I wanted to show you one of my favorite places in the whole world, the Tallahassee Museum. It’s a quiet, peaceful little spot under the oaks, with exhibits on native wildlife and local history. I’ve visited hundreds of times (I’ve been going there since I …
I always try to leave some space in my yard for pokeweeds that pop up, from seeds sown by the birds. This year I have one by the picnic table, one by the arch that leads into the vegetable garden, and one by the bird …
Every weekend Rob and I try to make some small improvement to our house or yard. To me, that’s one of the requirements of a good weekend: it ought to involve a beautification project (no matter how tiny). I always want to make things better.
This month we’ve been working hard, weeding, painting, planting, etc. But the most positive change around here doesn’t have anything to do with us and our efforts. The yard is lush and healthy again. It’s been raining!
After two years of extreme drought, normal rainfall seems like such a miracle—a blessing for sure. Every afternoon shower is a cause for celebration.
When I’m at work, Rob will call and notify me as soon as it starts raining at the house. (He works from home.)
“Well, it’s raining pretty good here,” he’ll say in his jolly way. And I’ll be filled with a sense of well-being that lasts for the rest of the day.
The rain has definitely lifted our spirits. We’ve been rejoicing over the yard’s new jungle-y look, all the mushrooms that have popped up, and the wonderfully soggy nature of the lawn. I don’t even mind that our usually white house has taken on a decidedly greenish cast. I’m so grateful for the rain that I’m trying to think of algae, mold, and mildew not as problems but as decorative accents.
And now on to the improvements we can honestly take credit for: We went to Dothan last weekend and bought this wacky lamp for the back bedroom. It weighs a ton (the base is brass), and the shade, which resembles an 18th-century mob-cap, is made of delicate frosted glass. The fringe of crystals around the bottom of the shade, is, in my opinion, the pièce de résistance. Rob says the whole thing is “so old-ladyish it’s actually kind of cool.”
While we were in Dothan, we also picked up a new plant stand for the kitchen. It’s got a nice sturdy marble top, so it should be immune to cat scratches (I’m hoping). I like having lots of houseplants around since they improve indoor air quality and look pretty. The cats like to eat them, so I usually choose ferns or peace lilies since I know they’re non-toxic.
We’ve been touching up the paint on our breezeway again, and last weekend we hung up a new Coke button sign and Coke thermometer for decorations. The cats seem to approve of our improvements. Even though it’s really hot and humid these days, the breezeway is still their favorite hangout. June Baxter likes sleeping on the little railing under the windows. She straddles it (it’s the funniest thing) and rests as comfortably as a leopard on a tree branch.
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| June perched on the railing and surrounded by friends (Frankie, Tellie, and Leroy |
We recently added a new decoy to our collection—the handsome plover you see below, carved around 1910. Rob and I aren’t into hunting, but we enjoy collecting decoys as folk art. Besides the new plover, we have an owl, two flickers, an eider, two crows, an unidentified brown duck, a dove, and a turkey.
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| The whole collection |
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| Eider with a mussel in its beak |
I thought I’d show you some pictures I took after work this week. “After work” is my favorite time, especially in summer when it’s light ’til 9:00 and I can do a little weeding when I get home from the office. For me, weeding is …
I actually took these pictures in early June, but I never got a chance to write about them until today. I took them on the sleepiest, quietest Sunday evening, when the square was totally deserted except for me and the mockingbirds. First I meandered around …
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| Just a bit of the weekend’s tomato harvest |
On Sunday (well, two Sundays ago, before our Oregon trip), Rob and I made another batch of our Super Baked Ziti. Rob stayed up ’til 3 a.m. the night before, making the sauce. It was an epic sauce. He started working on it about 8:00, when I was hanging up our new shower curtain and the house was being flooded by cricket and katydid music. (The summer nights are so wonderfully loud.)
He went out among the fireflies to pick fresh basil and oregano. He used our homegrown garlic and onions too, and our meatiest tomatoes–Cherokee Purples, Romas, Amish Pastes, and Brandywines.
“The only thing in this sauce that didn’t come from our yard,” he bragged, “is the olive oil! Oh, yeah, and the salt.”
At 2:30 I woke up after a bad (but extremely dumb) dream. I expected the house to be dark and silent–scary, depressing. But no. Rob was still at work on his sauce. Every room smelled of garlic and basil, and lamps were lit all around. There was a festive, merry feeling, and we sat on the floor and played with the cats until I forgot about my dream and the sauce was finally ready to be tasted and then stored away in a Tupperware.
Super Baked Ziti
Ingredients:
Ziti:
1 lb whole wheat ziti
1 batch (about 4 cups) homemade marinara sauce
1 batch cashew ricotta
1 onion, finely chopped
3 Asian eggplants, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
Crushed red pepper
1 package mushrooms, sliced
1 cup chopped, pitted kalamata olives
2 3-oz packages chopped sun-dried tomatoes, reconstituted
Salt
Olive oil
Cashew Ricotta:
1 package silken tofu
2 cups raw cashews (soaked in water overnight)
1 Tbls lemon juice
¼ tsp salt
Topping:
1/2 cup Panko
2 Tbls nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbls olive oil
Directions:
Preheat oven to 420 degrees F. Smear some olive oil around a 9 x 13 casserole dish. Boil noodles until al dente. Drain and set aside. Sauté chopped onion and minced garlic in olive oil until onions are softened. Add a little salt. Set aside. Sauté the mushrooms in olive oil with some crushed red pepper and a little salt. Set aside. Sauté the eggplant in olive oil with a little salt. Set aside.
Make the cashew ricotta by blending everything together with an immersion blender. Make the topping by mixing all the ingredients together.
Toss cooked ziti and marinara sauce in a large bowl until pasta is well coated. Add onion and garlic, mushrooms, eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes, and kalamata olives. Mix well. Add the cashew ricotta, stirring gently and leaving some pockets of cheese. Add everything to the oiled baking pan. Top with Panko mixture. Cover with foil. Bake for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake five minutes more.
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| Freshly harvested garlic |
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| Tomatoes, just rinsed |
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| That’s fresh basil behind the tomatoes. |
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| The ziti, finally done! |
Summer is my favorite season at Spruce Pine Cottage. It’s the green time, the lush, sultry time, the time when the rosinweed blooms and the garden is full of tomatoes. Box turtles come out in the rain. Nighttime is even better than daytime because there …
This summer Rob and I are growing a fun tomato called Granny Smith. It gets its name because it looks so much like a Granny Smith apple; it’s big and solid and stays green (well, chartreuse) even when ripe.
Each May a great transformation takes place in our borders and meadow garden when the purple coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea) start to bloom. The beds turn rosy pink and buzz and flutter with bees and butterflies. And I wear myself out taking pictures and picking bouquets and bragging about my great purple coneflowers. (I’m always trying to get people to come over and see them.)
I’ve spent a fortune on native perennials. I’ve tried nearly every kind you can buy. But none is as reliable, in my experience, as the good old purple coneflower, which is drought tolerant, long-blooming, and self-seeding. This plant never lets me down.
Purple coneflower is adaptable, growing in sun to part shade. It prefers moist, well-drained soil but can also grow in poor, sandy soil and red clay. I don’t water my plants . . . or fertilize them or spray them with any sort of chemical. I don’t do anything except fish for compliments about them: “So I don’t know if you noticed my purple coneflowers . . .”
In North Florida, purple coneflowers grow anywhere from 2 to 5 feet tall. Even before they bloom, I find them quite attractive–straight and sturdy, with plenty of big, dark green, lance-shaped leaves. This year they started blooming in early May and are still going strong now in mid-June. The flowers, which consist of pink rays arranged around a coppery central cone, aren’t at all delicate or fragile and make good cut flowers as well as nice roomy landing pads for pollinators.
I don’t deadhead my plants. Like I said, I mostly just leave them alone. Gradually, the cones turn black and are visited in winter by hungry goldfinches looking for seeds. The black cones don’t look all that pretty, I’ll admit, but the goldfinches make up for it. They’re quite decorative perched on a stem on a cold winter day, with their canary-yellow bodies and zebra-striped wings.
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| My cute nephew, Jake, in flowerland |
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| These fellows are a little shabby for some reason. |
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| My sister Kris and Jake |
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| Sophie among the coneflowers |
