Nineteen for 50 - Mostly weeding and reading

Time spent in the garden increases this time of year. Maintaining the beds that we re-hauled last year, weeding and thinning plants in the other areas, installing edging and re-establishing the borders between gardens and lawn, pruning shrubs and trees, preparing the soil in the vegetable raised bed, picking out and then planting veggies. E helps with jobs requiring a shovel, edger, or any heavy lifting.  He hauls mulch, compost and dirt. He built a fortress around the veggies to help them stay out of the mouths of deer. He mows and mows, trims and waters. Much of the yard is starting to look great again, after a few years of minimal work completed in it. 

West side - cleaned up last year

Front garden by sidewalk

ground covers run amuck in the "stump garden"

Tomatoes safe from the jaws of deer

The cabin is 'under contract' so hopefully the closing and transfer to the buyers will go smoothly. There are a few things at the cabin that we'll bring home and store for now but it is for the most part cleaned out and awaiting the new owners creating their own memories there.

Work is, well, work. A lot of days I struggle to figure out how to get all the things done. Other days I say, "Screw it. I'm going outside." And then I wake up at 2am thinking about all the things that still need to get done.

I am preparing to go on a scrapbooking retreat later this week. This is about half the group that usually goes but when planning, we were still just getting first vaccines and made the decision we would feel more comfortable with a fully vaccinated group, keeping it small and paying a bit more. I usually go with this group 3 times a year and now it has been 16 months since last there.  I am slightly anxious and at the same time excited about it.  Planning what project I will work on, I decided to go way back in time and work with photos I have on hand, from high school and college days.

Since last blog post, I haven't completed any books or tried any new recipes, but do have 2 recipes and 3 books in reserve.  We had recipes last time so I'll start with the books

Books 19, 20, and 21

Book 19 was a book club pick and we'll be discussing it tonight. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was one I was only mildly interested in and didn't anticipate liking it much. It seems there was a lot of hype about this one and EVERYONE was reading it. Sometimes when things get overhyped, they greatly disappoint me, if I even end up reading them at all.  This one did not - I read it quickly and would pick it up eagerly to see what was going to happen. It is a novel that is part environmental science of the North Carolina marsh (not nearly as boring as that phrase makes it sound), part coming of age story of Kya the "Marsh Girl" (one of my favorite descriptions of her was "a tangled-haired, barefoot mussel-monger who lived in a shack") and part murder mystery of Chase - "the best quarterback this town ever saw".  It tells Kya's story chronologically, from the time she is a young girl until she is an older woman. Chase's story starts with his body being found. It was engaging and well-written, especially for an over-hyped book.  One of the lines that stood out to me (and doesn't give away any part of the story but resonated with me), after one of the characters asked if Kya could forgive him: "Why should the injured, the still bleeding, bear the onus of forgiveness?"

It took me a full 4 months to read book 20, but considering that I first remember hearing about the book (and about the subject) 30 years ago, that seems like hardly any time at all.  Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick is probably not a book you are going to read. Chaos theory is most likely not your idea of interesting reading and this book, though accessible to beginners, is not exactly a beach and margarita read. As a math major many years ago, I attended a talk on chaos (symposium? is that what they called those?). Honestly most of it went over my head. A friend who took a class on fractals mostly annoyed me by pointing out fractals and non-fractals in the cafeteria (strawberry - fractal, caf tray - not a fractal) without telling me what the heck a fractal was. A fractal is a shape that is infinitely complex - think of a hill. For you and me, a hill is relatively smooth and we can walk over little differences in terrain. For a cat or dog, there may be more differences in surface to navigate. For something smaller, say an ant, it becomes even more complex. The closer we get to the surface, the more complex it is. I only explain this because I didn't want to be like the person in the cafeteria. Probably the most familiar part of chaos theory is the Butterfly Effect.  This book told how chaos theory became to be a new science and how many different disciplines were all studying it at the same time - meteorologists, biologists studying population growth, physicists looking at turbulence, and so on. Like I say, I thought it was interesting but the audience for this one may be limited.

Finally, the most recent book finished was one I first read probably 25 years ago and it immediately went on my list of my favorite books. Surfacing by Margaret Atwood is one of her first novels, written in the '70s, and I have always struggled to describe the book and why it affected me so much. The blurb on Goodreads seems particularly misleading to me - "part detective novel, part psychological thriller".  If you are looking for either of those things, you will be sorely disappointed, I think. Certainly there is an element of mystery to it - the unnamed narrator goes with her boyfriend and another couple to an isolated cabin in Quebec to look for her father who seems to have disappeared - but that storyline seems very secondary to her introspection and to the story she is telling herself and her friends vs. her reality, her coming to terms with reality and escape back to nature through madness.  As a twenty-something, I scribbled many quotes from this book in my journal.  Re-reading it as a 50-year-old, I felt myself wanting to scribble them again and then scribble some more. I think it hit me differently than it did a quarter-century ago, but it really hit me this time too. Atwood is poet as well as a novelist and this novel definitely has a poetry to it. A few of my favorite lines:

“We battled in secret, undeclared, and after a while I no longer fought back because I never won. The only defense was flight, invisibility.”

“From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view.”

“'Do you love me, that's all,' he said. 'That's the only thing that matters.'

It was the language again, I couldn't use it because it wasn't mine. He must have known what he meant but it was an imprecise word; the Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them, there ought to be as many for love.”

Until we weed again,

Hallie

Fifty for 50 Tally

Books completed – 21 (5 more in progress)

Recipes tried – 20

Blog posts published– 19

Miles walked in June - 8.09

            Miles walked in May - 52.42

             Miles walked year-to-date –234.48

Scrap book pages completed –19

Hats donated – 20

Hours volunteered – 0

Camping in Colorado and My Midsummer Review

Reading: Since last posting 150 years ago (okay, it's only been just over a month but it seems like longer), I started and finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz, and No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns.  3 very different books and I enjoyed them all, though for different reasons.  Right now I don't feel like blogging about books, though, so you will need to stay tuned for my future posts on those.

Eating: Summer is fully upon us.  Here in the upper midwest, we are setting records for high temps and have been sweating with high humidity as well for what seems like months, though I suppose in reality it has only been about 3 weeks.  Summertime in general and heat in particular make me think about eating differently.  First, we have abundant fresh produce this time of the year (this is further enhanced at our house because of our weekly CSA (community-supported agriculture) share delivery, and also because of our vegetable garden.  Second, we tend to avoid turning on the oven and do a lot more grilling.  Third, the lure of soups, stews and casseroles (hotdishes for you Minnesotans!) is not as strong as the temptation of salads - both green and pasta.  I will be posting some summer food recipes, thoughts and suggestions in the upcoming weeks - stay tuned for that as well.

Weeding: Wow.  Weeds grow really, really well in this weather.  Apparently thistles, crabgrass and clover are very drought resistant and heat tolerant.  Cleaning up the flower and veggie beds - deadheading, weeding, cutting back - is even more work when it is 95 degrees with 95% humidity.  We are also working on the stump garden because we now have a plan drawn up!  A friend who is a long-time gardener and awesome planner drew up a layout for the "stump garden" using our input.  There are plans for walkways in and out, a fire bowl and seating area, privacy from the street and incorporating the colors and plants we own or would like to own.  We hope to also add some sort of water feature.  There will be a lovely view from my office window and should be blooms and color for multiple seasons.  Watch for pictures as this project progresses.  Right now, the sweaty job of removing turf and excess soil is in progress.

Travel: Maybe I could call this section "retreating" or something.  For now, it will be just "travel".  Last month we took a driving trip to Colorado for a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park.  After the first 2 days, I was ready to turn around and come home, but it improved significantly after that, so I was glad we continued.  We drove the first night to my mom's in southwest MN (there was a delay of our departure that night because work, and other circumstances out of our control) then from there proceeded south through Iowa - completely benign and uneventful, as you would expect Iowa to be.  We took a little off freeway detour to see the Blue Bunny ice cream factory in LeMars, IA, but did not get any ice cream.  We stopped at a sleepy little town in Nebraska for lunch - Lyons (I pronounced it Lee-own' the way it is in French - probably not how they say it in NE though), and continued on our way.  That afternoon is when the trouble began... 5 miles out of Clarks, NE, the tire pressure monitoring system started to tell E that the left rear tire was getting low.  It should be at about 31 and it was at 28.  By the time we stopped in Clarks at the gas station, it was down to 16 and when we checked again after getting gas, it was 2.  So we unpacked the trunk (which was stuffed to the top with camping gear) and changed the tire to the "compact spare" aka donut.  Someone stopped by then to tell us there was a service station where we could get it fixed, but alas!  It was 4pm on Saturday and it was closed.  We discovered our spare allows us to drive up to 65mph for up to 3000 miles so we continued on the interstate, nearly getting run over by every big truck on the road.  After a failed attempt to find a tire repair place in Grand Island, the only city of good size in the middle of that blessed state, we drove on to Ogalalla where we had a room booked for that night.  After a late dinner at Denny's, a fitful night's sleep, and waffles for breakfast, we drove on through the high plains to the suburb of Henderson, just outside Denver.  This is where we were picking up the wee little camper we were purchasing, direct from the "factory".  Marty, the man who built the trailer, was quite helpful - he determined our hitch was a good 5 inches too low for the trailer but set about building us a new one.  He also directed us to where we could get our tire repaired. I won't go into more detail about the next 6 hours of our time outside Denver other than to say it took a long time but only a little money to repair the tire and get it on the car, Olive Garden tastes pretty darn good when you are hungry, 107 degrees doesn't feel so hot when it is a dry heat, and our hitch is now tall enough to haul the trailer.  We pulled out just in time for it to start raining.  Hard.  But eventually it stopped. We got into Rocky Mountain National Park and to our campsite around 10pm but happily did not have to set up a tent in the dark like we usually do.  With the help of a friendly neighbor camper, we got our trailer set up, blocked and chocked, the airbed inflated and were in bed not too long after.  It was a long 2 first days of the trip but we were happy campers after that.  We relaxed in the campground, drove up to 11,000 feet and got out of breath walking across the parking lot, saw beautiful mountains, alpine lakes, and a herd of elk, hiked several miles and saw more majestic mountains, pristine lakes, colorful flowers and funny little ground squirrels, cooked on a little campstove (no campfire due to the extremely dry conditions), and slept in our compact hard-sided tent on wheels.  We came home by way of hot dry Wyoming, to the surprisingly beautiful Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota where we spent one night in a pine filled campground.  We had a long day's drive across boring South Dakota (truthfully, other than the Badlands and Black Hills, SD is very boring.  Sorry SoDak'ers.) then spent the evening at with my sister and brother-in-law at the campground where they have their (not-small) camper parked for the season.  So much fun to see them!  Hard to get used to the humidity and mosquitoes, though, after having been in hot, dry, wildfire land.  Then we were home.  I will post pictures sometime, in case you have not already seen them on Facebook.  I especially need to post one of the little camper - we do so enjoy it!  I named it Rudy.  The style of camper is called the Roughneck, so Rudy the Roughneck it was.  He seems to enjoy being hauled around by Sadie the Saturn.  They look pretty good together too.

Well, I am off to make dinner now.  As I said before, stay tuned for my reviews of those 3 books, for summer food thoughts and ideas, for pictures of progress on the stump garden and for pictures of the camper and Colorado trip.

Until we eat, read, weed or retreat again,
Hallie

Feeling Summer

Reading: Since last post, I have finished the Hunger Games trilogy.  Catching Fire went quickly, in just a couple of days.  It moved the story along nicely but really just felt like filler between the first and last books.  Mockingjay was better than I anticipated.  Most people that had read this, at least that I had talked to or saw discuss it, thought it was not the best of the series, so I had pretty low expectations for it.  It exceeded those expectations.  Overall I enjoyed the trilogy and am not sorry that I read it.

Next up is Hit by a Farm - How I learned to stop worrying and love the barn by Catherine Friend.

Eating: It is grilling season, though we need to clean off the grill before we can do that.  I like that part of summer - a couple burgers or brats on the grill, a little salad, maybe some taters cooked up in foil - dinner is served.  We will be cleaning off the grill this weekend, so watch for some recipes for outdoor cooking to follow in the next several weeks.
The CSA will also start delivering in a couple weeks so there will also be veggie reports. 

We are having a potluck at work in a couple weeks (yes, I am going in to the office so those of you thinking it would be a pretty sad potluck with just me in my home office, you can just hush!) and it is a "Take me out to the ballpark" theme.  I love to bring dessert to potlucks and if I can't bring dessert, I am often at a loss as to what to bring.  But what dessert goes with ballpark food?  My first thought was crackerjacks!  It isn't technically a dessert but when I make homemade caramel corn, it is so tasty and sweet, it may as well be dessert.  My coworker was trying to think of ideas of what to bring so I was suggesting a few.  I think I probably got a little obnoxious with my ideas towards the end but here are a couple of them:  Cheese BALL served with pretzel rod "bats", cake or cookies decorated like a baseball, diamond or hat, cotton candy, peanuts, sunflower seeds (or salad with sunflower seeds in it), anything served in a batting helmet, Chips and queso dip (nachos appear to be very popular at the ballpark), hot dogs or other sausages, chewing tobacco (haha!) or Big League Chew bubblegum. What other ideas do you have?


Weeding: We have the veggies and herbs all planted: tomatoes (cherry, roma and beefsteak), peppers (red, yellow and orange bell peppers - still need to get some hot peppers), corn, carrots, potatoes, arugula, lettuce, basil, rosemary, spearmint, garlic chives, oregano, thyme and cilantro.  Hope it all grows!

We spent much of last weekend up at Camp Amnicon in northern Wisconsin, volunteering our time to get camp ready for the summer.  I was pleased because I got to do some weeding and planting there too.  I had done a little walk around when we first got there and thought, "Yikes!  That little flower bed could use some weeding!" so was happy that they asked me to work on that. 

The plant swap 2 weeks ago went pretty well.  I helped to have some pictures of the plants I was offering so people could see what they look like in bloom.  I wish more people had pictures or at least would label their plants.  Oh, well.  I took 15-16 plants and came home with the same amount, but different ones.  I have to get them in the ground this weekend. 

Here are some photos of what is blooming today.  Enjoy!

Painted daisies (pyretheum) in the 'kidney bed' (so named for its shape)

sedum, hardy geranium and lamb's ear on side of the garage

Clematis 'Polish Pride'




Anemone are growing like weeds in the "stump garden" (so named because we used to have a stump there)

Columbine along the deck

Fringed bleeding heart - still blooming though the other bleeding heart are done

Peony - the loveliest of June flowers

Stella d'Oro daylily and some unknown plant (if you know what it is, please tell me!)

Corn flower

close-up of penstemon flowers, just the faintest pink blush on the white flowers

Penstemon 'Husker Red' (I think that is the type anyway)

Perennial salvia (I think)

Front garden

Z is for Zinnia

Weeding: We have reached the end.  This is the last post in the A-Z Challenge.  I will reflect on the challenge later this week, on what I liked, what I struggled with, what I would do differently and what I would keep the same.  But right now, Z is for Zinnia.

'Profusion Cherry' photo from linehanqazuc.livejournal.com

There are not usually many zinnias in my garden, but the one kind I have grown, Zinnia Elegans 'Profusion Cherry' and 'Profusion Orange I like. They are tough little plants, which can take the heat, and do well without much watering.  I have mainly grown them in containers on the deck or front steps. The flowers last for a long time and the plants get nice and full.

To me, the purpose of annuals is for color when the perennials are not yet blooming.  But I don't tend to grow a lot of annuals.  The two main reasons for this are: I am cheap, and I am lazy.  Annuals usually need to be purchased every year.  A person could start them from seed, which would be cheaper, but them you either have to a) start them inside early and plant them out when they are ready (and the weather is right) or, b) sow the seeds directly outside and then wait for them to come up.  Planning ahead and waiting are not 2 things that I care for.  So, I would typically buy them at the garden center (spending money for plants that are guaranteed to die in the fall), and then would have to plant them all.  So I save annuals for containers, and have significantly scaled back on those now as well, since the perennials are starting to fill in so nicely.  I like geraniums (Pelargonium), dusty miller, zinnias, pansies, and a few others.

What's blooming now in the garden?  Glad you asked.  Here are some photos taken yesterday.  Enjoy and let me know what you thought of the A-Z challenge! 

new little irises - free from the plant swap last spring

The vinca is blooming in the stump garden

Bleeding heart shrubs (seriously - they are huge!) in the stump garden

Front garden - mini daffodils and hyacinth with creeping Jenny and Lamb's ear

Until we weed again,
Hallie

L is for Lamb's ear and Lungwort



Lamb's ear, with hardy geranium in the background

front garden, lamb's ear on left of sidewalk

Lamb's ear in bloom

Weeding:  Besides plants with purple or yellow flowers, I also enjoy plants with interesting leaves.  Two of the interesting leaf plants that I like happen to start with "L".  Lamb's ear (official name 'Stachys') is just as soft as it sounds.  The leaves are fuzzy and silvery-colored.  It gets pink spikes of flowers but they are just an added bonus.  A word of caution about lamb's ear, though.  A little will become a lot. It makes a nice groundcover, and as with many groundcovers, it will cover a lot of ground if you let it.  It spreads by roots, shoots and seeds.  I started out with a normal sized plant and now have a large mass of it in the front bed (might make a soft little place to sit!), a growing patch of it on the side of the garage (transplanted from the mother mass), and little sproutlets all around both areas.  If you don't want it to reseed, cut the flowers off.  And if it is growing where you don't want it to be, rip it out.  But I love it for its soft leaves that aren't quite green.  Sometimes, if everything is the same color, it all blends together. 

Lungwort with hostas and ajuga

The next plant comes first with a bit of a rant about hosta. I know there are 10 million different kinds of hosta and everyone and their brother who has a shady spot in their yard grows at least one hosta, but I am not a fan. I think they just look like big lettuce plants and if I wanted that, I would grow lettuce - at least I could eat it then. The other part of my aversion to them probably stems from my neighbor across the street. She planted approximately 5000 hostas, all the same kind, in a kind of tutu around the mature evergreen trees in her yard. It is one of the least inspired landscapes I have seen. I have a few hosta that I acquired before deciding that I didn't like them. They may go to new homes eventually but that part of the yard (the "stump garden" named for the stump that used to be there until last summer when it finally got ground out) is a major work in progress. So anyway... (if you are still with me after that) what else can we grow in that shady spot? How about Lungwort (official name 'Pulmonaria')? It gets pink flowers but this is one I grow mainly for the leaves. There are different types, but the ones I have are dark green with splashes of silver and are very textural.


lungwort (on the left)

There you have 2 new plants to check out.

Until we weed again,
Hallie

Eating: The ratatouille was good.  I ate a bunch of it and froze 3 quart bags of it for later when I am craving summer veggies in the fall or winter.  I have another 1/2 an eggplant this week from the CSA (the other 1/2 goes to my in-laws) so am looking for another good eggplant recipe.
This is the recipe I used last week.  http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/ratatouille/detail.aspx  The chopping took a while but I like to chop, so that was okay.  Left out the 'shrooms because I am not a huge fan and also because they didn't speak "summer" to me.  And I used fresh parsley instead of dried because I have some growing on the deck.

We are on a pizza kick this month.  I have made home-made pizza (or 'Ho-made' as we call it, after a sign we saw in Door County advertising ho-made jams) for a number of years.  Simple Betty Crocker crust and sauce recipe, to which we usually add Canadian bacon and sometimes peppers if we have some.  Bake on the pizza stone from Pampered Chef (of course!) until the cheese is brown and bubbly.  A couple weeks ago, we made the pizza and E added red pepper slices from the pepper he grew, harvested and sliced thin (he has mad knife skilz).  It was perfection.  The next week (happened to be a Thursday again), we decided to try a BBQ chicken 'za since we had some leftover rotisserie chicken.  I made the BBQ sauce (with a little help from Pampered Chef for recipe and the BBQ rub) while E shredded the chicken.  A little green pepper, some red onion (on my half) and then fresh cilantro (added after it came out of the oven - otherwise it is just little burnt leaves - ask me how I know).  So tasty!  The best one yet.  This week was a Mexican pizza - instead of the red sauce we used E's fresh blender salsa, topped it with leftover taco meat, "Mexican-blend" cheese, and peppers. Fresh cilantro and crushed tortilla chips on top after baking.  Also very tasty, but not quite up there with the BBQ chicken.  Thinking of more creative ideas for the next pizza - suggestions??

Reading: I finished A Wrinkle in Time. I didn't like it as much as I remembered liking it before.  I need to think about it a little more before I discuss it.  Good thing bookclub isn't coming up real soon. 
Now I am reading Rhoda: A Life in Stories by Ellen Gilchrist.  It is a good sized volume of short stories, some of which are autobiographical, starting when Rhoda is about 7 or 8, in the '40s.  Love Rhoda's attitude and spunk.  And Gilchrist's writing style is engaging and descriptive.  I really feel like I am getting to know this character and her family.
I still need to pick a book for the Saturday bookclub.  What shall I pick for a bookclub that doesn't usually read the selection? Hmmmm....

Weeding: Date for the plant swap has been set.  I am very excited for this!  Swapping plants with my friends, snacks and beverages (of course! Can there be a gathering with out food??), tours of my garden.  I am enjoying the planning stages for that.  Also in the planning stages: E and I are hoping to build the second raised veggie garden bed on Labor Day weekend, get it filled with compost and then leaves to "cook" over the winter and be ready for spring planting.  And the gi-normous stump will hopefully be getting removed soon so we can get going on that area behing the house (plans percolating in my brain, not yet on paper though - a hedge for privacy, a fire pit, seating in the secluded area in addition to the half-log bench E made from the trunk of the tree, expanding the plants to all sides of the area, maybe a small water feature like one of those fountains that bubbles up out of a large rock, etc., etc.).  I have dubbed this "stump garden". 

Time to go cut back some of those tall flower stems on the daylilies and tie back some flopping plants. 

Until next time, happy reading, eating and weeding!