My Terrace

This is the aftermath of dealing with the hedge, a muddy little bare slope. My sensibilities are pretty simple and primitive but this was ugly. Plus I always liked terraces.


The hedge ended where the railroad tie wall begins which left a weird gap between the wall and the slope. The shrub I removed there was so large and overgrown, it was like ripping out a tree. I thought about putting in a more standard sort of wall but considering my neighborhood, and the general look of my yard to begin with, I went with found material.
I have decided to plant some nice perennials in each terrace. The bottom one has siberian iris which should grow pretty tall and cover a lot ot the railroad ties. The 2nd terraces has bee balm, also called monarda, something I had kept in a pot last year because I had not broken enough ground for it. Beebalm is beenip to bees. I really think they get stoned when they re around it. Hummingbirds love it too.

One thing I thought might be nice is to plant my spent thalia bulbs. I planted them below the bee balm. Thalia is apparently the oldest (1610) known hybrid narcissus. I don't know if they'll do well considering that I forced them in water rather than soil and that I did not let them stay green for the 6 weeks post-bloom recommended, but it was plant them or throw them away. In planting them I have cultivated the soil to a deeper depth than I would have otherwise.

They were lovely in my house. I forced them in various vases and these gigantic sherry glasses in clear glass marbles, hydroton, and white glass disks.


Here's the finished (for now) wall. It is sturdy enough to hold a cat. I hope humans will not try to stand on top of it. Anyway it isn't so much of an eyesore and will be less so as the plants grow in.

There's a Hedge

That straddles a border between my yard and an apartment building. I am working on taming it. It's just a mess! It was a combination of rose of sharon, spirea, and boxwood, with a ton of ivy choking it up and some wild morning glory and clematis (old man's beard) growing wildly. I am eradicating everything but the spirea and thinking about keeping some clematis but keeping it in check. I know also that I can't really kill the ivy but I am greatly reducing its quantity.

I am not taking pictures because it just isn't pretty. Instead I am posting some from last summer. Just looking at them cheers me up, even though I think I sorta look like my grandmother. Maybe that's why I chose that cotton dress. My grandmother had a vegetable garden and walked around barefoot all the time, squashing spiders with her feet sometimes, but that was in South Dakota.
So here's some summery pictures that cheer me up. It's hard to remember how beautiful my garden was. I am happy to see that my chamomile has self-seeded and that there are numerous chamomile plants growing, many where there aren't supposed to but I might just leave them be. Whether it's tea or bloom, chamomile is soothing.
My latest bit of bokashi juice smells like soy sauce. I guess that's decent.

Turkey Leek Fennel Wild Rice Soup

So the other week at my local farmer's market they had an extra turkey. I know it's early but I LOVE turkey so I got it, about 11 pounds maybe. I did the standard stuffing, but with some home grown leeks.

Here we have a gratuitous picture of leeks mixed with some other stuff from before the frost. I love leeks. I fell in love with them when I started my kitchen garde research and found Creative Vegetable Gardening: Accenting Your Vegetables With Flowers by Joy Larkcom. One place referenced by Larkcom and others is Villandry. Villandry is a chateau built during the Renaissance that was restored last century including a fabulous potager. Leeks and cabbages are pretty prominent in the squares.

I won't go in depth about it just now, but my aspirations are kinda like it. Visit their website, the design is just amazing if you haven't heard of it. So the leeks there were part of a square design I had that I let go a bit.

Anyhow, when I make turkey, I try to when the 1st meal is over to clean all the meaat off the bones. Then I put the bones in a huge pot of water with all the good stuff you need to make soupstock. Usually for poultry that includes celery and celery seed but in this case I threw in some fennel stalks with a bunch of fennel seeds left on. There's also as you may see some carrots and some parsley(not really visible. Anyway, I hope that that's a good self-portrait. This is simmered overnight which makes the house smell great.

The soup is delicious. If anyone shows an interest I might post my recipe.

Morning

This is the 1st thing I see in the morning. That's a lemon rose geranium that lived outside when it was still warm.

I love scented geraniums. They were really popular about 100 years ago but could I imagine see a resurgence.

In the book, A History of Kitchen Gardening by Susan Campbell, she describes how fresh apples were placed in baskets lined with rose geranium leaves. That by the way is a pretty cool book. It tells of old greenhouses heated many ways including by hot composting manure!

Next we have some lemongrass, which also lives outside when it's warm. I really have enjoyed this. It's beautiful and grows fast. Below it I planted he shou wu, which was an impulse buy. I guess it's pretty neat but I don't love it.

The cat pictured below likes to eat this lemongrass, now that I've moved it inside. I just started some wheatgrass for him to munch on. I think he sorta likes doing things that he knows will annoy me.
I started this post when there was way too much going on for me to finish it. Not that it really matters but I usually have a general idea or a post, usually based, since I do want this to have lots of eye candy, on a photo or 2 or 3. So I post the photos then I edit my post.

I can't see what it actually looks like until after I publish it which is annoying. I mean, I am a visually oriented person, this is true for my gardens and it's true of this blog, I'm picky.

So the final picture here is me not really awake holding Abe who obviously wants me to put him down, which I did. In the background are some tomato plants that I really should dispose of but haven't yet.

You have an idea of what I see every morning. The lemongrass has had a few blades dangerously dangling over my bed so I've trimmed them, but it's nice feeling like I am living in a benevolent jungle. It's one of my pleasures.

I'm going to add one more thought. My last post was before our election and I am really happy that Obama won the election. I hesitate to say anything political but I suspect that most people with my gardening lean are left of center, though if anything, Obama is more of a return to center rather than a turn to the left.

I won't argue with anyone about this but one thing that drove me crazy in my landscaping past is the conservative wealthy people I dealt with, not that they were mean, but they just seemed so removed from LIVING. I had some stepford wives, you know what I mean?

This is why I should only talk about happy, non controversial things, and landscaping. But since on this post I've already dug myself a hole, I'll refer you folks to an article by Michael Pollan, Dear Mr. President-Elect, I am warning you that this article is 9 pages but I think I agree with it. It was published almost a month before the election so it could be to either McCain or Obama, though I have only heard Obama acknowledge reading it.

My checkered past

So what did I do before this?

Lots of things.

I'll talk about these 2 pictures 1st. These 3 steps shows just some of the seedlings I started with this past May.

Some of these seedlings went to other gardens but I do overplant. Just glancing at this I see a few that perished. Some due to my negligence, others for other reasons.

I had some catmint, a relative to catnip, that perished from a certain orange cat nipping at it. The same neighborhood cat I believe killed a cardinal chick in my tree hydrangea. For some reason my gray cat has befriended 'Orangy' while fighting with just about any other cat in the neighborhood. Orangy also liked to use one of my beds as a litterbox. I had to make a 'tiger trap' with skewers to keep her(?) out. But I digress.

So anyway, the 2nd picture shows a bed planted with red cabbage, lettuce, ocean sorbet pansies, and some tulips. There's also some onions.

Inspiration for this kind of planting comes from Joy Larkcom's book
Creative Vegetable Gardening: Accenting Your Vegetables With Flowers. This book was my introduction to Larkcom. I have since discovered that perhaps she should be as famous as Michael Pollan. Really, she is one of my heroes.

I truly believe that vegetables and flowers need not be separated. There are many reasons for this. Another proponent of this philosophy is Edward C. Smith. I learned a lot from his book
The Vegetable Gardener's Bible, a pretentious title from a non-pretentious man. One observation he made is that often plants that grow well together taste well together.

Didn't I say that I was going to talk about myself? Oh yeah, so here's a picture of me from this past May, shoveling compost from my truck to my garden.

I signed up for google analytics and found that finally somebody searched and hit this blog, which has had about 30 unique visitors. This was somebody in Beverly Hills, California! But they searched on my name!

Oh no! I have 2 guesses as to the identity of said person, but that could reveal my checkered past. I'll let you uninformed readers imagine something more interesting than reality.

I grew up 1 generation removed from a farm in South Dakota, 2 generations from Europe of 3 of my 4 grandparents. My father was a mathematician at the University of Pittsburgh, a bit of a leap from a dirt farm, my mother mostly a housewife, also from a South Dakota farm.

I have been to college but dropped out to work on archaeological digs in the lower 48. I've worked in more than a dozen states, mostly NE, but also New Mexico, California, and Oregon. My work as a field tech (shovel bum) spanned 15 years off and on, perhaps more off than on but it was pretty cool.

For 2 years straight I was a bicycle messenger in Pittsburgh, which included 2 winters. This was a blast but pretty crazy. If you think being a messenger is easy I've got a few bridges here to sell you.

After that, I landscaped for a very small company for some of the wealthiest people in Pittsburgh. I worked for this place for 2 years before I decided I'd be better off striking it out on my own. Plus I also decided that I wanted to try to get people to do something a little different from the standard stuff.

I think it's about time for people to rethink their yards. So there you have it.