Random Twits

# Don't pick more strawberries than you can actually DEAL with in a few hours. Trust me on this one.

# When picking husband up at airport, go directly to Arrivals gate. Don't get side-tracked by the Argentina vs. Mexico game in the lounge. He will take this somewhat personally.

# Snakes like straw. It's a fact. Deal with it.

# When people give you tips on pruning fig trees, write them down. Do not trust these things to your memory.

# Try not to let the fact that eldest son walks around randomly punctuating every comment anyone makes with the word "LOL" (pronounced "loll") drive you insane.

# If you wake up at 6am to watch a World Cup game, you will be tired by lunch. You might also be slightly irritable.

# Remember that your children will repeat amusing phrases they hear on the BBC's Horrible Histories. Phrases like "I'm so random!" will follow you where ever you go. Tip: earplugs.

Garden Thursday

This is pretty much what's going on around here right now: strawberries. Strawberries and World Cup madness. Yes, I admit, I scorn every other sport but soccer. Why, you ask? Do you really need to ask? Good looking, trim, fit, lithe, long-haired men in shorts and tight t-shirts running around looking all Mediterranean and intense and sporty?

Say no more.

Other than that of course we're picking strawberries. And eating them. And making jam. I made 15 pints tonight. I used to experiment with strawberry recipes (Eton Mess, tortes, pies, tartes) but my kids are still young enough that all they really like is a) jam, and b) fresh berries, and c) strawberry shortcake. And maybe some more jam. So that's pretty much all we do with them. Every so often I go a little nutty and make a cobbler.

This is definitely the time of the year when Garden Tableaux are worth bothering about: the growth is lush, everything is fresh and new, and any old pot looks atmospheric shoved up against an old stump.

Witness this tableau. Le Tableau Vert. (that means This looks really cool, don't you think? in French)

Does your garlic look like this? Well, then, that's a good sign. It means that it's doing what it should be doing: ripening. The first time I grew garlic and it did this my initial thought was "$#&@! What the h$** did I do wrong?" I even dug up half of it, to see what was going on under the ground. That's when I belatedly realized that everything was going as it should be. I might have tried to bury it again, foolishly. I know I felt pretty dorky.

Now I can nod sagely and say, in response to my friends' "ACK! THAT PLANT IS DYING!" "Have you never seen garlic grow from beginning to end? This is, my friend, the circle of life."

Ha. No, of course I don't say this. Well, not usually. I'm a little more circumspect. Dignified. Usually.




A new lewisia. Orange! Rare! (oops, I'm sounding like the LEGO maniacs in this house, now, aren't I? "this is a really rare piece!") It fell off the back of a lorry. Couldn't very well leave it there, now, could I?





Here is Sandy's clematis. I'd link you to her blog but she hardly ever blogs anymore.

Ahem.








I've got big plans right now to fell some tree tops and make myself a 4-legged arbour, like one I saw in a garden magazine the other day. I've got a Cabernet Sauvignon grape that I plan to grow up one side of it, and I'm going to move my David Austen The Fairy rose over to the other side, because it was languishing a bit against the pine tree. Actually, I lie: I forgot about it as it languished against the pine until the other day when I was repositioning my soaker hoses and discovered it languishing rather sadly. It was not pleased with me. So I hauled it out of that spot and stuck it where my new arbour will eventually be. As soon as I get Richard to help me, that is. Don't tell him - I need to break these things to him slowly. He has this bizarre idea that his weekends are for relaxing. Ha! Who does that?





By the way, if you're looking for a pretty little creeper for your paths, try this Blue Star Creeper. It's not quite as robust as the usual Irish and Scots mosses, but it's extraordinarily charming. I would have had significantly more if I hadn't though it was a weed a few months ago, and tugged most of it away from these pavers.

Yes, just call me Gardeneri Lame-olei.










Oh, and my lovely little Rosamundi is in full bloom. It's low growing and slow growing, but the bloom is quite arresting. At least, it arrests me. And that bumble bee stuck in the middle there looks rather arrested, too, don't you think? Must have been Pink Flower Day.

Or White Flower Day...?




Finally, a shot of a planter with some petunias in it. Petunias, especially these little multifloras, are quite the workhorse and they usually have some pretty crazy colours on them. That tall spiky thing is a Dracaena. They say they are perennial but I've never had one to overwinter so I'll let you know just HOW perennial they really are another day.

May The Cookies Be With You

It all started here. I saw Bakerella's post about these new products at Williams-Sonoma (the horrendously expensive but way cool kitchen store) and immediately started madly obsessing musing about how I was going to get a package of these into my Cookie Cutter Collection. Yes, I do have a cookie cutter collection and yes, it is insanely large and involves way too many obscure designs but I am completely irrational about it fairly extensive.

But the reason I was prepared to pay $20 for 4 little Star Wars cookie cutters was this: my kids love the entire Star Wars oeuvre: movies, LEGO, light sabres, Halloween costumes (please don't ask if I made two brown Jedi robes with matching undercoats and wide belts for the boys for Halloween because I won't admit to it). And the idea of making a batch of cookies, a batch of royal icing in shades of green, brown, black, white, and red, then spending several hours hunched over the counter with way too many bags of icing decorating those little cookies so that they exactly resembled...

Wait.

Did I really just say that?

Anyhow, I saw that box, gnashed my teeth when I saw that it was too late to enter the draw for a free set (but let's face it, I never win those blog contests), and immediately phoned my mum, aka the Cross Border Shopping Queen, to tell her that we needed to drive down to Seattle, where the nearest American Williams-Sonoma was, so I could buy a box of Star Wars cookie cutters.

After listening to her guffaw loudly for a few minutes, I hung up and decided on another tactic. I would subtly encourage Richard to consider another trip down to Seattle. So what if we'd just been there? Surely there would be an academic conference or something nearby that he could go to why I quickly dashed to this store? Sadly, that didn't work either. "What do you want from that ridiculously expensive store now?" was his response. "We are not going down there for a box of silly cookie cutters." He might have accompanied those words with a withering look or three but I didn't let that stop me. Silly cookie cutters indeed. We'll see who gets a Darth Vader cookie, won't we? And then, wonder of wonders, my friend announced a trip. A trip to Seattle. It was fate. So what if she didn't live anywhere near me. She would have to drive right by a Williams-Sonoma store at some point in that trip, right? Sure she would! And we have Canada Post to connect us, right? So what if it sometimes take a month within the same city? Anyhow, I gave her some links to really fun places to take her kids, all of which involved a huge and totally out of the way detour past the Williams-Sonoma store.

Of, for goodness sakes, I am just kidding. I would never be so crass.

Of course not. Never. Not me. No way.

(Sheila coughs self-consciously then looks away)

Fortunately she is an extremely reasonable and kind to irrational people who pester her about cookie cutters person. She agreed to mail me a box. Look! Darth Vader! Boba Fett! Stormtrooper! Yoda! There they are, reclining enticingly on my counter, along with a batch of sugar cookie dough. To heighten the experience I even used the recipe that came with the cookie cutters. It was enough to make one giddy.



Here is the cookie dough after I'd rolled it out and pressed the cutters into it. These are actually quite sensible cutters: if you dust them with flour they don't stick a bit.

Luke, I am your father.

Cookie dough, I am.

Look, sir, droid cookies!

In the interests of not ending up with a mass of smooshy Darth Vaders and Stormtroopers, I put each tray of cookies into the freezer for 5 minutes before baking. I don't know if this made a difference or not, but look...

Here's how they turned out.

And there's FDPG's hand, snaking in to steal the first Boba Fett. Our friends came over shortly afterward. Thankfully they came before I was forced to consider the aspect of royal icing.

And all the cookies disappeared.












Cookie, I am.
Good, I am.
Earless, I am.





Getting deaf, I am.
Disappearing, I am.
Delicious, I am.






Silly, I am.

The Fair Rosa Mundi

Foundling In The Garden

Okay, someone, identify this for me. What the heck is it? It was sitting in the blackberry bushes, looking ready to pupate.

And if you're wondering what is behind it (as Richard the Non-Gardener was) - it's my gardening glove. It was our Spinal Tap moment...

Good On You K'naan

World Cup anthem, anyone? Here's a rendition that was featured on Jian Gomeshi's radio show Q a while back. It still remains my favourite version.

It's perfect. Really really perfect.

Now get out there and score some goals...

Garden Thursday

Some people like to build snowmen; I like to build rockmen. Here is one from my black and white spotted stone phase. Eventually the moss will grow so rough and thick that these rocks will be fused together.

This week in the garden saw us picking raspberries and strawberries, of all things. I'm going to have to lay out more slug bait, though, because Snake isn't keeping up her end of things in the strawberry bed. She seems to hang out closer to the side of the garden, where the slugs are large and brown, leaving the teeny tiny black slugs to feast on my strawberries. When I was out picking them this morning I found a few that were just a shell. A shell. The entire inside had been chewed methodically away, leaving the outside intact and fresh-looking. I was annoyed. I am so not a slug fan. I see no redeeming features in them at all.
I tried to get Toffee to chew on some slugs but he's too fastidious.

He prefers to sit decoratively on the paths.









When he's not acting as a model for me. Here he is showing you how big the mullein is. It's taller than the kids. Almost as tall as me. It looks alive, it's so big and sturdy and stiff. It glows in the night. Mullein turns up in all the medieval herbals, with various names: Hag's Taper; Clown's Lungwort; Jupiter's Staff; Clot. I plan on turning the flowers into oil later on.

Toffee plans on playing with the spiders that congregate under its leaves.









Lots of purple in the garden. I'm always struck by how much purple I've planted. These are balloon flowers.


This is a mallow called Braveheart. Not after Mel, but after its rich, deep, dark brave heart.






The petunias are almost overpowering the lettuce in the window boxes. These are right outside the living room window, and I've removed the screens so anyone can open the window and pick the lettuce. Lettuce tends to bolt if it gets too hot, but I get around this by planting it on the north side of the house, where it's always quite cool.





Another David Austen rose: Evelyn. This one is named for the store Crabtree & Evelyn. They sell a perfume that supposedly smells like this rose. This rose is most peculiar: it never opens up into a typical bloom like the others. Instead it stay like this - a little bud. It smells very delicate and fruity.













This is a garlic relative: ostrakownium or something like that. I can't find the tag and I don't think that's how it's spelled but I also can't find it by googling the word, so we'll all just have to remain mystified. It smells like sweet garlic if you can imagine it. Which is, contrary to what you might think, rather pleasant.







Silly Garden Sculpture #89

My mother threw out this teapot and because it was in such good condition I took it when she wasn't looking. At the time I thought I'd use it for mosaics but it ended up in the garden. Now it has a teacup as its companion. Everyone should have a companion, right?

It's sitting in a pot of cannas, which grow well here although you can't overwinter them outside. I forget which variety this one is but it's very unusual-looking: gold striped leaves and hot orange flowers. According to my garden book its closest living relatives are the gingers and bananas. Now if only I had some gingers and bananas in my garden!