Posts from — November 2011

Several weeks back, a friend worried about the number of things she needed to do as she prepared to leave town on an extended vacation. Among her many tasks was bringing inside the house plants that had migrated to the yard during the summer; she didn’t want to take any chances in losing plants to unexpected frost during her time away. The sheer number of plants involved meant a project that would take a substantial amount of time hence moving the plants inside was a large item on her to-do list.

The collection of plants that I carried inside to escape cold is more modest. These are my plants and these are my plans:

* a rosemary plant. Rosemary is a tender herb that will not survive being left outdoors in our area. I have overwintered a rosemary plant several times and lost rosemary plants when overwintering an equal number of times.

Regardless, I am hopeful that this plant will not only survive the winter, but also be propagated into a small forest of rosemary plants.

* a bay laurel “tree”. The bay laurel is quite small and, I hate to admit it, is not growing very quickly. I have modest goals for this plant: survival will suffice. We’ve tried several times, unsuccessfully, to keep a bay laurel plant alive for longer than a year.

My plan is to pay closer attention to the plant so that if a problem develops, I can treat it early.

* a scented geranium. This plant was sadly scrawny when I bought it, and it still is. The geranium grew just a little this summer, but certainly not a lot. Since it’s been inside the house, it has developed lots of leaves, albeit very small ones. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I bought this plant, but I sure need to do some research on improving it.

* a silver edge Lavandin (lavandula walenda) This plant was simply a whim purchase from a 50% off sale. When the clerk pointed out to me that it was not hardy for our zone (Zone 5) I should have put it right back on the sale shelf. I was taken with its silver tipped leaves and wanted to add it to our growing varieties of lavender so I purchased the plant nonetheless.

At home with the power of the internet, I’ve learned a little more about this plant. There seems to be debate about whether it is a “true” lavender because it is a hybrid. Since I’m growing the plant because I liked it, rather than for its essential oils, I’m not going to get caught up in the controversy.

These outdoor plants join our indoor inventory to keep us company throughout the winter and clean the air as bonus. Whether they thrive or even survive remains to be seen.

Surely we aren’t the only gardeners having to make room for plants to come inside for the winter. What moved back into your house house from the porch or yard? How many plants did you carry in– and find room for?

One afternoon this past July, Jim and I headed to an evening meeting in Lansing. We left home early to avoid work traffic and arrived with time to spare. We contemplated our options for just a few minutes before we made our way to visit the MSU Horticulture Gardens for the first time.

14 acres of gardens awaited us. We didn’t have time to visit them all, but we did enjoy a really nice walk through several of the gardens.

The Perennial Gardens were particularly lovely and meticulously maintained. Curved walkways wind between large beds with clearly marked labels with scientific, cultivar and common names. Benches scattered throughout the garden provide comfortable vistas to sit and admire the gardens and pond.

We wandered through the Rose Garden next. This section has a formal layout and high walls that place the rose plants at eye-level for easy of viewing and smelling.

The Vegetable Demonstration Garden provided the majority of the ah-ha moments for us. The clever staking techniques on display certainly caught our attention. Again, the well-labeled varieties growing next to each other allowed us to compare the growing plants. We were especially interested in the mason bee houses in the garden. Mason bees are known for being industrious pollinators for orchards and home gardens. I would like to have some in our garden next season.

The last area we visited — and perhaps the most delightful — was the Michigan 4-H Children’s Garden. Although we traveled without children, we wandered the alphabet garden and found our way through the maze. Bridges, fountains, trains and more are interspersed throughout the beds. It seems a safe and popular space to let your toddlers run off some energy.

There’s no admission charge to the gardens, although the parking in the lot requires feeding tokens into the meters. Paid parking seems to be the trend among gardens.

Since we only had an hour to spare this time, our visit to the MSU Horticulture Gardens was a brief one. We definitely will plan a return trip and allow more time to explore and learn in this beautiful setting.

During the seven years we lived in Toronto, we happily celebrated two Thanksgivings each fall. Canadian Thanksgiving, which falls on the first Monday of October, opened the fall holiday season, and we followed it up in November by hosting our own American Thanksgiving dinner. Our exasperated then-6 year old son noted, “This holiday is just about food!” Our guests and our family were fond enough of turkey and fixings that we enjoyed the meal, even if there were no presents involved.

Moving to Toronto to go to graduate school is the closest I’ve come to moving to a new land. In spite of being “just next door”, the experience of relocating to Canada was chock-full of studies in cultural differences and national identity, but still nothing like the changes and surprises that must have awaited the pilgrims.

I tend to think of our pilgrims as already arrived in the New Land. In my mind, they are not travelers, but householders– people with meals to prepare, tables to fill, and chairs to sit in.

More accurately, however, a pilgrim is someone on a pilgrimage, usually a long journey with spiritual or moral significance. In the neat way that global human experience overlaps, the history and practice of many religious traditions have included pilgrimages.

No where in my life am I more of a pilgrim than in the garden. Gardening is never a destination (“Look! A finished and perfect garden!”) but an on-going process. I’m always learning, trying to grow a new plant, moving something that’s not thriving to another spot, attempting a different technique, becoming familiar with a particular weed or flower. I encounter changes and surprises. A garden may not be a place of spiritual reflection for everyone; at the best times, however, our garden gives me the space to ponder the wonders of growing things and the mysteries of creation.

Living in a time and place when the basic human needs– food, clothing, shelter– can be met almost instantly, I find the garden to be one spot where I can get in touch with my inner pilgrim. Gardening slows time down. Nothing happens fast and, for the most part, nothing can be sped up to satisfy more quickly. It is what it is.

Sometimes when I’m out in the garden, I look around and imagine what if I were a settler and this was my food source, my cupboard? How would we eat? In the bounteous days of summer, I like to think we’d eat pretty well. We’d have a salad with all sorts of greens and lettuces, tomatoes, cucumbers, and cook some broccoli or green beans. Could we get a whole meal out of the garden? We occasionally do and, more often, feel quite celebratory when we get at least half of our meal from our yard, like eggplant parmesan (our tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, peppers) or pesto (our basil, garlic). But we like our breads and grains and meat and cheese, and our limited space, time, and skills (and local laws) prevent us from completely feeding ourselves.

The truth of the matter is we don’t need too. We live in the land of plenty and, although our resources are modest, they’ve never been inadequate for keeping our larder well stocked and our table holding a meal. We celebrate harvest at this time of year, even though we live well year-round.

Gardening reminds me that the simplest of human endeavors — sitting down for a meal together– is a long process that starts with soil and seed. Effort– if not mine, then someone’s — combined with sun and rain and lots of time to result much later in the food I am blessed to enjoy. Gardening as one on a journey gives me a frame to appreciate the web of relationships and systems that keep us fed. Gardening as a pilgrim helps me practice thankfulness.

Jim explained a Roxbury Russet apple to our friend Jay. “It’s small, and very, very hard, and covered with a brownish sandpapery skin.” Replied Jay, “What you’ve described is the worst advertisement for an apple that I’ve ever heard.” But don’t be fooled by the exchange.

A Roxbury Russet apple is truly a secret treasure of fall.

When I was a kid, I thought an apple was an apple. I don’t remember any knowledge of choices or different types, even. Apples were red or green. Sometime later as a grown-up, I started paying more attention; I discovered varieties and that I liked some better than others.

We were living in Toronto when my relationship with apples changed. For lunch one day, my best friend brought me a Roxbury Russet apple that she’d purchased from Kensington Market. True, the Roxbury Russet is no beauty by usual North American consumer standards. It’s not big or red and shiny. The peel is a brownish yellow, and the skin texture is something like a fine sandpaper or felt. It’s heavy for its size and very hard.

Eating that first Roxbury Russet was stepping through the doorway to discovering the vast variety of apples that exist and the range of tastes and textures that can delight us. The Roxbury Russet became my very favorite apple.

When we moved back to Michigan, I was saddened by the thought of leaving the Roxbury Russet apple behind. We decided to plant an apple tree in our yard, and we found a heirloom nursery, Trees of Antiquity, that had Roxbury Russet stock available. Our tree is not yet at the producing stage, so we have that to look forward to.

Fortunately, I discovered Roxbury Russet apples for sale at the Farmers’ Market in Ann Arbor. I was thrilled. Now each fall, I make trips to our market and check with the folks at Wasem’s table to find out when the Russets will be ready. Roxbury Russets are a late-ripening apple, but the wait is worth it.

The composition class I’m teaching was finishing up on discussion a series of articles about food and health, so I brought in some Russets to slice up and share. I wanted a concrete demonstration of how food choices are limited when the focus is on narrow standards of attractiveness and how heirloom varieties have gotten pushed aside when marketability drives production. I don’t know if I made my points successfully, but I did see a lot of satisfied crunching taking place. There were no leftovers to take home.

Sharing a secret is an innately risky business so I thought twice about writing this post. Maybe there will be a run on Russet apples and I won’t get my fix. Or maybe someone else will be motivated to look beyond the Roxbury Russets’ curious appearance and discover a new favorite apple.

A couple of days ago, I had 2 huge zucchini still hanging around. My plan was to shred them. I was just waiting for some inspiration.

I complained to Jim that I wasn’t excited about the prospect of shredding all that zucchini, and he directed my attention to a mysterious kitchen object that we inherited some years ago and promptly stored unused in our basement. The promise of a task made easier was enough motivation for me to dig it out to give it a try.

I didn’t know what to call this device, but some quick research on the internet revealed that we own a vintage Saladmaster food processor. Very easy to assemble and use, it made relatively quick and easy work of my lingering zucchini and for that I was pleased.

Unlike most gardeners, we have never had a zucchini bounty to contend with–until this year. In the past, we’ve averaged maybe one zucchini per plant– nothing to get alarmed about! This year, the zucchini just kept coming. I don’t know what we did right to make our plants so happy, but I’m afraid we have to chalk it up to part of the mystery that is gardening.

We enjoyed some delicate zucchini dishes with small, tender zucchini stir-fried among veggies eaten over rice or sauté with a pasta sauce. A few zucchini managed to hide themselves under those huge leaves or otherwise elude us until we had a whale on our hands.

Fortunately, we discovered a zucchini bread recipe that we like. The tasty loaves disappeared almost as quickly as banana bread so the recipe is a keeper. I’ve popped the 2 cup freezer bags of shredded zucchini into the deep freeze to keep us in zucchini bread all winter long.

Zucchini Bread
(adapted from a low carb zucchini bread recipe from the Livestrong website)

Ingredients:
2 eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup brown sugar
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 teaspoon vanilla
? cup almond flour
½ cup pecan meal
¾ cup flour
1 scoop whey protein powder
1 teaspoon salt

Method
1. In a large bowl, beat eggs.
2. Add oil, sugar, zucchini, and vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet, mixing well.
5. Pour into a prepared loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 F for about 60 minutes. Test center with a clean knife to make sure it’s done.

Cool, slice and enjoy!