The Butterfly Bush

Friday, August 31, 2007

My favorite plant in the garden right now is the butterfly bush. As an Easter gift this year, my Aunt M gave me a cutting from the plant in her Pennsylvania backyard. I was so excited to receive what appeared to be just a stick in a pot of mud, a few of its tiny leaves clinging on for dear life. I have long admired butterfly bushes at the community garden and secretly wanted one of my own. I just didn't think I'd have room for one.

Infant butterfly bush, April 24, 2007

I made room for this one. This was not just any butterfly bush, after all, this was Aunt M's Butterfly Bush. I will always find a place in my garden for pass-along plants like this.

All summer long I witnessed the gradual resuscitation of that stick with the little leaves. I wasn't sure if it would bloom in its first year in a new place, but now in August, my Easter gift is alive with sweetly-scented purple plumes. I stand beside the cascading flowers and smile at the tangle of butterflies dancing about blissfully. Aunt M's gift was more than a plant from her garden; she gave me these delightful winged visitors, too.

"The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough."
- Rabindranath Tagore

Saving Seeds

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Winter Radish Seeds

While reading Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, I found myself stumbling over this statistic: "Modern U.S. consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago."

And this: "Six companies -- Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Mitsui, Aventis, and Dow -- now control 98 percent of the world's seed sales."

Does anyone else find this alarming?

Arugula Seeds

My effort to save more seeds from the garden this year was driven by one part curiosity, one part frugality, and one part defiance against the way big corporations are running our food system. What happens when seed ownership falls into the hands of fewer and fewer people? We lose flavors and nutrients, we lose plant and wildlife diversity, we lose knowledge of what's in our food and how it's produced. We get genetically modified soy, canola and corn, and cheap high fructose corn syrup.

Red Russian Kale Seeds

Kingsolver's book gave me hope, as she and her family chronicled their year of eating local and homegrown food. They didn't go hungry, they didn't go broke, and it sounds like the entire family discovered many beautiful things along the journey. Their eloquently told story, with intermissions of seasonal recipes, made me want to do more to connect with food and food traditions. I want to grow my own asparagus, make cheese, and taste a turkey that wasn't born in a test tube. For simpler starters, I'm making a commitment to buy more heirloom vegetable seeds and saving seeds from the garden.

Onion Seeds

Here lie the seeds of future meals. I know saving seeds is just one small gesture, but it gives me hope. It's hope not to lose more beautiful things in this world, before we even realize what's missing.

Tomato Sauce: Liquid summer sun

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

After months of nurturing -- from the placement of seeds to the careful watering of plants to the fending off of hungry birds and diseases -- it all comes down to this: the sauce. Growing the tomatoes is the most challenging part. Making them into sauce is as easy as pie. (Pizza pie, anyone?)

I begin the process of making tomato sauce by roasting our San Marzano tomatoes. Included are pieces of our homegrown garlic, salt and pepper, and a few drizzles of olive oil.

Once the tomatoes are soft from their baking, I press them gently through the food mill. Their skins and seeds give way, and I'm left with a brilliant red nectar.

To that I add a handful of fragrant, freshly picked herbs: thyme, oregano, and basil. The sauce simmers and thickens and fills my every breath with the essence of summer days.

I ladle the sauce into containers, where it will freeze until summoned to adorn future meals. I find myself stooped over the pot just then, slurping every last drop to its lip-smacking end. A long journey of tomato growing concludes with this soul-filling satisfaction: liquid summer sun at the bottom of a pot. I smile at the thought of having garden-touched meals to warm cooler days ahead.

Help me make a new clematis plant

Friday, August 17, 2007

With the move less than a month away, it's time to get serious about figuring out how we're going to transfer the perennials from the plot to the new backyard. We'll first move our worldly possessions from apartment to house, and then we'll spend some time designing our new garden. My goal is to get our perennials from here to there all in one piece and in time enough to allow them to settle into the ground before the first frost. We're staying in the same grow zone (USDA Zone 7), so everything that grows here should also grow at the new house.

My Sweet Autumn Clematis is one of the plants I'd like to take to our new home. Actually, it's not "my" clematis; it's Sarah's, the woman who occupied the plot before me. Perhaps it was planted by someone even before her.

I have grown to love that clematis plant as if I'd planted it here with my own two hands. All through the summer it slowly stretches its leafy tendrils, draping a thick green blanket over the fence between the my plot and Elana's. In September that blanket will burst into white -- a snowfall of tiny star-shaped flowers.


Rather than digging out the whole plant, my plan is to start a new one from a cutting. I did some research and learned that clematis plants can be propagated by a process called layering. This means I would have to sink one of the stems (still on the parent plant) into the soil so it could sprout roots. The problem is, none of the branches are close enough to reach the soil; they're all up high on the fence. So I cut a few branches and put them in a glass of water, thinking they would grow roots that way. No such luck. It has been two weeks and no roots have appeared yet. I'm feeling like I need to go to Plan B.

This is where I need your help, fellow gardeners. What is Plan B? What's the best way to start a new clematis plant from a cutting?

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Bittersweet moments characterized my photo shoot today, as I realized I was preparing my last Bloom Day post from the community garden. I am likely to see these flowers in another place, in another August, but never again quite like here. Come along with me as I say farewell to my garden plot, in the language of flowers.

Bells of Ireland and Calendula

Zinnias

Black-eyed Susan

Hyacinth Beans

Dahlias

Coreopsis

Sedum

Butterfly Bush

Mexican Sunflower

Calendula

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related Posts:
Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - July
Leaving the Plot

I am woman, watch me mow

Saturday, August 11, 2007

The ink on the house contract was barely dry when my husband and I started our discussion about the lawn. What kind of lawn mower should we get?

For me, there's no question; it's got to be a push reel mower. There's no way I could bring myself to use one of those malodorous, gas-guzzling gadgets. One hour of mowing with a gas-powered mower produces about the same amount of air pollution as a 100-mile car ride. And our own Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 800 million gallons of gas are used in lawn mowers each year, producing 5 percent of the nation's air pollution. I'm not okay with that.

Michael agrees about getting a reel mower, but he also thinks we should buy an old gas-powered clunker to do the bulk of the work until we get our garden beds put in. I said no way.

"Do you know how hard it is to use those reel mowers?" he asked. "It will take forever to cut the lawn with one of those things."

He was trying desperately to sway the opinion of a stubborn wife whose mind, he knew, was already made up.


"Oh, I don't mind at all. I will do it," I said. "I will take charge of cutting the lawn."

"Yeah, but how's it going to look to the neighbors if they see me sending my wife out there to cut the entire yard with one of those things?" he asked, still unsuccessful in trying to sway me toward the gas guzzler.

"Who cares what the neighbors think? Women can and do mow lawns, you know. And plenty of them use reel mowers (somewhere, I'm sure). Maybe the neighbors will think my reel mower is the coolest thing. No noise. No stink. I'll get exercise and plenty of fresh air. What's not to like about that?"

And then I popped up out of my chair, held my arms straight in front of me (as if standing in imaginary lawn-mowing stance), and sang in my sprightliest voice to the tune of Helen Reddy's "I am Woman, Hear me Roar."

I am woman, watch me mow... I've got two more rows to go!

Husband rolls eyes. The lawn mower discussion continues...

Peppers Picked

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Buran (red), Purple Beauty, and Banana Peppers

Today's 100-degree Fahrenheit heat felt like something only a pepper could love. And they do. This was the colorful collection of capsicums I picked from our garden over the weekend.

Peppers with their charred skins pulled away

With a series of soft crackling and popping noises emanating from our kitchen, I heard the peppers surrendering their skins to the bright blue flames of our stove. The red ones stayed red, while the purple one revealed its inner green soul. All the while, the strong smell of charred peppers transported me imaginatively to someplace else: a kitchen in faraway Mexico perhaps.


We used the charred peppers in a salsa combined with our Brandywine tomatoes and a few of our weep-me-a-waterfall onions. The sweet tomatoes tempered the onions' sharpness and provided mercy for our tear ducts. A balsamic vinaigrette tied everything together, peacefully.

The dazzling sweet summer concoction topped our Sunday-night salmon dinner.

Taste the Fruit

Monday, August 06, 2007

Our watermelon plant produced only one melon,
but what a fine melon it was.
~~~
"Live in each season as it passes;
breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit."
- Henry David Thoreau

Leaving the Plot

Friday, August 03, 2007

It is with mixed emotions that I write today's post. My husband and I are about to embark on the next grand adventure in our lives: We bought a house! And we are exceedingly excited about making a home that we can call our own. This means I will be leaving my little garden plot that has become such a cherished part of my life for the past four years (and the inspiration for this blog). Actually, it's not so much the plot itself that I will miss; it is the people. I can dig up my herbs and flower bulbs and cart them along with me (and I will), but I can't take the people who give this place its true spirit. There are people here whose personalities are imprinted on me indelibly. Without them, the community garden is just a jumble of fences, an anonymous array of flowers, and some struggling tomato plants. All together, we've made an extraordinary place here in the city. I am certain I will miss it.


I must press forward now because moving day will be here before I know it. Where I'm going, there is ample space for a vegetable garden -- a bigger vegetable garden -- and I am excited about all the possibilities that lie before me. All of a sudden, I will also have trees, shrubs, and a lawn. Oh, my! A lawn! I will probably spend about two seconds leaping through that lawn -- a celebratory cartwheel or two fueled by the glee of home ownership -- and then that boring turf has got to go! Where there is lawn, I see space for food. And flowers. Yes, more food and more flowers. I have plans. Big plans.