Paperwhite narcissus are one of my all time holiday favorites.  For years when I ran the nursery, it was a constant race to keep up with the demand for these fat glossy bulbs that quickly root, shoot and burst in fragrant bloom just in time for holiday gifts and decor.  Every year we sold hundreds and hundreds and yet, I have never grown tired of their heady sweet fragrance nor cease to marvel at how simple it is to get these beauties to bloom; it’s called “forcing”, but really, very little coercion is involved.

Getting them to stand up - now that’s a different story!  You’d think my years and years of experience would have granted even some small level of expertise or explanation as to why these plants persist in flopping just when they are in peak bloom.  HA! 

Such as it is…here are my directions:

3-4 weeks before you want flowers place clean gravel in a vase; I like to use clear glass vases so I can watch the succulent white roots emerge (isn’t it amazing what passes for gardening mid-winter?)  Nestle the root end of the bulb into the gravel and top lightly with another shallow layer of rock to anchor the bulb in place.  Fill the vase just to the bottom of the bulb with water and place in a bright but cool area to root.

Expert tip #1 coming up:  In a temporate region, like our beautiful Pacific Northwest, place pots and vases of planted paperwhites outside for maximum exposure to light and cool temperatures to produce nice straight, stout stems.  (I’ve even tucked a few bulbs in with mixed container plantings on the hope that we’ll have our usual mild weather.  These bulbs bloom and hold for weeks and weeks provided temperatures stay between 40-45 F.)

Onced budded, bring the bulbs into the house but keep away from warm drafts and heat to encourage the stems to remain upright; you can even move the plants back out onto a cool porch when you are not enjoying their fragrance in the house to prolong their show.

Here’s where my expertise starts to fall apart.  Some years I follow the above instructions and have a glorious display with successions of powerfully fragrant, pure white, snowflake-like flowers for weeks on end.  Other years… well, unless I mistakenly purchased the rare weeping form this year, this is my sorry result.  Heavenly scent but hardly graceful splayed all over the table; sad, really.

So I began to hunt around the net for a solution.  I came across the Cornell University Website - they’re smart folks and their horticulture department is one of the best.  From Floriculture to Nursery Crop Production, Soil Science to Plant Pathology - these are the real experts!  Their advice? Gin - that’s right, cocktail hour now includes “potted” plants!  “A dilute alcohol solution will curtail excessive growth and result in shorter, sturdier stems which won’t flop.”  Really?

So, here’s round two in the great paperwhite caper.  I’ve purchased 5 more bulbs and set them into the gravel.  Of course, now it is a brisk 22 F. outside so they can’t go out on the back porch this time; it will be a true test of the spirited Cornell theory.  Download Pickle your Paperwhites and play along at home.

Me, I’ve cut all my formerly flopping flowers and created a lavish bouquet that fills the rliving room with a heady fragrance. I think I’ll have a martini and toast the good folks at Cornell while I await my test results.

Cheers!

Sometimes I let the rules take over, I guess it’s that oldest child thing. 

If the rules for  Bloggers Bloom Day state that you photograph and record what is blooming in your garden on the 15th of the month, than by gum I’m gonna wait until the 15th.  So much for playing by those rules!  I was so excited to contribute this month along with esteemed garden bloggers like Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening  Idaho Gardener  and many more.  There are so many clever, quirky, irreverant, smart, sassy garden bloggers out there.  It’s a great big sandbox and I want to play!

Inspired by the words of Elizabeth Lawrence, “We can have flowers nearly every month of the year,” Carol of May Dreams Gardens started Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from all over the world publish what is currently blooming in their gardens, and leave a link in the comments of May Dreams Gardens.

We’ve had a very mild autumn thus far and for the past few weeks I’ve been making a list of plants that are (were) flourishing and (did) look lively.  Autumn blooming tuberous nasturtium (see above) only just begins to bloom in mid November; its slender tubes of brilliant orange and yellow look like upside down flames dripping from the lobed, blue green foliage.  The crops of equally orange berries on the Iris foetidissima were a nice echo (note: I count berries on my “blooms” list). 

In another berried echo across the yard the Billardiera berries are (were) fat and fancy with a coat of shimmery iridescence, while nearby umbels of Dichroa febrifuga fruit dazzled in  dusky shades of pewter, pink, lapis and inky midnight blue.  I just love berries - the more otherworldly in color the better.

It’s an off year for beauty berry in my garden. In the big garden overhaul of ‘08 I tore out my Callicarpa dichtotoma ‘Profusion’.  In the past I was willing to forgive it  its awkward gangly form for its brilliant florescent purple berries every fall; that was until I discovered C. d.  ‘Early Amethyst’ a more compact and pleasing form with attractive foliage that emerges dusky purple in the spring and exhibits a glorious golden decline in the fall. ‘Early Amethyst’ berries are in tighter clumps than ‘Profusion’, put on quite a show against the fall foliage and persist well throughout the winter.  Anyway, my little one gallon plant was only installed this fall and I’ll have to wait at least another season for the effects to return.  We gardeners are forever planting but what we’re really cultivating is PATIENCE!

Anyway… it’s only the 14th but in a fit of rebellion I’m going to post my Bloggers Bloom pictures today while the lovely mantle of snow (!) is still fresh.  We hardly ever get snow in Seattle, and of course when we do everyone freaks out, weathermen flap their hands like excited geese, shoppers stock their pantries for the end times and drivers…well, the less said about Seattle snow drivers the better.  Remember, we have a lot of hills and it doesn’t take much to spin around and start playing automobile pinball.

So when I awoke to a winter wonderland this morning I rushed outside to snap some garden shots which I’ll quickly post before I get in my armoured snow vehicle and make the trek to the grocery store to stock up on provisions for the Big Blast of 08 - I’m sure the local TV stations each have their own storm logos by now along with various “parka boys” bringing LIVE reports every 15 minutes.

Winter blooming crocus…I have no idea which one.  I bought these corms probably 15 years ago at a local bulb sale and they’ve shown up every winter since.

Camellia sasanqua ‘Setsugekka’  This beauty blooms all winter and smells lovely when I pick a blossom to float in a shallow bowl by my bedside.

Here are my tuberous nasturtiums (left) and Iris foetidissima

…ah, the best laid garden plans and plotting.

 Billardiera longiflora  brrrrr… we’re not in Tasmania anymore!

Dichroa febrifuga  This plant looks like a recumbent hydrangea all summer with characteristic mophead flowers but the fall berries are the real treat - at least before they dessicate in the freezing cold.

Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’  Usually I go out and pick the last straggling leaves off her, especially if I’m going to take a picture or cut some branches for a winter bouquet - but I think I mentioned - it was COLD out there!

Clematis cirrohsa ‘Freckles’  Cute, huh?  This little rascal blooms all winter…and spring and summer and fall for that matter.  Never a giant show but endearing and most welcome at any time.

Well, that’s my contribution to Bloggers Bloom Day December 08 here in Zone 8, Seattle, WA. 

I attempted to leave the following comment at the Secret Stash Sea Salts blog this morning, but because I can’t seem to work the secret handshake and apparently haven’t been issued my decoder ring for the inner circle I must resort to posting it here and spreading the link love around!  

“This morning while reading about yet another economic meltdown and anxiously anticipating the coming “Winter Blast” (logo to arrive any moment now)- which will no doubt do a number on my beloved garden - I was distracted by today’s Seattle Times article about Secret Stash Sea Salt.  Caramel, Lavender, Vanilla…will you marry me?  Better yet, will you cook for me??!?!  Congratulations on your delicious sounding product; and good luck with the Ballard Market this Sunday during our “coldest weather since 1990!!(scary music)”.  I know what I want stuffed in my stocking Christmas morning!!!
- Cheers, Lorene  Plantedathome.com”

Chef Joe Conrad and co-owner Janna Wemmer are the brilliant minds behind this intriguing line of specialty salts.  Why so excited about salt?  What do you add to a dish when it “needs something”; for that matter what addictive crunch gets this weary writer through an afternoon of brain block?  Secret Stash Sea Salt makes my mouth water just thinking about their inventive flavors!  Visit their website and by all means, if you’re in the neighborhood drop by the Ballard Farmer’s Market on Sunday and introduce yourself to these fine culinary minds, I know I plan to.  You might want to bring them a hot drink or a small flask of a warming nip (see WINTER BLAST above.)  Baby, it’s gonna get cooooold outside!

“The golden age of exploration would have yielded far fewer discoveries without the sustaining nourishment and scurvy-preventing properties of salt-cured foods.  Perhaps the oldest and most primitive cure, salt remains an effective preserving method.  Fundamentally a rock, salt is a mineral derived from salt water or mined on land.  It is a component of our very blood and vitally necessary for our bodies to function.  That culinary standard, Joy of Cooking states “The interplay of salt and water is essential to life itself.”

The above passage is from my upcoming book Canning and Preserving Your Harvest (Sasquatch Books, summer 09); see here and here for more details about that project. 

 Ah, a lovely hour spent dreaming about magical salt crystals - a welcome diversion from the media drumbeat of financial ruin.  Now I better get outside and wrap those tender plants, disconnect hoses, and batten the garden hatches…or maybe I’ll swing by Ballard.  We’re having guests to dinner tonight  - with a sexy salt to accompany my Grand Fir oil and fabulous bread from West Seattle’s own Bakery Nouveau I might not even bother to roast that giant piece of pork in the fridge!  YUM!

Yes please!

It’s good that we have a national day for giving thanks…and stuffing more than just the bird.  I have so much to give thanks for and I try to remember that more often than on a single day in November.  But I will take this opportunity to declare thanks, “out loud”.

My past year “Planted at home” has brought me many blessings…good work, new friends, exciting opportunities and most of all, the privilege of being at home and present to and for my friends and family.  It’s been a year of travel, loss, adventure, health issues, stretching the comfort zone, and much laughter along with the tears.  The gift of time, at home - when needed - even when I’d rather be somewhere else, is precious beyond measure.

I am thankful for dear friends who support me, hold me up and cheer me on.  I’m rich beyond measure on my paupers pay.  Debra, Mary, Mary, Paula, Paula (yes, I have a lot of girlfriends with redundant names!), Sally, Terry - and the chance to reconnect with dear Lorraine.  Without getting too “running with wolves…” these people hold a place in my life and I trust them with my heart.

My family of 4 is together under one (tiny) roof for the first time in years.  Not always comfortable, peaceful or easy, oftentimes hectic, crowded and messy - I wouldn’t trade this experience for all the bedrooms and bathrooms in the cleanest house in the world.  To be all together at the dinner table when someone blows soup out their nose with laughter is my prize; with all our differences, we are so good together.

I’m grateful for the “rightness” of things that seem so wrong at the time.  From computers that blow up with deadlines closing in to caramel malfunctions.  In a serendipitous turn to last weekend’s Blue Skies and Betrayal, I discovered a delicious, albeit inadvertent recipe for salted toffee.  It would seem that if your (cheap) thermometer fails and you cook the sugar for too long…you get a lovely brick of toffee.

I’m still not ready to cut loose with my recipe, as I’ve clearly got some fine tuning to do, but steeping fresh bay leaves in the heavy cream before adding it to the molten sugar was genius!  In my frustration with the sugar-based building material that was my result, I had completely forgotten that I’d experimented in that way.  (I love bay-infused creamy desserts, rice pudding is another winner.)  The other night, I was working off steam and telling my woeful story (again) to my captive audience, i.e., my household, emphasizing my disappointment with a sharp crack on the counter with the parchment wrapped, (expensive) salt-laced brick of sugar.  To my surprise it broke quite easily - I had this stuff pegged as the next big breakthrough for NASA space shuttles repairs.  I tasted a small fragment and was further delighted to find I could actually chew it with my seriously-not-strong teeth…and, it was delicious!  Maybe I’ll have to add a small mallet to this year’s holiday candy basket and call it good.

One thing I never mess with - or fail with - is my Nana’s Texas Pecan Pie.  Brown, sugary, nutty and buttery - this is the HOLIDAYS for me (and my dad, and husband, and kids…)  It’s simple, soulful and reminds me so very much of the woman who loved me best in the world…until I had my daughter at which point she switched her allegiance to her!  This was explained to me politely, yet firmly some 22 years ago.  Nana has been gone since 2003, but lives on in her many, many family members.  Even today, as we grandchildren put together the annual extended family Christmas party our ideas must pass muster with our memories of Nana. 

Today, I’m thankful for pecans, butter, pastry and the love of a woman who made a wonderful pie.  Here you go, Happy Thanksgiving!

Nana’s Texas Pecan Pie

•  
  • 1 cup brown Karo syrup
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 3 eggs, slightly beaten
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cube butter
  • 1 cup whole pecans

Preheat oven to 300 F.  Mix sugar, syrup, eggs and vanilla.  Add pecans.  Pour into an unbaked 9″ pastry shell (use your best all-butter recipe).  Slice butter thinly over the top of the pie and bake in the slow over for 1 hour.  Cool, cut and serve with barely sweetened, vanilla laced, whipped cream.

I really made an effort to NOT WORK this past weekend.  Instead I cleaned house, cooked dinner, puttered on projects, read and relaxed; no proofing, no editing, no lost weekend at the laptop.  Sunday dawned with beautiful blue skies, the perfect opportunity to go outside and prune my long neglected, overgrown olive tree.  I have plans to fashion olive wreaths for friends this Christmas - World Peace, dontcha know.  But, even the nice weather failed to lure me outside.  I figure I’ve waited this long to prune, I can wait a little longer - and it’s not like I can’t do that rain or shine.

Instead, I planned to take advantage of the beautiful dry day and start on Holiday candy making.  Working with sugar can be tricky in our humid (damp, soggy, WET) pacific northwest. Who knows, this might be the last blue sky day until….?  While I don’t have the patience for Christmas cookies something grabs me about Christmas candy!  Each year I make Pecan Pralines and Marshmallows (yes, they taste just like Kraft but still, I like ‘em and they make killer s’mores!).  Last year I dabbled in Caramel and even danced around the idea of homemade Turkish Delight…even going so far as to download a video about it.  I LOVE Turkish Delight - especially the rose flavored variety.  I chickened out on the TD but I seem to recall caramel success.

Lately I’ve found some wonderful sounding caramel recipes - sea salt (my oh my) and gingerbread spice.  So, I decided to start this year’s candy making with ooey gooey caramel - simply sugar, melted until nicely browned and well…”caramelized” with heavy cream and flavors added.  I gathered my ingredients: brown sugar, white sugar, corn syrup, butter, and heavy cream.  As far as kitchen supplies, you need a heavy bottomed saucepan, a wooden spoon or silicon spatula for stirring the hot molten mixture and oh yeah, a candy thermometer. 

There was an unfortunate fudge incident many (many) years ago where I misread the C. and F. markings on a cheap candy thermometer (and in so doing created a hardened brick of sugar stronger than most concrete formulas!), much to the dismay of my rocket-scientist dad who just shook his head in disappointment.  Apparently, temperatures are a key factor when getting rockets into space; what can I say…young children were underfoot and I was distracted…for about 15 years!  Anyway, these days I’m pretty good about quality kitchen tools.

Of course, recently my faithful candy thermometer broke.  Well, it didn’t so much ”break”; I inadvertently put it through the dishwasher and all the calibrations came off…it still gauges heat - it just can’t communicate the results, poor thing.  These being economically challenging times, I confess I went for the cheaper replacement. See where this is headed? 

Yesterday’s first batch of candy was a maple fudge penuche; I have this idea for homemade pecan rolls, yummmmm.  The house was smelling heavenly…real maple syrup, caramel-y sugar, beautiful butter - what’s not to like?  It sure seemed like it was taking a long time to reach soft-boil temperature (236- 240 F.) but, hey, I only do this once a year; maybe I just forgot how long it takes for the sugar solution to concentrate, giving up its moisture and rise in temperature.  I totally understand the theory; I’ve got a little “rocket scientist” in me after all.  But when it came time to “beat to a fudge like consistancy” something went terribly, terribly wrong.  My lovely maple penuche turned into a grainy, hot, gob of molten sugar, the butter separated out from the mass and begin spattering out of the stand mixer and spray all over the (once clean) kitchen!  Did I mention it was HOT?  What a mess - and I had to work quickly to clean it all up given what I know overcooked sugar hardens to.

Sheesh, OK, round two.  But first I tested the thermometer.  Boiling water - right on the mark 212 F. 100 C.  Ok, go slower; have patience; go for a more Zen-like process - BE the stirring.  I decided to go with my tried-and-heretofore-true caramel recipe.  Maple syrup is expensive, sugar I can afford.  30 minutes later I poured the russet brown mixture into a parchment lined 8×8″ pan and sprinkled flakes of Murray Island pink sea salt on its cooling surface.  My first indication that something had gone wrong (again) was when I risked burning my tongue and snitched a gob of caramel off of the base of the candy thermometer before rinsing it.  Hmmmm, it darn near glued my jaw shut!  Sure enough - 60 minutes later I’ve got a hardened brick of nicely caramelized sugar sprinkled with (very expensive) salt!!! 

Argh!  Now I’m really frustrated, discouraged and anyone who has ever spent the afternoon working with hot sugar can attest, burned in several places all over my hands and wrists.  My clean kitchen is a mess, I’ve gone through nearly a pound of butter, a pint of heavy cream, plenty of sugar and all of my good humor and I have nothing to show for it!!!  I spent the rest of the afternoon (the sun had long since set on the beautiful blue sky day) researching caramel, sugar, “soft ball stage” and candy on the internet.  I have no idea what went wrong.  Blue sky, low humidity - check; heavy saucepan - check; low steady heat - check; heat to 236-240 F. - check, check, check - it said so right there on the (%*$% cheap) thermometer!!! 

It was a very unsatisfying day and an inauspicious start to my holiday baking.  I had blithe notions of blogging about “gifts from the heart and home”, sharing recipes and maybe even taking on the Turkish Delight video. HA!  Instead, I wasted a perfectly beautiful blue sky day indoors and after hours and hours of effort have only betrayal, burns and a bruised holiday spirit to show for it.  Bah Humbug!

Don’t get me wrong, I try again, with a new candy thermometer!  Today is another beautiful day. I’m off to Emerald City Gardens to purchase an aloe plant for those pesky burns and I promise I’ll share recipes when, and if, I get them to work.

Bad, bad, bad thermometer!

“I have my litany of frustrations, as everyone does, but ultimately I try to be hopeful because I don’t see any decent alternative.  I want to believe we can turn things around.  It would be cynical to give up on life and turn our backs on the kids:  Cynicism is irresponsible.  And having hope is a much more healthy way to live.  I think of hope as a design decision.”

-Barbara Kingsolver

I found the above quote (somewhere?) many years ago, shortly after “the events of 9/11″ as they say.  I typed it up, made copies and stuck one on my office wall and tucked one into my wallet right there next to the red Chinese New Years envelop that was a gift (filled with a Starbucks card) from my friend Big Dave.  These scraps of paper, mixed in with receipts, credit cards, my library card and various other “you’re-a-member” cards are precious talismans to me.  As I search for my Costco card, trying to calm my nerves from the hell-that-is-the-Costco-parking lot, I come across the bright red envelop or the Kingsolver quote… and breathe.  The paper has become so worn it feels felted; smudged with dirt and lipstick, creased and torn from the nearly 7 years it has accompanied me.

I love Barbara Kingsolver.  Yes, her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is compelling in a way that has changed many lives, my own included.  But it’s her 1995 book of essays, entitled High Tide in Tucson that I found transformative.  Especially the essay by the same title as the collection, about a little hermit crab that hitched a ride in a shell collected on a beach vacation in the Bahamas all the way to a house in the middle of the desert in Arizona. 

With the gift of a storyteller and the sensitivity of a naturalist, Kingsolver tells the tale of her daughter discovering the crab–”EEEEEK”–and how, together, they make a home for the poor creature so far from it’s native habitat.   A revolving wardrobe of shells is offered as is a roomy terrarium - even a name, Buster.  I won’t spoil how it turns out, or what became of Buster, but this simple essay opened my eyes to the connectedness - across miles, habitat and even understanding - of all living creatures.  I can just hear my kids, “you are SUCH a NERD, Mom.”

Anyway, Kingsolver has been a hero of mine ever sense and her sentiments on hope struck a deep chord with me.  Too often, we are accused of being naïve, or unsophisticated when we express hope.  Hope is often mistaken for “wishing” and “desire”, as in “I wish for success, or enough money…or for someone to come clean my house!”  Hope is something other, an attitude, an outlook… “hope is a design decision”…I love that.  Not passive wishing, or covetous wanting, but a deliberate decision to approach the world from a certain perspective.

We hear a lot about hope these days, in the news, campaign materials, and fevered rhetoric 24/7.  What if we deliberately made the decision to hope?  To open our eyes to our need for community, support and relationships, and acknowledged our connectedness across miles, habitat and even understanding?   Yeah, yeah, yeah…it’s getting thick in here; but what if?

It’s like the hours I spend down on my muddy knees planting bulbs each fall.  I always put it off until the rains begin, not for any reason other than bulb planting is not one of my favorite garden chores and I always put it off as late as I can.  Digging in cold, wet dirt to bury very unpromising-looking nuggets of vegetable matter in the HOPE that they will blossom into lovely, colorful, often fragrant bloom in 4 to 5 months time is something I know to be true.  Just as I know that those bulbs which remain on the potting bench withering in their paper bags will most certainly, not bloom.

I’ve planted a few bulbs so far this season, early for me!  But dozens more are waiting for me to get out there and get busy.  But first, I have to finish my manuscript - it’s crunch time ’round here, and truth be told, why I wish someone would come clean my house; I’m definitely not attending to such matters.  No, I’m caught up in cured meats, pickles, drip cheeses, and herbal libations.  The other night I dreamt about salted lemons!  But the beginning of November is almost here.  Hope is a design decision.  I know I’ll get the book done, the bulbs buried, the floors swept, but most of all I wish for…desire…yearn for and crave a collective spirit of hope.

No passion is without its Control Issues, Gardening is no exception.

The following is an excerpt from Hortus Miscellaneous, my first book, a humble little hodgepodge of gardening information and instruction that, like the Ouija board of kid-dom, always seems to have something to say about the human condition:

Pollard: a woodland management technique traditionally employed to produce crops of firewood or lumber in which trees on a single stem were cut back to a height just above that of grazing livestock.

 Pollarded sycamores at Filoli

Pleach: Tree branches are trained in a single horizontal plane above a clear stem, eventually knitting together with the branches of adjacent trees; an elevated hedge as it were. 

Topiary: the traditional craft of training and pruning plants into a variety of forms be they strongly geometric or whimsically representational.

Espalier : a restrictive form of pruning consisting of a central stem supporting several tiers of paired horizontal branches on which short fruiting spurs are maintained. Espaliered fruit trees are often trained against a southern wall where they benefit from retained heat, ripening their crop more quickly. 

Parterres and Knots: meticulously clipped plants form intricate geometric patterns representing the gardener’s ultimate control over the garden; generally designed to be viewed from above for the most impressive display

Miniature knot garden at Filoli

As gardeners, we’d like to think we’re in charge.  Actually it’s pretty human to want to CONTROL our environment, keep our loved ones safe and happy, deck our surroundings and adorn our image.  In our pretty little heads the birdies sing, the tomatoes ripen and no one gets hurt! 

Gardening seems pretty harmless in the grand scheme of things.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been drawn to knot gardens and topiary; their clipped formality is a paragon of control.  Having tried to manage a full blown knot garden for several years I’m now willing to let the groundskeepers play that game. 

Hats off to Kathy LaFleur and the amazing (& huge) knot she manages at her garden in Rancho Santa Fe.  I met Kathy last fall when I had the opportunity to stay in her guesthouse.  Waking in the morning to see the clipped rosemary spangled with dew was magical.  Note:  do you know how fast rosemary grows???  This is not standard knot garden material this is ART on a nearly daily basis!!!

These past several years I’ve narrowed my formal aspirations to a series of small table top knot gardens and Lonicera nitida ‘Red Tip’ standards.  Tough day at the keyboard?  Clip, clip, clip… Spouse being all too human or it’s too much to think about actually weeding in the heat?  Snip, snip, snip.  Not fit for polite society?  Trim, finesse and detail the poor things!

Life can be a slippery slope fraught with heartache, loss and fear and anxiety.  A wise person remarked - our lives don’t  necessarily have a goal, in the sense that we never truly  “arrive”.  Instead what we are given are “moments” every day - our present.  A beautiful bloom, a beloved partner or child, the taste of a ripe berry.  If we can identify and cherish those moments, then we are living our lives. 

But in the meantime, when things get dicey it’s nice to be able to exert a little control, even if it is on my little radio flyer table top knot garden!

We have a custom in our house.  Every first day of school, the kids get their picture taken in front of the Blue Door.  Actually, most of the doors in our house are blue; “Blue Door Day” is code for Very Important Event.  School, athletic events, proms, finals, travel adventures - you know the sort.  There is generally much rolling of the eyes and impatient sighs…”mommmmm, I gotta go!”  But the real magic is when you line all the Blue Door shots up together.  Together they tell a story of the growth of a family.

This year we’re finding the Blue Door a little slippery.  My son is due at school (across town) at 7:10 AM!!!  To say that he is not a “morning person” is to call rain wet.  I’ve missed the opportunity to snap my BD shot these past two days as he’s lucky to even be dressed, equipped and mobile…feeding is optional. 

Today is my daughter’s first day student teaching.  Talk about the circle completing itself, from first day of Kindergarten to teaching!  We got the shot this morning.  (She was generous enough to have roommates take her BD pictures, minus the blue door, during the years she was off at college - see, she gets it!)  We’ll keep trying for the moving target that is Max flying out the (blue) door every morning around 6:45am!!!

I’m not what you would call a “helicopter mom”, ever hovering and orchestrating my kids’ daily lives - not even close.  In fact, I’m more apt to declare “stick a fork in her/him - she’s/he’s DONE!”  Well, Max is almost done, we do still have to get him out the door every morning for the next 9 months!!! 

It’s not necessarily an easy transition to watch your kids go out into an oh-so-flawed world.  It can cause a mother to cramp up with control (or lack thereof).  So, what do I do?  I go out into the garden, of course, where I can capture compositions of color and contrast and still a moment, caught in pixels, where everything works. 

In keeping with the Blue Door Day here are my snaps of garden blues:

A shade composition of Dichroa fibrifuga, or Blue Evergreen Hydrangea, and the finely cut, nearly turquoise blue foliage of Dicentra ‘Langtrees’, or Fringed Bleeding Heart.  The real WOW is still a month or so off when the blossoms of the Dichroa give way to 1/2″ metallic blue/purple berries that hold on the plant well into the winter.  A few dangling racemes of heart-shaped white flowers on the bleeding heart are still in bloom as they have been since early spring - now that’s a satisfying plant!  Note: Dicentra ‘Langtrees’ is apt to scuttle through a bed mingling and generally insinuating itself into the crown of everything nearby, as you see here.  Finally, the white leaf margins of Hosta ‘Regal Spendor’ brighten the dark green of the groundcover.

I’m all about the edibles…ornamental edibles are even better!  ‘Sunshine Blue’ Blueberry is a winner on so many accounts.  A dwarf plant, to about 3-4′, clothed in beautiful chalky blue evergreen foliage that takes on rich autumnal hints with cool weather.  Fat berries set in numbers - the plants are self-fertile - and taste like the sweet, tangy wild native blueberries of our Cascade mountains.  No bland, mealy berry on this star!  The plants have only been in the garden since May but already are earning their keep in so many delicious ways.  ‘Sunshine Blue’ was originally developed as a commercial crop but because the berries set underneath the canopy of leaves they were problematic to harvest and were not considered a success.  Factory farm loss is the homeowners win!!!  The berries are hidden from the birds and crop over a long period of time.  I can’t say enough wonderful things about this beautiful landscape plant.

Climbing Blueberry, or Billardiera longiflora, is not in fact a real blueberry but one can clearly see how it got the moniker! An evergreen vine to about 6′ that twines itself neatly up the railing of our back stairs.  Narrow dark green foliages remains clean throughout the year and shaggy, copious, somewhat nondescript limey-green flowers appear in May only to give way to these beauties in late summer.  Oh MY!  This is another one of those plants that, for all it’s relatively small dimensions, totally steals the show when it is in fruit!!!  Brilliant plantsmanship, clever compositions, vintage trailer be damned…  this little guy wins ‘em over every time.

Okay, technically more black than blue, but like I always say - a gal’s gotta eat!  The himalayan blackberries are ripe in the weedlots and greenbelts throughout the city.  Their perfumed, winey-tart flavor is our ONLY reward for fighting their wicked brambles and thorns all the rest of the months of the year!  A pernicious weed if there ever was one, thickets are quick to engulf empty lots, fences, and small buildings.  This is the Northwest’s Kudzu…only we can make a delightful jam from it’s fruit.  Truth be told, I would probably miss these thugs if we ever did erradicated them…which there is absolutly no chance of ever happening. 

The coming week promises to be sunny and warm.  Isn’t that always the way on the week the kids have to go back to school?!?  I think I’ll wander over to the greenbelt, pick some more berries and make some tarts, a nice treat to get us all over this seasonal hump.

I met the most wonderful blog the other day… Redwhiteandgrewblog.com is devoted to

“promoting the Victory Garden revival and other simple, earth-friendly endevors as bipartisan, patriotic acts in an age of uncertainty.” 

Go there - Go there often… In just one short week I have been inspired by the optimism and energy of this “growing” movement towards raising our own food.  It’s not just exciting - it’s of crucial importance and a simple act of independence and yes, patriotism in a country we can help to become.  The following definitions are from RWGblog: 

Meme:  “A unit of cultural information that represents a basic idea that can be transferred from one individual to another, and subjected to MUTATION, CROSSOVER, and ADAPTATION.”  Source

Social Entrepreneurship: “A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society.” Source

So here’s my response to RWG’s challenge to talk about fall gardening (yeah, yeah, twist my arm!!!) 

Victory Garden Meme Questions

What are your favorite local garden resources:  Sentimental favorite - Emerald City Gardens, a tiny, quirky and passionately run nursery

What are your favorite books and magazines? 

1.  Northwest Garden News -  a regional resource for gardeners in Washington and Oregon. From publisher, Mary Guiterrez: “I want a love of gardening to be passed on to future generations. I believe that gardeners can, one backyard at a time, help to restore health to our planet. We can provide habitat for wildlife, restore lost trees, and create natural spaces for future generations to grow up in.”  full disclosure - I contribute on a regular basis
2. The Complete Guide to Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, by Steve Solomon: a classic for years now and one I always used to refer people to at the nursery for his clear, succinct and thorough explanation on soil science - the basis for ALL gardening success.
3. The Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord
4. The Art of French Vegetable Gardening by Louisa Jones - hey, a gal can pretend, right?

Truth be told, some of my best inspirational vegetable garden books are in fact Cookbooks. 

1. The Herbal Kitchen by Jerry Traunfeld, former chef extraordinaire from the acclaimed Herbfarm Restaurant
2. Northwest Kitchen by Seattle cooking diva Kathy Casey
3. Unplugged kitchen, a return to the simple, authentic joys of cooking by Viana la Place - a delicious homage to fresh produce and seasonal eating.

(OK, now I’m hungry!)

What have you had success with growing in your (fall) garden? and When do you plant and harvest it?   Well, I’ve only just begin to plant for a fall garden.  What with our fitfully slow start to Spring this year, we’re barely into Summer!  What I have planted so far:

• Beets - beautiful in the ground (ever the sucker for ornamental edibles) and sweeeeeeet on the tongue
• Red mustard - again a beautiful plant that always bolts too quickly when spring planted but holds for months in the shortening, cooler days of autumn
• Arugula - again with the spring bolting, plus along with radishes (a favorite of our household for baguette and sweet butter sandwiches) you can’t beat arugula for instant germination gratification!
• Fava beans - of course - after harvesting my crop in late July I cut the plants back to about 12″ and added a fresh layer of compost.  The regrowth is already about 12″ tall, branched and flowering - can you say more, more, more!?!
• Black Kale - actually I sowed this seed some time ago between the rows of the Favas but it’s not been until the beans were cut down that the little seedlings have really put on some growth.  They should be eating size by late September and hold well into the winter.
• Kohlrabi - I always wonder when I’m moved to plant something I never even buy at the market but these are just too weird to pass by and in the course of my research writing The ECL Guide to Growing Vegetables (Sasquatch Books, due out in 2009) Kohlrabi just sounded too good to pass by, its’ taste a cross between a crisp radish and an apple (?) and perfect  for late summer sowing.

• Lettuces - I’ve really worked to keep some small cut-and-come-again crops coming on.  Usually we have lettuce for the world and then nada for the rest of the summer!
• Leeks - these have been in the ground since May but are sizing up and looking beautiful.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left leeks to flower - an amazing sight - and just bought leeks for the kitchen!
• Rainbow chard - spring planted transplants are still cranking out stems and leaves; a few plants are starting to bolt so I’m planning on cutting everything back fairly hard fava bean-style and going for a second crop that will produce throughout the fall.  Same goes with the sorrel plants.

What is your favorite gardening tip?  Grow it, kill it, know it!!!  I know it sounds glib but in spite of all the information I take in from books, magazines, and yes, blogs, it’s the hands-in-the-dirt successes and failures that stick and live another day to inform my next move.

• On a more practical level my friend Sally told me to regularly snip/mow my tiny patch of chamomile and use as an anti-fungal mulch my tomato plants - It works!!!
• Under “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘um”  - having long ago been handed down (red flag!!!) a division of  comfrey, and after repeated efforts to dig it up, bury it deep, or excavate the entire area to eradicate the beast (fail, fail, failed) I finally have made a tentative peace with the beast when I found out from my friend Willi on her weekly radio show on KUOW, our local NPR affiliate that comfrey also makes a great mulch in the veggie garden.  Check out Willi’s blog Diggin’Food.  I did a little more research and found that comfrey is as high in nitrogen as barnyard manure, with an NPK analysis of 8-3-20.

Why do you call your garden a _________ (Victory Garden, Peace Garden, Freedom Garden, vegetable garden…etc.)?  Definitely “Victory Garden”  I am a vintage ephemera nut with a definite retro streak so’ Victory Garden’ floats my boat on a lot of levels.  (check out these great public domain images from the Library of Congress and the University of North Texas)  I also think we do claim an independence and satisfaction when we produce for our own table and reconnect to the process and evolution of FOOD - I’d call that victorious!!!

So, there you have it my fair readers.  Plant one for the homeland!  I always say…

Plant the World, Grow Yourself!!!

Eucryphia blooms from our bedroom window

The title is a line from one of my children’s favorite books purchased around the time when my son was born much to the disappointment of my daughter who was really, really, REALLY gunning for a sister.  Julius, Baby of the World, by Kevin Henkes went a long way to helping us over that hump and contains that line which has entered our family’s lexicon to express moments of wonder and marvel.  It works great, feel free to borrow it anytime…  But I digress, I just thought my title might need a little explanation.

I know we’re all supposed to keep garden journals…”the cherry tree bloomed today - 3 days, 4 hours earlier than last year!”  But I don’t. 

I do however have certain events in my garden that I eagerly anticipate on an annual basis:   the heavenly fragrance of the winter daphne, when the way-cool hot pink tips of the Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow” first start to emerge, sweet peas in bloom, fava bean harvest (don’t worry, I won’t beat that drum today) and many, many, more.   But the QUEEN of them all is when the Eucryphia x nymanensis is in full freakin’ flower!!!  She steals the show from the entire garden and I can only sit and (kiss, stroke and) admire her narrow form clothed in deep green foliage, copious pearlescent blooms and listen, mezmerized by the dizzy hum of pollinators. Hummingbirds, bees, and wasps congregate by the hundreds during daylight hours until the entire tree has an animate quiver.

The tree is situated (quite by accident I assure you) perfectly lined up with the peak of our second story and the much-deliberated green of our house and it’s white trim make a beautiful foil.  There’s almost a church-like frame to the whole composition.  Again, I take no credit.  This shrub came home from the nursery with me probably 10 years ago because “I like it…it’s cool”.  Dumb luck and the sheltered location of our backyard get all the credit.  Well, that and the fact that it’s been safely out of striking distance of our many garden renovations!

KISS 

STROKE 

ADMIRE 

This from Digging Dog - one of my favorite West Coast nurseries whose wonderful catalog reads like a compelling garden resource:

“This splendid evergreen hybrid between two Chilean species, Eucryphia cordifolia and Eucryphia glutinosa first arose nearly 100 years ago at Nymans Gardens in Sussex, England. Its name translates ‘well covered’ and reflects the abundant, sweetly fragrant bowls of pearl-white flowers with cheerful yellow stamens.” 

Check them out at Digging Dog.

But about garden journals, I totally understand the inclination to record and archive the events of everyday.  Plus, it would be darn handy to have a plant list for my many treasures (which one is the Billardiera longifolia and which one is the Billbergia nutans variegata….. ) let alone a means of documenting my various, haphazard garden experiments. Often, when conducting a garden trial of the latest greatest organic wonder spray I can’t remember which is the sample and which is the control…hmmmm, I guess that is an outcome.

But for now, writing is “indoor girl” as we say around here and gardening is …well, gardening is outside of that discipline.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t take note of and anticipate the rhythm and reliability of perennial pleasures that return every year to remind me that life is moving forward, on and on.  Even the most painful betrayal, disappointment and crushing heartache will pass as will those days of celebration, sunshine and laughter, thank heaven.  Today I’m bowing at my Church of the Eucryphia. I’m celebrating her beauty, her support for nature and her constant and beautiful presence in my life.