You knew it would have to be hydrangeas at this time!
Hello everyone,
Here we are again! Another year…
A friend asked me this week how many it’s been since I began (with Kitchen Gardening Days) the round of events and workshops here at Glenmore House, to which I replied “this year totals sixteen”… which is kind of hard to believe! That’s sixteen years of newsletters too, though the first years were without a website and I wrote all ’email newsletters’ by copying and pasting each and every one with a personalised ‘top & tail’ and…probably a poorly attached image. At this time of year, there’s no doubt the image would have been hydrangeas – afterall, I’ve been oohing and aahing over the hydrangeas at this time of year since we plonked them in position at the end of the Barn for ‘safekeeping’ while we demolished and wreaked havoc all around before putting everything back together and then some…35 years ago. And so today, you get hydrangeas once again, because Christmas is not Christmas or summer holiday time without them! And every year they are a different colour and I can never decide which colour to send you.
It has been SO lovely to see so many of you here this year. And it’s been quite a one! I hinted at the beginning of the year, that the first stretch would likely be heavily loaded with food (and so it was!) while the second half would likely be predominantly garden focussed. From our Journey through Lebanon with Sunday Kitchen to Italian Coastal with Amber Guinness; Plants, Clay, Fire with Cade McConnell to Troubleshooting Sourdough with Holly Davis and Plant-Based Farmhouse Cookingwith Cherie Hausler; interspersed with my own Kitchen Gardening Days and not forgetting our Conversation with Paul Bangay, we got off to a fine start.
We kicked off the second half quite rightly with a sensational screening of those two important films: Suzannah Cowley’s Thankful for Soil and (UK produced) Six Inches of Soil; Alchemilla’s Lunar Cultivation following swiftly after – those two events occurring in such proximity an ideal way to set we gardeners up for the season ahead. Next we were all inspired by Jeremy Valentine’s presentation about the garden he and partner Grant have made at The Stones, Central Victoria (do catch Jeremy’s new monthly ‘In the Weeds’ instalment for Galah) and then Colleen Southwell’s Neighbourly Garden, before the long-awaited Sofra cookbook launch: what a beautiful and emotional event with Sivine and Karima and although not intentional, it chimed exactly with the rose harvest, thereby presenting an extraordinary opportunity to celebrate the day with a rose distillation, using the same time-honoured, traditional copper alembic still method of distillation long used in the lands of the Levant. And everyone got their hands in the roses! There was another Kitchen Gardening Workshop before our beautiful day that proved to be smooth Sailing with Richard and Matilda Dumas, where truly…between the presentation images on the wall and our mini exhibition of Til’s paintings behind (and wherever she could prop or hang another), it felt as though in every direction we looked, we were all at sea! To end the event year then, with a Lavender Harvest Workshop on the most glorious summer’s day you might imagine (cue blue sky, sun, cicadas, bees and the intoxicating haze of lavender) was quite simply…magic.
And now it’s time to down tools (though there’s plenty, as always, to do in the garden!). A few peeps have asked about the next Kitchen Gardening Day and yes…it will be either the last Saturday of February or the first Saturday of March…I’m thinking likely the latter, but I’ll let you know in January! Other than that…next year is an open book – I’ll be ruminating on all the possibilities during January! Though I do intend to keep up the Substack writing over the holiday period, so I’d love to see you there.
In the meantime though, thank you to everyone who has participated and / or been a guest at Glenmore House during the course of this year. And of course I send an enormous thank you to all who have presented and shared their stories, passion and skill. My aim is to continue to bring in those who I believe will inspire you, because they inspire me; those special one-off events and workshops alongside my own Kitchen Gardening, Field of Flowers and Distillation workshops (although I did find myself uttering out loud last week, how perfectly divine that intimate workshop for two really was and that perhaps that might be the way of the future!). When it works out that way, you surely do have me all to yourselves…all day!
I send very happy Christmas and Holiday wishes to you all. I hope you can take a breath, a step back, that you have some time to daydream, dilly-dally…and to dip a toe in the ocean!
With warmest wishes
Mickey
