Category: Ponderings

A Most Remarkable, Magickal Blue Moon!

Few things surprise this old Crone, especially when it comes to greeting new visitors to my backyard.  Over the years, we’ve entertained — and often adopted — dozens of feral cats & litters of kittens, lost dogs, scores of lizards, a swimming crustacean, a runaway iguana and several non-flying, unidentifiable large birds.  One hearty little bunny took up residence in the garden and stayed for years, and a pair of mallard ducks spent several days, pool-side (to the chagrin of two very concerned dogs), enjoying countless dips in the pool before flying off to wherever they came from.  They returned each summer, for several years, before presumably moving on to a new “vacation time share”.

Last Friday afternoon, on the day of the Blue Moon, I was in the kitchen, busily finishing some preparations for an annual weekend-long party that was taking place in our home in a few hours.  I had noticed some bird activity outside the kitchen window, noting that the mockingbirds were very annoyed at something on the roof above.  My husband and our friend, both of whom had just returned home after running some errands, called to me to, “Come outside!  Hurry!”

It was then that I met the most remarkable creature. Continue reading “A Most Remarkable, Magickal Blue Moon!”

What’s the buzz?

 

“Upside-down trees swingin’ free,
Busses float and buildings dangle:
Now and then it’s nice to see
The world– – from a different angle.“

— Shel Silverstein

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When I was a young girl, one of my favorite activities was to hang upside down and watch this other topsy-turvy world.  I often, also, tried to catch glimpses of the life Beatrix Potter described down the rabbit hole or follow bird village life in the tallest of the neighborhood trees.  I loved to lay on a quiet hillside and listen for the giants walking across the clouds in the sky high above me.  I was a true believer in the Luscious Layers of Life.

What happened that caused me to foolishly believe otherwise?  I am suddenly reminded of the song, MacArthur Park, and Jimmy Webb’s symbolism of something wonderful and sweet that has been destroyed because of neglect:

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
Cause it took so long to bake it
And I’ll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
 
I did think my beautiful, bountiful garden had been destroyed because of my own neglect. The late fall gave way to my yearly overly-scheduled event list and holiday rush, and the new year brought on a long anticipated massive home remodeling project.  My so-called “winter garden” never stood a chance.  By the time early Spring came and went, and late Spring turned into an early Summer, we hurriedly stuck a carload of nursery plants into our raised beds that had been given too little attention (and too little compost) over the winter.

Some of the plants thrived, but our tomato crop suffered through the summer, no plant ever giving us more than a handful of fruit, and there was never enough to make into salsas or sauces to can for winter enjoyment.  We had a very small zucchini crop and we ended up tearing the cucumber vines out long before they produced any fruit.

Our hearts ached with guilt that something so beautiful as our garden had been, just one year previously, had been allowed to wither and die — “all the sweet, green icing flowing down”.

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While it’s true that we suffered some real disappointments in the garden this year, we did find a few pleasant surprises tucked into the precious layers there.  The tomato plant in the photo, above, was not one of the pitiful nursery plants, but a “volunteer” – a “gift” from the neighbor’s chickens, no doubt, who spent many happy hours digging and scratching at this spot in the front yard.

It is never a good idea to expect life in the garden to be the same, year after year.  The garden is the heart center of the Luscious Layers of Life, with many magickal worlds both above in the trees and below the sweet, renewing earth.  We had a basil plant that had nearly taken over one of the raised planter beds, that had been heaped with flowers, year after year, and full of happy, appreciative bees.

This year was no exception.  We didn’t mind the bees, because they didn’t seem to mind us and tolerated us reaching in to gather fresh leaves for dinner.  But, one day, my husband noticed rather a large amount of bee activity at one end of our garden gazebo.  He noted it, and then realized the number of bees going beyond and under the gazebo floor was rising at an alarming rate!  We soon had to give up using the gazebo at all and decided to contact some bee movers before the situation really got out of hand.

The nice man from Guerilla Beekeepers in Santa Ana arrived to remove, rehabilitate and relocate our 30,000 honeybees from their home under the gazebo.  He taught us a lot about the bees and explained they live half their lives in the hive before ever coming out into the garden at all.  Apparently, these bees had been building this home for quite a while.  If we had been able to wait another month, we would have had loads of honey from the, then, estimated 50,000 bees, instead of the small amount we were able to harvest.

He remarked, several times, that these were the gentlest bees he had ever worked with, as not one even attempted to sting him.  He was using a small amount of smoke to calm them, as was the usual practice, and a thought occurred to me that I just had to ask:  Could they be calm because of their regular exposure to marijuana smoke?  The guys behind the fence tucked my bees into bed each night with a little toke, it seems, making for some sweet, peace-loving hippie freak bees!  He thinks that could well be the case, as these were definitely some peaceful, easy feelin’ bees.  The Guerilla Beekeeper Guy just put them in his car and drove them up the freeway to Santa Ana — he must have been quite a sight with 30,000 bees buzzing around inside his car!

Well, they’ll stone you when you’re tryin’ to be so good
They’ll stone you just like they said they would
They’ll stone you when you’re tryin’ to go home
They’ll stone you when you’re there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned  

                                           — Bob Dylan                                              
 
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My husband was walking past the pool one quiet afternoon, when he spotted a “hand” reaching up out of the water, to the deck above.  He stopped, just in time to notice an iguana climbing up the pool wall!  WHAT?!!  We called the guys over from next door, asking if it was theirs, and we were able to get these photos.  Apparently, the iguana belonged to someone down the street, and had been missing for several months.  We all believe this little guy had been living in one of our trees all this time, taking a dip in the pool and sunning itself on the pool deck when no one was around. It had grown a LOT since leaving home.
 
Our Golden Retriever had NO reaction (he was there in the yard with my husband) to the iguana, which leads me to believe he had seem it many times before.  Fionnlagh, why didn’t you tell us there was an iguana in the garden?  You never asked me.                                      

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I think this is my FAVORITE part about gardening, the little surprises I find here and there.  It’s my favorite part of life, too.  If life turned out exactly how it was planned, how boring it all would be!  I plan on spending a lot more time sitting in my gazebo, watching and listening for all the surprises my garden has to offer.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Goodbye, Old Friend

“I don’t know why you say goodbye, I say hello.”

— Paul McCartney

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I have finished posting the last of my cucumber recipes for the season. Truth is, we couldn’t take any more of this determined plant.  We’ve eaten more cucumber dishes this summer than I may have eaten in the last 5 or 6 years combined, and I was anxious to plant something new in its place.  While tearing the vines off of the (very successful!) trellis experiment, we noticed several cucumbers that had been hidden away beneath the thick vine cover, now beyond the eating stage and well into the seed-curing stage.

I must admit that I am somewhat fearful about the prospect of saving my own seeds.  While I fully embrace the concept, and I have had a few small successes with saved tomato seeds, I find it hard to imagine that I could do something, myself, that I have been relying on Burpee — for years and years — to do for me.

A change is slowly coming over me.  Having lived in southern California for more than half of my life, I find that it has taken me nearly this long to overcome the prejudice, ingrained in me by my home state of Pennsylvania, that we do not have “true” seasons here.  I was taught that Spring was for planting, Summer for growing, Autumn for harvesting and Winter for resting and planning for the next garden.

Not so!  We very much have seasons, here in Orange County, and each is a special time for planting certain crops, growing certain crops, and harvesting certain crops.  It is the cycling of crops that is important in my garden, now.  Now, more than ever before, the lessons I have learned through studying the Wheel of the Year are realized in my own hands, with my own seeds, in my own dirt, by my own spirit.

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Did you ever have to say goodbye to a friend?  We have all lost loved ones to death, but I am speaking here of losing a friend — who just left.  I am speaking of the intense kind of friendship — have everything in common friendship, do everything together friendship, be together always friendship — that you sometimes feel you have searched and searched your whole life to find, that just — without warning or explanation — totally and permanently ends.  You wake up one day to find your best, truest friend is gone, because they have chosen to go.

I have had that happen several times to me, probably not surprising over the period of sixty years I have lived.  It is sometimes easy, after the pain has lessened, to understand why it had to be so.  But, not always.  Sometimes, it remains one of life’s so-called “cruel lessons”.

Every once in awhile, I get the idea that I might reach out to that old friend, let them know how much I loved them and how much I’ve missed them, and ask if we might try and rebuild that once-beautiful friendship we had.  But, that would be nonsense, I realize.  What’s gone is gone.  What’s dead is dead.

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And then I look at my garden.  These are the last of the King Kong Zucchinis for this year.  Three zucchinis, totaling most of 16#, each close to a foot-and-a-half long.  Truth is, we couldn’t take any more of this determined plant.  


These zucchinis had to go.
They were wonderful while they lasted and gave me more than I ever thought possible, hundreds of pounds of fruit, dozens of delicious meals.

But, I couldn’t take any more.  I longed for a new plant to grow in its place — kale, beets, cabbage, anything but zucchini!

We will eat what we can of these, and allow the ripest one or two to cure for a week or so, and then harvest the seeds.  Hopefully, the seeds will retain the same strength and vigor as the Mother Plant, and King Kong will return to my garden next year, or even the next.  This garden friend is not gone — permanently and totally —  as long as the seeds remain.  The friendship may not be the same, the plants may be less productive, the fruit more commonly sized.  But, as long as I have seeds, I have the promise of many new, delicious, zucchini memories to come.

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I’m not going to call my friend.  As tempted as I am to know that I was, also, loved and I have, also, been missed, I fear that this is not so.  I fear that I grew in a garden that was allowed to whither and die, left to ruin after one, final harvest.

But, because of this death, I have grown into my own special King Kong variety of friend.  I am so much more than I was then, and a much better friend to myself than I ever knew how to be.  As long as I hold onto the memory of my friend, I hold onto a seed that may grow, once more, should I choose to plant it.  It may not be the same as it was, but — who knows? — it may even be better.

Simply Elegant Green Beans

My mother-in-law lived with us for about a year, after her husband died and she moved to California.  As her birthday approached, we explained it was our family custom that she select the menu for her celebration dinner — anything at all was acceptable, as long as it was something that we could buy or make.  Imagine our disappointment when she asked for a simple hamburger and green beans!  The children were particularly horrified, as they had been dreaming of homemade pizza or a 25# lasagna, and even with the added request of dill and thyme on the green beans, nothing could ease their pain.

I admit I was confused by her request, as well.  She had lived a comfortable life that some might consider ‘privileged’, and I had known her to dine most often on an expensive steak or a luxurious crab salad or even pheasant.  Green beans?

Many years have passed and, while I am still far away from her 90 years of age, I am starting to see the world a little through her eyes. Sometimes it really IS the simpler things that pack the biggest punch, especially when it is freshly picked green beans from your own garden.

I have doctored up her very simple recipe, just a bit, but have kept the dill and thyme that she loved so much.

Continue reading “Simply Elegant Green Beans”

I love surprises!

I have come across some of my favorite surprises right here, in my garden.  It is normal for me to discover a litter of feral kittens living under my deck or a long-abandoned (by some uncaring neighbor) pet bunny which has taken up residence behind a woodpile.  I’m ashamed to admit how many stray cats have made their way through my garden gate and into my heart.  I have found duck eggs left behind by mallards who stopped at our backyard pool every year for a short vacation and it is normal for a neighborhood chicken or two to call at my front door.

I sometimes think that people who don’t have a garden to visit must have horribly dull lives.

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.” 


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One evening last week, we were hanging out with some friends in our outdoor kitchen, when I happened to notice this bloom on the vine behind my friend’s head.  Was I seeing things?  It had not been there earlier in the day, when I was preparing the grill area for that night’s dinner.  Then I realized it is a Moonflower, a nocturnal bloomer that opens after sunset and glows all night in the moonlight. As the sun rises, the fragrant blooms close.

The surprise?  I planted the seeds three years ago.

Yes, I knew there was a vine of some kind on the trellis, but we have so many vines in that area and around the nearby pergola that I hadn’t given this particular vine much notice.  And any thought of the lovely Moonflower had long before escaped me, when the seeds I had planted failed to germinate — or so I had thought.

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While clearing the cucumber vine from the garden, I spotted this little lizard friend at my feet.  Yes, we do have many, many lizards in our yard and garden, just like most homes in southern California.  
What was so surprising, then?  This lizard had a tail.  A long, glorious tail.
I think all the lizards in my neighborhood are Truth or Dare lizards, because none of them have tails.  They did at one time, certainly, but most have been lost due to their poor choice of recreation — “Run in that house full of cats and then try to run back out before you are caught!” —  Tell the truth, lizards, don’t risk taking the dare.  Hold on to your tails.
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All gardeners experience the joy of volunteer plants at one time or another.  I’ve had volunteer tomatoes show up in quite a few odd places; this year we had a nice, healthy one coming up between two bricks at the edge of an old garden bed.  One year, we had beets popping up all over the side yard, a month or so after the seeds we had planted were washed out of their bed during a late season rainstorm.

This year, I have volunteer cantaloupes.

The surprise?  I have never planted cantaloupes.
We first discovered the vine, growing out of the end of the middle of our three new raised beds.  We assumed it was a cucumber, as the cucumber vine had rapidly taken over the first bed, where we had trained it up a trellis.  What a lovely surprise to find two perfect cantaloupes, hidden under the leaves!  Today, I discovered a second cantaloupe vine, in the third raised bed, growing in the space still occupied by a struggling Roma tomato!
My guess is that the cantaloupes are growing from seeds that were in our compost pile, as we do eat a lot of melon from the local Farmers Market. I cannot wait to taste them!
When my garden is free to roam, so is my spirit.
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I dig a hole and plant a seed,
Cover it with dirt, and pull a weed.

Down comes the rain, and out comes the sun,

Up grows my plant,

Oh! What fun!


— Author unknown.  (I once taught preschool.)

Grilled Summer Frittata

Who doesn’t love a frittata?  They are easy to make and can be adapted to use just about anything in the garden.  And now my husband loves them, as well, because they can also be grilled!

We had a little family get-together recently — out in the garden, of course — so we wanted to take advantage of all of the produce we had on hand.  We found we had a nice combination from the local Farmers Market – and the garden – to make a great meal.  We made up a few cold salads to round out the menu.  The rest of the vegetables, along with a few sausages for the meat eaters, went on the fire. Continue reading “Grilled Summer Frittata”

And so it begins…

Zucchini.

If you have a garden, that one word probably holds a lot of emotion for you.  People either usually love it or hate it — not because of the taste of the vegetable, itself, but because it is so easy to grow.  If you cannot get it to grow in your garden, you fear a black thumb, because EVERYONE can grow zucchini, you insist.  When it does flourish, the hate for the vegetable comes because IT WILL NOT STOP.

Last summer’s garden was a bit difficult.  I was experimenting with saved seeds, but my timing was off and the overall results were rather underwhelming.  I did manage to cultivate two zucchini plants, however, that produced a steady supply of very nice fruit.  I got out all of my favorite zucchini recipes and tried some new ones.  But, smack in the peak of the growing season, my plants were struck by a very bad case of leaf mold!  


My garden is totally organic.  I insist on that.  I always plant more than I need, so the bugs, the birds, and any small animal visitors can sample a bit and still leave enough for my family to enjoy.  So, I cut off the infected leaves and hoped for the best.  The leaf mold was determined, so I cut off more and more leaves, until the plant was nearly gone.

It grew back.  Another steady supply of very nice fruit began in earnest.   I pulled out every zucchini recipe I could find, and the zucchini continued to grow.  I grilled it, fried it, baked it and pickled it.  Then the leaf mold struck again.  

Again and again I cut off the infected leaves, nearly leveling the plant to the ground with each attack.  And each time it grew back, always producing a steady supply of very nice fruit.  I fell head over heels hallelujah in love with zucchini that summer — not because of what it gave me, but because of what it taught me.


Those two sickly, apparently hopeless zucchini plants demonstrated  a determination and strength that is inside all of us, no matter how broken we may seem — on the outside or the inside.  We are all capable of producing greatness.  We may only need a helping hand from time to time.  We all need a chance to be allowed to grow.

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I think my garden has a lot more to teach me.  I decided to write about it, here, so I will not forget what I learn.