Category Archives: Not Vegetables

Garden time?

Work has been swallowing up my days more than usual these past few weeks. I’m happy if I can disengage after a 12 hour day. When I get to this level, where 12 hours is a normal day…the garden suffers.

I drove by a community center today, a couple of gyms, and a handful of churches, and thought about the people who also travel for business, and find their peace in a workout, or in a temple, and they can find those things while they are out of town on business. It made me wish there were such a place. A place where I could go pull a few weeds. A place where I could go play in the dirt for a minute. A place to take a breath and sit and pause for a moment.

Enjoy your gardens for me. I miss mine.

I’ll see if I have a draft hanging around to share with you before I can make it back home, and back to the earth.

Putting up harvests, eating our colors, and late fireworks.

I’m going tomato-picking again tomorrow! Last harvest was a few days ago. Any guesses how many pounds we’re up to?

These went to DH’s mother, the freezer, a giant batch of pico, and some grilled peppers.

I learned on a Victory Garden episode a few years back about dehydrating unusual things. One of those things was zucchini. The idea being you can dehydrate zucchini, carrots, and other things in season, store them in the pantry, and then when the winter doldrums set in and you’re needing to make soup – voila! You have some summer sunshine in your soup.

I have yet to make the soup, but am starting on the dehydration experiments. My first batch was actually dried last year, and is still in tact – dry and happy.

It’s a handy way to store some of that summer squash excess a few of you in cooler climates may be in the throws of. I cut these about 1/8″ thick, laid them on a cooling rack (like for cookies) and left them in a rarely-used cupboard, forgotten. Last week, we had a few too many squash in the fridge about to turn. I took out the mandoline, set it on the “paper thin” setting, and went to town. 24 hours in our turned-off gas stove later and…

I’m not sure how these will reconstitute in a soup. They’re nearly translucent, and I’m thinking they may simply mush when they hit the soup this winter. Only time will tell.

What about what we’re eating now? We’ve been playing more with the mandoline and making fries! We’ve made beet fries from some Chioggas, which also just came in the mail in the form of seeds to sow soon! I didn’t grow any of the tubers in the pan below, but perhaps someday.

Here we have some organic sweet potatos – orange and white, and some blue potatoes as well. Can you just picture that same pan with some Chioggas in it?

And, after all the worry over how the summer would be this year after last year’s insane heat and drought, we’re having a nice (and surprising!) July. The thunderstorms that passed over our heads week after week last year without letting loose a single drop (only to unleash on the midwest and cause horrendous floods) are unzipping their buckets of water almost every other day these days.

For being drought tolerant, this spongy-leafed sprawler sure puts on a show with regular watering.

These are blooming just outside our garage door. The very same door we propped a ladder against to climb on the roof and watch the fireworks two weeks ago for Independence Day. A little delayed reflection of the explosions in the sky.

An herbalicious mess.

When I planted each of these less than 18 months ago, they were from cute little 4″ pots, or even smaller transplants of my own. I over-pruned the sage in the back this spring (oops…) which created room for the rosemary to expand (and DH rarely cooks with rosemary.) The Italian Oregano made SO many seeds last year, I could plant an acre or more, and it’s starting up again. Nevermind those lovely purple trumpets on the Mexican Oregano, they can stay as they keep the bees, butterflies, and other flyers happy.

The volunteer Texas Hummingbird Sage and Thai Basil are popping up in some far-away places! Here they are fighting the good fight against some more Henbit.

And those green onions I had in a jar on the kitchen counter? They’ve earned a pot – right next to my new watering can that I like maybe a little more than a sane person should.

The tops of the onions made it onto a burger for DH the other day. I’m curious to see how many more times it will re-grow.

Speaking of re-growing? This guy had co-existed peacefully with five seed trays for the last month.

Notice I said “had.” This morning I was awoken by DH, who was obviously unhappy. When I inquired what was the matter, he said he had some bad news. I automatically started running various grandparents through my mind and then he explained that the truce was broken and four of my seed trays were demolished by the charming-looking feline pictured above.

I worked quickly, plucking the wee sprouts from the piles of tossed earth and replanting them in a resurrected tray. The cat has been locked in the other room all day. We’ll see how I feel about letting him out tomorrow.

Fingers crossed that the baby cauliflower, broccoli, lettuces, and greens recover. So much for keeping track of varieties this year…

If it works, why change it?

Sometimes I want to keep trying different things. “Optionizing” as DH calls it. I can optionize any decision into the dirt if left to my own devices without any constraints. When I first started planning my Heat Bed, I made use of a handy local annual publication Native and Adapted Landscape Plants. Each year a new version is put together thanks to Grow Green and I find it calling to me from the counters of the garden shops I tend to frequent in the first quarter of each year. And – it’s free!

I started the plans for the Heat Bed last fall. I pulled out my free guide and quickly filtered the options down to any plant that was listed as both “Sun” and “VL” for “Full Sun” and “Very Low Water Requirements.” From there, I narrowed the field to any plant whose maintenance was listed as either “No maintenance required” or “Cut back in January.” After all, this landscape will someday be a rental again and I wanted this bed to last.

With a narrowed list (of eight options) I took my measuring tape, graph paper, pencil, straight edge, and eraser into the front yard. Quickly abandoning the straight edge, I came up with Plan A.

My eight options took me around the Land of Internet Nurseries to check pricing, availability, and any possible conflicting information. I arrived at Landscape Mafia. A wish list was made, and thanks to my thoughtful parents – plants arrived just in time for Christmas! When I had found Landscape Mafia, I had no idea how very local they were. I had wondered how plants such as the Fragrant Mimosa would handle shipping. Then one day, arriving home from work, there they were! Apparently shipping had been avoided in favor of the more reliable (and faster) delivery method of one of the nice fellows from Landscape Mafia delivering the plants himself! That’s right. I had apparently just missed him, but he had pulled up in his small SUV and unloaded the pots onto the porch. You can believe that walking up to a porch decorated in new foliage lead to grins of delight and exclamations of joy!

And just like how this post has gotten a smidge side-tracked, so did my plans for filling the Head Bed. The tree in Plan A had to come down in January. I luckily and gratefully discovered the community gardens and suddenly had five times the space to plan for edibles before the heat came. Work geared up more than expected for the first quarter (and the second, and now the third…) and the Heat Bed was left for another day.

I finally installed the plants from Christmas, only to them slowly lost to random mishaps. I was down to four plants from seven (when Plan A had included 43.) So I went into old habits and concocted Plan B. Nurseries had plenty of shade options, but unless I wanted agave, succulents, or manfriedas, I was out of luck. Home Depot claimed “sun-loving” and I took the bait. Thankfully, it was cheap bait, because most of those are now gasping in the heat. I could keep them alive with daily watering, but that defeats my desired journey with the bed.

I’m going to leave the Heat Bed for now. Anything I plant now won’t have a strong chance of survival with the days only getting hotter, and drier, until October. Plan C will look more like Plan A. Sure, the 40′ Silver Maple is gone. But the Fragrant Mimosa gained a foot these last six weeks, the Mexican Bush Sage is still blooming it’s purple velvet plumes, and at least one of the little orange daisy bunches is hanging in there.

Plan C may have one of these:

And I’m still dreaming of a gathering of these:

I may’ve accidentally taken my spade through a main root line of my Moss Verbena, but am hoping it makes it through the summer to recover this winter and look more like this again:

Sunflower in the shade.

We grew sunflowers once when I was little. The giant kind, with faces bigger than your head. I remember being astonished at the sheer number of seeds in one sunflower. I also remember being surprised at how differently the seeds tasted! This year, I sowed four kinds of sunflowers, even some of the giants.

Only one came up.

She’s a fighter.

It’s hot around the yard these days.

I thought I’d picked some sun-loving, drought-tolerant, and generally tough-skinned plants for the new front bed.

They’re looking a little wimpy, but so far only one has died and it was dying before it ever made it in the ground. It is so nice to have this bed done! Even if it will be a battle, that I may only win with agave varieties, it’s nice to have the dead grass and unruly invasive weeds looking a little more friendly.

Things I learned on this project:

  • Sun-loving, drought-tolerant still doesn’t mean put the baby plant in direct sun and water every other day until established. It means see if you can find the plant in October and put it out about Halloween to get established before it needs to be sun-loving and drought tolerant, you’ll have a better shot.
  • When buying rock, don’t shop at the big box stores. We found Whittlesey’s, and there’s likely a similar landscape supply company near you where instead of $4 per rock, the same rocks or nicer are $0.07 per pound.
  • If the rocks are too big, and of the right make-up, leaning them against a stump and tapping with a hammer will break them into smaller lengths (much easier for small circles!)

Another rock project? The new pomegranate for DH. Our grass is made of at least three varieties – all of which like to invade any place they aren’t already growing.

That impossible to miss, super tall and lush grass behind it? I have a soft spot for that grass. When DH mows, it gets hacked to the ground. By the time the rest of the lawn is ready for me to mow it, this stuff is back up to Bug Jungle Size. Same amount of light, water, and soil as the other grasses around it and it just throws caution to the wind and shoots for the sky. As much as I can’t bring myself to mow over it, I’m glad DH does so it doesn’t take over the entire yard.

The seeds are just about ready to save, though, and I’ll be stowing some away for a rainy day when we’ve moved someplace without it and I find myself in need of a resilience reminder.

 

 

Operation: Wild Bed

Over the last six months or so, I’ve been slowly chipping away at a small plot of grass at the front of our lawn.

Tangent: If this wasn’t a rental, that wouldn’t someday in the not-so-distant-future have tenants living in it, all of the lawn would be gone. All of it. But. It is what it is. And. The front lawn specifically is mostly ours, and partially the neighbors. By ripping out all of ours, I would be directly (negatively) affecting the property value of our neighbors by diminishing most of their front lawn to about…four feet wide. Basically – that’s just rude. Ultimately, if their property value is reduced, so is ours. Someday, I will not live surrounded by lawn. Today is not that day. /end tangent

I’ll make due with a patch though! This spot will be a wild bed. A bed for the bees, the butterflies, and maybe even the birds made with drought tolerant plants and natives. I  started with some plants gifted to me by my folks, via Landscape Mafia. A few holes in the lawn, a few scoops of manure, some beneficial fungus, and in they went. Months passed as I worked on the new 400 sq feet over in the community gardens, worked more than I’d expected, and trained for the mini-tri in the evenings. What I didn’t realize, was that what was, to me, very clearly a garden bed…wasn’t so clear to other human creatures. DH was kind enough to mow around the plants…and apologized for accidentally over one that was completely hidden under the grass. The folks that pick up the recycling at the curb thought it appropriate to put the recycle bin (the big kind, on wheels) back down in the bed instead of the street. That was the end of another plant. Thankfully, the two lost plants were of the kind that I had three so no single variety was gone.

DH, in his wisdom, suggested I communicate the existence of the bed more clearly to other human creatures.

We headed over to Whittlesey’s again, this time for rocks! We meant to get enough for this bed, the White Oak, and the new pomegranate in the back yard. We thought we got extra. Usually, that’s true. Never having purchased rock before…

We were a little short. The front bed got its boarder, and the White Oak has a C. The pomegranate is still without stone.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been able to spend a little time every few days removing the sod and weeds from the front bed. When I started, we were still only in the high 80s, and I got a good space done in an afternoon. Now we’re always in the low 90s, and the spot gets sun all day. I can sneak in about an hour before the sun sets where the light is dying and it’s not sweltering. I’m getting there though!

Want to see what else is joining the Fragrant Mimosa, the Verbena, the Mexican bush sage, and the lone survivor of the Recycle Bin Lawn Mower Incidents?

We’ll see how they do. I may end up moving the Day Lily and the Lobelia due to too much sunlight.

As much as I enjoy growing food from seed (and saving seed from food) I haven’t ventured into non-food seed sowing other than simple flowers (wild flowers, zinnias, violas, nasturtiums, etc.)  Last year was the first year I’d ventured out of veggies into flowers, maybe next year I’ll venture more into the seed sowing aspect of non-food. Maybe not til the year after.

Local changes.

Most years, different agave varieties, and other succulent varieties, throw out their flower spikes. Usually these are neat little spikes 1/2″ to 1″ in diameter, and 3′-5′ tall. Occasionally, an agave goes bonkers.

Flower spikes in this family of plant, I learned last year, is their final hoorah before kicking the bucket. They’ll hang in there, growing bit by bit, year after year, until they sense that everything is just right. When that happens, the flower spike production begins, and occasionally – it gets breath-taking, awe-inspiring, and occasionally just downright funny.

I didn’t capture a shot of the largest one I’d seen to date (last summer? summer before last?) but it was HUGE. It was well over twenty feet tall. This year, this little cluster just brightened my day. Excuse the phone camera quality, shot at a stop light (from the passenger seat!) clutter in the frame.

I’m interested to see if they simply plant more agave (they usually do) or attempt to replace it with a quick-dying annual as other landscape crews in the city do.

 

Trees turning itchy green.

Growing up in Oregon and Washington, spring comes as a full season. Winter leaves, and the world begins to both thaw and dry out. There’s a season up there where all of the new growth has yet to reach its expected greenness. At that stage, everything is a bright, glowing green – or as I like to call it “itchy green.” It’s so green, you think it will make you itch just to look at it. It’s so green, you can tell the plants were just itching to pop from their dormancy.

Occasionally things here turn itchy green, but usually not all at once, and not for very long.

But there are things coming forth from their hibernation. Like our new Mexican White Oak tree, which surprisingly to me (although it shouldn’t have been), puts out new growth in the form of frosted leaves.

We put in two trees last year as well, well, DH did. Two pecans. One is a Choctaw, and the other…I’ll have to check the tag. Here’s one budding out with fuzzy little tassles.

This is a bush that was in place when we moved in. I’ve never liked it. It’s pokey. I think it’s a Holly Bush. I have a hard time enjoying things that need hedging. It also makes the entrance to the garage feel a little boxed in.

So why not take it out? Put something else in? Because I have a soft spot for the bees. What you can’t see in this photo, is that this bush is currently putting out very fragrant, tiny little blossoms and is covered in dozens of bees.

And so the bush remains.

 

Boing! – goes the springy Spring.

Look at what’s waking up!

Last winter, my mother and I planted some nasturtium seeds in my front flower/herb bed. I’ve recently read about how nasturtiums don’t like close quarters, and go figure that they haven’t poked their heads up yet in this lovely, reseeded-on-its-own mess:

But never fear! The nasturtium seeds that didn’t appear last spring in the back bed found their roots and put forth this cheerful face:

But I’m not sure how much they really mind a crowd, because look at where this little smiling face is hanging out:

And did you happen to spot that blue spot down to the right of the Blanket Flowers? At the end of the spring last year, I swiped some roadside seeds. I tossed them in the back of this bed, and imagine one of my “oops! forgot the sprinkler was on!” moments floated the seeds to the forefront. I’m glad. Doesn’t she look happy?

It has honestly taken me years  to remember to call these Blue Bonnets. I would always initially say Blue Bells, and then quickly correct myself. They’re currently blanketing the roadsides here in Central Texas. Not in the breath-taking numbers they have in the past, but with such a mild winter I’m not surprised.

Let me fine a nice photo showing what they can do…

Other smiling faces are showing up around the house as well. These ones are from a seed packet from DH’s mother, and they remind me so much of Alice In Wonderland! Don’t they just put that song in your head? “You can learn a lot of things from the flowers…”