It bloomed!

Years ago now a friend gave me a lovely little clivia plant. In fact, she gave one to each of my Bee (quilting, knitting, reading, art talk, arguing) and everyone has had tremendous success with this beauty. Except me. Of course, except me, or there wouldn't be any point in writing about it, would there?

I have tried three spots that were recommended and the thing just died a little bit each year, had a small spurt of life and hung on. For two years, our son was in charge of watering and all the plants had a bit of a tough go of it. The other day I realized that the clivia was as dusty as the dickens and needed a wipe down.

I discovered this... Today the flowers are a little taller and a little more coral in colour, but the camera is on vacation.

At this time of year, a lot of the blogs I visit are showing garden pictures. I find this a bit of a yawner. We all have the same flowers and shrubs it seems. However, I will show you one photo.

You might think it is an average forsythia, but this beast flowers once a decade. Whatever combination there was this spring, it worked. The forsythia bloomed, the ornamental crap apple to the right of the photo leafed out and is currently in bloom just as the yellow is disappearing and it was a lovely sequence. I deliberately call it a crap apple. After it's ruby purple blooms, it does its best to look like the inside of a sodden cigarette dish. It is the ugliest tree ever, ever, ever.

The bees, the Jay and the beekeeper continue to battle it out. Netting is keeping the Jay from the hive entrance, but he has figured out that there are other spots the bees congregate. On the other hand, the bees are flying in straight lines unlike last week, when they were circling. I suspect that means the Queen has mated and is busy ruling the roost, so to speak. Did I tell you that the Queen has a name? Queen Amalia. The bees are of Russian stock and Amalijia is a Russian royal name and the current heir in waiting to the Dutch throne is Catherina Amalia. I suggested the name to the beekeeper, who luckily liked it. Nice conjunction.

As I watch the bees out the dining room window, I am noticing that for all the space the net allows for entry and exit, there seems to still be a traffic jam on the North-east corner of the contraption. There is a lovely purple stake holding the net in place and it seems to be on the direct take-off and landing strip of the bees. A little bit ditzy on that detail.

Colour is a coming in

I don't know if it is my new glasses seeing the screen more clearly or if the font size has grown and darkened. It looks weird even though I've checked it out.

These are the last two of my copying compositions from DekaArt (see earlier post for link). It's pretty hard to mess up a bunch of 'U' shapes with leaves and being Dutch, I thought a tulip or two was appropriate appropriation. I'm pleased with this one because it is the first time the colours turned up where I wanted them and I like the saturation.

I believe this is also a DekaArt composition. I like the colours better. I ruined my pens here, they didn't like going over the acrylic/gesso combinations. I have these two pinned up on my design wall to let me know that one day I will be able to figure out my own compositions along with colours.

The last three weeks, I have been taking "Sumptuous Embroidery" online course with Sharon Boggin. I won't link to that site because this is the last online course she is offering. We are learning how to make a flat ground, a slightly raised ground and eventually, a really textured ground. I am behind in the course. We have moved on from the monochromatic study to the fully coloured one. Today I will sit and finish foxy (she is my own design for a change) and get those french knots and bullion knots layered all over the place. Then, perfume bottles need to be drawn and a composition format figured out and all the threads chosen. I love tossing my threads all around until the right combination comes up.

It has taken me ages to clear the debris from the chair. Ironing boards, coffee tables and looms are all terrific places to sit things on, until you can't see them any longer. Then it is hard to use them for their specific task. But the chair and ottoman are clear, the Ott light is plugged in and I have a nice documentary to watch while stitching.

Stitching stitches

I finally have the new piece underway. I meant to start this in February, but life and all that. It is based on the leaf of the linden tree and I'm using all-sheer fabrics. Nothing natural here. Look away if it bothers you. 

I sewed my first leaf, was very pleased with the way the stitching lines were going and then realized I had stitched everything on the back side, not the front. Being transparent, this is hard to tell, but it meant that the leaf arched to the right instead of the left. Now, you'd think after all the crazy things I've done in my life, a leaf arching in the wrong direction from the sketch wouldn't be a problem. But it was. I just couldn't settle down to the second leaf. I ripped out the darker outline, sewed it again from the front side, added some yellow stitches and pretended that I meant to do that.

I was able to regain my composure and added the second leaf, arching in the correct direction. Really Laureen, I should be able to just let that go seeing as trees have leaves that go every which way. Some people have to put their socks on before their pants, some have to do it the other way round. I have to keep to the sketch once the directions have been established.

One of my regular stops in blog land is Lillipopo.
here
on the date 3/31/2014,she shows several stitches that are new to me, a woven running stitch, a circular stitch and a buttonhole filler stitch. Below is the wrapped running stitch.

I cheat, as usual, and use the back of the needle to slide under stitches, rather than changing needles.

Here is the circular stitch. It must have a name, but I sure don't know it.

these little stitches have to go outwards from the circle, not along it, otherwise the next step is messy.

Here is the completed circle,

 and here is the finished little design.

We approach the end of this post. Did you know, I can vacuum the house while waiting for photos to upload. Amazing.

Sore Throats? Left over bread?

It's that time of year. Scratchy throats, sore chests, cold heads. And too many left over ends of bread that don't seem to have a purpose. Abra ca dabra.

I found this lemon soother recipe over on Local Kitchen (see side bar) who had found it on Twenty-Two Pleasant.

http://twentytwopleasant.blogspot.ca

It is not measurement specific.

 Slice two or three lemons (after washing skin) thinly. Don't fuss about seeds. 

Shove into one or two or three jars. 

Cover with honey. Let the honey sink. Shake. Cover with more honey. Repeat until lemons are fully covered with the honey/lemon juice combo. This might take a day, depending on how thick the honey is.

Ideally, let it sit for a week. Phoebe and Steve both came down with sore throats and colds. They dove into a jar the same day I made it. They brewed endless cups of lemon tea and loved it. Very soothing. They both added Rooibos tea to the lemon to make a heartier cuppa. Apparently, this lemon honey will do amazing things:
*keep in the fridge for weeks,
*can be added to by either slicing and adding more lemons, or adding more honey. An eternal jar kind of thing.
*co-join with your favourite alcholic beverage for an amazing toddy.
*do incredible soothing strokes to your ego for being home-made, synthetic free and wholesome.
*replaces throat lozengers if you make a tea, let it cool and take it with you to sip as you feel crummy during the day.

TA DAH !

Magic trick number two, Bread crumbs.

OK, for you old kitchen duffers, this should (!) be an old trick. But for the newbies, this is a real money saver. Bread crumbs? you say. How can a jar of bread crumbs save me money? The answer is because it replaces expensive pre-packaged options.

Shake and bake - never used it. Panko-smanko. Hamberger Helper - please. (what puncutation indicates scorn).

Here's how she goes:
Abra ca dabra too

Collect assorted bread ends. Different kinds of breads make for more interesting crumbs.

Then you put the stale bread crumbs in the grinder upper. This style is best, a blender can work but needs to be fed a handful at a time, or it will clog up.

 Pulverize the buggers.

Add to an airtight jar. That little gizmo can be bought in the canning section of Canadian Tire or maybe a grocery store. I love it. It gets used for any kind of jar work. Saves a ton of mess.

Close the lid, put on shelf where you will see it. Add it to ground meat to soak up juices, (meatloaf, meatballs) add spices and use as a topping to give crunch to mac and cheese, tuna casserole, baked pastas with grated Parmesan and so forth. Also makes a nummy coating for fish, chicken, porkchops and other meats I refuse to eat. How do I know it's nummy if I don't eat breadcrumb covered meat. My kids tell me so.

What if you don't have a grinder upper. There is a smaller, one or two cup version for sale that is worth considering buying. Over the course of the year, this appliance is pulled out over and over again and is a major piece in using the food we freeze and preserve.  If I had to give up an appliance to save on electricity, it wouldn't be this one. Or the washing machine.

No money? Then consider a rolling pin. Take a tea towel, a sheet of wax paper, bread crumbs, a sheet of was paper and a second tea towel. Roll away. You won't get a fine crumb but a nice 'rustic' crumb. It won't work for coating meat but the other ideas will still be fine.

Ta Dad Too

A final bread crumb tip. Take the torn bits of bread, get a large zip lock baggie, put bread bits in it, toss in freezer. Keep adding until baggie is full. You now have the makings for croutons or a great bread pudding, especially if you added some raisin bread or sweety breads (like ends of banana bread)

So, if you followed my advice about roasting red peppers and freezing celery, buying real Parmesan, you will have a good kitchen structure to take you through the winter. See you at the farmers market.

Urban Farming - July 2013

We've been working consciously on this project to turn our home into an urban farm for about three years now.

Before thinking this could work, we had already established organic garden beds, herbs, grapes, pollinating plants, open water for insects and birds. We used the clothesline, inside and out, installed a wood stove, use passive solar heat in winter, reduced water consumption and a few other odds and ends.

I had farm envy. I wanted horse manure to muck about, I wanted chickens to eat the bugs out of my veggie garden, I wanted to not have to listen to my neighbours playing loud, ridiculous radio stations. I discovered I was never going to get the small farm of my dreams and I had to readjust.

I moved along to frustration. How was I going to turn a determinedly north facing garden into a veggie patch? Chickens are outlawed in Halifax. Cows for sure weren't going to work. Miniature farm animals? No go. Everything I thought belonged on a farm, was roadblocked by being in the city.

Then I discovered two major things. One was the "100 mile diet" which I speak about  here. The other was the idea that homesteading is about switching my thinking from a consumer's to a producer's. Along the way, I realized there were many things we can do as homeowners that can make time on the earth a little less aggressive.

As you have read, we have switched our eating habits to eating nearly 100% locally produced foods. (Except there is a heat wave on and I am eating Mrs. Vickie's Chips and Sussex Gingerale, so I fib a little bit.) If it can't be locally grown, such as peanut butter, is there a local producer? If it can't be locally produced, such as coffee, can it be "Fair Trade"? If it can't meet any of these criteria, how important is it? So I do without bananas. I do without citrus fruit most of the year. I need an orange in January. It sparks me up to get through to March

As I look through the cupboards, I realize we really have shifted so much that it is hard to find anything that offends.

The Farming Goals haven't been so successful. Our garden is covered in shade. At best we get 5 hours of sun beside a maple that is so shallow rooted, nothing grows under it. It is a perfect place for overwintering the compost and storing a boat.

Livestock is impossible. Chickens, Ducks, Rabbits, Pigeons, Quail and Bees. All not allowed. I was feeling embarrassed at calling myself an Urban Farmer. How is that possible without a crop or an animal?

But good things began to happen. I realized that our garden is the only one in shouting distance with open water in the winter. The photo above is our small fountain. Usually the rocks are wet and there is easy access for small birds and insects. The photo below is our bird bath with electric warming feature.

We are the gathering spot for many bird species all year long. We've had odd visitors like the yellow breasted Flicker and the Rose Breasted Grossbeak. There are 5 different types of butterflies, 7 different types of wasps, several types of bees, and once, I saw rabbit foot prints. I know there are tons of mice. Any self respecting farm has mice.

I still felt embarrassed to mention my notions about Urban Farming. I came across this book again,

http://www.rootsimple.com/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/

The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen. They have a great blog coming out of California that I enjoy weekly.

http://www.rootsimple.com/

I read this about 6 years ago, when

dreams of owning a real farm fell flat. I read it again 3 years ago, and put some more suggestions into action. I read it again this spring and realized that while I might not be doing the usual routine of producing my own food and flesh, I am providing a highly essential ecosystem for pollinators. Those butterflies, bees and wasps are all needed to pollinate other people's vegetable gardens. These insects travel for long distances, getting their pollen fix.

Just recently, we became foster parents to a fledgling bee hive. I love them. They are fun to watch, they mind their own business beautifully and I am learning interesting things. They will stay here until they are strong enough to go to a permanent home. I might get a jar of honey out of it, if they do well. Come on Bees.

Local Poetry in Halifax

An espaliered fruit tree at Annapolis Royal Botanical Garden, Nova Scotia

Well, here's something new to me. I heard about this a year ago, but last week a hard copy of a poetry journal was placed in my hands and voila!

Open Heart Farming, The Second Seeding, Vol 2. is now available at
http://www.ohforgery.com/

Open Heart's mandate is simple, yet powerful. It is an annual journal of poems on food and farming by Nova Scotians. It is published by Open Heart Forgery, Halifax's grass roots poetry journal. Each month there is a free, downloadable collection and they ask you to share it with others.

Here we have a different kind of garden, local effort, local art, inspired by local greens or not, if there's a drought. It is modest, humble and perfectly beautiful.

There is an annual Anthology, available at Bookmark for $10 or you can order it online (I think)
http://ohforgery.com/OHFanthology.html

I'd like to share with you two poems, one by a Quaker Friend, Sylvia Mangalam and the other because I like it. Of course, I like Sylvia's as well, but there is the Quaker connection that is always fun to toss out.

Fall Rite by Sylvia Mangalam

The Kentucky Blue bean swelled
Bigger than they should.
Tired of the garden,
I picked them anyway.

It's a sort of rite
This anticlimatic harvest
Reaching for the high fat ones,
Rounded over full seeds.

Gathering up the dry corn--
What can I do with this?
The last green tomatoes,
Last marjoram sprigs--

This genuflecting gleaning
Respects all the work here
Of God, of worms, of me.

And this one by Jaywant (Joe) Patil

Fruitless Tree (inspired by Luke 13:6-9)
The farmer about to chop down the tree
which had been fruitless for year three.
Give me another chance begged the tree.
I will be fruitful for sure next year,
if you fertilize and dig around me this year.
Everyone deserves a second chance sire.

These two poems have a spiritual dimension, but there are lots of plain old secular poems as well. One dedicated to hops, another to alfalfa, another to saltwater.

Happy Hoodwink # 17

What on earth is a Happy Hoodwink #17? On April 1st, 17 years ago, a little black volkswagon arrived just ahead of a snow storm so big that the ferry between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia was stuck in sea ice for a couple of days.

Steve, Phoebe, Lucas and I, plus our two orange cats, Wrassle and Bruno arrived packed into the Volkswagon Bug (it has a rag top) and we were desperately trying to arrive at our new home before the snow hit. We weren't sure if the realtor had turned on the heat and lights for us. It was also an Easter Monday and we weren't sure if stores would be open for groceries or not. Everyone was tense. The scotch bottle was shared around by the cats and adults. The kids had Easter chocolate to get zippy on.

We arrived, the house was warm and every April 1st since we have gathered for breakfast at a Greek restaurant for a celebratory breakfast. Today we talked about highlights from the past year and goals for the coming year. We no longer ask the question if the move to Halifax was a good idea. Everyone remains very happy to be here, everyone has a pretty darn good life here and so, Happy Hoodwink to us.

ps. Why Hoodwink? Because none of us could believe that such a good thing was happening to us and it had to be a huge joke. Thankfully, we were wrong.

Veggies or Windows or Doors?

What's a girl to write about when there are so many exciting things to say about veggies?















or windows?
















As you can see from the first photo, we managed to get a fair harvest off our tomatoes for the first time in a gadzillion years. I was reading Kitchen Garden, a British magazine and they have an ongoing feature on poly tunnels. This is when you take most of your yard and put it under a huge plastic framework, covered with ugly white tarping and grow fabulous veggies inside, all winter long. I must write in and ask if she gets snow or frost, or freezing temperatures. Somewhere in England they must get freezing temperatures. Think of how they cook root vegetables. That can only happen in cold climates. I dragged these tomato plants into the front hallway about mid-September and have harvested around 5 tomatoes, plum and ordinary, and Steve has cooked up two very fine bruschetta dishes. Well, he's an excellent cook anyways but having good tomatoes helps ever so much.

As a comparator, here are the tomatoes left on the driveway, close to where they spent the entire summer. Sad aren't they?















I am taking pity on them this afternoon and bringing them in to see if I can get them to join in the ripening fun.

Remember that little pumpkin that was so bold as to put itself on a pedestal? It is still pretty little. The vine is now wilting and the pumpkin, perhaps embarrassed about its journey into self-importance, has come down to the ground.















I don't think it will orange up in time for Hallowe'en. On the other hand, no one knows how that pumpkin arrived in the planter in the first place, so maybe it is it's final colour. Neat stripes. Maybe it is a squash of some sort? Any ideas?

Didn't you just love the window in the second photo? This is the window that had adults weeping in their sleeves. Why? Well you heard the story in my earlier rant about the evils of repair men and it wasn't so much this window that threw us all into a tizzy as much as the fact that new windows had to be inserted at all.















I Just Love This Window !















I lie on my bed and behold.















I sit in my brand new chair under my ridiculously frivolous light (courtesy of Cheryl)
and behold.

A lot of beholding going on in this room. Did you notice that little black thing under the window? This is courtesy of Linda, who has shed her shackles and purged her pockets and said, "Ain't no room in my land of liv'n for this baby." and so I received a little black electric fireplace. Much more useful than a little black dress, for those of you who like to shop. I have turned it on already a few times this fall and had a nice read, with toes up on the bed, cat in lap and a look at the beholden view and know contentment.

But the ultimate of ultimates, the finest of the fine, the zonkiest of zonks is the DOOR. The back door in the kitchen, plus it's partner the storm door. There must be a better word than behold, but I can't think of it in my excitement, so behold better than with the window.















Wasn't that worth it? Isn't that a divine door? Unpainted, true. No door knob, true. But can't you just see the back yard?








Don't you see the purple bench? Isn't it purple?






We keep walking into the kitchen and thinking, "Someone left the back door open." and no they didn't. But it completely works if that is what we are thinking. We can see out the wide open but truly closed back door. This will make such a difference in the months of February and March. I usually had my forehead frozen to the glass of the old door as I fumed and fussed for the days to stop being so grey. I don't care about the cold or the snow, but the greyness gets to me and now I will see the bird feeder, the wood of the trees, the poop of the calico cat as she does her level best to irritate all of those watching her and the greening of the garden as spring slumps in.

Now that the renovation man has left, I like him. He did do terrific work, he has great skills and when he was speaking with Steve, he was great. By the end, he was even joking with me about dogs being better than cats (rather a foolish topic of conversation since he obviously is wrong, but still he tried) and he was certainly cheerful when we paid him. And in the end, this door makes it all worthwhile. Too bad these things can't be achieved a little more free from pain and emotional scarring, but I guess that isn't part of our world right now. Maybe tomorrow Scarlet.