Lifescapes

Cucumbers: This week in the garden

Out in the garden, the cucumbers are getting ready to swing into their cucumber production number. These are Marketmore, a heritage variety that does well here--takes about 60 days from emergence to my plate. I love to eat them fresh from the vine, with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions, and thin-sliced carrots in a zesty oil/vinegar dressing. Bill (who isn't big on raw food) prefers them pickled.

I always have good intentions about canning, and I even know where the jars, lids, and pressure cooker are! But when I'm working on a book (as I am now--#4 in the Darling Dahlias series), I can't seem to find the time. So I use my mother's 1930s recipe for ice box pickles.

Ice Box Pickles

 

•  6 thin-sliced cucumbers
• 1 cup sliced onion
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon celery seed
• 1 teaspoon pickling spices
• sprigs of fresh dill and thyme

 Bring the vinegar to a boil. Stir in sugar and salt until dissolved. Add celery seed and spices. Cool slightly and pour over the cucumbers, onions, and herbs. Cover and refrigerate. Will keep indefinitely.

I know I'm dating myself, but I remember Mom making these pickles back in the days when we had a real ice box. It was restocked with ice twice a week, when the ice man delivered the ice. ("The ice man cometh," my father would say with a chuckle--which I didn't understand until I was in college and read O'Neill's play.) The ice man drove a big blue truck and carried the ice on his shoulder, on a burlap pad. My brother and I would follow him out to the truck and he'd chip off a chunk of ice for each of us. A nice treat on a hot Illinois summer afternoon.

The ice box pickles are a nice treat, too. If you'd like a bit of color, add some chopped red bell pepper. If you want more zing, add chile peppers (jalepenos, serranos, habaneros, what have you).

Reading note. [In the seventeenth century] cucumbers were in great demand at the local apothecary shop, where they were an important pharmaceutical. The seeds were employed to treat inflammations of the bowel and urinary tract and to expel tapeworms, and the pulp and juice were used to ease skin inflammations and treat sunburns. Even today, beauty consultants in expensive spas often recommend placing cooling, soothing slices of cucumber over tired and inflamed eyes...--China Bayles Book of Days, entry for June 3

 

A Beautiful Mother's Day Sunrise

Source: twitpic.com via Susan on Pinterest

 

A beautiful sunrise this morning in the Texas Hill Country and at the Wildflower Center in Austin (where the photo was taken)--a good place for a Mother's Day treat, to wind up National Wildflower Week. We've had a wonderful week here at Meadow Knoll, with over 3" of blessed rain filling the cattail pond, refreshing our little Pecan Creek, and fattening the tiny green nutlets on Bill's pecan trees. We harvested our last decent crop of pecans in 2009, so we're hoping for an abundance this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden report. The Kentucky Wonders and MacCaslan beans (both climbers) are vying for top honors this year. We'll have beans to eat in another week or two, along with the new potatoes that I need to dig as soon as the ground dries out a bit.

I'm delighted with the Gonzales mini green cabbages I planted this year. The outer leaves are bug-bitten, but the small, tightly pack heads are perfect and very tasty. One head makes just the right amount of cabbage for slaw-for-two. I'll try these again in the fall.

Book Report. Moving forward with the Dahlias #4 (The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star). This book features a woman aviator, so I've had the fun of researching women airplane pilots of the 1920s and 30s.

As a writer, one of the joys of this series is sorting through photos of the period and pictures of period furniture, dishes, clothing, so I can include authentic details in the books. I've been posting some of these to my Darling Dahlias board on Pinterest--a great place to archive research photos and share them with readers. Although the Cottage Tales series is concluded, I've the same thing with my Cottage Tales board--just updated it with a photo of Beatrix's dollhouse.

And now that my two big conferences are over (Story Circle and the Herb Society), I can get back to blogging more regularly. I'm fascinated by all these web-based ways to share, but I'm always balancing time spent online (which I enjoy) with time spent writing and gardening (which I love). I know you have the same problem: it's a juggle, isn't it?

But on this beautiful Mother's Day, I can only be very grateful for all the things this life has offered me: my three wonderful children and their families, each and all amazing; my husband and life-partner; my work; and the days here at Meadow Knoll.

Reading note: If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.--Master Eckhart

 

 

Yarrow: In bloom this week

Yarrow is such a modest and unassuming little plant, isn't it? Tiny white flowers in an umbrella-shaped cluster, with ferny, feathery green leaves that have given it its species name, millifolium (a corruption of the French phrase, mille feuille, a thousand leaves). Its genus name, Achillea, is an historical footnote: yarrow is said to be the plant that Achilles, the hero of Greek myth, used to staunch the bleeding of his soldiers and treat pain and inflammation--hence its common names, soldier's woundwort, herbe militaire, nosebleed plant. It's been used as a healing herb for over 2500 years; in China, its Asian cousin was (and still is) used to treat inflammations, bleeding, heavy menstrual flow and cramping, and snake bites. It works by virtue of two major plant chemicals that produce blood coagulation, several chemicals that reduce inflammation and relieve pain, and a chemical that relaxes the smooth muscles of the uterus and digestive tract. The leaves can be applied as a poultice and a tea or a tincture can be made of the aerial parts of the plant. A good medicine-cabinet herb, handy to have around.

But I've also been interested in yarrow's uses as a divining herb. I first met the herb in the medieval manuscripts I studied in graduate school, where the Anglo-Saxons called it gearwe and used it as a powerful force against evil. (Other common names: angel flower, devil's pepper, devil's nettle.) It was hung beside the doorway or strewn on the floor to ward off illness, bad luck, evil fairies. And in cases of demonic possession, yarrow could be used as a cleansing herb. In a tenth-century leechbook, for instance, yarrow was prescribed as a "spew herb" (a vomitory) to treat "a fiend-sick man or demonic, when a devil possesses the man or controls him from within with disease."

Yarrow was also used in foretelling the future. Here's a curious little East Anglian charm that combines both its incantatory and its medicinal qualities: 

Yarroway, yarroway, bear a white blow [blossom]
If my love love me, my nose will bleed now 

And in China, yarrow is an important divining herb. Fifty dried stalks are used to cast hexagrams in the I Ching. The procedure is a more complicated and less convenient than coins, but interesting--if you enjoy the I Ching (as I have), the yarrow stalks will give you some insight into the traditional divining practice. 

These days, yarrow has been hybridized and comes in the soft pastel colors of the rainbow. But I prefer the modest white blossoms that remind me of Achilles, of the old Anglo-saxon gearwe, and of yarrow's ability to foretell the future.

Reading note. A Gaelic woman's yarrow charm, translated by Kenneth Jackson: "I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be sweeter, that my lips may be warmer, that my voice may be gladder...May I be an island in the sea, may I be a hill in the land, may I be a star in the dark time, may I be a staff to the weak one: I shall wound every man, no man shall hurt me." (Quoted in The Englishman's Flora, by Geoffrey Grigson)

Wildflower Season

This is our front yard, a billowing blanket of red, yellow, and orange gaillardia--Indian blanket, or firewheel. A stunning mass of beautiful flowers, the legacy of an unexpectedly rainy La Nina winter.

The past few months have been hugely hectic: books, garden, and couple of major conferences. But the book (Widow's Tears, China Bayles 2013) has been delivered; the garden is doing its green thing; and both conferences are history. The Story Circle conference (which I co-chaired with Peggy) was richly rewarding (and exhausting). And the Herb Society of America conference, where I spoke, was great fun. If you're interested in my talk ("The Secret Life of Herbs"), you'll find the text here. Bill brought his turned wood art and I brought books to sell, and we spent two full days connecting with friends (old and new) from all around the country and right here in Texas.

And there was a wonderful honor: the HSA named me their Honorary President for 2012-2014! China is convinced that this is all her doing, of course, since she is the one who owns the herb shop, does all those herbie things, and is featured in all those herbal mysteries. I've tried to explain the situation to her, but even though she is a remarkably bright and perceptive person, she is being remarkably dense about this. But I'm sure I'll be able to find a way to make her understand--eventually. My term begins July 1 and I'm very much looking forward to working with the HSA board members to acquaint more people with the organization's wonderful work. (Did you know that it was the Herb Society of America that created and sustains the National Herb Garden, in Washington D.C.?)

Garden Report

March was unexpectedly rainy, April was unfortunately dry--but last night brought a wonderful (and entertaining) lightning and thunder show and a lovely half-inch of rain. With luck, there might be a repeat performance tonight or next week, according to our weather guru. As you can see, the beans are doing very well (the trellis is made with cane harvested from along the creek). The potatoes are ready to dig--and I can't leave them in the ground because the soil gets very warm in the afternoon: we might have broiled potatoes! The tomatoes are beginning to set fruit, and I harvested the first tomato hornworm this morning. Squished him dead. But of course there will be more. One year, I harvested a gross of the things. That's right: a dozen dozen hornworms.

Book Report. Widow's Tears is done and on my editor's desk (well, in her computer, anyway). I just finished the copy edit of The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose (the third book in that new series). I'm working on the fourth book now: The Darlng Dahlias and the Texas Star. The manuscript of Wild Rose is still making the rounds of NY editors--I'll update you on that when I have any news.

And in the meantime, I'm enjoying what has turned out to be the most spectacular wildflower season in the quarter-century Bill and I have lived here at Meadow Knoll. Every window offers a joyful view, and when I go outdoors, I scarcely know where to look. Summer looms dry and hot over the southern horizon, but spring has been a great delight.

Reading Note:

’Tis a gift to be simple, ’Tis a gift to be free.
’Tis a gift to come down where you want to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
--traditional Shaker Hymn