Bean Therapy in the 2019 Summer Garden

This has been a year of exploration of peppers, which I never bothered to grow since back in the day when my mother and I would plant tomatoes and peppers to make our own salsa casera. After I moved to California in 1988, I had no need to plant peppers and make the cooking sauce; out here EVERY supermarket has it, unlike rural Pennsylvania.

Last summer I began using peppers in my minestrone recipe, and found that they had become indispensable in my cooking. Box 7 became my pepper nursery, with Anaheim chilis and Italian White Wax peppers. And what the heck, why not plant a pepperoncini and a bell pepper as well?

Having no room set aside for the last two, I just jammed them in with my first planting of wax beans, which I'd started too early and looked like lame weeds. To my surprise, two weeks later, the wax beans had begun to leaf out like crazy, and the bell pepper and the pepperoncini were enormous and covered with blooms, while the Anaheims and Italian White Waxes were less than half the size.

Whaaat? Beans and peppers like each other?

Now back to tomatoes -- which I love like a crazy old cat lady loves kittens. This has been a crummy tomato year in the Pilarski Farmland. Seemed like every time the plants had a wave of flowers, the temperature went over a hundred, which shriveled the buds. And the first nine Shady Lady plants I put in ... they were not thriving. Since peppers and tomatoes are both from the same family, I began planting bean seeds in with the sad tomatoes.

And seeing how pathetic this year's tomatoes were, Bernie told me to go buy more plants, three more Shady Ladies, which I planted into the new bed with beans, not waiting around to see if they needed beanie buddies. This is Box 10, tomatoes planted with beans:

With Beans

You can't even see the beans in there, except on the edges. But boy oh boy, those tomatoes know the nitrogen-fixing beans are partying right along with them.

And then, this poor trio, which were the first plants this spring:

No beans

Admittedly, they're all husky plants, that's why Shady Lady is my go-to producer. But wow, what a difference. Same light, same watering system, same potting soil, same number of plants, same size box. Beans made a huge difference.

Next year, with bean buddies from the beginning, we'll be planting Anaheims again, as they are delicious in a number of dishes, and of course, jalapenos and a bell or two, but the Italian White Wax -- turned out to be so hot that when Bernie nibbled one, I thought he was going to pick up a frying pan and smite himself with it to put himself out of his misery.

They are now compost.

Oh, the Sun Still Rises and Sets

We were sitting out on the back patio the other evening, and a sudden trick of the clouds and sun gave us a surprisingly reddish light. All the brickwork glowed, and the pool looked especially deep blue. This photo sort of captures what we saw, but not quite. Not red enough.

In only about three minutes, the light had changed; the sun was dipping behind the houses across the street.

You just have to savor the moments when they occur, because it's possible that oh-so-rich light may never return in this lifetime, and even if it seemed to be similar, the flowers -- that sweet mix of summer vinca, autumn mums, and winter color carnations and pansies -- would be different, the clouds would be different. And whether the beautiful time lasts three minutes, or thirteen years, all you can do is remember it with wonder and appreciation.

The radiant painting faded, back to normal. The sky dimmed to the usual lovely evening light of this season, and we sat out until the patio lights came on and scattered their pattern of shadows across the herringbone brickwork.

The weather service claims, in its long-range forecast, that in about a week or so, nighttime temperatures will be in the 40s, and that rain is possible. The beautiful light won't be there, but times of chill and rain have their purpose, and that's good, too. I have kohlrabi and lettuce and peas and chard and spinach and turnips and beets that all like the season of winter, so I will rejoice in what I have that lives and grows, and hold the memory of amazingly beautiful times in my heart.

The Winter Garden

I got a bit of a late start last autumn with my winter garden; I really should get stuff started in the beginning of October, but at that time I was still harvesting tomatoes and zucchinis. Nevertheless, the beginning of November still gave me enough time to get some greens in, and snow peas.

In the most successful planter (the one that got regular water and had no roaming cats taking a crap in it) I had snow peas, then a row of delicious red-leaf lettuce, and a double row of spinach.

We've had plenty of peas for sides of stir-fried veggies, and enough spinach for salads; I'm the only one who eats the dark lettuce, but I don't mind. A recent storm knocked my peas off their trellis, so the extra string was necessary to prop them up.

The chard and the seed onions didn't work out so well -- those were the ones that needed to go into the garden earlier. That was the planter that the cats got into, until I took twine and strung a criss-cross pattern across the top.

Soon it will be time to switch over to the summer planting, which will be tomatoes without rhyme or reason, and zukes again, and corn. And some cucumbers.

(And more tomatoes.)

An Autumn Evening

My studio in the garage is already starting to get chilly in the evenings, already too chilly to want to work out here in the mornings. In another week, I'll be swearing about having not laid out the cash to insulate the ceiling over the summer as I promised myself last January that I would.

There are so many things I keep saying I'll do: finish those novels, put my finished novels up on Amazon Kindle Direct; finish the six oil paintings hanging around the studio, continue with some colored-pencil sketches I was really having fun with months ago; make a comforter from an old polyester blanket and a deliciously-textured cotton duvet cover someone gave me, sew a couple baby outfits, hem the veils that cover my mouth, cheeks, and ears while I'm riding during fly season and hot sunny days.

Everything takes time.

I did manage to get a winter garden planted, with seed onions, spinach, beets for beet greens (I already ate a few of the tiny leaves and they are wonderful), chard, lots of snow peas, and yesterday I finally saw some of my lettuces sprouting -- it's red-leaf lettuce and the tiny dark leaves were nearly invisible against the soil. Planting the garden took a couple days, working the soil, sowing seeds, weaving a twine lattice across the south planters so that cats would stop digging in it (had to replant the beets after that), weeding out the rogue nasturtiums that insist on popping up to strangle all the other plants.

Today I caught up on the last of the laundry to be folded, went out to the ranch and exercised the horse in the arena, then dunged out his paddock. After a shower, I began making braised lamb shanks (time-consuming but well worth the time spent) and gorditas (fat little tortillas) for dinner. John made tzatziki (cucumbers and stuff in Greek yogurt) to accompany the lamb.

Good work, a feast, and a long autumn evening to watch NFL football and ponder the paths life takes and to question the decisions of coaches.

Projects can wait for a day or two, I think.

Not Yer Average October

Beautiful!

We should have been seeing this in May, or June, but unexpectedly, our water lily bloomed today.

Wonderful things happen when we least expect them, and I should have kept that in mind before being crabby in previous posts.

What needs to get done will be done, and if not, well, Fate and the angels know what agenda to follow.

Pity you can't eat water lilies. They look absolutely delicious.

Volunteers

 This happy face was the first of the cosmos to bloom.

None of these plants were planted; they came up on their own from their parents' cast seeds or bulbs.

The cosmos' parents were from a six-pack that our local hardware was giving away last May; every Thursday, any woman shopping there could have a free six-pack of flower plants. I chose cosmos one week, and their seeds fell to the deck around the pool and were subsequently swept by Bernie to the no-man's land beneath the grape vine. This spring, the cosmos children leaped up in joy to have their own planting in the earth.

I gathered all the freesia bulbs from the disintegrated wine barrel that used to sit under the Japanese maple ... but missed some seed that opted to grow. Who could bear to tear them out? If they proliferate,  I can't deny them. One tiny stalk, yet they perfume the air around for ten feet or more.

 This creature is the image of its parent plant from last year, which was in itself a volunteer. I love nasturtiums, with their zesty smell (and you can eat them in salads) and bright colors, but they can get out of hand in their second and third generations. Red Splotch here has already traveled six feet in multiple directions, looking for optimum sunshine. I do admire its purposefulness and ingenuity, but am keeping a close eye on it so that it doesn't kill the Japanese maple or rip out the foundations of the house.

Life, in its beauty, does not have to be ordered, or orderly. Sometimes it is crazy productive, other times just has a little stage time to wave, do its tiny dance, and be  gone, committed to memory by a few fortunate admirers.

I try to remember that I'm one of those volunteers of the earth, too, that I was not cultivated to specially produce great super-market sized fruit or florist-quality proliferation of out-sized blooms. (Maybe my mother would stamp a foot in her failure to make me an astronaut, a neurosurgeon, or a Nobel Prize winner, but oh, well, Mom, I didn't want to sit in the fertilizer in the hothouse, after all.)

These poppies, which I never planted, but were on this land before I bought it, survive and grace our Springs each year with their gaiety, their color, and their will to survive, year after year. They produce seeds, and let them go; they don't worry about whether the seeds will get to the big garden, or just sprout from cracks in the brick deck.  I love them, and take heart in them, and call them sisters;  no one knew what I would become in my life, and maybe what I have become is simply a drifting volunteer, changing from season to season, what the climate decides is right.

My volunteers shout to me not to worry about the future, because what will grow in the earth next season is likely to have some tremendous beauty in it.

This year, each morning, I walk out into the back yard and take inventory of the plants. Been a long time since that was a high priority, and I'm enjoying how my heart feels when I take the stroll from the double-blossomed red geranium beside the door, to the neon pink cyclamen blooming under the suddenly dark red leaved Japanese maple ...

I see some volunteers: a freesia getting ready to bloom where its parent planter used to be, some yellow nasturtiums already sending out long streamers, ready to conquer the world.

Then the troubling cucumber planter, where the seeds have not sprouted, and I don't know if I just planted them too early, or if the jays watched me, then dug them up and ate them.

The snow pea tub comes next, with more snow peas than you can shake a stick at, lush and green, the blossoms pure white. From there I wander to the tomato barrel, where "Bush Goliath" has set its first tiny tomato in spite of the chill nights.

I say hello to the first California poppies blooming nearby, nod smiling to the new pale green leaves of the grapevine and the temperamental avocado. The volunteer cosmos are growing by leaps and bounds, and look! -- there are potato leaves poking out of the soil in Potatoland! Behind them, flanking John's menacing artichoke, are two Roma tomato plants, looking smug in their little cages, begging for their booster of epsom salts.

Stopping to poach a spear of asparagus, I cast an eye on the space I hope to house a couple Big Daddy tomato plants in the not-too-distant future. The golden euonymus gets a warning as I pass: Stop harboring bindweed and rose-root bastards or we will dig you up and turn you into compost. (It's seven feet wide and has a trunk the size of my wrist, so it doesn't take me seriously.)

Loaded with buds and new blossoms, the Stella cherry grows sedately, sparklingly white blossoms in the morning sun. By the time this tree sets fruits, we'll have swathed it in bird netting so that the mockingbirds and the jays don't destroy the cherries. They take a bite out of each cherry, the greedy things, spoiling them for us before the cherries are even fully ripe.

I shake the hand of a branch of the fern pine we planted to provide summer shade for our bedroom window, salute the indefatigable alstromeria flowers that have colonized most of the bank, and avert my eyes from the obscene number of lemons hanging from the branches that stretch far over the birdbath from the back patio.

Our garden is beautiful, and I'm delighted to be enjoying it again.

Once inside, I visit my tomato seedlings in the windowsill.

Life is good.

Winter Day

Yet ANOTHER day in the 60+ degree range! We went to the hardware store today, and found that they were out of onion sets already -- this crazy warm weather has everyone jumping the gun.

I did have to go up to Manteca for a couple things, so we stopped in The Home Depot and picked up onion sets (they had plenty) and seed potatoes as well. In about two weeks, I'll be ready to plant, I think.

Coffee cans are sitting in the garage, waiting for me to plant Marglobe tomato seeds in them; I'll buy Bernie's Romas and maybe an Early Girl at the hardware. I've got a month and a half before I need to worry about tomatoes, though obviously, I've got them on my mind.

It's nearly time to close up the garage and chase the granddaughter indoors. I smell some fool's fireplace burning even though it's a "No Burn" day. With the warm afternoon, even with the sun going down, the neighborhood boys are playing football across various front yards, and Lil and a couple girls are playing their incomprehensible princess or wizard games. Howie is ready to go indoors where he has a slim chance of someone giving him a tidbit as supper is cooked in the kitchen.

Like the kids, I'm reluctant to admit that a winter evening is calling an end to activities in the open air.

Oracle

In those days

at the equinox of the Late Summer Year

the heat rose again as in July

and the people did once again

dip in their swimming pools in luxury

and lament the waning hours of daylight

Two months of summerlike weather

did the people lose that year

two months of gardens growing

two months of sending children outdoors

their tans were lousy

unless they went to a tanning salon

Summer dresses and sandals

tank tops and shorts

the people wore them even though

the sun and the earth declared autumn

"No, Summer will not end!" they cried

"Extend it the two lost months!"

"This cannot be done," said the Lord.

"The sun and the earth have their own agenda

as they must

for the sake of the rest of the world

yet I will help your acceptance blossom

and feed the nimble-tongued toad as well

Thus the Lord

allowed the flies of September to flourish

in their hundreds, in their thousands

flies which knew that Summer ended

and which coveted the houses

and the dinners of mankind

Like a second job

the people took up fly swatting

massing mounds of carcasses

in their kitchens and their porches

in their bathrooms and their dens

and turning their many minds

And so the people stopped their whining

heaved sighs of relief at early sunset

they looked to the skies for tell-tale hints of rain

and began to hunger for the chilly nights

the wearing of sweaters

and the demise of all the filthy, bloated, obnoxious and frantic flies.

The flower in the picture is cyclamen, which is winter color around here. It's begun blooming early, for reasons I don't know. We got two decent tomatoes from cultivated plants, finally, and while I welcome our current hot spell, I have indeed begun to wish for real autumn weather to slow down all these damned flies. They hang on the doors and sail in any time someone comes through; they ride on people's backs like they were on a bus and enter the kitchen to wallow on counter and dishcloth and mashed potatoes.

Ripening tomatoes, or the demise of flies? Well ...

Life Is All About The Each Days

This is the south forty. Corn.

I never planted corn from seed before that I can remember. I've grown tomatoes, peppers, onions, spinach, parsley, lettuce, radishes ... but corn? No.

So we planted sweet corn in a swath in our front yard. I have no idea if it will produce edible ears in that unamended heavy clay junk that passes for soil; and though I may have had fantasies of growing enough corn to put up for the whole winter, I don't actually believe that is going to be the case. Maybe the corn is too close together, maybe the seed was crummy (the germination rate sucked) ... whatever. We haven't got any eatin' ears yet, but two things commend this crop in a suburban front yard: A couple rows of corn look beautiful, and the sound of the afternoon breezes rattling the stalks is like food for the soul. We love the corn, and I will probably want to plant more again next spring.

Bernie grilled more spectacular chicken today. Dear God, thank you, it was so good. We swam in the pool, too -- thanks to this late heat spike, the pool is usable.

And we had a bit of excitement today, as well: our neighbor is going out of town for a few days and we find ourselves in custody of two female dogs.

A short aside -- except for the all-too-short couple weeks of my puppy Pumpkin (35 years ago) and the conqueration of my household by Grace Louise, a gray-cream calico kitten (20 years ago), all our pets have been male. (We don't count Molly; she is not a pet, she is a curse.)

Anyway, our household is baby-sitting a golden lab named "Honey" and a German shepherd named "Zena." They are ladies. They are hefty animales.

Howie has made known his antipathy for clumsy womens by showing his teeth and snapping (not biting) and looking crazed from his reclined posture at Bernie's feet. Both clumsy womens said, "Hey, dude, no problem, geeze, what a crab" and kept a good ten feet away from him. Sebastian just crawled under an end table and pretended the ladies weren't there.

We took all four of them to a fenced park and let them run and make acquaintances before we brought the girls into the house. They did fine. They're fine here.

Zena is a big girl German shepherd, though, and having her here has made us miss Babe so much. He was so big, so dark, so exuberant ...

Zena would have hated him.

Goodbye, Nicholai

The 1977 printing of the Sunset Western Garden Book has this to say about eucalyptus:

No pests. In Australia, you seldom find a eucalyptus leaf unchewed by insects; here, by contrast, you almost never find one insect-chewed. Importing has been entirely by seed; no natural pests have been imported by way of living plants. There are no foliage-attacking diseases of eucalypts here.

Indeed, one of the reasons there are so many eucalyptus in California is because they were so easy to grow, so beautiful, so varied. At my previous house, and this one, my front yard planting had as its focus the feathery, graceful, tall Eucalyptus nicholii: willow-leaf eucalyptus.

"Nicholai," I whispered to this tree when I planted it, "your job is grow fast and tall and hide that ugly street light from me." (Right by the sidewalk in front of the house was an orange-tinted street light -- unsightly by day and glaringly bright at night. Ugh.)

And so it did. In only a few years, Nicholai soared above the street light, with grace and loveliness shading the yard, for peaceful darkness at night, and cutting the heat of the late afternoon sun.

Sitting in the front yard was like sitting on the edge of a rich forest, thanks to the nicholii and little brother tree Dwarf Blue Gum. Complete privacy from the street, even from the sidewalk a few feet away. On the hottest summer days, we'd sit under the tree with a mister spraying us, and be comfortable and content, surrounded by beauty.

Bad things happen even to good trees.

I'm not sure when, but a bug from Australia arrived in California: the eucalyptus psyllid. The infestation began as a few white dots on some leaves of Nicholai; when we found out what it was, we did some oil spray, which helped the lower branches we could reach. Alas, most of the tree was higher than we could spray, and the foliage began to really weaken, with great leaf fall sprinkling the lawn.

Last month, seeing the disgusting waxy exudate from the psyllids sprinkling the lawn, the front porch, the outdoor furniture, the sidewalk, our neighbor's lawn and driveway and cars, we knew that we had a lost cause on our hands. We could have tried systemic poison, but the amount of chemicals needed would be massive, and we'd have to trash the front vegetable garden, the blueberries, and forget ever planting edible stuff in the front yard, because the psyllids are never going to give up. Bugs don't quit. Moreover, runoff from our yard (and all the yards in this neighborhood) goes right into the river. The fish -- those left -- don't need more pesticides.

We love our trees. They don't talk, or beg at the table, but they protect us from the sun and the wind. They soothe our eyes with beauty, and share our home. Sometimes they dump stuff on the neighbor's yard, but we don't mind cleaning up after them.

It was a hard decision to have the nicholii cut down. We'd thought to wait until Fall, but economic times are tough right now for tree services, so we were able to get a really fine price ... for the job to be done today.

Maybe it was best to be done with it quickly, I don't know. The tree-cutters were most efficient, and very careful of the other plants in the yard. We said goodbye to the tree before the tree service arrived, and if that sounds dumb, so be it. I've been leaking tears all day over the tree that I planted and nurtured and admired through all the weather of eleven years.

My tree is gone. The yard, without Nicholai in it, seems strangely small. The dwarf blue gum (which is not affected by the psyllids) will fill in quickly; most likely in two years it will be hard to tell there was ever a second tree there.

Still, I won't forget it.

Love, love, love

Two weeks into this Husband Has No Job proposition and it's just all good, all so good.

We had our 35th wedding anniversary last Monday, and both of us felt that the time had gone by incredibly fast -- except for the two weeks before his job ended.

Yesterday, we went out to the ranch to mess with the horse for a couple hours, and saw a pair of Bullock's Race orioles -- a sight that for the eyes is as good as the best food your tongue could register.

Today, we reclaimed our Piker Memorial Plaza out back from the weeds and ants, and found a new home for some pots and herbs. My great vat of cucumbers will also abide there, once the ants figure out that they can't take it over. Probably tomorrow I'll plant cuke seeds.

Oh, and yesterday I cooked a turkey that was right up there with one of the best, at only $.79/pound for a fresh turkey. It was very tender and juicy (with no injected crap) and flavorful. I overheard John telling Alex it was the best turkey we've ever had. Could be.

Thank you, Father Schmalhofer, the gravy was perfect, perfect, perfect, a tribute to your blessing upon my gravy, lo, at least 30 years ago. That blessing has held all these years, so you are probably a saint.

Life is glorious ... except for the walnut/locust/citrus bloom that wakes me at 4:30 AM and makes me cough my lungs out, sneeze rabidly, eyes pour tears, and sinuses throb. Why 4:30? Why not 10 AM when I'm not trying to dream for entertainment and have tissues at hand?

Digging, and Howie Has Patience

Friday, and still no word from Back East about my mother and my sister.

"Should I call people back there and ask them what the hell is going on?" I asked my husband. He was kind, and reminded me that everyone who has anything to do with the situation already has my phone number, and knows to call me if anything has happened.

And that is true. I just want CNN-type hourly updates from all of them, so that I can tell them if they're doing it right or not.

Mom herself is not answering the phone in the evenings. I always called her at the same time, so she knows if the phone is ringing, it's me. No answer. Or maybe she just turned off the ringer one more time and blissfully forgot that there was such a thing as a phone.

She did tell a mutual friend (last Sunday) that she was not going to answer her phone any more because she was sick of caseworkers coming around disrupting her routine.

Wow, I think that must have been the inspiration for the cartoon feature, "The Emperor's New Groove."

In the meantime, to try to stop worrying, I went out to the back yard and finally, after what, two years? -- got around to planting our little cherry tree that John and Alex gifted us for our 30th wedding anniversary.
Digging was good, though I got a close up view of the massive weeds on the back bank, and filled up half a 55 gallon recycle can with only about four feet of the bank.

And I finally got Howie and Sebastian to pose together. Seb, in the foreground, looks bigger than Howie -- and almost is.

His head is bigger, but How still has more bulk per inch. But not for long, I think.

Sebastian has that intense, direct stare that wants to know what is happening ... and Howie is just asking, "How much longer do I have to lie here beside this pile of crap?"