Happy winter

The baker is busy in the days before Christmas. I stepped outside this morning to breathe in the darkness, while it still reigned. I hope to spend Christmas Eve afternoon sipping whiskey on the abandoned railroad tracks, toasting our new friend: the beaver who is constructing a dam in the valley where we often walk. There is a steep bank where we can sit and watch him tending his floats of branches. There are new little ruts - I call them beaver slides - going down the bank, into the water. I like to imagine him yanking his treetops over the edge, and then wheeee!!! In he goes after them. Plop.

Happy solstice to you, friends.

Animals

These Woodland Creatures have been making a mess of my desk (chewing up pencils, leaving dirty footprints about, etc.)! So I gathered them all up, threw them into the scanner, and slammed the lid shut. Ha.

But really... a friend asked me to draw some animals for her daughter's bedroom art gallery. Here's who I have so far.

The weather has gone a bit wintry, and consequently, I've spent a good deal of time at my desk drawing this week. (Also there was the heffalump trap. For anyone who is waiting with bated breath: we did not catch a heffalump. They are notoriously difficult to catch. For anyone who does not know what one is, below is a clue.)

Today we made a heffalump trap

Frosty morning

The boys are off for a weekend-long recording session. Laika and I are on our own. We intend to Get A Lot Done, and eat whatever we want.

So far, things are going well! Laika found her own yesterday's-barf, conveniently frozen in the backyard, and ate it. And I slipped on the ice, but did not fall and break my ass, and whenever that happens, I feel like it's my lucky day.

Sniffing the wild air

My dog, Laika, does what my mom has always called "sniffing the wild air." She closes her eyes, tips her head up, and uses her nostrils like a pair of small bellows, welcoming in the scents. She looks peaceful, happy and relaxed.
 
I drink my coffee on the back porch in the morning, so I can feel the weather, and so I can feel like I belong. Some mornings it is hard to stay out there, with the warm protection of the kitchen behind me. But I like ritual, or I am a creature of habit, or whatever... I need to smell the wind: is it blowing in ocean salt or hyacinth? just sewer gas and diesel fume?

This morning was a treat: southern pine, on a raft of peach-and-lilac sunrise.

Thanksgiving

A forgotten-about Musque de Provence pumpkin vine produced this huge black beauty in our garden. After the rest of the greenery had slumped with summer past, there it was tucked in the strawberry patch underneath an espaliered cherry tree... From what I read, it is immature - these pumpkins turn a lovely warm terracotta color when they're ripe - but it roasted up nicely anyway, and a small portion became our pumpkin pie.

We had a warm kitchen full of family, friends, and dogs yesterday. We ate a turkey from Clodhopper Farm, barded with Clodhopper bacon. Mockingbird bread, Ardith Mae cheese, Hillside butter, farmers market kale and brussels sprouts, our own potatoes, and on and on...

I've been stewing in my own toxic broth of cynicism even more than usual lately. But in the last week I've been reminded: I have so many people I love... and such a bounty of beautiful, comforting, nourishing food... and the time and freedom to walk out into the woods to clear my mind whenever I need to...

I've got a whole lot of be thankful for. And I am.

Bumble bees in my lemon tree!

We've been having frosty nights and sunny, warm days, so I've been carting my potted Meyer lemon out to the back porch coffee table each morning, and then back inside in the afternoon. The tree is in full bloom right now, and since pickings are slim for pollinators in November, it attracts whoever is out there roaming around. I hope my diligent carting will result in a tiny crop of late-winter lemons.

I forgot to bring the pot in until last night, in the dark, when I returned it to its perch in the kitchen window, and then went to bed. In the morning, with coffee water a'boiling and eggs a'scrambling... something started a'buzzing. Loudly! And in irritation!

Unbeknownst to me, three jumbo-sized bumble bees had fallen asleep in their supper bowls last night, and just then woken up in my bright, warm, lemon-blossom-scented kitchen. Oh, my.

Matt and I carried out a successful catch-and-release for each bee, and I went back to making our breakfast. When I next stepped onto the back porch, there was an irate bumble out there, buzzing madly at the kitchen window... separated from its dear, sweet lemon tree by a pesky pane of glass. Another bumble crawled across the coffee table and flung itself forlornly into the ashtray, where a blossom had fallen the day before. It buried its snout in between the dirty petals and slumped there.

I carted the lemon back out, and everyone dedicated themselves to energetic foraging, until they fell asleep in their flowers, early afternoon.

Seeds from my mother's garden, for you

The last thing I did, on leaving my parents' property, was fill little paper cups with seeds: opium poppy, nigella, calendula, and dill - four of the flowers that self-seeded wildly and, during a certain part of each summer, made my mother's garden the enchantment that it was. The poppies are the stars - hundreds of them, in every incarnation: single, double, frilled and fringed... grape-colored, wine-colored, vermillion, lilac... and cupcake! There are some that look just like pink cupcakes.

I put together packets of the seeds for friends, and have a few left over to offer here. If you would like one, please leave a comment or email me (zoe[at]fastdoggardening.com). I would be so delighted to know Mom's seeds are sprouting hither and thither across the country next spring.

After the acreage next door to my parents' land was bulldozed to make way for the natural gas industry - horse pastures, swamp, and woods, ripped up, flipped over, and ground in - my mom carried that year's poppy seedheads across the new moonscape and strew them along the edge. I didn't know she'd done it until the next July, when there they were, visible from the road - a stubborn streak of soft, strong, beautiful poppies across a wasteland of ugly, ruined earth. I think it was her way of protesting, saying Not Here, Not This.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed. Our community is small, and people know and respect my mom. They know her garden, and her politics. They know, like I do, that if there was ever anyone capable of saying Fuck You with flowers, it's her. She did it with artistry, and showed what she stood for - not just what she was against - at the same time.

And so... These seeds I want to give you - they are special, because they are the seeds of dissent. Gardening feeds our spirits and our bellies, both, and it is, at this point in history, an act of rebellion. Tending garden gives a person passion, satisfaction, peace, and awe - experiences the consumer culture can't offer... It is a wholly constructive endeavor, and yet it rejects so much bullshit at the same time.

The photo at the top of the page was taken by my dad, Michael Poster, in Mom's garden.

Growing luffa sponges

This is Luffa ægyptiaca, giver of sponges for scrubbing with. After a long summer of tracking garden dirt inside, not cleaning under my fingernails, and allowing the overfull laundry basket to sprout horns and hooves and crouch in a corner of the bathroom like an ogre... it's time to clean house.

Cleaning house is boring, unless you have your very own luffa sponge that you grew all by yourself, and then it's kind of fun, at least for a little while.

Luffas need a long season to produce, which we don't have in northeastern Pennsylvania, but I did get one sponge off my vine, and that's all I need. Like I said - I'm kind of a crappy housekeeper.

I start my luffa seeds (available from Fedco) indoors under grow lights, and set plants out after danger of frost, when the soil has warmed. They need as much jump on the season as you can give them. Luffas like to scramble, so the clothesline is a good place for them, especially if you don't intend to do laundry. They send out tendrils every which way, and hightail it wherever they are headed.

Our vine produced one early fruit, which I left to mature and dry, and then cut after frost. If the fruit is totally brown and dry when you cut it, you just peel the skin right off - all that's left inside is the dry sponge and the black seeds.

We had one short, late dry spell this year. In a season as wet as this one was overall, a dry spell is really stressful on annuals that don't have their roots down deep and are accustomed to guzzling as much water as they please. The luffa vine panicked and set fruit - lots - all of a sudden. But the season wasn't long enough to mature this young fruit. Hence the single sponge.

I think I will cut it in half or thirds, depending on how many things I decide to scrub... two, or three?

October harvest

My prowess as a winter gardener is shamed this year. I planted our cold weather crops too late and had poor germination, then a little crusade of slugs marched forth and decapitated all the lettuce and most of the kale. So my cold frame is only half full of two-inch tall kale and arugula... Not the lush 3 x 5 salad pasture I had hoped for. Luckily the self-seeders know when to germinate all on their own, and scattered about the garden are deep green patches of arugula, sorrel, and our own very own leafy, wild, mixed-breed brassicas. I won't be able to protect them from the snow and freeze, but at least for the fall, we have salad.

The nasturtiums in the bowl are 'Peach Melba'.

Fennel

The other Sunday Matt and I ate at our friends' restaurant, AV, for late afternoon brunch-y bistro-y supper. On our vegetable plate was a little heap of divine roasted fennel, which reminded me that I planted fennel this year, and where do you suppose it is now?

I hadn't thinned it enough to make nice robust bulbs, but when I yanked it up, it was still tender and sweet, so I chopped the bottoms, tossed them with olive oil and salt, and roasted them. All that was left the next morning was the mermaid hair, wilting on the kitchen table.

Callicarpa dichotoma 'Early Amethyst'

When I stand on the back porch having my coffee and admiring my Callicarpa dichotoma 'Early Amethyst' each morning, all I can think of is the line in the X-Ray Spex song that goes

freddy tried to strangle me
with my plastic popper beads
but I hit him back
with my pet rat

Becoming handy

When we bought our little house on Fig Street six years ago, we had a lot of work ahead of us. We had no idea what we were doing, but lucky enough the easy part comes first: you start ripping shit out.

Over the years we've made frequent trips to the lumberyard, hardware store, electric and plumbing supplies. The men who work (or are shopping) in these places are important sources of information. Here in the valley, you ask them a question, and you get a question in return.

Well that depends... Are ya's handy?

We've always nodded our heads, because we want to know the right method, not the duct-tape'll-do-it method.

And so, this past month while I was loading shingles into the dumpster post-DIY-roofing-job, I thought to myself: Well I'll be damned, I think we've earned it. We can nod our heads yes now, and really mean it - we're handy. We might not know the tradesman-approved way to do a thing, but after gutting this house and putting it back together better than it was before, what we've learned is how to solve a puzzle with our brains, our backs, the brains and backs of our family and friends, a small budget, and a whole lot of crappy old used building materials.

I think this stands us in in good stead for our next construction project, which we hope will be building a house from scratch.

Backyard party

We returned this week from a little vacation to Matt's hometown, Duluth, Minnesota. His dad and step mom threw a party for us and all the family and friends who couldn't make it to our Pennsylvania wedding in June.

I didn't get any pictures of the fantastic northwoods fare that Kathie, Dave and their friends prepared and spread out on the buffet table, but I can tell you some of the highlights: fishcakes made with fresh Lake Superior whitefish, wild rice with venison, mashed rutabagas and carrots, smoked salmon and whitefish, lefse (crepe-like potato pancakes), Swedish meatballs...

I did get a few pictures of the backyard, where tables were set out amongst Dave's diminutive, elevated forest of bonsai. A flower arranger friend crafted the sweetest little autumnal mason-jar bouquets to decorate around.

Minnesota-bound, in the buttermobile

When my grandpa was alive, he liked to tell funny jokes. What I mean is, his jokes were really funny to him, and the fact that they tickled him the way they did, combined with the fact that we all loved him very much, tickled us as well.

When Grandpa told a joke, his hands folded across his big belly, his eyes squinted, his face pinkened, and he laughed silently, with his shoulders bouncing. Or at least this is how I remember it.

Grandpa sold used cars, and my then-boyfriend/now-husband Matt had an old diesel Mercedes that he'd converted to run on vegetable oil. So that was something they had to talk about: vehicles. Grandpa had a joke for Matt, whenever they'd meet.

Are you still driving that buttermobile?

Or...

Does that car of yours still run on Ivory soap and peanut butter?

This cracked Grandpa up... I guess it was the idea of Matt scrambling through the kitchen cupboards like a cartoon character, filling up a mop bucket with assorted jars, jugs, and bottles, and heading out to the garage to tank up his car with miscellaneous household products.

Matt sold the Mercedes and bought a well-used diesel Dodge Ram when he started the bakery, so he could transport all his bread to the farmers market. It also runs on vegetable oil. In the past couple weeks, he's filtered 95 gallons so we can drive to Minnesota to visit his family, and have what I'd say is a well-deserved vacation.

Here's a picture of Matt's gas station in the garage. That's our garlic hanging from the ceiling.

One other thing about Grandpa... he respected smart frugality, and I think that pleased him about Matt's project as much as anything: Matt was doing something really weird but totally practical, for free, and by god, it was working.

Hell yeah

Matt found a big old maitake (hen of the woods mushroom)! We made fritters last night, and he added a maitake-red-onion-and-sage focaccia to his Friday night bake.

Argiope, where are you?

Last October I took these pictures of an Argiope trifasciata, or banded garden spider, in my irises. Every morning, now that it's late summer, I look for this year's argiope, but I haven't found it yet. There are many other spiders in my garden, and I love them all, even the Giant Clothesline Spider who each night builds a net for catching Zoes in, and who each morning catches a Zoe.

The first two pictures are the back, and the third picture is the belly.

Mushrooming

It might seem small, but when Matt and I first got together, I relished the discovery that we travel through the forest at the same pace... I'd never had a boyfriend who wanted to spend hours poking around in the woods, just like me.

Over the past two summers Matt has gotten really into mushroom hunting. I held back at first, on account of I didn't want to eat a mushroom and die a horrible death. But Matt's enthusiasm, along with the entertainingly written ID tome he's been reading (David Arora's Mushrooms Demystified) drew me in. Mushrooms still make me nervous, but I understand these points: with a little effort, many of the choicest edibles can be keyed out and positively identified, and there's no reason to eat something you aren't absolutely certain about - you can always choose to simply admire it for its lovely wildness instead.

Looking for mushrooms takes time... It takes a readjustment of vision and mind. The ground is a whole other world, and while I've always been a scrambler, an inspector, a sifter... I've never quite known the ground like this before. I feel like I am as close to being a moss-dwelling beetle as I ever will be.

So this summer, Matt and I have not paddled on the river once, or gone on a long, strenuous hike. Every day off, we've just taken a slow walk into the woods. We've found a lot of mushrooms, and other things. It's not a recognized or respected skill, this thing we do - looking, smelling, occasionally finding a delicacy on the ground... But I think just being in the woods - in a whole-body-and-mind way - is probably the thing we are best at, of all the things we do, and that feels very gratifying.

Black trumpet (Craterellus cornucopioides)

Craterellus ignicolor

A mixed bag of Craterellus cornucopioides and C. ignicolor

A type of milk cap, Lactarius hygrophoroides

Hedgehog, Hydnum repandum

September light

Goodbye

Last night I picked a few more seeds from mom's garden, and said goodbye to my parents land. Goodbye to the foxes, the rocks, and the rye. I will keep crying over you for awhile, but also look forward to the year ahead, as Matt and I ready our little house-in-the-city to be sold, and begin the search for a few acres in the country, and a new heartland.

Cuphea 'Purple Passion'

I spied this cuphea in the Baker Creek catalog last winter and wondered... Could it really be that good of a color? And I thought... not freakin' likely. But the part of me that loves cupheas, or maybe the part of me that loves to prove people wrong and then get mad about how they lied, ordered the seeds anyway. And now I can tell you: Cuphea lanceolata 'Purple Passion' is really that color - like blackberries bobbing in Pinot Noir, lit from behind by a sunset. Mine is growing amongst bronze fennel, which makes for a quiet little combination that you have to examine up close to appreciate.

Good god am I grumpy

and I have been for days. Would you like to hear about the prick on a 4-wheeler whose head I nearly threw a rock at? Or how I wished the man driving the Halliburton truck that just about toppled me into the ditch would EAT A POISONOUS MUSHROOM AND DIE?

Probably not. Instead, here are three things that have managed to crack my crappy mood.

Oh hell, I can only come up with two.

The devil's darning needles

Clematis virginiana is one of the better things about Pennsylvania's roadsides. Not only is this native vine quite decorative, but it also hides from view our plentiful Keystone Ice cans and Happy Meal cartons.

A few years ago I clambered down into the swamp over the hill and pulled up a little rooted piece. I took it home and tucked it into the soil beneath the flowering quince in our yard, and every late summer since, I've sat on the glider and wondered: where is that damn thing? I can see a few stray strands of it amongst the quince branches each spring, but by August, they've disappeared.

This summer was a wet one, and the clematis thrived. Finally, the dark, glossy foliage of the quince is veiled in cream-colored lace - better than I'd hoped. If you sit in the grass underneath and look up, you see the source of a wonderful humming - one hundred pollinators, of all stripes, foraging.

Clematis virginiana also has a host of wonderful common names: you can call it devil's darning needles, virgin's bower, or old man's beard. If you were having a nudist wedding, and you were the bride, I think you could just drape yourself in a few strands and be quite stunning.