Lifescapes

Prickly Pear: In bloom this week

 

Our corner of the Texas Hill Country used to be a huge ranch, mostly used for grazing (cows, goats), part of it for raising cotton back in the 20s, before cotton ruined the soil and the boll weevil ruined the cotton. It wasn't long after that before an opportunistic plant began to colonize the landscape. Prickly pear. Prickly pear is a useful plant, and I admire its ambition and tenacity, but it can be a hazard. So, since we wanted to improve our pasture enough to host a couple of cows, Bill put a lot of labor (mostly with a grubbing hoe) into eradicating the prickly pear. But we saved a few plants, and one of them is blooming this week, to the delight of the local bees.

Prickly pear is a nutritious vegetable, tasty, too, a little like green beans. I've cooked and eaten the pads (nopalitos) I've gathered from our plants, but I've also bought them from the grocery. They're a mainstay in Mexican cookery and frequently used in Tex-Mex food, so we can buy them around here, fresh and fairly local (from the Rio Grande Valley, where they're a commercial crop). GourmetSleuth has some good information about gathering/cooking them. Be careful--they are really, truly spiky. They're also medicinal. The Indians used the muscilage (the pads have a sap that's similar to aloe) to treat burns, sunburns, boils, etc--and there's evidence that the plant may be useful in the treatment of diabetes. Lots more info, photos at TexasBeyondHistory.

This week, writing and much else. Making good progress on the next Cottage Tale. Settled on the title, The Tale of Oat Cake Crag, for reasons I'll explain in another post next week. Also worked with Peggy to publish the June Story Circle eletter. It's here, if you're not a subscriber. (Why not? It's free.) Also working with Masha Holl (whom I met last week with the San Antonio Romance Writers group) on a trailer for Together, Alone, which comes out in September. I've never done a trailer before, but Masha is a pro, and she's teaching me all kinds of new things. Look for that in early August.

Oh, and also garden stuff. The green beans are coming on this week, enough to eat and some for the freezer. The zukes are here too, and I've harvested the sweet onions. Planted more beans, watermelons, and cantelope (for fall).

Reading note. While it is widely known that the pears were the largest part of the [indian] diet for several weeks in mid-summer, the plant was used in many other ways. The pads, especially the younger ones, can be eaten year round – direct evidence from Hinds Cave coprolites (dried human feces) suggests that the pads themselves were eaten often. When moist grass or herbs were not available, the pads were used as green packing material providing steamy moisture and chemical compounds that helped bake lechuguilla and sotol. The pads could also be used as containers and even canteens... During the tuna [tunas are the red, pear-shaped fruit of the prickly pear] harvest, prickly pear was THE most important food in the region, and ranks with pecans and buffalo as a critical seasonal resource.--TexasBeyondHistory

Madonna: In bloom this week

 

My favorite lily, blooming for a week or two always at the end of May, well after our last frost and always just before (oh dear) hurricane season begins. We've lived here in the Hill Country (become "placed" here, as Scott Russell Sanders puts it) for 23 years now, and have become intensely aware of the ebb and flow of the seasons. When I was a girl, we called this plant the "Easter lily." But Easter is a movable feast, with a date that is set according to a religious calendar, and Lily claims her own calendar, set by the tilt of the earth, the slant of the sun, the rise of temperature, the fall of rain. In my garden, she signals that spring is past, summer is beginning. I'm not sure I welcome that announcement, but I respect it and thank for letting me know.

Speaking of rain, it always seems to rain here on Memorial Day weekend (another interesting intersection of the seasonal and human calendars). Occasionally, there's been flooding (many of us still remember the Flood of '81). On schedule yesterday, we got .15"--no flood, but it half-filled our rain barrels and we're glad for it. The storm in the Gulf that slid up into the Lower Mississippi Valley didn't achieve the dignity of a name ("Invest 90L" was the best it could do), but it's created enough instability here to provoke showers, in conjunction with a low pressure area moving from west to east. (See what I mean by "intensely aware"?) Maybe more rain today. Here's hoping. 

High-tech house call. For the past 6-7 years, we've pastured a couple of cows, not for milking but for mowing parts of our 31 acres. The senior cow, Texas, all longhorn and probably 20 years old, developed an odd-looking growth on her flank. Anxious, I took a couple of digital photos, emailed them to our vet, and he replied via his BlackBerry with a diagnosis: a "callus formation" from the brand she's been carrying since she was a calf. No danger to her, nothing we have to do. I was relieved.

I had to smile at this high-tech exchange. We very much appreciate Trampus, our vet (Highway 29 Vet Clinic, for those of you who live around here). He's always available to help when we need him, and he knows his animals, inside and out (literally). Living in the country, we also value all this high-tech communication. Keeps us connected, informed, aware, in touch.

Keeps me in touch with you, too. I love it.

Reading note: Committing yourself to a place does not guarantee that you will become wise, but neither does it guarantee that you will become parochial...How can you value other places if you do not have one of your own? If you are not yourself placed, then you travel the world like a sightseer, a collector of sensations, with no gauge for measuring what you see. Local knowledge is the grounding for global knowledge."--Scott Russell Sanders

Sunshine cookery, solar living

I got a solar oven last year and love it. Here's a photo of supper (macaroni and cheese, with a few bits of ham) cooking yesterday. I put the oven out to preheat for a couple of hours--by the time I'm ready to cook, it's around 325 or so, plenty hot enough to cook/bake almost anything. I posted a couple of photos a few months ago, here and here. I used the oven during the winter, and now that it's summer, I very much appreciate being able to bake pies, cakes, lasagne, etc, without having to fire up my propane-gas oven, a wretched waste of fuel in any season, but impossible in the summer, because it heats up the kitchen. Solar cookery is one of my strategies (like line-drying the laundry, which son Bob calls my "solar dryer") to reduce our dependence on the grid. Our electric coop is moving toward greater use of wind turbines as an energy source, but still relies on coal-fired plants.

Today, working on the current Cottage Tale. I'm up to 22,000 words, about a quarter of the book, which for me means that the "first act" is finished and I need to start developing the complications in each of the three major plot lines. Also, planting carrots and beans in the (solar-powered) garden, and more solar cookery (potatoes, cabbage, and onions from the garden, baked with sausage, plus cornbread). Hope you're looking forward to a restful Memorial Day weekend!

Reading note, from Solar Gardening, by Leandre and Gretchen Vogel Poisson: We believe that civilization has to be reinvented if it is to be salvaged. We need to establish and build a solar culture, one in which light is the mainstay for us and for all our activities...To do this will require that a new class of people take hold: a solar peasantry. These will be people married to a place and to its finite resources, dedicated to extracting life's essentials from the sun and to reestablishing the biosphere and occupying a nondestructive place within it...Gardening is our most direct connection with the sun. It is the gateway to solar living.

Buffalo gourd: In bloom this week

 

Looks like a squash or a cucumber blossom, doesn't it? This is a wild buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima) that blooms on a low rocky ridge in our east meadow, here in the Texas Hill Country. The genus name tells the story, grouping this plant with squashes and cucumbers. The species name exactly describes the smell of the crushed leaves: fetid. Like sour tennis shoes left out in the rain and sun. Eeuw.

The mature fruit is too bitter to eat, but the bees absolutely adore it, and therein lies my problem. Because this plant (which covers an area the size of a garage) is within a half-mile of the garden, I have to think about this when I'm saving seeds. The same bees that pollinate this beauty also pollinate my zukes, cukes, and winter squash. I don't want to destroy the buffalo gourd (another time, I'll tell you about its name), so I don't try to save the Cucurbita seed in my garden. If the buffalo gourd cross-pollinated the garden plants, the resulting fruits might be so bitter we couldn't eat them. A reminder to me that my garden doesn't exist in a vaccuum: it's part of the local ecosystem. What goes around (literally) comes around. There's no such thing as safe sex for plants. Do you know where your bees have been?

My solution (not original with me): wait until the buffalo gourd has stopped blooming, then save my seeds, observing other good seed-saving practices. You'll find a helpful article here.

The Austin library (Spicewood Springs) event last night was great fun--thanks to all who came, and to the library staff (Monica, Kay, others) who put together the luscious food. Sold lots of books for Story Circle and enjoyed the evening, especially the Q&A after. Smart, thoughtful questions from sharp readers who are choosy about the books they read. Loved it.

Gorgeous weather here, cool and dry (versus the usual hot and humid) so I'm squeezing in some gardening time (still doing succession planting, so everything doesn't come on at once) between sessions here at the computer, working on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag. Tomorrow, San Antonio. Hope to see you there.

Reading note. Buffalo gourd was used by native Americans as an abortifacient—a plant whose chemicals can cause uterine contractions intense enough to abort an early-stage fetus. It was also employed by Indian mothers to wean their babies: the juice smeared on a nipple would be a definite deterrent to nursing. This squash-like plant produces a large crop of bitter fruits that the Indians dried and used as containers and scoops. The young fruits and the seeds, however, are edible, and the local rodents find them irresistible. By mid-winter, there’s not a whole gourd in sight, but turn over a rock and you’re likely to discover a cache of dried seeds, carefully hoarded against leaner times.--Susan Albert, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place

Spring garden soup

 

Soup for supper, made with chicken broth (from chicken I slow-cooked last week), sausage, and onions, carrot, kale, potatoes, and parsley from our garden, along with some herb bread I baked in the slow-cooker. The potato crop was disappointing (10 lbs of seed potatoes yielded 10 lbs of potatoes--not exactly a stunning success), but the potatoes are tasty and I've learned some good lessons. I'll plant some fall potatoes in early August and see if they do better. I've also ordered a couple of different varieties, all early. (Did you know that some potatoes produce in a shorter season than others?) I've found a great supplier: www.potatogarden.com. They're easy to work with and their catalog is terrific. This year, I planted Kennebec, Yukon Gold, Bintje, Caribe, Red Pontiac. The Bintjes, Yukons, and Pontiacs (all earlies) did best.

This week in the garden: planted three cane bean tepees (cut from the cane that grows by the creek), then planted pole beans (Blue Lake pole) around each tepee leg. Also planted a couple of rows of soybeans (Shirofumi). These are new to me--I love the frozen soybeans that I get from the supermarket, but stopped eating them when I discovered that it came to my table all the way from China. That's just too many food miles for me. Planted sweet potatoes (grown from slips in the kitchen window) and bush beans (more Blue Lake). We're a little cramped for space, so I'm getting ready to move the fence and expand the garden by another five beds.

Fence? Absolutely necessary here, and in most places for a successful veg garden. There are too many critters, both in town and country, that love fresh beans, lettuce, peas, etc. If you don't have a fence, you'll be waging endless battles. It's a little more work, yes. But definitely worth it.

Book stuff. Worked on The Tale of Oat Cake Crag (still a working title). Slid into Chapter Four but feel that I need to go back and add in a couple of scenes. The main story line is off to a strong start, but the subplots need attention. And since this is the next-to-last book in the series (only 8 Cottage Tales), I have to start paying attention to winding up all the subplots that have been developing over the course of the books. I've never written a time-limited series before: that is, once that develops a main story and a gang of little stories across a definite, planned number of books. An interesting challenge.

Also on the book front, Bill finished the contract details for The Darling Dahlias, the new series I'll start writing in September, due out in July 2010. Nice to have that interesting project settled and scheduled. If you missed the announcement, it's here, where (as a bonus) you can see a photo of our Lady Banks rose in bloom. She was gorgeous this year.

I'll be in Austin and San Antonio this week, celebrating Texas Mystery Month and selling books (on behalf of Story Circle). If you don't have your copy of Wormwood yet, you can get it, signed, and support a good cause.

Reading note. I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among [is profoundly important]. . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation. --Terry Tempest Williams

New potatoes: Yukon Gold

 

Please don't write to me (are you listening, Bob K?) and tell me that these are itsy-bitsy potatoes. They are--especially in comparison to the potatoes I used to grow in my Illinois garden years ago. They would be larger and there would be more of them if my Hill Country spring potato season were longer. And yes, Pat, I did get them in on Valentine's Day.

Special thanks to Kari, who replied to my request for info on potato heat tolerance with this link and a quote: http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/potato1.html  "Maximal tuber formation occurs at soil temperatures between 60° and 70°F. The tubers fail to form when the soil temperature reaches 80°F."  Thanks, Kari. That's a good site. We've had two weeks of above-average temps, and despite a foot (really!--12") of straw/leaf mulch, the soil temp was 80+ yesterday. I'm harvesting potatoes, and will be planting beans in that bed. In the photo, Yukon Gold, which yielded better than Caribe, Bintje, Kennebec, and Red Pontiac. I'll save some for fall seed potatoes. We''ll eat the rest. And next year, I'll try putting them in a couple of weeks earlier. But it may just not be possible to get a spring potato crop in my climate. By itself, that's good to know.

Everybody: if you don't take a flashlight and go out in the garden after dark, you're missing much of the action of garden life. After dark is when you can acquaint yourself with the pill bugs and other hungry critters munching on your beans and cabbages. After dark is when the moon silvers the green leaves and the owls call. After dark is when you can meet your resident rabbit.

Last night, I met mine. I promptly escorted her out the gate, with the help of the cat. Her? Right. This morning, very early, I found a baby bunny, hiding behind the watering can. (Shades of Peter and Farmer McGregor here.) He scampered for safety (no, not in the watering can), and I haven't found him again. But I've fixed the fence, so he and his brothers and sisters (no respectable rabbit mother ever gave birth to just one!) are confined to the garden until I can show them the way out. Tonight's the night, bunnies!

Yes, Mother Nature, there can be such a thing as too many rabbits.

Reading note. We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent questions of the time: How much is enough?--Wendell Berry

Antelope milkweed: in bloom this week

  

When I see this native blooming across our dry, limestone pastures, I always smile, knowing that it is a larval host for Monarch caterpillars. Not so many Monarchs this year (it's been dry), but I can always hope. The female Monarch lays her eggs on this antelope milkweed (Asclepias asperula), plentiful here in central Texas. When they hatch into baby caterpillars, the babies feed on the milkweed, which contains toxic cardiac glycosides. The chemicals give the Monarchs a bitter taste, and predators leave them alone. A handy arrangement for the butterflies. I wonder how many thousands of generations it took to evolve that clever line of defense--and feel privileged to host the plants that host those marvelous butterflies.

Speaking of pastures, ours are much greener after the April rains (3+"), and our cows are plumping up, after their lean winter. We may breed Blossom this spring, to a local Hereford bull. But the outcome (if there is one) is off in the future, so we've made arrangements with a rancher friend who is butchering a couple of calves to get some grass-fed local beef for the freezer. 

Garden stuff. Harvested a few new potatoes for dinner tonight. I read recently that potatoes don't set tubers when the soil temp reaches 80 degrees (mine is about 78), so I think it'll soon be time to harvest the spring potatoes and plant pole beans in their place. I've been freezing snow peas and kale, and will have zucchini in another week. This morning, I planted my rooted sweet potato slips. (Thanks, Patricia P--those sweet you sent gave me 10 new plants!)

Book work. Moving forward on the next Cottage Tale (#7), with some uncertainty about the title. Wanted to call it The Tale of Oatmeal Crag, but that's a real place, on Beatrix Potter's Hill Top Farm--and it's not where I need it to be for my plot. Considering calling it The Tale of Oat Cake Crag. But I'm making progress in the writing (if not the title): at 7500 words for five days' work, which is right on target: 1500 words for each writing session. I'm at the point in the process where there are a gazillion ideas and possibilities in my head, and the main task is sorting them into some sort of logical story arrangement. This is the fun part, at least for me.

Reading Note, from Paul Gruchow's Grass Roots: The Landscape of Home: To inhabit a place means literally to have made it a habit, to have made it the custom and ordinary practice of our lives, to have learned how to wear a place like a familiar garment, like the garments of sanctity that nuns once wore. The word habit, in its now-dim original form, meant "to own." We own places not because we possess the deeds to them, but because they have entered the continuum of our lives.

Clematis: In bloom this week

 

Isn't she gorgeous? This clematis is blooming on an arbor over a path that leads from the "yard" (defined by a couple of curving flower beds) into the openness we call Meadow Marsh. It's almost too hot and dry for this plant here, and I'm not always good about watering her part of the garden. But this year, the rains that came while Bill and I were touring with Wormwood happened at just the right time, and the clematis is lovely. There's a rare native clematis that I've never seen--I'll have to check for it. Maybe I can find it online.

At work again, this time on the seventh Cottage Tale. The working title: The Tale of Oat Cake Crag. The first chapter (finished yesterday) features Professor Galileo Newtown Owl and the flying boat. The owl is a fictional character. The flying boat (named Water Bird) was real. It appeared on Windermere in 1911 and met its doom in early 1912.

In the garden, I'm challenged by a pill bug invasion. While I was gone, they ate the new crop of beans and have added potato leaves to their menu. Ashes are helping, but I may have to try a pyrethrin dust. But apparently there's a shortage. The world's supply of this natural insecticide (Chrysanthemum cinerariaefolium) comes from Kenya. But the growers are plagued by violence in that sad country, and pyrethrum has become hard for suppliers to get. From politics to pill bugs, in our newly globalized world. It's time to start growing our own, instead of relying on imports.

Reading notes: In its current form, globalization cannot be sustained . . . There is a growing consensus that globalization must now be reshaped to reflect values broader than simply the freedom of capital.--John J. Sweeney

Home again, lovin' it

 

So glad to be home, with the garden, the roses, the dogs, and even the Texas weather. Got a trace of rain last night--just enough to wash off the ashes I used to dust my potatoes, hoping to repel a pill bug invasion (take that, you wretched fiends!). Cool this morning, but 90s are predicted this week, with nighttime temps over 70. I have a few tomatoes ripening right now, but with these hot nights, I'm not expecting a huge crop. Next spring, I'm going to look for some heat-tolerant tomatoes. Suggestions?

To everyone who rode along on the Wormwood book tour, grateful thanks and hugs. It was a hugely wonderful (if tiring) trip. Having Bill along made it much easier and more fun, and having you along for the ride meant that I had to document it, which was a good thing. If you were under the illusion that touring was glamorous (great restaurants, posh hotels, etc), I hope my posts disillusioned you. We ate on the run, drove some 5500 miles, and occasionally got lost--once after dark, in the rain. We were rescued by a friendly cop who went out of his way to give us a police escort to the place we needed to go. Had an encounter with a cop who was not so friendly: he gave us a ticket for going 40 mph in a 30 mph zone (we had slowed for the 40 sign, which we saw, but not for the 30, which we didn't). Watch out on SR 18, on the east side of Marion IN, just before you get into town. There's a motorcycle cop with a radar gun stationed there. He'll see you before you see him--and probably before you see that speed sign. I'm guessing that the locals already know about this situation (some might even go so far as to call this a speed trap), but the unwary out-of-towner doesn't. Now you do. Other than that unwelcome event, the tour was great fun.

The week ahead: housecleaning, garden, and writing. I'm getting started on Book 7 in the Cottage Tales series--another dragon book, for those of you who enjoyed Thorvaald, in The Tale of Briar Bank. More later....

Reading note. Before any choice, there is this place which we have not chosen, where the very foundation of our earthly existence and human condition establishes itself. We can change places, move, but this is still to look for a place, for this we need as a base to set down Being and realise our possibilities--a here from which the world dislose itself, a there to which we can go.--Eric Dardel