Category Archives: my garden

Tree Collard

my garden

Overall the plants in my garden look as though the gardener has been absent. Too true — and the sky is lacking rain. So I at least did take the hose to everything yesterday, and found one “tree” that seems to be thriving under neglect.

It’s the tree collard that a dear friend gave me. I knew that these perennial vegetables grow very long and tangled stems, so I had planted it in a corner of my cramped yard, out of the way of annual beds.

My photo doesn’t show much of the curly stalk, and the pictures I found online are of plants that grow tall and straight, not like the more recumbent ones we seem to have around here, which get very complicated twining around themselves. The trunk-stem gets longer and longer and the leaves grow mostly at the end of it.

If I had more room I’d love to have a large plantation of these hardy greens.

Pimientos from the October garden.

food and cooking, my garden

Have you ever seen a fresh pimiento pepper for sale in the grocery store? No? That’s why, if you have a garden, you should consider growing them yourself. The little jars of diced pimientos that are the only experience most people have of them — sorry, but they are not to be compared to the fruits you can expect to harvest from your back yard.


I went around the garden this afternoon snapping pictures of the prettiest things, including the peppers.

What first caught my eye was the way the color of the Mexican Sage coordinated so nicely with the Red Russian Kale. Some parsley is peeking up at the bottom.

Arugula (with the white flower) is a real self-starter and has come back up through the basil, and the nasturtiums are still going strong.

But about those pimientos: It was about 30 years ago I encountered a fellow gardener’s planting of them, on a sunny hillside growing alongside beans and tomatoes and other more common things. Ellie said, “Pimientos are marvelous; they are good with everything. We just love them!” It was at a time in my life when I was very suggestible regarding any homemaking idea, and the garden was a big part of my homemaking.

Since then, I don’t think a year has gone by that we didn’t grown some pimientos, though one time we ended up with plants that had an odd shape and slightly different flavor. That’s when we learned that there are different varieties called pimiento. But the shape of the fruits in my photos here is what we think of as standard.

Pimientos have a richer taste than the standard sweet red bell pepper that the supermarkets carry, and the wall of the fruit is probably twice as thick. For 20+ years I would mostly serve them sautéed with mushrooms and/or onions and garlic as a vegetable dish. The skins would often slide off before I got the skillet to the table, in which case sometimes I’d sometimes manage to remove some of them. Mostly the skins got eaten.

 

But now that I have a gas range I can easily turn them around on the stove with tongs while they hiss and sputter, and have fire-roasted peppers. (I also did this with poblano peppers this summer.) After they are blackened all over, you stick them in a bowl or something with a lid — I tried a plastic bag but the peppers were so hot they melted holes in the bag — and let them sweat a few minutes until the skins rub off easily under water.

Meanwhile, the house starts to smell like a Mexican restaurant!

Once they are bare and thick slabs of sweet flesh, it is so easy to chop some up into soups or stews or salads. Lay a pepper on top of bread and cheese, or just bread…or feel really indulgent eating one all by itself. I freeze some flattened between waxed paper to use all year long.

Spiders and Winds

my garden, poetry, quotes, , ,

I never think of spiders as devils, at least not the garden spiders that are so busy all over the place this fall. This one is between the cherry tomatoes and the bottlebrush. I went with my camera into the yard before the sun was very high, hoping that some of the critters had mended their nets after the rains, and I did get good shots of a few.

Then I read George MacDonald’s verse for the day, from A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul. He wrote a section of this long poem for every day of the year; the lines for October 10th use the metaphor of a spider to warn about how the devil works at entrapping us every morning. We do need to continually pray for the Holy Spirit to break our selfish crust, I know that. O Heavenly King, blow into us and fill us and make us a refreshment to everyone around.

With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh—
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.

-George MacDonald

I don’t like to end a post with reference to that snake, so let’s look at our situation from another angle before we finish the contemplation:

I consider no other labor as difficult as prayer. When we are ready to pray, our spiritual enemies interfere. They understand it is only by making it difficult for us to pray that they can harm us. Other things will meet with success if we keep at it, but laboring at prayer is a war that will continue until we die. 

–Abba Agathon

Looking and Sniffing Around

my garden, nature, , , ,

runner ducks

The rain brought out the good smells of the earth and plants, like the junipers lining the broad sidewalk along which Pippin and I walked for a long time yesterday. We were on our way to the park so that Scout could feed the ducks. Dozens of ducks, geese and even some coots came to sample our bread — but I focused eventually on the backs of the geese, and dreamed of a skirt in those colors and patterns.

More species of birds live by the lake and sleep on the lawns than last time I was here. Even runner ducks, and several types of geese in addition to the Canada geese, who were not interested in us at all.

I loved these khaki-colored guys with their topknots.

pimiento pepper

After we got home, Pippin looked out the window and said, “Oh, you have a phoebe!” I was so excited to hear that, but it took me a while to see the little bird on the fence after it was pointed out to me, and not just because I wasn’t wearing my glasses. If a large goose gets in my face the way they did at the park, I notice them, but otherwise the details of my environment have to be fairly stationary if they are going to get my attention.

This morning I went out to take photos of the wet and more stationary garden. Quite a few pimientos are ripe red now, and I’ll be snapping them off soon to roast over the gas flame of the stove.

In the front yard the verbena is still blooming away, and contrasts nicely with the variegated leaves of the shrub whose name I can’t remember right now.

Cécile Brunner

The mister and I are Glad that our nest will be ready against the winter cold: At this very moment a man is installing a brand new furnace in the garage, and yesterday we laid in a supply of oak firewood. Those logs make for another yummy scent of Fall. Stay warm, Everyone!