Category Archives: my garden

Love and Hate in the Garden

food and cooking, my garden, ,


We thought we had cut the bottlebrush shrub down for good, but it was soon evident that he took it as a pruning for more vigor. That was a long time ago. Ever since this Callistemon showed us who is boss we have liked him even less, and try not to look at him except for about twice a year when we hack away at his skyrocketing branches to let more sun shine on our nearby vegetables.

We were doing that yesterday when I noticed the lone first flower of the season, barely opening, and it didn’t seem so brash and domineering when in a tender phase. I let him into the house.

On the left is a photo of the amazing Early Girl tomato vine. My husband wanted to plant anything but Early Girls this year, because after 30 years of being The Best and most famous of our tomatoes, superior in every way, they were disappointing for five years in a row.

I begged to plant just one Early Girl, and she has turned out to be the largest of our ten tomato bushes, with the biggest and most perfect fruits, and the consistently wonderful flavor we expect. She did not want to be cast off, so she tried really hard this time – that seems the obvious message. I will never again even think of forsaking her.

In the tomato photo you can also see the tree collard emerging from the ground like a dowel on the right side of the staked vine, and leafing out on the left side.

It’s great, in theory, to have a perennial leafy green vegetable always ready for the picking, but our garden is simply not big enough to accommodate such a meandering type. I don’t think I had ever harvested one leaf, and he was suffering an aphid infestation again, so I removed Mr. Tree Collard. Above right you can see him before he went into the yard waste bin.

This is the Summer of Parsley. I like to let parsley go to seed and sow itself where it will, and in the spring there were lots of little seedlings which I stuck in here and there. They’ve now formed thick hedgerows in some places, I’ve got plenty to cook with, and new seed heads are starting to hang across the sidewalk.

That’s not convenient, so I put those pretty sprigs into a vase with the budding bottlebrush. The parsley had been growing right under the shrub, so they weren’t complete strangers. To all appearances they are getting along, and each has something to contribute to a relationship that is proving to be a boon to the household.

 

Grandma didn’t make pesto.

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My grandma of renown was no slacker, and she was the person who taught me by example how to prepare for a trip. When my sisters and I stayed with her in summertime, we usually went with Grandma and Grandpa on a week’s outing to a cabin or camp in the mountains.

Everything was ship-shape on the home front when we drove off early enough in the morning to have breakfast at the Tracy Inn on the way. There was not a speck of dust on the furniture, and the beds had been made up with fresh sheets as soon as we were out of them. Certainly Grandma would have made sure that Grandpa deadheaded his prizewinning flowers.

Liam, whom I’ll see tomorrow!

But Grandma would never have thought to drive down the state to visit one grandchild for a few nights, and then turn around to fly across the country the very next week to sojourn with a passel of other grandchildren for more than two weeks. The way I am doing. I have to keep reminding myself that in a myriad of ways I am not Grandma.

I am blessed to the point of unbelief having so many grandchildren, and Grandma only had a few of us whom she saw twice a year. Grandma didn’t do the gardening, and she didn’t write any blog posts, though I daresay the wonderful letters she wrote are worth more per hour invested than what I put out.

If there had been basil growing in the back yard, I know she would have arranged things so that the pesto was made at least a couple of days before departure, giving her time to sweep and mop the kitchen and get to bed at a reasonable hour the night before. She wouldn’t be complaining, because she liked traveling and had Everything Under Control.

Not me. I have mostly been whining about everything, including the reality of all the work undone and how I hate leaving home. I was standing at the sink this afternoon whimpering as I pulled leaves off stems, when it hit me that making pesto is one of my most favorite things to do. How wonderful is it that I have a garden that grows basil, from which a woman can create one of the wonders of the culinary world?

And the people in my life — oh, my! Preparing for and going on trips with my grandma was one of the happiest activities of my childhood. She was so good to provide that for us. Hugging and holding my children and grandchildren is necessary food for the maintenance of cup-running-over happiness. Right now I don’t really care if the floor is still dirty and the bed unmade (and a hundred other negatives I won’t waste time listing even to myself) when I drive off tomorrow morning. What do you know — I’m not Grandma!

If Grandma had been washing basil and found a Japanese beetle in the sink, she’d have said, “Tch, tch!” with disgust, but I saw it as a photo opportunity. I could feel this way because this summer I’m not growing green beans. Japanese beetles have ravaged many a crop of green beans here, and in the past I developed a quickness in squishing them between my fingers.

Grandma would not have written a letter or recipe or anything the night before a trip. But writing is also one of my favorite things to do. So here I am.

I see that I blogged about pesto three years ago without giving my recipe, so I will put it up this time:

PESTO
3 cups packed basil leaves
2 large cloves garlic
1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts 
1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
 

Mix in the food processor, adding the oil and cheese at the last. Add more salt if you like, or more oil if you need it to be runnier. I’ve had this keep for weeks in the fridge, and years in the freezer, and still be flavorful.

It’s probably easy to guess what is another favorite activity I will indulge in before the sun goes down: gardening. I need to spread some manure around where I thinned the perennials yesterday. Maybe I will run out of energy to clean up all the basil-tinged oil smeared around the kitchen before I fall into bed, but it’s very comforting to have a few little tubs of that tasty stuff in the freezer when we haven’t even got to August.

Grandma wouldn’t understand my style of housekeeping, but she would love me anyway.

Busy as Bees

family, my garden, nature, , , ,
Bumblebee on Hot Lips salvia

Tonight at dusk when I was sprinkling the basil through the hose nozzle, I saw a couple of bumblebees frantically getting their last drops of nectar from the Hot Lips salvia bush. It was really hard to get a picture of this one because he was in such a hurry floating and buzzing from one bloom to the next.

Pippin was sitting on the swing with me this week and she noticed as I had, that the honeybees favor the lavender, while the big black bumbles stick to the salvia. Or maybe it is that there are so many honeybees that they get first pick of the bushes, and the few bumblebees segregate to whatever is left over.

 

The honeybees like the lambs ears, too. I am thrilled to have so many bushes near my swing where I can see hardworking creatures fulfilling their purposes. I put this one in the shadow of my head to get a good shot.

Two lavenders and Hot Lips

Mr. Glad and I have been as busy as bees ourselves. For four days we took care of little Scout again; he keeps us running up and down the stairs and all over the garden, and sometimes we take walks through the neighborhood along the bike path. I showed him the wild fennel and how the young shoots especially are tender for munching and taste like licorice.

wild fennel and blackberry bloom

He’s a quite friendly fellow, and as we were standing on the side of the path nibbling our greens he was lucky to see some people walking a dog. He held up the fennel frond and called to them, “We’re having a picnic!”  It’s only been about three weeks since I was dreaming about picnics I might make happen Someday. That fennel picnic happened with so little effort and no planning at all.

PomPom was just writing about picnics this week and pointed out that our Lord’s feeding of the 5,000 was a blessed picnic indeed. I’m pleased to see that my grandson has a good start on appreciating how substantial are the little things God has growing along the path of life.

Last week I was buzzing with joy, flying down the state a ways to greet the new grandson “Liam.” A couple of days after that, Mr. Glad and I went to a Giants baseball game, which is pretty much an all-day commitment. It was fun to see our team beat L.A.

Then there were the several days with Scout and his mama. And no sooner had they departed for home than we were sent on three errands of mercy in one day. My mister had to drive a distance for the last one of these and isn’t home yet.

Back in April in the Prologue of Ohrid I noticed a couple of references to saints whom St. Nikolai compared to honeybees flying about carrying honey, or laboring diligently at the work for which they were created. Just watching the bees as I rest on my swing makes me happy, and the sight of them reminds me that after a short break I need to be up and at my work again.

I’d like to be more like the honeybees. When the last bumblebee was anxiously trying to get more salvia nectar, all the honeybees had gone from the lavender. They knew enough to give up for the day and go to bed. And so shall I.