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Blanco, Texas : Thyme Traveler : April 2008
Spring Thyme: Flowers, Flowers Everywhere!
April 19, 2008 19:24
Flowers, flowers everywhere, with billions of butterflies in contrasting colours. It smells as good as it looks, too! The brush piles from last winter's cedar chopping have become Wren apartments, they are fixing them up
for their kids, who are just now being laid as eggs in the nest inside the old attic fan.
Proud Papa sits on a post outside my studio in the afternoons, singing "Security, security, security" at the top of his voice. His song is different in the morning, it sounds more like "Fidgety, fidgety, fidgety wrennnn..." while Mama has a more conversational tone, chatting to her family and friends. I can hardly wait until the babies hatch.
My husband has really gotten into mulching mode, toting leaves from the forest up to the veggie patch. He spent his Saturday digging up a humongous dewberry patch that had crossed it's borders all the way up to the tomatoes, like a carpet of thorns all over the east end of the garden.
Since we never get any of the little ol' dewberries, anyway, it's no loss, if we can get a few bushels of groceries and meds from the same space. The soil there on the downslope is deep and black, with lots of morning sun, what should I grow for fall? Gee, is it already thyme to be thinking about fall? Yes!
Global warming has really speeded up or compost piles, and all the weeds that don't get eaten are filling the bins fast. Our excellent and picturesque compost bin is made from wooden pallets, the kind you get free at the lumber yard. It's a double bin, made from 5 pallets, with the closed side facing the sidewalk and the open back facing
the kitchen door.
Beautiful shrubberies and a magnificent datura surround the frame, and thrive on the compost inside. It never smells nor draws flies, because we toss leaves and grass clippings on top of the veggie scraps. Occasionally the armadillos come and turn the pile for us, so that's no work, either, except for raking the spill back into the bin.
One side is building while the other side is rotting, so twice a year we get a couple of barrows of compost, though we never scrape it all the way to the bottom because then the shrubs around the outside suffer. It's been there for at least 12 years, we had to prop up the corners with steel fence posts about 5 years ago because they were old and falling apart.
So easy! Compost is really a no-sweat project, if you are doing a lot of work you are doing something wrong (LOL)
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Recipe of the Week ~ Eat Your Weeds
Go out in the yard, pick the tenderest, perfect tips of whatever you can find that is edible.
Take them in the kitchen, chop them up all very fine ( I use big scissors instead of dragging out the cutting board).
Bring 1 quart salted water to a boil, add a dash of olive oil, toss in the snipped greens and simmer for an hour.
You can strain out the green slime or put it thru a blender for a creamy green soup with grated cheeze or croutons, or you can use it to cook rice, potatoes, or peas.
I made a good bowl of stew last week by adding 2 cans of jalapeno blackeyed peas and 1/2 sack of frozen mixed veggies to a thick broth that was mostly lambs quarters, lemon balm, cilantro, and baby garlic.
To that I added black pepper, turmeric, and dried sage, so the taste was reminiscent of curry.
Each week brings a surprising new flavour, some are kinda weird, but you may discover a combination that is delicious. As much as we love Italian and TexMex flavours (the kind that are easiest to grow around here), the garden has grown into a jungle of all sorts of other possibilities, so we are experimenting with putting our meds in our food.
Lemon balm is one of my faves, it tastes so good in omelettes or fried rice, besides being a tasty hot or iced tea, and is reputed to relieve the aches and pains from working in the garden. It's self sown all over the place, so now it, too, is officially a weed, right up there with the parsley and garlic and all the other denizens of the Veggie Jungle. Go get 'em!
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Gardener's Zones
April 29, 2008 11:38
In this era of global fluctuation, gardeners across the earth are seeing changes in their normal Climate Zones. It's really a challenge for us here in Blanco County! (Read Article)
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