Garden update

This is when it all starts to get good. Last night we ate these amazing things, with broccoli and spinach and kale from the garden. And Sunday we ate big plates of salad-- spinach, lettuce, beet thinnings-- with deviled eggs. Eggs and greens, greens and eggs. It must be June.

You may notice from the above picture that all the bishop's weed is gone from the circle garden. At least from this distance, it appears that way, but the rest of the summer will require near-daily vigilance to ensure any sprouts that emerge don't spread to conquering capacity. And there will surely be sprouts. Yesterday I was crawling around in the mud with a trowel forking pesky little volunteers out of the ground. 

After a very slow and bumpy start this spring, finally everything is thriving. Squash, cucumbers, beans, tomatoes, peppers. Potatoes. Everything. This weekend I led many many party guests through the garden, everyone exclaiming and showering compliments. The compliments were nice, don't get me wrong, but felt beside the point. Also, I felt myself being pedestal-ized when I'm still honestly a novice. It's hard to really wrap my head around, but all of this work? The fancy brick paths and raised beds and picturesque-ness of the whole thing? I did it for me. I did it to satisfy a nearly lifelong longing for that feeling. That look around and smile and sigh and think, we are fed, and this is pretty. 

The food and the flower beds, on the other hand... I was all too happy to receive compliments for those things. Oddly. The vegetable garden is simultaneously the least private and most private place here-- closest the street but most fiercely mine. Maybe, just a place to scratch my only-child itch. 

This is not to say I rue those compliments. Compliments are kind, and welcome-- but they also come from distance. Compliments are shouted across a fence, the divide between understanding and good manners. When you don't know what else to say, you offer a compliment. Someday, someday soon, I want to lead garden tours where people are asking about mulching, talking about their own soil, their own crops. Speaking the language of growing things, so we can celebrate it together, from even footing on the same side of the fence.

Ok, musing over.

This picture is for Steph.
Now that everything-- save for late plantings of cucumbers and bush beans-- is in the ground and mulched (mostly) I can turn away for a hot minute and do other things. I am trying to get back to working on our house exterior, but now it insists on raining five days a week. It took a few good downpours to sate the bitterness over last summer's drought, I'll be honest, but now I am ready for things to dry out for five days so progress can be made. There's really no such thing as perfect weather, is there?

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House party

We had a terrific party. True to form, I was so busy hosting I didn't take any pictures. I barely had time to eat-- I'd sit down with a plate, take a bite, and see good friends coming down the driveway. How could I stay sitting at a time like this?! We had gray though mostly dry weather, and at least as many guests as last year. The party is in its third year, and some continuity is developing among the regulars. My parents and my aunt and Patrick's parents are getting to know the town. College friends meet band friends. Everyone brings amazing food; we always end up with more wine leftover than we purchased for the occasion; family and friends alike take turns putting out more food, clearing plates, and washing dishes. For me, the day is a whirlwind of meeting and greeting, refilling glasses, and conducting garden tours. 
This year it wrapped up with a campfire group sing led by our friends the Schwarzanses, an eight-member family who loves to sing as much as I do. We sang Amazing Grace and If I Had a Hammer and Free Falling and All I Want is You, from Juno. It was awesome.
Sunday we treated ourselves (and our heads) gently, cleaned up, mowed, and took Del swimming. If there were any doubts as to his golden retriever lineage, this should pretty well put them to rest. What a water dog. Oh, and naturally, of course, Delmer was the absolute life of the party. As we expected.
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Five years

This morning, I woke up, as I usually do, to Patrick getting out of the shower and rummaging for his clothes. Heaven-sent is the husband whose wife is allowed to marinate in bed while he gets dressed for work. Usually he makes a great playful show of trying to smack me with his belt, talks to the dog about something philosophical, and fills me in on the revelry that filled his prior evening. This is our morning ritual. There are familiar refrains, such as "Because you were being jerky," and, "But I'm a nice Plathy!" (He calls me Plathy.) This morning he informed me he was going to be wearing "Delmer-skin pants" to work, and proceeded to put the imaginary pants on, one leg at a time, accompanied by woofing sound effects. And I rolled over to hide my smile, and tried to remember what my life was like before I had a man in it who could make me belly laugh before 8AM.
I couldn't remember. I couldn't imagine that, as joyous as my single life could sometimes be, that it was ever as full with fun and humor as my life is now. And I was thankful.
Later, after I had gotten up and made tea, Patrick called from his drive to work to wish me Happy Anniversary. I had completely forgotten. 
Funny though, isn't it, those grateful thoughts that filled my head before I'd shaken off the sleep-grog enough to realize that it was, in fact, our anniversary. Half a decade. Half a damn decade. So much of the hard stuff is behind us, and so much of the good stuff is still ahead. I love that feeling. This morning, as I'm baking cheesecake and making sandwiches for our party, I am going to hold that feeling as present as I possibly can in my head. This marriage is good, and happy, and we are so lucky.

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Grilled beet salad with barley and feta

This was a phenomenal meal. It's nice, on a Sunday night every once in awhile, to spend an extra twenty minutes on dinner, and I feel like this was the perfect occasion to do that. Breaking out the grill for the first time since last year provided a nice occasion for that sort of care. We broke out the grill for the first time since last year, we had marvelous fresh beets and fennel to use up, it was such a beautiful evening. In a way, it was the perfect last meal of spring and first meal of summertime, all on one plate.
By way of plot summary: there are many steps here, but they are all very easy. This recipe does make a lot of dishes, but in terms of time commitment, so many of the steps overlap that everything can be done in the time it takes to cook the barley.
Cook the barley Cook 1 cup pearled barley in 3 cups water and 1/2 tsp salt at a low simmer for about 35 minutes. Remove from the heat and let sit another 10 minutes with the lid on. Drain off any excess water.
Grill the beets and fennel Peel and slice, brush with oil, salt and pepper, and grill on medium-high with the lid closed ten minutes per side, until tender. Meanwhile...
Make the vinaigrette 2 tbsp vegetable oil 1 tbsp walnut oil (or another tbsp vegetable oil) 1 tbsp red wine vinaigrette 1 small minced garlic clove 1 tbsp minced fresh tarragon S+P
Toast the walnuts Heat a dry skillet over medium heat, and toss the walnuts around until they start to brown and smell walnutty.
Blanch the greens Wash and stem the beet greens, and tear into bite-size pieces. Fill half your sink with very very cold water (throw in ice cubes for extra points. Heat a large saucepan of water to a spirited boil, throw in all the greens, stir once, then just as quickly drain and transfer the greens to the ice water bath. They should look green and awesome.
Assemble: Pile a little cooked barley onto a plate, followed by some beet greens. Drizzle with vinaigrette, top with grilled beets and fennel, and sprinkle with walnuts, feta and minced fennel fronds (if you got 'em). Love life.
And now for me, it's back to cleaning. Gotta get this house ready some way, some how!
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Weekend shots

It was a fine weekend. By the numbers: we spent almost all Sunday relaxing and enjoying summer. We took Del to the creek, sat in the yard and drank yard beers, and ate some really excellent food (recipe tomorrow). Saturday Patrick and I made a little more progress on this sexy beast...

which is just one skinny sixth away from becoming our new patio. Okay, each "sixth" in this case is a giant slab of slate, which Patrick has been maneuvering into place using a complex system of levers, fulcrums, winches, chains, and skids. Bless him, for he is so handy. I grow things, but he can slide an 800-pound slab of rock off a trailer like a damn greased otter, like it was meant to be in place under our hickory trees.
These slabs are, incidentally, pieces of the old village sidewalks that were dragged up into the weeds decades ago when everything was replaced with concrete. We had six of these slabs on our property, and had always thought they'd make a fine patio. We have exactly five days until our party, and one more slab (and a lot of leveling and back-filling and tidying up) to go. Whew.

Del watched our progress, and ate sticks. This dog undertakes with great relish the responsibility of breaking all large and medium-sized sticks into small fragments. He finds the occupation greatly satisfying.

Pete, who loves chasing a stick dragged through the grass, is less than pleased, but he'll have to be satisfied with getting some airtime on the blog, instead.
All around, things are blooming. I love this week. Maybe my favorite week of the year. Our anniversary, Patrick's birthday, and all the irises, Centaurea, poppies, Dame's rocket, and spirea burst into bloom. Such a celebration.

This was a great weekend for other reasons, as well. Patrick's band Tumbleweed Highway competed in a Battle of the Bands to secure a slot at a country music festival Friday night, and they WON. After watching the competition-- two cover bands full of flash and swagger among them-- we were all SO surprised when the judges chose the very hairy and talented trio of guys we love. The ones who sing original songs about neon lights, bull thistle, and small town life. You can watch a video of their performance, and the announcement that they won, here.
Sitting in that theater full of people, alongside my fellow Band Wives and the rest of the fine TW HWY support network who'd come out to cheer along, we were on the absolute edge of our seats. I love them, not just because they're my husband and his friends, but because those songs about bull thistle hit a nerve. They tear me up. Watching them live through the gains and losses that go with band life the past two years, I was so ready to see them get some notice. Notice from more than just the most sober Bud light-swigger at the bar, notice from more than just me and the other band wives. Notice from somebody, well, important. And they did. The festival is in two weeks. What a thrill.

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In the orchard

The light was so beautiful last night. All day, it was mid-eighties and sticky, but about 7:30, everything started to glow. I decided to take pictures of the orchard, because it's finally starting to look like something-- not a pretty something, necessarily, but a productive something-- and that makes me happy. The brushy little trees really don't look like much, but when you remember what they looked like when I planted them, they seem to have come a long way. 

Right? To think that barren field of twigs (and no greenhouse!) was just two scant years ago... well...

I think the companion planting is finally starting to pay off. I've planted comfrey, chives, lupines, Baptisia, daffodils, yarrow, Queen Anne's lace, and now some currant bushes in around the trees. All these things have a good ecosystem-building trait of some kind. Lupines and Baptisia to fix nitrogen, daffodils to repel deer, chives to repel everything else. Comfrey to send a deep taproot down into the hardpan and siphon up minerals. I hack the comfrey down to the ground about every four or six weeks-- "chop and drop mulching," that's called-- so the minerals it's mined can benefit the trees, keep down the weeds a little, and retain moisture. The comfrey, for all its miracles, doesn't seem to mind the inhospitality.

I'll admit that right now it looks a little sloppy-- but that's permaculture. As picturesque as an orchard of just grass and trees might seem, it's also more sterile. Here, the fruit trees are surrounded by friends cheering them on-- at least that's what I try to tell myself when I start worrying others might consider this an "eyesore-- and in a few years it'll look more like an effusive meadow of wildflowers than a weedy lawn. As everything grows in, and I find more things to plant here, the whole orchard "block" will be one solid plant community, with no lawn whatsoever.

I can't tell you who's more looking forward to that day: me, the gardener, or Patrick, who currently spends half an hour a week mowing out all the nooks and crannies around the planting.
I'll close with a picture taken during Wednesday's hail storm. Sheesh. The stuff shredded a few hostas, but didn't do much damage to the garden, thankfully. We ate a big bowl of garden spinach last night.

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Scurrilous weeds, and other stories

I've begun seeing this stuff in my dreams. I am digging it out of the circular area between the driveway and the vegetable garden-- which you can see here, on the lower left--

and yanking out its every gnarly white root, and even scraps of leaf that end up scattered (because it will root itself again, from just a torn-off leaf) and hauling the whole mess to the compost. Bishop's weed. Please don't ever plant it. There's a variegated kind, too, which isn't quite as vigorous-- but it's close. This area is contained by lawn, so there is a natural limit to how far the stuff could get. But over by the property line, it has marched its way across several dozen yards of tangled currant bushes, sumac thicket, and tartarian honeysuckle-- would-be fine real estate for Jerusalem artichokes, or ornamental shrubs, or something useful-- were it not for the damn Bishop's weed. The photo above is from Friday, before I launched a sub-nuclear offensive (read: zipped up my rain jacket, made myself hot chocolate in an insulated mug, and got down to WORK). 
My progress isn't as impressive from this angle, but see here: I hacked, pulled, and dug the stuff out from around the three languishing currant bushes (right side) and denuded that whole left side. I have to say, the thoroughly saturated ground is making the job easier for me, and fueling the progress I've been making this week.

I have exciting plans for this space-- come on now, were you surprised? There's a nice Syringa bush there, on the left, and those currant bushes, and a maybe 12 year old hickory sapling, and a giant dead stump (where once there lived a hickory many years older than 12). Between the Syringa and the currants, lined up with the center path in the garden, I'd like to put in a path of wood chips, an efficient energy-link between my kitchen door and the garden gate. You can sort of see the back steps of the house in this picture, on the very left. This little circular area is my pass-through en route to pick dinner, so many nights, and it should suit that purpose. 
I've already started filling in around the Syringa with a mix of herbs and sun-loving perennials. My priority is things that attract good bugs, and also free or cheap things. Right now, I have Liatris, variegated pineapple mint (I dream of Mojitos...), a few odd Campanulas that caught my eye, an Artemisia, and Anise Hyssop. And chives. 
The other side gets less sun. My mother-in-law suggested a bench, and the more I think about that idea, the more I like it. A bench under that hickory, backed by a tall stand of Solomon Seal, and flanked by a few fat hostas... yes. Yes, that suits me just fine.
Remember when I had barely an eighth of an acre in which to grow my vegetables and flowers? Remember when my soil was so terrible zucchini failed to thrive? (I never blogged about that.) I remember my old Binghamton life-- that one I left two years ago-- and I feel like a different person entirely, but not on purpose. This place and its needs have changed me, fully, as I hoped it would, and though I have way less time to drink beer on the porch than I used to, and way tougher hands than I used to, this place has been worth it. It continues to be worth it, more and more, every year.

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