I added a third blue-glazed pot to the stone patio behind the vegetable garden. I think it’s a nice effect. The arrangement of pots and furniture is more balanced now, and the extra pot adds needed color, of course. I can’t wait until the ferns …
This weekend was very satisfying, one of the best I’ve had in a while. I got to do all the dorky things I love, like playing with my cats and making cat videos and drinking too much Coke, but I also moved ahead on some …
When my mom’s sister Aunt Mary came to visit us from Wisconsin in February, she brought a bunch of old family pictures with her so I could scan them. Well, I finally finished scanning and I thought I’d share a few of the best ones:
This is my favorite. It’s a picture of Grandpa at home in the kitchen, sitting in his rocking chair next to the potbelly stove. Mom says he had just come home from church and was reading the church bulletin. She said he did the same thing every Sunday morning, that he’d sit there in his hat and coat and read the bulletin from front to back.
Grandpa was a farmer, by the way; he owned a small dairy farm near Green Bay.
Here are Mom, Mary, and their sisters Diane and Sharon about to ride to school. They attended a two-room country school, Summit School, that was close enough to bike to. “There were nine kids in the family,” Mom said, “but we only had three bikes, so the little kids would always have to ride on the back while a big kid pedaled.” In this picture Mary’s the little one on the back of Mom’s bike. It’s Mary’s first day of first grade. Doesn’t she look excited?
It’s not surprising she eventually became a teacher since she was that jazzed about school.
Here are Grandma and Grandpa on their wedding day. They got married in the middle of January. Doesn’t the snow-covered world look surreal? The third person in the picture is their priest, and I think it’s kind of funny and, oh, so typical that he looks happier than they do on this important day. Grandma and Grandpa were definitely your classic no-nonsense Midwesterners; they didn’t generally show a lot of emotion.
This is Grandma as a teenager. I’ll tell you what I know about her. She grew up on a farm near Eaton, Wisconsin. She went to school through eighth grade, and when she finished school she went to work for a family who owned a nearby country grocery store called Osterloh’s. As I understand it, Grandma lived with the family (the house was around back of the store, I believe), and she helped with housekeeping as well as tending to customers. Mom said she thought Grandma probably worked at Osterloh’s from the time she was 13 to the time she got married at 23.
I asked Mom how Grandma and Grandpa met and she said they probably met at “one of the dances.” She meant the polka dances, which were very popular in Wisconsin at that time, in the 1930s. Mom said dances were usually held at a local bar or supper club and that there was always a live band playing the polka music.
On Saturday, Mom, Bunny, Kris, Sophie, Jake, and I went to Eden Gardens State Park in Santa Rosa Beach. The centerpiece of the park is the historic Wesley House, built in 1897. A white-columned beauty with a two-story wrap-around porch, it stands on the shore …
This weekend Rob and I were so busy. We did so much hard labor that I went to bed at 9:30 Sunday night and I’m still sore today. In addition to keeping up with our usual cooking, cleaning, and cat-parenting chores, we also managed to finish three major home-improvement projects.
The first thing we did on Saturday morning was paint a couple of dirty, discolored doors (living room and front bedroom). It was quite a satisfying endeavor. The doors are nice heavy old things, and we painted them a clean snowy white. Since our cats enjoy getting paint on their paws and running around on the furniture, they spent the day in the Little House (the old detached kitchen). They weren’t too thrilled with this arrangement, and there were at least a dozen attempts at escape. I think the only cat who didn’t try to escape was Leroy, who is tubby and sweet and very lazy. There’s this dumb bathmat he likes back there, and his hobby is placidly sitting on it.
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| The front-bedroom door, freshly painted. We hope to paint the whole room (golden yellow) in a couple of weeks. |
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| Leroy, content in the Little House. I mean, he was content until I offended him with my camera. |
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| Carl pouting |
Probably the most important work we did was pressure-washing the house, a project we started on Saturday afternoon. Well, we didn’t really pressure-wash the house. We just sprayed it with this solution called Jomax (mixed with some bleach), and the mold and mildew came off “like magic,” as Rob so joyfully declared. I should add that it was a particularly exhausting, drenching sort of magic, one that left us achy, wet, and reeking of Clorox.
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| The house, all clean and shiny. Those are woodland sunflowers in the foreground. |
The last major project we tackled was mowing the woods behind the backyard. (We did this on Sunday.) Mowing back there is always a big job because our poor woods are choked with invasive nandina and ardisia. I’m serious, these plant pests form a wall-to-wall carpet of horror under the trees, and the only way we can control them at all is to mow them down periodically. I hope someday, if we keep mowing them, we’ll finally wear them out, but right now that shows no sign of happening. Both the nandina and the ardisia are still annoyingly healthy and robust.
I was on the riding mower on Sunday, and I must admit I was thoroughly enjoying running them down. I became a bit careless in my enthusiasm. I’m usually a very cautious person, but I was taking real chances that day, mowing wildly over rough terrain. I ended up stuck in a hole, stuck up on a stump, then stuck between two trees. If my sisters had seen me, they would have laughed, because I’m famous for being kind of a terrible driver.
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| The woods after mowing. Around each tree, there’s an island of invasives I still need to pull by hand or take down with the weedeater. And yes, this picture does embarrass me. |
Right now the star of our vegetable garden is definitely our 5-foot clown pepper “tree.” It’s loaded with shiny green, orange, and bright red bells that dangle from the branches just like Christmas ornaments. It’s really a sight to see. I call it a clown …
On Saturday Rob and I stopped by Dudley Farm in Newberry to do a little agritourism (we were spending the weekend in nearby Gainesville). In case you’ve never heard of Dudley Farm, it’s an authentic Cracker farm that’s been preserved as a state park. It’s …
Today I’m talking up starry rosinweed (Silphium asteriscus), a native perennial that’s at the height of its bloom season now. The bright yellow daisy-like flowers are about 2 to 3 inches in diameter and make me think of smiley faces. They’re just so dang cheerful, I can’t help being charmed.
I became acquainted with starry rosinweed about 10 years ago when I was working at Georgia Wildlife Federation in Atlanta. We held a native plant sale as a fundraiser, and starry rosinweed was one of our offerings. I got to help put together a little catalog for the sale, with descriptions and pictures of all the plants. Researching and writing about starry rosinweed made me want one of my own, so I bought one at the sale.
My rosinweed thrived in my tiny inner-city Atlanta yard, in the heavy clay soil next to my front porch. I loved how tall it was (about 5 feet) and how straight it stood (it never flopped over).
I also liked how busy the flowers were with sulphurs, painted ladies, and other butterflies, as well as various interesting flies and bees. At Georgia Wildlife Federation, one of the big reasons, we said, that you should plant native plants is that so many animals depend partially or entirely on insects for food—and native plants support native insects. My rosinweed demonstrated the point quite nicely. It was a regular hub of insect activity, full of merry buzzing and fluttering, and I always enjoyed watching the action.
I brought my rosinweed with me when I moved to Quincy, and later I bought more at Native Nurseries, a terrific nursery in Tallahassee specializing in native plants. Rosinweed spreads itself around somewhat, but not in an aggressive way. It’s popped up on its own in several of my sunny and kind-of-sunny beds, in both clay and sandy soil.
The bright green leaves have a sandpaper-y texture and edges that are usually coarsely toothed. They’re long (about 5 or 6 inches) at the bottom of the plant and get smaller as you get to the top of the stem. The stout, sturdy stems are mostly green but are often tinged with some maroon or purple. The flower buds and seed heads have a star-like shape, which is maybe how the plant got its pretty common name (I’m just guessing). I’ve read that goldfinches eat the seeds in winter, which would be a neat sight to see, but I’ve never been so lucky.
What I can tell you for sure is that starry rosinweed is tough. It never wilts, even in the driest times (and there have been lots of those lately). The dog days of summer are here, rain is rare (again), and yet somehow the rosinweed is still perky. I stroll around my faded, tired-out yard and see it smiling, twinkling.
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| The day I took this picture (Wednesday) was the first time I’d ever seen a zebra longwing in my yard. I was so excited. |
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| This lovely lady (eating a moth) spun her web between two rosinweeds growing near the front steps. |
