Mom, We’re RICH!
Earlier this week, my sister and I took her kids over to my mom’s house. They love visiting great grandpa and the candy and snacks that he doles out freely- we always did too when we were young. They ate their fill of M & M’s, potato chips, and other snacks while all the adults enjoyed listening to my grandpa’s stories about gardening and growing up in the hills of West Virginia.
After the kids were stuffed with candy, and we were filled with stories, it was time to go. The kids gathered buckeyes, from the same tree my we did at their age. Little Orin was so excited and gathering as many as he could in his little hands.
He threw them in the box my sister was gathering black walnuts in and exclaimed excitedly, “MOM, we’re RICH!”. Then he explained that he was hoping to be able to play conkers when he got home. Don’t worry if you don’t know what conkers is, I didn’t either until he explained it (see link for explanation).
When I was young, candy was also one of the highlight of my visits to my grandparents, now that I’m older it’s his wonderful stories. As a child, I also loved walking through the woods with my grandpa learning to identify trees, animals and other plants. He definitely installed in my dad and in us a love of the natural world.
I must go over and soon and start documenting these stories for the kids to appreciate when they’re older. Preserving the Legacy of your family is such an important thing, head on over to the Your Day blog to read my post about my grandpa’s legacy . With the technology available today, it’s to easy and worthwhile to do, as this is truly one of the most valuable family heirlooms you can have.
Did you have someone growing up that shared their love of nature with you?
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Gardening is a Social Activity
Last Friday I stopped by the library to pick up a stack of books. My friendly librarian was excited to see me, she wanted to invite me to a plant swap they were hostling the next morning. Our head librarian and all the ladies that work at the library are gardeners and, as most gardeners, they love to meet other people that love plants. The library sponsors many gardening events each year, trying to educate the local community about gardening. Usually, I’m working on Saturdays in the summer and cannot attend the events. Luckily, however, I happened to have Saturday off.
It was raining on Friday afternoon, so I couldn’t go out and dig any plants. The next morning, everything was still soaked, so I decided to split my aloe plant instead of digging something out the garden. Being the creative person that I am and having the need to do things well, I made labels for the plants with a short history and care information. Of course my blog address was on there too, I figured a few of the attendees might enjoy visiting.
The skies were dark on Saturday morning and it looked like rain. Luckily it held off, but I think it scared a few folks away. There weren’t a ton of people, but that’s fine with me, being slightly averted to large crowds. It was also nice to have a smaller group for ease of conversation.
We chatted about plants and gardens for a while then the plant swap started. There were some very interesting plants available and a door prize of a Kousa Dogwood tree. It was great to hear the stories behind some of these plants, where they came from, how they arrived in their respective gardens, and how to take care of them. Someone even brought mimosa plants, a plant that grows wild in Colombia and one that I loved as a girl.
Luckily, everyone wanted an aloe plant, one will even reside at the library for soothing scrapes and burns. I made it home with a few interesting new plants including: burgundy hibiscus, black pussy willow, mimosa, corsican mint, Japanese iris and a nice big houseplant that needed a new home (I believe it’s an anthurium).
It certainly was a great event, hopefully next year I’ll be able to attend again. I’m already thinking of which plants I’d like to share. I would love to see a few more events like this, as it’s a great way to acquire new plants and meet new people. These ladies will be great allies if I ever decide to try to start a community garden for our town.
Have you ever attended a plant swap? Is there an active gardening community in your area?
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The End of Tomato Season
At the end of September, about two months after the appearance of the first vine-ripened homegrown tomato of summer the time has come to dismantle the garden before the cover crop is sown. Frost is coming: fermentation and decay are in the air. Plants have fallen down, top heavy, and many tomatoes look like sad sacks, flaccid and drained.
-Amy Goldman (The Heirloom Tomato: From Garden to Table: Recipes, Portraits, and History of the World’s Most Beautiful Fruit)
Come mid-September, the tomato plants are no longer the stars of the garden. The Vines are starting to look like exhausted from their summer of bounty. I still have a few plants that are nice and green, but the majority of them are looking pretty rough.
Tomatoes don’t taste as well this time of year when the night temperatures start to drop. I have noticed that they’re not as sweet as August tomatoes and the depth of flavor just isn’t there. That’s the main reason I no longer keep the vines around until they are killed by frost.
Today I plan to spend my afternoon clearing out the two rows of tomatoes in the garden. All the green tomatoes will be put in the basement on shelves to ripen slowly. They won’t taste like vine-ripened tomatoes, but they’ll be quite delicious roasted with garlic and olive oil. The ripe ones will be canned into something delicious, most likely my new favorite recipe for them, Roasted Tomato Passata from the The River Cottage Preserves Handbook.
A few years ago I stated pulling them out in mid to late September to make way for cover crops or overwintering crops like garlic or shallots.
When do you clear out your tomato patch?
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Plant Spotlight: Goldenrod
Baroness Matilda and all the children showed me over the whole estate on their first free afternoon. When we passed by a large bed of tall yellow flowers, Rupert said proudly:
“This is echte amerikanische Goldrute (genuine American Goldenrod). Papa says it is quite expensive, and we are not supposed to pick it. Pepi, our gardener, takes special care of it with a special kind of manure mixture”.
I admired wholeheartedly this noble guest from America, whose golden blossoms attracted all the bees of the neighborhood.
– Maria Augusta Trapp The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Goldenrod is a truly beautiful plant, especially at this time of year when most other flowers are waning here in the Northern parts. It provides a bright pop of color and blends beautifully with the colors of fall, blooming just before the leaves start the change. Most people consider it a weed, but it’s really a native wildflower, actually an herb. Goldenrod is a beneficial plant, playing host to butterfly larvae and repelling other insects considered pests. Being a vital source of both nectar and pollen for pollinators, it’s allowed a place in the gardens of Chiot’s Run.
Goldenrod is a member of the aster family, along with joe pye weed, chicory, black-eyed susan, liatris and many others. It produces food for a wide variety of insects: monarch, clouded sulfur, American small copper and gray hairstreak butterflies as well as a wide variety of other pollinators like: bumblebees, wasps, soldier beetles, honeybees, syrphid flies and others. Lucky for the the monarchs it’s blooming everywhere during their migration through Ohio so they have a plentiful source of food for their journey.
Goldenrod is under appreciated and even vilified by many people. Those will fall allergies often blame goldenrod for their sniffling, but ragweed is actually the plant they should be cursing. As with many “weeds”, goldenrod is actually an herb. Traditionally it was used medicinally for it’s anti-inflammatory and diuretic effects. It was also used because on wounds because it helps promote healing.
Interestingly enough, while researching for this post, I found out that goldenrod contains rubber. Inventor Thomas Edison tested a number of plants looking for a source of rubber after being asked to find a native source by his friend Henry Ford. He finally settled on goldenrod because it contained the most and through his experiments was able to produce a 12-foot-tall plant that could contained as much as 12% rubber. The rubber produced was long-lasting resilient, examples of it can still be found in his laboratory, elastic and rot free after more than 50 years. In fact, the tires on the Model T given to him by Ford were made from goldenrod. Edison turned his research over to the U.S. government a year before his death, goldenrod rubber never went beyond the experimental stage. Which is quite a shame since the synthetic rubber based on petroleum became the material of choice for car tires.
Many people shudder when they think of goldenrod blooming in their gardens, but I welcome them. They can become invasive since they spread by both seeds and underground rhizomes, but I find that they’re easily pulled out when the need arises. I don’t let them grow in my cultivated foundation gardens, at least not in large numbers, or in the vegetable garden. They do however, spread freely along the edges of the woods and in the more naturalized garden areas. We actually have a couple of the 125 different species, it’s quite interesting to note the differences between them.
Do you incorporate any native wildflowers in your gardens? Any goldenrod?
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We Have Winners
The winners for the American Flags have been chosen. Drew from Tiny r(E)volution is a fellow blogging friend. Drew and his wife Crystal (and soon a new addition) are in the process of building a tiny home, you can read more about this on his blog Tiny r(E)volution. He said:
Tiffany was also chosen as a winner. She writes a blog called SongbirdTiff which she describes as: “I like to think of Songbirdtiff as my alter ego. She’s the one who skulks around thrift shops, bargains at yard sales, and clips coupons. I am simply the boring old typist behind the keyboard.” She said:
We also have a winner for the seeds from the $5 Challenge. Kristin has been a long time blog reader. Head on over to her blog Going Country where she humorously talks about all sorts of things from raising sheep and collies to all of her crazy adventures in country living. Her tip for frugal meals:
A big thanks to everyone for your great comments! If either of you winners haven’t received my e-mail use the “contact me” form on the right to send me your mailing address so I can get your flag in the mail.
