Bittersweet Days

 

Bittersweet

More Sweet than bitter, though.

Yesterday morning I rose late. It was Sunday, after all. 

I grabbed my coffee, as usual, sat on the front porch and watched the gray skies brighten as the sun rose higher behind the.

"I am so blessed," I thought.

I had just spent most of the week, probably the last really warm week of the year, glued to the couch, with a fever and scratchy throat. COVID had knocked me down.

Less than a month ago I significantly changed my diet -- giving up some tasty foods, possibly for good -- in order to heal some health issues. 

The weather had been dry, along with being unusually warm, so I worry a bit about the trees and perennials in the garden.

My father is in the hospital after having a stroke.

But there I was, feeling grateful for my life.

Life is sweet, because when the night is over, the sun rises. Clouds may cover it, but yesterday it meant rain was coming, finally.

My recovery has been rapid and yesterday I finally stopped blowing my nose every five minutes. My energy was rebounding. (Today, I'm even better.) The diet is getting easier, and I've seen promising results.

My father slowly improves with therapy and my mother's constant presence. We're assured that he will see his 100th birthday on Tuesday next week.

However, even if it hadn't rained, or my illness had lingered longer, life is still sweet. My dad will never get back to where he was before the stroke. And the diet remains challenging.

Yet, I am grateful. 

Gratitude.

It's not just something we dust off and put on the mantel for Thanksgiving, it's something that's best worn every single day. Even when the day is rough, a little gratitude smooths the waves a bit.

Every morning I grab my mug of coffee (Thank you), I walk out the front door of my cozy home (Thank you), I sit on my front porch and look out toward the sunrise (Thank you) and say, "Thank you for this new day and whatever it brings."

Gratitude doesn't make life easy. It does, however, sweeten things.

Some of you reading this may feel that life is far more bitter than sweet. I hope that you can learn to see whatever sweetness there is. Even if it does not, at the moment, outweigh the bitter, I'm sure it is there. Keep your eye on it, let it draw you toward it, the way this bittersweet vine in the redcedar tree drew me to admire it. Let it's seeds sprout and bring more sweetness into your life. That is my prayer, my wish for you.

(NOTE: The photo above is of American bittersweet, Celastrus scandens, a native vine, not to be confused with the invasive and destructive Oriental bittersweet, which can strangle trees.) 

Cycles

 

From Death, Life.

Yesterday, while at a neighbor's place searching for stones fallen from a rock wall, I came across this dead tree covered with these little shelf fungi. How beautiful.

It's a reminder that when anything ends it becomes food for something new. The dead tree feeds the mushrooms. When it all is broken down, both tree and fungi will feed other living beings.

What beauty. Nothing goes to waste. All cycles and recycles.

That's Life and Death.

Moving On

 

This photo was taken more than a week ago, after the first rain we had in more than a month of drought and heat. Rain fell over three days and we netted a blessed 2.5 inches (6.35 cm). When the rain ceased, I spent three days preparing the garden for freezing weather to arrive on the weekend. 

It wasn't going to just fall to 32 degrees F. (0 degrees Celsius) or a little lower. Oh, no. Almost all of the cool season vegetables would survive that without protection. The forecast called for it to drop to 25 degrees (about minus 4 Celsius), and continue going down for a few days.

So I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday picking summer vegetables and covering the cool season ones, hoping to protect them enough that they would survive the warmer weather on the other side. (It won't even freeze tonight.) I picked a lot of lettuce -- there was finally enough to sustain us! It was so beautiful! I then covered it with several layers, hoping beyond hope it would survive the forecast 20 degrees (minus 6.7 Celsius), which turned out to be 18 degrees (almost minus 8 Celsius). I haven't yet uncovered the lettuce. I have a feeling it won't be pretty.

I picked all of the eggplant and peppers that had started to turn color on Friday, planning to pick tomatoes and the still green peppers on Saturday. The low Saturday morning was supposed to be above freezing. Surprise! The temperature was just enough below freezing to kill them off. Oh well, less work for me. I spent two days harvesting cabbage and greens (kale and collards), while my husband cooked them to put in the freezer. Some of the cabbage was later used in making soup and sauerkraut. Some are left to turn into other delicious dishes.

The purple daikon radishes before I covered them against
the coming bitter weather. 

I covered the purple daikons with heavy blankets and plastic (so the blankets wouldn't get wet in rain and snow that was forecast, but failed to arrive).

Sunday morning brought 24 degrees, and Tuesday brought the 18. The gardens pretty much melted. 

I kind of enjoyed the look of disaster in the garden. The reminder of cycles. I was in no hurry to clean things up. 

However, yesterday afternoon (Tuesday) and today my husband went out with the wheelbarrow and tools to clean it up. He can't stand the look of decay. He sawed down the okra plants, some of which looked like small trees, and pulled the peppers and eggplants; chopped down the kale and collards, and cleaned away the remnants of cabbages that I'd left in the garden. He cut down the melted kale and collards, took down the long beans and their trellises, and remove the loofa and malabar vines from the trellises. Wow!!!

The garden is tidy now. Only three tomato plants stand. 

The next week or so will be much warmer. No freezing in sight.

And such is the way of things. We have always had warmer weather after our first freezing night, but "normal" was not with lows of 20 or lower. However, we cannot rely on the old normal. Our new "normal" seems to be unpredictable, too cold too early, warmth coming too soon... then leaving. Drought and deluge.

Climate change isn't coming, it has arrived.

But we keep going on. 

We move on after the freeze... try to figure out how to raise a garden in a new normal that might not settle in to a normal for a while. 

I move on to the next thing. 

Keep moving.

This year I have moved on from a decades long practice.

About 30 years ago I started writing a little gardening column for the newspaper I worked for. It began as a little box in the corner of a page, where I put in gardening information from the Extension -- what to plant now, what other gardening tasks might need done, and so on. Somehow it became more about what I was doing in the garden and evolved into a personal -- sometimes profoundly personal -- column about gardening, more or less. I continued writing it even after I left the newspaper and moved to the next county over, where I offered it to the local newspaper. For the past 15 years, it has been published in two newspapers, then.

And now it is done. 

A couple of months ago, I decided it was time to close that chapter. The column had become a burden, rather than a joy. I listened to a podcast in which they discussed "what do you want to give your energy to?" I decided I no longer wanted to put my energy into that column.

A little more than a week ago I wrote the last one, the finale. I feel a weight lifting, an expansion of my being.

I started doing this blog to supplement the column, because I often had more information than I could fit into the word limit. I could put the extra info in here, for my readers to follow. It never quite worked that way, though, and the blog became its own thing. 

I hope to put the energy that went into my column into this blog now -- part of it, at least.

And I feel that something else is on the horizon.

I keep moving on.

Because standing still isn't an option... not if you want to keep living.

Waiting...

 

The Souvenir de la Malmaison rose by my front door still blooms in late October.

The rose has looked more lush and beautiful than it ever has. Typically, at some point its leaves show signs of black spot, a fungal disease that affects the foliage. This causes my husband to keep pruning and trimming.

This year was very dry and warm. Not the kind of weather conducive to the development of black spot. So there was some benefit in the heat and drought. We, of course, watered the rose regularly with our dishwater, an easy task because the rose is near the front door, which is next to the kitchen.

While Josephine's souvenir from la Malmaison gardens blooms, we are in a season of transition. The summer rose blooms as the geese fly to their winter home. I pick tomatoes and okra, while the winter radishes swell underground. All is in flux. As always.  

And tonight I sent off the last gardening column in 30 years of writing it, first for one small town newspaper, and then two. It might not seem like much from the outside, but it consumed a lot of head space and time for me. It's been a good run, but it's time to end. 

And now it has. 

I will turn that energy to this blog, and other things. 

We'll see what happens now. 

In transition. 

In Between

 

We are in that in-between phase of the seasons...

The summer garden has started its decline and the cool season plants are bursting with life.

And yet...

This hardy hibiscus in front of my house keeps blooming. I started it from seed early this year and planted it out in early summer. It has achieved most of its mature size in just one season, from seed. It is the "Luna" variety of hardy hibiscus. The seed packet contained a mix of colors. Besides this luscious pink, white-blooming ones also grow in my flower garden, although they are not as robust as this specimen.

If I keep them watered, they should live through the winter to bloom again. 

Water will be the key to winter survival for many things. We are in moderate to severe drought conditions here in Northeast Kansas. Summer brought us a couple of extended periods of high heat (100-plus degrees F. for a week or more). And so far autumn has been a little warmer than the norm. If it remains dry, perennial plants and trees -- especially young trees -- will require water throughout the winter, as long as the ground does not freeze. Evergreens are particularly susceptible because they continue to transpire (lose water through their leaves) even though their "metabolism" slows considerably in winter.

As they transpire they pull water from their roots. Drying winds will cause that to occur even more. In the spring they are likely to show signs of "burning," their leaves brown and dead because of it. Keep your valuable evergreens watered -- but don't drown them.

This hibiscus plant is planted in a choice spot, where it is easy for us to water it with our dishwater. We always capture dishwater in tubs and use it to water the flowers and herbs next to the house. 

When I planted the fall vegetables, the kale, winter radishes, collards, cabbages, broccoli and lettuce, I laid soaker hoses along the rows for ease of watering. The reward is these wonderfully robust purple daikons (left) and other veggies. Several more cabbages are ready to cut. I'm looking forward to turning some of them into sauerkraut. 

Enjoy this in-between time of beauty and abundance. 

Transitions

 

Autumn has arrived!

A season of transition from summer's big production slowing into a season of rest.

We had our first "frost advisory" last week. No frost in our hilltop gardens, but frost at the bottom of the hill. This is our "pond," which has had no water in it all year. It's been dry since last fall. So many different plants have taken over. I love the way the plants have created this variegated effect, with different colors and textures. The white areas are a froth of grass seedheads covered in frost. The rising sun highlights the plants in the front of the photo, while the bowl of the pond is still in shadow.

We have another advisory for "patchy frost" early next week. So I'll ponder whether to protect some of the tender summer vegetables, or let them go. Since the days following the supposed frost have no frost potential, I will most likely drape them in sheets and blankets, while others I plan to take down regardless. Transitions.

My life contains another transition. I recently decided that after 30 years I would quit writing my gardening column for a couple of local newspapers. Enough is enough. I will put that energy into other things... like making more regular posts here.

More later.....

Bonus Abundance

 I always try to scatter my kale seeds (and others) thinly so they don't require too much thinning. I am too impatient to dry a single seed at a time at appropriate distances, so I just scatter lightly. Yet, some spots (or even a whole row) always wind up looking like this (above), lots of little plants growing tightly together. 

This makes them more difficult to thin, but that's my karma. Of course, even if I'd scattered them at more appropriate distances, they would need to be thinned. You don't sow kale seed one every eight or 12 inches (recommended growing distance) because you must account for some seeds not germinating. 

Thinning plants is rather tedious, and I've often avoided it. However, the thing that gets me out there thinning is thinking of it as a bonus harvest. Clip off the tiny plants just above the soil and you have baby greens -- a free gourmet offering! They can be used in salads, steamed, or stir-fried.

I also harvest the baby winter radish greens, although they grow so fast that they were pretty much toddlers by the time I got to them. I've been using the as my main salad green. Not everybody likes them (they're too much spice and bitter for my husband), but they feel so nourishing to me. Last year I couldn't get enough of the winter radishes themselves, especially the purple daikons, so I'm hoping for a good crop this year. I'm not sure I'll make it through all the radish greens before they get too old if I only use them in salads, so I will try them in stir fry or soup, or just mixed into other veggie dishes.

I also planted collard greens -- a day later than I planted the kale and they are so much bigger than the kale. I've also planted brussels sprouts, for greens only. I haven't ever been able to grow satisfactory "sprouts," but the greens are tasty, especially after a frost. Because they grow more slowly than the other greens, they're still waiting to be thinned... I mean harvested as baby greens. They should make a tasty stir fry.