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.

Raspberry Recycle

Everything can be put to good use.  In my dream world that is true.  When it actually happens that a natural waste product has a beneficial second life, I'm blissed out.

The fresh green of this year's growth.

So collecting my bliss is top of the Things I get to do today in the berry patch.  The raspberries are finished after four weeks of generous gifts to our table and tummies and a few into the freezer.  The last few pickings were not very much fun with the new canes hanging every-which-way, getting in the way and risking being broken off, brittle as they are.  Removing the just-finished-baring canes feels good as I put the patch in order and give this year's canes space and support for their fall crop.

These grew up last summer, released their first berries in
the fall, and just finished blessing us with this year's crop.

Mulch is a gift to the new growth, holding moisture and releasing its nutrients back into the soil.  As I collected the spent canes, their yet-healthy-and-green leaves caught my attention.

Old leaves stuffed between the canes as mulch.  Do not do this
if there is disease or rust of any kind on your raspberry leaves.

They snapped easily and quickly from the stalks.  A generous fistful was tucked between the canes and snugged to the ground.  All the spent leaves stripped, and all of them used for mulch.  Bliss.

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.

Strowing the Garden

"Where do you get your strow?" Reva asked over the phone.  Strow.  I was speechless with absolutely no clue what she was talking about.  Context of the question implied, however,  that not only did I know what strow was, but I had also procured some.  "You know, the strow you put around your strowberries."

"Strow" in the "strowberries"

So every year when Things I get to do today include putting straw around  my strawberries, I remember Reva, from Knoxville, TN, my neighbor in times past.  Warm affection is mixed well with this mulch that keep the berries clean and the earth damp.


I now "strow" most of my garden.  And I think of Reva nearly every time I see it glisten in the garden light.

Chicken Twitter

They seldom stop talking, and they never have much to say.  The content is simple and to the point.  Gwyneth and the gang, my chickens, constantly keep each other posted on their moment by moment activities by clucking, squawking, cackling, muttering, twitting, singing single notes, and when they were smaller, peeping.

If it’s quiet in the hen pen, I sense ennui and head out to shift the situation that is now on my list of Things I get to do today.  Essential chicken activities include scratching, pecking, scratching, pecking, scratching, pecking and pooping.  So if they’re not scratching, all is not well.

A chicken knows, as sure as a chicken knows anything, that around the base of plants bugs live.  That chicken knowing is the precise reason the hens have a pen that provides a barrier between them and my garden and flowerbeds.  Thirty seconds of serious hen activity can be the death of a tender plant.

But berry vines are tough.  They do best if mulched well to keep they feet damp and provide extra goodies for growing fat, juicy berries.   However by October the main production season is past, and they don’t mind having a good scratch at their base:  a foot massage and a back rub combined.  The girls are itching to provide this service.

Twenty feet of raspberries and marrionberries with deep mulch at their base can keep the flock contented 24/7 if someone will put the mulch back occasionally.  That’s something they don’t do.   So I rake the litter back under the vines, and the girls fall in behind me, contented again to post aloud what they are discovering as they scratch, peck, scratch, peck, scratch, peck, twit.