Category Archives: my garden

Ascensiontide Showers of Blessing

June 8, 2011church, food and cooking, friends, my garden, other gardensAscension, bones, California, flannel bush, Mexican Evening Primrose, monasteriesGretchenJoanna

This short season between Ascension and Pentecost — it just seems natural to call it Ascensiontide, even though, until we get to Pentecost, we are still in Eastertide. These ten days are a subset, maybe. All this is The World According to GJ, and probably not kosher — oops, I’m getting more faith traditions mixed up in there.

That I am confused is not surprising, considering how wild and unusual my last two weeks have been, with a heavy amount of visiting with several friends and great busyness leading to brain fatigue. Thank God He gave me the strength to enjoy all the extra love and liveliness in the house. So much has been going on, I wanted to give a brief report of highlights.

plants still waiting to go into the ground….

Rain. It kept us from going on the walks I had anticipated, and also relieved everyone of irrigation duties.

blue lake pole beans

Very odd to get so much rain here in California the first week of June. Most plants don’t mind it, but the basil looks nigh unto death, waiting for summer. Here are the happy beans instead.

flannel bush

Hard as it is to believe, it appears that the rain has finally ceased. No one dared complain about last week’s lack of blue skies, here where an excess of water can can only be counted a blessing, and where tornadoes are rare.

My friend May and I drove over the mountain several times to see our elderly friend Jerry.

close-up of bush

Hail battered my car on one of our trips to his house, but on the way home later on we saw a bush we didn’t recognize by the side of the road and stopped to get its picture. Can anyone identify it right off? [I since have learned it is flannel bush.]

Jerry’s walnut tree and vineyard

Jerry and his late wife lived all over the world before settling in wine country to try their hand at being vintners, and they brought seeds and plants from many countries to plant here. It’s sad, though, to see the garden in disarray, lacking the care of Mrs. Jerry.

Some flowers and trees keep going in spite of neglect, like these orchids, which grow outdoors through the winter.

toasted sesame seeds

I had fun cooking for extra people. We ate Lemon Pudding Cake with Raspberry Sauce, and some Sticky Rice with Mango. Also fresh oatmeal bread, and Duk Guk, a soup whose name does not make you think nice things, but Guk is the word for the odd Korean rice cake ingredient that I like a lot — so much that I probably should not keep it in the house.

I toasted sesame seeds to make Lemon Sesame Dressing for the piles of green salad everyone consumed. Maybe after Pentecost I can post some recipes.

through the monastery gate

koi pond at monastery

In the evening of the Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost, I went to the Holy Assumption Monastery for a Family and Friends event.

First there was a lecture on “The Power of Bones,” referring to all the Bible references to the health that can be in our bones, and to the proper and reverential treatment of human bones. It was a prompting for us to consider in light of Holy Tradition our often irreverent modern funeral practices; I’m sure that in the future I’ll have more to say on this general topic that pertains to all of us.

Not long ago Gumbo Lily posted a blog about where her blog name comes from — it’s actually the name of a flower that grows on the prairie. For her I am putting up this picture of the cousin to her gumbo lily, our Mexican Evening Primrose that grows happily in a rocky spot between our driveway and the neighbor’s. It gets by in the dry summer with only a couple of waterings, but it didn’t mind the good Spring soaking.

Mexican Evening Primrose

I can’t tell about Ascensiontide without mention of the rejoicing to my spirit from having the festal hymns playing in my mind ever since last Thursday. In our daily prayers we have left off beginning with, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death…,” and we aren’t yet returning to, “O Heavenly King, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth…,” because we are still looking forward, liturgically, to the descent of the Holy Spirit.

So we are singing, during these ten days, about the event described in this way: “And it came to pass, while He blessed them, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” (Matthew 17) The troparion hymn goes like this (now imagine me waking to it and falling asleep in the same joy!):

Thou hast ascended in glory, O Christ our God,

Having gladdened Thy disciples

with the promise of the Holy Spirit;

And they were assured by the blessing

That Thou art the Son of God,
the Redeemer of the world!

Today’s Cats and Flowers

April 28, 2011my gardenCalifornia Poppy, catsGretchenJoanna

Giant and lovely snapdragon

Reasons these cat pictures are bad: 1) I took them through a dirty window 2) I had to zoom in so as not to scare away the cats, so they are blurry 3) The glare made streaks in some photos 4) my garden hose is always lying around cluttering up the background.

I wasn’t prepared for having so many cat visitors in one day. The first one to arrive was the one I will name Boots. He was so interested in my clogs. I decided to put some food out for Boots, because, I’m very sad to report, Jim hasn’t been around for a month. I might as well try to make new friends by means of my leftover cat food, because I’m afraid he won’t ever come back.

Boots

The next picture shows Boots eating, and looking nicer. Except for the white feet, he isn’t the prettiest. But then, Jim wasn’t very good-looking until he had eaten regularly at my step for a few months.

Pincushion

I watered the yard thoroughly this morning, and will again Friday before we leave for Oregon to visit kids and grandkids. So I had to take pictures of flowers. I love my garden, even if it is pretty messy. If I loved it better I’d coil up the hose every evening.

Boots didn’t eat all the food, so there was still some later on when Girlfriend came by.

Girlfriend

Last of all, just at dusk, came this odd-looking feline whom I’ll call Two-Tone….

Two-Tone

Oh, I take that back. It’s almost dark now, and Cow Cat is here — I can see through the window as I type — and what do you know, there is still food in the bowl. Cow Cat visits several times a day, usually, and always looks in the window and in the bowl, even though we have shooed him away many times.

Cow Cat a year ago

We didn’t like him because he’s ugly. But Goldilocks questioned the morality of that opinion….at least, that’s the challenge I felt in my heart when she said, “Why won’t you feed him?”

Calendula with oregano

Last year when I wrote about the cat visitors, I had chosen Jim, the black cat at the bottom of this post, as my favorite. So we discriminated against Cow Cat. Pippin said he may have a classic deformity of the face that makes him look the way he does. It’s not his fault. So perhaps I will take pity on him after all. Will he forgive me my past unkindness?

This yellow California poppy is very beloved, because it is unusual. The bright orange are much more vigorous and easy to grow, but I managed to get this one established, and it comes back most years.

Cow Cat is unusual, and he keeps coming back. Maybe I could learn to love him, too.

The day started with callas.

April 17, 2011church, my gardenbees, calla lilies, Holy Week, Lazarus, smells, snailsGretchenJoanna

This morning I went out in the fog to cut as many nice calla lilies as I could find in my three patches, to contribute to what our Flower Lady and her team would use to decorate the church for Palm Sunday and Holy Week.

Mr. Glad came out with me and found a snail on the slab of schist that Soldier brought me from the mountains a while back.

Today was Lazarus Saturday, which is like a foretaste of Christ’s own resurrection. It marks the end of Lent, and helps us remember Christ’s power over death and hell which He demonstrated at The Event of all history, which will come to us at Pascha whether we are ready or not.

I dropped off the bucket of blooms right before Divine Liturgy (Holy Communion service) in the morning. In the afternoon, people cleaned and decorated the church.

In the evening was the Vigil for Palm Sunday, a gloriously rich beginning of the feast. The callas had been added to other flowers, including something that looked like campanula, and some unusual orange woody stems with berries (?) on them.

The palm fronds were all laid out at the ready.

In the middle of the service, while the sun was still up, we processed outside and stood singing and praying for a while; I was next to the wisteria and noticed the bees buzzing and the sweetness of the flowers adding to the flavor of the Holy Spirit.

Not long after that — I am leaving out so much that was wonderful, like the flower-covered chandelier set to swinging, and special breads, but You Had to Be There — the palm fronds were given out, and once they had a branch to hold, the children found it easier to last another while.