Rain on zinnias, seeds on crackers.

bread, food and cooking, my garden, wildflowers, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It was hard to keep up with myself last week, and with all the friends, projects and tasks that fill my life to overflowing. I guess I was somewhat playing catch-up after my mountain retreat the previous week. The garden got gently rained on three times that last week of September, which is unusual. Combined with fog on other days, the dampness caused mildew in the planter boxes, but mostly the lower leaves of the tall zinnias have been affected.

When I noticed the Japanese anemones looking better than ever, it occurred to me to plant a few more this fall, maybe some pale pink ones — but I corrected my impulsivity in time, and won’t be taking on one more project, what with so many others unfinished. A more reasonable goal would be to try to take better care of the anemones I have, and see if they can be encouraged to be taller and more robust. It’s a sign of their middling health, that they do not ever spread and multiply, and their flowers are few and small.

The sneezeweed I grow in a pot looks as well as it ever has. I bought it a few years ago at a native plant nursery, because I love the mountain versions of the flower. I put it in a pot so I could be sure to water it enough; the irrigation settings for most of my garden are set for drought-tolerant plants, and sneezeweed is not one of those. My type is pretty plain, or at least monochromatic, compared to the mountain ones.

In search of fancier kinds, a few months ago I browsed sneezeweeds online for quite a while, and ordered seeds for this one, Purple-Headed. When I am looking at seed catalogs or even plants in nurseries, all the options seem so do-able and desirable. But once the time comes to get on with the actual work of planting… well, I literally drag my feet. So who knows what will happen with these seeds…

I used my sourdough starter twice last week, first to make a large pan loaf of seeded wheat-and-spelt bread. This is the recipe I have been trying to perfect, but perfection hasn’t happened yet. I may have to pause the sourdough project while I branch out and reach back, to other breads I have made or have wanted to try, like chocolate bread, Indian flatbreads, and applesauce rye.

Buttery Sourdough Crackers was a satisfying recipe that used a bit of starter. This picture shows the dough as it was resting overnight, along with leaves of the lemon verbena that I am drying, after pruning my plant for the first time ever.

I used this recipe for: Rustic Sourdough Butter Crackers as my jumping off place, substituting half dark rye flour, and adding sesame seeds to one half, and poppy seeds to the other. I baked them a lot longer than the recipe called for. The resulting crackers are nice and crispy and easy to eat. The butter ingredient plus the sourdough tang is a great combination.

My friend Lucy and I took another one of our monthly walks, up in the hills again but to a park she hadn’t been to before. It’s mostly very brown up there now, but the poison oak is making red splashes in the landscape. And my old friend tarweed!

The Seek app tells me this is not either of the species I saw on my way up the mountain last month, but Hayfield Tarweed. And it seems to come in white or yellow versions, in one case growing side by side:

The third online Beowulf class was this week, and I spent more than two happy hours in the company of the most delightful teachers, Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau. They both love the subject, and Richard is definitely a Beowulf scholar from way back. I will have to at least quote a couple of lines from the poem here eventually, though it seems that unlike me, most people I’ve talked to got an introduction to Beowulf in school. So you may already be more familiar with the story than I.

Apple orchard where I go.

At the end of the week, I remembered: apples! It’s time to make a trip my favorite apple ranch, and see which of their 30+ varieties is available now. I squeezed it in on Saturday afternoon, and added a stop at a nursery out that way, hoping they would have starts of some kind of leafy greens I could tuck into spaces in the planter boxes after I take out zucchini and tomatoes and eggplant. They did!

So here in the back of my car is a mix of apples Empire, Jonathan and Macintosh; and six packs of Swiss chard and collards. I do have chard growing right now, but I think I need more. And I wasn’t able to get collards started from seed in August.

One more glad sighting of late summer I want to share, is this half wine barrel that was unplanted through last winter:

When I put in some snapdragon plants in late spring, I noticed a couple of tiny mystery plants that didn’t look like weeds, so I left them undisturbed. Now everything has filled out and I find that I have beautiful Thai basil and tropical sage complementing the snaps. Gardens are ever surprising.

Happy October!

The huge summer has gone by.

poetry, ,

AUTUMN DAY

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Sundial Calendar – Mesopotamia

Patience comes to the bones.

poetry, summer, , , ,

PATIENCE

What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon’s white crescent

rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle–

the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.

There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart

as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.

-Mary Oliver

 

The living enchantment of September.

nature, poetry, , , , , ,

In addition to several poems that he shares in his recent post about September, including those of Derek Mahon, Howard Nemerov, and Bashō, Stephen Pentz offers this thought:

“I have a vague notion of what occurs when ‘the ecliptic and equator cross.’ Something to do with the movement of spheres, I suspect. But I’m reminded of my oft-repeated first principle of poetry: Explanation and explication are the death of poetry. Here is a wider principle I have adopted at this moment: Explanation and explication are the death of enchantment. The enchantment of the World, of course. Mind you, I accept the existence of the ecliptic and the equator. This is not an anti-scientific manifesto. I simply prefer, for instance, a single butterfly or a single leaf, with no explanations attached.”

-Stephen Pentz on his blog, First Known When Lost

Here is one of the poems:

THRESHOLD

When in still air and still in summertime
A leaf has had enough of this, it seems
To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage
Its drifting in detachment down the road.

-Howard Nemerov

I hope you will visit his blog and read the whole loving tribute, including evocative works of art, to the month that is soon to be gone for another year.