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

Ginormous Harvest Today

Four foot-long cukes and four foot-long squash.

What happens in the garden when the gardener gets laid up and can't get out to garden? Worse yet, what happens when the quick-growing poke weed jumps up so tall that it towers over the squash and cucumbers, providing cover so a few of the fruit can go rogue? That's right, the gardener reaps a harvest that is so enormous, so ginormous, so beyond big, that it borders on the obscene.

Today, after wrestling with about 25 four foot tall poke weed plants, yanking them free of the soil and bagging their sorry hides, I was able to pull from deep under the yellow squash plant four amazing foot-long wonders. After that, I freed up four more cucumbers. Two of them had grown so large that they'd given up being cukes, having turned from green to a scary pale yellow that made them look more like an alien-like birthing pod.

Preliminary research seems to be indicating that this biomass of vegetation is going to be either too course, too bitter or too seedy to eat. But I'm not inclined to give up just yet. So I've found a buttermilk squash recipe that calls for two-and-a-half pounds of yellow squash (One down, three to go.) and I've got another cucumber and yogurt soup recipe that calls for three "large" cukes. (Hmm, I wonder if that means some 36 inches of cucumber, the length of my three-foot-longs laid end to end.). We're also going to have some sliced cukes marinated in balsamic vinegar, more bathed in ranch dressing, and still more dipped in a vinaigrette.


And I may have to make more squash bread and stick those in the freeze with the half-dozen that are already there. On the other hand, if you're reading this, maybe I could foist a two-pound squash off on you? If nothing else, you could try hoisting them numerous times as a healthy knew way to build up your biceps. The Putterer

Let's Hear It for the Fig

My little fig tree, Ficus negronne, a self-pollinating dwarf that I got from Wayside Gardens early this spring is happily bearing fruit. We've just sampled our second of its offerings today for lunch. It has a delicate and subtle flavor, but when I bite into it, I'm registering a powerful amount of delicious satisfaction simply because I grew it myself.

Even though I've had to share a lot of my harvest with my intruder friends--the squirrels, deer and raccoons--this year's garden has been delivering all sorts of sweet surprises--the tomatoes, the occasional cuke, the eggplant and the squash, not to mention all of the arugula, mint, sage, basil, oregano, lemon balm, rosemary and lavender.

The garden seems to be offering us a rather interesting trickle down effect. Nothing miraculous, of course, nobody is jumping up to say, "Hey Mom, should I go out and weed for you? Can I mow the lawn? How about I sweep off the sidewalks and the deck and pick up all the sticks from the storm." (Call me a failed parent?)

But instead, the garden has been slyly infusing our lives with an overwhelming desire for delicious, nutritious foods. One example a bunch of bananas grew dark and unwanted in the fruit bowl on the counter top. It looked time to pitch the contents of the bowl, when Patsy decided she would make us a banana bread. Herbal teas and infusions are the drink of choice. And nobody has any desire for fast or frozen foods. When I ask what they'd like for dinner, the girls come back with requests like salad nicoise or brussel sprouts. I even cooked up and served a bowl of dandelion leaves one evening and while we all thought the flavor too harsh and bitter, everyone dug in, eating the greens if only to benefit from its healthful properties.


So let's hear it for the fig! The Putterer

In A Pickle

I crave a pickle. I want the kind my grandma used to make and I don't have her recipe. So I made some this weekend and I've got my fingers crossed that they'll at least be a close approximation.

I had to buy the pickling cukes at the farmers market. I was growing cukes in the garden, but the deer chewed them to the quick.

These pickles will have to sit in the fridge now for two weeks.

Let's just hope this will satisfy my intense craving. The Putterer

The Not So Nettlesome Nettle

“Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies.” – Richard II III.ii.

Today it will be 105 degrees and I will venture little in the garden. Even in the shade, the humidity makes any outdoor activity akin to a death wish. But still even on the hottest day of the year, the garden delivers.

I am snug inside my air conditioned home, drinking a tall glass of stinging nettle tea over ice. I made it with a dried herb, one cup to one quart hot water (not boiling), and left to sit overnight. It tastes like a glass of fresh goodness, giving first an aroma of a hay-filled barn on a hot day and a vibrant flavor of wholesome greens.

Quick Wiki: Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) is a dioecious herbaceous perennial, 1 to 2 m (3 to 7 ft) tall in the summer and dying down to the ground in winter. It has widely spreading rhizomes and stolons, which are bright yellow as are the roots. The soft green leaves are 3 to 15 cm (1 to 6 in) long and are borne oppositely on an erect wiry green stem. The leaves have a strongly serrated margin, a cordate base and an acuminate tip with a terminal leaf tooth longer than adjacent laterals.

Now, I have often seen this plant in my garden and pulled it out and tossed it as any common weed. But this gardener promises to redeem herself from now on. In my quest this week (I had two weeks off from work to recover from surgery. And while the body mended, the mind was free to range) to learn better solutions for coping with the symptoms of menopause, I've discovered a range of plants that offer solace. Nettle is practically the Wunderkind of garden herbs.

Herbalist Susun S. Weed crowns it with "miraculous" abilities. As a source of calcium, magnesium potassium, silicon, boron, zinc and vitamin D, it is an agent for healing and restoration. Weed says it energizes the endocrine glands (critical to women who have lost the hormonal function of their ovaries); it nourishes the cardiovascular system, normalizes weight, eases and prevents sore joints, relieves constipation, and helps to maintain supple skin and healthy hair.

So on this hot day as the body continues to mend and the mind to wander, I'm thinking of the possibilities. Newly restored, refreshed and energized, I look now into my crystal ball and see multitudes of ideas and opportunities. How is it that a simple green friend had so much to offer and yet, grew in my garden weed-like overlooked and unwanted?  This week, I walked the trail in Sligo Creek Park, the tendrils of unknown plants tickled my legs as I navigated the path, and I felt the magnitude of my botanical ignorance. I want to know more of the secrets of plants. And so a new quest begins.

Gardener of flowers and vegetables seeks herbal wisdom and knowledge of nature's ways. The Putterer

Sage Advice

This afternoon, I clipped six leaves off my sage plants and made an herbal tea for me and Patsy and Claire. I poured  hot (not boiling) water into the teacups (two leaves a piece) and left the mixture to steep for ten minutes. The drink turned out to be a soothing minty-flavored tea and we all enjoyed it. The tea idea came from some sage advice found in the book, "New Menopausal Years: the Wise Woman Way" by Susun S. Weed.

I went kind of crazy on Amazon, recently, with one-click shopping and bought enough books on menopause that it should take me into the next decade to read all of them. But the most appealing one so far is Weed's. She didn't start off first with a patronizing sermon about losing weight and starting an exercise program like one silly book did. It didn't start off, either, listing all the symptoms in a terrifying sort of mantra of doom and gloom as another did. And it didn't ask you to purchase a confusing and likely toxic recipe of expensive bottled nutritional supplements.

Instead, Weed's Wise Woman Way appealed to my inner goddess, or rather my strong woman credo. Her sensible advise and soothing words explained that this path is just like any other of life's hardships, one to face bravely and to conquer, but to do it with acceptance, grace and commitment. (Alice must slew the Jabberwocky! Me, I've already done that. Bring on Menopause!) And really it went straight to my heart with a rather appealing idea that any gardener would appreciate. Weed's approach is to enlist "herbal allies," common plants found in most backyard gardens.

"When we consume phytoestrogen-rich plants we allow our individual bodies to create precisely the hormones we need," says Weed. Phytoestrogen plants are those that contain an estrogen that is similar in chemical structure to human estrogen: seaweeds; roots of dandelion, carrot and yam; seeds like nuts, grains and beans; buds like artichokes and berries. Women who consume these estrogen-rich plants in their diets "don't need to adjust their hormone dosages the way women on pills and patches do," says Weed.

Well, I'm down for that. I'm not taking any more pills. I'm already a tamoxifen junkie, who has to pop an aspirin every other day so that the darn tamoxifen doesn't cause me to stroke.

I'm going to carefully study each of the ten herbs that the Wise Woman recommends. Today, I went to Weed's sage page (p.159). I'm growing sage (Salvia officinalis) in my container garden on the deck just outside my kitchen door. An old wives' tale says that "where sage doth grow well and vigorous, therein rules a strong woman." Huzzah!

According to Weed, it will prevent and regulate night sweats, reduce mood swings, calm your crazy side, ease inflammation, aid with digestion (be gone flatulence I trounce you with sage!), help with headaches, strengthen your liver (Woo Hoo,  Margaritas?), vanquish joint pain. 

And for you still youthful ladies, it will sooth menstrual cramps, too.

Let's hear it for the sage old sage plant! How about you come over and we mix up a pot of sage tea? The Putterer

A Rainy Day Recovery

I probably shouldn't be blogging just yet. Doctor's orders say I should avoid operating heavy equipment, or signing legal documents, (really it says that on my orders). But early mornings are my favorite time of the day and since I've spent the last 18 hours sleeping or dozing, I'm feeling not so bad. The weather is working out well for me, too. After about 10 hot, hot dry days, in which I diligently maintained my container garden with rain barrel water, it is raining. It's a slow steady soaker, the kind that a gardener appreciates. And the rain barrel is filling up again. In this picture, you'll see my rudbeckias and my Russian sage and the moonlight coreopsis all commingling together at the front fence. In the heat of the past few days, over 100 degrees at times, these plants thrived, casting an ethereal beauty to the entrance of our home. When you walked through the gate and passed alongside them, there was a sense of a slight drop in temperature and maybe even a fragrant breeze.

And now the rain coming down makes me feel at peace and content to just do nothing at all but snuggle in for a few days and let myself heal. The Putterer