Looters in my garden!! [Video Proof]

Plus 3 refreshing drink recipes for late summer.

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Hello there!

It’s late summer here in Australia. Not my favourite season. I much prefer winter. Especially in my peri-menopausal years, the hot muggy weather has me seeking cool drinks, cool rooms and cool knickers.

If the heat isn’t enough to deal with, there’s wicked gangsters prowling our garden as I write this. You might think they’re funny and adorable! You’ll soon learn the truth…..

There’s not much I can do but console myself with an icy homemade elixir - made with fresh ingredients from our late summer garden.

Here are three recipes (including printable pdf) for you. Cheers to summer crops you get to actually enjoy!

#1 Lemon Myrtle Cordial

Lemon Myrtle is an Australian native plant with fresh-lemon + an-Australiana-twist flavoured leaves. They can be infused into tea, cordial, gin, vodka and more!

Lemon Myrtle is a wonderful Australian native plant that’s been used by indigenous Australians for thousands of years as food and medicine. It grows as a small tree or shrub. The lemon scented leaves can be used in teas, cordials, added to cakes, cookies, yoghurt, stews, soups and more. Birds and butterflies love it too.

Freshly picked Lemon Myrtle leaves to make cordial. They can also be dehydrated and ground into a powder for easy addition to baking and cooking. Or just pick some leaves and crush them in your hand and inhale! Divine!

Lemon Myrtle Cordial

INGREDIENTS

2 cups fresh Lemon Myrtle Leaves (choose fresh shoots and young leaves as older leaves can get a hint of bitterness)

1 cup lemon juice to boost the lemoniness of the cordial

2 cups sugar or 1 cup of honey (or to taste)

1 TBSP lemon zest

4 cups water

METHOD

Place the water, sugar/honey, lemon juice and lemon rind in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes until all the sugar or honey is dissolved. Add the Lemon Myrtle leaves and steep for 10 - 20 minutes. Strain into bottles and store in the fridge for 2 weeks. Use as a concentrate. Add a little to sparkling water with lots of ice cubes and a fresh Lemon Myrtle Leaf and lemon slice.

#2 Cucumber Lime Cooler - My personal favourite!

This is part mocktail, part green smoothie and can easily be made into a cocktail if you need to. The combo of lime, mint and cucumber is a cooling balm to my hot and sticky soul.

Cucumber Lime Cooler - 10/10 recommend especially on hot sticky days

We have a lime tree that fruits prolifically most of the year. I think it does so well because it’s right outside the chicken house and our free ranging girls love to shelter under its leafy shade on hot days leaving their rich manure.

Staying cool under the lime tree. Smart!

Another reason we have a lot of limes is the cockatoos don’t eat them.

Not sure why. Those vandals will destroy a crop of lemons or oranges in minutes just for the sport of it!

Bastards.

Don’t let their bright yellow plume of head feathers and cheeky antics fool you. They’re the thugs of the Australian bird world.

We’ve given up hope of getting a single pecan from our majestic tree. The cockies get every single one. I wouldn’t mind so much if they ate them all, but they don’t. They pluck the nuts from the tree while they’re still too green for us to harvest, and chuck most on the ground untouched.

Then there’s the passionfruit.

We’ve been quietly excited about our young passionfruit vine. Ian spent a Saturday building the trellis and carefully selecting the varieties. We planted 3 vines nine months ago and the first one is already bearing two dozen fruit. Our latest rhythm has been to wander out there after work with a cold drink and check them for ripeness.

Alas! We came home last week to find 7 of our precious passionfruit ripped from the vine.

We know exactly who’s responsible for this carnage! These characters…..

You may see a cute cockatoo. I see a villain.

We knew if we didn’t cover the passionfruit vine in netting right then there’d be none left by the following afternoon. So as the light was fading and the mozzies were biting we hauled bird netting awkwardly over the trellis.

So far so good. It seems to have done the trick!

It hasn’t completely deterred them though. The rascals fly in every afternoon squawking obnoxiously overhead. It’s 4pm and I hear them coming now as I write this! They make such a racket you can’t hear each other speak over their noise! But it’s a different story when they get to the pecan tree. Then they sure know how to be silent. You can be standing right underneath 20 of them and you wouldn’t know they were there except for the sound of the nuts dropping on the ground.

I think they’re out there doing it right now. I’ll try to get a video for you…..

Could you see them? There were several in the tree just then. Could you hear the nuts dropping? So quiet, so sneaky!

If that’s not enough to get you on side here’s another story about these nefarious beaky felons.

A friend likes to feed the birds on her deck. She puts out seed for the lorikeets, king parrots, and rosellas who come to visit. But cockatoos have got wind of the daily free feed and come and throw their weight around.

If my friend happens to be busy or running late, these bird mafia look her in the eye through her kitchen window as they slowly and systematically rip out her precious succulents one by one until she comes up with the goods. Brutes!

Anyway back to this yummy cooling drink….

Cucumber Lime Cooler Recipe

This is a very good use of the limes the cockatoos have graciously let us keep as well as mint and cucumbers from the garden.

INGREDIENTS

2 cucumbers

1/2 cup of lime juice (5 - 10 limes)

1 cup of fresh mint leaves

4 tbsp sugar

Zest from one lime

1 cup ice

1.5 cups water

METHOD

Place everything except water in a blender and blend until smooth. Add water and blend to mix. Serve with extra ice, slice of lime and sprig of mint.

Optional: Add a dash of gin or vodka.

ENJOY!

#3 Acerola Cherry Syrup

Acerola Cherry or Barbados Cherry is very very high in vitamin C. We planted this tree near our gate and many mornings on our way out for the school run, whoever got out to open the gate would pick a handful for us all to snack on in the car.

This tree is more of a shrub with no thorns so it’s a good choice for small gardens. It loves a good pruning and fruits well afterwards. The crop ripens quickly and is short lived but we usually get two crops a year. One in Autumn and a smaller one in Spring. Fruit fly don’t get a chance to ruin them and the birds do like them but they seem to leave us plenty. The fruit is tart - not as sweet and juicy as regular cherries but still good to eat fresh.

Use this syrup in desserts, cordials and cocktails or as a vitamin C boost though I can’t be certain how much vitamin C is in the syrup because heating the cherries may degrade the vitamin C. Best to eat fresh if you’re looking for health benefits.

Acerola Cherry Syrup Recipe

INGREDIENTS

500g of fresh ripe Acerola Cherries

3 cups water

500g sugar (approx)

Juice of one lemon

METHOD

Place the cherries in a saucepan with 3 cups water. Cover and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. I like to mash them up a bit with a potato masher then let them steep a bit longer (off the heat) before moving on to the next step.

Remove the solids by straining the liquid through a fine seive.

Measure how much liquid you have. For every 100ml of liquid add 90g sugar.

Place liquid and sugar and lemon juice into saucepan and simmer until sugar is dissloved.

Bottle and refrigerate. Or freeze in ice cube trays then once frozen place in a container or zip lock bag in the freezer.

Will keep for 3 months in the fridge and up to a year in the freezer.

Late Summer Drinks From The Garden Feb 2025

1.91MB ∙ PDF file

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xxx Katrina

PS: We’re currently building a bird proof enclosure. We’ve already planted new pecans there so we’ll get a harvest one day soon!