Yesterday there was a little rainstorm in the afternoon, so I came inside and stirred up some vegan gingerbread. I made a huge mess. Molasses and syrup dripped off the edges of the counter, and sugar sparkled on the floor as the lightning flashed. Of …
Babs died on Wednesday. I won’t go on and on about how angry I am about this. I’ll just say I’ve been writing down my memories of her, and here are just a few: She would always sit on the steps by the screen door …
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| The Barn Garden, which is not mentioned in this post. My pictures tend to be irrelevant. |
On Sunday I woke up early and started mulching the enormous bed we’re creating on the south side of the front yard. We’ve been building this bed for about two years—that’s how huge it is. We put down layers of newspaper to kill the grass and weeds, and then we top the newspaper with shredded wood mulch that I order from Britt’s Dump Truck Service. I’ve had to order load after load.
The bed (I call it the Southside Bed) is in a pretty dry, sandy, shady spot. When we first moved in, it was a jungle of invasive plants—camphor, Old World climbing fern, and wisteria. We’ve cleared the area over and over, but the invasives keep coming back. We plan to keep on cutting and clearing until they give up, until we wear them out.
On Sunday morning I was cutting wisteria and spreading newspaper. I was having fun. When I go outside early, it always seems like something mysterious and wonderful might happen, that I might be a witness to something amazing. I might see a deer—or God. So I was working, but I was also taking time to look around.
So far the bed is still pretty empty, but some little sumac plants are popping up. Someday soon I hope the bed is full of sumac . . . and rosinweed and woodland sunflowers. Right now, though, it’s almost bare, a vast plain of mulch. A wide, silvery path of grass runs along beside it, crunchy from lack of rain.
When I ran out of newspaper, I did some harvesting in the vegetable garden. Rob and I pulled a bunch of carrots. Our carrots are so funny this year—they’re really short, and most of them are pretty skinny. The reason? Rob was too softhearted to thin them, so they’ve been growing like grass, really close together. Rob is much, much nicer than I am. I don’t generally feel sorry for carrots, but he does. He feels sorry for everything.
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| The carrot harvest |
We used our carrots to make a big pot of curry. And we had some delicious, oily, salty stir-fried kale on the side. Rob says this is the last kale we’ll get this year. He’s pulling it all out because it’s really spent now . . . and full of whiteflies.
As we cooked, Buntin played with some fresh okra. Buntin loves playing with okra. She carries it around in her mouth, making braggy sounds; she’s really proud of catching such dangerous prey. She bats the okra and runs after it. The other cats watch, fascinated, and then one of them inevitably starts chasing her as she dashes around the house.
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| Buntin. Rob calls her Honey Bun, especially when she’s being bad. |
Here’s a pretty neat picture of one of our black swallowtail caterpillars. Right now these little guys are all over our yard, chowing down on our bronze fennel plants. I just love how chubby and baby-like they are—so sympathetic, so cute, in my opinion. I’m …
Well, here he is, our freshly repainted gnome, Mr. Halfrey. We got him 11 years ago at the Lakewood Flea Market in Atlanta, and he’s been repainted twice. In Atlanta he always stood in our backyard in a funny little “gnome’s garden,” a patch of …
This weekend was really too hot for strenuous yard projects, so Rob and I spent most of our time repainting our garden gnome, Mr. Halfrey. His old paint had melted off in the rain. Painting him was pretty time consuming because he’s big (about three and a half feet tall) and fairly elaborately dressed in a pointed hat, a bell-sleeved jacket, a shirt, leggings, and pointed shoes. His accessories include a pipe, a satchel, and a little frog friend. There were so many tiny details to paint (gold buttons on his shirt, gold buckles on his shoes . . .) that we were stuck in the garage for hours and hours on Saturday afternoon.
The weather was burning hot, like I said, but we were really quite comfortable in the shady garage since we had a box fan going. The neighbors’ chickens and duck provided the soundtrack for the day. The hens were clucking and cooing so softly, making such comforting sounds, but the duck was being really noisy (as usual). The duck is a loudmouth. He sounds like he’s an obnoxious party guest making a bunch of corny jokes and laughing at them all by himself: Ha ha ha ha ha! I always feel sort of sorry for him.
Rob and I sat on the floor in the garage, painting and babbling foolishly, saying the dumbest things. As Rob painted a face on Halfrey’s frog (it was the cutest face ever), he was talking to the frog, calling him “Señor Pepin” and asking him various questions. And Señor Pepin was answering. This is just one example of the dumbness. Later, as Rob began painting Halfrey’s pipe, he decided to give me a little update on his progress: “Well, right now it looks like Mr. Halfrey is shoving a piece of poo in his mouth . . . or a finger covered in poo. I don’t know how great that is. . . .” I couldn’t stop laughing. I love poo jokes.
Since it was so hot, I had to do a lot of plant-watering, of course, later in the day. I’ve planted blue torenia in all my pots in the Vine House, and as I was watering I decided that the flowers look just like baby birds with their beaks open, begging for food. They really are the cutest things. Torenia is tough too; it can take the summer heat. I always plant it in my pots once the petunias have fizzled out.
My blackberries are almost done for the year, but there are still a few fruits left. It’s neat to see the cardinals landing on the trellises to peck at the fat black berries. I often see them doing this at dusk.
We’re still nursing Babs, trying to get her feeling better after her bout with pancreatitis. She’s on a low-fat diet, and she’s resting in our Little House, which, once again, has been converted into a cat hospital. We often sit on the floor petting her and talking to her–or talking about her.
“You know,” I said to Rob the other day, “Babs isn’t short for Barbara like you probably thought.”
“It’s not?” Rob said.
“No.”
“What’s it short for then?”
“Babigail.”
“Ah.”
We haven’t finished painting our gnome yet, so I can’t show it. Here’s another garden ornament instead.
And another.
And my caladiums again.
So far, this has been a really great year for tomatoes. In order to use up the bounty, we’ve been making big buckets of fiery salsa pretty much every weekend. Today we harvested over five pounds of tomatoes, a colorful combination of Park’s Whoppers, Arkansas …
