Category Archives: bees

We bloom and drink, and wait.

bees, my garden, other gardens, , , , , , , , ,

In Wisconsin my daughter Pearl has been tending a large house and garden for about eight years. She’s much more artistic and organized than I, about all of the design and execution of beautiful spaces indoors and out. She does all the work herself, even to the point of laying bricks to create a quiet and somewhat hidden corner to sit in, with morning sun and afternoon shade. It’s a wonderful spot winter or summer, and I enjoyed it with Pearl on one of my visits. This time, she had little time for sitting, what with being the wedding planner for Maggie. While she was bustling about, on my first morning after arriving late at night, I made the rounds to see all the flowers that are still blooming everywhere.

Her hydrangeas are gigantic — and I saw others in the area that are just as impressive. Along the side of her driveway, and in big pots, a multitude of plants all grow thickly and complement each other;  she doesn’t know the names of them all. She showed Izzy and me this Blackberry Lily, iris domestica, displaying its seeds — something different!

At the airbnb where some of the wedding party stayed, closer to the venue, I sat on a wide porch where giant trees shaded the lawn and tire swing. Pearl’s house has similar ones, though maybe not as tall, that charm me at any time of year.

One day Roger and Izzy, Lora, Pearl and I went to a nature preserve in the middle of wide fields that are being restored to wildness from agricultural land. The asters provided the brightest splashes of color in the midst of the various drying grasses and seed heads, and bees were all over the several species of them.

Most of the Gray-headed Coneflowers (Ratibida pinnata) had faded to simply gray heads, but this one was still going strong:

Hairy White Oldfield Aster

The temperature had dropped some, rain was coming in. Everything was delicious.

Common Comfrey

Wild carrot seed heads, here and above.

That encounter with native plants of Wisconsin pretty much filled my Nature cup. When I came home, just as at Pearl’s, this first morning I wandered around and around again to see how my own garden had fared in my absence. In spite of all the unfinished projects waiting for me, I felt warmly welcomed. It’s been a little rainy, and cloudy. For some reason my furnace is not turning on, so I gave in and just opened the door to the coolness, and put on a flannel shirt.

I guess the Japanese anemones heard me saying that I plan to move them to a different spot, and they are putting on a display five times bigger than ever in their ten years of life. I’ll have to reconsider… If nothing else, I will at least wait until they finish blooming before I move them. Other things blooming now are bulbine….

The salvia is producing more blooms since I rather tardily trimmed the old ones.

And always, always, the pomegranate bushes are blooming, from spring until frost! Rosemary is flowering right now, too.

I’m finding it quieting to my spirit to be among the plants as they adjust to the changes of fall. I thought the urgency and too-muchness I was feeling leading up to my time away would be waiting for me when I got home, but it seems not.

This humble native succulent is quietly waiting, not demanding more than a few drops of water from time to time. It appreciates a little shade. When I bought it, there was a sign nearby saying it was not ready for transplanting yet. So it was just the plant for me. We will be ready when we’re ready!

Busy, with mouse.

bees, food and cooking, my garden, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Getting things done. It’s so much fun to check off a few boxes on my “After Greece” list. One of the tasks was to get the fountain leveled. Just before the stonemason was going to come to do that, the pump motor died; I’m glad that happened just before, not after, the leveling. The man who always cleans my fountain when I let it turn green, about once a year, got me a new motor and installed it while I was out one afternoon. That was easy! The stonemason leveled it last night, and gave it a more secure brick-and-mortar base.

I returned from Greece two weeks ago but haven’t got back in the cooking groove. Part of the reason is, I hadn’t made it to the store to buy supplies, and was trying to assemble meals with whatever I could find in the cupboards and freezer. This morning I took my one onion, a can of tomatoes, a small container of mixed sauteed vegetables I’d stored in the freezer, and my home-grown fava beans also stored in the freezer, and made a really nice soup. “Before Greece” I’d roasted all the peeled garlic cloves in the fridge, which was a giant bag — I threw a bunch of those in, too. The soup was good hot, and also cold, as I found out later when the day had warmed up and it didn’t seem necessary to warm up dinner as well.

Recently I decided I wanted to mulch my vegetable plantings with rice straw the way I did ten years ago. So this morning I drove to the feed store where I hadn’t been since then, and was pleased to park next to the shed where baby chicks were peeping. While waiting for the bale to get loaded in the back of my Subaru, I noticed that they had not only rice straw, but rye, wheat and teff as well. The fibers of the teff straw were different from all the others, appearing to be fine and fluffy; I’d like to try that for mulch sometime.

In the past it was a hassle to keep the straw bale dry in the winter and at the same time prevent the rats from bedding down in it and chewing on the tarp that was protecting it, so I thought I’d keep it in the garage this time. Problem was, there was no space for it, unless I would get rid of the plastic storage bins that have been piling up in there as I empty them one by one. So I took them all out and put a notice on our parish email list asking for takers.

My goddaughter Esther came over midafternoon to get some lavender to use in cosmetics. I loaded her bag with rosemary, oregano, and yerba buena herb as well. She said that everything she cooks, if she puts oregano in it, it tastes better. And she’s not even Greek!

I have several types of English lavender growing here; she thought the small, darker purple blooms had the nicest scent, so I made her a couple of bundles of those stems only.

While she was still here, another parishioner stopped by to get some bins. She took almost all of them, and later another person took the remainder.

After the first batch of bins was gone, Esther and I were still standing in the driveway when I saw a field mouse run past. What? At that time of day one doesn’t expect to see such a critter, and I actually haven’t seen a mouse around here in ages, at any time of day, though we are always battling rats that come up from the creek. I could only guess that the mouse had been inside the bale of straw. Uh-oh. Now I am not sure about storing it in the garage.

Son Pathfinder has a new house, with new-to-him plants scattered around it. So he texted me a photo of one of them, wondering if I knew what it was. I had seen an almost identical one on my neighborhood walk the other day, but my Seek app couldn’t identify it correctly. We kept looking up plants and trading ideas back and forth for an hour via text (we’re very slow texters), and finally figured out that it is a yucca: “The flowers are edible and have a peppery flavor. Fruits can be roasted or dried and are sweet and fig-like.”

Here, the bees are finding the teucrium to be full of their favorite sweet food.
And with that I will say good-bye for now.

 

African Blue Basil

bees, my garden, nature, , , , , , , ,

This morning I switched my walking route to the less-frequented, unpaved path by the creek, and I was alone down there. But for a minute I could hear above me on the paved path, behind the trees, a woman talking on her mobile phone. She had it set on speaker, and I could hear both sides of the conversation. The woman near me said, “How is your diet? Are you eating the right things?” and I caught the Woman-on-Speaker saying, “I just can’t eat salad,” after which Woman No. 1 said, “I know people think Special K tastes like cardboard, but I eat a bowl of it every night before bed. It helps me sleep good!” And then they were out of range….

Bristly Oxtongue

That conversation is slightly connected, by being about things we do or do not eat, to the title I almost gave to this post, something about “Bristly Oxtongue” — but it was a little too rough. Now that I think about it, I do see why the plant was given that name, though when I have cooked beef (ox) tongue, I never thought of the bumps as bristly. And the botanical one I saw on the path was in its glory, such as that is, with prolific flowers on a 4-ft high plant. I have identified it in the past, but lately don’t tend to pay attention to the various thistly and bristly plants out there.

Another plant that is not my favorite, and which I wish I could keep far away from my garden, is Bermuda Grass. When I was growing up, the birds brought its seeds to the lawn my father had planted around our new house, and from then on it was a Bermuda Grass lawn, which has a lot to say for it in the dry and hot Central Valley of California. It needed watering less than weekly. It was a scratchy and coarse kind of grass to play on, and in the winter it goes dormant and brown, but it’s very hardy in every way. This plant has been encroaching from my neighbor’s back yard to mine for as long as I’ve lived here, and I am forever fighting its advance.

Today I realized that one reason this stretch of path is surprisingly green, is that it has a healthy crop of Bermuda Grass growing on the sides.

I saw quite a few other plants along the way. Curly dock reminds me of the rural bus stop of my childhood, where that plant was always growing.

Back in the home garden, my cultivated species are filling my cup of contentment. I have strawflowers for the first time, which the skippers love. If I didn’t have the ability to put a big digital photo here, I wouldn’t be able to see the long but miniature tongue the skipper is dipping down into that flower. Drink up, little skipper! Be my guest!

African Blue Basil

The plant you have been waiting for is the African Blue Basil — at least, that’s what the tag on the little pot said, that I brought home from the nursery. I just read about it online, and it says that the leaves are purple when they first sprout, and mine aren’t… It also is supposedly a perennial, which would be nice. It’s magnificent, and I saw two species of honeybees among the dozen or more were working it. It’s the latest dish that the pollinators are tasting on the smorgasbord in the Glad Garden.

The fountain is dry, but not I.

bees, bread, my garden, travel, , , , , ,

This morning the fountain-cleaner Bill did his good work scrubbing and flushing out my fountain, and then left it empty and turned off. I am traveling a lot in the next month and don’t want it to become a swamp while I’m gone.

Out my bedroom window.

The garden is looking pretty good right now because it’s entering the flowery time of year, and because I’ve had several days to focus on it, to be out there noticing not just little weeds that are easily pulled out of mulch, but this and that glorious scent and sight.

On my neighborhood walks, too, I’m spying perfection of Japanese maples…

…and at church, just look at the wisteria! I could only fit about half of its span in the frame:

Springtime is downright boggling, to the mind and the heart.

During the few days that were cloudy and gloomy, I washed the dirt from my hands and put them into the sourdough. My recent loaf is very tasty, but it would not rise — well, not much. After several hours I gave up and hoped for oven spring, which did not happen. So I got this stunted result, shown after I had sliced it to store in the freezer, so I can take out one slice (2 1/4 inch tall) at a time.

Soon I was back outside again, planting three butternut squash starts and a Juliet tomato plant in the planter boxes. There is no frost in the forecast, and I will soon be gone to Wisconsin for a while, for the first of the grandchild weddings. My original plan was to just wait until mid-May this year to plant summer vegetables, but it seems worth the risk at this point to get them in sooner.

We Orthodox are entering Holy Week on Sunday. I will be away from my parish for most of it, and through Bright Week, and away from my home and garden, so any real-time reports I might have time for will be field reports, or travelogues. For now, I’m soaking up all the familiar and beloved elements of my world to fortify myself against the asphalt and airports that lie between me and daughter Pearl’s garden. Once I arrive there, I will be well nourished by hugs and kisses from a dozen or more family members, and won’t even think of my lemon tree or coral bells back here.

But not quite yet! When I noticed the bee with its head in the lithodora (picture at top), I was mostly looking at the Blue-eyed Grass nearby. It is so sweet it breaks my heart.