Category Archives: my garden

Christmastime River

Christmas, family, food and cooking, my garden, , , , ,

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The days surrounding and including Christmas Day have been full and flowing with love and friendship and good times. It feels like a river in which I am dreamily floating along, but somehow not up to speed, not able to live up to my expectations for myself or participate in all the activities planned by others that I’d like to. For example:

Cookies: I bought almond paste, but didn’t bake any cookies. Instead, I’ve been nibbling away at one log of paste, and thinking of making stöllen with the other package. Pearl and Joy brought plenty of cookies, so no one was lacking in that department.

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Scout gave me nut brittle and chocolate-dipped pretzels he had made, for when the cookies run out.

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Christmas Dinner: I marinated my becoming-traditional leg of lamb for Christmas dinner, with rosemary and wine and garlic. Then on Christmas Day I overcooked it!

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It was a great feast that day, with lots of vegetables: roasted butternut squash from my garden, sautéed mushrooms and sweet red peppers, creamed spinach — plus tamales! I guess we were trying to keep track of too many courses at once. Most people loved the lamb anyway, and I will make lentil soup out of the leftovers.

We ate at the big table using all of its leaves, covered with a new green tablecloth I got on Freecycle, and a new table runner that carried the theme of my evergreen tree with its birds.

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Jamie’s mountain goat

Decorating: I’m tired of some of my decorations; I’d like to get some good quality faux greenery to hang on the railings in the future. This year I hung tiny LED lights on the manzanita branch and they were pretty, but a real chore to manage; I think I’ll just take them down now that the first batteries wore down, and be low-tech with my branch in the future. This year I didn’t put any lights around the kitchen window, so I’ll have to get in touch with other sources of winter cheer.

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Caroling: Sixteen of us were here for our usual Christmas Eve festivities, mostly squeezed into about six hours during which families arrived from other towns, unloaded their cars full of children, food and gifts, and for some, sleeping gear; prepared and ate dinner; arranged ourselves and our presents around the living room and took turns opening gifts in a civilized and grateful manner; re-grouped to eat cookies and eggnog and put some children to bed; departed to our rooms or other houses and towns very late…

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That wasn’t enough time to sing carols, which was a disappointment to many of us, but with the little children’s needs… Just now thinking that perhaps I could plan an easier meal somehow next Christmas Eve, so that we could sing carols before dinner?

The day after Christmas “we” did make giant snowflakes, with instructions from Kit. And we did read Christmas stories, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for years. So it was different, but very nice.  Some of us took a walk on Christmas Day, and others a longer hike the next. Soldier made more finishing touches on my greenhouse and the playhouse, and I began to clean the patio. I held Jamie a lot and he fell asleep on my chest as we sat by the fire.

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Scout loved the collection of rocks he was given.
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Swiss chard in the front lawn this morning
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Maggie gave Jack some treats for Christmas.

Cleaning: This is the second year in a row that I didn’t get around to dusting the living room furniture before the festivities! On Christmas morning when I was alone downstairs I noticed the dust on the piano… I’m lucky to be in a family where probably no one noticed things like that, especially with the humans and torn-up wrapping paper filling the space and all over the piano and other furniture… gl P1030228

 

 

 

It’s been cold, but that didn’t prevent Scout and Ivy from playing in the fountain from which the ice had only recently melted. One night an action figure got frozen in up to his waist — he was the same guy whom I’d seen underwater in the tarps that covered the planting boxes until last week.

I’ve spent a lot of effort morning and evening the last few days covering the lemon tree, melting ice in the fountain, and going out before sunup to survey the estate.

Only concern for my fountain could get me to do that! I was rewarded by seeing the various plants with their frosty crystals. The Iceland poppy shrivels to a bright crisp when it’s 27°, but by midday it relaxes as the thermometer rises, and sways gracefully again.

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Tonight may be the last of the freezing temps for a while; I will go out soon and turn on the fountain to run through the coldest hours in hopes of keeping the water in the pipes from freezing completely.

In this new week we are looking forward to our parish feast day, and to Theophany. It’s good to be carried along on that river, the flow of the church calendar that keeps me centered on my life in Christ. I am thankful this Christmas, for Him and for all His gifts.

December and my watered gardens.

Christmas, church, my garden, , , ,

It is a little strange IMG_1228to finish the installation of my garden at the beginning of winter. Some of the plants and trees are going into their dormant stage soon after being planted, and are not likely to be very showy until next summer. I’m thinking of the coneflowers. So I ran out and bought three six-packs of Iceland poppies to plant in that area to break up the expanse of wood product that will be staring at me. And some Dutch iris bulbs.

Much mulch, that’s what you see now. The bare branches of fig and plum don’t show up against the brownness. The paths are one kind of mulch, called Playground Mulch. It’s soft and laid on thickly so the grandchildren won’t scrape their knees on flagstones or whatever I might have used instead. Neither will they get muddy, because there will be no dirt to be seen! The other kind of mulch, coarser but a similar color at this point, covers all the planting beds and hides the drip irrigation lines; it is tucked in around every flower or shrub. This is how you do it if you want to conserve water, and I do….

The children might get wet, though, if they stick their fingers into the fountain. It’s finally all put together and hooked up to its new electrical conduit deep under the pathway, and I can turn it on very easily whenever I want. Then its lovely water sounds provide a needed auditory focus and delight during this period when the plants are small and mostly not flowering.

Even when it’s not turned on it makes me happy, sitting there in the middle of everything and marking the intersection of the four directions, not quite the points of the compass, but pointing to the corners of the space. I don’t like to call it a yard now that I’ve invested so much in the beautification of my property. It was a yard, when it was all a big slab of dirt, waiting to be turned into something, with heavy machinery and other non-living stuff all over the place. But now, now it is a watered garden.

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The unfinished tasks are likely to be completed before Christmas. In the meantime I am giving my attention to the holiday, and rain is watering the garden, too, so even the poppies are droopy and not photogenic. What I do find photogenic is my Christmas tree, which Pearl helped me set up and decorate last week. Christmas tree 2015

I realized last month that I could not manage a cut tree of the size I wanted, so I bought an artificial tree, and I’m happy with it. Even the thought of getting an artificial tree caused me to panic at first, because I had no idea where to start looking, never having given a thought to that sort of tree before. But my goddaughter Sophia is an interior decorator and she immediately helped me. It’s been easier than I expected.

I couldn’t resist buying a darling live tree in a pot as well, but I’ll show it later. It’s still outdoors in the dark at the moment. Oh – but I see that it is showing in the photo above, with the hose caught on its branches. I don’t know where it will go when I bring it in, but I will decorate it with birds and pine cones.

Today was the feast of St. Nicholas. Everything was lovely at church. We have been having Matins before Divine Liturgy Sunday mornings, and I’ve helped with that service most Sundays, which means that I arrive at about 8:30. Matins is all about the Resurrection of Christ, so the significance of his rising from the dead is what we sing about for an hour straight, and that’s before we even get to the Divine Liturgy.

When both of us are in church, I hold my goddaughter Mary, whom I wrote about here and who is now nine months old already! I carry her up for Communion, and like to keep her with me as long as possibl3be58-nicholasilluminatede afterward just because she’s so sweet. Today as we stood in line we looked up at the chandelier that was still swinging gently from when it was earlier set in motion to accompany a hymn to the Theotokos. We stood next to a candle stand for a couple of minutes and watched a score of candles shining. I sang along with the choir, to her, “Receive the Body of Christ; taste the Fountain of Immortality.” Then we did, and our hearts were refreshed.

This glorious Lord’s Day —  It all fills up the soul and tires the body!  Today after the service I worked in the church bookstore that is open during the agape meal, so I didn’t get home until 2:00, exhausted.

This evening we listened to some Christmas music, and Kit built a fire to cozy us up. It feels like December!

Not by singing and sitting.

my garden,
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Getting the paths leveled and straight.

 

Gardens are not made by singing “Oh how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.
~Rudyard Kipling

What does make a garden is thinking and planning, digging and preparing good soil, marking out paths and providing for water.

You build any needed hardscape in the form of trellises or boxes, retaining walls, patios and paths.

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Fine craftsman installing the trellises that he made.

 

You get some plants and arrange them so that they are in the right relation to the other plants, and to the sunlight. You place them in the ground in such a way that their roots can spread out and take advantage of that good soil.

The paths here are made of three layers: a layer of weed cloth on the leveled soil, an inch or two of base rock on top of that, to be followed by a couple of inches of path mulch. Don’t ask me what that is, because I haven’t seen it yet; I am going on the recommendation of Landscape Lady who has it in her yard. The final layer of path will be the last step in the whole landscaping project.

I haven’t been doing much physical work, but I spend a lot of time sweeping and wiping the floors inside the house after I track in the clay mud. The other day after the paths got their layer of base rock, I realized that I was tracking the mud from the patio that hadn’t been swept in weeks, so I swept it. That was my contribution to progress. GLP1020753After the rock is smoothed out with a rake, it has to be tamped down by someone with muscle equal to all the pounding foot-by-foot until he has flattened all the paths very hard. The playhouse served as a coat rack, and the snowball bush gleamed on the afternoon.GLP1020749Today was the big day when the first of the plants went in, most of the dononea or hop-bushes along the fences. I could have helped with this if I hadn’t been running to the store or in the kitchen for those hours, making a very involved meal for a new mom. I did dash outside a few times to take pictures. Today it was the womenfolk, Landscape Lady herself and her assistant. GL P1020778They lovingly and carefully put the bushes in their new home, and then I sang,
“Oh, how beautiful!”

It’s a Eureka.

agriculture, birds, family, food and cooking, friends, my garden, nature, ,

I am now the proud owner of a lemon tree, for the first time in my life. Unless you count my father’s ten acres of lemons that I helped to pick when I was about twelve; I also learned how to drive the tractor down the rows a few yards at a time to catch up with the pickers and make it easy to load boxes on the trailer.P1020744

When I tell people that I am planning for a lemon tree, without fail they ask me if it will be a Meyer lemon. No, it will not. I don’t know if Meyers are often grown commercially, but my father always showed scorn at the mere mention of a Meyer lemon, because they weren’t Real Lemons. All of my experience my life long has been with the old standard variety, Eureka, so that is what I wanted.

The Meyers are more frost hardy. If there had been a market for them, my father might have been wise to consider Meyers, because his lemon crop was ruined by frost so many times that he eventually pulled out those trees and planted more of the orange trees that were safer and more profitable. I’ve been living most of my adult life we don’t get a citrus-killing frost very often, but just in case, my tree will be planted under the canopy of my huge pine. If temps in the 20’s are predicted I can cover my baby, and/or put Christmas lights on it for a little extra heat.

This would be a good time to give you one of my recipes using (Eureka) lemons. I see I’ve already shared my favorite Lemon Poppyseed Sandwich Cookies, Lemon Curd, and Egg Lemon Soup. Here’s a different one, a recipe it seems I’ve never transcribed into a computer document, which is also one of my favorite savory dishes. Lemon juice is not cooked into the stew, but juicy lemon wedges are served alongside bowls of these beans at the table and squeezed over in the desired amount.

When I discovered this recipe and tried it for the first time — maybe it came from Organic Gardening magazine in the 70’s? — it reminded me so much of the beans I ate in Turkey that I wrote the Turkish word as the main title of the recipe copied into my funky notebook.

GREEK BEANS

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I don’t want to take time to type in the recipe right now because I have been so busy for several days, I am about to crash, and  hope to get sleep for another busy tomorrow. Much of the hubbub has to do with the garden project. At times four or five people have been working at once, on three different parts of the plan.P1020680

Soldier son came over again and finished the planting boxes. He also got the Craigslist playhouse off the driveway and into its final resting place, after building a foundation and floor and then moving it on to the spot that he had carefully leveled. P1020697

These pictures were taken a couple of days ago and already a lot more progress has been made; I hope that next week I can show you the paths all complete in their several layers.

Today the workers didn’t need me to make decisions or anything, so I caught up with some friends. First Elsie and I took a walk, which we’ve been trying for months to coordinate our schedules for. I took her on my favorite bike path loop which doesn’t require getting in a car to go anywhere.

When we got back to the house we stood out on the sidewalk looking up at the sunflowers and wondering why the birds haven’t eaten the seeds. Her eyes traveled up a little higher and spied a kestrel on the roof of my house! I am a great one for not seeing birds; if I had seen this one I wouldn’t have known what it was. But Elsie once saw a raptor like this grab a blue jay from her back yard so she read all about them. She also told me a story about an Australian woman she met who had lost her small dog to a hawk who swooped down and carried the tiny creature off.

I decided that today was the best day to cut the sunflower heads off, because if the birds don’t want them, I do, and I don’t want them getting rained on again and getting moldy. I went into the garage to get my loppers, and lop, lop, lop — the three plants with the seeds big enough to find and eat were down. I gave one seed head in a pie tin to Elsie — the seeds were falling out without us doing anything — and she went home to roast them with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Mrs. Bread hadn’t seen my yard since the real landscaping has started, so I phoned her and she was able to come over. She helped me to harvest sunflower seeds, but we found the seeds toward the middle much harder to extract. We got tired of this digging and went to the store together to buy me  a handbag.

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I am having an improved blogging experience tonight. Since last winter I have acquired a laptop and an easy chair, so now instead of sitting in front of the desktop in the corner of the house we call Siberia, I can sit comfortably and toast my toes by the wood stove. At first I noticed how much easier it is to think when I’m warm, but now….I’m getting sleepy…very…sleepy. I’ll be back another day.