Category Archives: my garden

The Zephyr brought joys.

family, food and cooking, my garden, , , , , , ,
Liam’s papercrafting

While my son “Soldier” was away for a few weeks, his wife whom I call Joy brought all four children to California to see the grandparents. They came by train, the California Zephyr line, which gave me an excuse to tell them stories about my yearly summer train trips as a child to see my grandmother. The images that my mind retains through the decades related to those journeys are vivid. Many railway experiences of the current Amtrak era are worlds apart from what I knew, but I’m happy that the children had a new adventure, and even slept overnight on the train, which I never did.

Their lively group stayed with me five nights, and visited Joy’s family nearby as well. We were so busy all those days, I barely remembered to take any pictures, much less write about our fun.

braiding seagrass

Liam’s side of our Bananagrams game, using all his tiles.

We went to church, to the beach, to the cemetery — bringing along yarrow, zinnias, snapdragons and sunflowers for the children to lay on their grandpa’s grave. They are too young to remember him, so when we got home I showed them a photo slide show on the computer.

We took walks along the creek and to the neighborhood school’s playground. I read from Eleanor Farjeon’s The Little Bookroom as I had read to their cousins last month, and laughed hilariously over “The King’s Daughter Who Cried for the Moon.”

The children combed my garden to find everything I would confirm as edible. They gathered hundreds of manzanita berries from under that little tree and chewed on them, spitting out the several rock-hard seeds in each. The strawberry tree fruits are ripening now, but the tree has grown so tall that they needed a ladder and a broom to knock them down.

These children are, as we say, “good eaters.” No matter what strange concoction Grandma has made, they want to try it — even my ultra-spicy pudding that I make with the pulp left over from making ginger broth. When oatmeal or buckwheat porridge was on the breakfast menu, they loved having a smorgasbord of toppings, everything from peanut butter and milk to chopped dried apricots and this seed mix.

I was given a dozen homegrown peaches recently and I used a recipe from Smitten Kitchen to make a cobbler, half of which we ate for dessert one night, and the remainder next morning for the third course of our breakfast, after grapefruit and scrambled eggs.

It was delectable. Where the recipe called for vanilla or almond extract I used almond. I think if I make it again I will increase the amount of fruit, and use a little less cream or butter in the scone topping, with confidence of still being able to call it Plenty Rich. And I would like to try it with plums — or any fruit!

My dear people are headed back home to Colorado now, and the cobbler is gone…. The taste of scones and peaches is already fading, but Joy and her young joys made a big deposit of sweetness in my heart, to flavor many days to come.

Sunflowers

bees, my garden

One afternoon this week I dedicated a solid four hours to gardening. It made me very happy, but also stiff! And it brought to my attention more work that needs doing. In my front yard I need to divide irises, and change some things around, maybe plant a tree or two before the end of fall. I cut off some giant branches of the Delta Sunflowers; their limbs get so heavy and extended that they often break — partially — and lie on the walkway, or in the neighbor’s driveway, while they go on blooming.

I took the nice blooms off and stuck them in a vase outside. These flowers are home to ants and other tiny animals that I don’t need in the house. I took this picture through the (dirty) window showing the cheerful view I get while I am standing at the kitchen sink.

Twenty-four hours later, a bee was still finding nectar on one sunflower.

Waiting for Queen Lime Orange.

my garden, summer, , ,

 

After seeing the beautiful zinnias that several of my fellow bloggers have showed on their sites, I was plotting  through the winter how I could create my own display, featuring my favorite colors that I rarely find in the local nurseries anymore. Others have told me that they have had a similar experience to mine, of ending up with mostly magenta flowers, when they buy a mix of zinnia starts in a six-pack.

So I bought four packets of seeds, and started most of them in the greenhouse. When many of those seedlings mysteriously died, I bought single plants in the nurseries, 4-inch pots in which the buds were beginning to open, and didn’t appear to be magenta. Two coral colored to begin with, and later, true orange. And I planted seeds again, at the end of June, directly into the ground or pots.

The seeds I planted the most of were called Fruity Beauty mix. They came in a clear cellophane packet, but online they are advertised to look like this:

Now various of the seed-started are beginning to bloom.  I’m not sure which are which, I think I got a little mixed up, and lost some tags. Maybe when they have fully opened and all bloomed I will be able to tell more. But I think I am still waiting for the Queen Lime Orange ones. Every day there is a new flower to look at and rejoice over.

I’m also thrilled to have eggplant this summer; and true Echinacea Purpurea, Purple Coneflower, which flourished for years and years in my old garden. The interesting subspecies of echinacea in various colors that were installed in my new landscape have mostly died out. It took me a few years to find good plants of the “regular” type at the right time, but now I those are in bloom, too.

The white echinacea are very enduring, too. They are in the front garden, and faithfully grow up tall and elegant every summer. They seem to make more flowers every season.

This last picture I think of as Lovely Layers. There is a whole community of plants at their peak here, from the echinacea on the right to the volunteer sunflower poking out from under the asparagus fronds on the left… yellow abutilon against the fence and golden marguerite in front of that, and even lamb’s ears and salvia sticking up. My cup runneth over with these sunny gifts of high summer.

Deadheading Gazania

my garden,

This morning I visited some church friends to see their vermiculture setup. Before I ever started my remodeling project almost four years ago, I knew that I wanted to raise worms, but I have put it off until such time as I could make mental and physical space for the project.

When I got home I did some online shopping for various styles of premade stacking trays designed for this kind of farming, and I ran across a video of a man who has quite a large operation and thousands of worms in a giant bin. I took a picture as the video was running, when I saw the sign on the end of this long container of vermiculture:

It’s hard to read, so I will tell you that it says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

After lunch, I found myself in the garden where the gazanias have been needing deadheading for months; suddenly I decided to settle down and just do it. These plants  have been proliferating since I freed them from being crammed in a pot. It’s hard to believe all of them had been in that one pot… well, maybe it was two or three pots. But they do multiply! They are constantly making “drop-ins,” as my long-ago neighbor called the self-sown volunteers.

There is so much variety in the colors and designs of the flowers, it’s always a joy to take a good look at them, in the back corner of the yard where they are easily seen when you’re sitting at the umbrella table. Here you can see them in front of the Jerusalem Sage and the Hopbush.

I had a quiet and peaceful day, even with my morning worm research outing, and then Vespers in the evening. There was plenty of stillness in which to remember God, and there was COLOR!