Robert Bridges, an English poet from the early 1900s, once said "If odour were visible, like colour is, I would see the summer garden in rainbow clouds."
I don't know if he meant flower gardens or vegetable gardens, but either way, it's a nice visual.
My mom had a huge garden when we were growing up. I hated it. Every part of it. Planting, weeding, harvesting, preserving, eating. No thank you.
That's why it is surprising that now, in my fourth decade of life, I love almost all aspects of gardening. Except weeding; I just can't make that one a positive thing no matter how I twist it around. At best, it is a necessary evil. At worst, it is the ruination of a perfectly good day.
But I digress.
Planting...how exciting to imaging all the potential of summer bounty when putting plants and seeds in the dirt. I have become something of a fanatic of flower gardening. I spend days to weeks planning the layout of all my flower pots or containers (and I have two dozen pots/containers...no joke). Young Man once asked me why I "keep putting crap in the yard to mow around." Because it makes me happy, my friend!
One of those containers is a whiskey barrel purchased from Menards by Captain and the kids (that sort of sounds like a breakfast cereal, doesn't it) for me for Mother's Day one year.
I filled it with steer yard dirt (that's compost to all of you non-farm folks) and plunked a daisy and petunias in it. They grew to astronomical proportions. The next year, it was dusty millers...again, mutant growth. For a couple of years after that, it was sweet potato vines that eventually completely covered the barrel. I don't know what's in that dirt (actually I do), but I've been tempted a couple of times to have Captain's agronomist soil sample it and tell me what the magic ingredient is. This year, I planted flowering kale, argeratum, and a green spiky plant.
Each year when I am planning the annuals, I always leave one container as the "mystery plant" spot. I like to try one new plant each year, just to see what's what. There have been hits and misses there (memo to me, snap dragons don't do well for me), but I learn something every year.
The vegetable garden is pretty standard with several varieties of tomatoes, swiss chard, green beans, squash, zuchinni, egg plant, cucumbers, and lettuce. Captain doesn't like it when his mom and I plant the rows of seeds because they "aren't straight enough." Well geez, who cares? We are just getting more product per square inch doing it our way. Nope, not good enough. He hauls out the string and posts so he can plant a straight row. Whatever...it makes him happy.
In the early weeks after planting the garden, we check it almost daily, as if there is magic whisky barrel dirt out there that will makes Jack's beanstalk grow. By the time stuff is actually starting to ripen, the weeds are so out of control, it's hard to find the produce. Princess always complained when we made her pick green beans about whose dumb idea was it to make the bean the same color as the vines and leaves so that the beans are easy to miss. Talk to God, sweetie, it was His idea.
My first foray into preserving was a salsa recipe from my good friend, Mae, and I still use it to this day. For a couple of years, I tried the Mrs. Wages salsa mix instead because it was quicker, but I soon went back to the homemade recipe because it was better. So often, good things are worth the extra time and effort.
After that, I expanded my horizons into pizza sauce and pasta sauce. As in dozens of pints of both each year, not to mention the dozens of pints of salsa and quarts of plain stewed tomatoes. That is a lot of work the old fashioned way of blanching, peeling, and quartering the tomatoes. I finally invested in a Sauce Master at Hardware Hank. What used to take hours now took just minutes. The machine removes the peels, cores, and seeds with just the turn of a crank. Ingenius!
Another good friend of mine did a lot of pressure canning of vegetables, and after having home canned green beans at their house one evening, Captain said I should get one also because, "Damn, those were better than anything you buy in the store." The first time I used the pressure cooker, I was such a nervous wreck about possibly blowing up the house, I texted my friend every 30 seconds to double check I was doing it right. Apparently I was, because that year I had 35 pints to tide us over the winter. Now I also do pints of vegetable soup as well. My next trick is going to be canning some stew meat. We'll see how that goes.
I also used to use Mrs. Wages Dill Pickle mix, but the flavor just wasn't quite right. I did some the next year using the Ball Canning Book recipe, which were better, but still not just right. Then I accidentally stumbled upon a recipe on the internet that did not call for pickling spice...mainly because I was out of pickling spice at the time I needed to put up pickles. Oh. My. Goodness. Those were the best pickles (a) I've ever made or (b) I've ever tasted. And therein lies the reason behind today's post. I am going to a friend's house to get some dill so I can make some awesome pickles to last us through the winter!
In your life's garden, I hope you have many beautiful blooms, few weeds, and a bountiful harvest of rainbow clouds!
No comments:
Post a Comment