Herban Sprawl

22 October 2009

It’s fall housecleaning time around here. Owing to a general inability to deal with the mountains of accumulata, this process is lengthy and unnecessarily painful. However, it’s a good time to get it out of here.

My particular downfall is clipping recipes. I have a new stack of them to deal with, but at least the magazines themselves went off to be recycled today. And, thanks to a very lovely week, weatherwise, the front yard is getting cleaned up on an intermittent basis. I had intended to indulge in more of that today, but instead found myself squirreled away in the kneewall storage. The last time I did an overhaul of that area was probably five years ago. Stephanie helped me, which was good. She kicked butt and took no prisoners. Today I hauled out some boxes of goodies that need to be gone through, made room for other items that had been jammed in there, and cleaned out the coffins of out-of-season clothes.

It was dusty work, difficult - thanks to the cramped space (you have to crawl in on all fours), and generally took a lot longer than I might have liked. However, the space is much more tidy and I used my spiffy labeling machine to make easy to read labels of the collection of Rubbermaids in there. I worship at the foot of the Rubbermaid Goddess!

Cheri called while I was attempting to put the puzzle pieces back together, and patiently waited while I put down the phone, juggled a Rubbermaid here and there, then congratulated me on each victory. Of course, thanks to her tiny size, she will be the likely recipient of some nice items I can’t squeeze into! It’s a bonus to know I can share a couple of beautiful silk tops, my Over Y’alls and so on.

I guess the point of all this sorting and tossing is not so much to make room for all the rest of the stuff as it is to shed old skin, so to speak. It’s good to dump things from another time in our lives, and particularly good when it relieves us of some pain or will go to a good home.

I discovered a collection of old newspaper clippings from the Illinois-Michigan Canal project my dad was involved in, and the first thing that came to mind was to send those to the visitors’ center for their archives. I certainly don’t need to keep that stuff, and they could use it. By the same token, a few years ago, I had a lovely bonfire of letters from an ex-beau. Now that was satisfying! Sometimes it takes a while before we can let loose of things, and I’m beginning to think it is to allow us time to get to that place where when we do dump the stuff, we appreciate that we can indeed let go.

The House Goddess comes tomorrow, and while I still have some things I need to deal with before bedtime tonight, at least I know I have a clean closet, the summer stuff is put away neatly and labeled so I can quickly put my hands on what I need when the first warm days appear. I do have six boxes and two desktop hanging file boxes that need to get cleaned out, but then I can also fire up the firepit on the patio and torch something like ten years of canceled checks! (Yes, Lawyer, I did sift through and pull the mortgage checks… I still have the sticky note you stuck on the house settlement papers that reminded me to save every single one of those.)

Yeah, it’s good to clean it out, get it all dusted and spruced up before the holidays. Real good…

20 October 2009
My last issue of Gourmet arrived today. I am still grouchy about this. Not even the editor, Ruth Reichl, was told or, as she told Terry Gross, she would have planned a completely different issue.

My subscription went until July of 2010, so I will be interested to see what those creeps do for the subscribers.

Meanwhile, I did a magazine clean-up yesterday, extracting what I wanted from the 2008 issues of Bon Appetit and Gourmet. This is paper recycling week, so I have been ridding myself of excess paper, and that’s always a good thing. Much to do in the way of fall housecleaning, and clearing out old magazines is always a gratifying thing to do in front of Clatterford or Lovejoy.

At least Ruth Reichl writes books - and good ones, at that - so I can still read her wonderful pieces. I am going to make sure The House Goddess sees this last editorial, as it will go a long way in helping to understand why I get so picky about how her other clients treat her. Ms. Reichl talked about why it is so difficult for her to consider having household help. She must not be messy like Big Kitty and me!

Dry weather has set in here in The Star City. Yesterday I ran up the water bill with a brand new giant, economy-sized oscillating sprinkler in the back. The front needs it today, but first I have arranged a play date with the Neuton mower. Okay, here is my plug for the greatest mower of all time.

I hate gasoline powered mowers. They get to be the devil to start, they require all kinds of maintenance, and then you have to drain them for the winter. They are also noisy and emit pollution. If I want Briggs & Stratton decibels, I have my black and white charmer, Charlie at five in the morning! A few years ago, after our dear Mr. Johnson passed, we had Lawn Lady. The first year was okay, the second was a disaster. I decided to investigate this new mower I had seen in the gardening magazines.

I lucked into a pre-season online deal and popped for the Neuton, and even though the blade on my early model is small, it really doesn’t matter. I love this machine. I don’t like the trimmer attachment, but that’s okay. Black and Decker came out with a cheap battery powered trimmer and I’m happy with it. When it croaks, I’ll get the new Neuton hand-held trimmer. The mower, however, is the bee’s knees. I keep a pair of batteries charged. That way I can alternate, and I have gotten to the point where I only need most of one battery to do both front and back.

Those who have seen the back understand why, in spite of the small amount of real estate, it is a chore to mow. It’s steep. It requires healthy ankles and knees, not to mention good upper body strength to shove the mower into tough corners. This year, I have been blessed with all of the above, so I’m getting a weekly workout!

Anyway, Big Kitty watered in my absence, but there were plants that got neglected because he’s not one to check for details. He doesn’t do garden. He does computer. Today I will see if some goodies have revived. I’m hoping for the best. If not, well, c’est la vie.

Now it is time for the garden project to swing into post-convention scheduling. I have more plans to execute, and in order to dig, I have to water thoroughly because this clay is brick-hard. That is the issue that has dogged my efforts all these years. That is the reason I about killed myself digging up those little weeds with the red stems before I left! I checked the prairie garden last night and saw that I did a better job than I thought. I’m going to run the sprinkler on it later on and hopefully I can eradicate the last of those little interlopers.

Next up is a trip to the mulch place for a truckload of hard work. If I can get things mulched before SUUSI, I will consider this gardening season a genuine success. Everything after the heavy-duty mulching will be gravy. Oh, sure, I will still be out there with the Japanese weeder, doing damage to errant pokeweed, locust, paper mulberry and other assorted uninvited miseries, but mulch is what makes the garden look better, feel better and  grow better. The hostas need it badly, and there, it pays to be careful. They also need heavy duty slug control!

And so it goes. It’s good to be home.

Yesterday, my neighbor was in her lounge chair, reading, while I toiled in my yard. I was insanely jealous, because that’s what I want to be able to do - look out at a weeded and cleaned up yard that is free of the noxious weeds I have spent 20 years fighting back.

When we bought this house, there was a row of weed trees that ran up one side of the back yard. A friend and his chainsaw with me following, painting the stumps with straight Round-Up got rid of the big trees, but then I spent the next 19 years yanking out miles of orange paper mulberry roots. They are still in the yard, but they are dwindling. Just not fast enough for my taste.

On one side of our house is a lot that used to belong to the former owners of this one. They sold it in the 1960s and a two story colonial was built on it. That back yard is a semi-terraced nightmare of weed trees and vines. A veritable jungle, neighbors have complained to the city about it, and periodically the owners have made a half-hearted attempt to clean it out. There is a large tree that is listing toward our house. With all this rain, I am waiting for the thing to uproot and land on the roof.

Behind our lot is a 12′x60′ piece of real estate that belongs to the Star City. By some quirk on their books, there is the expectation that the homeowner (we) will maintain this steep weed paradise. And for many years I did. Then my knees started to object. Again, it was a matter of hiring out the chainsaw detail and dealing with the residue with Round-Up and back-breaking, knee-compromising work. I just don’t have the physical ability I did twenty years ago, so it is a terrible mess. It’s embarrassing to hear the walkers bitch about it as they go by on the street that borders the mess, but what they don’t seem to realize is exactly how steep the damn thing is, and that it doesn’t even belong to us. I’m not spending my paltry teacher half-retirement check on that. Period. End of statement. Unfortunately, that mess likes to leak over the property line, which means I have a 6′x60′ piece of real estate to which I must apply myself sometime in the near future.

Yesterday, my task was to chop down the rest of the Pokeweed Forest that had infested my prairie garden. I had another square-stemmed thing that had gotten to be taller than me, as well. I cut those down, and their roots were easy to cut out of the dirt. Poke, on the other hand, has a root system that might need a stump driller! Last year I thought I was being so smart. I cut the poke, then, using a disposable dripper, squirted straight nursery strength Round-Up into the hollow stems. I thought sure this would poison the source of the weed. No such luck. They were back with a vengeance! Of course, today, they are lying, limp as a spent unowhat, on the curb!

The prairie garden gained some new plants last year, and they are doing well. The cimifugia racemosa (Queen of the Prairie) is likewise doing well. I hope it will bloom heartily this year. The pink plumes are glorious. After hacking down some massive mulleins, the plants now can breathe. Again, those root systems came out pretty easily. Bless their hearts.

My past gardening sin has been a mixture of the fear of pruning, and a stubborn resistance to moving plants around. Somehow that seems to have left me, and I find myself looking at a dogwood and its low growing branches with a saw on the brain. I whacked down a pair of buddleias with nary a pang of guilt. When I planted them, the witch hazel tree was a skinny, gangly teenager. The dogwood was middle school sized. Now that both of those have matured, the buddleias, which are well-established and can get huge, are in the way. The peony can’t get any light or air. I may love those buddleias, but if they don’t work there, they can’t stay. I think I’m finally maturing as a gardener!

We have more scattered thunderstorms in our forecast for this week, which is good for me. I have to dig out the summer clothes from the depths of the kneewall storage, and there are other indoor projects that I can do. But for every hour I can spend digging up weeds, that’s even better. All the new plants are becoming well-established thanks to all this rain. The patio is ready for a second application of Round-Up, and that plan is progressing nicely.

Next up: a scoop of mulch on the truck vs. bags from Lowe’s. I’m thinking a scoop. Cheaper by far.  Just need to put air in the wheelbarrow’s tires!

That lounge chair and a book are getting closer…I can feel it!

Eek! It got chilly! After several days of summery temps, the bottom dropped out and it’s only 50 degrees out. It’s a good day to go out and start digging in the manure, but it’s also a good day to go sit in that big massage chair and get my toes done!

The work ethic is having a little conversation with the sybaritic side, and the bottom line is that is it also a supremely good day to give my studio a thorough cleaning - as in dust, vacuum and all that happy stuff. One of these days I’m going to figure out how to satisfy all sides of my life! (Not.)

Yesterday’s visit to Lowe’s was remarkable for having found a couple of new astilbe varieties to pop in with the hostas. The tags said they were from the Music Series. I saw white and I saw pink. I couldn’t see different names for them on the tags, but I thought, “Hey, Uncle Doc is a Lyric and a CSO subscriber - what better for the Uncle Doc garden?”

I pulled them to the tailgate of the truck while I unloaded eight 40 pound bags of composted manure/humus, and when I went back for them, saw they had stickers on their sides. One said Rhythm & Blues, the other said Rock & Roll. Okay, now, given Uncle Doc’s decidedly high brow music preferences, I had a pretty hearty laugh.

He had just sent me a whole fat envelope full of the news about the classical music scene in The Windy City. He is so excited because he gets to see Elizabeth Futral in The Merry Widow.  I am excited because he will also get to hear Stephen Costello in that production. I am jealous as hell, too! I want to see Elizabeth in the worst way! And that’s what makes our connection so important. We talk plants, music and whatever else comes up. The garden spot I am creating will honor that.

So much for decisions - as I was writing this, Lottie called to remind me that I am the leader for the Monday night book group, need to supply the snacks, and oh, by the way, did I want to take a quick trip to Walters’ Greenhouse for herbs today? Hah! Herb Mecca? The manure and my toes can wait… Yielding to herbal temptation is a no brainer!

Today was mow day. The thing about yard work is that one needs to keep an eye on the weather forecast in order to know when and how to fit in the things that need to be done. We’re lucky enough to have some rainy days coming up, so I wanted to get plenty of work done today.

I’ve been cleaning out one bed at a time, and today I got a jolt of inspiration for one that had been giving me a lot of trouble. Ivy. Periwinkle. Grrr. The mess had all resided under a dogwood that was serving as the shelter for my hosta collection. Since Big Kitty and decided to engage in watchful waiting regarding the real estate market, I decided to put things in the ground, rather than risk losing them.  And that’s how the inspiration part got started.

Most of this area is under a dogwood that provides wonderful dappled shade. Around the edges, I planted three dianthus varieties, and behind those, some lily bulbs that were in dire need of getting out of the pots. Their tags had been ecologically correct wooden ones, the names are now long gone, and I am no long planning to be e.c. for plant i.d. tags! Foeget dat noise. I also put in a couple of new bleeding heart varieties in a special place. The lilies of the valley did really well this year, and while they haven’t multiplied invasively (yet), they have their little spot near the trunk of the tree. It was while I was squatting under the tree, planting that the idea to make it into a special meditation garden came to me.

I need a little bench, and I’m willing to wait until the right one presents itself. The tree is going to get temple bells, and after I kill an area of icky, icky weeds, the soil is going to need some amending. That’s one reason nothing much has ever done well under this tree. The dirt is brick hard clay. I got so excited about this idea that I even sketched it out. Daylilies will rim the area to the west because they can take the sun. The tree hangs low, so between it and the daylilies, whatever gets planted in the space below will be shielded from hot summer sun.

I moved some junk wood around to give me a starting point for the bench, and that’s when I realized, this was going to be Uncle Doc’s Garden. Hostas, because he’s the one who got me into all this hosta trouble. Temple bells because he’s been traveling to southeast Asia and decided he likes the Dalai Lama’s ideas. And I’m sure I will come up with some other ideas for it.

This is what makes gardening so satisfying. It’s hard work, and a lot of the time the hardest work has to be done when one is not in the mood for it. But just get started, and before you know it, the hours have slipped away. We’re having some really brutally hot days this week, so I am looking forward to a good rain tomorrow. If it doesn’t materialize, that’s okay. I can go to Lowe’s for bags of composted manure, start cleaning out the herb bed and who knows what else.

We have rain today here in the Star City, which is a very good thing for us. We have to maintain a certain amount of moisture during the next couple of months in order to avoid the bone dry summer that threatens our green canopy. I have two flats of 4 inch pots outside, and in order to keep them from weighing 6 tons apiece, I probably ought to bring them inside. These are for a little talk I am giving this evening at a culinary class.

Yesterday, the darling Vella teased me about retirement and how I must be gardening up a storm. Hah! If only she knew what a mess my yard is. It is hard to admit that I kind of gave up on it in frustration, but there it is. The truth always comes out sooner or later. I might as well fess up now. I became discouraged when my knees started giving me trouble as I navigated the steep hill. I also had spent untold hours and dollars fighting back the mess that encroached from my neighbor’s weed lot and the city right of way that is a sheer drop from the street behind our property. I was sick of it.

The thing is, in this economic climate, I am loathe to consider a move. I want to see how things shake out first. But that doesn’t mean I should lower my standards where this place is concerned because if I want to unload it, curb appeal is key. Besides, who wants to live in a dump, surrounded by a mess? No, I must soldier on, and luckily, the knees are a bit better.

I have some ideas that I think we can manage as do-it-yourselfers, but it involves the assistance and leadership of the Greatest Procrastinator of Them All. I’m trying to decide it if would be worth it to rub itch powder into his computer chair….

I jest. However, I do need to motor out to the mulch place and get a scoop. And there are shrubs that have far outgrown their spaces. We have some rejuvenating to do around here, that’s for sure. I guess I should give those yews a big haircut. My other neighbor has a good eye for pruning, so my plan is to have her direct my cuts. Hopefully we can get that glorious vitex shaped up so that we can run our mowers without losing an eyeball in the process!

For now, the rain lets me procrastinate and think. The goddess provides what we need, but sometimes we don’t know what we need, so she just has to proceed without us and hope we catch on! Hmmmm I’m thinking a shade border next to the porch and a decent pathway instead of those awful Japanese yews….

Following the St. Patrick’s Day cook-off, it was abundantly clear I needed to rethink my crockpot needs. I had a pair of rather small corned beef slabs, but they didn’t hardly fit in my 3 gallon crockpot, given the fact they had to share the space with a lot of spuds, carrots, a turnip and the cabbage. I was in Target, procuring other household necessities, when I wandered down the small appliances aisle and pondered the situation.

I gave in. I bought a white, oval shaped 5.5 quart crockpot with the new kind of temperature and time controls. I didn’t go nuts and get the one with the digital read-out - thinking that was just too many steps up the “things that can go wrong” ladder.

I’m all set now. I can put in a decently sized roast without having to cut it up and squeeze it in. I’m not getting rid of the 3 quart one, though, because it is great for smaller needs.

I was thinking back to those first crockpots of the 1970s. Hare and I were digging around on the reject heap for Western Stoneware in the early 70s, and there were a lot of strange pots that looked like they went to something, but who knew what? When we saw our first crockpot in the K-Mart, we saw the rejects in their intended use. Remember those things? The crock was fixed and even though they weren’t that big, they seemed enormous, especially when it came to cleaning them. Orange, brown, gold… they were UGLY!

Later they came out with the three quart one, but again, the pot was fixed and that one was truly the devil to clean because it was also heavy. My dad gave me his because it was just too frustrating for him to master. I got a lot of use out of it, but when the pots came out with the removable insert, I dumped his and got a new one.

I’ve been happy with it, except, as I’ve stated above, when it was just too small for big batches of food. I’m already planning a turkey breast and some other good things. When I want to spend the day in the yard and still have a really fine dinner on the table for my hardworking spouse, a crockpot is the answer. I’m just old-fashioned enough of a wife-type to like the idea that when he comes up the walk, he can get a whiff of something tasty in the works. I’m already thinking of Marcella Hazan’s roast in red wine - an afternoon of braising turns a very lean (and cheap) cut of beef into a favoloso supper. Giada has one, too, with a killer sauce that is ever so easy to whip up in the food processor.

Yeah - this new pot is going to see heavy use this spring. I have a lot of garden rejuvenating to tackle. Nice to have supper ready when I come in.

It is a balmy 75 degrees here in the Star City. While I am feeling grumpy and out of sorts about the shift to daylight savings time (what a waste…), it is still a good thing to be outside. Those pesky, but cute, little weeds with the white flowers have proliferated. In no time, the flowers will wither and the seed pods will shoot seeds everywhere. I want to pull them before they get to that stage.

I’ve made a pact with myself. I’ve decided to ignore my aches and pains. The tendonitis in my elbow has subsided enough to allow me to pick up  bag of weeds and haul it to the curb. If I aggravate it, so what? I’ve eaten enough aspirin this winter to keep the entire regiment pain free!

Last year The House Goddess remarked that our hillside is ideal for a water feature. I’ve always thought so, but I’m not sure I want that level of maintenance. And that seems to be the issue for me. I am great at installing, but come those dog days of summer, my resolve withers along with my plants as they gasp for water.  As I’ve been weeding, I’ve come to the conclusion I need to take a different approach. it is really a two parter.

First off, I read a great book called The Gin and Tonic Gardener. The idea is to garden in such a way that one creates places to hang out with a book and a gin and tonic. A water feature would greatly enhance that kind of experience in the yard, but I’m still not sure I’m up for the maintenance. So I’m taking a “nip it in the bud” approach to the bad stuff that comes up every year. That is part one.

For part two, I want to finish up some of the projects that have been staring at me for a few years now. They are unsightly and they are bugging me. They don’t live up to my Fine Gardening standards!
The thing is, I’m not in the mood to spend a lot of money on my yard.  I did better last year, but this year I don’t really want to do more than add to the herbs. The thing that always breaks the bank is what to do with the hayracks. annuals get to be expensive, and quite frankly, I’m tired of watering the damn things. They add so much to the curb appeal of our house that year after year I plant them up and tend them, and come August I am S-I-C-K of dealing with them. Even Clarice pointed out that I wasn’t doing much of a maintenance job on them. And he was right. Burn out is a tough disease to get over.

We need to attend to painting this year, like it or not, so I’m thinking that cleaning up things and cutting back on the high maintenance ideas is the best course of action for this year. And the hayracks might just become nasturtium planters, which is not a bad thing, actually.

Enough of a rest period. It’s time to return to those cute little weeds!

It’s that time of year, as the song goes. I have the makings of two kinds of cookie in the fridge, ready for assembly and baking. I love cookies and the neat thing about this season is that the food magazines are burgeoning with new recipes.

Most of us have the idea that Christmas cookies should be the ones that take effort. They must be something special and we should have spent a lot of time making them look like the ones food stylists trot out for magazine cover art. I’m afraid I’m not into that. I don’t even like to make plain old cut-out cookies. On the other hand, a few of the ones I like a lot do involve some dough manipulation, so maybe I’m not so big a slouch after all.

Years ago my sister and I were each working our way through a cookie cookbook and after having discovered a cookie press in the dark corner of my mother’s pantry, I tried the spritz recipe. My sister went gaga over those and they’ve been a staple of our Christmas baking ever since. She also had the cut-out cookie recipe from a friend’s mother that she loved. I made those, too, but I never really like the flavor. They had sour cream in them and I finally realized I prefer a less acidic cookie. When they head to Chicago to spend Christmas with the kids, I’m sure Grammie and the itty bitties will be making those recipes. There are certain traditions in her family that are not to be altered. Period.

Last year I made a recipe from an old Gourmet. They had some odd name like Polish cookies, and I am here to tell you, a kolacky by any other name is still a kolacky. (You pronounce it koe-loch-key.) It’s a divine creation of cream cheese dough with a filling of apricot honey goo. Another season offered a little thing of butter cookie pressed into a mini muffin pan and filled with a pignoli mixture. (pine nuts for you non-wops) Also heavenly. The basics parts to those are in the fridge as I type.

There is another one I want to try that involves grinding about four different kinds of nut and shaping the dough into a little finger sized roll. I’ve been wondering why four different kinds of nut, actually, and trying to figure out if the individual flavors will stick out, or whether the combination will create a completely different nut. Should be interesting.

And thus it goes. My plan is to make about six different cookies and to package those up for gifts. If I have this worked out like I think I do, then I shouldn’t have too many of them left around here to contribute to our dreaded belly fat. On the other hand, if I don’t have enough for a few weeks’ worth of afternoon tea, I’m going to be irked. You don’t do a baking marathon and not get to enjoy the fruits of one’s labors, y’know.

When Harry was here yesterday, he volunteered his huge kitchen and convection oven to my enterprise. Harry ain’t kidding anyone. Harry likes cookies! Of course, what he’s really and truly wondering is what kind of chocolate creation will find its way into the rotation this year. If a doctor told Harry there’d be no more chocolate in his future, I think he’d plan his funeral. (Heaven knows, I’d be in the same boat. Life without chocolate? Ugh!)

We have a lovely day with the sun shining. After the dismal rainy week, it’s quite nice - On the other hand, our water supply has been helped by the constant soaking we got earlier in the week, so that’s to the good. Our trees and shrubs all needed a good stiff drink. It’s a good day to bake!