"The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there."
George Bernard Shaw, The Adventures of the Black Girl in her Search for God. 1932
Summer's Abundance - Coming home from vacation revealed a mountain of Basil surrounding our little garden girl in the vegetable patch. Time to make pesto. My father-in law taught me to cut it down now, make a bunch of pesto and freeze it in ice cube trays. Then in the winter you can defrost the middle of August and taste it on your noodles!
July Tip - Take your coffee grounds and put them on top of the soil beneath your rhodedendrons, hydrangeas to get acid into the soil and encourage beautiful blooms.
Penny Newkirk's Country Garden Cuisine Cooking School,
www.countrygardencuisine.com in St. Charles, IL is a haven of gardening creativity in food. Jo Cessna from www.thenaturalcook.net just taught a class there on "Love Your Vegetables" and introduced me to the equivalent of a green, organic vegetable candy which is her recipe for Kale Pesto. Any child would love this on anything; sandwiches, pasta, in lasagna, on crackers, veggies as a dip. Here's Joe's recipe: 1 bunch Dinosaur Kale (The bumpy, ripply kind)
1/2 c Parmesean Cheese
1/2/ c pecans or walnuts
zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 t nutmeg freshly grated is best
pinch of sea salt
1 - 2 T Olive Oil (she goes lighter on the oil than I do. I'd use more)
1 -2 T Lemon Juice (fresh)
1 - 2 cloves of garlic
De-stem and blanch Kale in boiling water for 45 seconds. Blanching is cooking it in boiling water and then plunging it into ice water to stop the cooking process. In food processor put lemon zest, juice, salt, nutmeg, nuts and garlic. Pulse to chop well. Add cheese and Kale. Pulse until very finely chopped then add oil through the feed tube. It shouldn't get too oily. You want it to be spreadable. Double the recipe and freeze it so you can have some for later. Enjoy and amaze your kids with this healthy and versatile treat. It is also easy for them to make! Also check out their websites!
IT WORKED! In typical fashion, last fall I ran out of time before planting all the bulbs I had bought. So instead of leaving them in the garage to freeze and then rot, they went into the basement refrigerator. Left untouched for months, they greeted me in the beginning of March as still firm bulbs. So, I decided to experiment and plant them to see what would happen. Today (4/26) they began to bloom! Save those bulbs you can't get to and try it next year.
ALIVE! - In just one month we move from barren Lenten twigs and sticks on the table (photo beneath) to succulent leaves and flowers. The dead
branches once displayed now extend their invitation to Resurrection life and they show us what it looks like; full color, beauty, fresh, supple, reaching out and up! All in a month. Go out into your yard and cut some branches and bring them inside. Feel their soft leaves. If you don't have a yard, buy some. They keep growing in the vase if you keep cutting the ends off and freshening the water. The little bunny on the table is a family tradition. His name is "Brocky" and he always comes out for Easter, spends spring and summer around the house and then disappears until the next spring.
Early Spring , is also the liturgical season of Lent. It is a time to look into our cup and ask the Lord to reveal what we can't see that needs healing. Henry Nouwen's book, Can You Drink the Cup is a helpful trowel in this effort to dig into our souls and seek the Lord's help. In this season, our church has a little tradition of putting plain, dead looking branches into a vase before the altar as a reminder of how we need to be stripped down and remade by the Lord to be ready for Easter. Reenacting this display in our home is a quiet reminder of the pruning that needs to happen in this season, to our hearts as well as our trees.
Concerted preparation of our souls when walked alongside the soil preparation in our yards bears the best fruit in due season. It seems impossible to seperate one from the other, physical gardening from heart gardening. As you reach for your chosen Lenten devotional also buy some seed starting mix and ask the Lord to multiply all your efforts.
Chocolate Cosmos Returns - In the pot pictured above with tulips some strange seedlings recently popped up. Now that they are about two inches I can see that they are the Chocolate Cosmos (photo below) that was growing here last summer and has self seeded. This is thrilling as it was truly a new found favorite last year. Now is the time to move things around before the roots are too established so these will be moving out to my perrenial garden. Seeds are such a Spring surprise in the garden. You may not recognize them right away. Be patient with them. Try to think about what was there last year, even better check your garden journal and see if you wrote it down. If you don't have time for a journal, save the seed packets and keep them in a photo album.
Spring - Seed planting is a way to find God and spring is the season to plant seeds. Grass seed is satisfying because it gives us an abundance of green. By March 1st we are starving for green here in the Midwest, so much so that I will often plant grass seed in pots, set upon the window sill. Inevitably, this new grass makes its way out to a dead patch in the lawn and then I see the thousands more empty holes needing attention. By then it is too late. April is the beginning of planting the more serious seeds...the grass will have to wait, on to the dream seeds!
Who can resist those artful packets in the grocery store? Every photo promising a gourmet salad bursting with arugula and heirloom tomatoes. Just one lettuce packet promised to yourself turns into a fistful of ambition and a cart full of seed starting compost and peat pots. This seed dream happens to me every year. This year has been one of the most exciting due to a find in the neighbor's trash.
TIP #1 - Keep your eye on the curb, for someone's trash might be your garden treasure.Coming home from Maundy Thursday services on a drizzly April evening, I saw a distressed, windowless door at the end of a neighbor's driveway, waiting for trash pick-up. Looking it over revealed a host of possibilites for new garden art. Why not hang it on brackets, sideways against the patio brick wall and grow an array of vines all over it? The photo below captures the current state of the idea, door hanging and seeds germinated. I hope to cover it in Morning Glories, Moonflowers, Passion vines and Black Eyed Susan vines Start a tradition of growing Morning Glory and Moonflowers from seed with your children! Moonflowers open in the evening and send forth the most heavenly sweet scent and the Morning Glories open in the morning. Their morning greeting of sky blue calls for breakfast outside just to take them in a little longer! The Morning Glory above is a surprise to me. The bees cross pollinated some of the traditional purple with some white and magenta stipped flowers last year resulting in this purple stripped variety which I have never seen before. It was the first flower to open on our hanging door!
Tip #2 - Save your fun restaurant bottles and use them to display special flowers. This royal blue water bottle shows off one of my favorite flowers, Chocolate Cosmos. The sparkling Limonata bottle features Cedar from the trees in the yard, a nice dark green accent against summer's mild green hues.
Tip #3 - Birthday and holiday flower bulbs are recyclable in your garden. Plunk them in the dirt and forget about them until they surprise you with an unanticipated bloom. Easter Lilies from the past do very well when planted and ignored. Ours bloomed again in July. Save your Amarylis Christmas bulbs as well and they will revitalize over the summer, growing succulent leaves. In early September dig them up and put them in a paper bag in the fridge. Pot up in mid October for an even bigger holiday blossom than the year your Aunt sent them to you.
Tip #4 - If space is limited, use the corners of your yard. Generally these are wasted areas. We decided to capitalize on empty corners as garden areas so we could maintain open play space for the summertime Badminton championships. All of our gardens are set in out of the way spaces. Fantasizing about using up the middle of the yard for an enourmous hydrangea garden is a frequent pastime for me while lollygagging in the hammock. Our little vegetable plot needs to be continually cleared of the aggressive grapevine on the fence, but the harvest is worth it. In this little space we have brussel sprouts, broccoli, cucumbers, two different basil varieties, five types of tomatoes, nasturtiums, swiss chard and kale. You can do so much with a small space, but keep the cucumbers pruned back or they will take over.
Tip #5 - Plant and enjoy edible flowers. There is something quixotic about eating edible flowers. Many add a spicy touch to salads, appetizers etc. While on vacation in the Adirondacks I met Jane Desotelle, a woman dedicated to the culinary aspects of flowers. She had a photo album full of the many ways she uses daylilies, pansies, nasturtiums and violets. Purchasing her magenta colored violet jelly and putting into the center of a round dish full of goat cheese then serving on a cracker was delicious! Check out and order from Jane at Underwood Herbs at (518-463-4777.) Her prices are very reasonable and everything is completely natural.
Nasturtiums like the ones pictured here can be filled with a cream cheese and mango chutney filling using a pastry bag to pipe the filling into the center of each flower. These take a little time, but for a fancy occasion they are worth it. Eat the leaves torn up in salads also.
