Tag Archives: Nodding Violet

Samwise and the swallowtail.

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Ladybug on sunflower leaf.

When I woke today, a multitude of urgent tasks filled my mind and sent me off in the wrong direction. Eventually I was rescued by the Jesus Prayer, by Jesus Himself. As I calmed down I realized that a few of the tasks were not that urgent, and when I began to consolidate my lists, one task fell off altogether, being a completely unnecessary outing, and large project that would have followed. That was a drive to the apple ranch to get Gravenstein apples, a variety that I usually miss out on because they are so early. But it won’t hurt to miss out on them again — why change tradition?

Volunteer Delta Sunflower

I’d wanted to water the garden early, but it ended up being not-so-early, and what do you know, that was not a disaster. Putting the hose on thirsty plants — or were they plants that merely look dry because it is August? — gave me so much joy, I could hardly bear it. I remember when my current garden went in, ten years ago, with its extensive automatic irrigation, my daughter Pearl was concerned and said, “But Mama, you love watering the garden!” Evidently that is true. It’s a great gift to have such work.

Viburnum coming along after hard pruning.

It seems to me that the irrigation system needs some adjusting; my thought is that as the plants are more in number and greater in size than when we first programmed it, and even since the last changes, I should customize it further. That job is a mental challenge for me, as there are six different valves/lines and three programs, for each of which one has to determine how many days per week and how many minutes of run time. As I have done so often, I will have to study the diagram and how to enter the settings via the dials and buttons, because it never sticks with me. If I just give some areas a little more water by hand, that will relieve my anxiety. It will be easier to tackle the problem if I am confident that nothing is dying of thirst right now.

Path mulch reapplied after 9.5 years.
Salvia clevelandii

As I walked around with the hose, noting how many things are alive and obviously growing, happiness filled me. The thoughts of J.R.R. Tolkien that Eugene Terekhin writes about recently in “Why Gardeners Will Save the World” make me think that my garden is helping me while I am tending it:

Quoting a letter Tolkien wrote to a friend: “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty.”

Terekhin: “Mythically speaking, Sam [the character in Lord of the Rings] was ‘down to earth.’ He was a gardener who loved all things that grow — as all hobbits do.”
….
“The most important thing one can do in wartime is to grow a garden. Because when we grow things, they grow us. It takes a long time to grow something, and as we tend our garden we grow together with it.”

I know for sure that just being out there, soaking up the scents and the colors, watching the bees and butterflies drink from the flowers I tend on their behalf, is to me that most essential, ordinary life such as Tolkien shows us. For quite a while I followed this glorious, common swallowtail in all its glory, a creature that was drinking from just about every zinnia in the planter boxes. He and I were of the same mind about Being, and being down to earth.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

I like rain and roasted onions.

books, food and cooking, home, weather, , , , , , , , , , ,

Rain… rain… rain… It’s been raining All. Day. It’s night now and still raining. I’ve been exulting in it, because I didn’t have any responsibilities that required my going out. I could tend the fire, chat with my daughters online about their weather, roast onions, read, and even accomplish one housecleaning task that has been hanging over my head for months: cleaning the ceiling exhaust fan in a bathroom. Yippee!

The nodding violet that I brought indoors last week before freezing weather arrived looked so lovely with the rainy light behind it, I had to take its picture.

Sir Gawain by Howard Pyle

On the table by the violet are a few of the books I bought to go with an online course I am taking this fall: “Christian Wonder Tales.” It is taught by Martin Shaw, the mythologist and storyteller whom I met at the Symbolic World Summit last winter. Tolkien’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight didn’t get in the picture, but is another title he recommended, and I have it upstairs.

Who knows if I will read any of these books to the end — I haven’t even finished The King of Ireland’s Son, by Padraic Colum, which is quite delightful. Also perfect for listening to, because the narrator Gerard Doyle’s Irish brogue, telling the stories-within-stories as is the custom with Irish stories, has me journeying entranced from the Irish cottage to the castle and back again, meeting mysterious characters and challenging assignments around every bend in the road.

Now to the topic of food: Back when my friend Susan was also my housemate, sometimes I would walk in the front door to another sort of captivating story, the aroma of which was the essential part. What are you cooking?? I would ask, drawn immediately into the kitchen, and it took a few repetitions of this encounter before my nose remembered what she had told me: “It’s only roasted onions!” I eventually had to start making them myself.

(Above, onions in my kitchen as it was 28 years ago. Notice bread rising in pans at left. The only thing that is the same now is cast iron pans always on the stove top.)

To keep up with my appetite for them, I’d need to roast a batch of onions once a week, but it ends up being more like twice a year. As soon as they are out of the oven I always serve myself a little bowl of them, which seems to be about one onion’s worth… or two — so I usually double the recipe below. Do you roast onions? You can find many recipes online; here is my version:

ROASTED ONIONS

3 large onions, yellow or red
2 tablespoons olive or other oil
1 tablespoon balsamic or other vinegar
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
(1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme) – I never add this

Cut the onions vertically into quarters or sixths, and then slice those wedges crosswise as thick as you want; I make mine 1/8 to 1/3 inch thick. Toss them in a bowl with the other ingredients and roast in a sheet pan at 375 to 400 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally, until they are as brown as looks good to you. I think sometimes, in an effort to get them crispier, I have overcooked them and made them a little tough.

This evening I didn’t use balsamic vinegar, because recently I was given an extra special bottle of “plain” red wine vinegar with a noble heritage. Just as bakers like to pass their sourdough starter around to friends, so chefs and winemakers often share a vinegar mother (also called a vinegar scoby). My vinegar was fermented with a mother whose mother belonged to Alice Waters, and whose grandmother grew in Julia Child’s kitchen. Does that make my onions taste better? You know, I think they might just be the best I’ve ever made!

The flowery gifts of August.

family, love, my garden, , , , , , , ,
Nodding Violet

Right in the middle of a very busy week my oldest daughter Pearl and her youngest Maggie came to visit, and that gave me a lovely and relaxing day. They had been camping for four nights from Wisconsin to here, on their way taking Maggie back to college in the southern reaches of California. It had been a long time since I’d had some focused time with this grandchild; we did a lot of catching up on face-to-face time and hugging.

And she suggested baking cookies together, and even suggested which kind of cookies. She would like the chocolate macaroons I make at Christmas; it just so happened that for some reason I’d bought almond paste last week, not really knowing why. So we made those marzipaney treats that I’ve never before made at any other time of the year.

The recipe calls for egg whites but not yolks. So we made Key Lime Cookies to use up the yolks, and to use a few of the big bag of limes I’d bought recently, I also can’t remember why. I sent Maggie on her way with most of the cookies this morning.

We three made a feast of a dinner together and Maggie went out to gather flowers for the table. 🙂

As for tomatoes, an unrepeatable sort of agricultural science experiment has been going on here. I have a few plants in the back yard that I intentionally planted and fed and have been watering…. I staked them and have so far picked about fifteen delicious Sungold cherry tomatoes off of one spindly vine.

By contrast, growing out of a crack in the sidewalk in front is a Green Doctor cherry tomato plant, looking hale and hearty, on which are growing bunches of tasty fat fruits. That plant is living proof of what I have known for a long time, that in our climate at least, tomatoes love heat more than they love water. The only water the sidewalk tomato received was one light rain in July. But its roots, wherever they are, are kept warm all night by the concrete that soaked up the full sun during the day. I’m thinking about scattering more seeds in that crack next spring.

I need to divide my Dutch Iris this fall, so I had my helper Alejandro remove most of them, and here they wait, on the side of the driveway:

Today a cord of firewood was delivered right next to them; the arranging of that was one of the many business calls I made this week. I’m amazed at how many tasks were completed (trash removed, garage door serviced, Household Hazardous Waste disposed of) or projects started.

I was waiting in a lab and saw these signs on the wall. This way of using the word love is a pet peeve of mine, which I began to acquire in the days of the toy named Care Bear, about whom it was said, “Care Bear loves you.” Ugh. I don’t like to trivialize love by lying to a child about what a toy can do, but I also find the use of the passive-voice “You are loved” to be false.

True love is not something that just happens; even falling in love requires something human from us. Who is that unnamed somebody who loves me, that the sign seems to know about? Of course it’s all too inane. Let’s look at flowers instead. Try not to look too long at the distracting hose in the next picture. Here you can see the sneezeweed starting to bloom behind the zinnias.

My vegetable garden is quite skimpy this summer, but I am thankful to have zinnias everywhere; I will plant some greens again next month, and take my joy from the flowery gifts of August.

 

Broken hearted over September.

my garden, other gardens, senses, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Sneezeweed

From my planter boxes I pulled up and cleaned out parsley, zucchini, chives and Love-in-a-Mist; butternut and pumpkin vines, and a volunteer zinnia. When I went after the sea of overgrown chamomile, its warm and bittersweet aroma comforted me in the midst of that violent afternoon’s work. I don’t think I used one leaf of basil this summer; I just wasn’t home enough to take care of the garden in general, or to use half of its produce.

My pumpkins, grown from seed and nurtured in the greenhouse, were a complete flop! But one plant I gave to my neighbors produced 22 pumpkins, so one morning I found these on my doorstep:

Now I’ve sealed the boxes against winter, and added several inches of good soil. Still to do: organize and plant all those beautiful succulents that my friends gave me in the last few months, and put seeds into the dirt.

Trug full of Painted Lady runner beans.
Succulent stem abandoned and unwatered — and undaunted.
My first spider plant ever!
Nodding Violet I propagated.  If you want it, come and get it!

I had fun with Bella the other day at the community garden where she tends a plot. We always like to look around at what the other gardeners are doing, and to forage along the edges where people plant offerings to the whole community who farm there; you might find raspberries, or cutting flowers, or kale ready to harvest and take home.

Some kind of amaranth…

Some kind of 10-ft glorious amaranth.

I brought home seeds from that community garden, too, of tithonia, in a handkerchief I happened to have in my purse:

These mild days with soft air are a balm to the soul. They always surprise me with their kindness, especially when they turn up between others that are by turn sunless and drizzly, then scorching. For two weeks I’ve had my bedroom and morning room windows wide open to the weather all day and night. A cross breeze rolls over me as I sleep.

Sometimes there’s been a bit of smoke, sometimes heat at midday. At night I often have to burrow under the blankets; I hear the traffic early in the morning, and occasionally the neighbors’ loud voices late at night. But it’s the best way I know to feel alive to the earth. Simply by being open to the weather and the air, I can be In Nature. It’s the most convenient month for that, here where I dwell. September is where it’s easy to feel at home….

But — September is leaving this very week, that change is in the air. I admit to being a little broken-hearted; essentially, I’m being evicted, and that’s harsh. There is nothing for it but to take inspiration from that budding succulent stem above, that will draw on its stored resources, and make the most of whatever sunlight burns through the fog.  Those three little pumpkins will likely come in handy, too, because it’s time to start cozying up to October.