A Month Ahead and A Month Behind

Azaleas are peaked or past peak.

Roses are busting out.

I was just going through last year's photos of the garden and it looks like we are almost a month ahead in terms of bloom times. In fact, my garden seems like it's in a big hurry, and every flower and every plant is vying for attention. The azaleas bursted open as if they were trying to beat out the daffodils. The roses woke up so early, I thought they might ask for a cup of coffee. The dogwoods flowered so fast, I almost missed them. And the May-blooming irises and peonies are warming up in the batter's box for their turn at the April plate.

We're finally going to get some rain today and it couldn't come at a better time because while the garden is out ahead, the Putterer is way behind at work. So today, I'm going to be head down at home on the keyboard. Though, really that doesn't bother me. It's a pleasant task, I'm writing little blurbs on the cool things to see at each of the museums. I might even run downtown and take in a museum, or two, to complete the task.

A bus man's holiday.

Meanwhile, I couldn't be more pleased with the garden this year. I'm right on schedule, having put down mulch for the first time in half a dozen years on some of the beds and staunched a few weeds. I got grassseed down just before the early spring showers arrived, so the blades are robust and thick. I grew red lettuce, kale and chard from seed, so the vegetable patch is ready to deliver. I worked and worked

Dogwoods are showering their petals.

Swiss chard is ready for picking

the soil over at the community garden. I grew a cover crop of clover, then turned it over in trenches, row by row, mixing in compost so that my beds are thick and spongy, and teaming with earthworms. Over there, I've got sugar snap peas and greens growing in one bed and the others are ready to plant just as soon as the nights can be counted on to stay warm. I've got tomatoes, melons, cukes, swiss chard, basil, eggplant, peppers, onions and parsley starts all thriving under my lights and waiting to go out to be hardened off and planted.

Today, the temperature shouldn't  rise above 55, so I've got my fireplace humming with a toasty blaze. Delicious coffee in hand. Snoozy pup snuggling beside me. It's going to be a wonderful day today.

An early spring for an at-the-ready gardener. Not a bad thing at all. The Putterer

Will the Swiss Chard Like My Cucumbers?

This picture has nothing to do with this post,
but these irises are in bloom now at my fence
in my home garden.

Flash. You know you are really a chronic garden-aholic, when your first thought of the day is whether or not swiss chard is a companion to cucumbers. It was not quite 4:30 this morning when I started pondering my next move in the garden. One thought led to another, including trying to figure out if  I can get a little planting time in this evening after work and before dinner has to be on the table. And never mind, the crush of assignments piling up on my desk at work, which doesn't keep me awake anymore (yay!). I know it will be there when I get back there in the morning.

I am up with the birds again and running around on the Internets searching for the perfect plant to be BFF to my pickling cucumbers. Now, nasturtium, which I plan to pop into the soil just as the edges and around my Putter Fort and next to my neighbor in plot number 25. . . (By the way, I was coming home, waiting at the light on East West Highway next to the Fenton Street Garden. Craning my neck, I could see that the owner of 25 was in the garden. She hadn't shown up at any other time and I was anxious to meet my plot neighbors to either side. I was dressed for the office and it was raining a slow trickle and I actually considered running over there in my heels just to say hello. Plot-aholic!)

Okay, back to nasturtium and cukes. These plants work in tandem with one another. I can plant the nasturtium, as well, on the tomato side of my plot/fort. They will deter aphids and other pests and they will improve growth and flavor to both cucumbers and tomatoes. (By the way, cukes and tomatoes are NOT BFFs (that means "Best Friends Forever". So I have the two plants planted on either side of the fort, separated by my hallway path) And I want good flavor. Besides, I love the taste of nasturtium flowers in my salads. It's always a surprise to my guests when I say, "yes, you can eat that."

But the chard and the cukes are not good mates. Chard wants to be close to tomatoes and beans, not cukes. So any plans for chard have to be reconsidered. Meanwhile, I have this open space next to the cukes. What to do? My friend, Anne, suggests bush beans. I've already got pole beans planted in the back room of the fort. And frankly, I just don't really love beans all that much to have so many growing. Radishes and dill could work. But every time, I've tried to grow radishes, I pull them out of the ground to harvest and something has gone terribly wrong. They never pop out looking like anything I've paid for in the supermarket or at the farmers market. Under my soil, they twist and turn and morph themselves into a terrifying vegetable that looks like an old man's junk. Yuck, who wants that at table?

My friend, Anne, also suggested okra. I have no idea what an okra plant looks like. Oh Miss Google, would kindly show me an okra plant? Holy crap! That one grew to nine feet. Good gracious, I don't think the plot could handle a nine-foot inhabitant. Now, while I love okra and their crazy gooey mess that seeps from their delicious seed-filled pods, every pic I've just clicked on is showing something just a little too gynormous. But the okra is a very good friend to the eggplant and I have eggplant growing that are clamoring to have a buddy. I could try okra at the back fence and if they got too big, I'd just take them out.

Oh, I could do this endlessly. Time to eat breakfast. The Putterer

The Putterer Sputters and the Garden Grows Wild

I've selected this tender photograph to head up the post because I'm afraid to even enter the garden today, let alone take any pictures. I know it will be a wild place given over to spiders and their webs, mosquitoes and their stings, and rampant weeds and their climbing vines. This has been a rough summer for the kind of gardener, who hopes to keep nature tidy. But for nature, it has been a rambunctious and wild ride.

The image was taken a few weeks ago, when I was home from work recovering from surgery. Patsy was babysitting the neighbors' children and we took her charges to Brookside Garden to see its most excellent butterfly exhibit, "Wings of Fancy." The monarch alighted on little Maya's hand and her brother Johannes reached out to share in the experience. It was enough sentiment to make you want to weep. And Patsy, the photographer, caught the decisive moment.

Meanwhile, as the Putterer sputtered, the garden was left to its own devices. I clipped around the edges and Jim helped with some of the heavy, heavy stuff. But the mosquitoes took over, and though the spiders tried mightily to eat them all, they constructed their webs across all my paths. Then the sun beat down in one of the worst heat waves ever and the hydrangea that I transplanted from sunny spot to shady side last spring still took a hit as the soil cemented itself around its weary roots. The single squash plant took over the vegetable bed, it's prickly stems grew wickedly sharp. The cukes tried to fruit even as the deer nibbled its leaves to a quick. The eggplant delivered, but then toppled. The peppers gave up. The tomatoes did fine, but the squirrels and the raccoons stole the fruit. And then the rains came. A deluge, that bent the flowers over and dropped dried branches from the trees. I've seen evidence that locusts are on their way.

Today, strong and recovered, the Putterer will don long pants and sleeves, pepper herself with DEET, sharpen her clippers, and after asking Mother Earth's permission, she will advance into the wild place and make tidy the garden. The Putterer

The Love of My Life: Eggplant

I love eggplant. I can't get enough of it. Whenever we order out for our Friday night meals, my friends always pick out an eggplant dish especially for me.

This year, I stumbled across an eggplant plant at Behnkes. It was kind of late in the spring when I planted it and I wasn't sure if I'd have any success. But it has sweetly delivered about five good-sized eggplants this summer, or more elegantly in French, aubergine. This one is likely the last that the plant will offer me (though there is one blossom coming in now, and if I count the weeks until the first freeze--about five. Well, maybe she'll pop out another one for me).

Now, here is a funny story dredged from a long ago horrible time when I was smitten with my first real case of love. There is nothing worse than unrequited teenage love. The boy was in my third grade class and I fell deeply in love with him the first time I saw him. I harbored a painful passion for him for years. Maybe, as I recall, all the way through sixth grade. I did terrible things like phone him and hang up when he answered. I would sit starring at him in class. Sadly, he had no interest in me. I think he even called me Pyface. (I hated when the boys called me that.) So I made up a name for him. I channeled my love into a huge force of hate and loathing and worked up a powerful contempt for this boy, the former love of my life.

To ratify my contempt, I came up with a name for him that was certain to convey my utter and total disregard for him. His new first and last name were derived from the two most vile, repugnant vegetables that a mother could ever set before a kid to eat at dinner--"Broccoli Eggplant." Thus baptized one day on the playground, his moniker quickly caught on. The other girls on the playground and I used it to create a song, and later, a line dance to go with it. It was a chant that I'm sure unnerved him, and possibly caused his mother to phone the principal.

Today, the boy is a nice man who sells real estate. I wonder if he likes eggplant as much as I do?

My kids love eggplant, too. The other day, C. called from college and asked if I would please send her the recipe for her favorite eggplant dish. So here it is. The Putterer


Maccheroni Al Forno Alla Rustica

Ingredients

14 oz maccheroni

vegetable oil

1 aubergine, peeled and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices

salt

2 oz butter, plus extra for the baking dish

4 oz thinly sliced onion

12 oz tinned whole peeled tomatoes, with their juice, coursely chopped

freshly ground black pepper

4 tbsps freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano chees

4 pz Italian smoked mozzarella (use fresh if smoked mozz is unavailable), very thinly sliced

Preparation

1. Pour vegetable oil into a saute pan until it comes 1/2 in up the side. Place over a high heat. Once the oil has become very hot, carefully slip in as many slices of aubergine as will comfortably fit. As the bottom of each slice turns golden brown, remove from the pan and transfer to a plate covered with kitchen paper. Continue frying untill all the aubergine is done. Sprinkle with salt.

2. Pour 7 pints of water into a large saucepan or pot and place over a high heat.

3. Melt the butter in another saute pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and cook until it softens and turns a rich golden colour.

4. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and black pepper and cook until the tomatoes have reduced and separated from the butter. Remove from the heat and set aside.

5. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

6. When the water for the pasta is boiling, add 1 tablespoon of salt and drop in the pasta all at once, stirring well.

7. When the pasta is molto al dente (about 1 minute away from being al dente), drain and toss with the sauce and the grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese.

8. Smear the bottom of a shallow baking dish with butter and pour in about half the pasta, spreading it out evenly. Cover with all the aubergine slices and half the mozzarella slices. Pour in the remaining pasta, and place the rest of the mozzarella slices on top.

9. Place on the upper shelf of the oven. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until a light golden crust forms on top. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Source: The Classic Pasta Cookbook by Giuliano Hazan

Everything that Dies, Some Day Comes Back

October and it's all done. This picture of my phlox David (white) and Veronica (lavender) is old, stored for a future post back in August. Outside this morning, the remnants of phlox petals are gently drifting away.

The 2009 garden might have been one of my best. The dependable rainstorms throughout the season meant I rarely watered (I think once or twice this whole summer). In fact, the biomass that I've raked and weeded out of the garden this summer is probably a record. The deer that came through must have encountered the deer resistant plants that I'd put in, and decided to graze elsewhere. His damage was minimized by a flush of growth. The family of wrens that took up residence in my birdhouse hopefully made it to adulthood. The goldfinches have moulted. Their gorgeous yellow feathers have turned an autumn brown. The banana tree in the pot on the deck is probably confused by the cool evening temperatures. (What am I going to do with it?) The apple tree never produced but at least it's not growing sideways anymore. The peach tree survived the gypsy moth infestation. The Fourth of July tomatoes delivered all through August. The herbs and peppers are still holding fast. And the eggplant plant gave me two or three lovely Aubergine.

Now comes the process of closing it all out before the first freeze in mid-November. The fall chores sometimes come with a self-imposed anxiety to rake and clean and put away. The crush of fall social obligations, sports games and school activities. The temptation to work late in the evenings and go in on weekends to meet the press deadline for goSmithsonian. All of this conflicts with garden work and chores. I have to remember that no one cares if the plants turn brown and fall over, and the leaves gather on the lawn. It's the way it is supposed to be and I need to move slowly, deliberately, one step, one season, at a time. The Putterer