Procrastinating May 5, 2012

Hi friends!  Classes are over and finals start on Monday.  Blogging is such a great way to avoid studying.  ha!

The garden is going gangbusters after a very early spring.  So it’s time for the annual spring-has-sprung update, complete with loads of photos.  This is the first year I’ve had a perennial garden that has “leaped” and it’s so fun to watch.

Lupine.  The flowers on this are pretty, but I really love the palmate leaves.  They look so exotic and tropical in my midwestern garden.

I’ve been trying to establish low-growing Dutch clover in our lawn to help smother annual weeds like crabgrass and to provide a nitrogen-fixing service.  It’s finally coming in thick in several places.  I know some people consider clover a weed, but I don’t.  It’s pretty, soft to walk on, and it means I don’t need to fertilize my lawn as much! 

Our shittake logs have been fruiting like crazy with all the rain.  We harvested 1+ pounds already and they’re ready to pop again.  SO YUMMY!

Forget-me-nots.  These are one of my favorite spring ephemerals.  I let them go to seed every year and they always pop up for a bright splash of spring color.

Japanese Painted Ferns.  These have been oh-so-slow to establish but they’re finally looking robust and beautiful.  Love these plants so much.

I know they can be overplayed and boring, but I do love hostas, especially the varieties with hints of blue-green.

A very early spring brings with it the near certain promise of late frost damage.  Here’s a strawberry flower (with black center) that suffered from a spring frost.  Fortunately, most of my strawberries are blooming now, so I hope we’re in the clear.  

My violas came back!  How I love these sweet, edible flowers.

I’ve always had terrible luck with spinach.  This year I bought new seed, put down some pelleted compost, and have been occasionally foliar feeding with fish emulsion.  Look at those lush leaves!  The rabbits have been sharing in the harvest, but at least I am, too!

Speaking of rabbits, Here’s the set-up to protect the peas and brassicas from rabbits and cut-worms.  So far, so good.

Beets!

Braising Mix.  YUM!

Look at that pergola!  P built it last year and this year I get to plant it.  A few divides have already gone in, but I’ve got a nice list for purchases from plant sale fundraisers to fill this out.  Corkscrew willow, russian sage, scented geraniums are on the list.  P put in some hops along the back that will be trellised up to the top.  It’s going to make a lovely space for summer dining.

And I can’t post without some knitting, can I?  Of course not!  This alpaca, woodland shawl is hot-off-the-needles and will be my graduation shawl.  I thought the leaves were fitting for a horticulture major.  ;)

Honeybees February 27, 2012

Yesterday P and I drove down to the farm to check on the honeybees.  I was nervous.  I had heard reports of hive losses from several beekeepers and I was steeling myself for a hive of dead bees or, worse, an empty hive.

I popped off the telescoping cover and peered down through the slot in the inner cover.  I saw several bees, frozen on the frames, and my heart sank.  But as I looked deeper in the hive, I saw more bees and… they were moving!

I popped off the top deep (it’s a three-deep system) and, sure enough, a dense ball of bees were huddled on the center frames of the middle deep.  It was too cold to pry out frames and look more closely, but I dug the frame tool down into the comb to check for honey.  It came out dripping and P and I shared a little bite.

I was ecstatic.  Not wanting to chill the bees further, I reassembled the hive but put my ear down to the top-bars before sealing it up.  And I heard, nay felt, that deep, resonate humming that sounds to me like the current of life itself.

I’ll be back bearing pollen patties in a few weeks.  If they’ve made it this far, there’s a good chance they’ll be a strong colony this summer.  Pure joy.

Freeze October 22, 2011

The first freeze finally came and took away most of the garden for the season.  I’m always simultaneously relieved, sad, and amazed.  The peppers are done for the year, along with so many others.  It’s time to put the garlic in the ground and a layer of mulch over everything.

I’ve been a little bit stressed because of finals and thus I’ve been cranking out the knitting at a furious pace.  I hope to be back soon to display all the lovely woolen wear.

For the love of lavender August 1, 2011

This past winter marks the second winter lavender has successfully wintered in my zone four garden.  I had an abundance of blooms this year and here is the recipe for one project.  Unphotgraphed uses included lavender sachets, bottles, sugar, baths, and general enjoyment.

First the stems had to be picked just before the blooms opened.  The buds are deep purple but they’re still buds.  I have another variety that flowered so quickly I wasn’t able the harvest in time and I had to just enjoy it in the garden.  The buds retain their color and fragrance better than opened flowers.

Once the harvested stems had dried I stripped off the buds.  It’s tedious work, but I just picked up a stem here and there for several days and managed it with very little direct effort.  Now you can use the lovely lavender for whatever you want!

I made ice cream!  I brought 2T lavender buds, a 1/3C honey, and 3 C cream to a boil and then let it cool, stirring occasionally, to room temperature.  I put it in the refrigerator overnight and strained out the buds.  I wisked 1 C milk, 1/2 C sugar, and a splash of vanilla into the cream and put it into the ice cream maker for 25 minutes.  The soft mixture is then frozen for 12 hours and voila!  Honeyed lavender ice cream.  Delightful.

Finding Room For Beauty July 6, 2011

When I planted my first community garden plot several years ago, the garden organizer suggested I plant flowers, too.  I couldn’t imagine planting flowers – what a waste of space.  If I couldn’t eat it, I wasn’t interested.

This year I planted my veggie garden with all the usuals – potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets… But I spent most of my early spring gardening busting sod for new beds of… flowers.

In went daisies and coneflower, cosmos and lobelia, oenothera and columbine.  I planted sedum and lamb’s ears, two varieties of baby’s breath, lupine, delphinum, and foxglove.  I started violas, bachelor’s buttons, and calendula from seed in my precious, limited seed starting space.  And that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

They’re beautiful and I love watching them bloom.  Previously I couldn’t imagine taking garden space from plants with physical purpose, plants that help me survive.  Beauty was a luxury I didn’t dare afford.

But this year’s obsession with flowers has visually demonstrated a major shift in my thinking.  Beauty, comfort, and enjoyment are important, and I can make room for them in my life.  It’s not just the flowers, but a way of thinking that embraces intangible benefits.  It’s the willingness to feed my soul instead of just my body.  It’s an acknowledgement that I don’t need to simply survive…

…I can thrive.

Marching On June 4, 2011

I’ve been feeling jumbled lately.  Planting on the farm is late and therefore frantic.  I put in 52 hours last week and still have an immediate to-do list dozens of items long.  My directed study is… stalled.  Our yard has exploded with plants, both wanted and unwanted.  I can’t recall, exactly, when it started feeling out of control but I’ve been wrangling seedlings, sod and weeds on the home front whenever I’m not at the farm.  Therapy has moved away from the dramatic sobbing, major leaps and enlightening epiphanies into the slow middle work of plodding forward on issues that aren’t much fun to deal with.  Writing letters to my abusers is slow, hard work no matter which way I frame it.

I sent the letter to my mom and received a discouragingly unsatisfactory letter in return.  I haven’t spoken to her since and I don’t see that changing.  Some days I’ve been pretending I don’t have a mother so I can get used to how that feels.  I wish, somewhat frantically, I could write more about this because it might help me sort through the unexpectedly crushing disappointment, confusion, and sadness.  But I can’t.  I can’t find a crack to pry the whole mess open.

It’s just so hard to accept the enormity of what happened, of what didn’t happen, of what is still happening.  I keep thinking, keep wanting to believe it surely wasn’t that bad.  Because what if it was?  How am I still standing?  Still smiling?  Still laughing at silly jokes?  How have I kept a handle on myself, kept myself from falling over the edge?  What were the trade-offs?  What did I lose while I, as a child, single-mindidly kept my life from slipping into the statistically inevitable cycles of poverty and abuse?

While my dad would always tell me, “Honey life isn’t fair and anyone who tells you differently is a liar” I just can’t get over the injustice of it all.  I know there is no satisfactory answer but still I wonder, “why?”  Why?  Why?  Why do grown adults hurt children?  I can’t get over it.  I can’t understand.  Coming to grips with my own reality, both past and present is so bloody hard.  Until therapy I could always pretend it wasn’t so bad, I did the best I could, and I came out okay.  But the truth is I didn’t come out okay.  I will struggle with some very real repercussions for the rest of my life.  And that sucks.  Especially because my struggles are so invisible.

And, fortunately or unfortunately, I’ve become involved in several research projects.  I feel entirely unqualified to do any of it and it’s rather terrifying.  I’m so scared I’m going to mess something up.  I’m managing two organic fertilizer trials on the farm (as if managing farm operations isn’t enough to keep track of) and I’m working on plant propagation research.  I’ve been funded for some of the research, which is an exciting ego boost, but the lingering doubt is still there.

Sometimes it’s all I can to do keep my feet moving deliberately forward.  Most days I wake up and just want to turn around and run, run, run.  Run somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, somewhere where the demands on me are not so intense.  I’m pretty sure I’m capable of all this but overcoming self-doubt is no easy task.

This summer doesn’t feel warm and breezy.  It feels overwhelming and unwieldly.  But this is always what I’ve done well – tackle the difficult things moment by moment, step by step until I succeed.  Keep marching forward, keep trying, keep moving.  Just keep moving.

May 24, 2011

Heavens, I’ve brought home too many plants lately!  That’s the “problem” with running on plant sale, volunteering at another, working on a farm, and having friends with perennials!  I’ve been busy in the garden and here’s a little peek at what’s been going on:

A few volunteer Forget-Me-Nots have been blooming.  How I love these sweet little flowers.

Blue fescue

Garcia the (tiny) cherry tree

The lilacs are blooming heavily after a good prune last year.

Lungwort – one my favorite new foliage perennials.  Look at those lovely sliver splotches!  It reminds me “splatter painting” which I loved when I was a kid.

Asiatic or oriental lily?  I can never remember the difference.

I have hopes we’re going to have a nice strawberry harvest this year!

I picked up this rhododendron on a whim, not realizing how big they would get!  Heavens, where am I going to put it??

Pardon the interruption, but this is the enormous log mess in the middle of the yard!  The log pieces are so big it’s going to take the better part of the summer to break them down into stackable pieces.

This is the witchhazel that promptly defoliated after I planted it last year.  It looked dead this spring so I bought another.  And then, of course, the old one sprung back into action!  Now I need to find a home for both of them since I didn’t realize they’d get to be more than 20×20′.  Yikes!

One of the many hostas I’ve collected this spring.

Ok, I know I say this about a lot of plants but Lamb’s Ears are one of my very favorite plants.  I can’t wait until this little guy is big enough that I can pick leaves and carry them around with me.  They’re so fuzzy!

One of my teeny apple trees that I started from scion wood and rootstock last year.  Doesn’t it look healthy and happy?

I have a “thing” with starting lavender from seed.  This little guy was started a few months ago and is now 1.5″ tall.  It’s a silly thing to do here in the north where lavender doesn’t reliably winter.  But still, I’ve twice wintered lavender I’ve started from seed but have never had much success with lavender from commercial transplants.  I have big dreams of someday having a robust, perennial lavender patch! 

The few beds the previous owners left were weedy and out of control.  I’ve slowly been trying to remake them.  Here’s the front (full shade) garden.  I wish I had a before shot!

All three of our blueberries made the winter and one is flowering quite heavily.  I’m looking forward to a few of these lovely treats!

The peas were slow this spring because it was so cold.  They’re finally getting a move on.

I’m hoping this funny little plant will be the star of this year’s garden.  It’s an artichoke!  I’ve got five of them and, with the cold spring, I’m hoping they’re properly “vernalized” so they’ll flower the first year.  Here’s to hoping!

I love zone four hardy succulents. 

Ellen (named after my grandma) the peach tree is flowering!  I realize some might find it strange to name plants, but I’ve always named most things in my life so it feels perfectly logical to me.

“Banana cream” shasta daisies.  I’m not sure if I like these yet but they were free so I’m trying them out.  (Side note: Daisies are one of my favorite flowers, but I’m a little ambivalent about yellow ones.)

Last but not least, last year’s shittake logs are fruiting!  The mushrooms are so much better than the store varieties.  I’ve been enjoying them with pasta and in omelette.  Delicious!

Whew!  That does it for the garden tour this time around.  Hope you all are enjoying the warm(er) weather.

Relief May 12, 2011

Finals are over.  I still have a directed study that needs to be finished by the end of May, but the bulk of the pressure is off.  I am so relieved.  This has been such a rocky semester.  Many of the classes were ones I had been putting off (read = not very exciting).  I got eyeball deep in a bunch of extra circulars, including a big research project.  Farm season started.  I had a lot of soul-searching to do as well as thinking about the future.  And, to add fury to the fire – there was the therapy which has been so incredibly difficult. 

I cooked eggs yesterday and realized that’s the first time I’ve cooked in at least two months.  P has been getting us by, cooking up big meals on Sundays and sometimes during the week.  Otherwise it’s been takeout, tortilla chips, and popcorn.  I wish I were kidding.

I’m taking today for myself.  Too bad it’s rainy because I was hoping for some quality time in the garden.  I have ~150 plants on the deck awaiting soil, including a number of large shrubs and trees.  I’m not sure where they’re going, exactly, but they were “good deals”, orphans or just pretty and so they sit.  Tomorrow P and I head down to a state park for our annual morel hunting trip.  P found a few delicious handfuls the other day so they’re out!  We just need to go and find more.

Thanks, friends, for sticking with me over the past several weeks.  I know it’s been ugly around here but your listening and encouragement have been invaluable to me.  Today I feel like the worst is behind me.  That may not be true, I don’t know, but I’m going to believe it for now because that sure feels good.

And it stopped. For now. May 6, 2011

The crying has stopped, mostly.  It’s lovely.  My heart is quiet lately, I’m working on relaxing, I feel peaceful.  Maybe it’s all the lavender bubble baths.  I am under no illusion that this will continue for very long, but the respite is nice.

I have decided not to call my mom for mother’s day.  Instead I sent her a blank card with a picture of a flower.  I wrote “Happy Mother’s Day” and signed my name.  I can recognize that she is a mother, she get me through childhood alive.  But I don’t have to cough up my soul or pretend my reality is different than it is.  I’ve also written her a letter, handing back her “stuff” I’m tired of carrying.  I will send it in the next two or so weeks.  I feel settled and ready.  Maybe that will change when the day get closer, but, as of right now, I feel prepared for this.

I’ve visited loads of plant sales and my deck is full of new finds awaiting a final home.  Included in the mix are Swiss stone pine, magnolia, peonies, rhododendron, witch hazel, a pile of perennials.  My hands and soles are developing their summer callouses.  I’m valiantly fighting back the kentucky bluegrass from my gardens.  My seed starting efforts have failed miserably this year.  Too bad.  Things look nice on the farm, though, so I know I haven’t completely lost my touch.

This is a boring post, really, and I apologize for that.  But I needed to see it in writing – the crying has stopped and my life feels… good.  Not great, not quite what I hope, but good.  And that’s more than I’ve dared hope for a long while.

Lighthearted May 4, 2011

If you’re a plant nerd, you might appreciate this.  It’s a poem I wrote for an assignment in a environmental physiology class after a lesson on stomata.

An Ode to the Constant Motion of Stomata

Opening and closing

is that all that you do?

Just the regulation of gasses

and water vapor, too?

On paper it doesn’t

seem so important a chore

just opening and closing and reopening

that door.

But we’d all be in trouble

if your operation flopped

if the doors just stayed open

as if they’d been propped.

Or if those guard cells

just snoozed, never bothering to

pay attention to the signals

that let the water run through.

Yes if those stomata just lazed

on sunny afternoons

the photosynthesizing would stop

and so would our food

and so would the flowers

and the grass on barefeet

we’d all be in trouble

and life wouldn’t be so sweet.