Trip to Cleo's Nature Trail

Fab Four mini-road trip to Cleo's, outside of Nampa.  We took the scenic route (the picturesque Owyhees, typical Idaho farmland, high desert) out past Lake Lowell to the Orchard Cafe in Sunnyslope.  It is a super cute little cafe with lots of flowers and a little gift shop...lots of wine-o gifts.  We had a pleasant lunch and headed out to Cleo's.  Quite an interesting little spot...You can read some about it here.

Check it out if you get the opportunity...it is for sure an interesting and nearly magical place.

Gardening

I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.

David Hobson

I have comfrey! I'm so excited!

The Legendary Herb of Life

High in protein: 22-33%. High in vitamin A, C and B-12. Rich in silicon, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, iodine and more. Very high food value for animals. Used as a folk remedy for centuries. Known as boneset and knitbone.

Comfrey can be used as compost material for organic gardens. It is very deep rooted so it mines many nutrients from the soil. The fast growing leaves contain these nutrients. When you cut the leaves, they quickly break down to a thick, black, fertile liquid great for your garden.

Rudolf Steiner, father of Biodynamic Agriculture, lists these 7 plants as being very important on a farm: comfrey, stinging nettle, yarrow, chamomile, horsetail, dandelion and valerian. Others have added burdock to the list.

Comfrey is used in Permaculture as a way to have ecological, sustainable farming systems that benefit the land and people.

From Nantahala Farms

More about comfrey here and here.

I'm super stoked about comfrey. It is an amazing herb. I've used it to help heal Rob's cracked rib and broken sternum. I have used it to heal the bloody callouses on Sadie' s elbows. I've used it to heal a boil on my own belly.

I decided to order some crowns yesterday off the Web. I was telling my neighbor about my plans and he was so cool and kind to share his radical plants with me. I was able to get NINE crowns! Here are a couple of them:

I went and loaded up another 15 or so chunks of concrete from the lady up the road and built a round raised bed to plant these special green babies.

Five went in here and four went into a smaller bed in another corner of the former dog run. I'm grateful for Neighbor Tom for his generosity in sharing this incredible plant with me!

I'll post some pics when they grow up.

Mondays that fall on Tuesdays blow

Mondays that fall on Tuesdays blow. It is one of those days where I feel like I am wearing someone else's contacts. Like I want to drink a lake of coffee, but each sip of what I have in my blue mug burns on the way down, sits there in my big, barren stomach and shoots mean heartburn arrows up into my throat and the backs of my ears. My chair feels like there are hundreds of small nubby protrusions that are constantly attempting to bury themselves into the backs of my thighs, and my feet seem incapable of finding an acceptable spot to rest. They are dancing uncomfortably like fathers-in-law at gunshot weddings. There is a yawn in my toes. A yawn so big I can feel it all the way up through my legs, into my spine, and in the uppermost crevices of my cranium. It is so big that it can only come out in spurts, rushing uncontrollably out my mouth and ears, forcing my eyes shut so tightly that it squeezes any and all moisture out, running down my cheeks in rivulets tinged with black on the edges from my mascara. I want to return home to my bed. It smells like incense. I want to pull the covers up over my eyes and go back to sleep…and sleep for at least a month.

Memorial Day Weekend yard work

Was a very busy and productive weekend!

Tomato and basil bed all planted...only seven tomatoes,  including two awesome Park's Whoppers!  There's also two cukes and some marigolds in there as well.

Old wooden ladder trying to contain my sweet peas set up against my gorgeous syringa! 



One of the lavenders from our wedding...still going strong even after Mylie danced the congo in the middle of it last spring and broke it in half.  



Old planting of thyme that overwintered in the bucket along with new plantings of chives and rosemary.   Yes, I'm a sucker from punishment with rosemary.  I can't get it to survive the winter for anything.

Sea thrift, dianthus, phlox and others...all perennials that overwintered in their pots.

Northernmost perennial bed.

Jalapeno bed and main perennial beds.

Old main garden...now an herb and wildflower refuge.

The jalapeno bed turned and ready for planting..



The jalapeno bed, after planting.



Mow strip project

I hired Nick to help me bust out the mow strip project.  I'd been thinking for a couple seasons about something to keep the lawn from growing into the reclaimed concrete borders in the front yard.  I had dug the trenches a few weeks ago, using most of the dirt to even out the low spots in the front yard and fill the holes left by The Great Organic Dandelion Eradication of 2014.

Here's the trench:

We leveled out the dirt in the bottom of the trench and placed pieces of broken concrete at the bottom of the prepared trenches.  We then filled the large negative spaces with some red rock we got from Rob's boss, leftover from a job.  Hooray recycling!  Next came chunks of white porcelain.  Where can you get chunks of white porcelain?  Hire your 13-year-old nephew to take a sledgehammer to the old toilet you've had in back part of the yard for five years.  Easy peasy!  Nick had a blast throwing huge rocks though the toilet and busting up the remaining pieces with the sledge.

Here comes the pea gravel!

We swept all the pea gravel into any voids we could see and walked over the whole conglomeration several times to settle it further.  Finally covered the whole trenched area in dry concrete, dumped Dixie cup by Dixie cup...much to Nick's chagrin.  Now, add gently sprinkled water.

Voila!

The finished product!  I'm generally satisfied with the result.  I'm excited to see how it holds up!  Here's the breakdown on cost:

1.  Concrete chunks - upcycled from my own old driveway rehab project years ago, along with some from the lady up the road's projects...FREE

2.  Red rock - FREE

3.  Porcelain chunks, super-upcycled from old toilet...and yes, the ENTIRE toilet is now resting in piece (snicker) in my front yard - FREE

4.  Two bags of pea gravel from Lowe's - $3 each

5.  3/4 bag of 60# of concrete - $4

Total - about $10, radical.

Purple in the garden

allium bloom

columbine

Can you ever have enough purple in the garden?  I think not.

Premonitions







Today when I woke up, I could not tell what time it was.  At first I could not focus on any sharp details in my room.  I blinked a couple of times and pulled the warm comforter up over my head, exposing my toes.  It was then that I first noticed the heavy dampness...I could actually feel the moisture falling out of the air and on to the skin of my feet.  I slowly began to take in the smell of sweet swampy-ness.  I must be dreaming.  I sat up - could not even see my alarm clock.  I fumbled for my glasses, and again felt how heavy the air was.  The droplets of sticky moisture hitched rides on the hair of my arms.  I put my glasses on and they felt familiar; I waited for visual clarity.  It was not there.  I blinked again, squeezing my eyelids tight, scrunching up my nose, but all I could make out was the sliver of light coming through the door.  It was green and misty - and well, foggy.  I could hear a faint bubbling sound, like a stopped up drain in my basement.  I slid out of bed onto the wet slippery floor, and made my way to the door.  Everything felt thick and moist, like an old mildew-y sponge.  I called to Sadie, but even my voice was muffled by the green mist that permeated my

room.  I kept toward the alien light emanating from outside somewhere in the

northeast corner of the house.  I opened the door, but no relief came from

the fog.  In fact, it was more dense outside my bedroom.  I could not see

the front windows, only the light from the lamp in the corner of the dining

room - barely penetrating the air.  I called to Sadie again, and soon she

was whimpering at my feet.  Her nose was cold against my hand, and her coat

was wet and cool.  She stepped into the hall with me and lost her footing on

the wet hardwood.  I stepped slowly to the kitchen, pausing to switch on the

bathroom light, it did not work, as far as I could tell.  In the kitchen,

the greenish steam was more stiff and it smelled like, ...like sugar!

Overwhelmingly like sugar.  I rounded the corner at bumped against

something, someONE standing at my stove.  I recoiled back into the hall with

a stifled screech, and then heard a smallish voice said, "Hello. Want some?"

I reached around the corner as far as I could without actually stepping back

into the kitchen and switched on the light above the stove.  Its bare

illumination outlined the shape of a squat, wide-hipped figure with what

looked like green shaving cream piled on its head.  It turned to me with its

oddly brown face and pointed to a boiling pot on my stove and said, more

urgently this time "Want some?"  Suddenly, I realized that I was standing

toe-to-toe with an Oompa Loompa, straight from the Chocolate Factory,

reeking of sweetness.  He was still looking at me inquisitively, one hand in

the pocket of his striped overalls, and one hand pointing with my wooden

spoon to the boiling liquid in the pot.  "What is it?", I asked.  "Cactus

soup," came his sheepish reply.

That was the admonition from the gods.  We’re gettin’ drunk at the Cactus tonight.

Save the bees! Please don't use pesticides!

Today is Wednesday

My beloved forget-me-nots

I am currently on a classical music binge…I have been listening to Beethoven, Bach, Vivaldi, Rachmaninov, Yo Yo Ma, etc. for the last several days and I can’t seem to get enough of it. Adagio, concerto, nocturne, allemande, suite in E major, allegro, fugue, andante, moderato –such romance! Such vigorous words! A vow: I will incorporate more music words into my vocabulary. There was a time in my life several, several years ago when I listened to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons continuously for nearly a month. I think it kind of weirded me out in the end and I put that CD in my desk drawer at home, and it has never seen the light of day since. Maybe I should turn myself in for a case study as to the effects of prolonged exposure to The Four Seasons. I am wondering what Bach is doing to me now. Something elemental and strange, I hope.

I don't understand why people clear a space of all vegetation with horrible poison like RoundUp, then in-turn attempt to cultivate edibles in the same space.  Good soil is alive...full of organisms, earthworms, and bugs.  It moves, breathes, and supports our very lives by supporting the green things we REQUIRE to survive.

Rob and I spent several weeks this last month manually removing nearly a hundred gallons of dandelions from the front yard.  I then used a turkey baster and squirted horticultural vinegar (get it here) in the holes left by the removed dandilions to ensure the destruction of the gargantuan tap roots that dandelions have.  Horticulture vinegar is 20% acetic acid.  It kills the hell out if whatever you put it on, but it does not stay in the soil.  It will not harm soil!  I then overseeded with nitrogen-fixing micro-clover and grass seed.  The clover has sprouted already...still waiting on the grass seed.  I will post pictures in a few weeks after the first mow.

Please stop using poisons like RoundUp!  Yeah, for sure it is hard work, but the soil is still dark, full of worms and bugs...and will support any and all plant life.