*what TV show is that description from?
You carefully sketch and design your gardens and borders. You plan for height and variety, texture and color. You create walkways and growing areas, a border here, a berm there.
Early spring finds you growing seedlings on the window sill. It takes such effort and exact science to make the small plants whole and healthy enough to finally be transplanted into the garden where they will grow to bring you joy and food for the season.
But for all the careful planning, for the pages of written plans saying eggplant will go in this square and a Japanese cucumber will go in that square and hmmm, let’s plant Nasturtiums here, there are the unexpected plants for which I did not account, the “volunteers.”
There was a day I’d have pulled them all at first sighting, but now I don’t. Now I see a Zinnia or a Marigold that has decided to grow in a crevice or between bricks or have just plopped themselves right in the middle of a walkway, and I give them their space. Now I am glad they have upset my carefully laid plans and have just shown up, out of nowhere ~ a gift, a happy surprise.
The volunteers, sometimes flowers, sometimes a vegetable of some sort, while often getting a late start compared to the seedlings, ultimately catch up and are stronger and more established than the plants I’ve been coaxing, fawning over, encouraging to grow. They are just there. They just showed up, no work or toil. Just there for the enjoyment. They are divine blessings – an infusion of favor that I didn’t have to work hard to get, which makes them all the more delightful. And cherished.
pictured: some “volunteer” zinnias I keep getting to cut and enjoy inside; they just keep producing blooms and I did not do one thing to deserve it…
I admire poetic people, the ones who can express the deep feelings and thoughts of the soul with a new turn of a word or phrase. I always wish I could do that, but I can’t. If I could, I’d have written a thousand songs by now. As it is, I can dream up the melodies, but I can’t get the words right.
But when I go to the garden in the early morning hours, my observations are downright Dr.-Seuss-like. And they show up fast. So today, sometime during the time I played in the dirt and pulled the weeds and watered the plants and argued with the spiders about territory and rights and got chased by wasps and picked the produce and swept the patio and plumped the pillows and drank some lemon water and de-weeded some pathway cracks, I observed this:
The purple petunias are pungent today, heavy and sweet with perfume.
The peppers are plenteous, parading in glory, papilionaceous and pretty.
And it is not just that I have created 2 great entries for “P” for writing a children’s garden book (oh the dreams I harbor), but that those two things are perfectly and totally true today. In my garden.
images from google because I was just too lazy to take pictures…however, I have a lot more pepper varieties than this!
I spent the entire week in Puerto Rico poo-pooing their very sad looking tomatoes. They were barely-pinkish, transparent, rubbery-looking things that resembled something that some one may have tried to grow at some point or the other, but which had been aborted too soon and now were in a state of perpetual laboratory-like strangeness.
this may have been one of the better ones at the resort, truly…
So, seriously: we eat at these great restaurants. Everything is beautiful, but every time – terrible, terrible tomatoes. What on earth?
So, a long day on Palomino Island was my final day. I dragged the beach lounger knee-deep into the ocean and let the waves splash over me all day while a hot breeze cooled my skin. I got burned. A deep burn, but it was OK because I had been careful not to burn before, so the base tan protected me (I hope Ali, who has agreed to help me un-do previous sun damage on my skin, is not reading this – because we just talked about it the night before I went!).
Tredessa looked at me and said, “Mom, you are burned. You are as red as a tomato.”
And then, the reason I am so proud of her, the reason I admire her intelligence so, she made the distinction, “But not like a Puerto Rican tomato. Like one of your tomatoes.” And I beamed. Tomato red.
From my garden. A small tomato and some basil. If it is slightly blurry, forgive the photographer (me). I think it is because I may have been shaking a little bit in anticipation of sprinkling some salt on these slices and eating them. Because, omygoodness, they are sweet and tangy, and the juice, which tries unsuccessfully to escape my tongue and run down my face, is madly divine, the fountain of life, more potent than wine.
I would like to dedicate this blog to Bryan. Read here and here and here – for old times’ sake, Bry. And oh, what the heck? Here is my roasted tomato recipe for Cody, but Bryan, you can enjoy it again, too – right before you re-read this blog about YOU, where I seriously question whether God wants us to be friends if you hate tomatoes! ;)
Puerto Rico. The sun setting, inside the portico, no flash. The air is heavy, a tropical breeze. The coqui (ko-kee’) song is rising. The Stingray awaits…
A tender green, thinly-sliced, baby zucchini; thick slabs of lemon-yellow cucumber and a blood-red tomato, with saltshaker handy; sweet corn slathered in real butter and sprinkled with cajun seasoning: this is a cool summer supper for a hot summer day.
Our backyard is a veritable toad-city, the pond providing a natural pool for an occasional toad swim and all the shade and garden nooks and crannies for dwelling. It might at times be almost plague-like, if you don’t like toads, but we appreciate how they dine on unwanted bug life.
But the biggest toad of all, the Godfather Toad, if you will, is gone. That toad had to be weighing in at 10 ounces, for sure. I mean, he must have really been packing away the mosquito larvae. He was huge and he was a governing presence. But he flew too close to the sun, attempting to stay hidden in tall grass…the same grass Dave was mowing.
The garden is a little less welcoming now. The mosquitos bzzzzzssszzzz in temporary victory. The little toads wonder what the future holds, watching for the next time the loud green machine will come rolling out like thunder. For the Godfather is gone. He is dead. No more Mr. Big Toad.
A few weeks ago, I followed Averi (the youngest of my grandbebes), around with a camera. Each time she “stopped,” I’d try to snap her picture. But she is faster than the digital can handle.
She’d be looking right at me, center screen, giving me that smile all grandmotherly-photographer types are dying to get. And then? Dang it!
“She’s Like the Wind,” from the Patrick-he-used-to-be-so-cute-Swazye
“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” ~Paul Cezanne
Hunter hung out with me in the garden one morning recently. He harvested carrots from the back 40 (feet…not acres). Then we made a bouquet so we could enjoy the beauty of them as well as the taste.
OK, everybody, here is what I want you to do: go to www.hgtv.com and check out my beautiful sister-in-law, Robin’s, front porch on Rate My Space.
I think you can link directly HERE. The descriptive tag-words used were things like shabby chic, distressed, and steel and it is titled, in the “porches” section of Rate My Space, “Super Sweet Space” by robinelise.
I am pretty sure when Joe and Robin sided their house earlier this year and decided to add this unique touch, they had planned to paint the trim to a pristine white again, but after seeing the effect are re-thinking that position.
It’s really pretty when family is sitting on it! :)
My niece, Elise, and my brother, Joe
Go, rate!