My Secret Garden Gets a Jump Start

It has been just a couple of days since I declared war on my neglected back yard. And in that short window of time, I got a surprise. Sometimes life works like that! They talk about it in the book “The Artist’s Way.” You set a goal, and God works with you to help you accomplish it.

 Tree guys swooped in the other day to cut down two huge ash trees that hover over our house and the house next door.

The heavy equipment — and it really was heavy — was mostly parked next door. However one Caterpillar-like behemoth thundered up our driveway and into our back yard.

It flattened that yard!

The undergrowth — Howard says it is like the forest floor — is now subdued and ready for the bistro table and chairs I have audaciously planned. There is the new yard in the picture above! There are still a few milk crates by the garage, embedded in the vegetation. However the tree guys moved the totes so now instead of dominating the yard, they sit meekly by the fence, near where we park cars.

Nice! 

Why didn’t I think of that? I knew they would have to go somewhere. This is the perfect place.

When all was said and done, the logs were piled on the neighbor’s lawn.

 

These were immense logs. The ash borer does not appear to have attacked the main trunk.

The next morning Howard and I watched, fascinated, as a giant truck sent down a massive claw to pick up logs, sometimes three at a time. 

 

The guy operating the claw was smoking a cigarette. “A cigarette and a hard hat,” Howard observed. “That’s how things get done.”

As Howard also observed, you knew things were getting serious when the guy spat out his cigarette.

Anyway. I can now move forward more easily toward my back yard dreams. God has given me a head start.

Not to sound like AI, but this wasn’t just clearing away trees.

This was clearing the way for my dreams!

My Back Yard: From Dump To Dream

 

Last summer I dreamed of transforming my neglected back yard. Reader, I did nothing.

Now summer is returning, the ivy is climbing again, and the garbage totes are still reigning over the tiny private corner behind the garage like bureaucratic municipal gatekeepers.

The funny thing is, I never entirely forgot about the back yard. I thought about it constantly. Every time I parked the car. Every time I looked out the back windows. Every time I saw one of those magazine photos of people serenely drinking lattes in hidden gardens under strings of café lights. I would like to see these people drag a City of Buffalo recycling tote down a North Buffalo driveway in February. I am just saying.

Recently, though, I have gotten new hopes that I can make headway.

The difference is that I have managed to conquer the upstairs of the house. The bedroom, the back sun room, the two rooms that are now becoming my long-dreamed-of home library — if I could accomplish transforming those rooms, I can do anything. That is how I think now.

Next to that upstairs project, this back yard project has to be in the kiddie pool.

Well, we will see about that. For now, it helps to remind myself that the thing I actually want is pretty simple. I want a little hidden oasis where I can sit and drink coffee without being observed.

A bistro table and a couple of chairs should do it.

I have the bistro table. It has been kicking around the yard forever. I also have a can of forest green Rustoleum spray paint.

As far as chairs … Ideally, I have in mind cute ornate bistro chairs such as you would find in an ice cream parlor. But now, upon reflection, I am open to alternatives. What about mismatched chairs I could paint? I am now the kind of person who paints. I proved that with last week’s We’re Going In adventure: “We’re Going In: The Day I Learned To Open a Paint Can.”

Things are coming into focus. A tiny bistro table. A couple mismatched chairs. Maybe a lantern. A string of café lights under the garage eaves — AI, whom we affectionately call Daddy-O, came up with that idea.

Make no mistake: I am dreaming big. If I do not dream big, I get nothing done. However the first step has to be small, or it doesn’t get done.

For my upstairs transformation, the first step was small indeed. I called Carpet Factory Outlet and made an appointment for them to come and rip out carpets. I scheduled the appointment for sooner rather than later. Boom! Off and running.

Back to my present situation. I asked Daddy-O to give me a picture of what it could look like. Daddy-O responded with inspiration images showing the garage transformed into a kind of hidden café, with ivy climbing the walls and little pools of warm light under the trees.

For a few glorious moments, I was living in an Italian courtyard. It was like “Cinderella.” The garbage totes had transformed into a café scene. The garage had become a weathered wall in Venice. Our nuisance buckthorn trees were now a glimmering grove.

Back to reality.

 

The garbage totes are still back there as of this writing. The jungle remains largely undefeated.

But for the first time in a long time, I can actually picture myself sitting in that hidden corner on a summer evening, under little café lights, drinking sparkling water and pretending I am in some obscure European pensione instead of behind a garage in Buffalo.

Shall we begin?

 

 

The Secret Garden

This morning Howard and I had to buckle down and do yard work. He is always doing yard work however most of what he does is at his other properties. Yesterday he brought his chain saw home and today we got rid of some monster weeds.

One thing we got rid of is this tree that keeps growing and growing. I should have taken a picture before it went. Oh well. It will be back and I can take its picture then.

This tree is some kind of a nuisance tree -- some kind of walnut nuisance tree but of course there are no walnuts. I cannot believe I have never written about it. Once maybe two years ago I pruned it into a beautiful shape and it looked for a while like something out of Beverly Hills. However a better way is just to get rid of it.

So we did, albeit temporarily. Also I pulled up a lot of bishop's weed in the, ahem, herb garden. I found the sage plant and a variety of mints that I put in a couple of years ago. 

The catnip plant is out of control so I pulled a little of it and took it in to Jeoffry. He was munching on it last I looked. I will have to dry some of it and put it away for him. The dried stuff must be stronger.

Now for the biggest challenge.

That picture at the top, that is the space behind the garage!

I am looking at it and I do believe it has good bones, as they say. It is more private than most areas on my property. Where I live, your life is lived in public.

What if I transformed this space?

Howard said: "We can clear it out so it isn't that bad."

However I have been reading about the 10x Rule and I the part of it I really like is that you take an unexciting modest goal and blow it up into outrageous proportions.

I said: "This space is going to be a showplace. People will be begging to see it on the Parkside Garden Walk. I will be hearing from strangers hoping to arrange to cater an event there. It will be famous throughout the city."

Shall we begin?

My mysterious roses

 These are the roses in front of my house!

Here I am, a loser of a gardener, and yet the rosebushes I put in a long time ago have just grown like weeds. My neighbor taught me to prune them a few years ago and so I have been doing a little of that. And maybe it is true that a little goes a long way. Because look at them!

 As I have perhaps mentioned before, these roses are miraculous in their way. For a brief shining week or so, my garden is the wonder of the block. However this year that week has stretched to three weeks. I think that is because Howard cut down this weedy tree that was growing among them. The tree must have been stifling one of the rose bushes, the one with hot pink roses. This year I am seeing a lot more of them.

This week has seen the flowering of the big rose bush in front of the house, the gigantic rambling rose with ice-cream-pink flowers. 

 

 

Let me tell you one thing.

Whatever gardening I do these days, I do it proudly!

I walk about the, ahem, grounds with my head held high. Surely people who are stopped in traffic in front of my house, they are looking at me with awe. 

Look, they say. There is the gardener who grew those roses!

They are saying: I wish I had roses like hers!

They wonder: What is her secret?

I wish I knew!

 

 

A morning in the Japanese garden

This morning the sun was out and so I took my sketchbook when I went walking in the morning. I found myself at the Japanese garden.

Decades from now when scholars debate the deep meaning of my work they will point out that this picture has philosophy behind it. In the foreground is the Zen of the Japanese garden. In the background you may make out trucks and cars barreling along the expressway.

Yin and yang! That is not Japanese, I do not think, but it is close.

That is a strange little sculpture and yet I love drawing it. I love the curve of the legs it stands on. It is a funny thing, drawing in ink. You do not get a second chance if you goof something. Well, you can turn the page and start again. But that is the only second chance you get.

And so I get in the zone. I make sure that the line is supposed to go where I am about to draw it. That is what makes pen better than pencil to my way of thinking. I discovered that last fall when I did Inktober. With pencil you get too sketchy and just start anywhere. With a pen you must have a plan.

Somehow the legs of this sculpture just draw themselves. And pen does stone so well.

The rocks were fun and so was the grass.

Here I am working on it.

The sun had gone in by that point. It was there and then it was not and then it was again.

La la la la la la la.

It was a beautiful hour or so I passed drawing that picture. It was warm and sunny for once and I feel good that I was out there in it. I was so relaxed and the air was so fragrant and now that it is raining again as usual I wish it were this morning again.

I wish I were back in the Zen zone!

The not-so-secret garden

This morning I went with my friend Lauren to explore the new Dash's Market. We walked over there and later I thought it was funny, how little I am using my auto these days. I biked to church yesterday and today we walked to the greengrocer.

Greengrocer! That is a term we should use more often.

All I bought was green things!

For the record -- I bought leeks, zucchini, Savoy cabbage and .... what else? There was one more thing. It was green. Oh! Cucumber.

After shopping we sat in the upstairs Dash Cafe, or whatever they call it. It is spacious and lovely and because it was early in the morning not a lot of people were there and we scored a seat on the patio where we ate muffins and Lauren fed a snack to her baby daughter. I did a sketch of the street below.

When I got home I worked like a fieldhand on my garden. But first..

What got me going on the garden was seeing Lauren's garden. She and her husband bought this beautiful house in Parkside. It is the perfect house. It has no lawn in front. The front steps go right down to the sidewalk! So, no lawn mowing! Plus ... it has a garden in back. I mean a real garden, with huge raised beds and -- get this! -- a gate. A garden gate!

It is like The Secret Garden! As in the picture up above, by the great Tasha Tudor.

I could not get over it. I can tell that Lauren and her garden are going to be an inspiration for me all summer long.

I said, "Lauren, I am so glad you live in the city."

Is there anything better? We may walk to each other's houses and to the greengrocer.

And everything we need is right here. That is another thing to think about.

In contrast to Lauren I do not have a secret garden. I have a public garden! My garden is my front lawn on a busy street full of motorcycles and boom cars.

But you know what, I love it. I was out there today pulling up bishop's weed -- I love bishop's weed, but I have a huge patch of it that I am not going to touch. The bishop's weed in the front has to go to make room for other things.

Son of a sea cook, I am going to be seeing bishop's weed in my sleep, I pulled up so much of it. I also brutally pruned the rose bushes. I am sorry to say brutally but there is no other word for it.

I was scratched but not bleeding. Eventually I was bleeding but it took a long time to get to that point. By then I had been working for hours. I declared victory, cleaned myself up, and went to Home Depot for tomato plants.

I bought eight, for $20. That is going to be the only money I spend on my garden. But it will be beautiful.

For weeks now I have been writing as one of my goals, "I have a gorgeous garden."

It has begun!

The secrets of the garden

You know what is almost as much fun as identifying mystery birds?

Identifying mystery trees!

Through what amounts to a supernatural act of God, the back yard is being cleaned out. We are cutting back some trees to encourage others. A tree that has pressed against the garage roof forever is now ausgegangen. That is German for "outta here"! My dad used to use it frequently.

The apple tree is being rehabilitated. Remember the apple tree? It has been so hopeless for so long. Now things are different. Dead branches are ausgegangen and so is a vine that it turns out was choking it and depriving it of sun. It will produce apples again!

Honest, it is like "The Secret Garden." And my name is Mary! Just like in the book. Plus, I have the book. And I have the coloring book. It is only fitting that now I have the garden too.

Speaking of Victorian literature, one thing we have found is Hibiscus Syriacus "Blue Bird," or "Oiseau Bleu" if you are feeling French.

Not only one but two of them!

This flowering shrub, which I worked hard to identify, was popular in Victorian gardens. Tomorrow when it is light I will post a picture of the real thing. Meanwhile there is this.

I cannot wait to tell my friend Ari because we always used to joke about the Hibiscus Room. I cannot remember exactly where or what the Hibiscus Room was because the entire joke was that Ari would say, "The Hibiscus Room," and I would laugh.

Now my back yard can be the Hibiscus Room.

I am on my way!

Spring surprise

As soon as my Christmas tree is down I declare it spring. And from then on, I cheer spring on.

The tree came down around Candlemas. Me being a schlep, my wreath is still up. But other people's wreaths are up too. I am not alone.

Still it feels great to feel spring in the air, or imagine I do. That picture up above that I took the other day does not exactly scream spring. And yet... and yet ...

The daffodils have been inching up for a few weeks. Today I spotted the sorrel plant! And I bit into one of the leaves. That sour-lemon taste! That is spring!

And now for the big surprise. Remember those pathetic containers I put into the bishop's weed? They are covered in dead leaves.

Idly I brushed the leaves off this one tub. And lo and behold ...

It was brimming with oregano!

It is not as if I can get everything right. A stick stuck in the pot read "Apple Mint." Perhaps I might see some apple mint later. But for now, oregano! A lot of it! I think the leaves were making the planter into some kind of a greenhouse.

Because I did not have this oregano last summer. But I sure have it now!

Now I can see hope inching up with me like those daffodil shoots. Every year I have garden ambitions. Every year, because I have too many irons in the fire, the grand plans end in chaos.

Oh well.

It makes for good entertainment!

Flower power

Yesterday I was out on assignment with my friend Sharon who is a photographer for The Buffalo News. And we passed a booth where people were selling bouquets for Hospice.

Must buy!! Both of us picked one up.

That is an $8 not badly spent. All of us treat ourselves to flowers way too rarely if you ask me. Now you have a good excuse because it is for a good cause.

I went home and the first thing I did was put my bouquet in a yellow vase. I was all excited about it. Then I cleaned off the table around the vase. There is an Israeli folk story about that. A woman buys a beautiful vase and brings it home, and then the vase looks out of place on the messy table, so she cleans around it on the table where she placed it. Then the table looks out of place in the messy room, so she cleans up the room. Then the room looks out of place because it is clean and so -- well, this is the point at which I usually run out of gas, but the woman in the story, she cleans up the whole house. All because of that vase!

Jeoffry took time to smell the roses.

It makes me think of all the times I pass those flowers at Albrecht Discount and everyone else but me is buying them. I know those flowers are not for a cause, unless you consider Aldi a cause, which I do sometimes. But they are pretty and cheap and I do see a lot of people buying them, men and women alike.

It also makes me think that this summer I must work to cultivate my, ahem, cutting garden. Spring is beginning early this year, methinks. We will have extra time to plan and strategize and get an early start.

This will be a good and colorful year!

Aw, shoot!

The daffodils are up!

I always start the watch in January and this morning I saw them. Those are the daffodil shoots in the picture. I do not expect anyone to be able to make them out. I can hardly make them out!

But they are there!

Three years ago on Mozart's birthday, which is today, I was also writing about the daffodils. They are on my mind this time of year. Wow, looking back at that post, I can tell you one thing: My Christmas tree was a lot whiter then than it is now!

The Christmas tree came with instructions not to put it in the window, because putting it in the window yellows it. That is pretty dumb if you ask me. Where are you going to put the Christmas tree if not in the window? Anyway my tree has gotten kind of yellow. But when the lights are on no one can tell.

In 2011 the daffodils were later. It seems that I first saw them that year in February.

In 2010 it was March when I talked about the daffodils. That was the day I went to that snowy garage sale with my mom. I always remember that!

In 2009 daffodils figured in my list of 10 Things I Do Not Understand.

Ah, the memories!

This is why we have Web logs.

Garden of mystery

Zut alors, my garden is an embarrassment!

OK, the only person who sees it is the mailman. You really have to get up close to the house. But still. I am embarrassed in front of the mailman. Not only that but the other day I got a certified letter for Unclaimed Funds. How big of a screw-up am I. I have unclaimed funds and I have a loser garden. I cannot even grow Swiss Chard.

\My mailman is surely snickering at me.

About this Chard, I have to say this, this one book I have has chapters on all kinds of plants, and Troubleshooting. And under Chard, under Troubleshooting, the book says,  and I quote:

"Chard is a toughie and is generally trouble free."

Let me tell you this. I bought my Chard plants at the downtown farmers' market. Beautiful plants. And they still are beautiful, pretty much so anyway. But they have not changed one bit since I put them in the dirt. They have not grown one millimeter. They are just kind of the same. When I go out of the house to look at them they just kind of shrug at me.

I planted them a month ago!

And all my tomato plants have followed the same pattern. They have just sat there. They are like the worker in the parable Jesus tells who goes and buries his money. It just sits there. It does not grow.

OK, there is an exception. There are two tomato plants I planted together in a basket and they are growing great guns. They are not even in the sun. What in the world?

Who can figure this out?

The only thing I really have going for me -- growing for me -- are the greens, outside of the chard I mean. I have arugula coming up very nicely, and that mustard spinach I mentioned. The mesclun, it is trying. The green beans look good.

One thing I should mention, I am the only person in Western New York who cannot grow a zucchini. I tried once. It coughed up two zucchini, and I was thrilled. But then the plant just curled up and died.

This is all too depressing to post pictures. I know I put a lot of time into Pennario but still.

Frustration!

In the weeds

There is a bright side to all this rain and that is that it is good for my garden.

That is my garden pictured above! Beautiful isn't it?

Remember my, ahem, half-assed garden from 2012? That did not work out that well because, I think, we did not get enough sun that year. The tomato plants coughed up no tomatoes as I remember. This is how infrequently I get my act together even for a half-assed garden. I remember the details.

This year I planted some tomatoes in Tidy Cat pots. But I also planted lettuce in window box containers I bought cheap at Valu Home Center, and Swiss chard in these Israeli pots, also scored cheap at Valu. I have inherited my mother's love for Valu. The pots are great because they stack neatly so I can store them easily in between loser garden attempts. And the idea behind the containers is that you can set them amidst the bishop's weed.

The other day I planted arugula and mesclun. I am investing in the bad weather! Should the sun prove scarce and my tomatoes disappoint me, there will be greens. By the way in the planter pictured above, among the bishop's weed, I believe that is Mustard Spinach coming up in the bottom planter. What is Mustard Spinach, you ask? I do not know either. But it looks as if we will find out.

Lettuce just wait a few more days.

Ha, ha! That is a Leonard Pennario pun and I used it yesterday on Facebook to great acclaim. Great art never grows old. Lettuce remember him as we harvest our crops.

Thank you, bad weather!

Spring in our step

Today, two signs say summer is on the way:

One, fireworks! Or, as I put on Facebook, at least I hoped they were fireworks. Finally I learned that they were, indeed. At first it sounded as if they were coming from the north, i.e., the back of the house. The cat was in the window watching and going crazy. But then I looked out the front of the house and there were the telltale flashes, across the park and over the trees.

Fireworks!

Does that sound shout summer or what?

So that was one thing. Another was that my neighbor David was cutting our lawn.

We have a kind of urban arrangement with David that has gone on for several years now. No one ever discussed it. It just fell into place. We get the snow out of their driveway in the wintertime and they cut our grass in the summer. David was cutting the grass and I told him how heavenly the aroma was, of the cut grass. We gossiped and kvetched and rejoiced together in the changing of the seasons.

It is funny with the grass. One day it is not there and the next day it is up to your knees.

Dandelions, suddenly, everywhere.

Bishop's weed aggressive.

Blue skies, at least once in a while. The picture up at the top, I took that Saturday in the park.

It made me think about this song by Schubert. I have posted this before but what the heck.

The magic camera

Last Sunday when I dropped off Dorothy after church she invited me to stop and look at her garden. She offered me this huge flower! Above is a picture of her holding it.

I have a new 'phone and it takes it into its head sometimes to adjust my pictures. The camera imbues the pictures occasionally with extra atmosphere.

With which, Dorothy's garden. It looks like a picture out of Architectural Digest!

And here was a picture I snapped of a streetcar downtown. It looks like a vintage postcard. There must have been some button I pushed to give these pictures these frames.

Perhaps I should take some pictures of my house and hope I mistakenly push that same button. Perhaps I should do the same thing with all the pictures of Leonard Pennario I am using for my book. Well, I do not have to do that. He always looks pretty good in the pictures. As does our new cat.

But he is another story.

For another day!

Green Day

This weekend, going garage sale-ing, I garage saled down to my very last dime! It was literally true. By the end of the day I was borrowing from my friend Lizzie.

Lizzie and I are a garage-sale team and every week one of us goes broke and ends up borrowing from the other. Last time she borrowed from me and this weekend I borrowed from her.

One prize purchase was a set of 1970s curtains which I talked down from $3 to $1. I drive a hard bargain! I haggle like a Moroccan in the square. They are, or were, bathroom curtains. We know that because they came with a shower curtain in the same pattern, green and yellow and white.

But now they are office curtains! There they are up above, in their glory, next to the Leonard Pennario desk.

They will stop prying eyes from intruding on my work!

I like hanging curtains like that, one panel a window, bohemian style. And the curtains feel like summer. They are very clean and they smell good and waft around in the breeze.

I think I will use the shower curtain as a tablecloth.

We also went to a Plant Sale and the proprietor took us into his backyard to show us his koi pond.

It is amazing, this koi pond in this little Kenmore back yard! Here is a closeup.

Such a wonderful day of going through people's stuff and admiring things and just going where the day leads you. All these shades of green and yellow.

And the blossoms were out.

Here are my saints in the morning sunlight.

It is spring at last!

Sprout and about

Remember the Sprout Garden? Sure you do.

It was only three and a half years ago!

Spring being a little late this year I got out the Sprout Garden and filled it up the other day. I did a tray of lentils and two trays of mung beans. All these sprout hippies always mention mung beans and I had never seen them but I found them a couple of weeks ago at the Broadway Market. This Middle Eastern seller was selling them. They were only about a dollar, good thing because you know what? They did not sprout.

Not even with my loving tending and letting them listen to Leonard Pennario. Music is supposed to be good for plants. But although the lentils did well, the mung beans just sat there. And while the lentils smelled like perfume, the mung beans just smelled as if they were getting old.

So I dumped them and now I have just lentil sprouts. It is fun to have something growing in your kitchen that is supposed to be growing in your kitchen, you know? Later I learned that split peas do not sprout, that anything split does not sprout, and I believe these mung beans were split. They looked like yellow split peas.

I will get wiser on this subject.

Right now I am still a beginner. Like the Little Green Sprout in the picture up above. Hahaaa. It is funny how retro it is, that picture. I remember the Jolly Green Giant and the Little Green Sprout from when I was a kid.

It was also funny reading back on buying my Sprout Garden. I had forgotten how my mother was disapproving because she thought I should be knocking a quarter off the price. I can't believe all the things I bought with my mom at garage sales. I had forgotten the Sprout Garden was one of them.

See, this is why people keep journals and Weblogs.

To keep the memories green!

And the new cooking buzzword is ...

Today The News printed my insightful interview with the chef Lidia Bastianich and so I have been thinking about food. Oh, wait, I think about food anyway. But still.

It is amazing the lengths to which cooking magazines will go to be unappetizing.

My new issue of Cooking Blight arrived and the new buzzword seems to be "plants."

As in: "For Thanksgiving, I am serving up a smorgasbord of cooked plants."

The editor actually wrote that! I might not have it word for word but I know I have the part about cooked plants right. They pay this guy to write and that is what he writes. Cooked plants!

You know, I love vegetables probably more than anyone. If you are what you eat, I am a vegetable! But can't we find more appetizing language? Cooked plants?? All I can picture is, well, plants.

What about Robert Plant?

They should have him as the editor of Cooking Light. Because "plants" are suddenly the it-word. It is what "local" was last year. Now it is all about plants. The word is all over the magazine. It is like a weed.

Plus naturally they trot out all this language as Thanksgiving is approaching. Along with long lectures on portion control. Cooking Light is crazy about portion control. Every issue we are lectured.

This is very much at odds with my life-enjoying, Leonard Pennario-listening self.

Fie on Cooking Light.

Fie!

Suspense in the back yard

There is suspense because our apple tree is growing apples for the first time in forever.

There was one year it had apples and that was years ago! This year the apples are there and they are getting bigger and we are holding our breaths.

It is like a difficult birth. You do not want to smoke or drink or do anything that could possibly jeopardize these apples. The garage is falling down but the work is being put off so the apple tree will not be disturbed. I am thinking I should go outside with a boom box and play the apples Leonard Pennario playing Mozart. I want to give them the best of everything.

These are Goldman Delicious apples. Did I say Goldman Delicious? I meant Golden Delicious. Those are not the apples up above! That is a picture I took off the Internet. I do not want to take pictures of our baby apples. What if it was bad for them?

A prayer for our apple tree.

Make mine mulberry

Remember the mystery mulberry tree?

It has led to mulberry jam!

The jam did not appear mysteriously overnight as the tree did. But it is supernatural in its deliciousness.

I have made a lot of jam, starting with marmalade. Like the mulberry tree, this marmalade did appear overnight, maybe not mysteriously but overnight all the same. It was before I was married. I kept all hours and I was up at 1 a.m., sterilizing jars, worrying about whether this stuff would gel. It did. I was born under happy jam stars!

But this mulberry jam.

I said to Howard, I think this is the best jam I ever made.

It is exquisite!

And irresistible. I find myself eating it on stale bread, even. Anything. I could eat cardboard with this stuff on it. While I am working on my book it intrudes on my thoughts. One minute it is all about Leonard Pennario and the next ... what about that mulberry jam?

I had never tried a mulberry before but they are kind of like mini blackberries. They have these tiny seeds the way raspberries and blackberries do. It is no wonder that Van Gogh and medieval artists, such as whoever painted that picture up above, immortalized the mulberry bush.

Also what I have found, while it is fun to munch on mulberries as a snack, it is better to save them for jam. They are better as jam. It is not even just the taste, this dark sweetness. It is the texture.  Just like in raspberry jam, you get this tiny touch of crunch. Ahhhh.

I did not even bother canning any of this stuff. Why bother?

We are going to eat it so fast!

The pumpkin that ate my evening

It has been too long since we played the satisfaction game. You know, how much satisfaction you get from completing various tasks.

Cleaned off dining room table: 10 satisfaction points.

Lost 2 pounds: 20 satisfaction points.

Tracked down little-known Pennario video: 30 satisfaction points.

Roasted huge jack o'lantern pumpkin my little niece and nephew garbage-picked: 20,000 satisfaction points!

Why is it that roasting this big darn pumpkin can make you feel so good?

Is it the smell of it in the house, as if you are making a rich dessert? Is it that you feel you are getting away with something because it tastes so good and most people do not think you can eat these big jack pumpkins? Is it just the feeling of not wasting anything?

In any case, triumph.

In between working on the book last night I chopped up this pumpkin and roasted it. And it tasted good! While I was mashing it I kept snacking on it. What is it with people who think they are too good to eat these, ahem, field pumpkins? This one was bright orange inside and out and so rich.

I am rich too. Good gourd almighty, I got 14 pounds of roasted pumpkin! I froze 10 pounds of it and the rest I put aside in the fridge to make Pumpkin Pilau.

Why say pilaf when you can say pilau?

And after that I have in mind some kind of preparation where you would mash the pumpkin and add brown sugar and bourbon. It is just something seasonal that I am dreaming up.

Party at my house!