Summertime & the Living…

High summer, and we are among the living.

It’s it’s hard to believe how much has changed, when it seems that staying so close to home, so little does.

We took pictures of the yard when it was flat dirt, and when Himself was tilling and planting – but the pictures don’t do it justice. There’s nothing that can describe dead ground suddenly becoming alive… a sun-baked stretch of clay becoming a DIY meadow for dragonflies, butterflies, a league of lizards, two nesting pair of mockingbirds, a scrub jay, countless goldfinches and house finches and all the pollinators – at least three types of bees, by striping pattern, among numerous others, including tiny, jewel-green flies (whose ironic common usename is Green Jewel Flies. Can’t make this stuff up). Despite the clay soil and the fox leaving calling cards early on, somehow, this is the best garden, yet. We have giant zinnias. We have giant marigolds. We have …color and life and birds swooping around, and the odd tiny kestrel come calling, the ubiquitous crows, as well as the hooting of owls at night.

We are still here – and how are you?

We didn’t start out with the idea for a DIY meadow. We just knew we wanted… something to see. The entire back wall of the house is dedicated to windows, and we needed something other than flat ground and dirt to look at, as year turned. The extra rain we had this past winter really encouraged us to take a chance and drain the little pond that had settled itself into the center of the old fire pit – and T’s family giving her gardening supplies for her birthday in March sealed the deal. She received seeds she would have never otherwise purchased or tried growing. Just flinging the seed out there onto the newly tilled ground and hoping for the best made a big difference.

A study from the University of Colorado (funded by the American Cancer Society) published in January 2023 in the journal Lancet Planetary Health found that people who started gardening saw their stress and anxiety levels decrease significantly. This wasn’t WHY we started gardening, but it’s been a definite, positive by-product. This was a stressful winter workwise for Himself, with a lot of political shenanigans and nonsense going on. (Ironic that even working for yourself can be political.) Work hits its ebbs and flows, so there was less work with more annoying people. Odd how that works. T meanwhile slogged through finishing a novel that she didn’t want to write (but was under contract for). Dreading one’s work made it (at first) much harder work than she expected, and that took a lot out of her. And then, the health outcomes she was dreading came to pass – the new biologic drug she’s on showed wearying signs of not working, and, worse, brought on the hemolytic anemia she had carefully worked to prevent for years. Staggering with exhausting (and wishing that weren’t literal), depressed and discouraged after the long winter and uncertain Spring, both T&D needed a win.

Which was where gardening came in. Gardening, friends, is an act of faith.

One must believe in the potential of this weird looking bit of woody …something. It’s dull and tiny and one must toss it in the dirt like detritus, and think, “Okay, we’re told you have all that you need inside of you to do your thing. Go.” And then one must wait. Five to seven days, ten days, fifteen, and that woody bit of nothing …transforms. It pokes up through the soil, completely changed into the likeness of a plant – a tiny bit of green, which, in a few more days produces true leaves which determine what it will be. An act of faith, the substance of which is hoped for, the evidence which is now seen. To quote Audrey Hepburn, to plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

The pandemic zeitgeist invented something else called… rage gardening. People were so tired and fed up with things in the world that sometimes the only thing they felt like doing was hitting something… so they went out and hit the ground with a pick axe. (THIS is contraindicated – those suckers are heavy and you could hurt your back, and then you’d feel so much worse…Start with a hoe.) Ripping out plants, flinging away rocks and chunks of clay, yanking out weeds and sharply cutting a hoe into recalcitrant soil has continued to have its uses. Especially for T, for whom holding a hose to water some days requires sitting down, beating on something until she is breathless is helpful. There’s very little that individuals can do to change things, yet we are subtly shamed and castigated for the warming planet, for the political situation, for the stupidity of book bans. There is very little that is our fault, yet there is a lot which is our responsibility, and sometimes the very little we can do to control the depth of the handbasket in which we are going to hell wages war with the choices we can make to turn the lives of our community in a positive direction. Sometimes, life is exhausting. There is so little we control – but how many weeds are growing next to your zinnias? That, you can manage.

Obviously, not everyone gardens in a temper – that sounds exhausting, to say the least – but ripping out things and turning soil has left us understandably exhausted. At least that chronic fatigue makes sense. At least in the garden, frustration can be a source of good, to give us space to process what we know, that bad times won’t last forever, that we’re being cradled, held, and looked after, even when it doesn’t feel like it. That joy comes in the morning.

Gardening then becomes a portable magic. Carried from the parent plant, seeds, via bird poop, wind, rodent digestion, or some intrepid gardener who glares at the squirrels and frets at the finches stealing “his” seeds (sound like anyone you know? Maybe????), these bits of the future go out into the world, not knowing where they’ll land. But, land they do, and they recreate themselves, reinventing themselves to fit where they need to be, over and over and over again.

“It is a greater act of faith to plant a bulb than to plant a tree . . . to see in these wizened, colourless shapes the subtle curves of the Iris reticulata or the tight locks of the hyacinth.” –Claire Leighton, Four Hedges

Gardening allows us, even briefly, to take some of that mute, unseeing, seed-like faith into ourselves – and to wait steadily and patiently for what’s inbuilt to do its job – giving us space to wait with grace for in another day, a solution, a new medication, an ending to crisis.

We planted two types of melon this year – neither of them remotely “normal,” because seed catalogs arrive the day after Christmas, when it is dark and one’s resistance is at a low ebb. (Well played, seed companies.) T was enticed into purchasing two heirloom-ish things she’d never even heard of, one a single-serve Tigger melon, which begins a deep, striped green, but which is a deep, striped orange when ripe, and the other, a mastodon-sized, orange-fleshed monster.

The largest watermelon is about four to six pounds already, which we consider shocking – we’ve never successfully grown decent melons without “help” from the deer in the from of either stepping on each one of them, or taking a bite – one single bite – from each, because grazing animals are sometimes complete dorks. TBH, we’re afraid to hope the Tigger and the Orange Crush or whatever its called – actually come ripe. So far, however, they’re doing their thing, and sending out distinctive leaf-shapes on sturdy vines to colonize the shady area beneath the bushes along the fence.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the house we have at last count twelve Georgia Roasters – a Comanche Nation heirloom variety of squash used in the Three Sisters planting method (the squash, maize, and pole beans thing) – six or eight delicata squash, and a handful of birdhouse gourds ongoing. (Why we chose to plant those next to each other is a short, dumb story – we had old, old gourd seeds and didn’t think they’d germinate. Joke’s on us as both birdhouse gourds and roasters will grow a ten foot vine FROM ONE SEED. The morning glories are climbing them, and the vining is almost visible if you stand still watching them long enough. The race is on to pull down the neighbor’s fence).

The roaster squash, relatives of butternut, are just HUGE so far, and we’re not even close to their full weight, which sometimes exceeds fifteen pounds EACH, and they exceed the length of a forearm. We are excited to have overwintering hard squashes – something we’ve also not ever tried to grow. We also have birdhouse gourds going – we did those once and they were fun. We made all these cute birdhouses and gave them away — and the one we kept, a windstorm blew down and shattered, disappointingly. With the 35 mph winds we had last winter which blew down the fence we’re going to be much more careful with these.

The season is waning – we are collecting seeds and already seeing the fading of the intense colors and the drying out of the vines as the squashes and gourds begin to ripen. We have harvested and collected seeds ready to unleash into the soil to create another shorter, intense flowering season before the El Niño rains promised/threatened come and soggify the soil into unresponsive clay lumps again. We’re hopeful that the next growing season will be easier – that the green compost we turn into the sandy, clay soil will attract more worms and rejuvenate what tends to be basically worthless. We’ve had an amazing season without knowing what we were up against, and now plan to turn rice hulls and other organic material into the soil in hopes of helping it do even better.

Having access to an outdoor space is a privilege, one we’re aware of, and grateful for. Our world is smaller and circumscribed, and as you might expect, living with restrictions as we do, due to T’s autoimmune disorder, is sometimes annoying. The world leaves those chronically unable to participate behind, ever well-meaning but inadvertently too fast, and expecting everyone to keep up. We as a society don’t do well with protracted anything. With chronic illness, there’s almost this sense of “aren’t you done with that YET??? Nope, we’re not, and we might not be, for many years or ever. Happiness is dealing with what you can and letting the rest go, however. We haven’t contracted Covid, by the grace of God. We haven’t had more than a passing stomach bug – no serious illnesses other than the one(s) already here. Part of “the rest” that we’ve let go has been the things and people we expose experience firsthand, where we go and what we do. We hope to continue to make adjustments and figure out to live within our restrictions. We hope to hear how you’re doing. We hope someday things change. But, until then, there’s the garden – and the internet – and the blessings of friends who send good wishes, which we cannot take for granted.

Hold onto those things, and don’t let go.

Calendula Gone Mad

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Well, friends. The calendula never died & we’ve had a huge culling of the most intrusive ones. The silver bushes are taking off, as are a few other things which languished all last year. Lack of gophers is surprisingly good for gardening. T has planted tomatoes and a wee herb garden. Spring has sprung?

-D

Hybrid Calendula

We bought a couple of different varieties of calendula, which apparently decided they were a great match, and have self-sown. The hybrids are just wild, with a range of colors, shapes, and sizes. We shared a bunch with some friends & transplanted as many as we could to other parts of the yard. There are still dozens to dig out and encourage, and it’s worth the effort!

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Nothing much to share. We’ve been isolating, of course, and even stopped visiting the farmer’s market about a month ago. Grocery delivery means we’re only leaving the house to walk through the neighborhood. I’m considering getting a trickle charger for the car, simply because the only time it goes anywhere is if we need to visit a doctor; we’re being very good about brushing our teeth, as that’s on hold for a while as well.

I hope you have some flowers in your life. If not, they’re cheap, and a real joy – just don’t get sidetracked by the gophers (new plants are cheaper than traps, in more ways than one).

-D

Self Sowing Seeds

Through the years we’ve done vegetable gardens, with maybe a few flowers thrown in as a row border or something. This year we’re really only (successfully) doing flowers.

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I can catch the morning glories before the pods pop if I check up on them, but that’s just for fun, because there’s no way I’ll get them all, and I don’t want to really. The nasturtiums are just easy to find. The other flowers have already self sown by the dozens. This should be fun!

– D

Irvington Gardening

During this time of everyone staying at home, we decided to do some gardening. Well, no – we’d already decided, but now seemed an ideal time, so we ordered 7 cubic yards of compost, and some plants to arrive a few days later.

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We knew 7 cubic yards was a lot of compost, but it actually went fairly easily. It was cool enough to need to wear warm clothes while shoveling, which made a huge difference. There are 5 cubic feet in a wheelbarrow and 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard. So, figure about 40 wheelbarrows had to make their way somewhere.

We basically wanted to bring the earth back up to being level, either with the sidewalk or with the top of the planters. The previous tenants didn’t really do much with things, so we’ve been adding fertilizer and compost and really trying to improve the soil as much as possible.

It has been 13 years since we’ve done any serious gardening, and even then, it was probably way back in 2002 or so that we were really able to garden at home (we’d been gardening at B & L’s). Here, it’s convenient to get out there first thing for 20 minutes, or to get out there over lunch to thin some fruit, rather than having to make a huge production of Visiting The Garden.

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The challenging part was managing to get about 15 wheelbarrows tipped into the raised beds. There’s a metal nose on them, which needs to be wiggled into place on the lip of the bed, and then the whole barrow has to be lifted through 90 degrees and dumped.

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We’re deciding what to put where, and how much space to leave between things. We’re trying to read the labels and give things the space they need. It is hard to resist Annie’s, though, particularly when there are such gaps in our garden. On the other hand, we seem to have planted quite a few seeds, and they are growing apace. Soon we shall be inundated, we hope.

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We have planted morning glories all around the fence and at the base of the tree at the sidewalk. We’ve more to plant (these were sprouted inside), and then a whole bunch of other vining things (birdhouse gourds, cantaloupe, cucumbers), etc. For a first year’s garden, we don’t expect it to be perfect, but we really are looking forward to what comes up!

-D & T

Concerts, Persimmons and Pomegranates

Our Christmas choral season is over for Mission Peak Chamber Singers. For us, that meant 2 hours of singing on Friday night, 3 hours on Saturday night, 1 on Sunday morning, and 2 on Sunday night. 8 hours of singing this weekend. It was a blast, despite the rain and wind, awkward microphone malfunctions, travel time, and exhaustion.

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MPCS at Old Mission San Jose

We’ve continued to enjoy the harvest, with the pomegranates and persimmons having ripened and been harvested. One citrus has turned out to be a grafted tree with at least 4 different fruit, including a white grapefruit, maybe a lime, and a satsuma.

Unfortunately, the squirrels and crows did manage to get to a few before we could harvest them, so I had no choice in sharing with them. Everybody else can go to the grocery store, though – this is the first time in my life I have a persimmon tree and I’m pretty much going to eat them all myself. I’m sure my blood sugar will hate me, but if it helps add a few pounds I will not complain at all.

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I brought them in, polished them up (they have their own wax), and left them for nearly a month. Next time I’ll trim the sepals when I first harvest them, because they’re quite stiff and make it harder to remove the stem end without rupturing the soft fruit. I may prune back the Granny Smith, as it shades the persimmon (and because who in their right mind plants a Granny Smith?).

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Pomegranates also came ripe, so I took the opportunity to prune back the bush that should be a tree (it helped me get to the fruit on the inside of the shrub, as well). Quite a few split, and there were a few dozen tiny ones. We harvested them all, removed the arils from the split ones, and found that the tiny ones are just as mature and flavorful as the big ones! I might strap the individual stems together to try to make it function more as a tree and to stop obstructing the pathway. What ought to happen is for it to be pruned back to a single tree, I would guess, but that’s going a bit far for me.

Earlier in the year, when I’d encounter a hollowed out one, or one that was gnawed by the rodents (squirrels), I’d pick and discard it. So, when harvest came, I wasn’t expecting anything like this hollow one – I’d gotten rid of the ones I could identify weeks and weeks ago. This was one of the reasons I got out the pole saw: the fruit was fabulously dark red, and I expected it to be perfectly ripe.

Next will come the white grapefruit (maybe this weekend), and then the orange and tangerine. And then it’s time to do research on how these trees should be pruned and when, and to finish planning and planting the flowers for next year.

-D

Marauding Squirrel

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Yesterday afternoon, we were happily reading away when we heard a scritch-scritch noise. Looking out our sliding-glass door onto the deck, we saw a squirrel. This squirrel was in the process of amputating our sunflower. It then carried it off to who knows where.

Squirrels apparently like sunflowers. Not quite what we were anticipating when letting it grow.

-D & T

Serendipitous Spring


“If you have a garden and a library,
you have everything you need.”
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Spring has sprung, the grass is riz… and now we know where all the flowers iz…volunteering in our front yard! We were a little shocked a few days ago when we discovered that the greenery we thought were perennial Agapanthus that never sent up flowers are, in fact, irises. We oohed and ahhed like… well, like eejits, really. Our neighbors must think we’ve never seen a flower before.

Of course, the neighbors are probably used to the madness by now. The noise level outdoors has risen, as T’s been crowing her victory over Sidney and …Sonia Squirrel. (Oh, yes. The squirrels are multiplying. We now have four, but at least two of them, probably Boris and Natasha, haven’t hung around long enough for their names to be screamed in fury… “Bad squirrel! No! Stop digging!” – As if that helps. They’re as bad as really smart, tree-climbing dogs…). The feeder has been moved now TWICE, because little rodent brains work feverishly, and they’ve managed to outsmart the humans three times, but this time it looks like the opposable digits crew won. We know we’ve won because, at long last, we’ve seen ACTUAL BIRDS visiting the feeder, as opposed to large hanging rodents… We’ve identified Nuttall’s Woodpeckers (or Downy’s — it’s hard to tell, and they won’t sit still for photographic proof just yet) and a pair of Lesser OR American goldfinches — once again, they’re not quite comfortable enough with us not to bolt every time they hear us moving toward a camera. The combination of bird baths and bird feeders has proven to be irresistible — and we really thought the birdbaths would be just something the sparrows enjoyed. Who knew we even had goldfinch in the neighborhood?

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(We’ve amused ourselves with the realization that our birdbaths look a great deal like a pair of poppies we admired earlier in the Spring. Weird synchronicity, that.)

Meanwhile, the roses are blooming their hearts out, surprising us with a few blooms from the rootstock, even – fully different colors and sizes that expected. Even a tiny, dry set of twigs in the back that didn’t produce before has sprouted a single, brilliant peach rose. This year, the yard seems to provide a little surprise around every corner… fortunately all nice surprises thus far. (We’re looking at you, Boris and Natasha. What else have you buried in the yard??)

D always jokes that T. has a natural taste for “nuts and twigs,” based on how she was raised (Shout-out to the vegetarian-vegan-wheat-grass-drinking, alfalfa-pill-providing ::shudder:: tofu-touting parenti!), so it’s no wonder that she actually likes rye bread, despite the fact that for many people it’s kind of …on the Bleh And Avoid list. Much to her unbridled glee, she’s now supported in that “like” by a nod from various nutritional reports. The Whole Grain council has rounded up the lot here, but the bottom line is that rye bread can really help support the cellular work in the endocrine system, and if you’re pre-diabetic or suffering from an inflammatory disorder, whole-grain rye can help.

(There are a LOT of people who preach the gospel of “reversing” diabetes, and “curing” yourselves with rye, and we’d like to just duck, so our endocrinologist can give those people a big dose of stink-eye without us in the line of fire. *ducks* Thank you.)

Look: we have no idea about that – and don’t send us argumentative email about it, either. We’re not saying that rye cures anything, nor are we touting any particular Huffington-post-quoted doctors, or Dr. Oz (please not Dr. Oz!). We’re just saying that rye has been shown, over time, to enhance insulin secretion, indicating a possible improvement of β cell function, which is saying that your pancreas is doing more of its job making insulin.

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The irony was discovering this AFTER starting a rye sourdough starter. (Which, in its earliest stages, smells …floral. Not sour. Floral. While this is weird, it’s …kind of nice, because sometimes a starter crock can have quite a pungent smell.) Our local bakery has quit carrying the sourdough rye we liked, so we’d decided to do our best to recreate it — so far, we’re working on getting the bread to RISE properly. While our first loaves were not pretty in terms of “traditional” bread, they were beautiful bannocks! A little more work with dough conditioner and gluten, possibly some oat bran, and we’ll see ourselves to rights. Eventually. At least it’s delicious whether it’s pretty or not.

One rainy afternoon, T. decided to start the garden… early. She may yet repent of this notion, as the kitchen sunroom floor is hosting a great many seedlings which may need to be repotted before finally being put outside. We were happy to find a really good use for the plastic “clamshell” packaging on the apples from Costco; they make nice little greenhouses with their plastic lids, and are quite reusable. Now that many groceries are switching to plastic egg cartons, they also make a nicely reusable starter for small seeds.

The gooseberries and Alpine strawberries have miniseeds, which have produced equally teensy seedlings, so staying indoors for awhile longer might be just fine for them. We’ve never grown either, and have a lot of hopes for them — the poha berries, or cape gooseberry, is allegedly a very simple plant to grow, and Alpine strawberries grow wild in Northern Italy — in the cold, in the dry, and in the wet. T. is sure she’s going to kill something so has planted nearly all of her seeds of each plant… which means that we may, in fact, soon have WAY TOO MUCH of everything. Isn’t that the way it goes, though? Ah, well; better too many gooseberries than too many zucchini… although, that’s probably going to happen, too.

The kale and jicama have produced surprisingly hearty, thick-leafed seedlings, and of course, the cucumbers and birdhouse gourds are making a break for freedom already and trying to vine, even with only two leaves… thing just might get interesting, here…

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“Every flower must grow through dirt.”
May you ignore the fertilizer, put down roots, and thrive.
Happy Spring!

Succulent Succor



This dear little plant has been with us now for about six years, and is finally feeling well enough that it’s giving us some flowers! We picked it up in a pot containing less than one teaspoon of dirt … and a substantial amount of glue! It was one of those pots with a suction cup on it, and was meant to be stuck to the refrigerator or something. As if living things should be refrigerator baubles!



So, we took it from its pot – a feat involving a knife, much coaxing, and a pair of scissors with which to extract the roots – and repotted it. It lived in a little mustard pot for a few years, and grew larger, until we finally gave it its current home … in a coffee mug which had developed a crack.



It’s been happily living in the coffee mug, in various window sills, for several years now … and has been growing steadily all this time. It’s now about three inches across and three inches high.

We didn’t expect anything of it, and have simply been enjoying having a little plant which doesn’t seem to mind infrequent waterings or adverse conditions. So, when it began to develop a flower spike, we were excited!

So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. And finally gave up on anything happening, except for maybe thinking that we’d get a few seeds or something, because it was just taking sooo long for anything to happen. We were finally rewarded, though, with tiny little flowers which started off being light green, and now are … well, not light green. Don’t ask me what color they are, but I’m going to guess that they’re kind of pink. Sort of. Or off-white towards pink, at least. But with green stripes.

How Does the Garden Grow?

The garden … limps along. This year’s been a rough one, for some reason. We’ve had strange weather – with long periods of cool, punctuated with intense heat for a few days in a row. We’ve had several variety of grasshopper – the monster green ones, and the little tiny green ones, too. We’ve had black aphids. And we’ve had no peppers survive, no okra survive, and very slow growth on the tomatoes: they’re only 3 feet tall, when they should be at least six and bearing fruit by now.

The Amaranth is already trying to go to seed, so I’m worried about it as well, and the kabocha is already starting to fruit, when it should be sending out long tendrils to conquer the rest of the garden.

Sigh.