Rory has come to visit during school vacation and the chores begin. We found out the worms are not dead after all. At least not all of them, so we have to feed them eggshells to help reproduction, and squash flesh and seeds. If you look really closely you can see a couple of worms in their last meal. We also saw very very tiny worms, so I guess the eggshells work. We are not the only ones…
Again! Another 5 inches.
Ode to Tomatoes “come on! and, on the table, at the midpoint of summer, the tomato, star of earth, recurrent and fertile star, displays its convolutions, its canals, its remarkable amplitude and abundance, no pit, no husk, no leaves or thorns, the tomato offers its gift of fiery color and cool completeness.” Ode to Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973 Nobel Prize winner) (translated by Margaret Sayers Peden) It seemed appropriate that a friend sent me this…
My jade plant has overwintered happily in our unheated Great Room for several years, but this past year the room did not maintain temperatures above freezing - and as you can see the plant suffered. However - when life is short, the instinct is to procreate! A few branches at the top of the plant are blooming. I will be able to start a new plant or two.
The state of my indoor plants, such as they are, makes me long for spring bulbs in the lawn. But alas the lawn is buried under deep snow, fresh snow, with more snow promised. The cyclamen is sprawly, but still going. This one a bowl of daffodils I potted up in November. I made the mistake of using a bag of mixed bulbs on the sale table at my local garden center. I will know if future to…
Tomorrow we are hosting the Heath Gourmet Club (27 years of serving ourselves) February dinner. Since it is Valentine's Day the theme had to be love. I sent out word that our entree will be chicken with citrus and amaretto - the amaretto supplying the love. I suggested that in addition to thinking of aphrodisiac foods which did at least once on an earlier Valentine's Day, there were many ways of thinking about food of love. They…
Tomorrow we are hosting the Heath Gourmet Club (27 years of serving ourselves) February dinner. Since it is Valentine's Day the theme had to be love. I sent out word that our entree will be chicken with citrus and amaretto - the amaretto supplying the love. I suggested that in addition to thinking of aphrodisiac foods which did at least once on an earlier Valentine's Day, there were many ways of thinking about food of love. They could…
Celeriac was lauded in our daily newspaper, The Recorder, on Saturday by Aaron Falbel of Sunderland for its brightness of flavor, versatility, and modesty. He says,Relegated as you so often are, to the back and upper shelves in the supermarket,Tossed among horseradish, jicama, salsify and other strange,Unidentifiable rooty things.Little do they know that you are the storage champion of all time, Leaven even butternut squash in the dust. . . .You persevereon, and on and on, Keeping your…
Beverly Duncan is known to her Ashfield neighbors, and colleagues at Mohawk Trail Regional High School as a friend, as a helpful worker, as a gardener, and as an artist who sells cards and sketches of flowers and other plants at Elmer’s Store. Some know her as a freelance artist and illustrator for books and magazines, but many are not aware of her reputation as a fine botanical artist whose work has been exhibited at the Denver Botanic…
Beverly Duncan grew up amid the lush landscapes of Hawaii, and her art has always tended toward the natural world, but it was not until a dozen or so years ago, when paintings that she had done of autumn leaves for a Buffalo (NY) Science Museum, that she rejoiced "to have found a place in the art world".Those paintings caught the eye of someone at the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University and she was…