Saturday Farmer's Market - Odds & Ends

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

UPDATE from last week:    

I haven't had time for much beyond the basics in the garden this week. Busy. Busy. Busy. Among other thing, I'm looking for a new job.

I actually find myself dreading the thought of being successful in my job hunt, but working part time for half the year is just not supporting all our vices. We're particularly concerned about our addictions to eating regularly and living indoors. Indulgent, I know, but what can I say?

How will I possibly survive without my mornings in the garden? It's just too painful to contemplate. Don't mind me; I'll be fine. I think I'll sit in my garden rocker now and have a cup of tea.  . . .

UPDATE #2:

Look! This is our younger daughter, Petunia, looking pensive. (She's adopted, but looks remarkably like my husband.) Isn't she just the most precious little angel?

We find her much more appreciative and loving than her older siblings, and are amending our wills accordingly.

Petunia is a full blooded Boxer and came to us by way of a rescue shelter. Besides the general shelters, there is a rescue for just about any breed you can think of. With so many little sweethearts in need of loving homes, there is just no reason to patronize breeders and the like. We also have an Australian Shepherd who was a rescue dog, and they have both been wonderful additions to our family.

If you're looking for someone to love you unconditionally, 

try Petfinder, Rescue me, or AKC Breed Rescue.

(Sorry for the commercial, but I do feel strongly about this.)

You know what else I've learned? Boxers never grow up! Imagine a 70 pound puppy - forever. She's my baby and likes to sleep in my lap while I read or watch TV. With my legs outstretched on a stool, she fills my entire lap - to my toes. In the winter she's kind of like a full body heating pad. She's been with us for a year and a half now, and It's hard to remember life before her. (And no, that's not senility talking!)

UPDATE #3:

Oh! Oh! Oh! We've started seeing Monarch butterflies in the garden. It has been such a long time. My commitment to not using poison is paying off beautifully. Yes, I have had to learn to put up with pests, and find imaginative ways of dealing with them instead of eradicating them. But the variety of amazing living things enjoying and nurturing my garden with me has exploded, too. We're like a little co-op. A strange little co-op. We all do our part, and we all reap rewards.

Lucinda Matlock
- Edgar Lee Masters

I went to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed--
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you--
It takes life to love Life.

I wish I had a better quality camera. Or maybe It's just me. If you were to ask the camera, I'm sure that would be its story.


This is the bed between the house and the drive way. I expanded it from the small area where an old climbing rose bush grew next to the house. The heat this year has taken quite a toll on the bush; it's usually big enough to fill in the background of this picture. This year, not so much.








Last fall my husband found a small Japanese Maple on clearance. It had been trimmed to look like a lollipop, but it was still fairly healthy so he brought it home. Through the fall and winter it's leaves were a beautiful crimson color. The canopy has filled out nicely and it looks quite happy.

This little lump is a red azalea. It dropped it's flowers during the heat wave, but still has some new growth. I have it at the back of this bed as it will eventually end up being much more than a lump.









It's hard to tell from the photo, but this is a Pieris Japonica, sometimes called a Lilly of the Valley bush. In full bloom it is a mass of little white flowers. When I planted it this spring its flowers were starting to fade, but it put on lots of bright, new growth. And now it is covered with brand new bracts for a beautifully full rebloom. (If the heat doesn't have other ideas.)


A big half barrel in the center of the bed holds golden colored mums and, in the spring, huge yellow daffodils. I didn't get a picture of its first bloom, when it was a beautiful golden mass. I'm hoping to get something tall to put in the center, but I just can't decide what to put there. It needs to be something eye catching, but can't grow too big or too fast.









The purple flowers around the base of all these plants are verbena, and they're filling up the empty space nicely.

This bed also contains my 'nursery.' Here's where I keep my pots and the plants that are having difficulty.

In this picture are two lemon grass plants, a tiny bay laurel, a scotch broom, and a holly.










Here you can see all the new growth on my poor jade plant. This winter was hard on it, but it's coming back well.

And . . . a couple of my garden tenants, both hiding (or trying to) in the Japanese Maple. 

It looks like a grasshopper, but I'm not sure. This is the first one I've seen in the garden.











And if you look real close, you can see a praying mantis.

 

As always, you can click on any of the pictures to embiggen them.

Saturday Farmar's Market - Maiden, Mother, Crone

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

UPDATE from last week:  

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Pickles! Remember when I shared my recipe for sweet refrigerator pickles? Well, if you had started them at that time you would be enjoying wonderful sweet pickles right now!

I have enough ripe cucumbers for a second batch (after I get more canning jars). I'll put up as many as I can, since my family loves them, but I won't have nearly enough for the winter.

UPDATE #2: My Cherry liqueur is coming along nicely. I think. My actual alcoholic expertise is limited to a Guinness or two after yard work and an occasional weekend cooler. (My mother in law and I used to 'sip' some sangria while working in the garden. My husband rolled his eyes and called it giggle gardening. He's no fun.)

Is it supposed to smell like cherry flavored paint thinner?
 
              Here is an interesting vision of a Garden by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

If I could put my woods in song

And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,--
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,--
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide,--
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god,--none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another,
In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates;
Infant Bacchus in the vine,--
Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture,'Stay.'

This Farmer's Market post finds me feeling kind of introspective. I hope you don't mind too much.

In early spring my Iceberg rose bushes were solid white. Unfortunately, my camera and I were still on the outs at the time, so I have no pictures to prove it. I debated whether or not to leave the rose hips, and opted to deadhead and maximize the rebloom. After cleaning up, I finally got a few pictures.

What do you see when you look at this picture? Myself, I find that the three stages of roses reminded me of, "Maiden, Mother, & Crone."

That particular trinity means different things to different people - goddess triad, phases of the moon, realms of the world - but to my eyes, it is a memoir.

I remember the intensity of youth, the striving, the incessant need to move forward. To what, I was not always sure, but I knew I had to keep moving.

Then came motherhood, equal parts insecurity and satisfaction. To be honest with you, it's all quite a blur. Don't get me wrong, I have many wonderful memories of those years. But for the most part, it mixes together like the colors of an impressionist painting - all working together to create a thing of beauty. My kids are relatively well adjusted, so I must have done something right.

And here I am, Crone at last. I always expected that, like Dylan Thomas urged his father, I would rage against the coming sunset. But, no. I find myself embracing the calming time, and willingly following the path as it spreads out in front of me.

New experiences, new understandings, new friends, all collude to draw me forward once again.

I still don't know where the path is taking me, but I'm okay with that.

Flowers, anyone?

My garden.
My therapy. My inspiration.

These lantana are under my lavender crepe myrtle. (there are five of them) They share the same homeland (Australia) with the tree, so I figured they would play nice. I love the fiery colors and they are starting to fill in nicely.















My Jade tree was badly burned this winter even though I had it covered. It's quite old and has survived a lot, but the usual precautions weren't successful this time. I have been coddling it and it is coming back quite well. However, I hope to have a place to move it permanently inside before winter. It is much too large to be moving in and out.





This little sweetheart (whose name I can't recall) is tucked in among the rocks beneath my rosemary bush.










I have these hens and chicks, larger than the span of my splayed fingers, both in the rock garden around the rosemary and in a pot with other succulents.

This is actually a bright pink laundry basket that I've drilled for drainage, and it contains a motley assortment of succulents.

These are my avocado trees, started on my windowsill. Yup. There are two of them in the pot. I'm trying apply some bonsai techniques to keep them manageable. (The two sixty footers I see every day out my front window lead me to believe it's going to be a futile endeavor.) They were a bit peeked at first, but they seem to have rallied.





There are so many things I want to do in the garden, but you know how it is. Money, time, and ability are never up to optimum levels. I'd like to turn a couple of our old windows (replaced last year) into small cold frames.  I could use a truck load of mulch. I want to get rid of the grass, make some paths, . . . and on and on . . .

Until I am able to get around to all the ideas racing around in my head, my garden journal will keep them safe.

Saturday Farmer's Market - A Garden Journal

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

UPDATE from last week:

Remember that stump from last week? Well, we found a large clay saucer in the garden store that had been 'antiqued' and sealed. My husband secured it with water based construction adhesive. 

What do you think? 

It's understated, but I think the birds will appreciate a little respite from the heat. I hope so, anyway.

UPDATE #2: Our first little plum crop is all in. There wasn't enough to preserve, but we've been eating the sweetest, juiciest fruit I've ever tasted. Perhaps it will get old one day, but this is not that day.

UPDATE #3: The weather here has been abominable! We usually don't deal with too much in the way of extreme temperatures until about mid August. This year those temperatures hit before the end of May, and we've had several runs as high as 112 (122 in Sacramento!). The weeks leading up to the holiday have been averaging 16 degrees above normal for this time of year. My camomile is not doing well, which will cut into my tea reserves, (I feel like such a farmer with all the worry about the weather!) and it looks like I lost my blackberries. The Master Gardeners tell me that water is not the issue, they just don't like this kind of heat. Although I was looking forward to homemade blackberry sauce on my ice cream, part of being a gardener is accepting defeat gracefully.

Keep careful record 

of all operations, 

with eventual results,

for future guidance . . .

 - John Horner, 

A Cottage Garden.

7/5/13 - Watered the trees in front; Three more plums; Watered all the pots & chamomile; weeded lavender & mail box beds; picked peppers, tomatoes & cucumbers; . . . 

Do any of you keep a garden journal? I do, and it has brought a wonderful added dimension to my gardening (and my memory). This is my fourth year, fourth journal, in an ever evolving series. I use old fashioned composition books and started out, like in the entry above, recording date and garden activities. I taped in the ID/care tags from any thing I planted, and decorated (outside & in) with pictures and quotes from garden magazines. I also jotted down any ideas I had and kept a wish list.

With the advent of my new 'orchard,' I decided that I needed to be able to reference what I had done to each tree & when, as well as have any other pertinent information easily accessible. So this year I created a kind of permanent reference. I set it up with different sections, and even drew out my beds and marked all the perennials in them. The journal has ten different section and has really been handy this year.

This is my indoor cat, Snowball.

 (Yes, there is a story behind that.)

She escaped, and was sure I couldn't get her

 - three feet up, in the crepe myrtle.

 
The useful things I put in my journal are:

CONTENTS: You would be surprised how important this section is. I didn't put it in initially and I regretted it. Luckily, I left a few empty pages in the front of the book!

BEDS: This is where the the drawings of all my beds are, each with a list of its plants.

PHONE #S: Soooooo handy! (master gardeners, hardware stores, local garden centers, poison control, bee swarm experts, pizza delivery, etc.) All in one place.

FRIENDS: This section contains anything I need to remember about the tiny folk who share my garden with me, from birds to bugs - and beyond.

CHEMICALS: Fertilizer, or any other evil concoction I might use, is recorded in this section. (No plausible deniability, here)
 
LIST: All my trees, flowers, and such are listed here with their planting dates and a page #.

DETAIL: Each perennial plant in the garden has a couple of pages set aside in this section, where I record its progress, issues, etc. This will keep me from repeating past mistakes. (only garden mistakes, unfortunately) The page numbers from the last section are where each plant resides in this section.

ODDS & ENDS: Ideas, wish lists, projects: they all go here. My watering schedule and anything someone else might need to know if I'm out of the picture are here as well.

ANNUALS: After this gardening season got underway, I realized that I had no place to keep track of my veggies and annual flowers. This is it.
 

I also pasted the Julian calender inside the front (and the one for leap years inside the back). This makes figuring germination and harvest dates a snap.

Slugs used to be a real problem, but when I started feeding the birds it disappeared almost completely, and they bring so much joy and fun to the garden. Not to mention, they make for a wonderful soundtrack.

A small wild bird feeder and a hummingbird feeder both hang beneath the canopy of my crepe myrtle tree.

As for the daily entries that make it more of a real journal, I kind of miss them, and I'm debating what to do about that. Keeping a second journal seems a bit unwieldy, but maybe funneling all the daily thoughts into my poetry is an option.

 . . .  Yes! That's it!  . . .

Poets write stories in verse!

Maybe I can write the first gardening journal in verse!

Saturday Farmer's Market - La Fleur Esta Bonita!

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

Yes. I'm what you might call "sub-lingual" in two languages (besides English, that is). A combination of French lessons in grade school & Spanish in college (with a little Latin thrown in) left me ... Well ... my Spanish teacher was tremendously amused. He said that since I had mastered the Spanish words and nailed the conjugation (in French) I'd earned an 'A' in the class. Would you call that Sprench or Franish?

UPDATE from last week:

My Sweety bought a new garden basket for me. The old one was just too small to carry my daily haul!

Here's the basket . . .

. . . and here's what's in it today.

UPDATE #2: Oh! The kumquat has been covered in bees savoring its tiny white flowers. That bodes well for a bountiful harvest this fall.

UPDATE #3: We had a small crisis this week with our crepe myrtle, which was mature when we moved in over twenty years ago. Full bloom coupled with a rare spring rain bowed some of the branches dangerously. It was very strange looking as the canopy was completely open in the center. I had to do some judicious pruning to save one of the branches. I will have to do a bit more later on, and I really don't want to trim this beautiful tree any more than I absolutely have to.

The Garden

- Alice Meynell

My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own,

   Into thy garden; thine be happy hours

   Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers,

From root to crowning petal thine alone.

Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown

   Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers.

   But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers

To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown.

For as these come and go, and quit our pine

   To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers,

      Sing one song only from our alder-trees,

My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine,

   Flit to the silent world and other summers,

      With wings that dip beyond the silver seas.

Flowers, anyone?

This is the view of one of my beds from the house. The community mail box is just beyond the fence and you can see the sidewalk. There used to be an ugly three foot high fence across the front of our property, but we got rid of it. I prefer an open, friendly, neighborly front yard.

This was originally a lavender bed with three huge, beautiful 'jagged' lavender bushes, but a mishap with the neighbor's sprinkler system killed them. Both the the bees and I went into mourning - but life goes on.

You'll notice the stump in the back of the picture. It is a remnant of the old shade trees and will soon be a bird bath.


Here is the view of that same bed from the street. The small flowers at the front were just planted so they haven't had a chance to fill in.

Look! You can see our baby navel orange tree in the background.







The two huge bushes are rust colored mums. When I planted them last fall they were just scrawny little plants. And since I'd always thought chrysanthemums to be fall bloomers, I was thoroughly surprised to find them blooming this spring. When in full bloom they will (hopefully) be two rust colored mounds about three feet across.


I tucked two little white mums at the outside edge of the arc, sale table finds. If they survive, they'll be quite lovely next year. Along the sidewalk I just planted two colors of African daisies. They'll eventually fill in and cover all the bare spaces.

I started tucking daffodil bulbs into my beds last year, and spring was beautiful. I plan to tuck a few more in this bed this fall. I wish I had pictures to show you, but I lost years worth of pictures with a hard drive crash this year.

At the heart of this little bed is what I've always referred to as a parking lot iris, a fortnight lily (not even close), also a young plant.

Front and center is a pack of Sedum, tucked into an old truck wheel (my husband's contribution).

My garden nurtures me, and if I'm really being honest, at times it is what keeps me moving. As many of you can attest, living with chronic pain can take a tole, and there are low times. But when I walk out into my garden it embraces me. A study out of The Netherlands even says that gardening is an excellent way of fighting stress and improving mental health.

I follow the cycle of the lady bugs, watch the antics of the hummingbirds and the squirrels, and observe the growth of the tiny praying mantis into the lion of my garden. Happy worms and industrious spiders do their jobs and an increasing number of birds serenade from their stages in the trees. Hard working bees, the backbone of any successful garden, go about their business, signaling their approval by the flowers and fruit left in their wake.

Tea and poetry in my garden rocker are a lovely reward for the efforts I make, large or small, successful or not. Peace, as any gardener can attest, is to be found in the garden.

Saturday Farmer's Market - Fruitses

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

UPDATE from last week:

Fifteen jars of sweet pickles have taken up residence in my refrigerator, and two large jars of cherry liquor are now lounging in the kitchen window.  

(Thank you, Chris for the latter.)

Now for a bit of verse. The free giveaway on today's tour is The Island by Vita Sackville West, a gardener herself.

She walks among the loveliness she made.
Between the apple-blossom and the water —
She walks among the patterned pied brocade,
Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.
This is an island all with flowers inlaid,
A square of grassy pavement tessellated:
Flowers in their order blowing as she bade,
And in their company by her created.
The waving grasses freckle sun with the shade.
The wind-blown waters round the kingcups ripple.
Colour on colour chequered and arrayed,
Shadow on light in variable stipple.
Her regiments at her command parade,
Foot-soldier primrose in his rank comes trooping,
Then wind-flowers in a scarlet loose brigade,
Fritillary with the dusky orchis grouping.
They are the Cosacks, dim in ambuscade,
Scarfed in their purple like a foreign stranger,
Piratical, and apt for stealthy raid,
Wherever’s mystery or doubtful danger.
Iris salutes her with his broad green blade,
And marches by with proud imperial pennant,
And tulips in a flying cavalcade
Follow valerian for their lieutenant.
The Lords-and-Ladies dressed for masquerade
In green silk domino discreetly hooded,
Hurry towards the nut-trees’ colonnade,
Philandering where privacy’s well wooded;
They’re the civilians of this camp by blossom tented,
With woodbine clambering the balustrade,
And all by briar roses battlemented.
There, in the sunlit grasses green as jade,
She walks; she sees her squadrons at attention,
And, laughing at her flowery escapade,
Stretches her hands towards her dear invention.

Our property used to be bordered on the west by a line of mature trees. They were a motley mixture of nothing spectacular, but they gave us wonderful shade and protected our house from the harsh California sun. (They also made our swamp cooler work better - and cheaper.) A combination of factors led to their loss a few years ago, and with them went our shade. Swamp coolers don't work very well at all in the relentless sun.

After a couple fallow years, we were finally ready to replant. But what to plant? Much discussion and many discarded ideas later, we decided on fruit trees. Hubby always wanted a navel orange tree, so that was a no-brainer. From there we just decided to grow the fruits we liked to eat. Some trees are self-pollinating and others need a buddy to fruit, but we were on our way.







Two plums, two nectarines, a pomegranate, a kumquat, and an Asian pear came next. Our final two fruit trees were inspired by a trip to the local farmer's market. We tasted a fruit that we hadn't even heard of - pluots, and that set off a mad scramble to find two trees (at a price we could afford).  Ten fruit trees made up my little orchard, and the new project was underway.

My reading led us to expect a wait of four or five years for fruit. Surprise! We have pomegranates and oranges getting ready for a late fall harvest this year, and we ate our first plum just a few days ago. 









Incredible!

A half century of eating and loving plums in no way prepared me for plucking one off of my own tree and biting into it.


.  .  .  The tender flesh, yielding to slight pressure from my teeth,  bursting into a shower on my tongue, with sweet juices running in rivulets down my chin . . .

Excuse me.  .  .  .  I need a moment alone.  .  .  .

Okay . . . I'm back. 

Sorry about that. I got a little carried away, but I'll try not to let it happen again. 

When I was watering yesterday, I noticed that the kumquat tree was covered in tiny white flowers. If everything goes well, kumquats will join the pomegranates and oranges this winter. 

My orchard is still just ten scrawny trees spread out over the yard, five in front and five in back, but they seem to be happy little trees.

This isn't a very good picture, but it includes four of them. On the right, just barely visible, is the Damson plum I rescued half dead from a clearance sale. It's only two feet tall, but it has lots of new, green growth. To the left of that is my Santa Rosa plum, the one responsible for the beautiful fruit above. Next, comes the pomegranate, and after that, the kumquat. The trees in the back have not fruited yet, but if this year is any indication, .  .  .

I'll need to find some good recipes soon!