling in dirt, sunshine beating down, digging a few holes with a trowel and asking, ‘What next?’ with the satisfied glow of a woman who has just planted walnuts.
Naturally, it wasn’t like that at all. What it was like, was plotting an entire orchard of walnut trees. No, cancel that. A plantation of walnut trees.
Two of us spent the best part of one and a half days measuring and staking out where 50 walnut trees should go on a very large, steeply sloped, bracken-covered plot of land. We couldn’t even get a proper line of sight since there were trees to be felled. We got 26 in the ground. There were no trowels in sight. Clearly, I still have a way to go on this urban to country curve.
But for now, you can call me Walnut Queen.
On Saturday, Mum and I went to the Foster Farmers Market. We loaded up with good things and headed back to the car, where we loitered so I could finish my coffee. We were parked beside some lovely landscaping fronting a public building, adjacent to the market. A fair amount of foot traffic trundled by.
Mum proceeded to appraise the plant-life, pointing out a couple of beautiful, er, shrubs. (Alas, I did not inherit the botany gene.) As is her usual practice, she surreptitiously snaffled a few cuttings. As she scouted a striking banksia with burnt umber and yellow blooms, a little old bereted lady toddled up from behind.
“You’re not going to take that, are you?”
Oh-oh. Busted!
I took half a step back and held my breath.
Things took a rather amusing turn.
Mum came clean and Little Old Beret responded in plant-speak: “spinulosa… integrifolia… cultivar… prostrate form”, etc.
They traded plant names like ping pong balls and a slow, rapturous realisation spread on Mum’s face.
Little Old Beret: “Do you know who you’re talking to? I had one of these named after me.”
Mum: “Ce-li-a Ro-ss-er? Not the Celia Rosser? Oh my…”
The Celia Rosser talked on like a normal little old lady in a woollen beret doing her weekly shopping. Mum beamed sideways at me. I gathered we were in the presence of some kind of botanic greatness.
Some kind of botanic greatness turned out indeed to be the Celia Rosser, OAM Hon MSc Hon LLD (Monash), acclaimed botanical illustrator who has painted every banksia species, a body of work spanning 25 years and three published volumes. She has not one, but two, banksias named after her.
Even I, non-comprendis botanicus, was impressed (albeit upon my belated enlightenment).
They chatted like only those who inhabit the same rare world can do: “oh yes I know Peter, I was in the same plant group as him”.
Others would have melted in a pool of adulation. Aside from throwing several plate-sized grins my way, Mum did a sterling job of holding it together. In fact, she even mentioned a thing or two about banksias that the Celia did not know.
(The encounter reminded me of a time about eight years ago when I met Jamie Oliver. The only difference being that because I fancied him, I could not utter even one proper sentence. In my defence, it was before the Cult of the TV Chef took hold, and it was quite a natural thing for a thinking girl to lust after a scruffy boy who could cook. I would have also included a photo of me with Jamie, except that the print is god-knows-where, a result of my worldly goods being scattered between three locations across two states. But I digress…)
We left with a cone from the admired banksia and an invitation to visit the Celia at her home/gallery. When the coast was clear, adulation was unleashed, albeit with max restraint: “wait til I tell A…”
