Lifescapes

Lantana: In bloom this week

One of our prettiest natives: Lantana horrida. "Horrid"because of its strong scent, the toxicity of its blue-black berries, the thorny prickles on its stems, and the rash it can produce on your bare arms.

But no matter. The blossoms are so beautiful, the bees love them so, and the plants are so bravely defiant of drought that I grow it anyway. The domesticated, "improved" varieties sold in nurseries are calmer and less authoritative than the natives, and that's what most people grow. But I have mostly the wild ones, descended from a wild mama plant I dug up in the pasture a decade ago, to keep the sheep safe. I love these plants and respect and admire them for their toughness and tenacity. They survived the drought better than anything else here at Meadow Knoll.

Somebody wrote to ask about pecans. None this year, I'm sorry to say. The trees produce in an on-off cycle, every other year. In 2007, we had a huge crop, over 200 pounds. If 2009 had been a "normal" rainfall year, we would be harvesting nuts right now. It wasn't, and we're not. We're hoping that 2011 will bring enough rain to produce a crop. In the meantime, we're still eating pecans from the 2007 harvest, saved in the freezer. We had a pecan pie a few days ago--delicious. (Scroll down to the bottom for the recipe, if it doesn't pop up for you.) While I ate it, I thought about the trees and the work Bill put into watering and caring for them and the big job of harvesting the nuts. All well worth it.

Early last week, I finished up the copyedited MS of An Extraordinary Year and delivered it to Lynne, the managing editor at UTexPress. The rest of the week: living like an ordinary person, cleaning house, doing laundry, picking the last of the beans and peas and digging the potatoes in the garden, running a few errands, baking a pie. Felt good to get away from the writing work for a while.

But not for long. Next project on the desk: Mourning Gloria, the title of the 19th China Bayles book, which I need to start in the next few weeks. This title has been on my possible-titles list since about 1996 or so, but it went to the bottom of the list when Joyce Christmas used it in 1999. Joyce's book is out of print now, and after getting my editor's approval, I've decided it's my turn to use the title. (Book titles can't be copyrighted, in case you're wondering about that.) I'm at the point now of thinking about characters and plot, just letting a lot of stuff mix and mingle, wondering what it would happen if China and Ruby opened a farmers' market on their block, if Sheila and Blackie got married, if the shops got broken into--well, anyway. There's room for you in the book, but you'll need to enter our Cameo Characters raffle. Do it now, okay? before you forget. Proceeds go to the Story Circle Network.

Winter break. I'm taking a few weeks off and heading for New Mexico with the dogs--hoping to get away on Wednesday or Thursday. Bill and the cat will join me there for a couple of weeks, then he'll be back here. We don't like to leave the livestock alone very long without adult supervision. :) I'll be back after the new year, with Mourning Gloria already begun, I hope. It's due at the end of March. Maybe the next blog post will feature a photo of the mountains!

Reading note. Be careless, reckless! Be a lion! Be a pirate! when you write.--Brenda Ueland

Drought Notes #8: Resurrection

 
  
I've never before seen this clematis bloom in the fall. In fact, I thought I'd lost the whole vine in the drought--until two weeks ago, when it suddenly greened up, put out tendrils, then a tentative blossom or two, and now it's covered with these lovely purple blooms. We're still in what the weather folks call a "severe" drought (28" deficit for the past 24 months), but we've had enough rain to make some of the plants think that spring has come around again. The cypress trees along the creek are putting out new green leaves, roses are blooming, and the meadow is bright with blackfoot daisy and even a few out-of-season penstemmon. There's some water in the lake, a little in the creek (it's not flowing yet). I saw a heron fishing in Turtle Pool, so the crayfish must be reappearing. And a few days ago, I spotted this guy (or gal, as the case may be):

 
The perfect picture of a self-satisifed toad in a hole in a delightfully dampish place, enjoying a bit of rain for the first time in months.

I don't know which I like better: starting a new book or finishing one. This week, I finished The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. If you've been following along on this one, you might remember that I started it at the end of July and have worked pretty steadily ever since, with 4-5 days out here and there for book travel and the other ordinary business of life. Starting a book, I'm always nearly overwhelmed by the immensity of choices to be made; ending one, I'm struck by the apparent inevitability of the book's events--which says something about the miracle of plotting, I suppose. Monday, this one goes to NY via the magic of cyber-travel.

Snap beans, snow peas, carrots, zuchinni--fresh from the fall garden to the table. We're also eating kale, collards, chard, spinach, and a few sweet potatoes. Looking forward to various squash, and I'll dig the rest of the sweet potato crop next week. The tomatoes I direct-seeded in the garden are beginning to bloom: don't think they'll have time to set fruit. But those I cut back in July are producing nicely, so I count that a success. Next year, I need to put the fall garden in a little earlier: I was so daunted and disheartened by the drought this year that I waited a little too long.

Now that the book is done: housecleaning (especially my office, which is a horrible mess), catching up on the mail and the email, reading/reviewing a couple of new books, knitting, checking the page proofs for Holly Blues (due to arrive on Monday) and pondering China #19, which is the next book on the schedule. Also, working with Peggy on the upcoming Story Circle memoir conference, which she and I are co-chairing. I'm sure I won't be bored.

Reading note. The only reward I look forward to is seeing the finished piece of writing in hand. And if I should find myself in a lazy spell, all I have to do to get active again is to remember how miserable life was for me when I was trying to get published.--Erskine Caldwell

Stevia: In bloom this week

 
I haven't kept up on the FDA's latest position on stevia (if you have, please leave a comment), so I don't know whether this super-sweet herb is now legal for import. Last I heard, the American Botanical Council was petitioning for recognition as a GRAS herb ("Generally Recognized as Safe"). You can listen to a fairly technical discussion of this issue with Mark Blumenthal (American Botanical Council). If you don't know what stevia is or how to grow it, you can read about it here. If you're interested in finding out why import has been banned in the U.S., go here. Short version: it's opposed by the sweetener industry. Of course.

Whatever the progress on the legal end of things, my stevia plant is growing happily--and yes, it is legal to grow stevia in your garden. I bought my plant from Carolee's Herb Farm when I was there in April, and it thrived, even during the drought. I harvested it this morning, and am drying it my dehydrator. I use it mostly for tea, although one of  my favorite muffin recipes (Oatmeal Apple Pecan Muffins) includes stevia as a sweetener. With obesity and Type 2 diabetes looming as huge threats (thanks to our addiction to calorie-dense sweeteners), stevia could be part of the answer.

Cool and damp here. Many of our native perennials went into dormancy during the record heat and drought of last summer and have been deceived into thinking it's spring. The crepe myrtles are blooming, as is the trumpet vine and crossvine, the pyracanthus (which is bearing red berries at the same time). I've even seen some Bradford pears in bloom. The rain is pushing the fall garden into production: lots of peas and green beans right now. We're still in a serious rainfall deficit, over 27" over the past 24 months, but things are looking up as El Nino intensifies out in the Pacific. Reading more about climate change: this week, Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers. If you haven't read a good book on the subject, that's a place to start.

Hoping to finish The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree this week. Cancelled a couple of trips to Austin so I can focus on the book. Lots of little cleanup/fix-up details to attend to.

Reading note. 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth's carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is sustained only by plundering our capital base. The plundering takes the form of overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing pasture until it becomes desert, destroying forests, and polluting our oceans and atmosphere, which in turn leads to the large number of environmental issues we face. In the end, though, the environmental budget is the only one that really counts.--Tim Flannery

 

Gayfeather: In bloom this week

Her real name is Liatris pycnostachya, but I much prefer her "common" name, gayfeather. Now that we've had a little rain (2" in the past week), I'm beginning to see a few of gayfeathers blooming in the pastures and meadows. These native perennials grow from corms. And yes, they are drought-resistant. In fact, they're often named as an important low-maintenance garden plant. But when the soil completely dries out as it has done in the past 12 months, the corms become dessicated, shriveled, dead. I've noticed that the few that are blooming grow in favored locations: places where a little moisture might have collected, or in just enough shade (a grass clump, or a small tree) to permit some shelter. Or maybe the corms that survived had a tougher "skin" and could hold their own moisture better. (Will their offspring inherit this trait?) Whatever the reason for their persistance, I'm delighted. It's a joy to see these survivors.

But it's also a lesson, another indicator of the impact of climate change here, at Meadow Knoll. When the drought-resistant species begin to die off, we know that the situation is getting serious. And of course it's not just here. It's everywhere. But there's not enough political will to stop it, too much corporate investment in the emissions status quo, too little public concern. Bill McKibben wrote a strong piece in the New Republic this week--Earth to Obama: You Can't Negotiate with the Planet. Read it. 

Expecting rain here this weekend: remnants of TS Olaf in the western Pacific, colliding with a cold front sliding down on the jet stream from the NW. Happy days. The zukes/squash are still blooming, but there's a serious dearth of pollinators (the drought again?) so a fall crop isn't likely. There will be some tomatoes, green beans, and soybeans, and I'm eager to see if the sweet potatoes make a crop. Planted some pak choi and other Chinese greens, and the usual lettuces.

Darling Dahlias: 77,000 words as of yesterday, and making forward progress. Very much enjoying the characters. I love working with ensembles: much opportunity for interesting interactions, conflict, humor. One ensemble in this book (The DDs and the Cucumber Tree): a group of older ladies who live in a boarding house--a sort of 30s version of The Golden Girls.

If you haven't entered the Cameo-Character Raffle, here's the link. Your chance to appear in one of China's mysteries!

Reading note.  We can lie to ourselves about many things; but if we lie about our relationship to the land [or to the sea, or the wetlands, or the Arctic wilderness, or global warming] the land will suffer, and soon we and all other creatures that share the land will suffer. If we persist in our ignarance or dishonesty, we will die. . . . Seeing the danger of ignorance, we may be moved to invent or recover some of the lore that connects us to the land, that tells us how to live in our place.--Scott Russell Sanders
 

Water Issues: Drought Notes #7

Cooler, more rain, and the morning glories on my garden fence are celebrating the new season. Now that we've passed the equinox, maybe fall is really here. But we have seen Octobers with 100-degree days, so the jury is still out. And it's official. So far, this has been the hottest, driest, most intense drought on record in the Hill Country--although not yet the longest.

And although the rains (we've gotten about 5" here) have eased the situation a little, it's still critical as far as water use is concerned. Our aquifer (always low production) seems pretty much the same--we're careful about the way we use the water. But the rains have done nothing to replenish the lakes because the soil absorbed every drop that fell and the lakes that supply the water for most of central Texas are still dropping. The LCRA, the gov't agency that controls the lakes, is curtailing agriculture use downstream, to preserve the water for human use in the cities. Curtailed water means fewer food crops, job loss, economic hardship. Serious stuff.

And climate change predictions for this area suggest that periods of extended, intense drought may be the new normal throughout the Southwest. It's going to take some getting used to, require adaptations in our use of the land and its resources, in the way we define ourselves. I hope everyone who lives here is paying attention, but I know they're not. I still see local TV ads for swimming pools and sprinkler systems.

I'm over at Blood-Red Pencil today, chatting with Dani about my new memoir. Drop in and leave a comment. And I've posted some photos of our animal friends--cows, sheep, horses, geese, dogs, cat--on the book's website. Take a look.

And one more very important note. The USDA has launched a new website: Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food. Check it out. This is a hugely significant effort, and the USDA needs all the encouragement we can give. They're also on Facebook. Please, become a fan. We need to redesign our food systems and redefine ourselves in relation to them. This is our food future. Let's all be a part of it.

Reading note: As much as we live in a place, we live in place; we inhabit a condition of the soul. We live where we have made definitions, and in the process of making definitions, we create a place in which to live. Sallie Tisdale

Salvia: In bloom this week

I thought I had lost the salvias in the drought, but here they are, bursting into exuberant bloom after the rain two weeks ago.I don't think I've ever seen them bloom so abundantly. These natives (Salvia coccinea) are terrific for dry-land landscaping and the bees and hummingbirds love them. Here in the Hill Country, they bloom in spring and again in fall--in the years we have rain. In this photo, the white flowers in front belong to garlic chives, which are wonderful in omelets and soups.
 

Here's another salvia, S. guaranitica, blue anise sage or Brazilian sage. It's not a Texas native, but this one has more or less adapted, I'm happy to say. Neither of these species is the same as the Salvia that has gotten all the attention lately: S. divinorum, a psychoactive herb--as you might guess from the name, which can be translated to "sage of the seers." I've had my share of adventures in the past, but these days, I'm not inclined to smoke my garden salvias to see if any of them might share that characteristic.

And then there's plain old garden sage, S. officinalis, which of course is never plain or old. It's the first herb I remember, because it's one of the few my mother grew in her 1950s garden (parsley and dill are the others). She grew it specifically for poultry stuffing and pork sausage. Mine did well in the drought. In fact, most of the salvias prefer dry soil and resent it when their feet get wet. During the drought, they just curled up and waited patiently. I love plants like that.

Lots going on in the garden: melons, zukes, spaghetti squash blooming, English peas and snow peas, too. A few eggplants ripening, Irish potatoes looking good, tomatoes coming along. Remember those tomato seeds I sowed in the ground? The Early Girls are about six inches high and looking fine, but I think I got them in too late. Don't think they'll have time to set fruit. (Hope I'm wrong!)

A good writing week past, another coming up--except that I have to take a break on Tuesday and go to Austin for a photo session. Time for another author photo for book jackets. I always have to tell the photographer to put away her airbrush on these photos: when I'm speaking to a group, I see people looking down at the photo on their book jackets (a year or two or more old, depending on the book), and comparing the image to the real person. Makes for some interesting questions, sometimes.

Speaking of speaking. I'll be in Boerne TX on 9/29, at the library. I'll also be in Groesbeck, San Marcos, and Austin and a couple of places I need to add to the list: Wimberley (11/7) and Mason (11/15). Check out the page and mark your calendars. Used to be, authors wrote a book, the publisher distributed it, bookstores sold it, and that was that. No more. Like every other author in the country, I'm expected to get out there and talk about the books. It's a good thing I enjoy doing that. But if I didn't, I'd have to do it anyway.

Reading note. The shelf life of a modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.--Calvin Trillen

Rain! Drought Notes #6

After an inch-plus of rain, the fall garden is beginning to look almost lush. So far, we haven't gotten the huge downpours (15" and more) that hit Salado and the area north and west of Georgetown, but we're grateful. It's good timing for the winter pasture grasses, which need rain now if the livestock (cows, sheep, and yes, the deer) are to have anything to eat this winter. Also bodes well for next spring's wildflowers, which need September/October rains to germinate and December rains to feed growth. It's all in the timing, m'dears.

And the timing of these rains--courtesy of a large low-pressure area that has parked itself over Central Texas--is just about perfect. Not a drought-breaker yet, at least not here. But if El Nino can produce a couple more of these storms this fall, we'll be okay. It was a joy yesterday to see puddles in MeadowMarsh, the swampy area along the edge of the woods. As the dogs and I took our evening walk, they ran through the water, splashing. We're all joyful.

File this in the best-laid plans department. I was looking forward to a weekend with the copy-edited manuscript of next year's China Bayles book, Holly Blues. Unfortunately, it arrived on Friday--in the form of an electronic file, instead of print pages. I'm learning Word Track Changes, which is okay, not hard, and has its advantages (especially in terms of efficiency and cost). But I've always loved making pencil changes on the typescript, curled up on the bed or in my favorite chair. Now I'm working at the computer, which means seeing the book again on the screen--so screen-based errors will be as invisible to me now as they were before. (They jump out at me on the print page.) A few people have told me how easy this is, and it is--when you're dealing with short stuff. This is a 287-page book, and that's a whole different animal.

Companion photos for Together, Alone. It's so expensive to reproduce photos in books that I decided not to use them in the memoir, which came out late last month. Instead, I'm building albums of "companion photos" on my website. The first of these is available now. Go here and look for the album. We'll post another of these albums soon.

And Sharon Galligar Chance posted a lovely review of the memoir on her blog today. She's reading the book for SCN's Memoir Challenge. If you don't know about this challenge, check it out. We need to know the true stories of women's lives (not a fictional representation of women, and certainly not fictional representations of women by male authors, bless their hearts). That's what memoir, at its best, is all about. True stories of real lives.

Reading Note: Sometimes of late years I find myself thinking the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills. I will never live to see it, of course, but I know just how it will sound because I've lived up high and I know the sort of watch birds keep on us. I've listened to sparrows tapping tentatively on the outside of air conditioners when they thought no one was listening, and I know how other birds test the vibrations that come up to them through the television aerials. 'Is he gone?' they ask, and the vibrations come up from below, 'Not yet, not yet.'"--Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Mesquite muffins, rain, & other pleasures

These are the mesquite muffins I made for Bill yesterday, to go with a big pot of chili. They're made with the mesquite meal I made last week, from the beans on our trees. The recipe is here. These are savory muffins (with chopped onions and green chiles), and could have a bit more bite if you used habanero powder instead of the mild ancho I used. If you have a favorite cornbread or cornmeal muffin recipe, you could easily substitute 1/2 cup mesquite meal for 1/2 cup of flour--and cut the sweetener in half. Mesquite meal is sweet. Commercial mesquite meal is probably finer and less gritty than my home-ground meal, made in a metate. Baked the muffins in my toaster oven, to keep the kitchen cooler. We liked them!

Garden update. The ridge of high pressure that's been keeping us dry moved off to the west this weekend, allowing a cold front to dip down and trigger some isolated showers. We got lucky twice, both Friday and Saturday, for a total of about an inch of blessed, blessed rain. The fall garden is up and growing: beans, peas, soybeans, zukes, winter squash, turnips, carrots, collard, kale, Irish potatoes. Summer's sweet potatoes, melons, and eggplant are doing okay (a bit heat-stressed). The tomatoes I held over from early summer are blooming, but iffy.

Book report. I took a couple of days to pack/ship Applebeck Orchard and Together, Alone. If you haven't seen the trailer for Together, Alone, you'll find it on the book's webpage. Please take a minute to check it out. I love the music and the photographs are very special to me. After the orgy of packing/shipping, I went back to the beginning of the Darling Dahlias and have done a substantial revision of the first half of the book. Not quite done with that: more today, then on to the next chapter. I'd like to finish by mid-October. I have some book travel at the end of next month, and would love to send the book off before I need to go zipping around Texas

Reading and reviewing. I've been posting reviews of some of my reading on Abouthyme.com. The latest: a review of Fresh: A Perishable History, by Susanne Freidberg. Great book, highly readable, informative. Check out the other reviews while you're there. I was significantly unimpressed by James McWilliams' Just Food, although I certainly agree with his position on industrial meat production and on fishing. He makes a few valid points about the locovore issue (it is impossible for cities in arid and semi-arid climates to feed themselves locally), but his writing is marred by his scornful rhetoric and his "straw man" style of argument.

Yesterday, I happened on Wendell Berry's very fine article in the September issue of The Progressive, "Inverting the Economic Order." I love Berry's phrase, "cultures of husbandry," by which he means sustainable communities of people who have at the center of their concerns a truly "human affection and care" for the land, other people, the earth. This is something we ought to have at the center of our health care debate, as well--and is lost in the midst of all the shouting.

Reading note. The fate of the land is finally not separable from the fate of the people of the land (and the fate of country people is finally not differnt from the fate of city people). Industrial technology does not and cannot adequately replace human affection and care. Industrial and financial procedures cannot replace stable rural communities and their cultures of husbandry.--Wendell Berry, "Inverting the Economic Order."

Drought notes #4: no clouds

Here's a crepe myrtle blossom, keeping the faith--not much else in bloom these days, except for the stubborn portulacas, which just keep on keeping on, heat be damned. Today: #59 in the countdown of 100+ degree days, on track to break the record of 69 days set back in 1923. The difference between 1923 and 2009: the drought. It rained in 1923, so it was hot and damp. This year, it's hot and dry.

Here's a note from Bob Rose's blog. Bob is the meteorologist for the Lower Colorado River Authority, which is keeping an eye on the water in the Highland Lakes, all dangerously low. I was interested in his comment, because I hadn't thought of the heat from this angle.

But another reason this summer has been so oppressive for humans, pets and vegetation has been the number of sunny days. We’ve had very few days with enough clouds to block out the hot sun. I looked back at the weather records beginning June 1st and found only 2 cloudy days in June, 4 days in July and just 1 day so far in August. So all of us have literally wilted in the hot sun.  Of course it will take a lot more than clouds to break this drought, but they could at least help moderate the temperature.

He's right. We're all wilting under the constant sun. Another result of the heat: high electrical use. We're as frugal as possible with the AC and appliances and we have a small house, but our kWhs hit a record (for us) last month. And that's without my clothes dryer: I'm using a solar dryer now (called a clothesline).

Book report: Having more fun with the Darling Dahlias, primarily because of the 30s stuff. The time period just opens up so many possibilities--certainly makes the writing lively for me. I love learning new things. Today's rediscovery: roll-on garters. Thankfully, these were gone by the time I started wearing nylons (BP: before pantyhose), but I remember Mom wearing them. Ack. Wonder about the correlation between roll-on garters and varicose veins.

Don't forget the Cottage Tales Festival (see the post at the top of the page). Lots of chances to win a book, lots of fun stuff about Beatrix, the animals, the Lakes, and more.

Reading note. I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.--Alice Hoffman

  

Sumac: In bloom this week

The sumacs--our native flame-leaf prairie sumacs--are in bloom right now, and irresistible to bees. Can you see how full their pollen baskets are? Loaded and ready for return flight to their hives. The nectar that lures these busy workers must be especially sweet, for the trees (shrubby, no more tha eight feet tall) are covered with bees.

In the fall, the bright red fruit lures raccoons, which climb the trees and strip off the berries, and birds. They make a lightly tart, refreshing drink, too--brewed, strained, cooled, and sweetened with honey. Wherever sumacs occur, Indians found medicinal uses for them. A decoction of the root was used for urinary disorders, fevers and colds; a tea made of the berries treatedirregular menstruation, dysentery, and fevers and colds. A poultice of pounded roots and berries was used for warts, hemorrhoids, and canker sores, and the crushed leaves for the treatment of skin disease. Leaves and seeds were used to dry oozing sores, ulcers, and gangrene, and the leaves treated venereal disease. A pharmacy in a single plant.

Garden report. We had a brief rain at mid-week, got .6". Not much, when we're down 24" for the drought period, but the garden, the grass, and I were all very grateful. Miles (my garden helper) and I finished building the new beds (there are now eleven 4x8 beds and a couple of odd-size ones, plus containers) and I've been planting for fall: zukes, spaghetti squash, peas, beans, potatoes. And waiting for the arrival of El Nino. While I'm waiting, I cut some rosemary and made a batch of rosemary bagels. Yum.

Moving forward with the first book in the new Darling Dahlias series. If you're on Facebook, check my page every so often. I'm documenting some of the more interesting research in the early 30s, the time-setting for this series. You'll find most of this in my "links" section, lower left on the page.

Reading note. I got the blues thinking about the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and wash the floor.--D. H. Lawrence