Notice: garden closed due to armored bug takeover

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The mosquitoes have staged a hostile coup.
They are massive and ravenous, these Psorophor ciliata monsters.
They hold all veggies hostage in the garden fortress.
No weapons are effective against them.
We sneak in to aid the escape of ripe tomatoes, then flee.
You will find us in the house freezing heirlooms, Romas and whipping up gazpacho until further notice.

Poem: The earth's economy

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The earth's economy

Just when I thought the day
had nothing left to give,
when heat was ladled across
the shallow dry plate

of the nation, working or not, alive
or not, my country
road home from work
an affair of sour radio news and roadkill —

the furred skunk, possum, cat,
squirrel, raccoon, in the
special economy of the outward-
facing nose, lost in final scent,

the surrendered open mouth,
forehead pressed back in frozen
tragedy, tension gone, time done,
appetite dissolving into skull —

I find myself at the kitchen counter
in a different Americana, tearing
kale ruffles from their spines
for a chilled supper of greens with lemon

and oil, Dijon, garlic, cucumber —
live, wet and impossibly cool from the
earth garden just outside the door,
where the farmer’s wife one hundred

years ago also opened her apron
like a cradle, gingerly receiving
into thin billowing cotton pockets
as much as she could carry

as much as she could carry

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

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A poem on the occasion of the 4th of July

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A poem on the occasion of the 4th of July

The bee balm are bursting in air—
fireworks above the bright stars
of evening primrose. At dusk fireflies
flare up like breaths of economy
among these bulwarks
of gallantly parading flowers.

   What madness to erupt and effuse
   for hours, even days on end

the fireflies seem to say as they
hold then release their neon light.

Oh, which is right?
The greed I feel for
the glare of light now, all—

or the occasional throbbing of it, in its
transience, like the firefly’s?

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My tongue speaks French and Chinese

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Chinese long beans

I have tried to keep up with my personal farmer and his vegetable garden this summer by gathering and preparing the goods for the table. Just a few footsteps from our door we've picked strawberries, rhubarb, tomatoes -- green for frying and red, yellow and orange fresh or in sauce -- green & red peppers, jalapeños, banana peppers, kohlrabi (oh so crisply satisfying dipped in hummus), beets, peas, carrots, garlic, scallions, sweet corn, cucumbers, zucchini, bush beans and pole beans. From the herb bed: basil, parsley, thyme, chives, sage and rosemary.

While ordering seeds from his piles of catalogs back in January's blue ice days, Don discovered Chinese long beans and ordered some and even built a special trellis. These long beans are also known as long-podded cowpeas, asparagus beans, snake beans, chopstick beans, yardlong beans, dau gok in Cantonese and jiang dou (豇豆) in Standard Mandarin. They are thua fak yao (ถั่วฝักยาว) in Thai, right Dee Dee? (I sort of feel that I shouldn't say that out loud.) When the first beans were ready to pick, I was impressed with their length, but I asked myself, Does size matter? I am a green bean lover. When I go to Paris, a supper of haricots verts, baguette, Roquefort and a glass of red wine suits me very well after a day out on the rues. I like a thin, delicate bean, with a warm, mellow flavor and texture that is tender and smooth.

Chinese long beans next to a handful of bush beans; 

the long beans are about 18"

As we learned more about Chinese long beans, we discovered that they are all the rage in fancy restaurants. Chefs have fun sculpting them into different concoctions, like an entertainer does with balloon animals. I decided to create nests, and Don suggested the little onions that were strangely anchored on the surface of the soil under the scallion leaves, for "eggs".

I am trés heureux to report that Chinese long beans are délicieux! They are tender and warmly savory, the way haricots verts are. And you get to create something clever if you want. These are what I call bird's nest beans, which I believe my tongue tells me is les haricots verts d'un nid de l'oiseau in French and 鳥的巢穴豆子 in Chinese, but I could be wrong.

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Ode to Garlic

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Ode to Garlic

In the harbor of autumn
the husbandman
thumbed
gondola-shaped
cloves into the dirt.
They slept
under snow moons.
In spring’s growing sun
they sprouted, and
by July,
he pulled them
from the ground
by their leaf swords
and hung them like
pendulous
bolas
to dry.

Today, he carried
them to me
where I waited
under the maple tree
with empty hands.
Like a midwife,
I cradled them in my arms --
   eggs in a nest,
   clams in a tangle of kelp.

Oh, my children!

I felt the leap
inside, as if I myself
had birthed them
from my own canal.
Being from the center
of me, it was my duty to
rub the dirt
from their faces --
fat and cherubic,
their fragile skin
falling like petals
to the grass,
my papery hands
weaving braids like a crone.

When death comes,
send me down the river
with garlic -- pearls
of life pressed
in the soil of my hands.

~ Ruth M.

Listen to a podcast of this poem here.

This is my second ode. The first was an Ode to Quinoa, written shortly after Pablo Neruda's birthday July 12, when I was re-inspired by his odes. Here is a nice bio timeline of Neruda's life. I don't know how many odes he wrote, to simple, ordinary things. My favorite at the moment is his Ode to my Socks. I especially like it when you can see his original poem in Spanish next to the English translation, which you can at that link. It adds a deeper awareness of the nuances he intended. Neruda wrote odes to salt, tomatoes, a chestnut on the ground, and many more. I think that reading his, and writing my own, is a perfect way to meditate on the essence of simple, familiar things.

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taming a wild dragon

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'Flying Dragon' Hardy Orange (Poncirus trifoliata) at Beal Gardens

I should have taken her picture. (I want to get bolder snapping people.) The college student kneeling at the foot of the Flying Dragon Hardy Orange tree is one of the "slave laborers" in the Horticulture program, and weeding campus gardens is part of her curriculum. When the weather entices, Inge and I head out Fridays at lunch to sit on a bench by a fountain or walk one of the most beautiful campuses in the world. I watched the kneeling student's gloved hands picking at leaves and tiny weeds in black soil and recognized my garden clippers sticking out her back jeans pocket. She flashed us a smile, obviously enjoying her work.

I learn best from watching and imitating, and the student tidying those beds inspired me to put our own beds in order at the farm before winter. In July before the wedding my niece Jennifer worked long, hard - and she said "enjoyable" - hours on the veggie and flower beds to shape and beautify them: ha, wedding weeding. It would be a shame to let them run too far amuck.

Fighting the grass whose roots are bound with my poor iris rhizomes will never end (photo below). I was too lethargic to tend to these ruffley pale iris in their previous bed, and the grass did what grass does, shooting roots far and wide under the iris, herbs and daylilies. Now I pay the price, like I did Saturday in another weekend of warm sun, tediously pulling thin blades and roots, making my carpal tunnel weakened wrists ache.

But yikes, I won't get carried away and manicure the farm with its rustic barns to look like Versailles. I don't just love tended iris, tulips, peonies, columbine, sedum, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers and the like. The wild natural beauty of goldenrod, Timothy grass, Queen Anne's lace and sumak in the meadow - maybe not quite as wild as a flying dragon! - is where I go sit to soak in Nature. One day if the whole farm becomes naturalized, will it be by choice, or because of my laziness?

Nature never stops working - it's the ultimate example. But my hat's off to two women of a younger generation for motivating me to get off my butt and take care of all those sweet plants that I depend on in the spring to pull me out of the dormancy of winter.




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a rare November weekend

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Autumn sun and a light wind from the south carried the weekend up to seventy degrees (21ºC) and blue skies after a few weeks of cold weather (30ºF, around 0ºC). Towels whipped in the wind. The last of the garden peppers went into white chili (with turkey Don raised, white beans, onion, garlic, cumin, homemade chili powder from our neighbor's friend (we'd run out - thank goodness! wow was this good stuff), cilantro, lime juice and chicken broth, no tomatoes - save those for red chili).

Rosemary and parsley puffed out like it was August.



Beverly and Berta wondered where the cold went.



Don even let the turkeys wander outside their fence a while, but it didn't last long. He remembered how dumb they are, worried they'd head toward the road and penned them back up.

Floozie found a rock and wanted to brood. Wow, she looks big all of a sudden, as fluffy as the parsley. She used to be such a skinny squirt. A nosy one. (See sidebar toward the bottom.)



Spearmint, peppermint, ever-ready strawberries and frost-flattened rhubarb kept two other garden beds alive and green with red trim. Don had transplanted the foundering rhubarb here where it looks to be thriving now. I tasted a chunk of pink rhubarb stalk, thinking I'd make pie, but it was tasteless. I used to eat rhubarb raw when I was a kid from a patch in my parents' backyard - crisp, gritty, juicy and SOUR. We will have to wait until spring for this plant to grow fresh tasty stalks. Save room for warm strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode in June. Something in the pairing with strawberries eliminates rhubarb's gritty feel on your teeth.



The lumberjack chain-sawed dead wood by the pond, which I later stacked in the corncrib. So far the forced air furnace has hardly kicked on in spite of cold weather the last few weeks because the wood stove is efficient and keeps us cozy. It will be cold again soon enough.



What can be said - except Hallelujah, Praise the Lord and pass the sour cream (for the chili), and butter and honey (for the cornbread)!



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corny garden fun

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If April showers bring May flowers . . .

what do May flowers bring?

Pilgrims.

Planting tulip bulbs Saturday I thought about my dad in his quilted plaid wool shirt raking leaves. His wavy rusty hair had gone gray in those later years, but I still see him standing in the russet maple leaves with matching hair blowing up like a flame to the sky.

Dad was a Baptist minister. He crafted words into two sermons every week, fifty weeks a year, one for the formal Sunday morning service and another for the more casual evening service. His words were not flowery, they were just right. He wanted the gospel to speak for itself through him, a simple vessel. His Virginian accent had softened so you could just barely tell he was Southern. My ever-supportive mother said every week, "Carl, that was the best sermon you have ever preached."

But when he was home, he hardly spoke. We - my mother and eight kids - had to guess what he was thinking. Sometimes he would sit at his end of the big dining table, put his fork down and wait while we figured out what he required. Was it the salt? The bread, butter? The peas? At last after we passed him two or three things he would help himself and we would go on with our own plates. I am guessing he thought the other nine of us talked enough and he just didn't want to add anything else to the room.

But both my parents loved words, the English language, witticisms and word plays of any kind. Nothing got my dad to chuckle through his teeth like a word play. He didn't write this verse I found, but it is just the kind of thing he would have memorized and recited with a big goofy smile.

Cabbage always has a heart;
Green beans string along.
You're such a Tomato,
Will you Peas to me belong?
You've been the Apple of my eye,
You know how much I care;
So Lettuce get together,
We'd make a perfect Pear.
Now, something's sure to Turnip,
To prove you can't be Beet;
So, if you Carrot all for me
Let's let our Tulips meet.
Don't Squash my hopes and dreams now,
Bee my Honey, dear;
Or tears will fill Potato's eyes,
While Sweet Corn lends an ear.
I'll Cauliflower shop and say
Your dreams are Parsley mine.
I'll work and share my Celery,
So be my Valentine.

"Let's let our Tulips meet."

Do you know about "spoonerisms"? Take a minute and at least read the first story of Rindercella, her mugly other and two sad bisters and how she eventually slopped her dripper for the prandsom hince to find who tried it on her mugly other and it fidn't dit.
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harvest

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It doesn't seem to matter what I give the Earth - discarded knobs and knuckles of bone from our table, cucumber peels, broken eggshells, or used coffee grounds that look and feel like the black sand of Kailua-Kona, even invisible and toxic things, such as fears that swirl through my brain synapses - whatever little deaths I dump into Her lap, She absorbs them.

Some days, understandably, She explodes in a torrent of wind or water, or fire borrowed from the Sun. But reguarly what She returns is purified, through some filigree filter (think mycelium and earthworms) that cleans up what I give thoughtlessly. She gives back another day of Life.

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Postscript: To answer Ann, we have a hard time letting our tomatoes ripen, because we pick them green and Don fries them. Mmm, fried green tomatoes - a little tart, very savory, crisp outside and tender inside.

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Chef Don's Recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes (for Judy and y'all):

Slice green tomatoes about 3/8" thick.
Pour some milk in a shallow dish.
Place flour in a bag (some use cornmeal, or breadcrumbs; we prefer flour).

Cover the bottom of a fry skillet with olive oil and heat over med-high (on the low side of med-high) heat. Add 1 T. butter.

Dip tomato slices in milk, then dredge in flour and place in hot oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. If heat is too high, tomatoes will brown but the center will be raw. Tomatoes should cook 5-7 minutes per side. When you see oil bubbling through holes near the edges of the tomatoes, lift the slice to see if it is brown. Flip when brown on first side and brown the second side. Enjoy, my friends, enjoy.

homey clean

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Finally, after years of intending to make a home cleaner from natural stuff, I did it. None of the recipes had allured enough to push me past lethargy until Design Sponge shared this one (I've posted my version below). Read here some of the disturbing reasons you should consider it too, such as the fact that 17,000 petrochemicals have been approved for home use, but only 30% of those have been tested for impact on humans, and that the average American home has 10 gallons of harmful chemicals hiding in cabinets and drawers.

There are many things to like about this recipe, but the best for me is adding my favorite scents with essential oils.

Homemade All-Purpose Spray

Ingredients (I bought them all at a health food store, except the empty spray bottle, which I got at Bed, Bath and Beyond):

• 1 empty 32 oz. spray bottle
• 3/4 c. Distilled White Vinegar
• 1 c. Hydrogen Peroxide
• 1 1/2 tsp. Castile Soap*
• 30 drops Tea Tree Oil
• 30-45 drops Essential Oil of choice - I used 15 rosemary drops and 15 spearmint, then I added 15 drops of lavender to rise above the smell of the vinegar (other choices include lemongrass, lemon verbena, clove, cinnamon, anise, sage, grapefruit, lemon, and lime)
  

Mixing:

• Place all ingredients into the spray bottle using a funnel or measuring cup with a spout.
• Add water until contents reach top of bottle.
• Shake vigorously and clean with pleasure!

I can still smell the tea tree oil on my fingers (I had to be sure it was coming out of the dropper). Tea tree oil is also known as melaleuca oil, something that was in Australian soldiers' first aid kids in WWI for its natural antiseptic properties.

With an initial investment of over $30 in the various bottles of stuff, I thought this homemade cleaner might be more costly than a ready bottle of GreenWorks natural all purpose cleaner, but I was willing to pay extra. When Don and I calculated the cost (by the way, apparently there are 600 "drops" in one fluid ounce), we discovered it was only $2.13 total for 32 ounces. (Compare: GreenWorks $3.39/32 oz.)

Squeaky, streakless. I've just increased my chances of becoming a clean freak.




*Castile soap alone is a profound discovery for its simplicity and pure, gentle cleaning qualities.

local organic produce - in May!

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Our friends Karl and Lloyd are off to Japan for three weeks, so they are "sharing their share" in the university student organic farm co-op. We give them a dozen eggs about once a month, and somehow this doesn't seem equal. Look at all this food for one week!

Front to back: parsnips, radishes, beets, Swiss chard, carrots, potatoes, green leaf lettuce, spinach, spring mix lettuce, chives and basil. Students raise these veggies in a hoop house on campus. Oh, I saw one of my English graduates who works there. I guess that's one thing you can do with an English degree.

I will confess to you that I am just dorkily romantic enough to pretend I was the Girl with a Pearl Earring chopping these jewels meditatively while Don was mowing the lawn. Have you seen the film with Scarlett Johansson? It's not a great movie I suppose, but the visuals are captivatingly painterly and sensual - and sensuous - and worth watching it for. The opening scene where Griet (Johansson) prepares vegetables is transporting. Oh, and so is the hanging laundry later - to peer through and hide behind, and then figuratively become womanly modesty begging to be torn away.




Oh dear, was I writing about food? But food is sensuous, no?


















In the Art of French Cooking I found a recipe for braised carrots. I added parsnips and would have added chives and basil at the end if I'd remembered. They were all chopped and ready in a pretty little white dish like they show on cooking shows. The basil smelled so good. Actually I don't know if basil and chives would taste good together. (Susan, what do you think?) I meant well but forgot to add them at the end. Gordon Ramsey would have yelled at me. What a dufus! (He would have used other choicer names.)

Then in The Silver Spoon I found a recipe for Swiss chard with parmesan cheese. It uses just the stems of the chard - you save the leaves for soup or something later on. This was scrumptious I must say, but what isn't yummy with parmesan cheese?














Besides these two dishes we had a tossed salad of green leaf lettuce, spring mix, spinach and radishes in balsamic vinaigrette. Nothing but veggies (though we're not vegetarians). We were strangely satisfied, even without rice or some other whole grain. Maybe because all this stuff was picked a couple hours before and just a few miles from here.

Here are the first ten minutes of "Girl With a Pearl Earring" so you can see the veggie scene, which happens in the first couple of minutes, in case you don't have time to watch more.

White House Victory Garden

Over at Slow Food Nation I found this Eat the View campaign to get the Obamas to model something good for the nation: devote a portion of the White House grounds to an organic edible garden. You can vote for it here:

earthy yums

Home grown carrots that Don and Lesley planted in May . . .

. . . simmering with chicken and a fat onion in the stock pot.

A parsnip, rutabaga and cauliflower from the store, chopped and cooked in the stock . . .

. . . spices sprinkled in from the East, all puréed, then blended with a roux for: creamed vegetable soup. With a side of hot cornbread like my mom baked in a black iron skillet, spread with butter and honey that quickly melt and infuse the crumbly gold.

Let winter come.

Wow, look at this delectable recipe blog I found, with great recipes, photos and writing: Laylita's Recipes