Amy the Mom

True Colors

I have four lengthy yet unfinished posts in the queue.  However, the sun has been shining a lot more in these parts lately, so I've traded my blogging obsession for my gardening infatuation.  I'm pretty sure it's a healthier pursuit physically, but I sure miss all you guys. 

I'll return to my regular posting schedule when I finish transplanting perennials and filling terra cotta pots with colors so vivid they're almost obscene. 

If I didn't have to work, I think I would take a part time summer job in a nursery and milk the employee discount. 

I love the name of this rose, "Paint the Town."  I just planted this a month ago, but I'm already dazzled by it's brilliance. 

I love these pots.  I have two that flank my front entryway and they're my pride and joy.  In the autumn, I fill them with mums, and as December nears I decorate them with evergreens or mini Christmas trees.  One of my favorite days of the year, though, is the day I go to the nursery and decide what color combination I'll use and return home with a truck full of plants ready to be potted.  I love the smell of the dirt and the fresh greenery.  I baby these displays, deadheading them each morning and fertilizing them every Saturday. 

If you were to watch me garden, you'd wonder why I just walk around sometimes, staring at the beds in deep concentration.  I'm in another world.  I'm imagining plant placement, figuring out what needs to be moved, deciding that the  Polenium Caeroleum needs to be relocated to the flower beds near the front walk because the 125 pound beast is crushing the tender plants with his massive paws.  I'm making mental lists of all the plants I would love to have and imagining a yard filled with fragrance and color for three or four months out of the Minnesota year. 

Because of Clark's aforementioned girth, I've made the executive decision to cover the hill behind my house in hardy rosebushes.  I have a Darwinian approach to rose gardening-survival of the fittest.  I will not put frail and needy tea roses or hybrids in my yard.  They're too demanding and prone to failure in our Zone 4 climate.  They require constant chemical spraying, an extra blanket of protection during winter months, and still they aren't satisfied-they are the divas of the horticultural world.  Shrub roses are a perfect compromise, often more fragrant than their sissified counterparts and they take a brutal winter beating and still return to life each spring requiring nothing more of the gardener than a clean up pruning.

For the gardener on a budget, I highly recommend Craigslist. I got a bunch of incredibly beautiful irises like this last year and I'm already going to have to divide them.  You get to meet some awfully nice people this way, too. 

Amazingly, the rabbits have stayed out of my front flower beds this year.  These hostas were decimated last year, but have been untouched by the rodents this season.  It might have something to do with Nori, or they could be just satisfying themselves with all the extra birdseed laying beneath my feeders.

Sadly, gardening is often plagued by disappointments and frustration.  Case in point, my once flawless front lawn...

I have only two words to say about this...

BAD DOG!

I will return later this week with a delicious new recipe!    

It's always summer in St. Paul

By this morning, I'd had enough with the most recent round of winter weather.  Since I'm powerless to change it, I decided to go to the one place in the Cities that is always warm and vibrant-the Como Zoo Conservatory.  Unfortunately, hundreds of other people had the same idea, so the place was packed.  But for an hour and a half this afternoon, I was far from winter.

I could smell the blooming hyacinth a full fifty feet from the entrance doors to the conservatory.  That helped.  Spring growth is stalled here right now.  I had hoped to work in my garden this weekend, but those hopes were dashed when I awoke to snow on the ground AGAIN yesterday morning.   

The air is moist and heavy inside the conservatory.  It's redolent with the aroma of greenery and blossoms and earth.  I missed the peak display of the tulips and and hyacinth in the sunken gardens, but the colors were such a welcome change from the bleak landscape outside that I didn't even care.  When I was a little girl, I remember lying beneath the lit Christmas tree with my pet cat, and wishing that I could shrink down to a tiny little human.  I wanted to use the tree as my secret fort and clubhouse.  I would scale the branches and play among the lights and ornaments. 

I wish I could have the conservatory to myself for the same reasons.  Even if I could spend the night for just one evening, and not have to share it with anyone else...

Amy the Gardener

A few months ago, I found an old gardening journal in a box of junk from my previous life.  The gardening journal was a record of my botanical experiments in Zone 7, a far more forgiving environment than Zone 4 where I'm currently located.  It was fascinating to read what I was doing on March 20, 1998. 

• Sprayed roses with fungicide
• Transplanted dianthus
• Moved white butterfly bush
• Observed starts of peonies, crocus, hyacinths and daffodils
• Waiting for delivery of 5 more butterfly bushes, 6 hosta varieties
• Placing an order for 450 fall bulbs (I hope I canceled that since I left for Minnesota in August 1998)

Tucked inside the journal was several letters from my Uncle Wandell and his wife Aunt Betty and  my Aunt Gwen.  Wandell and Gwen were my mother's older siblings, and both have passed away in the last four years.  I maintained a regular correspondence with them over the years, much of it written.  If I awoke to the house on fire one night, those letters would be on the short list of items I would grab on my way out. 

Uncle Wandell was a Master Gardener and thrilled that his young niece had taken up the hobby as well.  When I wrote to him asking advice, he responded with a letter (printed on perforated sheets of paper from an old dot matrix printer) full of tips and a pencil written plan of his vegetable garden. 

I was so flattered that he shared his intricate plan and notes with me.  As much as I would love to plant a large vegetable garden, I have a south facing house.  For those of you not horticulturally minded, that means my front yard gets all the sun.  I'm not about to plant rows of corn next to the spirea and streetlights.  I do get enough sun in the backyard to put up some large pots for tomatoes and jalapenos, as well as plenty of fresh herbs.  It's so hard to find tomatoes that aren't anemic and jalapenos with heat at the grocery, regardless of the season.  I want to make a robust pico de gallo this summer that's got some kick. 

Pico De Gallo

1 1/2 pounds tomatoes, seeded, chopped
3/4 cup diced red onion
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 C  fresh lime juice
3 tablespoons minced seeded jalapeño (about 2 medium)
1 garlic clove, minced

Combine all ingredients and allow to mellow for one hour prior to serving. 

Morning Glory

Okay, no, they're not morning glories, they're perennial hibiscus.  I was thrilled to find these in the grocery store parking lot garden center earlier this summer, and I got two for the price of one.  Like morning glories, their blooms are spectacular in the morning, but wilted and faded by evening.  It's hard to believe such a tropical looking flower can survive the bitter cold of Minnesota, but gardening is nothing if not an exercise in optimism.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

As long as I have to work for someone, I choose to work for my current employers.  I enjoy what I do, and I feel privileged to work for two men I admire so much.  I realize this makes me one very lucky lady, and don't think I don't know it.  BUT, if I hit the Powerball tomorrow, and never had to work for someone else another day in my life, I would choose a worthy successor for my current position and go home to become the ultimate Domestic Goddess.  I'd experiment with new recipes, taxi the kids around, finally decorate the house the way I've always wanted and weather permitting-I'd garden my little heart out.

I'll say one thing about living in Minnesota, you certainly appreciate the warmer months a lot more after enduring a winter of hibernation.  I've long loved to garden, but for the first time in my life I find myself with the time to indulge my hobby, and accommodating soil to work with.  The weather this spring has been ideal for growing and I purchase more and more plants and garden accessories everywhere I go.  It's an addiction-an aesthetically and aromatically pleasant addiction-but an expensive obsession nonetheless.      

I work two blocks north of one of my favorite nurseries, and it's difficult to refrain from popping in and checking out their newest stock.

(you try and resist the WALL OF COLOR)

Every grocery in the Twin Cities has a makeshift nursery in the parking lot, and I tell myself as I run in for a gallon for milk that "I'll just look around, it doesn't hurt to see what they've got," and the next thing you know, there's three more pots in my truck.  I went into TJ Maxx the other night to buy swim trunks for Alex and walked out with a mini birdbath and two hose guides to match the three I already had.  Whoever made the executive decision at Target to incorporate Smith & Hawken merchandise into their inventory is brilliant-an evil genius where my wallet is concerned.  Wal Mart isn't safe, they have a formidable garden center and when that little smiley face starts showing up on markdowns, I'm helpless.  Sam's Club?  Plants can be purchased in bulk too, as it turns out.  Home Depot?  I just send Steve-I can't be trusted over there either.

(I get lightheaded just looking at this)

The only thing that's saving me is that the catalog people haven't found me.  When I lived in Atlanta, I was on the mailing list for every seed, plant and heirloom gardening propaganda out there.  It's tempting to go online and sign up, but let's be honest, most of the bookmarks on my computer are for pure horticultural porn.

Fortunately, my passion doesn't go unappreciated.  Steve made it very clear when we moved into our house that he had absolutely no interest in yard work.  I assured him that keeping up with the landscape would always be my pleasure, never a chore.  He has pulled into the driveway more than a few evenings and told me that we have the nicest yard in the neighborhood.  A friend came over last summer and told me that "It's like heaven," walking from the driveway to the front door thanks to the profusion of blooms I've planted.  I complimented my next door neighbor on his lawn recently, and his wife volunteered that my flowers were still the best.  Everytime I put out new plants one of my other neighbors wanders over to see what's going in next and what my reviews are on performance.  And even though I may tour the property and look at vacant spaces and think about what to fill them with, I know that I've already got everything I always wanted.       

(Almost everything-I saw these alongside a road last week. I simply must have vivid poppies like this in my garden.  They make you feel warm and happy just looking at them, don't they?)

 

   

 

Mindfulness

Things that made tonight a wonderful evening:

1. Finding a pillar for the "Ramona" clematis I purchased last week
2. Three hours of uninterrupted gardening
3. A freshly cut lawn
4. The intoxicating fragrance of lilacs
5. Playing fetch with Clark, the best dog in the world
6. Spinach Alfredo pizza with a luscious red wine
7. Relaxing in a clean house, with no dishes requiring attention
8. A good soaking rain, accompanied by a vivid display of lightning and a thunderstorm
9. The sweet, soft song of spring peepers
10. A hot bath by candlelight

Fiend

Oh sure, he looks sweet and cuddly-all four inches of him.  But he and his family are decimating my hostas and asters.  They're monsters.

Someone is going to have to pay.