Beds To Bed

Quilts tell stories.  The design names reveal a glimpse of the plot:  Wedding Knot, Drunkard's Path,  Dublin's Steps, Coffins Star,  Dad's Bow Tie,  Alabama Beauty.  Family history and all its memories are woven into the fabrics.

Leaves--from the earth to the earth

When putting the garden beds to bed was on the Things I get to do today, I began thinking about quilts.  The idea of keeping the earth in the garden covered with mulch or ground cover was working its way into this fall ritual. A quilt for each bed, of course.

Nature's Quilt Design

The trees in my yard have not dropped enough of their leaves to make a thick enough mulch, and our gusty winds that come with fall rain would tend to flap the covers by sending all the leaves to one side of the yard instead of snuggling down into each garden bed.  But the giant Pin Oaks in the nearby park had piled up the gutters by the sidewalk with their leaves for several blocks.  A quick trip with  my little pickup and garbage bags, the results sucked through my leaf blower/shredder to create a fine texture that will stay in place, and the beds were all tucked in the for rain, the fall and the winter.  Nature's quilted design creates beauty at every level.

A Bean of Another Sort

I'm in love with Fava Beans.  I've never actually eaten one prepared as an edible food.  There's even a can of them in my cupboard that I'm hesitant to open and eat.  Weird, totally weird you might say. Yup!

This part goes in the salad.  I'm going to stir-fry them soon.

Fava beans are cold hardy and can be planted early in the spring before frost danger has backed off.  They sprout right up and are covered with the most delicious grey-green leaves.  That's the part I love.  Salads made of all the edible green things that grow in my yard are what make my body strong and my heart sing at the dinner table. So before dinner, bits of all these are collected from the garden with heavy emphasis on the Fava Bean leaves.

Lush stand of beans obviously not diminished by
contributing leaves to our dinner table

You might think that a plant would have a tough time growing if all its leaves were pulled off.  That's undoubtably true.  So I always left the top three of four clusters--they grow in groups of five or six.

Very fat Favas on stems that are naked below--evidence
of my bean leaf theft

Now the plants are setting on beans. I've nibbled a few fresh and raw off the vine.  I know they aren't toxic, but it is clear they are best prepared some other way.

Unique blossoms of the Fava:  black and white

Soon I'll open that can in the cupboard and see if I like the beans.  Right now it's the greens I love.

Gravity

Yellow foxglove pointing the way

It makes flowers grow up.  It seems that no matter the direction of the stem, the flower itself knows how to hold its head up. Weighty blooms on long stems often are not well supported.  The stem leans more and more, but the flower always knows up.  The yellow foxglove just turns up the end of the stem.  Shasta Daisies put their yellow faces up.  My tomatoes were lying down a bit.  When they were tied to their supports, the stems had some pretty odd angles, but in the day or so they all straighten out and knew which way was up.  Gravity is the friend that shows the way.

Stems flat but faces turning up

Some times when it seems there are too many Things I get to do today, or I feel too distracted to know which way is up, looking at a simple, elegant flower will give me my directions.  Settle into the energy of the earth (gravity) and you'll see which way is up.

Green Feeding Frenzy

The head of lettuce already torn apart for easier access

They take bigger bites than I do, I swear! Lena Horne Hen tore off a piece of lettuce two inches square and swallowed until it went down.

OK.  This one is a little too big to swallow.

The rest of the girls didn't take smaller bites because they were polite.  It was just the luck of the tear.  Grab what you can.

Getting down to the last leaf

When a whole head of bolted lettuce (all you garden folks know that's what it's called when it is starting to grow tall and make seeds) lands in your yard, in the hen world you have to get to busy or there'll be nothing left to cackle about (or eat).

Katy reigns over the core

Going down!

The first lettuce plantings have turned bitter, so chicken Things I get to do today are fling a head over the hen-pen fence and watch the gals gobble it down.  I'm expecting them to say "oink."

The Perfect Scoop*

This is not about ice cream.  There is a fabulous recipe book by that title* with everything you need to know about ice cream by David Lebovitz.  Sorbets, sherbets, ice creams, granitas and toppings and cones--everything.  But this post is not about ice cream.  Its about a scoop--a perfect one.

Yesterday's Things I get to do today included tending the front flower bed, the one by the curb.  It faces east and dries out quickly after a watering.  Mulch would be the answer in our area, something like bark dust.  Here in Oregon you can hire a big truck with a huge hose that will pump a cubic yard in three minutes.  People cover all their bare ground with bark dust.  Keeps the weeds down (for awhile) and looks tidy and uniform.  My mulch is similar but is enhanced with compost and good things for the plants.  It helps hold the moisture in the ground because sometimes in Oregon it does not rain.

Putting mulch in an established flower bed needs to be done carefully with a degree of sensitivity and attention.  The big truck and the hose are out.  My usual technique is to gather what I can between my two hands and place it between and around plants.  By the end of the second wheel barrow load heading out to the flower bed, my back starts talking to me in a low, grumbly tone.

Bottomless milk jugs
made into plant cloches

The perfect scoop

So yesterday I remembered a recycling tip about making scoops: from plastic jugs and containers.  Ding Dong!  The little pile of cloches used earlier in the season to keep the bell peppers warm popped to mind.  They are made from gallon milk jugs with the bottoms cut out.  All I needed to do was grab the handle and scoop.  It held three times what my hands could carry.  It was easy to shake it around the plants without having to bend over so much.  It was fast.  It was perfect.

It was also hot and noon straight up when I finished, and all I could think about was the Perfect Scoop--of ice cream.

Sunflower Sassy

It's a valiant sunflower, at least.  At its best, it's a symbol of determination and hope.  Check out Cup on the Bus by Joanne.  First of the Things I get to do today is pay tribute to this valiant sunflower and to Joanne for her love of the underdog.  Her adopted sunflower certainly has all odds against it.

The pale one that won my heart

All my sunflowers are rooting for the fire station flower.  From a wildflower seed mix last year, a very pale sunflower showed up in my garden.  I saved one small head of seeds and started them in an indoor tray in the spring.  They had all the luxuries of the wealthy--food, housing, water and protective attention.

First bloom--with a little green tongue

Not all the plants have bloomed true to the pale yellow of that first plant.  They are not slender, short and delicate structures either.  Something about having the initial strong, healthy start has allowed them to bloom, robust and tall.

A week later--full, stick-out-your-tongue attitude

They'd like to send their vigor and cheer to that lone flower in the East, growing in the crack of the concrete in front of the fire station door.  Just stick out your tongue at the odds and glow your heart out, little sunflower!

Too Much of a Good Thing

Before the nitrogen fertilizer.

They say the best defense is a good offense.  Why do "they" always have all the answers?  I spent days offensing offensively with my best offense.  In real terms, I dug up the whole front bed that cuddled the horsetail.   Then squeezed a few chicken amendments into it along with lots of ammonium sulfate.

One day after application

See the results of too much of a good thing.

Roots of the not-preferred plant were dug out.
 Area received a heavy dose of nitrogen fertilizer.
It will be easy to take care of any growth that springs up.

I'm thrilled and my heart sings through the Things I get to do today.  The digging, the sifting for threads of roots, the redoing of my iris bed and the area around my rose--it's all just play, because I'm using sweetness and goodness to outwit and outpower something that I prefer not to have. Simple as that.

The Lie and The Truth

"Tiffany" Rose whose fragrance is beyond the beauty
of the flower itself.  This is for the "blog world."

We bloggers lie.  Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help your garden spade?  Well. . .ah, sure, a-huh.  Yep.  But with our camera's we show only what we want the world to see--of ourselves and of our gardens.  There's nothing right or wrong about this; there's just more than what meets the eye of the reader.

Here's the real picture.  My lovely rose bush surrounded
by invasive "horsetail"

While the Things I get to do today take me to abject despair and then from this dark place back to hope again, I thought I would air the dirty laundry, show you what's in the closet, but really just add a picture of part of my front yard.

Where is that lovely rose now?  Hint--top left.
 This is my view without the editing help of the camera.

Since life is just an experiment--that word has been included two or three times a week lately--my despair over the horsetail that is taking over my front yard has moved from the depths back to a place of hope. One of the on-line sources commented that none of the weed killers on the market (and I won't use them anyway) will really stop horsetail, but that it thrives in poor soil. Nitrogen rich soil is toxic to it.  I brightened immediately as I heard my mother caution me about using chicken "litter" in the garden,  "Be careful.  It will burn the plants!"  Wow! So I could pull/dig the horsetail and seriously amend the soil with chicken poo and eventually stop the horsetail.

Gravel path green with newly sprouted horsetail.
It was all clean last week.

A vision of my pull up the bushy, tufted weed and then immediately holding a chicken over the spot and squeezing it until the soil was "amended" plopped into my mind.

Wish me well with this experiment.

Lupin from Finish to Start

Kitten toes is what they look like.  That's how lupin ends.  Individual pussy digits complete with a gentle hook on the tip. That's where the similarity stops, I believe. Real cats do not have gentle claws.  They are real.

The top of the stalk is still full-flowered and vibrant.  This pretty must have been planted by Mother Nature herself, or perhaps a passing bird dropped something that planned to glory in this location.

Spike of a maturing flower--beginning of a cat claw

My father-in-law, Merlyn, had a whole row of different lupins--all different colors--one of his favorites.   They are a fascinating flower with all their complex development.

Colors grow more intense with time

Shaped like brilliant fortune cookies, these individual flowers have called me from the Things I get to do today to take special note.

Full spectrum of tight, baby green to vibrant, mature purples

Lupins come from the pea family, and the little beans in the pods are actually edible.  In some countries with colder climates, a type of Lupin tofu is made, since soy beans don't grow well in the cold.  But that is way more than any of us wanted to know about this gorgeous flower.  Merlyn was not a fan of tofu.

For Merlyn

He mowed the lawn the day his wife died.  My father-in-law loved to garden.  Being outside with the green grass was a way to cope and a way to heal.  Before he retired he was a building contractor, so working with wood jostled around with the earth for first place in his attention.

When the Things I get to do today include any sort of wood project, I often feel like he is still with me, giving a nod or a smile, usually pleased as a papa that I'm doing what he loved to do.  Our sharing of interests meant that he understood what I would enjoy for a gift:  for Christmas one year it was a Makita cordless drill.  Before that he put together and gifted me a compost sifter!

"Fine" soil clods

Let me tell you about compost sifters. They, along with our physical effort, take lumpy, clumpy compost and turn it into fine, lovely 1/2" minus material to sprinkle around plants.

narrow clod bed

They do the same thing with clods of dirt, which is what is usually available to me when the seed packet say "plant 1/8" deep and cover with fine soil." That happened again the other day.

Compost sifter over wheelbarrow.  Ready to sift.
Just use the back side of a rake to work
 the earth through the grid.

And since my sifter is nearly 30 years old and beginning to lose its corners, I'm going to make a new one one of these days.

Finished and fine!

I know you'll join me, Mer, for the process.  Happy Father's Day in a couple of weeks, and thanks for making planting such a sweet process.

Plant the Onions Twice

The triangles and waves of onions are nice, but I got serious last week.  Most of the remaining bags of onion sets went around the edges of two of the garden beds.  Poking tiny onions into the ground took me straight back to wee childhood--maybe three years old.  My grandmother had me pushing the little bulbs into the ground with the pointy end up--the perfect planting task for a kid that age.

Root side up, looking a little worn

And now one of the Things I get to do today is plant a dozen or so of those onions again.  Seems that the throng of squirrels that roar through my yard routinely thought I'd buried something special to them under the onion sets. Apparently they had to dig up a bunch of them before deciding that no peanuts or sunflowers seeds were hiding in the freshly disturbed soil.  So not because I'm a workaholic and love to overdo it, but because I want these onions to have a chance to grow, I'm planting them again.

Barricaded for their own protection

You can also imagine my fascination with the crow and squirrel performance out back.  The crow delivered his terse, strident lines with great volume and clarity from the tree.  The squirrel (may have been the onion digger) scuttled across the ground to the other side of the tree.  The crow shouted his speech again from the top of the chain link fence, a much closer stage.  The squirrel ignored him.  The crow flew past, banked sharply and strafed the insolent squirrel.  Duck and run for cover!  In my eagerness to see the display, I moved too close, and the crow, my new ally, lost focus and flew away.  Darn!

He may have been the same one that sang from our roof for several mornings, intermittently pounding on the skylight.  I think I've found a friend.

Start with a Pink Bucket

1.  Equipment: Potting soil, newspaper,
wine bottle with straight sides.

It's been going on for days.  When the seedlings from the indoor nursery have moved to the outdoor greenhouse play pen and begin to get their legs, it's time for their own pot.

2. Take a section of the newspaper, cut off the fold (paper cutter
is great), cut the sheet in half vertically so your resulting
sheets are about 5 1/2 x 23".  Wrap paper around the bottom
end of the wine bottle covering about 3" of the bottle.

I'm such a tender-hearted fool.  Not one of all the seeds stuffed into one tomato-seed hole failed to take hold.  And who am I to cut them off after such valiant effort?  Not me.

3. You want enough paper hanging over to fold/moosh into the
center cavity to "secure" the bottom.  Gently slide out the bottle.

The arithmetic tells the story: planning on 9 Oregon Spring Bush tomato plants--9 holes times 4 seeds equals 36.  And that is the way it went for nearly all the seeds I started. So I've been potting up tomatoes, cucumbers, zinnias, eggplant and peppers--114 all together--I just counted them.  It's taken days to settle them all in.

4. Quickly add a generous scoop of soil before the paper
changes its mind and decides to be flat again.

A meditative process, it is, scooping out the little clump of plants, talking to them sweetly and tugging gently to separate them from each other, then tucking them snugly into their new homes.  And that is where the rub comes: new homes for 114 plants!  Don't think I've ever had that many little pots to reuse--maybe if I'd saved them for ten years, but I haven't.

5. Add your seedling, more soil to snuggle it in.  Press it down
to remove air cavities around the roots.  Water lightly.

Here's where the straight wine bottle is a huge help.  First you drink whatever is left in the bottle.  Then, if you are able, follow the rest of the instructions--the pictures will help no matter what state you are now in.

6. These lettuce boxes hold six plants nicely and help keep the
sides of the pots moist.  WARNING:  this type of pot dries out
 rather quickly.  Keep an eye on them and water as needed.

 You really must begin with a pink bucket.

A Triangle of Onions

I seldom do what most folks do.  Grew taller than most women (6' 1")--that set the bar right off--which was really out of my control, but gave me the foundational premise from which to work.  Admitting right up front here, however, that it took me at least 40 years to ease out of the need to conform, to slide into the joy of being myself, to expand a bit more every day into possibilities.

Waiting for imagination to strike--to be planted soon

Wow!  What that has to do with onions is yet to be revealed.  My bag of 80 onion sets has been waiting on the kitchen counter for a month nearly. They were white onions.  I was waiting until a convenient trip out to buy sets for yellow onions.  Done.  The bags (3 all together=240 onion sets) have sprouting slowly into the Things I get to do today for at least two weeks as other things pushed to the fore. Daily promises to the three-bags-full were broken.  But today I got a firm grip on my determination, and though it was time for a dinner I had not yet prepared, I planted onions.*

Triangle of onions

Contrary to the instructions on the bag, designed to keep all of us in conformity and an ordinary state (boring, same-old-same-old, mundane, unimaginative, uninspired, dull), I planted the onions in my flower bed, and not in rows, either.  I thought waves would be nice. I planted two two-row waves.  And then I planted a triangle--between the larkspur and the peony.  They told me they would be happy there.  I believe them.




*After sharing with neighbors and friends and planting a few to fulfill my promise, there are plenty left to tuck here and there about the yard in the sunny spots.  Just too fun for words.

It's a Slippery Slope

Once you get started, you're a goner.  This gardening/yarding thing has me outside so much I missed my Tai Chi class last Thursday--plum forgot all about it until 3:15 in the afternoon.  Today I remembered, but when I got back, I took all that focus and relaxation right out in the dirt as though I'd never been away for a minute.

Empty slope fit for only weeds.

Right out of my yard catalog of Things I get to do today is make a space to plant my Critter Mix.  I found Critter Mix in my seed catalog.  The folks at this company make available at a reasonable price a whole pound of greens seeds like collards and kale and lettuces that you can grow to feed your chickens.  That is so cool I can hardly see straight.  My problem would be, here in the city, limited lot size without the quarter acre needed to grow all these goodies for the girls. The garden beds are for growies for us people to eat not for the hens.

Old treated posts and 2x4's--a nuisance to store

So I started looking around in the yard for space of hen kale.  And there it was:  totally useless space in its current configuration, but totally perfect space if I were to gather together a pile of rotted off posts and 2x4's from an old berry trellis and a fistful of rusted rebar stakes.

The project got much worse before it got better--pretty typical of projects.
However, Handy Andy's know that and simply shift into compound low.
Slimy folded stuff is nasty, old landscape fabric found five inches down.

Armed with this equipment I spent the rest of the afternoon making terraced beds on a slope that has grown only weeds for the past 30 years.  Wow, does that feel good!  And better yet, it isn't slippery any more.

Ready to plant.  Oops! Better order the seeds, do ya' think?

Making Babies: Planting

You have to have seeds if you are going to plant them.  Duh!  Well, maybe you could have figured that out, but it certainly caught me by surprise.  Things I get to do today said, "plant warmth-needing seeds," and I had not bothered to buy any.  I didn't even really know for sure what types I wanted to start.

In a bit of a dither, I shuffled through the stack of seed catalogs until the most familiar name appeared.  Page after page were filled with mouth-watering descriptions of the finest growies on earth.  I circled and checked far more than my garden could hold.  Finally, my wits crept back to me, and I thought of checking my left-over seeds from last season.



Amazing!  There in my hands were several packets of certainly-cannot-live-without-this-one seeds I had just circled in the catalog--even the same company.  Now this mama was really excited.  Rummaging through the backlog of seed packets produced everything I needed for the nursery starts: tomatoes (7 kinds), eggplant, sweet peppers, cucumbers (3 types), basil, a pale yellow sunflower and zinnias (big, brilliant red ones).

Little cribs in a nursery row

I planted all my old seeds--some from as far back as 2006--in sifted compost that I sterilized in our outdoor gas grill. Don't even think about doing it in your oven.

Lids to my baby "cribs" had labels that would shade
the young starts.  Pour very warm water over the plastic
underside of the label to soften the adhesive.
Makes removal quite easy.

Seed cribs with soft, compost mattresses and cozy, clear covers promise to grow very happy, healthy babies.  Now we wait (continued tomorrow).