Category Archives: my garden

Things that might – and did – happen in March.

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1 – My sister might send us a box of mandarins from California’s Central Valley. She and her husband grow these very fancy Dekopons, as they are known in Japan, under the label Sumo. You aren’t likely to see many of them in our U.S. stores for a while, but I just read that in Japan they already have Dekopon chewing gum.

They are awfully good, large and seedless and easy to peel, with a taste that reminds me of the fruits that we children gorged on from our father’s trees many decades ago, and which I still will savor if I get down there at the right time of year.

2 – I might decide to make a giant pot of vegetable and bean soup to last us through Lent and beyond. This is the Bean Soup Mix after soaking all night. The small brown beans are Tepary beans I bought at a farmers’ market years ago; I found them in the pantry and threw them into the lot.


3 – My CSA box might contain a pale green and spikey cauliflower, which they call Romanesco. I chopped it up put it into the soup, so I don’t know if it tastes any different from the usual cauliflower. But it looks interesting.

4 – The osmanthus might bloom, so that when I come up the sidewalk to the front door I swoon over its sweetness, and decide to cut some branches to bring inside.

It’s warm enough now that I felt safe sticking two of my old orchids out on the patio; the only one that bloomed I put in the garage. I’ve gotten so used to them, I might buy a blooming plant to have in the house if Costco is still selling them.

All these things DID happen. I’m loving Lent and Spring.

A little dancing sister.

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…Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate. This gives to the typically Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature was a solemn mother to the worshipers of Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, and even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister, to be laughed at as well as loved. -G.K. Chesterton

I’ve been enjoying my little sister in the garden this week. It started with a long weeding session, during which I rescued the sweet peas from a weed of which I don’t know the name. Does one of you know it?


It’s been growing taller than the peas, and even though I made some nice trellising for them, they have been confused by these weeds and are trying to climb on them instead.

The green and trailing weed is also flowering before the sweet peas bloom, and is not in any way an unpleasant weed to deal with.

How about this weed? Maybe someone can tell me its real name. We call it The Scattery Weed, because before the seeds are obviously ripe, when the plant still looks small and innocent, it waits with secret menace for the gardener to stroll by and brush it with her shoe or hand, then !!explosion!! of seeds in a several-foot radius.

I probably shouldn’t use the word menace when talking about my little sister. In this case she is only doing what is in her nature, and doing a good job of bearing many children for next year’s springtime.

I found more signs of spring while I was out there, like this oxalis blooming among the violets…

…plum blossoms decorating violets, and the violets springing up tall to decorate an irrigation head.

Above is a field of manzanita blossoms fallen from the bush to make way for berries, and hanging over them are snowdrops, truly looking like little sisters dancing in their pretty spring petticoats.

I finished my garden work just ahead of the steady rain we’ve been getting today. God is watering the earth and sending His rain “on the just and the unjust.” Thank You, Lord!

Linking up to Weekends With Chesterton.

Flowers cheer me up.

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Leaves from the cherry plum tree are piling up in the back yard. I should get out and rake them, but I just look out from my kitchen window, beyond the leaves, and notice the zinnias still climbing, past five feet now. On the windowsill was remains of a three-week old bouquet, so it was time for a new bunch, don’t you think? Some French lavender rounds out the picking.

Out front the Pristine rose is blooming. And recently I planted a spread of violas, with ranunculus bulbs down below in some places.

This is my favorite.
 

The wind blows warm.

food and cooking, my garden, nature, , ,

The wind has been blowing balmy air into and around the house these days, but I’ve enjoyed some cool walks in the early mornings. Somehow this year the autumn atmosphere is calling me outdoors and I’m actually hearing, feeling the pull. I want to soak up whatever it is in the air while I can, before I get all wimpy and chilly all the time and just want to sit by the fire.

On the subject of fires, this warm wind has fanned the flames of a wildfire in one of our favorite nearby parks — eek! Mr. Glad and I saw the smoke from our front yard where we were working on the lawn and flower bed. Thank God, it was put out fairly quickly and burned less than 200 acres, of vegetation only.

In preparation for the controlled indoor fires I’m anticipating, my husband and I had just finished moving a half cord of firewood from our driveway, to stack in the side yard. My own method of carrying wood involves loading several pieces on my left arm, which was bare on this warm day, and right off was getting a bit roughed up.

I dug around in the rag drawer and contrived an arm protector from a section of worn-out sock. I’m showing you two pictures so you will be sure to see how clever I am.

Two logs loaded on….


Mr. Glad showed me a concave piece of bark that fell off a knobby oak log, and we admired the design of its inner side, one bit of art work that must be representative of gazillions of other lovely bark designs that no one ever sees. Then I made it our computer desktop background.

I’ve had to interrupt my outdoor reveries to cook up some of the bounteous harvest. Old friends hosted a women’s potluck and that offered me the chance to try out a new cake on the other ladies.

When I defrosted the freezer last week I had found various flours that I want to use up, and Mr. C. dropped off a bag of Golden Delicious apples, so I tried this buckwheat apple cake. Everyone loved it, and took home what was left over, except for the slice I saved for Mr. Glad.

The recipe calls for so many apples (six), that they completely solve the problem of buckwheat being a dry sort of flour. It was not overly sweet, and would be a good sort of cake for people who like to eat cake often. I used limoncello instead of the maraschino liqueur. I don’t understand how the cake on the original blog came out so pale. It’s as though the cook used refined buckwheat flour, which I’ve never heard of.

For the potluck lunch I also made a big bowl of tabouli, my method long ago adapted from a Sunset Magazine recipe called Bulgur Salad. Next summer I’ll share it. I was able to use parsley, mint, and tomatoes from our garden. I forgot to take a picture until after I’d stirred in some tuna to make half of the batch into a main dish salad for Mr. Glad.

Back out in the garden again, I’ve been deeply digging to break up the clay for planting some ranunculus bulbs and pansies where a shrub used to be. Some of its big roots were still hanging around and for the first time in my life I used a chopping maul to get them out of there. That was satisfying work.

One of the jobs on my autumn to-do list was to take out the Cécile Brunner rose in the far corner of the yard. This picture shows it four years ago, before it became a burden that is more trouble than it is worth.

I never thought I would say that about such a lovely rose bush, but this one is so vigorous, and vigorously invading three neighbors’ yards, that it requires hours of pruning three times a year, from which I come away scratched and bleeding, and wishing I could have done something else with the time. The bush is in a place where we don’t even properly appreciate its enthusiastic blooming.

I forgot that it likes to bloom in October, until my glance landed in its corner yesterday. It won’t do to whack it down in its glory, so I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks before I tackle the job. I will sadly remove one more rosebush from my life, trying to live with the reality of my limitations. In the meantime, I cut some stems to make one last bouquet.