The new bed by the front door with the dwarf lilac Scotty and Mariela gave us.
The hosta and white flower bed at the top of the drive, below the shed.
The kitchen garden in bloom.
Wild roses in the yard.
Seasons
05/22/2012
05/07/2012
Kitchen Garden 2012
Got the kitchen garden planted for the most part this weekend. It sits in the circular drive and Bill did just an amazing job edging it. A nearly perfect round. We featured an herb farm as the food purveyor at First Friday and I got most of the herbs from them. They're all organically grown (as is our land.)
I layed it out as a compass...North / South / East / West...with deep purple pansies for the North, yellow for the South, white for the West and bi-color blue for the East. The center is a yellow rose.
Each quadrant has different herbs in it...chervil, sage, chives, French tarragon, English thyme, oregano and parsley. We want some dill and basil of course, but I will put the basil in the main garden and the dill hasn't sprouted yet. The whole is ringed with multi-colored French marigolds which I am hoping fill out and create a border flower hedge. Of course they're also edible.
The picture is taken from due North. That's Missy Girl posing in the background.
03/30/2012
Climbing Clematis
I just love that this becomes this.
The picture on the left is today...the one on the right is July.
03/10/2012
Annual Amorphophallus Watch
Every year, over the past ten years (yes...we've been together ten years now) Bill's amorphophallus tuber, which he brought up from the Keys, puts on a spectacular display and it is different every year. It is never less than beautiful to watch, but occasionally it is really spectacular.
This appears to be one of those years. While outside the vicissitudes of winter play out...it was nearly 65 degrees here this week and today it is snow flurries. We've had more snow in the past two weeks than we've had all winter, in fact.
In any event, while winter runs its erratic course, inside it appears that the amorphophallus is about to bloom. In fact we think it may actually flower this year, which is one of those "good news/bad news" situations.
The good news is the bloom of an amorphophallus is so spectacular -- newsworthy actually -- that when a similar plant bloomed at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden the lines were out the front door.
When old enough, the tuber produces a 6' flower (early May, before the leaf emerges), resembling a giant vase made from the purple vinyl used for cheap '70s car seats.
The bad news is it stinks like rotting meat.
Stay tuned.
02/10/2012
The Long Cyber-Winter is Over!
For months...some of you remind me it's been since November of last year!...I have been able to post writing to this blog, but no photos. Alas, some, nay most and possibly all my inspiration to write comes from the illustration and the lack of that, at the very least, took the fun out of it for me.
So though I attempted to post photos by sending them to my friend Dan (with whom I do GayWisdom.org) that was pretty much an unworkable solution. Dan has many better things to do than to post my photos.
As it happens, it turns out that the reason I was having problems had to do with the server I was using. At one time I had three different servers on my machine (which I am told simply clogs the works in the end)...Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome. I almost never used Internet Explorer, was pretty wary of Google Chrome and stuck pretty close to Firefox. But when I had a PowerBoost done by Norton, the technician removed all of them but Internet Explorer.
And Internet Explorer was the problem. I can't tell you why or anything, but the moment I switched over to Google Chrome, I was, once again, able to post here.
Harrumph!
So I missed posting the chrysanthemum turnips Pat and Barb served us for New Year's Eve dinner in Maine...I missed posting about my little health scare in December when I went down to NYC for routine bloodwork and ended up in the hospital for three days!...I missed the holidays altogether (including my mother's quadruple bypass, open-heart surgery) and I've all but missed the weird winter we've had in which we've had more rains than snow and those rains nearly washed away our drive.
Worse, the lack of ability to write about what life is like here in the country (and anyone that tells you it's quiet and peaceful is crazy!) made taking pictures less fun and less urgent in my priorities.
That's all over now.
It's been a long frustrating winter, blog-wise. I am pretty sure some people who had been following have given up on me. But we're BACK!
11/28/2011
10/30/2011
10/17/2011
10/11/2011
Apple (Buddha) Time
Well I guess it's no surprise that I just got tired of writing about rain. It has finally stopped, for now (and we are already holding our breath for winter and what all this precip would look like in white!) But if the rains did one thing right, it is that it grew our apples to a new level.
We've had apples since the day we moved in. The first weekend I was here, almost two years ago (as of 10/31, officially) I gathered apples and made applesauce. But the apples are not "pretty" and they were always small. This year, however, they are nearly twice the size, if not three times the size of that first year's crop. Don't know how sweet they will turn out to be. Rain = size...sun = sweet...but now I need to start getting some apple butter ready.
10/01/2011
Bean Baking Weather
Well it's finally turned to Autumn here...at least temperature-wise. Precipitation-wise it's still monsoon season and I've just about had it. Can't get in the garden. Can't mow the lawn. At least the mosquitoes seem to have abated with the temperature. Leaf raking has entered the To-Do List. Not that it does much good...as soon as you rake up what's there, more fall with the rains.
But it's nice and cool, so what do we do? We pull out mom's beanpot and we bake beans, of course. Yellow Cap beans from Rancho Gordo to be specific. Big meaty beans. We used this opportunity to clean out a good part of the fridge, too...in addition to the normal ingredients we added mango hot sauce, harissa and boiled cider to the beans. And just for good measure, instead of using ketchup, we used Stadium Sauce (a secret Milwaukee ingredient, usually found on brats). Had some nice chunks of salt pork in the fridge, too. I'm rather excited about these beans.
B&B (Bo & Bill) Baked Beans
2 C beans
4 oz salt pork or bacon
1 onion, finely diced
3 T molasses
2 t salt
¼ t ground black pepper
1/4 t dry mustard
½ C ketchup
1 T Worcestershire sauce
¼ C brown sugar
- Soak beans overnight in cold water. Simmer the beans in the same water until tender, approximately 1 to 2 hours. Drain and reserve the liquid.
- Preheat oven to 250˚
- Arrange the beans in a 2 quart bean pot or casserole dish by placing a portion of the beans in the bottom of dish, and layering them with bacon and onion.
- In a saucepan, combine molasses, salt, pepper, dry mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour over beans. Pour in just enough of the reserved bean water to cover the beans. Cover the dish with a lid or aluminum foil.
- Bake for 3 to 4 hours in the preheated oven, until beans are tender. Remove the lid about halfway through cooking, and add more liquid if necessary to prevent the beans from getting too dry.
