October 2023: Fall Fluctuations

Temperatures were all over the place in October. We began with days in the 90’s, but things quickly turned colder, and after the first week the lows were consistently forecast to go below 50. That was my signal to bring in my houseplants. Often, this process is really rushed because I like to leave everything out till the last minute, but then the last minute comes unexpectedly and the next thing I know I’m dragging a bunch of plants into the kitchen in the dark after work. This time around, I was able to spend an entire morning giving the plants a little TLC before I brought them inside and found places to put them all. Finding places for them is always a challenge because there are very limited spots inside the house where they will get enough light. Because of that and because they take extra fiddling indoors, I start looking forward to taking them outside again as soon as I bring them in.

Temperatures stayed pretty steady through the middle of the month. Some days were a little warmer and some were a little cooler, but there were no extremely warm or cold days. That meant everything could just keep growing pretty happily–as long as I watered. Our drought continued with hardly any rain to speak of. Leaves gradually started to change. My plants started to crisp here and there as they began to anticipate the end of the growing season.

I picked several rounds of lima beans and got a few more of the fancy blue beans I was trying to grow. Among the limas, I successfully got some very pretty ping zebra beans. I’ve been trying to grow them for a few years without success, but this year I’d read that they simply take a long time to mature. I took the suggestion of starting some plants early indoors, and that did the trick. The blue beans were an experiment that I shouldn’t try again, but it will be tempting to give it a shot. They have an amazing blue color, but only if they mature in cool temperatures. Apparently, temperatures here weren’t cool enough for blue beans until September, so I only got 5-7 blue ones, but those few were pretty spectacular!

I also got an assortment of tomatoes. Every time I enjoy fresh autumn tomatoes in a meal, I think of the guy I passed once at a farmer’s market who was proudly proclaiming that he never eats a fresh tomato after Labor Day because he thinks they’re inferior then. He’s missing out on a couple months of tasty tomatoes!

Things continued along until the final full week of October when temperatures ticked back up into the mid-80’s. Despite the toasty temps, the forecast was to end the month with a serious freeze, so I spent the final weekend of October working to harvest everything I possibly could. We also (finally) got rain, though that made the harvesting more difficult. I was able to harvest my sweet potatoes before the rain started, which made digging through the soil much easier. My harvest was ok, but not nearly as good as last year. The plants had looked healthy, so I’m not sure what happened. I also picked even more lima beans, a few more of the giant zucchino rampicante squash, all my basil, some tomatoes, and some melons that may or may not be ripe.

The zucchino rampicante squash was incredibly happy in my garden this year. I’d gotten three giant squashes from it in September and it was working on several more through October. Unfortunately, quite a few of them had blossom end rot and weren’t usable, but I also got the biggest one of the year that was about 34 inches long. Another had buried itself in my neighbor’s hydrangea plants. A few more of the squashes were still young and tender, so I picked those to eat like zucchini.

I’d hoped to have time to turn all the basil into pesto to freeze for later, but there was too much to do and I wasn’t prepared with enough of the right ingredients, so I decided to grind up the basil with a little olive oil and freeze that. My hope is that it will still be relatively easy to pull out of the freezer and turn into pesto one batch at a time.

May 2023: A Few Field Trips

I’m a little later than usual in putting together my roundup of garden happenings for the month of May. So far in June, John and I have spent one weekend camping at Spring Mill State Park, and I spent the following weekend catching up on a massive amount of work in my garden–hence the lateness of this post.

May had its own assortment of travel. Early in the month I went back to Twin Swamps Nature Preserve, located out past Mount Vernon, Indiana. The description of the preserve from an Indiana DNR information sheet describes it this way: Twin Swamps consists of a swamp cottonwood-bald cypress swamp and an overcup oak swamp, with an area of southern flatwoods between the two. This preserve is one of the few existing remnants of such communities which once occurred over large portions of the Ohio and Wabash River Valleys.

I’d gone there last year and enjoyed the walk, so I went back this year and brought waterproof boots. I really needed them! In one spot the water on the trail was at least 6″ deep. Twin Swamps is near Hastings plant nursery, where I often stop for plants for my garden. I also stopped at Hastings this year.

At the end of the month, John and I traveled to one of our favorite spots, Scratch Brewing, which is located near Carbondale, Illinois. They were offering a plant tour, so we signed up. It was really fun. One of the owners took a group of 15 of us tromping off through the middle of the woods where Scratch is located–seriously, tromping without any trails (the ticks were bad!). It sounds like he’d spent his childhood wandering through that woods and knew where lots of interesting plants grew. He picked a variety of plants then took us to two picnic tables in a clearing where he poured hot water over several of them to make teas that we could sample. He also brought some Scratch beers to sample that had been brewed using some of the plants we saw.

He clearly loved foraging and loved plants. One of his statements to the group was, “It’s just so amazing to me how many very different flavors exist here right next to each other.” There was also a moment when he pointed out a shagbark hickory tree, then paused while looking at it and said, “That tree has made beer.” He described the process of brewing new beers at Scratch that starts with a plant or fungus that they notice has an intriguing scent or an interesting flavor. The brewers at Scratch take that plant or fungus and experiment to figure out how to include some part of that essence in a tasty beer. It sounds like there are plenty of failures, but there are also some interesting successes. We sampled a few with a pizza after the tour.

In between the swamp and the brewery plant tour, there was plenty happening in my garden. I picked up a few more plants at the Master Gardeners’ Plant Sale and at a couple area greenhouses. Some of those plants ended up in a special new garden for Boo Boo. He’s buried under the broken concrete angel beside the rear bottle tree. I added hostas over his grave since he always liked to sleep under big hosta leaves. The new garden also includes some great shade plants. When I finished it, I was inspired to get all my fairies and mushrooms and toad houses out of storage, so it’s also a fairy garden.

Also in May, the last of the “spring-y” things like the irises finished blooming and we moved into solidly early-summer blooms like peonies and baptisia. I also had some nice blooms start on the native prairie plants I have planted in the dry, compacted “hell strip” located between the sidewalk and the street. And even the many leaf combinations among my plants have been beautiful to see. My lettuce sat and sulked for half the month and then took off at about the time that I’d been hoping to have eaten several rounds of it and removed it. I’d had other plans for the space where it was at, but delayed some of my additional planting.

Below, you can take a video tour of my garden and you can also flip through my photo highlights from the month. Each photo is labeled with more information about what’s in it.

September 2021: Quite Buggy

When I went through my photos from September, it seemed like there were lots of bugs. Some I didn’t even notice when I took the picture, but some were very noticeable indeed. The month began with me noticing hordes of squash bugs on the squash, a discovery that marked the end of all remaining hope for nice squash this year. Then there were numerous yellow garden spiders that strung their webs here and there throughout my garden. And the stink bugs, praying mantises, bumble bees, cicadas, and other small beetles and moths.

But the big insect story from the month were the monarchs. I saw probably 4-6 different caterpillars on my swamp milkweed in August and September, and finally in early September I saw one turning into a chrysalis. It’s the first time I’ve seen a chrysalis in my garden and it was very cool! I watched the chrysalis for about two weeks. Finally it got darker, and gradually I could see the butterfly’s wings inside. About a day or two later, my research told me to expect the butterfly to emerge. I watched it happen over my lunch break. Of course, I missed the exact moment the chrysalis broke open, but I saw most of the butterfly’s emergence. It was very interesting, but sadly something went wrong and the wings never fully filled out so they dried with wrinkles in them and the butterfly couldn’t fly. I was sad about it, but hopefully my milkweed will feed new caterpillars next year and at least one will successfully turn into a healthy butterfly. In the meantime, my flowers are feeding plenty of other monarchs passing through on their way to Mexico.

I’ve had plenty of blossoms in my garden including sunflowers, zinnias, tassel flowers (that the butterflies love), marigolds, hardy begonias, and tons of morning glories on my back fence that come up on their own. Toward the end of the month, I added a small strip of native plants by the street. I’m hoping it will fill out next year and I plan to add more. My patch of basil has been providing nice seasoning for meals, I’ve eaten some of my okras (and I’ve enjoyed even more of their pretty blooms), and my melons and beans continue to produce.

But most of my vegetable garden area has been a big mass of leaves and not much else. The Mexican sour gherkins took over and blanketed half my tomatoes to the point that the tomatoes mostly just gave up. The other half of the tomatoes never had been happy, so they also just gave up but for different, unknown reasons. The gherkins (aka cuke-a-melons) are really cute, bite-sized fruits, but I didn’t have time to really do anything with them this year. I ate a few raw and the rest stayed on the vines. Last year I made fun little pickles with them, but I didn’t have the energy to do that this year.

However, over Labor Day weekend I DID have the energy to make fresh pasta with a raw tomato and basil sauce. The basil was from my garden, the tomatoes were from my garden and Patchwork’s, and the pasta was made with eggs from a friend, fancy eincorn flour, and semolina. I also made a peach dessert using local peaches.

September 2020: Can We Be Done?

It feels like I spent plenty of time in my garden during the month of September, but I don’t have a lot to show for it. I think most of that time was simply spent watering. It’s been very dry for over a month now, which makes it quite a project to water.

At the start of September, I finally had some zinnias bloom. They were all volunteers from the giant bed of them that I planted last summer. I’d hoped a few volunteers would pop up, and they did. I intentionally left them wherever I saw them and have carefully stepped around them where they’re growing in the middle of my garden paths.

A variety of sunflowers bloomed, though they were strangely short. I didn’t get the seeds in the ground until late this year, so hopefully I’ll get them in the ground earlier and they will have a better time of it next year. They’re such cheerful plants, along with the marigolds that have grown really well this year. They’re also joined along the back fence with cheery Cypress vines and cardinal creeper. I haven’t grown the cardinal creeper for a few years, but I particularly love the jagged shape of its leaves. I’m glad to have it back again.

My sweet potatoes have exploded out of their raised bed. They’re sprawling everywhere and climbing everything. As an added bonus, their pretty purple flowers are decorating everything. I saw on another garden blog that the leaves are edible and can be used in place of spinach in recipes. Since I have such an abundance of leaves, I decided to try it. Of course, I made something super complicated: handmade pasta. I’d seen a recipe for handmade spinach pasta, so I thought it would be interesting to make that but with sweet potato leaves in place of spinach. I picked the leaves, cooked them, added them to the pasta dough, and rolled it into pasta. John and I made a vodka cream sauce using fresh, local tomatoes (I could only find yellow ones, so it’s much more pale than you’d normally expect), and I added a peach cobbler with pecan sandy topping for dessert. It was all tasty, but was also a full day project.

Through the month, all the plants slowly got browner and crispier, despite my weekly watering efforts. I was particularly disappointed that the cowpeas were among the first to dry up. They hadn’t produced many beans before they did. They were another set of plants that I got into the ground later than I would have liked. I continued to have a few tomatoes, despite the rough-looking plants, and more of the little Mexican sour gherkins that look a little like tiny watermelons. I also had plenty of basil.

By the end of the month, my garden has definitely reached the point where it’s ready to be finished for the summer. The plants are crispy and increasingly brown, despite my efforts to keep them watered. They look tired, and I feel tired, so I think we’re all ready for a little wintertime dormancy.

June 2020: Settling into Summer

Compared to the rapid development that happens in my garden every March through May, June was pretty laid back. I got my new perennials planted along with the first round of vegetables. Plants matured and bloomed. Raspberries fruited, though there weren’t many this year and after I ate the first big handful I didn’t fight the critters for the remaining few. Toward the end of the month it was time for a vegetable change-out: garlic was harvested and lettuces were cleared. Beans and basil were planted.

Tomatoes and mini cucumbers should start to ripen soon. The plants are doing so well that I’m a little afraid of the jungle I’ll have by August. We’ll see what else July brings!

January 2020 & A Bunch of Cats for Groundhog Day

I really don’t have much to show for my garden so far in 2020. The remains of my plants were all flattened long ago so there are no dried structures to add points of interest. There also hasn’t been any snow or ice to add a touch of wintry beauty–just lots of grey skies and rain. So, here is my garden at the start of the year. Not much changed for the entire month of January:

I began 2020 by finally cooking up batch of dried beans that I’ve collected for years from my garden. Since I don’t have a lot of space, I never get large quantities of beans, but I always feel like I should save them. They’re all different kinds including limas, cow peas, and regular drying beans. I wasn’t even sure that some of the varieties were supposed to be dried, but I guessed they were beans and they had dried so they would be OK.

Collecting a handful or two every year for many years made them feel almost too dear to simply toss them in a pot and eat them in a day or two. But over Christmas break I cleaned out the pantry and decided it was time. The many colors, shapes, and sizes were beautiful in my pot both before they were cooked and as I ate the final product. I also added some vegetables, split peas, barley, ground venison, and Ozark seasoning from Penzey’s Spices. It turned out to be delicious.

Since I wasn’t outside much during the month of January, I don’t have many photos of the neighborhood cats, but here is one photo of one of the dudes pretending to be a raccoon on the neighbor’s roof. I actually did think we were being invaded by raccoons the first time I saw the silhouette on the roof line. I prepared to run and then realized there was no threat.

Meanwhile, I do have an abundance of photos of all the indoor cats. Perry is still very Perry. He still bites. I’m still hopeful that we’ll reach a point where he can be a better cat. He’s a handsome boy and loves to play. As I was typing this post, he even came running over with a toy mouse in his mouth for me to throw for him. It was a rare occurrence, but really cute.

And then there are the beautiful and wonderful Ladies. At the end of January we celebrated three years since we found them at the Humane Society and brought them home. I can’t imagine any more perfect cats.

At Christmas, we acquired a used cat tree. I offered it to Perry, but he couldn’t handle the fact that it smelled like another cat. The Ladies didn’t mind, however. When we first brought it into the house, we put it in the kitchen by the back door just to get it inside.

Well! The Ladies absolutely love the spot because it means they can always sit in the sun and look outside. They do so often. John and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen and we love that the cat tree means that the Ladies have a spot where they can perch so we can all be together. It’s also a great pedestal where they can sit and we can admire their beauty.

So, is this cat tree in a really awkward and annoying spot?

Yes!

Is it really in the way?

Yes!!

Will it stay where it is for a while?

Yes!!!

Another great new spot for admiring the Ladies is the official Throne Room that I created on their large cat tree in the TV room. A little bit ago, John started jokingly calling the large cubby near the top a “throne room,” and I thought it was funny. Then I realized it would be even more funny if there was a corny, girly crown over the doorway. I got some craft supplies and made a bedazzled crown with plastic crystals and color shift paint. It’s perfect when the Ladies sit in it. It makes me smile, which was the whole point.

A Very Augusty September

Because of my travelogue (thanks, again, to everyone who traveled along with me), I haven’t posted anything about my own garden for two whole months! Well, I decided I better rectify that situation before the month of September is over. I only have a few more hours, so let’s get posting!

My garden made it through my trip to Europe thanks to watering from the house sitter. When we left, there were zinnias blooming, surprise lilies, beans, and honeysuckle. When we came back, the zinnias were still going strong, squash were ripening nicely, the autumn clematis was blooming, and a few lima beans were ready to pick.

Overall, August was hot and unforgiving and things quickly moved into the crispy, tired stage. I hoped some relief would come in September, but we continued to have dry weather and highs in the mid- to upper-nineties. Now at the end of September, my plants are all ready for a winter’s rest. The heat, bugs, and mildew have taken their toll.

At the end of August, John and I prepared a meal of summer on a plate: corn fritters and tomato gravy. It was my mom’s favorite food, but as children my sister and I grumbled about having to eat it so she didn’t make it often. It also requires some fiddling around, so I guess that could be another reason she didn’t make it often.

At some point many years ago, I asked for the recipe and she wrote it down for me. I have no idea if she actually copied it out of a cookbook or if she just wrote it from memory. If it was from a cookbook, I’ve never found that book. Several years ago, I did another blog post about corn fritters and tomato gravy and found it interesting that one of my mom’s sisters commented that she didn’t remember this particular combination of foods.

Now that I’m an adult, I’m sorry that we were so overly dramatic about not wanting to eat corn fritters and tomato gravy. It’s really good! Though, it isn’t particularly photogenic.

Late summer is also the time of year when my most unusual and dramatic orchids bloom. One variety is called Miltassia Dark Star “Darth Vader”. The other variety is called Odontocidium Wildcat “Bobcat”.

And with that, we come to my own lovely cats. They survived our trip to Europe, but clearly missed their humans immensely while we were away. They didn’t seem angry, but when we returned they required more than 24 hours of constant reassurances that everything would be all right.

Things quickly were back to normal, though. The Ladies are lovely and Perry is a challenge. Perry does much better if he has a couple enrichment actives every day. Usually that’s at least one play session and a walk outside, although sometimes it’s clicker training or a puzzle feeder. It’s good that both he and I can easily spend an hour just wandering aimlessly around the tiny yard and looking at what’s new.

Perry tends to get all the good stuff because we’re working so hard to try to modify his behavior. He’s got two big cat trees and lots of toys and if John or I have only one spare minute to play, he’s the one who is most likely to get the play time.

But, the Ladies love to play, too, and they enjoy their little cat tree. So we finally ordered and assembled a giant cat tree for the girls. Lady Morgaine is absolutely enamored with it. So far, Lady Ygraine has decided that it’s just not her thing.

And finally, a postscript for our European trip. Here are all the goodies we drug home with us. We’ll probably be enjoying them for the next year! There are a wide variety of German gummies, German beer, German and British chocolates, British cookies, British drinks, and a German garden weasel. Plus two German flags handmade for us by my niece.

July

My garden hasn’t taken a break yet, despite the hot weather. There are still plenty of interesting things to observe and new blooms happening. There are also some dry spots and brown edges that reflect the intensity of the summer sun.

The slide show below shows my garden’s developments during the month of July. I added captions to give you an idea of what you’re looking at. It includes:

• The beautiful beginnings of bean plants. I got them started a little later than is ideal, but hopefully I’ll still get some beans.
• My precious red raspberry harvest. They are one of my favorite foods, but I can’t find anyone around here who grows them so I decided to grow them myself. They were delicious.
• Spreading butternut squash and ripening tomatoes.
• Blackberries. I picked an absolutely perfect berry that had been heating in the sun. It had baked its own sugars and each little bead exploded with flavor in my mouth.
• Humidity!
• Blueberry picking. I’m stocked up for the winter! I probably picked at least 25 pounds in 95+ degree heat. It’s a test of my willpower.
• Bugs, birds, and blooms.
• The whole of the zinnia patch that I highlighted in my last blog post.
• Video of one of the many hummingbirds that are visiting my garden. For me, growing plants is so much easier than trying to keep the sugar water in a hummingbird feeder fresh. I’m OK with that.
• A video panorama of my garden at the end of July.

Early July was the time for Lodi apples. They make deliciously tart applesauce that’s just like my mom used to make. “Nosh-stalgia” is what one friend has heard it called. I’m thankful that there is one orchard in town that grows them.

Several years ago when I discovered the secret to my mom’s applesauce was June apples, I also discovered that I could purchase a cheap approximation of the Squeezo Strainer that she used to make the sauce. My new strainer worked pretty good, but I always wished for the real thing.

Last year, the cheap plastic crusher that pushed the fruit into the strainer folded in on itself, and I knew it was my chance to get a new strainer. I ordered a brand name Squeezo Strainer on Ebay and hoped it was going to be a good investment. It came in time to make applesauce. It wasn’t quite as amazing as I imagined, but overall I think it’s a better product. There are a couple design details on the cheap knockoff that I miss on the real thing, the particular Squeezo I got had a couple pieces that were bent ever so slightly so it leaked a little, and for some reason it really made the apples oxidize, but look at that wooden smoosher! It gave the apples a pounding and it didn’t break. I think it also did better at extracting more pulp. Plus it’s like mom’s.

I’ve also been working on more garden art. My Fairy Tree is starting to shape up. I painted the apple pickers, I added faces in them that were inspired by some garden art I saw last summer, I added another fairy created by the kids at Patchwork Central, and I added all the empty bottles I had on hand. I like where it’s going. I’ll add more fairies and more bottles and decide on what to place atop the two former trunks of the tree that don’t already have apple pickers on them.

And finally, cats. They’re all good. Perry continues to be a challenge, but with play time and regular walks he’s doing better. He’s a little like a 2-year-old in that he gets tired and cranky. He can’t leave me alone while I work on the computer, even though I know he would be happy to take a nap. But he likes his carrier and is content sitting in it next to me while I write. And don’t worry. When he’s had enough of the carrier he lets me know.

Meanwhile, the Ladies are quite lovely. In one of the photos below I managed to catch Ygraine at her most floofy and cute. She’s a queen. And I love to sit and read the newspaper while the Ladies look out the back door in the mornings. It’s a relaxing way to start the day. When they get tired of that, they play. Morgaine does lovely dances while chasing her tail.

Garlic, Beans, & Cats, Oh My!

A couple weeks ago marked the biggest switchover my garden sees every year. It was time for the garlic to come out and the beans to go in. The garlic harvest was good. I always get a small garden sampler from one organic garlic supplier or another. This year it was four varieties from Southern Exposure Seed Catalog. Their garlic has always done well for me.

Since I have such limited garden space, swapping garlic for beans is one thing I have discovered to maximize what I have planted. Ideally, I could plant the beans sooner, but it’s workable putting them in now after the garlic gives up its spot in the garden.

I’ve found lima beans do well for me, so I plant several varieties of them. This year I also added one variety of pole bean and some Native American beans that a friend gave me. I love the beauty of their varied colors and shapes.

Names of each variety of garlic and bean are noted in the following slide show:

Meanwhile, as promised, the cats. They’re all doing well. The Ladies are delightful and floofy. They are sweet and can get pretty much anything they want because of it. There have even been some summer days that were cool enough for the Ladies to sit in the back door and watch the birdies and whatever else is going on. And I’ve kept the bird feeders stocked for additional entertainment from their cat tree.

Perry continues to get marginally better, but he still has a long way to go. He’s funny and interesting and smart. It’s just too bad that his primary language is bites. We continue to work with him, even though it can be frustrating and disappointing.

Here he is showing off his clicker training skills:

And finally, some photos from the alley. Alleys are always very interesting places. In back of our house is a wounded stand of junk trees. One is a dreaded Tree of Heaven that is constantly invading my garden with its suckers. The others are relatively weak varieties of maple. They’ve grown forgotten for years and are quietly consuming the urban detritus around them. Their contortions are beautiful.

The Cost of Frost

The weekend before last began warm and beautiful. A few leaves were still on the trees, but the forecast was for a sudden change in the weather. I did some organizing and cleaning as the cold front blew its way through the treetops and into my yard.

In the time since then, my garden has seen a beautiful collapse of the leaves and plants. They’ve been invisibly broken apart by the jagged edges of internal ice crystals as we’ve finally had many nights in the 20’s and low 30’s.

Below are a series of photos that I took in this time period. You can spot the same plants as the frost changes them. Some colors deepen. Some leaves grow translucent. Some grow leathery.

After the frost had worked its way into everything and most of the final leaves had come off the trees, I spent the day with my leaf blower coaxing all the leaves on the ground into one garden bed or another. As part of the process, I took down my bean trellises and found a few final dried beans to add to my collection. There was a mixture of pretty limas and several more Mostoller Wild Goose pole beans that I think are gorgeous.

And finally, something freshly cooked but completely out of season–blackberry jam! For many years, my blackberries have fruited well but never produced enough at one time to make much of anything. Mostly, the birds would eat the berries as they ripened a couple at a time. Patchwork’s blackberry bushes were larger, so if I wanted to make jam I could collect enough berries there.

But for the last few years the Patchwork bushes haven’t done well. John’s eaten all the jam I had from recent years, so I decided I needed to do something differently. This year I collected the blackberries in my garden and froze them one at a time. By the end of the summer, I was pretty sure I had enough for a batch of jam and over Thanksgiving weekend, I finally had time to make it.

I used my strainer to separate out all the seeds, running the pulp through the hand-cranked machine over and over to try to get as much moisture out. I knew I wouldn’t have any pulp to spare. In the end I was a cup short, but thinking back to some jam I’d seen sometime this year, I steeped some sage leaves in hot water and added the water to the blackberry pulp.

The result? 4.5 jars of particularly delicious jam!