A New Year, A Clean Slate?

Nothing so simply symbolizes joy to me than a peony in full, rich bloom with its overblown, abundant scent. Its short bloom time reminds me to enjoy the simple things when we can.


The end of 2011 lends itself to thinking about a new year and beginning again. I think a lot of you will agree, 2011 was a rough year for everyone, the country, the economy, and ultimately the world. My thought is, though that the end of 2010, found me hoping for the best in 2011. I'm not a big one for New Year resolutions simply because they entail lists, and lists for me, are synonymous with work.

As I sit here typing I can see the ubiquitous symbol of infrastructure through my dining room window, the "telephone" pole. In this case, it not only carries the telephone landline, but electricity and cable as well. Shortly after WWI, telephony and electrification came to my village. At the time a dam on the millpond and its associated spillways provided enough electricity for the entire village and ground grain for local farmers, too. Newer technologies were layered on older technologies, similar to how cable layered their lines on the telephone poles.

Also while typing, a fat squirrel carried some sort of treasure up the pole. The pole has a shock of corn laying at its base, which happens to be the trash pick-up area for the cast-offs of my next door neighbor's fall decorating endeavors. The village has a maintenance guy or two, who run around and chip up appropriately bundled yard waste and compost them in the village's composting area. Unfortunately, this is not a year round activity, the corn shock will remain until spring.

The squirrel, however, brought me to the thought of the natural world and its collision with the man-made world and the thoughts of how we layer the new on the old. The squirrel didn't much care if he was scurrying up a telephone pole, electric pole, or my monumental pine. Its desire is simply up and away with its choice morsel. With the connecting wires running along side branches of my pine, it doesn't much care how it gets where it is going as long as it does.

I figure we can all take a lesson from the squirrel and just set some goals, never-minding how we get there, just that we do.

I was reading a blog I follow, the writer of which is not a big list make neither. For her, she picks three words on which she will focus her energy. I think this is much more useful than a list.

The new year will encompass the graduation of my son, a birth of a nephew, and unknown to most at this point-- a wedding (no, not me!); happy events all! These are all events we will celebrate and to which adjustments are needed.


This espaliered fruit tree in the Chicago Botanical Garden is trained to grow in available space. It might not provide an enormous amount of fruit, but it will fruit.

The new year will also find me again up for election to the village board, revamping my business model, now that my son will be in school at UW-Green Bay this fall, and honing some of my business skills. I will probably attempt certification for things I do, but never took the time to connect the supporting education and certifications.


I was a bit amazed at the sheer volume of potatoes, crooked necked squash, salad greens, carrots, radishes, and handful of cukes this 12' by 6' space provided. Better serial planting and choice of vegetables would have yielded even more in this stream-lined space.


I have also been driven crazy with new technology. Technological changes are speeding up, and there are advantages waiting for those of us who can adapt and incorporate these into our lives.

DebiO, my friend to the north, often ends her blog with "Be a joy giver." Her optimistic perspective in a year where teachers in Wisconsin have been hard-put to find joy in their lives let alone focus on it, has been uplifting.

So following the example of the fellow blogger, I have chosen three words to sum up my goals and challenges the new year will bring. These are accommodation, clarification, and joy.

What are your three words?

Have a fruitful, abundant, and joy-filled New Year!

My Inbox

Just like my inbox, my mailbox can be empty or overflowing. I went to my mailbox and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a survey from the Arbor Foundation and a bunch seed catalogs.

After I took the picture here for my blog, I noticed the veggies, particularly the cherry tomatoes seem so real they could be picked up off the Burpee plate. I haven't looked at the prices but this 3D macro photography effect surely explains the higher prices of their seed, I suppose.

I saved a lot of seed last year, so I'm not sure how much seed I will be buying. The last items to go into the family garden were four sweet cherry trees, 'Lapins'. My brother is pleased with our harvest, although we did have some squash that were either under ripe or did not cure properly and they rotted.

We do want to continue to add fruit to our garden, particularly pears, and possibly peaches. I have had some limited success with 'Reliance'.

I wish the Miller's catalogue was among the pile!

I also would like to add some non-gluten grains to our mix.

This spring also will be bringing a new baby to the mix. So while the soil waits and the strawberries and blueberries sleep, I will be plotting and planning about their growing neighbors, eventually getting the grow room working again.

Looks like I have some winter reading material!

Someday Santa Will Bring It

Last summer, I went on a garden walk and came across this lean-to garden greenhouse. If I had a garage, this is the greenhouse I would love to have. Maybe Santa will bring it for me someday. It was about six feet deep and eight feet long attached to a small shed used to store a riding lawn mower.

Merry Christmas in June

This was taken in the middle of June at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. At the time, I thought it looked too Christmas-y; the underplanting of a maple with Canadian Explorer Series rose, 'Champlain'.

You can be the judge.

Happy Holidays to all!

Winter Solstice

Muscari armenium








A palest blue muscari




Today is the Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest amount of daylight. To celebrate, I bought a package of muscari to cool and force, and some lettuce seed to grow as microgreens for salads.

Every day the sun stays up three minutes longer. I'll be counting the seconds until Spring!

Weigelas

'Autumn Joy' sedum and an unnamed sport of a variegated weigela in my garden. This weigela has an insipid very pale pink flower (paler than a typical variegated weigela), but for me nothing compares with its well-marked cream, dark green, and lime green foliage on red stems. It tries to revert to some sort of limey-green leaved variety every so often so pruning out this growth is important and has kept its size limited to about the size of a well-grown sedum.



There seems to be a lot of variation in the coloring of the variegated leaves of these weigela, all of which are the same cultivar, 'Magical Fantasy'. These next two pictures also show the 'Magical Fantasy' weigela.I took these pictures at Stein's the beginning of August this last year.




This is weigela 'Carnaval' in my yard. It has red buds that open to white and fade to a medium pink rose color, giving the impression that it blooms in all three colors. It has sort of medium green leaves and a more sprawling form if not pruned carefully. It's redeeming feature? It does bloom twice most years, once in June alongside roses, and then later in the fall. This double blooming also makes 'Carnaval the most difficult to prune, as weigelas bloom on year old wood.



This is 'Shining Sensation'. The leaf really has a rather glossy texture. Compare it to the next picture of 'Wine and Roses' contrasted by the weigela 'My Monet'. They make a good combo.


Weigela 'Wine and Roses' with its dark bloom and leaf are very attractive when well-grown. However, it also seems to be the least hardy here and I find that due to winter dieback, siting this cultivar appropriately and giving it extra winter cover is crucial. I have had several years where it has almost died to the ground resulting in no bloom.

When weigelas are in bloom they can rival roses for sheer impact. I find they are not terribly well known here in central Wisconsin. Deer will eat them, but as long as they do not browse them to the ground, I can only think that a light pruning/browsing will help their form over all. They are not bothered by pests, but can take winter damage and suffer quite dramatic dieback.

Perhaps the best known and most commonly grown here is 'Red Prince' (not pictured). It is also the hardiest and suffers little winter dieback. 'Red Prince is a large sprawling shrub with cardinal red trumpet-shaped blooms with indifferent green foliage.

Weigelas need well-drained soil, and full sun if possible, or they tend to get leggy and sprawling and bloom less. They can withstand some drought. Regular light pruning for shape should be done immediately after flowering. Also regular rejuvenation by removing the oldest canes should be done as well. Weigelas look best if kept smaller than three feet tall and wide, and canes are less than 1/2" in diameter.

A weigela is definitely a shrub to include for its "shining" moment in a shrub border, just be careful to not make it a focal point, or any given year you may be disappointed. When it delivers, however, you will be delighted.

It's Sunday and a Lazy One at That...

This moss rose is named 'Henri Martin', but that is probably incorrect.  It is a moss rose, probably 'Jacques Cartier'.



Always a wonderful idea, this arbor is covered with two different roses and a clematis.


This musk rose is a lot of fun.


I think this is John Cabot or William Baffin, both of the Canadian Explorer Series, both look very similar.



'Dainty Bess' rose, one I need to find for my garden, I think.

...so I thought I would share a couple of my favorite pictures from this year. (So lazy I didn't finish posting this until Monday morning.)

I think I need to try much harder with my roses after collecting these pictures taken at the Chicago Botanical Gardens this past summer. I have selected some good varieties for central Wisconsin, but there are some things I could do better.

Fertilize more.

Water more.

Cut back plants around them, and weed better around their roots.

Tie up all my climbers.

Prune more effectively.

Enjoy!

Does Everyone Have a Christmas Tree?

One of my favorite ornaments, bought back in my naive youth, when I believed there was true love and someone for everyone.



This year's Christmas tabletop ornament display is on my dining room table.


Does everyone have a tree? Really? Everyone?

I think we get so caught up in what the "idea" of Christmas is. I'm not sure I can see everybody actually having a tree. Students in dormitories? Widows in one bedroom apartments? My son and I in our tiny house?

I gave up on tinsel on Christmas trees the first time a roommate's cat ended up with "tinsel-butt".

It must be a slippery slope after that.

I've had one Christmas tree since I moved to my tiny house. I think it was the second Christmas after my son and I started living here. The first year, I was so busy and caught up with finishing the remodel and unpacking Christmas sort of got lost in the shuffle. The next year I may have put up a tree, but the year after my son and I spent the Christmas holiday at a water park themed hotel in the Wisconsin Dells and we didn't see the point.

After that, Faithful Companion joined our little family. For many years before my divorce I collected incredibly delicate, intricately decorated glass ornaments. Each year I would carefully unwrap these fragile dreams and hang them on a real balsam fir.

When my son was born just three short weeks before Christmas one year and presented to me in a huge stocking wearing a Santa hat, like Santa brought the thing from the North Pole; the fancy ornaments began their migration up the tree.

The addition of a frenetic boxer put paid to the idea of a tree for the next couple years. By the time Cinnamon turned four and calmed down enough that I believed she wouldn't pee on the tree stand or try to jump up and carry off some glass bulb that looked shiny and appetizing, my son was well into his basketball career.

He has often played tournaments over the Christmas break.

So there is just us, my son and I. Some years, just me as my son would spend Christmas with his dad, who I think the last couple years has had an eight foot tree in every room (big house).

We have no company gracing our home, and no reason to cut down a tree that grew for 8-10 years just to fill up half the dining room for a good three weeks. Three weeks or so in which I will bump into it trying to get to the poorly-placed light switch or to close the drapes.

So this is my son's last year of high school. It is already the 16th of December, and no tree. I wish I had big living room or dining room or just the right place to display one. Maybe I'd hang lots of twinkly lights. Maybe I'd dig out all the antique Christmas ornaments for the 1950s, the fragile glass ones in different themes (fruit, birds, the sea, commemorative, etc.), the glass garland, the elaborate crystal angel tree topper. Maybe I'd do that if there was family or friends planning to come, but there isn't.

So I have decided on this table topper with a few of the ornaments and a crystal beaded garland with silver bells that makes an soft, rustling sound.

If you close your eyes, you might almost imagine the sound is that of a sleigh and eight tiny reindeer far off across the snow.

The Village Snow Prognosticator

This is the Ice Queen from the "Narnia" movie. Our snow witch could be her mother, but she looks a lot like her, and is the epitome of what I think of as a Snow Witch.

Here in Wild Rose we have our very own village snowfall prognosticator, AKA... THE SNOW WITCH.

"Da, dat daaah...!" (like the three chords from "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?")

I'm told she prefers the title Snow Prognosticator. For me, though, there is just something more melodramatic about "Snow Witch" (da, dat, daaah).

So anyway, there's this woman who was taught by someone else how to tell the number of snowfall an area will receive based on interpretations of the first 'cat-tracking" snowfall. If your black cat can't leave visible track in the snow as it crosses your path, the snowfall doesn't count. (You can see where the whole cat thing leads me down the path to the name "THE SNOW WITCH"...da, dat, daaaah!)

Last year, she predicted over 45 snowfalls, I forget exactly how many. She nailed the exact number on the head. Down at the local library they post and track her predictions and report on where we are with unrelenting vigilance.

Everyone wants to know. I don't think she has been more than one snowfall off in ten years. It's uncanny.

They didn't used to post it, but in this busy age, it saves our librarians time just to post it on a big white board brought out specifically for that purpose.

This year, she is predicting 23 total snowfall, three of which have already passed.

So 20 more and counting...

Our "Snow Prognosticator" is unfailing...

Eating the Unusual: Pomegranates

If you cut open your pomegranate and it looks like this, you did it wrong.

I think there probably IS a LOT of misinformation out there as the woman in this video says. Watching her go after a pomegranate is enlightening. I do think she might have a slightly different cultivar than the ones available to me, but her video does make sense. Just don't cut either end quite so deeply. To me it appears she seems to cone out about 3/4" to an inch of the bottom and cuts off 1/2" at the top. I'd keep these cuts fairly shallow, maybe 1/4" to 3/8".

Eating a pomegranate I think can be possibly be regarded as an art form. I think it decidedly takes a bit of practice along with knowledge.

Pomegranates are hardy in zones 7 through 10. This means they just don't grow here, nor anywhere I have actually lived. From a horticultural perspective they remind me of a member of the rose family, which

They remind me of nothing so much as a ginormous rose hip. The edible part packed in section are like the individual berry cells of a raspberry.

Generally, when I see them for sale they are priced pretty expensively, a couple bucks each. I would almost assume however they are sort of invasive in their zone given what I have read about how easily their seed germinate. This year, I have been coming across them priced under a buck, once at 49 cents a piece, which prompted me to pick up four.

Pure pomegranate juice has always been pretty pricey as well, so until this year, I couldn't have told you what a pomegranate actually tasted like, so it may not surprise you that the only other time I ever ate a pomegranate I ate totally the wrong part. Since then I have educated myself a bit and understand the juice to be tasty thanks to Ocean Spray. They have begun selling a pomegranate and blueberry juice blend. Since I know what blueberries taste like, identifying the other flavor present hasn't been too terribly difficult.

So I was thinking juice. Along those lines I have also read juice extraction to be problematic in a home setting and involving a juice and jelly straining bag, a mortar and pestle, and taking a lot of effort and time. So for juice I attempted to apply something I know about juicing citrus. If you roll the soon to be juiced citrus around with a lot of pressure it makes it fairly easy to get a better amount of juice a lot more quickly. So I rolled a pomegranate around pressing fairly hard, rupturing a good number of the juice seeds. I think making a hole in one side and a hole opposite and placing over a glass could be a fairly efficient method of getting at the juice without the tasks of straining the seeds. The trick is bust all the fruit capsules.

My two-year-old nephews and I devoured a pomegranate the other day, slicing the rind and sectioning it, dripping not a drop of juice, except for that which dribbled down the boys chins. The boys declared it was "crunchy good" and kept asking for more. At first my one nephew asked if it was an apple, which we were also having for lunch. (He also though a Red Norland potato might be an apple when we popped one from the ground this summer. Obviously, it looks edible to him.)

My sister-in-law confessed she didn't lke pomegranates because she was confused as to how to eat them. Someone from the national pomegranate marketng board should get that woman in the video on YouTube to make commercials.

We talked about how pomegranates and apples are alike and how they are different. We spent a lot of time looking at the seeds of each.

Later, we moved on to eating roasted and salted spaghetti squash seeds.

We are the seed eaters.

We didn't eat the apple seeds, though. Big difference.

A Few of My Favorites From the Past Year

A lazy Sunday viewing of some of my favorite plants from throughout the past year.

Enjoy!


My front sidewalk in late July and early August is a walk worth taking for three to four weeks each summer.


Lily 'Satisfaction certainly gives that.

Creamy yellow white lily has lots of blooms and reblooms, giving the longest and most floriferous show in my garden.


A lot more of these Asiatic lilies are becoming established in my garden. They are worth the space.


'Golden Spirit' smokebush is a lime green in the spring. During the fall show, the leaves turn a golden apricot and seem to glow from within. It is a wonderful addition to my shrub border that also includes a sweet cherry, a pear, and an apple.


Another shrub from my shrub border, viburnum tomentosa.

When my dappled willow 'Hakuro Nishiki' (dappled brocade in Japanese)sends up its new growth, it is a beauty stunner in the landscape.







Two barberries planted for contrast.


Smokebush 'Nordine' showing beautiful coloration of spring foliage prior to blooming.


Green girl cast iron wall hanging rusting into a patina.


Peonies are one of my favorite flowers. I wish I had room for a full peony border.



White Asiatic lily with black stems planted en masse at Olbrich Gardens.

Winter Sowing: Onions

Onion seeds sprouted and growing n the potager. Still green, although the ground is nearly frozen.


I'm not sure what it is all about, but my attempts at growing onions is a bit like thinking you can put your money in a savings account these days and have the interest grow your money into something worth talking about. My onions, like money in a savings account, result in onions little bigger than the onion sets with which I begin.

Always willing to try something new, I've decided to plant my onion seed in the fall, following the idea that I plant garlic cloves in the fall and that onions I fail to harvest seem fine in the spring.

Last January, I thought to plant the appropriate long day length onions starting them from seed under lights. I also started leeks. The generic sets available here are simply white, yellow, or red-- no stated day length. I thought starting my own sets might be the answer. The onions I choose were a flattish red onion and got to the appropriate size, which is to say about 1 1/2" in diameter. The leeks, I am told were harvested and eaten on a regular basis by my brother, although I didn't get any from the family garden.

So while I seem to plant quite a few, my harvest of onions seems less than I would expect. So I will dream of nice spring onions. I planted 3 rows each about 8 feet long.

I have also left some late beets and carrots in the ground with the same expectations, that I will have tender young things early in the spring for salads. My celery never amounted to much although I did dry some of the tops for additions to pizza and soups.




I've started thinking about getting some microgreens growing under lights. I have some basil cuttings I have in glasses of water that have rooted and should think about planting, too.

What herb talks about fresh more than basil?

UPDATE: Although we had an incredibly mild winter, the beets and onions were nowhere to be seen. That's a first for me with carrots; so I have to wonder if a vole, mole or some other creature didn't reap the benefits from my work. Also very few of the onions survived to the next spring. I did, however, miss one of the pitiful leeks I harvested in 2011 and harvested it at the perfect size in September 2012 to make a WONDERFUL leek, red potato, and sweet red pepper soup.

Eating the Unusual: Horsemeat, Herring, and Cockroaches

Leafy greens collected from my garden yesterday for a salad.


Okay. I'll confess.

I've dined on horse meat.

Unfortunately, it tasted wonderful. I was served the horse meat wrapped in bacon and delicately cooked with a slathering of a truffle-type mushrooms in a very classy, silver service restaurant in Paris. It was the only thing on the menu I didn't recognize and wanting to broaden my palette, had asked the waiter to recommend something. Only later did I realize what it was.

I wasn't going to write about unusual foods I have consumed other than vegetables, grains, and fruits, but this came up in a class I was teaching today. I was reading aloud a story to a high school crowd that takes place along the front lines of World War I. The unfortunate part of these reading aloud dramas is I usually get to jump in the fray at some point in the middle of the story. It took me about three pages before I realized the story was from the point of view of a horse. A riderless horse with an injured leg, roaming the no man's land between enemy lines.

When a German and a Welshman both lay claim to the horse and the Welshman suggested they can't go the route of King Solomon and cut the dang horse in half, my mind shuddered in revulsion at the thought of, "Oh, yes they can!" I had an immediate image of the German pulling out a service revolver, shooting the poor creature in the forehead and asking, "Heads or tails?"

The German did ask, but only as he flipped a coin into the air and had the Welshman call it to decide who kept the horse. (I later found out this excerpt was from the book that has inspired the soon-to-be-released movie "War Horse". Saw the trailer last night.)

They didn't eat the horse... this time.

But it made me think about what we consider food, and how culturally this is so varied. Some places think of insects as potential dining fare. I'm not sure how hungry I would have to be to give that a go, even though I understand cockroaches and crayfish to be more closely related than I would believe they should be.

It also makes me wonder how did any cultural group stray from eating a particular food and how we establish our food likes and dislikes. My son, for examples, regards tuna, especially that out of the small flat cans, in very much the same way I regard cockroaches, grubs, and beetles. Eat pickled herring in a wine or cream sauce? Wow, that would really make him blanch. Yet, historically, our mutual ancestors were herring fishermen in Greater Yarmouth, England and most likely sailed the coastline of the Low Countries as far as Friesland, where somewhere they met up with our great, great times many greats ancestress who spoke, read, and wrote German.

This ancestress later emigrated with her husband to a new land, America. And while she did learn to write, speak, and read English; she continued to speak English with a heavy German accent, setting her apart from her neighbors and which is the beginning of another long story which I will not account here.

Raising my son, I have learned how his palette has changed and grown. But where as a nation and a people did we forgo quince, medlar, even pears to a great extent to settle with the one size fits all generic apple? How have we made the leap from all sorts of game fish to just a few commercially caught types, cod, perch, and salmon? And how did turkey and chicken become the pre-eminent fowl choices foregoing other game birds and possible backyard-raised pigeon, squib, goose, pheasant, and quail?

It is up to us to diversify and localize our food stream. We need to break away from the lock-step of eating just what appears on the shelves of our local mega-grocery market chains. We need to skip the sugary cereals (ten of which are nearly half sugar by weight!) in favor of eggs, fruit, and whole grain.

And, by the way, Anderson Cooper, that leafy blue green leaf at the top of the picture is a form of kale.

Ornamentation in the Garden: Pots

A whole nest of ceramic pots at Olbrich Gardens. Grouping them probably makes their watering tasks a tad easier and is a good tip for the home gardener as well.



A reinforced cement planter at the home of Dr. Darrel Apps. This is a top quality planter made to withstand central Wisconsin's extreme cold and spring and fall freeze/thaw weather. For the last couple years, Darrel has planted it with a dark colored banana plant which he allows to freeze, and then digs it up, cuts off the leaves, and moves to his cool basement room. He calls it his banana cana and it is a heavy sucker, the root filling a 5-gallon pail.




My fish planter from Pier One. It is so cute, I have just placed it in the garden and have not planted it. Sometimes planters are nice empty, too. With its two openings it gives me a lot of fun possibilities to think about.
Ceramic pots are a great way to add a shot of color to the garden. For those of us gardening on a budget, these pots can be a pricey addition. In my experience, sometime about October and early November is a great time to snap up some great looking pots of a decent size at good prices. This year at Stein's pots went on sale in the beginning of August. The prices were great. All of my nice pots were acquired on clearance.




For a pot to make a statement in the garden, it needs a certain diameter and height. You want to err on the large size. The pots I have are about as big as I can easily carry, empty. I always plant these in situ. Crushed milk jugs are a key component of the fill in these pots, along with Styrofoam if I have any lurking from recent deliveries.

I like to take good practices from things I see in botanical gardens. For example, the only pots you see the Chicago Botanical Gardens using are to hold those plants that move into a green house in the winter. These tend to be Italian clay pots of huge diameters. Olbrich Gardens in Monona, WI tends to have a freer hand with the use of nice pots used in a variety of different ways. With pots, unlike growing plants in the ground you do have watering concerns on a daily basis. This is something That the CBG probably doe not want to deal with. Olbrich, on the other hand must detail a gardener to this task daily as their number have pots used in and about the garden has decidedly reached critical mass.

Other than good quality ceramic pots and Italian clay pots, there are the reinforced concrete pots. These are heavy suckers. I have one of these and it is more what I call an urn, than a pot. I am sure you have probably seen these in a cemetery somewhere. I got mine at Wal-Mart years ago for about $10. I doubt you could find one that can withstand the weather as well as it has for that price now.


A trio of cement planters as a border focal point.


Sometime a pot planted with just the right color foliage plant is all t takes to be the exclamation point n a garden. Forget the "thriller, spiller, filler" design idea.