“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore.
Summer has made a very late appearance in my part of the world this season. It is only over the last few days the temperatures have risen to the expected thirty degree mark. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Just noting.
This is the summer in which I have declared that I will appreciate the summer season for what it is and summer has cooperated brilliantly. Firstly with lower temperatures than the usual. Secondly, with this magnificent sunset over Mount Warning last night.
How can I possibly not appreciate such a glorious sky-show?
Christmas is only just over one week away (really?…what happened to 2011 !!) and with that in mind, I will be making my family favourite Ice Cream Christmas Pudding this week.
I first posted this recipe here way back in December, 2009, when my blog was a brand new baby, just starting out in the Big Wide World of the Web. In fact, it was the sixth post ever added!
Over the last two to three weeks, this post has been up there at the top of the list of most viewed posts. Time for a repost….
“Living in a warm climate at Christmas time can have some definite disadvantages, the most obvious for me being that I have never experienced a white Christmas!
However, on the bonus side, how many people in the northern hemisphere would have ever have had the inclination to experience the pure joy of finishing off their Christmas dinner with a sumptuously divine Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding? This is but one of advantages of life in Australia!
It was only about ten years ago that I first made this summer Christmas pudding. It has become such a tradition since then that Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without it. (Mind you, I also make a traditional pudding, which can be eaten with hot custard).”
Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding
Ice Cream Christmas Pudding
1/2 cup chopped raisins
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup glacé cherries, chopped or whole
1/4 cup mixed peel
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
1/4 cup brandy, rum or fruit juice
1 litre softened chocolate ice-cream
1/2 cup blanched almonds, toasted & chopped
1/2 cup cream
Thickened cream to serve
Combine all the dried fruits in a bowl, add the brandy, rum or fruit juice. Stir the liquid through the fruit & leave to stand, covered, over night. (Don’t be tempted to add extra alcohol as the pudding will not freeze successfully with any addition to the specified amount!)
The next day, mix together the soaked fruit, softened ice-cream, almonds & cream. Stir well to combine, and pour into a 5 litre pudding bowl. Cover & freeze overnight, or until required.
To remove the pudding from the bowl, immerse the bowl for a few seconds in some hot water. Turn the bowl over onto a serving plate. Serve with thickened cream or cold custard.
“Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.” ~ Geoffrey B. Charlesworth
In just a few days time we will be heading yet again into the summer months, my least favourite months of the year weather wise, due to the suffocating humidity we usually experience here in the sub-tropics of Australia.
Purple and blue
Yes, the truth of the matter is, I strongly dislike the heat, and that will be the end of my whinging, I promise. I mean, surely there has to be a positive aspect, or even two, to the summer months?
This summer I will be making an extra effort to look for the more favourable aspects of the hot weather. During spring I have already begun to do so, by looking at my garden through wide open eyes, taking photos of the beautiful new growth that has popped up out of seemingly nowhere, overnight at times, to produce the most beautiful colours imaginable!
Shades of purple
Over the past two months I have constantly carted my camera around the garden with me to capture the beauty, before the heat sizzles the pretty colours away.
Today’s photos show just a smattering of the colour show in my garden.
To enhance my photos I have (finally) found a program on my computer which improves the colour and also resizes the photos, reducing the pixels, therefore speeding up the loading process of the photos onto the computer page.
Okay, okay, I know; everyone knows how to do this already. I can hear the groans from here. What can I say? I’m a slow learner, although a rather chuffed blogger, having learned something new today!
Continuing today with the third part of my “Lisnagar” story. Part one included close-up photos in and around the old homestead. Part two showed various old tractors and farming implements lying unused around the grounds of “Lisnagar”.
As you drive through the double gateway out the front of “Lisnagar”, if you look to the right you will see a massive wall of bamboo plants growing. You can’t miss it…it’s huge!
Apparently the bamboo is one hundred and fifty years old and has been a major topic of conversation between family and friends throughout the years. Legend has it that a giant snake resides in the vicinity of the bamboo. Whether he is there or not I really don’t know. I didn’t see him the day I took my photos, nor did I expect to bump into him!
Bamboo Passage
In the midst of the bamboo wall is an entry into a large bamboo cavern. Although the day I spent at “Lisnagar” was not a particularly hot day, you could feel a substantial drop in the temperature within the bamboo “room”. Apparently it is a cool area all year ‘round. I thought it would be an ideal place to set up a dining table at Christmastime, out of the sun and in an area so refreshing and cool!
Looking outside from the bamboo cavern
When my husband’s grandmother Esther (the eldest child of Edward and Ellen Twohill who built “Lisnagar”) was alive, someone had told her that the bamboo had been removed. Gran lived in Sydney at the time and was most distraught at the idea that the bamboo had gone. On our next visit north, we checked the bamboo situation out for her. It was still there.
Gran had married her husband Percival in 1912 at the Catholic Church in Murwillumbah. After the ceremony the wedding party had returned to “Lisnagar” where photos were taken in front of the bamboo.
The Wedding, 1912
This photo shows the young newly married couple on their big day in January of 1912, with Gran posing beautifully as the typical blushing bride in her gorgeous wedding dress. The distinguished grey hair gentleman standing behind the newly weds is Edward Twohill.
Not surprisingly, the bamboo cavern was the highlight of the day for my two modern daughters. They are far more interested in the here-and-now than concerning themselves about what-has-been!
For me, the whole package of the “Lisnagar” experience is a highlight in itself. The history of the home, the antique furniture, the architecture, the artwork, the grounds, the bamboo, but mostly the people, the ancestors of my husband and children, without whom I would not have the people I love the most today. 🙂
This quote, for me, pretty much sums up how I feel about the place I call home and I can well imaging it to be true for a number of people, even back in the days when Edward and Ellen shared their beautiful home with their children. These words fit perfectly….
“Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defence, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule”. ~ Frederick W. Robertson
This photo gives an idea of the height of the bamboo next to the parked cars!
Today I will continue with part two of my “Lisnagar” story. If you missed part one, where I showed some photographs of the house itself, you can see it here.
The old homestead of “Lisnagar” is in the quiet country village of Kynnumboon, on the banks of the Rous River. The home itself appears upon entering to be “the house that time forgot” and the very same can be said for the surrounding grounds.
This wheel no longer turns
Various farming implements and carts once drawn into town by draught horses are dotted throughout the property, unused, weeds growing through any crevices where they can manage to find light.
An old Dray Cart
The old garden shed would have likely seen many days of hard toil, perhaps carried out by Edward Twohill himself, the Irish immigrant who built the homestead in the early years of last century, to house himself, his wife and their large family.
An old garden shed
The look and size of some of the trees within the grounds would suggest that they were already on the land when Edward chose the property for his future home. Perhaps Edward planted some of these large trees himself. Who knows?
An old farming implement
Nowadays, this tree provides shelter for farming equipment which has long since passed its used by date. I wonder whether the Twohill children and their friends once climbed this tree, back in the glory days of “Lisnagar”.
Unused tractor
Edward Twohill was one of the early settlers in the Tweed area. He is also the great-great grandfather of my children. I don’t think any of my children realise just how fortunate they all are, knowing that this property was built and owned by one of their ancestors, but one day they will, when they have children of their own to show the house to.
Here at “Lisnagar”, my children have the opportunity to not only know who their ancestors were, but to see how they lived, walk inside the rooms of the home they once called home and catch a glimpse of how their lives may have been.
I can imagine it must be quite some experience to know you are walking along the same roads, through the same grounds, that your own ancestors once walked upon!
Typically Country
I know there was one area of the grounds that both of my girls got a kick out of seeing and being in, but that story will have to wait until tomorrow. 🙂
