Can Someone get the Feathers Out of My Jam?

In-keeping with yesterday's culinary post, I submit this post for your entertainment.

This one involves my Mum.

That means it should be quite amusing.

Earlier in the week I happened to look out our bedroom window over to what remains of our kitchen garden.

It's frosty at the moment, and there's not much left of the summer's growth, some strawberries struggling with the morning frost, the last of the spring onions and some leeks that have taken nine months to not really grow much at all. There's also the remnants of what once were verdant basil bushes that went to seed and then died. We haven't pulled them up yet.

I was delighted to see two gentle parrots quietly helping themselves to the seeds. My Beloved and I stood and watched them for a moment before I bethought myself of the camera.

Sorry about the quality of the image. It was a grey day and I took the picture through the fly screen on the window so that I didn't startle them.


We think they were rosellas.

Of course, in a quirky coincidence there is another sort of rosella commonly known in Australia. It is a fruit that is often used to make jam. Many people love rosella jam, but it is not commercially available. You have to know someone who grows rosellas, and not many people seem to grow rosellas because the fruit is only ever used to make jam.

Vicious circle, that.

So when I was talking to my mother on the phone and told her that we had rosellas on our basil bush she was a little confused.

In her experience rosellas are usually grown on a rosella bush.

How many parrots does it take to make jam?
... approximately none!