The Daylily Project

As I noted a couple of posts ago, I've been hauling daylily plants home from my mother's gardens for years. Some I've lost over the years, some have multiplied like crazy, some I've shared with fellow gardeners, some I have but have lost track of. I've lost the names of almost all of them, though my mother was most careful to give me the name of each. All of them have been moved around my gardens until I know longer know what is where. Now I've set out to at least label each plant as it blooms so that I can know where the duplicates are.

I keep reading that you can eat the buds, and someday I'm going to try that. But today, I'm just going to enjoy the beautiful show of color!

Here's my catalog. I'll be adding more as they bloom.

#1 -- In Pantry Garden & Cottage Garden -- I have lots of these to share.

#3 -- South of path in Cottage Garden -- not a great photo!

#4 -- Cottage Garden “Island” & Pantry Garden -- Lots of these to share, too!

#5 -- 'Delightful Lady' -- Center of southern section of Cottage Garden -- My absolute favorite. A much more delicate pink than this picture shows. Some to share, but not until the fall.

#6 -- 'Fat & Sassy' -- Along fence on south edge of Cottage Garden

#7 -- Double Yellow (description, not name) -- West of pink rose in Cottage Garden (along south fence) -- The picture doesn't do it justice!

#8 -- Along south edge of Cottage Garden, near cut-off -- It's hard to tell from the picture, but this one is peach-colored.

#9 & #10 -- New transplants from Mother's, no pictures. Both are in the Pantry Garden.

#11 -- Along south fence of Cottage Garden, between ‘Fat & Sassy’ and double yellow

#12 -- 'Redin Kilpatrick' -- in Pantry Garden

#2 -- Joan Senior -- In Pantry Garden

Spreading the Joy, Sharing the Wealth

This week has found Skye and me making our annual trek south to visit family. We spent three nights at my mother's, with day trips to my sister's and cousin's homes. It was wonderful to spend time with all of them.

This morning finds us at Love's parents' home in southern Arkansas. We're heading north again in an hour or so. But yesterday, we were busy spreading the joy, sharing the wealth.

I don't think I've ever visited my mother without bringing home plants, most often daylilies. This trip finds my trunk loaded with three daylilies, four irises, and a pot full of little oak trees -- and enough to share of each. So yesterday evening, my mother-in-law and I were in her back yard, setting out a bit of each. I hope they will do well for her. She always speaks of her mother's irises, and perhaps these will remind her of those.

Another Year Older...

Yesterday was my birthday. As Love headed off to work, he admonished me to not work all day, to take some time for myself. So I did. I dug a trench and set out the asparagus plants I hauled home from Bro's home near Ft. Worth this weekend. The soil is awesome! All that work Love put into the raised beds this fall really shows. I hope the plants do OK moving them in December. Bro didn't think it would be a problem, and he's usually right. Sister called while I was setting them out to wish me a happy b-day. She asked me if it was true that you can control grass and weeds in asparagus by using salt water. I told her that Bro says you can, and I've never asked him anything about growing anything that he didn't know. We both agreed that he is pretty amazing, but then, he DOES have a degree in agriculture!

If all goes well, we should harvest asparagus in the spring of 2011. The books I consulted yesterday say that I should be able to judiciously harvest a few stalks as early as this spring, but I think I'll practice patience and let the plants build vigor before I start harvesting. That's what Bro recommends.

I got some great presents for my birthday: books, jewelry, kitchen stuff. I have a feeling that the item I will get the most use out of will be a book from Love (which I put on my wish list after borrowing it from our public library): Seed-Starting Primer and Almanac, edited by Vicki Mattern. I plant to start vegetables indoor for the first time this year, and I think this will be a great guide. I can hardly wait to get started!

Cookin' with Bro

Most Americans don't consider Labor Day a major holiday, but here at The Realm, we do. My brother and sister-in-law make the trek from the Fort Worth (TX) area each Labor Day weekend for the shared birthday celebration of my sister-in-law and my daughter. We enjoy each other's company, sometimes watch a little college football, and always eat really good. My brother offered to make gumbo again this year, but I suggested that he teach me a new dish. What can I say? He is such a better cook than I am.

Tonight's menu consisted of Crawfish Bisque and Shrimp Etouffee (and it only took 5 college-educated adults to figure out how to spell etouffee). The etouffee was good, but the bisque was sublime!!!

Tomorrow, they will head back to Texas (along with their 2 grandkids who came along). We will miss them. We enjoyed the food, the trip to War Eagle Mill, and tracking the Razorback game and the LSU game on the Internet. We did not enjoy worrying over Gustav, and we all hope our home state of Louisiana gets off easier this time than 3 years ago.

The good news is that Bro is taking jalapenos home with him! We plan to strip the 4 bushes tomorrow -- except for the smallest peppers -- and pack those back to Texas to share with my nephew (who contributed the crawfish bisque recipe). Here's one recipe they plan to use them for. It's a good one -- we made it a couple of years ago on one of Bro's visits.

DEEP FRIED JALAPENOS
12 fresh jalapeno peppers, halved lengthwise and seeded
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
12 slices bacon, cut in half (cheap stuff -- not too thick)

Stuff each jalapeno half with cream cheese. Completely wrap each stuffed jalapeno half with bacon. Pin in place with a toothpick. Deep fry until bacon is cooked.

Indulge responsibly!

UPDATE: I managed to place almost 2 gallons of jalapenos with Bro! The small peppers left on the bushes will take me through first frost quite nicely.

A Sad Day

My brother-in-law sent me this.... I guess we'll have to pack more jars for our next La. trip.

Gourd’n Arches

Skye and I made a field trip out to The Pet Lodge last week to visit the gourd vine from the seed Dee reclaimed from my mother’s 24-year-old gourd. (Mother has revised her estimate. She says the last year she grew gourds was 1983.) We came away with a bag of seeds to plant ourselves next year and to share with Mother. While we were there, I snapped this picture of the Gourd Arch made from cattle panels. I have an arch like this planned for the bench in the Kitchen Garden, but I’m thinking morning glories followed by cypress vine, at least the first year. I really want to tempt the hummingbirds into the Kitchen Garden.

Just How Old Is This Hibiscus?

According to our estimates, at least 17 years old. I got rid of the houseplants 11 years ago – traded all those pots for a baby. I rooted this hibiscus for Sister two houses ago – sometime between 1989 and 1991. All my hibiscus plants are long gone, but they never looked like this one anyway! Sometimes Sister’s pot plants are so big that they’re scary!

Pesto Project

I'm never happier than when I have a new project. That is not necessarily a good thing, as it often leads to entirely too many projects to juggle. But still, I love a new project.

And this one just fell in my lap. When I was watering a couple of days ago, I looked at the basil and wondered what to do with it. (You may remember that my basil was a freebie this year.) Then, as I was eating lunch today, I opened Margaret's newest post over at A Way to Garden and learned all about Pesto Fest. Tonight I'll be harvesting pesto, and tomorrow I'll be making my first pesto. Yes, really, my first pesto.

Gourd Seeds

Last week as Skye and I were packing our farmers’ market purchases into the ice chest in our van before heading off on foot for other errands, my phone rang. My friend Dee, the gourd artist, was calling to report a gourd growing in her employer’s garden. You may remember that Dee took some gourds from my house last spring to paint and return. One of the gourds had sat on a shelf in my laundry room for years after I hauled it home from my mother’s Louisiana home, where it had been in her “storeroom” (a.k.a. pantry) for even more years. When Dee had started working on it, she cut into it and removed the seeds. This spring, she planted them in the garden she helps tend. And they came up.
Later that day, my phone let out the little beep it makes to announce a message. It was Dee, sending pictures of the gourd plant and even a tiny gourd among the many blooms.
I called my mother that evening to ask how old the gourd was. She thinks it was 20-25 years old. Of course, her first words were, “Well, I hope she didn’t plant them all!” That is one of the guiding principles of Mother’s life: “Never plant all your seeds at once.” Wise words. Dee reports that she didn’t plant all the seeds; she saved some for another year, as any good gardener does. And she promises to share seeds if she produces any gourds. And I promise to share them with my mother.

Jammin’ with Friends

While I was talking with one of Skye’s mentors the other day, the conversation turned to our Berry Patch and the canning of jellies and jams. She pointed out that such skills are going to be in demand in the coming years. I guess they already are, because I spent a recent morning teaching three work friends to make blueberry jam. Truthfully, only one of them begged, “Do you know how to make jam? Will you teach me?” But the other two jumped at the idea of spending a morning with other women, picking blueberries and jamming them. Skye declared that grown-ups have weird ideas of fun: getting together to pick blueberries and make jam did not sound like her idea of a party. However, she was glad to entertain the other daughters in the backyard swimming pool.
But it was great fun. The berrying gave us a chance to chat in a companionable situation away from work. When we moved inside to make the jam, everyone pitched in and the work went quickly. Even the friend who said, “Oh, I’m not going to take any jam home: we’re really not jam people,” succumbed to the temptations of blueberry jam once she tasted the brilliant purple concoction. And when the day’s work ended with blackberry lemonade – made with syrup from my own berries – the day was declared a success. We’re still deciding whether our next lesson will be homemade yeast bread or roux that leads to gumbo.

Glory in the Morning

These purple beauties are gracing the fence on the south side of the Cottage Garden this summer. And it's confession time again: I've actually never grown morning glories before. I've bought the seed more than once, but have just never gotten them planted. I think it's a mental block: my mother grew morning glories on the fence behind our home one summer, and when my daddy spotted them, he declared them to be "nothin' but damn tie-vines!" To a Louisiana cotton farmer, the morning glory (aka tie-vine) could make a mess out of a well-kept cotton field. But those little wild morning glories were mild shadows of the beauties in my garden. The deep purple is truly breath-taking. And these guys are in my garden due to the generousity of friend and neighbor Cee, who shared these with me one Sunday afternoon in May.

The Garden as Art

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Dee came over for supper and some downtime on the back porch. Image my delight when she showed up bearing gifts!

About a year ago, as we sat outdoors on the deck that preceded the back porch, she told me about how she had started etching and painting gourds. She even brought some of her finished and half-finished gourds to show me. The next thing she knew, we were tramping out to my gardening shed (locally known as "The Barn") to root around for gourds. I knew I had a couple out there that had come off a gourd vine here a few years ago. I had been saving them for a project that I doubted would ever happen. So my gourds went home with Dee.

Now they're home again. Isn't sharing fun?

Standing by the Dumpster in the Rain...

You just never know what the day will bring. There I was after a long day at work, putting my mixed paper in the recycling bin behind the school, when one of the Agri teachers pulled up to drop off a load of trash. And in the back of his truck, he had beautiful little herb plants that he was trying to find a home for before leaving for the beach for a week. So, I stopped in the rain to recycle my junk mail and soap wrappers and came away with five little pots of herbs: an oregano, a thyme, and 3 basils. Pennies from heaven!

The flowers on my desk

Today I have flowers on my desk at work -- zinnias clipped this morning from the cottage garden on the south end of my house. I don't often take flowers to work, but whenever I do, I see lots more smiles during the day. Even a simple daffodil in a glass jar can make a teenager or a history teacher smile. Somehow, that simple act of sharing my garden at my workplace makes it a better day. And the green glass vase: it's an old medicine bottle I dug out of my mother's "storeroom" in Louisiana last summer.

So, make tomorrow "take a flower to work day." I'm setting a goal right now to take fresh flowers to work once a week until winter comes.