Wild at heart

Penelope, blooming again. As lovely and as fragrant as ever.
My Spanish lavender. Stinky but beautiful.

My garden has gone completely wild. It had such great potential to be this little oasis of structured fecundity. Instead it is this jungle of weeds, flowers and fruit. I can't say that it is all that bad to have this jumbled mess. It is still nice to see things sprouting and growing, and when the sun shines on it in the morning and evening it is still beautiful to me, but it is not what I had planned. I was speaking to a man from India the other day about the Indian goddess of destruction, I think her name is Kali. She is symbolic of the forces in nature that destroy and she is not evil, she just exists as a natural cycle of life. Life emerges, is organized and is then destroyed and she represents this final stage in the cycle. I guess my garden is nearing its final stages. It is about to be destroyed by the coming winter. Harvest time is right now, and I am still getting carrots, tomatoes, tomatillos, bell peppers, kung fu peppers, banana peppers, basil and all the other herbs. But the winter is near. It is sad to see a garden destroyed by winter. But winter time has its benefits too. It allows the ground to rest and there is always the promise of spring. I've heard that there are plants that one can grow during the winter months-- beans, garlic, onions and cabbage. The French do that. Those crazy French. Always doing what they want because they can. I think I will too.

Tomatoes are like candy

The tomatoes are nearly ripe. My mouth is watering as I type. I didn't stake my tomatoes too well so they are a jumbled mess, next year I will have to stake more strategically. However, I am happy that at least they have tomatoes growing on them! I've also had success with my jalepenos, my kung fu peppers and then some kind of other peppers, I don't know what they are because they are not what I thought I planted, but oh well, nice surprise I guess. My Bell Peppers grew and were so beautiful, but then some kind of ugly pest ate a really odd portion of each bell pepper top and they have not been the same since. We also had some delicious sweet peas and a couple of squash (my squash have also been attacked and are no longer producing). Overall I am very pleased with this experiment and need to clean up my beds to prepare for late summer/fall plantings.

Garden secrets

Yesterday while visiting my grandparetns I learned some gardening secrets from their neighbor, Willie. He is a fascinating man who, along with his wife Lena, escaped from Nazi Germany in a motorcycle chase. I can't remember the details of the story, although I have heard it periodically throughout my life. I should get the scoop and edit this entry later.

Anyway, he has a BEAUTIFUL yard and garden. Yesterday he gave me the recipe/formula for how he treats his plants and grass. I guess it is organic. He mixes it up and then attaches a hose to a bottle and sprays away. Thought I would share it with all you other gardners out there.

SUMMER SPRAY (for grass):

1 cup epsom salt

1 cup listerine

1 cup liquid soap (like Ivory)

1 cup amonia

1 can beer

1 can coca cola

FALL

2 cup Epsom salt

2 cup liquid soap

3 Tablespoons of baking powder

3 cups of Tobasco (willie never uses tobasco)

TREE SPRAY (apply 2-3 times per year)

2 cups liquid soap (ivory)

2 cups listerine

TOMATOES

2 Tablespoons of Molasses

2 Tablespoons of liquid soap (ivory)

Garden Fresh

Well, after all the rain the garden just exploded. We have been eating fresh salads every night. It has been fabulous! I would highly recommend gardening to anyone who has the inclination. This all emerged from some seeds I bought from Burpee and a few plants I picked up through my local farmer's co-op. When I planted the garden I kind of wondered if anything would really grow. It is so amazing what comes from seeds. If you are new to gardening, start with radishes. They sprout up the fastest. And a place I haven't yet purchased from but is an incredibly fascinating organization is Seed Savers. You can visit them at www.seedsavers.org and read all about their mission and the great seeds they offer. As a tangent, if you are really interested, you should read about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault to which they are contributing.

Le Potager

So here is my fledgling potager. I just scatter planted all of my seeds. It is getting to the point where I am going to have to thin the bunch. I plan on doing that this weekend. The weather here has been so tempermental. I am hoping that my plants make it beyond this stage so that I can eat them! I have planted: radish, turnip, carrots, spinach, tomatoes, sweet peas, strawberries, mesculen, red lettuce, bell peppers, melons, jalepenos, squash, and a variety of herbs including lavender, rosemary, sage, lemon thyme and basil. I would like to place a brick path down the center of my garden and I want to move my small fountain to the back. If I have the energy (and Rodolfo is willing to help) I plan to attempt these projects this weekend too!! There is always so much to do, so many things to learn, and so little time!

Daffodils, Forsythia & Cherry Plums in Bloom!

Glorious spring is so close we can't help but be outside! This past Sunday was sheer Eden. Our Cherry Plums, for the first time, bloomed at the same time. It was lovely! Rodolfo and I spent the day preparing part of our backyard for our first vegetable garden. We are going to do a small potager, which is French for "kitchen garden". Unlike American vegetable gardens where one tends to sow row upon row of the same crop and then have a giant harvest in the fall, in the potager one rotates a small number of a variety of vegetables and flowers each season, so you even have vegetables coming up in the winter. I can't wait to get started and I really hope the squirrels do not eat everything I plant! I also pruned my roses. Can't wait for April 15th-- it's the last frost date and then it means I am clear to be outside from then until mid-October!

My Frozen Garden

Here is that beautiful crepe myrtle. I was trying to capture the glints of sun shining through the ice on the limbs but my camera didn't capture it.

Here is my frozen lavender. This hardy herb survived the ice. I am so glad. I am testing it to see if it can survive Oklahoma's harsh winter and so far so good. Yea!!! But I'm not calling the test over until the last freeze date which I think is at the end of March.

Here is a coneflower that I never chopped down. Very brown and dry but somehow still beautiful to me.

Here is the coneflower from another angle.