Tag Archives: weeds

time happiness

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I don’t know what “time happiness” means exactly, but I have an inkling about the longed-for place that St. Nikolai talks about:

Moments of happiness are given to you only in order to leave you longing
for time happiness in the bosom of the ever happy Lord;
and ages of unhappiness are given to you
to waken you out of the drowsy dream of illusions.

O Lord, Lord, my only happiness, will You provide shelter for Your injured pilgrim?

– St Nikolai Velimirovich

And I don’t know anything about “ages of unhappiness.” My sad times can’t by any stretch be called ages, though it’s true, when one is in the midst of intense sorrow, time warps.

Today has been sweet and kind of dreamy. I stopped on the bridge over the creek and thought about how beloved this little patch of suburbia has grown, especially in the last three years. This is the season when the creek bed is so packed with plants, you can’t see the little water that is down there. It was quiet and warm. The warm part of the day is short now.

I was passing by the yard with roses, lilies and other plants that are wilted and ugly from drought, insects, and disease. No one cares enough about them to pick off a dead leaf. And then what caught my eye and made me stop? A weed growing next to the fire hydrant.

“Weeds grasp their own essence and express its truth.”
– Santoka Taneda

It occurs to me just now that I may have posted a picture of this weed once before, recently… if so, it is deserving enough for a repeat showing.  It has been neglected just as much as the cultivated plants, which for a weed means it was not killed or pulled out. That has let its essential health and hardiness shine forth and produce tiny and flowers all over, decorating the wasteland beautifully.

Recipe with bees and thyme.

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One recipe for a Satisfying Day just fell together starting as soon as I woke up yesterday.
It included:

*Waking up early enough to take a walk before church.

*Picking pineapple guava petals from a hedge down the block
and sharing them with a neighbor who was also out walking.
My cousin Anne told me that you can eat them,
and they truly are as sweet as candy.

*Not putting off drudgery such as stretches and floor exercises.

*Managing to stand through most of church (this was easier after having walked, etc.)
and receiving Holy Communion, on the Sunday of All Saints of America.

*Wowing over the catalpa tree at church. Each flower is like an orchid…

*Shopping for garden twine at the nursery across the road from church
and finding seeds as well 🙂


*Talking to my dear cousin Renée  on the phone
while sitting in the garden with the sun on my back.

*Taking pictures of bees on the thyme while talking.

*Sorting through pictures of bees I took before and finding some good ones.

bee on echium
bee on privet

*Eating vegetables.

*Taking more pictures of bees on the echium.

*Sorting through more pictures.

“Friendliest Weed” in my garden is blooming prettily.

*Taking an evening walk beside the creek and studying the mystery grass again.

*Identifying a plant in the creek: It’s buckeye! I know buckeye, but only as a tree; I wasn’t used to seeing leggier growth in the creek. This picture shows some of the lighter green leaves of buckeye in the creek, a mature tree above, and even some mystery grass in the middle. I don’t think it’s Timothy grass, which one of my commenters suggested, but it looks more like Timothy than anything else so far:


*Going to bed too soon to finish this post last night,
but early enough to contribute to a new recipe for yet another Good Day!

 

Grass and turmeric and some same old (sweet) things.

food and cooking, my garden, nature, , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I’m wondering what this grassy “weed” is, along a stretch of path by the creek that didn’t get mown down – yet? It’s very familiar, and I guessed it was rye, but I can’t match it up with anything in Weeds of the West at this stage. Maybe when the seed heads develop, if it is allowed to remain.

The Queen Anne’s Lace that made such a lush display last year was removed on my side of the creek, but there are a couple of plants starting to bloom on this far side:

Thursday I worked in the kitchen and cooked up a storm the whole day long. I hardly did anything else. Every other Thursday my CSA box (farm box) gets delivered, so I had that to deal with. I made some more of the Egg Bhurji, a sort of Indian scramble, and got the flavors closer to my goal. This time I grated fresh turmeric into it because I had it on hand. I had bought the turmeric rhizomes to plant, but there were more of them than I needed for that.

I boiled the quail eggs. They were so darling at every stage, I even had to take pictures of them simmering in the pot. One place I read said to cook them for two minutes, another four minutes, so I think I had them in the pan for about three minutes, and the yolks are soft, but that’s very pretty, too! And they are very tasty. 14 calories and 1.2g protein each.

Last Sunday when I saw them as the love offering on that bench, it was amazing how instantaneous was the progression in my mind to the thought, “I could raise quail!” Ha! I did laugh at myself. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, and it would be easier than chickens, but I want to get started on raising worms as my next homesteading project.

Now that the temperature has been in the 80’s the sweet peas are exploding; one day I took bouquets to two different neighbors, and the next day I filled two vases for my own house. Soon the stems will be too short to do much with, and I need to take them out anyway, to make room for the butternut squash that I will train up the trellis.

Some pretty blooms in the house are the Nodding Violet or Streptocarpella, a species of Streptocarpus, which a friend and I agreed sounds like a flower to feed a dinosaur with a sore throat. But they don’t make that many flowers that I want to offer them to the sick, so I think I will forget about the dinosaur and just remember Nodding Violet.

Mrs. Bread gave me my first plant, from which I accidentally broke a stem that I rooted into a second plant; I gave that second plant to friend Ann at church.  Then my violet was struck down by cold in the greenhouse one winter’s day, but by then Ann had started a second plant which she gave to me. And that is how we take care of each other and of our Nodding Violets, and how I am learning to just keep them safe in the house. They are nodding “Yes” to that:

And in the back garden, the red California poppies are blooming under the (fruitless) plum trees. Mr. Greenjeans said that the warm weather we had a few months ago confused the plums and made them bloom early; then the frost hit and destroyed the buds. 😦 So he doesn’t have any plums, either. This is the third year for my plums and I ate one last year.

Considering how little attention I have given my strawberries, and the fact that they are old plants, it is a big surprise to me that they are so happy and productive this spring. This morning I picked eight fruits to bring into the house, which might set a record, but that could be because in the past I have eaten them all in the garden.

I hope your June is starting out as happy as mine. ❤

My weeds, massacred.

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Two days ago I saw a mallow blooming along my path and I thought it was so pretty, I planned to post the picture I snapped as soon as I got home. I guess I snapped too hurriedly, because I didn’t get a good picture, and yesterday I didn’t get back there to try again.

This morning was foggy and then cloudy, which would make it easier for me to get a good image, but I as I put off my walk for one thing and another I started to worry that the sun would beat me to the spot. Eventually I set off, walking fast and looking up at the sky as I went, where indeed the sunshine was about to break through.

Soon I forgot all about the lighting, when I turned on to the path to see — decimation!

Clearly my city’s maintenance workers are confident about what is a weed: anything growing in a 3-6 foot swath along the bike paths is Unwanted and deserving of execution at any moment.

This is the spot where Common Mallow had come into its bloom:

I will post the picture I took in case I don’t get another:

malva neglecta

My eyes were peeled looking for a mallow that might have escaped the mower and I found one:

I also went down by the creek to get closer to some cow parsnip to see if it actually was that, and saw lots of lush and wild plants who are safe for now… at least, until someone decides to dredge the creek!

That mix includes a kind of horsetail reed, probably Equisetum hyemale. I have another species in my garden, which I don’t have time to tell about right now, because I need to actually go into the garden and work, and pull up some of my kind of Equisetum, which I am considering a weed in some places, and in other places, an ornamental plant. 🙂

I noticed those plants above because I had taken a short-cut home, being somewhat disheartened by the ruin of my usual fields of research, and that led me past a less familiar stretch of the creek. [Update: The vine above I’m pretty sure is a wild cucumber or Marah, which is in the gourd family.]

Mowing is the thing to do this week, it seems. My neighbor Ray died a couple of years ago but someone is still “taking care of” his house, it seems. I don’t think it looks better than it did before they mowed the weeds he left behind, but I understand: now that our rainy season is over, all of these weeds will turn into crispy dry Fuel for wildfires, and after last fall’s devastation, people are duly careful.

Many weed portraits were added to my files in the last weeks while the plants were enthusiastically obeying their calling, and which I will use to continue my botanical, etymological and philosophical studies of weeds. So never fear! Weeds will return to Gladsome Lights, and I have no doubt they will also return to the borders of my walking paths.