Garden Hurdles

There’s a show on the BBC that I absolutely love, called Gardener’s World. It features Monty Don, who gardens a plot of land called Longmeadow. The garden is in Herefordshire, west of the Cotswolds. I can’t get this show on my TV, but every week some intrepid YouTuber puts it up on his channel. Invariably it is taken down within hours, as it of course is put up without permission. If I catch it just right, I can see the whole episode. I ALWAYS learn something. And I love looking at the gardens, both Longmeadow and the ones the hosts visit, and learning how different people do things.

In a recent episode, Monty was saying how they had had a lot of rain, and it caused all his border plants to flop into the paths, which caused anyone walking there to have soaked pants in seconds, and of course the plants were getting trampled. So he was using hurdles to prop them up, off the path. Ding ding ding, my brain was singing, this is what you need, Elizabeth! So of course I texted Dad immediately. “You have any of that French Broom laying about, from the garlic rack project?” and one thing led to another, with Dad taking a trip to a local open space, braving the thick stands of poison oak, chopping down more broom, and then making me five hurdles out of it.

I love ‘em and I could use another 20, honestly. I see endless uses for them. Originally these weren’t used in the garden, however. The UK have a long history with hurdles. They were used as a temporary pen for sheep, for shearing, or tagging, anytime the farmer needed to corral some livestock temporarily. They had to be lightweight so that the farmer could carry several at a time on his shoulder. They had to be flat for easy storage. They were often made from coppiced wood (another ancient term which no one uses anymore), which was a method of cutting down fast-growing trees to a certain height every year, using the cut wood for farm projects, and allowing the tree to regrow for the next year. Willow was a common wood used for this purpose, or hazel. Eventually the advent of modern sheep containment overtook these old ways of doing things, and folks used their old hurdles for garden fencing. Now artisans make them for high-end gardens, often woven, costing a whole lot of money.

I found an interesting website for the Heritage Crafts Association in Britain, whose President is HRH the Prince of Wales! The association explores all kinds of crafts in the history of the country, reports them alive and well or endangered (as hurdles are), and discusses the history of the items and any other interesting tidbits. If you’d like to read more about hurdles (and I think you should, it’s fascinating), you can see that website HERE.

Their mission statement reads “The Heritage Crafts Association supports the 2003 UNESCO Convention and its goal of safeguarding traditional craftsmanship by supporting the continuing transmission of knowledge and skills associated with traditional artisanry – to help ensure that crafts continue to be practiced within their communities, providing livelihoods to their makers and reflecting creativity and adaptation.”

I love this. I went down a very interesting rabbit hole looking at all the different traditional crafts that are endangered or the knowledge of creating them has become extinct.

On the more modern side of things, Dad created a series of YouTube videos to show how to make these,. If you’re looking for a summer project for your garden, you can find that series HERE. I imagine that there are lots of different kinds of wood or supplies that can be used to make these.

"Announcing your place in the family of things"

I’m sure you’ve all heard that Mary Oliver, the acclaimed poet, died this past week. Upon her passing, I was surprised to see such passionate and vehement opinions (all favorable) about her work, expressed by various nature writers whom I admire. I came across her poems once or twice and enjoyed them, but had never dug deep. So, encouraged by all these wonderful comments, I attempted to do so now.

Shelling pea blossoms

And, WOW. Her work is really inspiring. I wish I had discovered her earlier. All of it is deeply spiritual, deeply nature-loving, and wonderfully understandable (not the case with many poets). I have ordered her latest book, ‘Devotions,’ which is a sort of best-of. It’s a book I think we should have around, and should be read by anyone who appreciates nature.

A honeybee foraging in the fava bean blossoms

I read an essay about her in the Washington Post, by Maggie Smith, that really hit home for me; here’s the paragraph that made me truly tune in: “I learned from Mary Oliver how attention is a kind of love, how shining your mind’s light on a thing - a grasshopper, a bird, a tree - is a way of showing gratitude. I learned that poems do not need to be ‘difficult’ to be intelligent, that poems can be both inspirational and investigative, that poems can be tender without being soft. I learned from her to own my wonder and to stay open to uncertainty.”

Late-season narcissus

Does that sound familiar? Isn’t it sort of a theme of ours, those of us who appreciate nature, and who want to mark its processes in some way? Haven’t we talked about, over and over, the need to pay attention, to tell the story? Mary Oliver was one of us.

the first starflower

Her most famous poems are famous for a reason - they resonate. Here is one I love:

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

— Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

growing in fresh wood chips

I think there is probably no greater epitaph - no greater appreciation of this poet and her life - than to go outside this weekend, no matter the weather, and pay attention.

Searching for Grace

This poem is helping me this week. Maybe it'll help you, too.

“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

— Wendell Berry

Beer! and various other things

First things first: Today, we finally made beer!

Tom and I bought our supplies a month ago, and between one thing and another, we just haven't had time to get the process going. It takes about five hours to get a batch started. Finding five hours at home is not easy, but today we had lots of little chores, so we were able to do those and brew beer at the same time.

The best part of brewing beer (in my opinion, I'm sure Tom feels differently) is the words you get to throw around. "Time to sparge the mash!" might be my favorite phrase. And, of course, it was fun to do a project together.

The first part of the process is mashing the grain. Basically you take the dry, cracked grains and combine them with warm water, and make the liquid that will be the base for your beer. It has to remain at a certain temperature for an hour, it's a bit fiddly, but it's basically like making a big batch of oatmeal.

Sparging the mash!

I then took the spent mash out to the chickens, and that pile o' grain was gone in about five minutes. They LOVED it.

Then we added hops and boiled for quite a while. We added two kinds of hops, bittering and flavoring, and boiled after each addition.

When the foam 'breaks,' you cool the brew down quite a bit. After it reaches 70 degrees, you check the sugar content using a hydrometer.

cooling

science!

Meanwhile Tom had prepared everything with a sterilizer and it reminded us of cancer, funnily enough, where you have to have a sterile field before drawing blood (which we did at home every week for years). This was a sterile field for beer. Much nicer, and not life or death. :)

Then the yeast was added to the beer, whisked vigorously, and decanted into our carboy.

The only thing left to do now is wait!

In between beer processes, we got all our chores done. We even had time for some extra fun. I had a nice hike with Joe this morning in a spot I haven't been for a while in Shell Ridge. While walking I came across a camera, for monitoring wildlife. I've never seen one of these in the wild before.

Chamomile is blooming profusely in this part of the hills.

Adam and his friends went mountain biking in the same section of Shell Ridge this afternoon and came across a big rattler. They avoided him and had a great time. Unfortunately Adam took a sail over his handlebars at one point, and has road rash from his upper lip to his knee. He's now on the couch with a bag of ice.

Speaking of creepy crawly things, I found a paper wasp nest blown down from the eaves of our train shed. I have it in pride of place on our outdoor dining table. I appreciate paper wasps and never kill them - they pollinate as well as bees do, and lay eggs on soft-bodied insects, controlling that population.

I managed to get some art made for the chicken coop.

Let heaven and nature SING!

And I did some tidying up to ready us for next weekend and the Urban Farm Tour. Have you got your tickets yet? I'm really excited for the day. I think I'll make honey cake using honey from our hive, to share with our visitors.

It's definitely fruit time in the garden. These are all ripening and will be ready soon, but not soon enough!

peach

tiny apples

raspberry

blackberry

Meanwhile I'm harvesting and eating strawberries, blueberries, and huckleberries every day. The only veg we're harvesting and eating at the moment is peas, but collards and Bibb lettuce are not far away.

I did something this weekend that I'm particularly proud of. I signed us up for a meat CSA! Tara Firma Farms provides pastured beef, pork, and chicken to their members, delivered right to your door! We've visited this farm twice - Mother's Day in 2014, and to get a freshly-killed pastured turkey at Thanksgiving time. The property is idyllic and the animals all living out their lives the way they were meant to. We do eat meat, and I want to make sure that the animals have had good lives, not spending them in dark barns or in small cages with slatted floors, but rather running free in the grass, eating and rooting and mating and being animals. The meat costs more, and it should. Our weekly deliveries will start Friday, and I can't wait to see what we get, and share the cooking results with you!

And speaking of cooking, it's time to get to dinner prep. I've got focaccia risen and ready for the oven, and am making a seared scallop and bacon soup to go with it. Happy June to all of you!

Spring Break is here!

This week is spring break for all four of us. It's a gift of time: Time to actually accomplish the projects on the list, maybe take a nap, perhaps rent a boat on a reservoir? The possibilities are endless. However, the projects will likely get first priority, as having a considerable amount of time to complete them is just too tempting. Also, did I mention how busy it is in the garden, in spring? And with temperatures in the mid-80's over the past weekend, we got a head start on the list. We wished the neighborhood pool was open, after some sweaty working days.

a local hiking trail

Due to the warm temps, we keep a window open in our bedroom at night, and often in the wee hours around 3 am, I've been woken by coyotes up in the open space near our house. They howl and yip, and make quite a racket. I did some research and it looks as though this behavior is very common among coyote family members, especially at night. In fact, the coyote's Latin name, Canis latrans, literally means 'barking dog.' At this time of year in California, females are probably pregnant, having mated in February, and are expecting babies in April. There's still water in the hills in vernal pools, but I'm not sure how long that will last, and when the water runs out, the coyotes venture down in to our neighborhoods. They are generally not aggressive and can be quite shy, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that they visit our backyard water fountain during summer nights. Which is why our animals are shut up tight after 8 o'clock every evening.

In the garden, there's still lots of greens to eat.

Pesto Chicken tart with spinach, broccoli, and peas from the garden

The kale and spinach are still producing, but the chard is starting to look a little tired, and the romaine is looking like it's going to bolt any minute. The broccoli seems to be finished, and the beets are no longer growing. Peas are being harvested daily. The garlic is starting to get a little brown in the foliage, which means it might be time to stop watering it and then harvest. I didn't expect the garlic to be ready until June, but with this hot weather, it could be ready much earlier. The strawberry wall has tiny berries and I can't wait to taste the first one. The blueberry bushes have tiny berries, too.

garlic

kale

spinach

strawberry wall

peas, and a little friend

And, we have an artichoke coming up in the garden!

My only question is: who gets to eat it???

We eat from the garden constantly; I add greens to almost every dish I make. Tonight I was making a pasta bake, and I realized I was out of ricotta. So Tom whipped up a batch in thirty minutes. That was fun!

Preparations for Easter have commenced. I had so much fun dying Easter eggs naturally last year that I wanted to do it again this year. This project takes most of a day, but the result is so pretty, it's worth it. I used turmeric, red cabbage, red onion skin, yellow onion skin, and beets this time. Put your veg or spice individually in pots with a cup or two of water, bring to a boil, then simmer for 30 minutes, covered. Strain, add a tablespoon of white vinegar, and pour over hard boiled eggs. Then store in fridge for four hours. Drain and let dry.

I used white and brown eggs this year, and I have to say I like the effect on white better.

The darker ones are brown eggs, lighter = white eggs

Blue is white egg with red cabbage, bright yellow is turmeric, orange is yellow onion skin, green is brown egg with red cabbage, red is beet, red onion skin made the brownish colors

I also spent some time over the weekend making a couple of new paintings for a blank wall. I knew I wanted to paint something from the garden, and add quotes about nature that are meaningful to me. Next time, I'd like to try a mixed media thing, with the quotes made from 'found' letters or torn out of magazines, some sort of decoupage sort of thing, though I've never tried that. Maybe that will be a summer experiment.

Artichoke and Blueberries

Do you know about the website Nextdoor? I've enjoyed being a member. Last Friday, a neighbor posted that his mother was a Master Gardener, and he had many hundreds of seed packets to give away. I responded immediately and met him later that afternoon. I scored about $100 worth of seed packets! It was like Christmas. Not only that, they were from Renee's Garden, my favorite seed house! I'm not sure how old the seeds are, or if they are even viable, but I'm willing to give them a shot. I planted a lot of the flower seeds over the weekend. I have saved the zinnia and cosmos and will plant them in a couple of months.

Flower seeds

Veg seeds

I'll store the winter veg seeds in the fridge until fall, as well.

Speaking of storing seeds, I realized that my haphazard method wasn't working. I asked Dad to build me a seed caddy, and he built one for me (that same day) out of California Claro Walnut, a special kind of wood.

It fits perfectly in the fridge!

I know I've said it before, but it sure is great to have a woodworker in the family.

We cleaned out the garage, moved some lumber, and I took some stuff out of storage. The tomato, cucumber, and pepper cages are ready for use next weekend, after I attend the Master Gardener sale. We'll need to make a few more.

I also got the bee hive ready, as the bees will be here in less than two weeks. I took the bars out of storage and put them in the hive, and made simple syrup for the bees to eat as they are building comb and starting to collect nectar. It takes a lot of energy to build comb, and I want to make sure the bees have the calories to do that. Honeybees like a 1:1 ratio in simple syrup (hummingbirds like 1:4, a less sweet concoction). 

Bars are in and tools are ready

the bee feeder is ready, just needs a mason jar full of syrup

pretty yellow simple syrup, which will be stored in the fridge until the bees arrive

Flowers continue to pop up in the spring sunshine and heat.

Harlequin flower

Monkey flower

geraniums

another geranium

Plans for this week include: Building the raised beds in the North Garden, ordering and hauling dirt to fill them, buying and planting all tomatoes and peppers, and starting nearly all the summer vegetable seeds. I'll be taking winter veg out of the South Garden and replacing with summer crops. Early April is planting time. I guess Spring 'break' means something other than a break, at least in the garden.