My little girl, Annabelle! How she loved the garden and being outside and snuggles on my lap. I miss her mama personality. As you can see, Anna Banana owned the garden. The house. The yard. The couch. The bed. The chair. As any true cat does.
This Throwback Thursday flings us back to when we first started a little kitchen garden in our old house. This triangle plot used to be cement. TOTAL concrete. Ugh! After my honey worked his fingers to the bone removing icky cement, I went right to work, planting tiny rows of radish, lettuce, beans, peas. We added flowers, parsley, thyme, and even strawberries. And every year, I continued to remove bits of broken concrete that worked its way to the surface.
It bloomed, grew, produced, this little potager, and gave me hours of pleasure. It also transformed over time to include a fence (to keep tiny grands from trampling tender shoots), blueberries, a host of insects and pests, and a wide variety of vegetable experiments and floral specimens. The very best year of production was when our neighbor found and homed a swarm of honeybees. Oh, did we miss those bees when he moved!
Do you have a potager? A secret garden? A weed patch?
2 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (Merriam-Webster, 2019)
There are three options for rescuing neglected metal clothesline poles. Not the wimpy aluminum, bendy sort; but the solid, steel, withstand heavy-duty sleeping bags and families of wet jeans type.
I watch for these opportunities. For case 1 and 2, the clothesline poles are clearly not in use. Besides the lack of actual line strung between poles, each one of the poles in on opposite sides of a 6-foot fence. This is not conducive to the drying of clothes.
For case 3, the location of said poles is just off a parking lot, in the middle of, well, basically nowhere.
None of these clothesline poles are being used, when in fact, they would all be happy in my neck of the woods. I would be quite overjoyed to adopt a set of metal twins and bring them into my family.
I tell you this, but the man is not so sure we should knock on the door of individuals we do not know and ask for permission to dig up, haul, and relocate said harbingers of summer laundry season.
Here’s the irony.
In the backyard of our lower valley home, we had THE best clothesline. It served us well for many years. Until we sold our home and moved north. One doesn’t know to take along the clothesline. For future want.
Several years and moves later, we lived in an older home with a postage stamp backyard. No clothesline. Et voila! Our son and daughter-in-law, having purchased a home with some space, were the owners of a set of clothesline poles. Unneeded clothesline poles. How that can be true, I have no idea. But at that time, it was true.
We were gifted the clothesline poles. Yay for me! The man figured how to wrangle a decent clothesline in our minuscule backyard, tucked behind the old shed. Perfect! I loved doing laundry and hanging it to dry on my clothesline.
Fast forward. We sold our home, bought an RV, and moved to-wait for it-our son and daugther-in-law’s home. Not a permanent move, but in order to work on building our own small home. Our residence here has stretched longer than we planned, but that’s what happens sometimes.
And the clothesline poles? The ones that were originally here? They are there. At the old home. And I am back to not having a clothesline.
Funny thing, irony. If we had been slower to add the new clothesline at the old house, we would have a clothesline here. Read this post to see the ironic clothesline.
Thanks to seeds from a friend (Hi, friend!), magic unfolded in my night garden last night!
Moonflower seeds. I will admit I was accepting defeat at the beginning of the growth cycle. Never have I seen a plant grow SO SLLOOWWWW. Chances of actual blooms appeared nonexistent. Then came the heat. The smoke. The long summer days.
And poof! Cigar-shaped flower pods grew amidst the large leaves. BTW, the stems are out-of-this-world interesting to look at and touch. Once the flowers began to poke from the covering, they transformed into green taquitos.
Then came lavender-edged swirls.
which burst open into extravagant balloons!
Old-fashioned rose fragrance, glow-in-the-dark coloring, large, inviting. I wanted to stay awake all night to see which nocturnal pollinators took the bait and visited the deep blossoms.
Marvelous Monday indeed. What wonderful flowers inspire you? Do you know of any other night flowers? I hear moonflowers are perennials plus they offer abundant seeds. Moonflowers, anyone?
Grandmother Thorn gives new meaning to the words OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). She maintains her gardens with an iron will, daring anything to be out of place, grow where it’s not supposed to, or become mussed by irresponsible footprints.
Only one friend, Ojiisan, the man with a dragging foot and droopy shoulder, was allowed to make tracks in her perfectly groomed gravel paths. For they were best friends and enjoyed hot tea, conversation, and tasty sweets.
All was well until one day Ojiisan tasted gorgeous red berries and urged the salesperson to take some to Grandmother Thorn (but DO NOT walk on the path).
As you can imagine, he did not listen and disaster befell the merchant, the garden, and the welfare of Grandmother Thorn.
Or did it?
This beautiful picture book shares the story of letting go and allowing some things to be. And not all weeds are what they appear.
I love this book, both for the story and the tapestry-like illustrations.
KID KANDY:
Berry Hunt
1. Read GRANDMOTHER THORN. Memorize all the details you can of the weed and its fruit.
2. Does anyone in your family go grocery shopping or visit a farmer’s market? It’s time to go with that person. Go shopping.
3. Search the produce section. Can you find the fruit found in GRANDMOTHER THORN? Maybe your adult shopper will buy some!
4. Perhaps you live in an area where this type of fruit grows. Look around your neighborhood and see if you find the vines. If you time it right, you might even be able to pick some of those tasty fruits!
