« April 2011 | Main | June 2011 »
Root beer floats and raspberry lemonade.
Chocolate covered strawberries dusted with sugar.
Cold beer and a table of yummy BBQ.
Picnicking in the garden.
Little kids playing in the grass.
Runaway babies.
Flowers and sunshine.
A bright, sunny afternoon spent with lovely friends.
The conditions in the back garden are very different from the conditions in the front. The front gets bright, full sun, and for the most part, it's able to stand there without much interference. The back garden has to tolerate deep dark shade followed by blasts of the harsh, late afternoon sun. It has to go head-to-head with the miles of heavy shrub and tree roots. It also has to tolerate soccer ball kicks and Wiffle ball games and basketball bounces. Quite frankly, you've got to be tough (and flexible) to survive in the back garden.
A few things were already here when we moved in: a large deciduous azalea, a very sour cherry tree, two blueberry bushes, a crazy-huge ill-placed hydrangea, and a big red rhodie. But that's it. Everything else was bare to the bone.
Oh, and there was this sedum on the rock wall, too.
My ideas for this garden finally came together last spring when a landscaping company was giving away dozens of free boxwoods. I loaded up my car up with as many as I could and I hoped that the boxwoods would give me some direction. (Remember this post? Holy cow, has this garden come a long way!) I started making my curve around the yard and slowly but surely, I made it all the way around.
I added some lady's mantle, some hostas, a bridal veil Spirea, Solomon's Seal, ferns, Japanese grasses, dwarf willows, and astilbes. I still have a lot of fence to cover, however.
The plan was to keep things natural and woodland-y but also add a bit of structure. I had to leave a big space to play and lounge about, too. Soon enough, the hammock and the sun umbrellas will be set up here but for now, I get to enjoy it just like this.
And, look, here's the edge of the patio we built last summer and how it looks in the garden:
Alright, that's all I have for now. Thanks for joining me on the tour!
Thank you, dear readers, for the slug suggestions last week. And here I thought you'd think less of me for my slug killing ways! Putting them in a blender? Zoinks!
Okay, so the front garden is finally ready for a tour. We've been having a nice string of sunny(ish) and warm(ish) weather so the plants are bursting into action. Not many flowers yet (crazy, since by now some of these things should already be on their way out) but we have leaves! And buds! And growth! Shall we take a look around?
We have most of the usual suspects: liatris, peony, daisy, columbine, iris, rose, spirea, crocosmia, sedum, coreopsis, and daylily. I'm glad to see that they are all still surviving in that packed clay soil. I'm doing my best to amend it but, wow, it's like the amendments disappear into thin air.
And I don't know what in the hee-haw is going on with the chives. They are coming up everywhere and invading the other plants. This is the first time this has ever happened. Now I have a chive coming up right through the center of this columbine! It bugs me.
I like how the blue-green leaves of the sedum cool things down about it. The same is true for the Jupiter's beard in the back. The blue-green doesn't bug me. Blue-green never bugs me.
Aw, and what's not to love about strawberries? They're the sweetest things in my whole garden!
Back near the porch we have hebe, spirea, Gerber daisy, pansy, and kale going to seed.
And we have a close-up of the leaves of a daisy and what do you know… more chives!
I'd forgotten how much I love to visit with the plants, not just prune them, move them, dig them up, and divide them. Visiting really is one of my all time favorite things.
Thanks for joining me. Meet me back here next time for a tour of the back garden.
There's a war waging in my garden. And it's an unfair war because there's only one of me on my side and there are gobs and gobs of them on their side. They really are such wretched creatures, don't you think? You know who they are, don't you? Why, they're slugs of course! And they ruin everything! Well, not everything but they ruin lots and lots of things.
In the past, my system of defense against slugs consisted of me noticing the merciless mutilation of a plant and screaming "I hate you!" and running inside. That didn't work very well. Sometimes I would see an actual slug and I would pick it up and whip it as far as I could into the street, letting the tires of a car do my dirty work. I've heard lots of people do that. In all honesty, though, my system of defense was rather ineffective.
Not so anymore. Not so at all. A few days ago, I saw that my irises were looking unbelievably shredded and it was totally not okay with me. Totally not okay. My irises are dangerously close to my new vegetable beds—the beds filled mostly with plants I'm growing from seed—and we all know what a few slugs could do to a buffet of baby leaflets. So one night at dusk, I went out searching for the little bastards in action. I tip-toed in my flip-flops and pajamas and I could not believe what I saw! On each poor, innocent little iris plant, there were at least a dozen of the offenders, violently sucking and slurping away. I looked around some more—on the ground, in the grass, under the weeds—and that's when I saw a hefty trail of slime, and a line of slugs in all shapes and sizes, following each other to the feast. It was a slug superhighway. I stormed inside, bounded into the garage, and grabbed the sharpest, meanest, toughest shovel I had and…
Wait. Are you suddenly feeling worried? Are you beginning to think I'm not at all the girl I seemed to be? Are you wondering if you shouldn't visit here anymore? Well, maybe it's best if I don't tell you. Maybe it's too gory. Maybe the scene was too brutal. Maybe…
Alright, I'll tell you. But don't say I didn't warn you!
Okay, so, I took the sharpest, meanest, toughest shovel I had and I started scraping each slug off of each iris. As they fell to the ground, one by slimy one, I chopped them—SLAM!— right in half with the shovel. Then I went over to the superhighway and got the rest of them. All of them. And there were a lot of them. I won't even tell you the final number. But I assure you I did it as quickly and humanely as possible. I didn't want the slugs to suffer. I may have muttered "Tell your friends" under my breath but I swear to you I wasn't enjoying myself in the slightest. And do you know what? The next night I only saw three. And last night I only saw one. Maybe that's all of them, then. Maybe the carnage is finally over.
Hopefully.
Our yard slopes in all directions. It slopes up towards the south, down towards to the west, up towards the east, and down towards the north. This makes for some interesting gardening challenges when you need a flat surface for raised vegetable beds. The only place to put the beds (except for smack-dab in the middle of the backyard) was along this south-facing fence. And the only problem with this spot is that about 6 or 7 feet from the fence, the ground slopes sharply, over three feet down. I thought about putting the beds further out where the ground was more level, but that would have pushed the beds too far into the yard. I decided instead to build the ground up where it sloped down, and level it off as much as I could.
When I dug out the space for the patio last summer, I dumped each wheelbarrow full of old dirt here on the slope. I smoothed it out as best I could and left it there all winter. It looked horrible. And every time I looked at it, it reminded me of how much work I still had left to do on that stinkin' slope. But earlier this spring, I finally started to give it some shape. I dug a trench along the fence and I used some large landscape rocks that my neighbor was getting rid of to help support the soil and make a loose wall. Eventually it was level enough to add the beds. It wasn't perfectly level, though, and I still had to deal with a bit of a slope.
The size of beds we made are 4 x 4 feet square and made from 1" x 6" x 8' cedar lumber (cut in half at the lumber yard) and 2" x 2" x 8' cedar boards cut into 1 foot pieces. We sharpened the bottom edges of the 1 foot pieces with a circular saw so we could hammer them into the ground.
Then we (he) attached the 4 foot boards to the 2 x 2's like this:
I placed the beds where I wanted them (30 inches from the fence and 26 inches apart from each other so that a lawnmower could fit between them) and hammered the 2 x 2's into the ground.
Once the sides were level(ish), there was still lots of space between the boards and ground in the back, while the front was flat and flush tight. But we figured out how to fix that.
We used additional cedar boards (9/16" x 6" x 4') and placed them on the outside of the bed, following the slope of the ground. The board was basically on diagonal and we didn't want to attach it like that, so we scribed a line along the 2 x 2 and cut the board where we had scribed.
Then we slid the extra boards right in the space between the 2 x 2's. And look at that! No more gap! All we had left to do was add sheets of newspapers to smother the weeds and grass underneath.
And fill the beds with soil.
And, of course, add the plants! But I'll have to show you that next time.
In the meantime, happy Monday and happy planting!
Gnocchi was the first thing that popped into my head when Michael asked me what I wanted for dinner on Mother's Day. I love gnocchi and I don't eat it very often so when I do, it's very special. And this one was so special (and buttery) that I wanted to share it with you. The recipe was developed by Michael over the years and now it is just the way we like it:
Gnocchi with Chicken Sausage in Garlic Butter Sauce
Serves 6–8
2 lbs. russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 egg, lightly beaten
1–1/4 cup flour plus 1–2 cups more for kneading
1/2 tsp. salt
8 tblsp. butter
1–2 tblsp. fresh parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. mild Italian chicken sausage, bulk or removed from casings
1 bunch Swiss chard, de-stemmed and torn into pieces
1. Cook potatoes in a pot of boiling water until tender. Drain and let cool to room temperature. Put in a large bowl and mix until smooth. Add egg, flour, and salt and combine with hands until a loose, soft dough forms.
2. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and continue to add flour until it firms up and holds its shape (or until you get tired of doing it). Roll dough into 3/4" ropes then cut into 1" pieces. Set prepared gnocchi on a floured surface until ready to boil.
3. Saute sausage in a large frying pan with a little bit of olive oil. Cook until browned on all sides; adding Swiss chard towards the end to wilt. Set pan aside.
4. Meanwhile, set a large pot of water to boil. Add gnocchi and cook until they float to the surface. When they are done, drain gnocchi from the pot and set them aside on a large piece of parchment paper.
5. Add about 1 tblsp. each of olive oil and butter to a large non-stick frying pan and heat until hot. Add the cooked gnocchi and saute until browned.
6. Make the Garlic Butter Sauce: Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat until it gets foamy, about 3 minutes. Add parsley and garlic and let it cook for another few minutes. Combine the gnocchi and the sausage mixture and put onto a large platter. Drizzle with Garlic Butter Sauce. Serve with Parmesan cheese if desired.
It was my little guy's birthday this weekend. He got to take charge of the day in every way. From the moment he woke up until the time he went to bed, he decided what we ate and when, who played with whom and how, and where, if anywhere, we all were to go. Oddly, his birthday looked remarkably similar to all of the other Saturdays spent at the Smith house. Apparently he's happy doing the same simple things we do every weekend (with a few more cuddles and squeezes mixed in).
He let me decide how to spend Mother's Day (he's always been a good sharer) so we had brunch with my family and then we spent the rest of the rainy afternoon together at home where I was allowed to boss everyone around at will. Michael made me a special homemade dinner of Gnocchi in Garlic Butter Sauce (so, so yummy) and I enjoyed not having to clean up any of the big messes.
But now the birthday boy and I are home, sniffly and feverish, and not exactly enjoying the less-than-desirable end to an otherwise lovely weekend. We're trying to make up for it by devouring banana bread and watching movies and playing with his favorite birthday presents.
His most favorite being his new whiteboard. He's been asking for one for weeks and weeks. He likes how smooth it is and how quickly the markers move and how easy it is to erase.
Simple needs, I tell ya. Simple needs indeed.
