Saturday, March 31, 2012

Robyn O'Brien - Patriotism on a Plate

This TED Talk gives ample reason why this year should be your year to start a garden. Barring that, this is why everyone needs to get closer to their family's food supply.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Around the Garden: What's Up, What's Blooming, Booming...


The star of the garden show, my rhododendron 'PJM', blooming nearly a month earlier than it ever has.


These scilla bloom under the carefully manicured privet hedge. They are only truly visible to my ankles and the rabbit. The privet is just starting to leaf out so there is a bit of a blue glow about the base that is visible, and that's cool.

These are the unopened flower of the prairie smoke, geum triflorum. Each phase of the flowering, bud, flower, and seed pod looks like a "flower" so the triflorum part, I suppose. Although, if I actually pulled one apart, I'd bet I see only three sepals or tepals.

A better look at those pretty blue scilla.

Raddichio in garden, coming up from last year. It seemed to have a very bitter taste last year. I see this morning the rabbits have found it. The flavor must have improved.

Lysimachia 'Gold Coin', has a beautiful gold glow this time of year.

Rhubarb just coming up.

There's a lot going on in the potager. The peas I have planted are up. I got a great stand, good germination rate. I typically plan on 50% -65%, but I would guess it is closer to 100%. This March has certainly been good pea weather, unlike last year.

That means over in the family garden the peas are certainly coming up, too. These are the peas my sister-in-law asked me to please plant for baby Asher, who has stubbornly not made his way into the world.

Other things have been stubborn this March, too. My Internet connection has been driving me nuts. Currently, we are able to make only a tenuous hardline connection to the Internet, in a household filled with wannabee wireless devices. Probably a router, but maybe a cable. More trouble-shooting this time-waster.

The huge limb that broke off and hung up 30' up in my white pine crashed to the ground last night. Just last week, I was calling around to find someone with a cherry picker to come and charge me an arm and a leg to remove it from the tree. Last night's wind did the job for me, saving me $250 to $500, maybe more.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif My calling range was getting increasingly larger, 100 miles. No one had the type of equipment that would have been needed. With our early spring, I was increasingly worrying about finding someone with equipment, AFTER my gorgeous hosta had poke up their eyes and started unfurling their leaves. I had ghastly images in my mind of torn, tattered, and bedraggled hosta just in time for my Handsome Son's graduation party.

And, I heard that another boom rocked Clintonville last night. Out of curiosity, I will check the vertical ground tracking on the Shiocton seismography station. (It does appear there was some heavier vertical plate grinding between 4 and 6 AM.)

My son and I always talk about preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse. Perhaps, we should now be thinking earthquakes, instead. Possible the earthquake dislodged my stubborn white pine widow-maker?

Tonight, as fate would have it the Emergency Management Direc`tor for the county has a tabletop disaster exercise planned. I get to play myself, village trustee. Invite only, it should be interesting.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Sturgeon Are Spawning!



I guess that typically the sturgeon spawn in the later part of April. Like most other things this year they are a month ahead. They began spawning yesterday.

Just outside New London a bout a mile west, on CTY X at the Sturgeon Trail Park. It is definitely worth seeing these prehistoric beasts spawn. The DNR is tagging and measuring and releasing them. The biggest they tagged yesterday was 79 inches long. Most of the ones I saw today were four to five feet long. I did see them tag 66" and 59" femaies.

They will be spawning for the next couple weeks. The eggs will take about 2 weeks to hatch after that. They are more active when it is warm and sunny, so pick a nice day and make it a road trip. I was able to stand 4' or 5' feet from these fish and watch the show.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Apricot 'Moorpark' in Bloom AND BOOMS!






Last three years my apricot 'Moorpark' has bloomed April 24. It is in bloom, now. Today is March 21.

Hmmm.

Something is up. Or down. Nearby, the town of Clintonville, WI has been experiencing a series of "booming noises" in the night. A seismograph in nearby Shiocton is recording some type of "activity". It even made the news on CNN. Next we'll have bird falling from the skies in the hundreds, all of the same sort. And then an earthquake.

Except that in WI we don't have earthquakes.

I heard the Clintonville townfolks are having a meeting tonight at the school to "discuss". It almost makes me want to hop in the car and check it out. Talk to the townsfolk first hand, like something out of the town meeting in "Dantes' Peak" or "Jaws"... right before the natural disaster ensues.

Hmmm.

Handsome son and I have been theorizing on what the noises might be. We're both voting on pre-earthquake tremors. That will be interesting.

Meanwhile, whichever scientist was talking about the seismic activity actually mentioned it might be connected to a farm. A farm? What sore of farm would that be? And the thing is, the noises have been heard at night, like shortly after 8 Pm, 10 PM, midnight, and 2 PM. Last night after all the ruckus in the news and hundreds of 911 calls, no tremors, until about 5:30 AM this morning

So here's my alternative theory. Sound is caused by waves. I think it is basic physics, something is moving into something else. Something close to the surface of the ground. If you look at the locations of the 911 calls(The city of Clintonville is plotting them.), they seem to be appearing in waves type lines running SW to NE. Notice the big blank area along Main Street? So people do things because A) it makes them money, or B) it's fun.

So a couple local yokels have discovered something profitable. Something they could mine, maybe. Probably something in a cave, most likely not on their property. Now I know their are geologists saying this is an area of granite, and that's true enough. But a little ways to the east are caves of dolomite, or limestone, in Calumet county. Say these locals got hold of some explosives because whatever they have been removing from these hidden caves is getting harder to remove. And some of us are more into relaxing, eating cheese, and drinking beer, and think it would be a good old-time to blow something up rather than dig it out.

I also know the Clintonville City Manager has had a search done of mining permits. Come on, does she really think they filed a permit?

It just seems sort of curious that this is going on at night. After dark. Someone knows whats going on, and it's profitable not to say what it is.

So unless you believe cows belching out methane or those tractors with those phallic spikes out front are dropping 800 pound round bales on the feedlot so hard that the neighbors are calling 911... in Wisconsin, no less; it's either earthquakes, aliens, or mole men.

Take your pick.

I think I vote for the locals strapping flashlights to their cheddar wedge cheese hat looking for gold or diamonds(or whatever they think they have found, before I go with aliens or mole men.


In the garden, the garlic scapes are coming up, as is the salad blend.

I finally seeded my first tray of assorted tomatoes, tomatillos, and sage. I made these wonderful laminated tags a couple weeks ago. Do you think I can find them?

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

What the Snow Witch Says


Handsome son, his girlfriend and Faithful Companion this last Sunday at the village Mill Pond.

I visited the local library. The village snow prognosticator says despite the beautiful weather we can still expect two more snow falls. The head librarian also says she is more than willing to give them up.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Phenology Events

Today my willow looks like this picture I took on April 14, 2007.



This picture of my forsythia in full bloom is dated April 14, 2009.


Two people have told me they saw red-wing blackbird. I saw one as well. It wasn't until the second one told me this a bird that comes back in summer, when the weather is predictably warm that I did a double-take.

My son saw two bats.

My forsythia is about to bloom. Pretty sure it will bloom tomorrow. Crocus were blooming yesterday.

My Artic blue willow is budded up.

The frogs are singing tonight.

So what's a gardener to do?

I'm working with the idea that we are have a zone 6b spring and the calendar says April 17, not March 17.

I rototilled the family garden. Thanks to handsome son for taking a small engines course getting an A+ AND overhauling my tiller! I planted peas. I planted carrots, radishes, and lettuce. In Wisconsin. I am thinking of planting some fava beans. Generally, I don't think favas are planted here.

I haven't planted my tomatoes for transplant.

I'm going to make the best use the weather. I'm not going to plant heat lovers, but if it can take some cold, it's getting planted.

Pea planting tips: Soak in warm water for 20 minutes before planting.

Beet and Swiss chard planting tip: Put seed on a wooden cutting board and crush them with a rolling pins. Each "seed" is actually a pod with 3-4 seeds inside. The small seeds are dark, radish brown, to black.

Friday, March 16, 2012

Choosing Tomatoes for Central Wisconsin


My tomato seedlings last spring on April 5, 2012. I think I started them March 1. See how big they were on April 5? They would not get transplanted outdoors until the end of May, two months later.


Typically, I start my tomatoes on March 15. I am always itching to start them sooner, but experience has shown me that to do so invites disaster to your garden plan. They just get too big before I feel any safety setting them out into the unforgiving climate of central Wisconsin.

There are a few annuals, I might start before, or some unusual veggies (two years now I have attempted artichokes, not to have a single one germinate!) But peppers, followed by tomatoes, basil, and eggplant, and then tomatoes is pretty much the way I roll.

Not this year.

Yesterday was another beautiful day. I couldn't help it. I put out some red onion sets, planted a small patch of lettuce, and planted a couple rows of peas.

I planted some outdoor cool season crops BEFORE I planted my tomato transplants.

Last year, we had a great tomato crop. More than enough for canning, eating, freezing drying; it was a successful season. I was worried. There was a lot of rain, I kept thinking we would have blight. We didn't. It was not particularly warm, but August was nice, not a lot of rain, enough. Not a lot of heat, but the overnight temperatures were above 50 degrees (F), the daytime temperatures above 70.

Last year, I planted all the tomato seed I had saved for a number of years. The newer seed, as you would expect sprouted much more reliably than older seed, but I did get some from all my seed packets.

Last year, I chose 'Siberian', 'Bloody Butcher', 'Sweet 100', "Roma', and 'Olpaka'.

A popular tomato grown successfully last year in this area was 'Celebrity' as evidenced by the blue ribbon entries at the county fair.



I saved seed from last year. I purchased some 'Celebrity' hybrid seed and 'Better Boy', as well. I also missed having any golden, low acid tomatoes and thought it might be fun to dry some for their beautiful golden color to add to an oil along with basil and garlic for pizza and for a sweet jelly. I chose 'Taxi' and a tomato called 'Amana Orange'.
'Taxi' is a small 1 1/2" round, yellow tomato.

As for 'Amana Orange', Tomatofest says, "Huge heirloom beefsteak tomato named for the Amana Colonies in Iowa. These organic tomato seeds produce big, regular leaf plants that produce above average amounts of beautiful light-orange, irregular shaped (fluted) heirloom tomatoes that can grow to 2 pounds or more, with an average diameter of 5 inches. Excellent sweet, almost tropical fruit flavors. This tomato variety has been included in my tomato garden for more than 20 years. A winner!"


At 90 days from transplant, I might not see a lot of fruit, but the promise of a large tropical-flavored fruit convinced me.

Yesterday, I picked up some 'Chocolate Cherry' tomatoes. I also saw the tomato 'Mountain Princess' listed with a 45-53 days from transplant to harvest date. Short harvest dates are decidedly a good thing with the unpredictable weather of central WI. Plus, I like the Mountain series. It is predictable. The fruit are of a uniform size, and it was recommended to me as the best tomato for our local area by a garden stand grower.

I won't delude myself that I could transplant tomatoes into the garden a month early; even so, central Wisconsin gardeners, like me, it is time to start your tomatoes!

Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Weather Bubble


The weatherman called it "a bubble".

Yesterday running errands, or actually walking errands; I was returning from the local automotive shop after dropping my car for new-to-me tires ("they're 75% tread!" for $20, was a definitely selling point) and on the north side of a maple I see a branch totally in bloom.

In bloom. On March 14.

Yesterday, was also my birthday. Not saying how many, y'all, but quite a few. As such, I have noted to myself what the weather was like on quite a few of those March days. I can think of only a handful of days quite so nice. I like warm. I think my birthday celebration should extend a whole week, at least, if the weather can make it so.

Yesterday, our temperature hit 79 degrees (F) here. It was not a record, but close. For many places in Wisconsin there was a new record high. Just for a dose of reality, the weatherman noted that our typical average high is 39...

Since moving home to central Wisconsin ten years ago, we have had one actual last frost date of April 1 and one of April 19. I think it froze Monday night, March 12. Last year it was May 26. Typically, I think of the last frost date as sometime around May 18. I have a lot of family born in May, so it is easy to bookmark in my mind weather conditions on this day or that day. The year my very baby sister was born on May 31 it snowed. Two years later, I was marching in a Memorial Day parade, fingers freezing, as it was snowing again.

I don't know what this year holds. Could our last frost date this year be March 12?

I have been trying to determine what, though, as any good gardener does, and get out in front of the curve. The weather man with all his fancy equipment last night predicted no night time temps below about 35, most higher for the NEXT TEN DAYS. Predicted daytime highs in that 55 to 75 degree range, most on the higher end.

Whoo-hoo!

Or is it?

My mom said my dad's maple syrup harvest is a bust this year with a scant dozen pints of undetermined quality.

Already the apple growers are concerned the apples will bloom without their pollinators or suffer a late freeze and drop any fruit starting to form.

I'm a little more sanguine about such things. I think trees know.

So will this nice spring weather, more summer-like and seemingly consistent, come crashing down around us with no apples and gardens freezing in June. I don't know. I am going to do my best to figure it out. I'm going to call down to the library and get the Snow Prognosticator's prediction (A. K. A. the Snow Witch) about remaining snowfalls. I figure if she has a bunch of snow fall predicted, well the temps needed for snow tells a story, doesn't it? Maybe a cool or cold May...

But if it is one or two, or even none, maybe we'll have just a couple cold nights around the time of the full moons, the next nearly a month from now, and then predictably, a month later.

Maybe this will be a great pea crop year. Thirty day until the next full moon is enough time to get radishes fresh from the ground, or sow a patch of lettuce, if I can work the soil without compacting it overly much.

I know the soil is warming up as my garlic is greening up. My forsythia has not bloomed, yet.

Being an optimist, I'm going to plant peas. I'm going to turn off my furnace for at least a few days and plant peas.

I encourage you to do the same.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Fruit Trees in Early Spring


Ill-fated peach tree in 2007. I did get about a dozen peaches each fall.

Anything that I can have as a perennial and ornamental foodstuff in my home garden, what I refer to as my potager, is all good. If it is sweet, all the better.

Over the last ten years as I have developed my landscape around my tiny home I have added a strawberry bed (that central Wisconsin sand is good for something!), a cherry tree, an apple tree, grape vines, rhubarb, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, a pear tree, herbs, asparagus, and an apricot tree.

I even grew a short-lived peach, as pictured above.

In addition to ornamental, perennial, fruiting, self-pollinating when possible, dwarf stock in my .15 acre lot is highly preferable.

As often as possible, I have planted dwarf varieties or cultivars grafted to dwarfing root stock. For some fruits, dwarf is not part of the vocabulary. Enter my saw and handy pruner. So yesterday, with beautiful weather (in the mid-60s), I began my regular "winter pruning" (yes, I am behind!) of some of my fruit trees that are not so dwarf.

One of the mistakes I made with the peach tree was attempting to bend it to my will, particularly to the shape of a flat fan against the wall of my tiny home. Peach trees grow best if trained in an open vase-like structure. Attempting to grow them flat gives up over half of your possible fruiting spurs. The other mistake was planting against my house at the exact spot kept warm by a standing gas pilot on my stove.

At first thought, this may seem like a good idea to all of your adventurous fruit growers trying to hack your zone. Not. What happens is the tree thinking about blooming a few days ahead of when it should given possible freezing night time temperatures. My advice to you is to plant on a south slope or in the open, but in a location where the north or northwest winds will not cause unduly harm, and not to plant in a swale.

Because peaches are not grown here in central Wisconsin, it didn't help that I started out with a far less than perfect specimen bought on fall clearance for ten bucks. The structure, to begin with, was bad. In even the best of situations, peaches are a short lived tree and begin bearing fruit much too young, before they have the structure to support it. When my peach blossomed and started showing swelling fruit the next spring on a poorly branched whip. I felt much like the Mormon mother of a pregnant 10-year-old daughter must feel. Part of me wanted to pluck off the swelling fruit, the rest of me could not bear to do so. Fruit growing is not for the weak of heart. Even on mature fruiting trees, it is a good idea to thin out your fruit, especially the clusters of three or four to just one every 3" to 6" or even a foot.

So after my experience with the peach, I decided to try a self-pollinating apricot instead. Yesterday, pruners in hand, I cut back my apricot to just one bud above the beginning of last year's growth. This is placing my apricot at about six feet high. The space I have allotted for my apricot 'Moorpark' is about six feet wide. I can see the numerous fruiting spurs running very close along all the branches of the older wood. Apricots bloom on 2-year old or older wood.

Over the next couple days I will be pruning other fruit trees and caring for the other small fruits in my potager. The family garden also has a lot of small fruits and cherries so I have lots to tell. I recently picked up this book, Growing Fruit . Although not specific to central Wisconsin, when choosing cultivars for fruit trees and small fruits, this can be a great resource. It also has a great deal of information on diseases and growing tips for first-time growers. Between marketing hype and poor selection by buyers that also stock boards, nails, and lamps at your local big box store where they are also selling fruit trees, this book might be a good first stop on selecting appropriate cultivars for your own growing conditions.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I have actually bought this book. And, if you click on the link to Amazon.com and buy it there I probably make like ten cents. Are we all good, now?)

Monday, March 12, 2012

Spring Is Coming


This picture is not this spring after so mild a winter, possibly the mildest on record. This, a picture from March 31, 2011, and that winter that lingered, it seemed until June.

Spring is coming.

I see it saved from winter in the hollows of green.

I see it in the swelling buds.

I see it under leaves in corner blown there by whirling spring winds.

I hear torrential rains and think of a greening to come this week when temperatures will be in the mid-70s, possibly a record.

Already some talk of drought.

Yesterday, I walked the family garden with my nearly 3-year-old nephews, "Raspberries, sleeping...blackberries, sleeping...strawberries,... STILL SLEEPING..."

We find old okra pods, dried, whole, and filled with seed. Enchanted, they crack them open and scatter seed everywhere. Okra will be as weeds!

A lone spaghetti squash dried, cracked on one side, but nearly whole. Something has eaten all the seed, but left the spaghetti-like guts. I crack open the gourd-like shell. The dried innards come out looking more like a luffa sponge. The nephews are fascinated by the texture. "No seeds! Where did they go?!" They are enraptured with it. They point out rabbit ca-ca. Suddenly they are as a mob. "Rabbits! The rabbits took them! Those rabbits!!!"

I have visions of these tiny Elmer Fudds on patrol with sticks, pounding the ground, "huntin' wabbits".

I smile, glad my son and I wrapped the blueberries. I hope for a few drying days and a chance to see if my son's nearly-learned expertise with two-cycle engines will allow me a better outings with the tiller.

And, my basil has came up in the seed trays as thick as hair on Faithful Companion.

Yes, Spring is a comin' in.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

You Can Grow That:




I was at Stein's in Grand Chute on Friday and was staring at seed. I was hoping to find Six-Shooter heirloom sweet corn (no luck). What I did find was pelleted herbs and a few other varieties of seed I have never seen come in a pelleted form packaged by Livingston Seed. Livingston Seed is one of my favorites because the stuff does germinate and they put a lot of seed in a pack; particularly great for radishes, carrots and lettuce.

They included five herbs, two types of basil, two versions of parsley, and a thyme. I wish they had gone big on the herbs. I am sure herbs are something a lot of gardeners want to grow, but struggle to grow.

Livingston's foray into pelleted seed might just make a lot of beginning gardeners feel like, "Yes, they can grow that!"

Friday, March 9, 2012

Starting Sweet Red Peppers








Last year, the crop of sweet red peppers was abysmal in central WI.

I had very few. It seemed we would eat them green as soon as they got to any possible size. July was cool and rainy. We had a very late start to the growing season followed by a week of temperatures above 90. It was not only me, but nearly everyone I talked to had poor luck with getting sweet red peppers to ripen. There were also none to be had through local produce sellers.

My sister-in-law and I both commiserated. This year, we vow to do better. Rather, with her expecting her new baby any second, I vow to do better for the both of us. She also asked, please plant peas right away, "I need them to feed to Baby."

Okay, I feel there must be a pepper variety out their hoarded by immigrants from some Slovak country where the summers are shorter and cooler that would be a good variety to grow here. Last year, our back to back growing season was a mere 106 days.

This year I have decided to expand the number of peppers I will grow in an attempt to find a good heirloom or non-hybrid from which I can collect seeds and grow in coming years with regular success.

I have not been particularly pleased with pepper transplants because I don't know where they have been and who they've been with. If this sound like I'm looking for a good candidate for "friends with benefits", maybe it should. Unlike most other transplants, pepper transplants are very sensitive to temperature. If they experience temperatures that dip to less than 50 degrees (F), they can either drop their blooms or their bloom cycle is totally messed up. (Translation: greatly delayed.)

No bloom, no fruit. For the innocent gardener, you have no way of knowing whether they sat in a truck overnight when temperatures were in the 40s or whether they have been outside without protection because the plant itself will appear perfectly healthy. The only solution to this dilemma is to grow your own, harden them off during the daytime hours, and transplant them into the garden late, here around June 10. Transplanting them earlier may well end up with a much later crop.

Last year, I picked up some 'Aruba' transplants late in the year(beginning of June) and they set only one or two fruits per plant. They didn't even think about setting up a bloom cycle until July. If I had inspected them earlier, I have to assume I would have found nascent axials where blooms formed that were dropped because of the frost we experienced May 26 last spring.

Also last year, there seemed to be very little pepper seed available. What was available was pricey (50 cents per seeds) and did not germinate well (at about 30%!). (Do the math there!) The only seed that did germinate well for me was some jalapeno seed I had saved from the previous year, much to my brother's chagrin when he inadvertently added one to a salad.

This year my chosen varieties include purchased seed of 'Sheepnose Pimento', 'Sweet Heat', 'Planet Hybrid', 'Margaret's', 'Marconi Red', 'Sonoma Sunset Hybrid', and 'California Wonder'. It also includes seed from peppers I liked including some mini-peppers sold for grilling with dozens yellow, orange, and red in a large bag from the grocery store. I saw these listed for sale from seed and labeled as 'Yum' peppers. I saved seed from the very reddest and also from the peppers at large. I saved seed from the reddest of those 'Aruba' from my own garden and some from some jalapenos, too.

So I started my seed on March 1. Today, the first of my seedlings are up. I am using a grow mat and soaked the seed fro about 5 minutes before pressing into a native soil mix of 70% sandy loam and 30% spaghum peat moss. I then covered my seed with vermiculite and watered well. I have my seed planted in a domed 288-cell tray. The best and biggest will make their way to the family garden. I may also sell some of my excess. We'll see.

I guess it should come as no surprise that the saved seed is the first out of the ground. There's lots of those little 'Yum' peppers. Also the 'Sweet Heat' look to be doing well. As a general rule, because of poor germination I planted most of the tray two seeds to a cell, unless the package was only 10 or 20 seeds to a pack, as was the case with the 'Margaret's', 'Marconi Red', 'Planet Hybrid', and 'Sweet Heat'. These were also the pricier seed at 35 to 65 cents a seed.

So, one of my criteria, other than they be sweet red pepper varieties, include a short growing season from transplant (for those innocents among you, the number on the packages "days to harvest" is from transplant date, not seeding or germination). Days from transplant to harvest for these varieties are 80 days for 'Sheepnose Pimento', 56 days for 'Sweet Heat', 73 days for 'Planet Hybrid', 62 days for Margaret's', 75 days for 'Marconi Red', 70 days for 'Sonoma Sunset Hybrid' and 75 days for 'California Wonder'.

I confess. A couple of the varieties, the colorful picture of the red pepper sold me, particularly the one showing the 'Sonoma Sunset Hybrid' and its thick deep red sliced rings of sweet red pepper.

Ideally, my choices are heirlooms and non-hybrids from which I can collect my own seed from the plants that do the best in my own garden. That's one of the reasons 'Margaret's' made my list. This is from the Jung's seed catalog (a local seed provider here in Wisconsin):

"The sweetest, biggest, most beautiful sweet pepper you'll ever grow. The fruits are huge, about 7 inches long, with color that transitions from green to orange to deep red. They have thick walls and outstanding mild, sweet flavor. The plants bear early and prolifically. The original seed was brought from Hungary by a family member of Margaret Gubin, a long-time Jung customer from Cambria, Wisconsin who carefully maintained the stock seed for over 50 years."


So these are my choices this year. I am making an extra commitment to properly tag them from the get-go. Aren't my little laminated tags cute? My son's dad gave me his old laminator.

So what varieties are your favorites? I would love to hear!

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Making Wisteria Bloom







This time of year, it's nice to take a moment to look at the structures in your garden. I came across this garden arch serving as an entrance to a vegetable plot. Covered with a fairly young wisteria vine in bloom, it was a nice touch. The gardener who placed a wisteria on this trellis knew what they were doing.




Notice how they have braided and twined the wisteria vine on itself, stressing the plant. Girdling part way around some of the main stems would also help accomplish this stress. You can wait a long time for a wisteria to bloom, or you can help it along. If waiting is not your style you could try the sure thing and plant a nice clematis like 'Betty Corning' or a honeysuckle vine.


Saturday, March 3, 2012

Last Dance



My son played his last basketball game tonight.

I can't even wrap my head around that one.

His dad was there, his god parents (an aunt and uncle from five hours away), my brother and his twin sons. Not my sister-in-law though, as baby Asher was acting like he wanted to catch the game, too-- a month early-- maybe her water broke. My parents were listening on WDUX, the game being broadcast on radio.

The band was playing and all seemed precipitous to a Wildcat victory; and then...

...it wasn't.

My son put everything on the court, emptied out all his pockets, and the team came up short.

My one nephew was entranced with the band. Here I figured him for a post player. A post player like my brother, my sister...my son. But maybe not.

My other nephew, is agile, sure-footed, not like my lurking, lunky boy. A point guard in a family of post players. What to do? Ah, watch number 5. He does. For like five minutes in a game where the opponent tries to waste a clock that seems to be operating in a different universe moving incredibly fast where most times it never seems to wind down. Were they playing 6-minute quarters tonight?

He watches the point guard.

Then I hear his plaintive cry,

"I need...the...b-a-a-lll..."

Like a tiny whisper from his very soul, crawling up and intertwining with my son's sweat and anguish (and my tears).

Yes.

My son needs it, too.

After I watch the last few seconds tick away with my son on the bench, his face buried in his jersey because he is weeping the hot tears of defeat, crying, as is the point guard sitting next to him. The point guard, the son of a man who he has spent more time with than his own father this last ten years, and who even now sits on that same bench. He is the varsity assistant coach.

And then the game is over.

I walk down to the Athletic Director, who is standing off court holding the game ball. I ask him if I can have it. He says he has to have it back and that kids can't play with it.

Okay.

I had recently asked asked my son if the game balls were leather. " Yes," he answers. "What did you think they were made of?"

I didn't know.

I didn't know.

The only basketballs I have ever held have been a hard rubber. My son has one where the traction dots are rubbed smooth. Sometimes when I have watched his games, the ball seems to slip so easily out of their hands, but more likely their opponents' like it is slick, slippery, and wet.

I hold it in my hands. It is dry, soft, warm. It feels good in my hands.

I'm too old to have played high school basketball. Title IX happened for my sisters, not for me. In college, I rowed. It wasn't until a couple years ago, I realized that that fact actually made me a D1 athlete.

If I had held a basketball in my hands, a basketball like this one; I would never have let it go. I realize now how hard it must have been for my son to have been the "big man" all these years. His previous game he made 22 points, had 15 rebounds, two steals; a powerhouse on the court.

This game, a whimper in comparison.

I let my nephews touch the ball. But the touch is like channeling all the pent-up kinetic energy expended this evening on possession of this very ball. They whimper, "touch it, touch it, HAVE IT."

No.

I quickly return it to the Athletic Director.

Fifteen years from now, maybe on this very court, I will actually want the school whose team won this evening, to win yet again. Maybe it will be my nephews sweat and tears that will dampen this ball, but tonight this beautiful, cool leather dry ball is awash in the acrid, sad tears of my son, his team, and me.


Friday, March 2, 2012

Wet, Heavy Snow








Boughs bend deep with snow
Branches burdened, bowed, but alive
Limbs creak, groan, then give.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Food Wars: The Battle of Quiche



I wish my son ate quiche. He won't even try it. I LOVE quiche. It is so easy. I say I can always eat pizza; but I could eat quiche almost as often, if I had someone to help me.

My son, just doesn't eat like I do. He is constantly on the look-out for meat and carbs, his evil treat: potato chips. He can leave sweets untouched in the cupboard or fridge (for example, the pan of fudge brownies lurking to ambush me on the top shelf of my fridge, holed up for 3 days now!)

He's an athlete, and everything I'm not. The long list of foods I just crave forms nearly a perfect overlap with the foods he won't even taste: tuna, eggs, olives, melons, peppers, cheeses other than Monterrey Jack, vegetables, tomatoes, spinach, pickled and fermented food... the list is long and includes quiche.

This sweet potato and spinach quiche was pretty good and very easy. There are quiche out there that have a "self-crust, but I made this particular quiche in a pastry crust with a recipe out of the Moosewood Cookbook.

That crust:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter
scant 1/3 cup water

Stir up the ingredients, and roll it out. Put it in a preheated 425 degree (F) oven for about 15 minutes. Pierce the crust with a series of fork holes. I always like to cover the crust edges with tin foil. After you pre-bake the shell, you can fill it however you like.

I like quiche because it is a perfect decadent-tasting meal, and it reheats easily.

The ingredients you use in the filling can be chosen pretty much free-style as long as you include 4 large eggs and minimally 1/2 cup of shredded cheese, and 1/2 cup milk.

The quiche pictured here has probably a cup of chopped spinach, and a cup of 3/8" cubed uncooked sweet potato. Not cooking it allowed the texture to remain a bit firm to crunchy but brought out a slightly nutty flavor.

I also included in this particular quiche, chopped black olives, chopped sun-dried Roma tomatoes in olive oil, a tsp. of basil, some black pepper, crushed red pepper, celery salt, and garlic salt.

When I cook it, I leave on the tin foil and turn the heat down just a bit to 375 or 400 and cook it for about 20 minutes, or until everything has firmed up and has gone a sort of golden brown. A dry toothpick stuck in the middle it a good test.

Quiche is a dish a beginning cook can make their own.