Gardening

Happy Mother's Day

For all the mothers out there and especially my own! Happy Mother's Day!

For me it was another day of gardening and trying to catch up with a very late winter. Two weeks ago we had snow. Tomorrow this is what we expect:

Yep. Already into the nineties, which means the gardening will have to happen in the mornings, because it's just too scorching hot after lunch.

Here's a bit of our newest project - a butterfly garden, which means tearing up 1/3 of the front yard. I'm using Barbara Damrosch's Theme Gardens book as a guide for the many flower and flowering bush plantings.

There'll be a white curved picket fence in front of the wishing well that will help define the actual flower plantings around the bird bath, stretching to the walk on the left, and road to the right. More photos when things start to grow, and I'll include a list of the plants as well. Wait until I paint the wishing well with a full palette of colors! I can't believe it's mid-May and the cottonwood tree behind the bench has barely begun to leaf out.

The flower boxes have been planted, but I still have to paint all the white trim. This is part of the springtime ritual  for me, sort of a "right of passage" into summer most people would just as soon avoid.

After a nice chicken dinner that hubbo cooked, we had homemade vanilla custard ice cream with raspberries soaked in St. Germaine elderflower liqueur. Very nice indeed!

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. - Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

Z is for Zilch

Which is almost the way I ended the A-Z Challenge! Yikes! I was out-of-town on a mural installation and got home way too late last night. I'm fried, and I wish I could do Zilch today, but I have to finish reading Eric Maisel's new book, Making Your Creative Mark: Nine Keys to Achieving Your Artistic Goals. It's a terrific book meant for professionals in all the arts, and you can read my review tomorrow at the Blood-Red Pencil blog.

I also have to plant Zinnias, because I just found another huge bag of seeds. Apparently, I had Zinnias on the brain when I ordered seeds last autumn and this spring. Which is okay, because I love them. I plant California Giants from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds up the centers of each of my raised vegetable beds, and they not only look colorful and gorgeous, they shield the tender lettuces planted on either side from too much sun. I love those hot colors - these are the colors of my youth - groovy man!

I'm off to Zip through the day, my friends. It's going to be a Zoo around here today. Thanks so much for visiting me during the blogging challenge, and I'll continue to add your names to my special list. We can keep visiting each other, right? Just leave me your blog link in the comments and I'll continue connecting with you.

Y is for You

I'm embarrassed to admit I've written just under 1,000 words of my 30,000 Camp NaNoWriMo goal. I have written about 10,000 blog words just for the A-Z Challenge. What about you? How did your month of writing go in April?

X is for Xeriscaping

Definition of XERISCAPE

A landscaping method developed especially for arid and semiarid climates that utilizes water-conserving techniques (as the use of drought-tolerant plants, mulch, and efficient irrigation).

 

But contrary to popular belief, it doesn't mean zero-scaping. There are many ways to plan a water-wise garden and still create the visual beauty all gardeners love to see. It's all about clustering different textures, colors, and heights in a visually attractive manner. Here are some examples:

 

What do you think of this look? Do you live in a dry area and grow drought tolerant plants in your garden? What's your favorite flower, grass, or shrub? 

Here are some links you might find useful:

Colorado State University Xeriscaping Factsheet
Denver Water
Plant Select

W is for Water

That precious resource: water. When I was very young, I was married to a water engineer straight out of college, and I remember well the conversations about the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, that reservoir of life lying under a multi-state high plains region as pictured here:

There was much concern that the water levels were dropping by a few inches every year - today the depletion has increased to a few feet annually, and some community wells have simply run dry. In a time of extreme drought, there is little chance of the aquifer recharging. Knowing what we knew 30 years ago, how could this situation have become so dire?

That isn't the worst of the problem though. Energy companies are buying up water and mineral rights throughout the country, and are using precious water resources to engage in hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a natural gas mining process that risks contaminating water supplies needed for agriculture as well as human consumption. Just last week on the way to the city, we noticed the first fracking rig in our area along the highway, and never was there a mention of the development in any local newspapers.

Of even more concern are the laws around fracking procedures. In 2005, the Clean Drinking Water Act was passed by Congress during George W. Bush's administration, and  de-regulated injection wells to exclude contamination from hydraulic fracturing. This exclusion has been called the "Halliburton Loophole" after the company formerly led by former vice-president Richard Cheney. Halliburton is the world's largest provider of hydraulic fracturing services. Do you see an issue with this situation?

During President Obama's administration, fracking has become even more popular, in support of energy independence. However, the potential for natural gas exports has become the primary focus in the natural gas scenario. Here is a recent article at Salon.com about the upcoming boom in the fracking industry, and why environmentalists and local governments may find themselves at odds with large energy companies seeking to mine in any area with the slightest hint of resources. Even beautiful landmarks like Monterey Bay in California are at risk.

Is fracking coming to an area near you? Here's a map:

If you're in a drought or low water area, be afraid, be very afraid. Especially since you may not have a say in the future, depending on what state you live in. This article in The Atlantic covers a few more of the issues and offers even more maps.

If you're concerned about this issue, there are lots of anti-fracking groups popping up in major states. Here's a list to get you started. Better now than when your water supply is contaminated and undrinkable. There's so much of this activity starting up, where would we move to get clean water? This is not an issue that is going away by itself.

Save Colorado From Fracking

V is for Vines

I love arches. Arched doorways. Arched gates in the garden. Curving arbors with vines spilling over them. Flowers ranking upward, like roses and clematis and sweet peas. There is something so romantic and European about this idea.

Alas, I can't seem to grow the flowers that embellish an arched trellis, though I've tried for years. My clematis languishes. The roses die back by mid-season. Sweet peas hate the heat and don't even try. I've almost given up too.

But last year we tried some grapes. It appears they may actually come back this year, and if they climb, we might even get enough leaves to brine for stuffed grape leaves at our annual Greek feast. The heck with actual grapes - we're easy to please. Just a few dozen nice-sized leaves to put up. Is that too much to ask?

Okay, I confess. I harbor fantasies of a grape-covered patio like this. With big, ripe clumps hanging down just waiting to be plucked. A person can dream, right?

What's your elusive gardening dream?

U is for Unbelievable

And isn't there a lot of unbelievable stuff in our world lately? But I'm not writing about anything in the news today. I'm simply going to share my favorite chocolate frosting recipe, which is unbelievably delicious. I know this to be true, because I just taste-tested two of these beauties:

Today I made cupcakes from a cute little cookbook I downloaded to my Kindle, titled Cupcake Recipes by Suzie Johnson. It was free and the chocolate cupcake dough is very good, except it's enough for 24, not 12 cupcakes as stated in the recipe. But don't let this stop you. Freeze the extra cupcakes for another time!

I frosted the cupcakes with my all-time favorite chocolate truffle recipe from my ancient Dr. Oetker German cookbook. You'll have to suffer through metric measures as the book is written that way. Oh, wait, I can help a little:

Chocolate Truffle Frosting

125 gr. unsalted butter beaten until smooth (about 8 tablespoons)
150 gr. powder sugar (.652 cups)
100 gr. Dutch cocoa (.85 cups)

(I think you'd be safe using 3/4 cups of each of the dry ingredients)

Gradually beat dry ingredients into butter

1 organic (local if possible) egg

Beat whole egg into butter mixture until very creamy and smooth

Rum or rum extract to taste (I used one serving teaspoon)

If frosting is very soft, refrigerate for a short time to slightly firm it up. I usually place it in a pastry bag right away and squirt thick spirals on the completely cooled cupcakes.

This frosting recipe is also awesome as a candy. Form into small balls and roll in chocolate sprinkles.

Keep cupcakes and candies using this frosting refrigerated. If they last that long!  Nom nom nom.

What's your favorite frosting flavor?

And how's this for unbelievable? The weather! Sixty degree temperature swings within a week!

T is for Tea

I have a large mismatched collection of china teacups from my art gallery days. At The Peanut Gallery (yes, I really named it that), I often had afternoon meetings and served Low Tea.

Need I say that I have always had a slightly warped sense of humor? Small wonder I became a professional artist. We get away with anything!

Long past my gallery days, I still serve tea every Saturday afternoon, sometimes for guests, but always for the hubbster and me. Most days it's a simple spread, other times we go all out with various sandwiches and more than one sweet concoction like scones, puddings, cookies, and cheesecakes, almost always home-baked. Pavlovas, cream puffs, on occasion butter-cream torts. Lemon pies, shortbreads, brownies, well, the list is actually endless.

First we start with really good tea. I like to buy an assortment from Grace Rare Tea Company which carries my favorite, Winey Kemun, among many other fine imported teas.

I like a nice tea pot and this is my favorite in the collection because it has the perfect spout:

It's a gorgeous and large porcelain pot made by Crown Dorset in England.

I always set a nice table with linens and fresh flowers and, of course, good treats. Take a peek:

Well, you get the idea. After a long work week, it gives us a chance to do something a bit different from the usual meals - to sit down together for a relaxing chat, either just the two of us, or with neighbors who drop by to catch up with doings. It's festive, like a little party for no reason at all.

What about you? Do you do anything special on Saturdays? Here's a fun idea. Click on the T for Translate button top right column and read this post in a foreign language. Just because you can!

Remember what I said about that warped sense of humor. Zum voll! Would you like some sugar with that? Do sit down and have a spot of tea.

S is for Sins

We all do it. Bad things like lying. In religious circles it's called a "sin". If you follow the ten commandments, it doesn't have to be anything seemingly big. Modern behaviors like swearing and sleeping around are mortal sins if you buy into the Christian credo. Even something little, like lying, is considered a mortal sin.


So let's use that last one. Lying. With the Internet and all the fact checking information available to us, we should be able to verify just about any bit of information we choose to. But do we? We see a clever meme about someone we don't like - say the U.S. president - and we decide to pass that critical bit of information forward without checking it out. Take for example a recent series of memes showing Barack Obama with his hands folded in front of him as others stand at attention. The meme claims he will not salute the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, even sing the National Anthem. Here's an example:

But a quick check at the Urban Legends and Snopes websites, gives several logical explanations. Can you guess what the explanation is for the next picture?

On many such occasions, the band is playing Hail to the Chief! Wouldn't it be weird to salute yourself? Here's more at the Snopes website about this issue as well as flag etiquette from an expert.
 
My point is simply that you can take this sort of criticism a bit too far. I call it "bearing fall witness against thy neighbor" and if you follow the ten commandments, you really should make sure you check your facts before prevaricating in public. That's an even more serious sin!

Whether you consider yourself a religious person or not, the following is excellent advice:

There are six things that the LORD strongly dislikes, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.

—Proverbs 6:16–19