…the roses blooming outside…

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” ~ Dale Carnegie

the back yard through the yoga studio window

sometimes I abandon the yoga in favor of gazing aimlessly out the window

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Listen

When Someone Deeply Listens To You ~ by John Fox

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

Faded Rose - August 2011

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…the leaves were calling me.

I meant to do my work today,
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree,
And a butterfly flitted across the field,
And all the leaves were calling me.

–Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947)

Miss Peanut answers the call of a Mint leaf

Well, the last week has simply been heaven. Every spare moment was spent planting the seedlings started during Spring Break. Several huge cans full of grass and weeds were pulled as well. There is still a lot to be done, but the garden looks tended again. It’s impossible to express just how good for me this process has been. My intellectual pursuits of the last 20 months were very intense and I had not been grounded in the way I need, which is that special brand of grounded I only get from, well, the ground. All head and no body makes one a bit insane after a time. The garden is medicine. My muscles are delightfully sore and I have a touch of color back in my cheeks. The weather was even on my side with cool cloud cover and a bit of rain midweek. The photos all came out with a bit of fog in the center, so I apologize for the quality – not worth retaking them though. Let’s just pretend that I was going for that vintage nostalgic hazy days of summer sepia toned wonder and call it a day. Later I’ll clean the lens, since I know I probably thumbed it with sunscreen. We get messy when we’re gardening 🙂

Somewhere around 42 Tomato seedlings went into the ground in various spots around the property. They had priority, of course. Those are the leftover winter peas drying on the tops of the stakes so I can plant them later.

the Brandywines are in the ground and all is right with the world

The Artichoke seedlings, 4 of them, came from last year’s fruit.

Artichoke seedling

I found a bird’s nest, probably doves, in a burrow on the ground in the meditation circle. This makes four nests that I save in a special place in the potting shed. They are among my favorite things.

I have quite a growing collection of bird's nests in the potting shed

The Hollyhock seedlings are from Andrea’s seeds, so of course I’m hoping for dark colored flowers!

Andrea's Hollyhock seeds are finally in the ground

Tom bought me an upside down hanging Strawberry planter so I would have more than just a few ripe ones at a time. He loves me.

Tom's Topsy Turvy

There were at least three of these cans full of grass and weeds pulled out to make room for seedlings.

out with the old - in with the new!

At a certain point, I had pulled out so many plants needing new homes, I had to spread out over the lawn. I find I have to make a mess before I can bring about any kind of order.

finding joy amid the chaos

There is still a lot of transplanting to do; finding new homes for what I dug up, re-potting things that have grown out of their pots, moving all succulents and cacti to pots leaving more ground for herbaceous plants, etc…

looking for new homes

When I get it all cleaned up, probably by the Full Moon this coming Wednesday, I’ll be able to sit in my rocking chair and celebrate with a juicy glass of wine. In the meantime, the bees are busy gathering pollen…

greedy little bee in an Agapanthus

…the flowers are blooming…

Roses and Grapes and Andrea's birdhouse

…completely oblivious to the fact that I’m literally turning the entire garden upside down. The only ones to really notice have been the spiders, but we get along famously as long as we respect each others space.

the ever-faithful Feverfew

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That Flower

“I decided that if I could paint that flower in a huge scale, you could not ignore its beauty.” ~ Georgia O’Keeffe

rainbow sherbet rose

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Tuesday’s Muse: Mentors

Today is Tuesday, so time to honor the Muse. Today, she takes the form of mentors, those people who come into your life and teach you things, and I would like to talk about my father-in-law who passed away last Wednesday. He leaves behind a very large family that adored him and a lifetime of friends who loved and respected him. He came into my life when I was still a very young woman, about 20 yrs old. He gave me a job when I desperately needed one and that’s how I eventually became a Northcutt myself.

There are many things I am grateful to him for, but the one I will highlight here is that he shared with me his knowledge of gardening, took me under his green thumb and taught me how to grow things. He had been a sharecropper in Oklahoma before moving to California all those years ago when so many people fled the dust bowl. He also had a small farm here in Ramona, Ca. By the time I met him he was mostly settled back into the suburbs just a few miles from where Tom and I live now, but his backyard was always lush and blooming with as much as would fit. The crowded state of my own backyard testifies to his influence: a little bit of lawn in the center with all the edges packed with fruits, vegetables and flowers.

He taught me how to grow peppers and potatoes and how to train vines, told me when to cut back my roses and to plant garlic under them to help keep bugs off, and how to cage my tomatoes. Thanks to him, I know about burying rusty nails in the dirt under a Hydrangea to change its color and many other nuggets of gardening wisdom and folklore that all seemed like magic in the beginning. He taught me to garden by the cycles of the moon and to read the Farmers Almanac, told me why things were not doing well and how to fix it. He told me to loosen up the dirt around the base of plants so they could breathe, answered all my questions and told me silly stories. Most impressively, he knew all of this without ever consulting the internet or a book.

Over the years he must have given me a hundred planting pots , every size and shape and material. He picked them up, along with the half dead plants that were in them, in alleys and abandoned lots, or from the recently vacated houses and apartments he was working on. We always had fun trying to bring those poor plants back to life and more often than not we had success. If I admired a plant, he would immediately whip out his pocket knife and give me a cutting, along with another pot and some dirt, and told me how to grow it. My hands were always dirty when I left his house, but they were never empty. Every time I visited we took a walk together around the yard to tour his garden, where he was always happy and always in denim overalls. We had to stop at every plant and discuss its progress, every bloom was appreciated and snails were collected and thrown over the fence – I won’t say in which direction 🙂 There was a turtle that lived in the yard and we fed it broccoli together. If there was something new growing, he told me all about it. Billy Wayne Northcutt taught me more about gardening than anybody else. It was something we had in common, besides Tom. He passed along to me one of his life’s passions and for that I will always love him and am deeply grateful that he took the time and effort to teach me something so important. Thank you, Billy, from the bottom of my heart.

If you have a mentor in your life, it is an honor, say thank you. If you are a mentor to someone else, it is an honor, say thank you.

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Tuesday’s Muse

Last week, I made a vow to make Tuesdays a day for inspiration and a special time to honor the Muse in whatever form she may come. Today, a rose and a friend…

Without Time
by Steve Mitchell

without time
no scent on the bloom
frozen rose

rich luxurious luscious velvety deep dark red rosy scented beauty

Very special thanks to Steve Mitchell: friend, poet, Haiku master, artist, painter, philosopher, wino…you know, all the good stuff! Steve has always been an inspiration to me because his house is filled with his own paintings and he’s the only man to have ever told me a Haiku knock-knock joke that he made up. Seriously. Who does that? Thank you, Steve, you inspire me to paint, even though I really don’t know what I’m doing.

Some people paint their world using words or ideas, others with flowers and colorful gardens, some with clothing, cosmetics, food or photographs. Whatever you choose, use your favorite colors, splash around in them and do not be afraid of extravagant flourishes. Even nature decides once in a while that a simple red rose is not enough and she creates the deepest, darkest, lush red she can find, just because she can.

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Spring Break

The title of today’s post makes me very very happy. I’m going to say it again: Spring Break. Ahhhhh. One whole week without classes coming right up! It took a lot to get here and it’s a Full Moon, so today I’m going to rest and roll around in thoughts of what I’ve managed to accomplish over the last little while and pat myself on the back. We should all do that more often you know? Go ahead, pat yourself on the back right now. You are awesome and you know it! If someone else pats you on the back, it’s a great feeling, but why the hell should we wait for that?!

Spring Peas - April 2011

There will be no starting of anything new either. The week ahead will be spent finishing the things I normally don’t have time for. Work is caught up, but I will have the opportunity to do those projects that seem to get put at the bottom of my in-box over and over, like balancing the bank statements and taking inventory of my supplies, cleaning up computer files and reorganizing property photos…sooooo much excitement! There are also some weird and time-consuming school projects and one humongous botany paper to write. Yes, it would be more fun to flake more over the coming week, maybe even leave town a couple days, but my plan is to have everything done that I can do so the rest of the semester goes easy and when it’s over I have a clean Summer Slate to work with. Yes, I am becoming more pragmatic with age. Sigh.

Glamour and Drama in the Swiss Chard patch - April 2011

It will not be all work though…Tom and I have already started to enjoy the extra time together starting with a fabulous lunch out on Friday. I even pulled out a pair of four inch Louboutins to wear. We always enjoy our lunch dates, but the extra glamour went a long way towards starting the break on a positive, mildly self-indulgent foot. 🙂

Fresh Spring Strawberries - almost! April 2011

There has even been some gardening happening the last couple of days. Yay! My big red apple cookie jar is completely empty of seeds right now, which I believe has never happened. It got a good bath inside and out and all of the seeds except for a few odd ones have been planted. (By the time they sprout and get ready for permanent Earth homes, I will done with the semester) The last few remaining seeds will go in the dirt today to honor the Moon and I will not be buying any more for the rest of the year. The time has come to use what I have and clean out the potting shed of stuff I don’t use – I can hardly get in the door! It will be fun to see what germinates because most of these seeds are a bit aged. Some of them are even leftovers of envelopes that have not produced a single viable seed yet, Cantaloupes and Cucumbers among them.

Seed Inventory Day - January 2011

It always amuses me when that happens. Was there just a dysfunctional mother plant that put those seeds out? Most of the time it’s because they have been on the shelf too long and I always forget to check the date on the envelope. Perhaps that will be my nugget of advice for the day; always check for a ‘sell by’ or ‘use by’ date on your seed packages. They should be fresh and no more than a year old when you plant them. Yes, some seeds stay viable for much longer, but why take chances when they aren’t free? Also, I never buy seeds from outlet stores like “Big Lots” or odd stores like a drugstore where you normally wouldn’t buy seeds. If they are displayed in the direct Sun or outside, I don’t buy them either. In fact, I have discovered that seeds ordered online seem to be the most reliable in terms of germination. As far as storage goes, I’ve learned to keep mine in zip-lock baggies in my cookie jar or air tight glass jars, which I collect in every shape, color and size imaginable. They stay up on a shelf in my dark potting shed. It floods in the winter time, but my seeds stay dry and at a consistent temperature. Of course, the best place for a seed is in the Earth!

Boing! Grape vine tendrils....

So now I’m off to have breakfast with Tom and plan the rest of my day. It’s really a wonderful feeling to be able to take my time doing whatever it is I’m doing without feeling pressured to hurry up and finish so I can go do something else that needs doing. Ahhhhh. I can stop running now and enjoy the journey a little more, perhaps contemplate ‘things’ and ‘stuff.’ Contemplation has become a fancy luxury these days. Or maybe I’ll just go outside and sniff some roses – just for hell of it….

The bedroom window roses are in full bloom again. - April 2011

Happy Spring Sunday! and once again because I love saying it – Spring Break!

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It Rains and the Wind is Never Weary…

The Rainy Day
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

This is my dream house, north of Yountville in the rain. Haunted and unfinished, surrounded by ethereal trees, and it desperately needs a garden!

We have just had the most amazing storms! The temperature dropped drastically. Then came the rain. Then came the hail and the wind. We had a fire going and a nice bottle of wine, or two, from our Napa trip, some movies, and Tom made a meatloaf. It doesn’t get much better than that as far as winter evenings go.

The talking news heads were advising us to cover our plants, but I never actually had that kind of time. I think it’s fine though. Everything that lives out there has already survived my ‘back-to-school’ neglect and if it can also survive some ice being pelted at it, well I have a pretty strong garden to build on! Also, I’m very glad I once again resisted the urge to prune back the roses because they would have had new growth from last week’s warmth and that would be a disaster. Wait wait wait – it’s worth it! (at least if you live in Southern California!)

Waiting until after the worst of the cold to trim my roses has another benefit: I have a nice harvest of rose hips to use. Rose hips are the fruit of the rose plant. Most of us never see them because we dead head our roses and chop that part off before it has a chance to develop. We don’t plant roses using the seeds that are inside either. I remember learning years ago that there were rose seeds…!?…well of course there are!

Rose Hips...aka Rose Haws

Rose hips are considered the top plant source of Vitamin C. You’ve probably seen the jars of “Vitamin C with Rose Hips” on your drugstore’s shelves. They can be dried and used as tea, made into jelly, jams and preserves, or added to other recipes like you would a cranberry. There are tiny little hairy seeds that should be removed first, otherwise it’s pretty straightforward. I’m planning on drying mine for tea this year. Here’s a website I found which may clear things up.

Shiny and Ripe

This last year, my roses were left alone to their own devices and didn’t get pruned much. Aside from having the ‘hips’, they got a nice rest. In my opinion, pruning away at roses the way we do forces them to constantly produce and grow in ways that are human-driven and not necessarily natural. Right now they’re a tangled mess, but they’re also full of energy and life and rain and I just know that the moment I prune them they’re going to burst forth into brand new life, strong and vibrant. Or maybe I’m anthropomorphizing my roses and I really just want to feel that way myself.

Suburban Rainbows. Suburban Roses.

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Why is April still hanging around?

Thyme blossom

Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still cleaning up the multitude of messes caused by the month we know as “April 2010”. There is no way I will ever remember exactly all that happened, but I think I accomplished a hellofaLOT! There was almost too much of everything; severe weather extremes, paperwork, taxes, people, ringing of the doorbell, firings and hirings, math tests, fights, love, heavy sighs and cursing, joy and despair. At least the moon is finally waning, which makes the clean up easier, and I got to spend some time with my family in between all the other crap.

The garden took a backseat. It had to for the sake of everything else but, if your garden cannot survive a little neglect when times are busy, it isn’t the right garden for you. It won’t be until next week that I can get out there again and put things back in order, or have time to write anything properly here. In the meantime, here are some photos I took of April’s activity in the garden (and Happy Friday!):

Hollyhocks are blooming

Happy Roses

Apple blossoms

Potato plants

Evening Primrose

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A Kiss From a Rose

rosacea grandiflora

“How did it happen that their lips came together? How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill? A kiss, and all was said.” ~ Victor Hugo

Lemon tree with roses

Some days lately have just been too cold and clammy to enjoy gardening. The roses, however, are in full bloom so I decided to make rose water one day and stay indoors. It’s expensive to buy but easy to make and, thanks to Alton Brown, I knew ahead of time exactly how I would do it.

First of all, you MUST HAVE CHEMICAL FREE ROSES! Absolutely no pesticides ever come into contact with my roses, so I’m good to go:

1) Take your biggest stock pot and put a brick, rock, small meat rack or other “thing” in the bottom to keep your rose water catcher up out of the water. I used a rock:

yes, it's a rock in a pot

2) Pull the petals off your roses and rinse them if needed, also removing any bugs. I get little beetles on mine, but they shake right off. Choose juicy looking petals and discard all leaves and stems. Put the petals in the bottom of your stock pot and cover them with water.
3) Take a bowl and set it on top of your rock/brick. This will catch your rose water as it drips so it needs to fit in the pot with the lid on. I used stainless steel but next time I’ll use an older bowl because the roses discolored it.

4) Put the lid of the stock pot on UPSIDE DOWN. You want to choose one with a curved lid and a handle. The point is to have your evaporated rose essence run down the lid, down the handle and into the bowl.

upside down

5) Put some ice on the inverted lid to cause the steam to condense…this condensation is your rose essence!

6) Turn the heat on! This is where the instructions I looked up start to vary. All over the place in fact. Some advice said to boil for hours and some said 20 minutes. The reasoning behind what I did was this: I have plenty of petals out there to keep making more water with, so I didn’t need to abuse these petals by over-boiling them and thereby DILUTING my rose water. Once I felt the roses had given their best, I turn the heat off and said Amen. You can tell by scent. Once the kitchen stopped smelling so strongly of roses, I knew it was finished. Make sense? So, I simmered on low for about 40 minutes. Next time I may try 30 minutes, or put more rose petals in.
7) When it’s done, it looks like this:

I’m sure there were some uses for this boiled up mess, but today I was only after the water!

I got half a cup of rose water, enough to fill two of my apothecary bottles. (thank you Gina and Lori! I love them!)

This was so easy and fun, I will be making more all season! My favorite use so far is as a facial toner. I mix it with a little witch hazel on some cotton – done! Other great uses: put the rose water or petals in your bath with some milk (all of my expired milk goes in the tub with me) and your skin will be soooo soft! Or, spritz a little on your pillow or in the room. It’s even good mixed with Champagne/sparkling wine – be sure to float an extra petal in your glass 🙂 As I find more uses and recipes, I’ll post them. In the meantime, here’s the recipe that started it all. Thank you, Alton Brown – and also Tom, for catching that episode for me.

Simply beautiful

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A red, red rose

“I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It was 70 degrees and absolutely beautiful today, making it really difficult to focus on work. Tom and I always work half a day on Saturdays, but today I had to cut it back to a couple hours. The paperwork will still be there Monday, the New Moon will not! Instead, I pruned the roses in the front yard along the driveway. There are five bushes, all a little different, and they’ve been there since shortly after we moved in six winters ago.

Our landscaper picked them out and put them in. There was no landscaping at the time so I was ok with letting him do it. Now that I am a much more passionate gardener, I would never dream of not picking out and planting my own roses. In fact, shortly after he put them in, I told him never to touch them again.

Before I went out there, I looked up what info I had on properly pruning roses to refresh my brain, figuring I would post the rules here when I was finished. Funny thing about pruning rules in books or online: so much of it is crap and contradictory, or simply over-strict. Yes, there are some basic guidelines that give great results. What they forget to tell you is this: if you’re so busy worrying about getting all the rules perfect, you’ll forget to relax and enjoy it which is the damned point of tending roses in the first place.

So here’s what I know about pruning roses:

* use very sharp tools and clean them between plants if one has a disease.

* cut at angles which keeps moisture from settling on the cut edge and making things rot

* remove all dead or diseased stuff

* Cut one inch above the bud that’s pointing in the direction you want the thing to grow

* roses get rusty moldy and claustrophobic – keep the center empty and don’t let canes touch each other, they need their space. much like people.

* If you break a rule your roses will probably survive

* Know your rose! listen to it and it’ll tell you exactly what it wants. Get down there at eye level and see what’s going on. There are different rules about pruning depending on what type of rose you have, but I have discovered that even each individual bush within a type likes something different. Also shaping its personality; age, placement, what you’ve done to it before, surrounding plants…you get the picture – each rose is it’s own person, and most of them are very forgiving.

Timing in the garden is important to me, so I always prune my roses on the New Moon. Every single month during their growing season, I give them a little haircut. Last winter, Tom and I pruned them gently and left quite a bit of old wood. (we had so much fun that day and it was our best rose year ever) This year was time to prune drastically. This may sound more than mildly insane, but my roses have actually let me know they’d like some time off and I always give it to them.

I really discovered the giddiness of rose-pride one day when Tom and I were at the taco shop down the street. One of our neighbors recognized me and said Hi. I had no idea who she was but she said knew me as the “Rose Lady On Cork Place.” I think that’s pretty awesome, and I’m not going to tell her I sometimes break all the rules.

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