So much has happened since I last talked about my gardens that I hardly know where to start, so this may be a scrambled account.
The bleeding heart is beautiful this year, next to the last of the daffodils to open, a set that is all white. The peonies are doing well, and have pushed up through the wire supports. I’d guess that they are over two feet tall now. I need to move mulch to cover parts of the driveway garden…as soon as it stops raining!
The hostas have come up. I need to trim the spent flower stalks from last year. I hope this year the bunnies will leave me a few hosta leaves. I believe that I am going to try a cayenne spray to see if that will help!
The daffodils are mostly gone now, but the memory remains of one of the most beautiful displays they have ever given us. I need to dead head so that they will bloom beautifully next year. I know that many people dislike dealing with the daffodil leaves as they ripen, but I don’t mind leaving them into June. In some places other plants will cover them, but I just wait them out. It seems little enough to do in return for the pleasure they bring us.
The oldest lilac, one that was here when we built, is in bloom, and those that we planted should follow suit soon. Lombard, Illinois, has a lilac festival during May. I should drive over and take in the festival.
My chives are incredibly healthy, and almost ready to bloom. When the blooms have faded, I’ll cut the plants back to encourage new growth, and I’ll harvest that new growth and see if I can dry it. I am very seriously considering digging up the garlic chives. They insist on relocating, and once the little bulblette grows, they can be tough to weed out. I don’t use the plant enough to justify giving them garden space.
I trimmed back the clematis and added new twine supports to the arbor. I used the string trimmer around the herb garden and north side of the garage, and I managed to get baby romaine, spinach, two kinds of dill and sweet basil seeds planted. Mother Nature is overseeing the watering this weekend.
I have an infestation of grass and bunnies where I used to have a thyme bed. The thyme got disgusted and climbed over the side of the bed to grow in the chat walkway. I’m going to dig out an area about 3 x 4 feet, and sieve the dirt, and then replant more thyme. There’s also a salvia plant that I want to slip a support over, so that it doesn’t sprawl this summer.
I have one arm of the herb garden that I think I am going to dig and amend so that I can grow zinnias. Zinnias were one of my father’s favorite plants, and I’d like to see a riot of color in that corner.
I made my first trip to The Growing Place, and picked up parsley (flat and curled), Sweet basil starts, three kinds of tiny tomatoes (Sweet 100, pear and one new one whose name I can’t recall), a Roma tomato, four pots of purple fountain grass, three of Homestead purple verbena, and two scented geraniums. It’s time to start moving the geraniums that I wintered over outside, but I need to wait for it to warm up again.
The star magnolia and forsythia blooms are gone, and have been replaced by pear and apple blossoms. The air is filled with the petals of these plants as they near the end of their bloom season.
The honeysuckle, both the pink and the white/yellow versions are in bloom, and we are once again surrounded by the greenery of the shrubs and trees that give us the illusion of privacy in the midst of more than a quarter of a million people.
I love watching the changes, counting the passage of time by watching what’s in bloom. As usual, Spring has brought great joy to my life!
Daily Archives: May 15, 2011
Carrel
Carrel is the word of the day, and it takes me back more than forty years to the period in my life when I was working on my bachelor’s degree. Like may students, studying in the dorm, or in my room when I lived off-campus, was not possible. Too much noise, too many distractions, or just too many other things to do, forced me to look for a quiet nook to study.
At that time you could walk into the stacks of the college library, and around the outside walls of the stack they had places where graduate students could go to study called carrels. Each carrel had a desk and a chair, a light and shelves to hold books that were currently being used. If the grad student was not using the carrel, you could slip into the chair and immerse yourself into your studies. Occasionally someone might walk past you, but for the most part it was a very quiet world that encouraged you to learn.
I remember the dry, slightly musty scent, and the low light level of the walkways. The carrels in use created warm pools of light surrounded by shadows, which provided a sense of isolation that helped keep you on task. You could occasionally hear a voice drift up the stairwell from a lower floor, or hear someone’s footsteps on the metal steps. The stairwells were open, but wrapped with a wire grid to prevent people from falling over the side. Probably a good thing given the stacks of books we carried from time to time.
I loved the library, and I enjoyed studying in the carrels. I have a great nephew at school now who has learned to hide himself away when he needs to study. I hope that he comes to love the carrels as much as I did.
Crocheting
My week was unusually tough. I felt like I was rushing around putting out fires, and trying to prevent new ones from popping up here and there. I have not worked in my studio in a month, and the weather has been keeping me out of the gardens while the weeds develop stronger and stronger footholds.
The one pleasant spot in my week has been the crocheted squares from the Share a Square project. Shelly Tucker sent the squares for two afghans to be assembled. One of my friends took one set, and I have the other. I need to get my afghan finished within the next two weeks, so I have been spending the evenings stitching the squares together.
I think that many of us have lost the pleasure working on a project like this gives us. I really enjoy sitting with Dear Husband, assembling these squares while we sit and chat or watch TV. It gives me time to reconnect to him, and also makes me feel that something useful is coming from that time.
Once the squares have been sewn into rows, I’ll crochet three rows around the outer edge to finish off the top. I’ll take a picture to share with you before I send it on to Shelly.
Share a Square will be starting their third year in August. If you crochet or if you know someone who crochets, who might be interested in making squares for this project, click on the link to the right for further information. You can be stitching now, but you need to wait until August to send your squares to Shelly. It’s the perfect way to end a busy day, and a child who is fighting cancer will carry the love you send for the rest of their lives. Give us a hand, won’t you?
Our Little Cake Boss
Our oldest granddaughter’s birthday is in May, and we will celebrate with her soon. We were surprised to find at Christmas that she is interested in crystals. When I heard about this, I thought she was into the multi-faceted, shiny stones that you might see in jewelry, but she is more interested in rocks. Her grandfather not only increased her collection of crystals, but found boxes for her to store and identify her rocks. He’s gradually helping her to expand this interest, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find him giving her rock hammers and things of that nature when she is older. One of Dear Husband’s sons has trained in Geology, so we might need to have him arrange a crystal-hunting trip one day.
While I know very little about crystals (although I’m learning more every day thanks to my granddaughter), I do know a thing or two about cake baking and cupcakes. Dear Husband’s daughter announced that GD1 wanted to be a Cake Boss when she grew up. There is a show on TV called “Cake Boss.” We’d never seen it, and made it a point to watch one day. I have no idea how my granddaughter saw this show, or what about it appeals to her, but it’s resulted in frequent bouts of cupcake baking.
I think I have the perfect gift for her. Sur La Table is a chain of stores featuring things for the kitchen, the grill and the table. I was surfing through their newest catalog and discovered a pan to use to make filled cupcakes. Envision the shape of a small ice cream cone from Dairy Queen…..the kind with a sugar cone. This pan will create the bottom piece with an indentation that holds a couple tablespoons of pudding or other fillings, and a top that looks like the swirled ice cream. The pan will bake six sets at a time. Bake, cool, fill, top and dust with 10x sugar and you have an amazing dessert! This is a Nordic Ware pan, so it should be good quality, and long lasting..
I figure I need to buy the cup cake pan to offset the rocks that Dear Husband will be giving her. I hope my step-daughter will still be speaking to me after a few rounds of these cupcakes. Perhaps we can have a baking day at Gramma’s! YES!!!
Do you suppose that this will be the child who carries on the sugar crisp recipe for the family?
Checking in
Moveable Type tells me that my last entry was May 7th. This has been one of those weeks where my blog and a number of fun things have been put on the back burner while I attended to things for my Mother’s estate, and other obligations.
I’m happy to tell you that both the egrets and herons have returned. I’m not seeing them in huge numbers, but I’ve seen an egret a day for at least two weeks, and I finally saw a heron this week. Mother and I used to watch for these beautiful birds as we drove to exercise, and I find I’m still checking out the retention ponds for a glimpse of these beauties.
In 1981 I went to stay with my parents for what I thought would be a brief summer visit, that turned into a year and a half stay. When I graduated from college, my parents and youngest sister moved from northern Illinois to far southwestern Missouri, to Table Rock Lake. My visits to them were during the summer so I had never seen the hills filled with the blooms of serviceberry and dogwood. The area is hilly, and the roads twist around, and you need to pay attention to your driving.
My eyes were drawn to the beauty of those blooming trees, and more than once I came closer to the edge of the road than I should have. It’s much like those days, watching for the egrets and herons, but at least the road is straight. Now I just need to worry about cars coming up behind me, wondering about my strange driving.
OUr spring has been mostly gray and wet, except for two unbelievably hot days this week. We made a new record in the Chicago area in the upper nineties on Wednesday. Thursday was almost as hot, but the weekend is thirty to forty degrees cooler. It will be one of those years where spring is missing for the most part, and we go from late winter into summer with no preparation. I don’t mind the cool, rainy weather, but I really need to get into my gardens!
I hope you are all faring well, high and dry if you are in the areas with too much water, and able to find a cool spot if you are in the heat Enjoy this day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it. 🙂