Berries!

I made a delicious discovery as I took Toby for an early morning walk on Friday. Raspberries! For weeks I have been watching the wild brambles go from bare, to being loaded with hard, green, and then pink and red berries. At last, some have turned dark purple. Even though we were in a bit of a hurry to get Toby's "business" taken care of so I could head off to work, I had to stop and pick a few. Everyone knows that the first berries of the season are the most delicious, and I wasn't about to miss out. Later today when it is not so hot out I'll go pick a bowl full. The only down side to enjoying free wild raspberries is that many of them are surrounded by poison ivy or poison oak. Chiggers--those invisible buggers that burrow under your skin and make you itch like crazy--seem to hang out around raspberries, too. However, the wild berries are tasty enough to make wearing long pants, long sleeves, and bug spray worth it, even with temperatures in the 80's.

It is somewhat of a tradition for me to make a raspberry cream pie each year. However, since I have become a devoted weight watcher, I think I will work on finding a lower calorie way to enjoy these scrumptious treats. Suggestions welcome!

Finding the raspberries reminded me that last weekend I picked a couple of quarts of sour cherries and put them in the refrigerator to pit later. What happened is I completely forgot about them. I have yet to check on them; I am so afraid I'll find a moldy mess of cherries representing wasted effort and wasted time. Even though I am basically an organized person, I just have not been able to find a way to fully balance working full time and taking care of such a large yard, the house, and so many animals while still leaving time for other things like eating, sleeping, and sitting down for a couple of minutes without feeling guilty about all that is not getting done. Oh well--I do what I can do, and keep looking for ways to simplify. The garden boxes are a good example. It is so great to enjoy wonderful home grown vegetables without all of the weeding, tilling, and hoeing. I'm sure I'll keep discovering better ways to do a lot of things, or learn how to let them go.

How does your garden grow?

My garden is growing great! The combination of rain and sunshine is working its magic and the plants are really taking off. The zucchini is especially impressive, growing by leaps and bounds within only a couple of weeks (compare the photo below to the one on my post of May 26). I'm also amazed by how the 'tall telephone' peas have grown. After an extra shot of fertilizer they started ascending the trellis at a rapid rate and have already rewarded us with a small harvest. We've also enjoyed lettuce, cilantro, and some beets from the garden.

The silver disk you see on the pea trellis is an aluminum pie tin I tied to the support with a bit of twine. It moves and clanks with even a gentle breeze hopefully helping to startle rabbits, birds, and other wildlife that may damage the garden. Even so, I did have one frustrating setback thanks to the band of rogue rabbits that have an encampment on our property. When I went out to the garden on Saturday morning, I was dismayed (to say the least) to find some of my green bean plants bitten in two, one tomato plant nibbled to the ground, and most frustrating of all, every single basil plant missing as though they had never existed. A quick check of the fence showed that the enemy rabbits had literally chewed through the vinyl fencing on one end of the garden. Bits of fence could be found on the ground as evidence. I couldn't believe it! That very day Nick and I visited the hardware store and came home with 100 feet of 2' tall rabbit guard fence. It took about 2 hours to install. It went up fairly easily as it fit right on to my existing quick stick posts. I'm really happy with how it looks -- from a distance you don't even notice it -- and with the fact that I don't believe it is chewable by even the toughest of rabbits.

Here is a picture of another uninvited visitor to the garden. With all the rain I am having some trouble with slugs and snails. This one received a reprieve, but others have not been so lucky. To protect the hostas in the front of the house from being eaten alive, I have been spraying them with a mixture of 1 cup ammonia to 1 gallon of water. This remedy was recommended by the staff of Stream Cliff Herb Farm near Commiskey, Indiana, that we recently visited. I hope it will do the trick. I hate how my beautiful hosta get full of holes from slug and snail damage this time of year. I'll let you know how it works.

I'm happy to report that my first bottle of chive blossom vinegar has been strained and bottled. It is the most beautiful shade of pink with a wonderful flavor to match. I can't wait to use it on fresh cooked greens or maybe even in some homemade salad dressings. Now I feel inspired to make up a batch of mixed herb vinegar. Perhaps a blend of oregano, basil, chives, thyme, and maybe even garlic would be good.

I also recently made a very good batch of herb butter. Here is the recipe in case you would like to try it yourself. Feel free to modify the ingredients to take advantage of what you have on hand. There really is no one recipe for herb butter. Also, by adding a tablespoon of grated parmesan cheese to this recipe, you would have a wonderful spread to grill on bread. Enjoy!

EARLY SUMMER HERB BUTTER
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 garlic clove, minced
2 teaspoons of minced fresh parsley
2 teaspoons minced fresh basil
1 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper (optional)

When butter is soft enough to spread, blend herbs in mixing well with a wooden spoon. Chill in a sealed container. Enjoy on bread, crackers, or cooked vegetables.

A few more pics

Here are three more garden pictures. The first shows how I am protecting the cabbage plants from insect damage. The plants are looking beautiful, so to keep them that way I cut a piece of lightweight floating row cover to the size of the box plus and extra 10" all around. I tucked the cover under the rim of the box and secured it with clothespins. My original plan was to secure the cover with bungee cords, but I couldn't come up with the right combination of sizes. Fortunately, the clothes pins work just fine.

Next is a picture of my sole peony plant, 'Top Brass.' I love how the middle part of the flower is ruffled up like a little top knot. I purchased this plant at a small independent nursery in Galena, Illinois. Have you noticed how few independent nursery/greenhouses there are these days? It seems we lose one or more every year. What a shame.

The final photo is of the flower bed at the garage end of the house. This end of the bed features Dutch iris, Oriental poppies, and perennial geranium. It is such a cheerful little garden and nearly carefree. Last year, before the perennials had grown so large, I filled in the spaces with Sweet Alyssum. I learned the secret to successfully growing Alyssum from seed is to plant them early, and only barely cover the seeds. I believe I planted the seeds in mid-April. The display was just as nice as when I started with bedding plants, but of course much less expensive. I love direct seeding whenever possible -- it just doesn't get much easier than that.

Focusing on What's Right

We have been having the most beautiful weather the past several days. Yesterday and today we had some intermittent rain, but nothing that has come close to spoiling the whole day. The combination of warm temperatures, bright sunshine, and gentle rain has really caused the garden to flourish. Unfortunately, the weeds are flourishing, too, and I spent a good part of yesterday weeding the beds. When I got home from work today I started noticing how much more weeding there still is to do. Even in the vegetable garden where I have spread a pretty thick layer of mulch the weeds are peeking through. How frustrating! It's hard to stay discouraged, however, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing, so I decided to get the camera and focus on what is going right in the garden. Here are a few of the highlights.

Pictured are my white clematis and a riot of golden coreopsis, plus a shot of false blue indigo, one of my favorite small shrubs. In the garden boxes are the beets and zucchini which you can see are off to a great start.

The corn, beans, cucumbers, carrots, and lettuce are also up and doing well. The tomato plants had a slow start and I had to replace one of the plants today. All in all, however, the garden is doing well. I will include more pictures in my next post.

Morning Visitor

This morning, as Nick was going out the front door to his car, he noticed something unusual in the driveway. He called me to the door to take a look, so I rushed to see what was going on. Unfortunately, I didn't have my contacts in or glasses on, but I looked out anyway. I saw what sort of looked like a rabbit--sort of. Whatever it was looked pretty fuzzy to me, and not because it was furry. Well, it wasn't a rabbit. Nick told me it was a skunk! It didn't look to be in any sort of hurry, and this complicated things a bit since it was time for Nick to leave for work. Fortunately, some quick thinking and modern technology came to the rescue. Nick used his remote keyring to blast his car horn 4 or 5 times. Mr. Skunk turned tail and ran down the drive without leaving any sort of lasting reminder, thank goodness! It was a comical sight. I never knew skunks could run like that! Many times in the past we've whiffed evidence that there are skunks around here, but this was our first up close and personal encounter.

A few minutes later as I was preparing to leave, I heard the unmistakable "gobble gobble gobble" of a wild turkey. Although he must have been nearby I never did see him. We have been surprised by wild turkeys on our evening walks in the past. When a good-sized turkey suddenly flies across the road in front of you, it's a bit of a surprise, to say the least.

Just two nights before, we were surprised when Toby took off down the drive like a shot. We couldn't imagine what was going on, but he was down the drive and across the road (without stopping to look both ways) in a matter of seconds. Soon, Nick saw the reason. Toby had spotted a young deer and was in hot pursuit. He chased her until he was tired of the sport and then came back home. We were quite suprised by our dog's sudden interest in deer hunting, being that we are not hunters, and prefer just looking at deer to shooting at them. I guess Toby just couldn't deny his instinct this day. We've been told his mother was quite an excellent deer hunting dog. She would have been proud.

So, these are my accounts of our recent close encounters with Indiana wildlife. I'm sorry to say I have no pictures of the critters to share, but we won't forget about then anytime soon.

A Busy Weekend

What a weekend! Saturday started out rainy and cool, and did not look at all like a good day for an opening day program at nearby Fort Ouiatenon. I had agreed to help out by being at the herb garden and talking to visitors who might like information on starting their own garden or who had questions about herbs. I was dreading it because it looked like the storms that started the night before might continue on throughout the day. We were surprised, however, that just after the flag raising ceremony at noon the sun came out and it turned in to a pretty nice day. Even more surprising to all of us, however, was how quickly the river started rising. I had parked my car in the lot without even a serious looking mud puddle nearby. Around 3:00, one of the other volunteers came over to ask where I had parked my car. The river was rising--fast--and so I went to check. I couldn't believe my eyes! My car was completely surrounded by ankle deep water. I didn't know how I was going to wade out to it. The fact I was wearing my 18th century costume made the situation even more complicated. Just as I was contemplating my next move, my husband drove in to the park, looking very much to me like a knight in shining armor! Thankfully he was able to drive me to the passenger side of my car where I was able to climb in with a minimum of wetness and move my car uphill to safety.

Whether because of the unpredictable weather, all the other activities going on in the community that day, or just a lack of publicity, there were very few visitors to the opening day of the Fort. It was disappointing, but we made the best of it. I used the time between visitors to weed the herb garden and contemplate some additions to it. Many of the plants didn't make it through the winter and the beds are looking pretty sparse. We also used the time between visitors to help put up a twig fence around the Three Sister's Garden, and were pleased with how it turned out.

Sunday was spent at home mowing and trimming. There is still so much to do, but it is starting to look nice. When everything is mowed and trimmed, our yard looks like a park and we enjoy it so much. This spring has been so wet, however, that the grass has grown like crazy and mowing has been no simple chore.


Here is a picture of a teacup planter Nick got me for Easter. I filled it with a parsley, Thai basil, and sweet marjoram plant given to me by my youngest daughter. I think it turned out so cute. I will keep it on the picnic table as long as the weather is nice.

I finished planting onions today, and also got the last of the deadheads off the showy sedums. It feels good to get some chores crossed off the to-do list. Even thought there are still a lot more jobs we need to get done, we made a lot of progress this weekend and feel good about how things are coming along. Plus, it's not even Memorial Day yet, so plenty of summer is left to come. I'm glad.