by angela@diggingbliss | Jun 17, 2006 | Uncategorized
Without warning, our lovely spring weather has succumbed to summer scorch. Valley heat scares the un-acclimated. We natives deal, though. You garden in the cool mornings and early evenings. During midday? Well, you stay inside in a preferably air-conditioned building or seek deep shade outside. Don’t go jogging. Don’t do roofing or lay asphalt.
Every morning I have the same ritual. I get up, go downstairs and pee my dogs in the backyard. While they’re doing their business, I walk the yard. It’s cool, birdsong arrives on cue, and the light is soft. In fact, my backyard is mostly in shade in the mornings because it faces south and west.
The front of my house gets most of the morning sun, but except for retrieving the paper in whatever god-awful ensemble I deemed “pajamas” the night before, I tend not to hang out there in the mornings. Not private enough, and you don’t really want to bump into me before I’m holding a cup of fresh-brewed coffee. Not because I’m unpleasant. I’m just a little bit mute. Clouded. Whatever they put in coffee… it brings clarity and after a few minutes I am awash with this overwhelming sense of… civility.
Here’s what caught my eye this morning, pre-coffee.
‘Munstead’ lavender and ‘Moonbeam’ coreopsis
Purple fountain grass (Pennisetum) and Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’
Yellow zucchini squash
‘Celebrity’
‘Black’ (heirloom)
‘Costoluto Genovese’ (Italian heirloom)
‘Costoluto Genovese’ (foreground) and ‘Early Girl’ (background)
‘Black from Tula’ (foreground) and ‘Copia’ (background)
Peace stake in purple eggplant
Tri-color beans climbing bamboo teepee
Immediately after peeing, lie down and sun yourself before coming inside for breakfast. Yeah, it’s a dog’s life around here…”
This is my “sunny Mediterranean” bed, where I grow all the really fun stuff like lavender, phormium, echium, verbena bonariensis, a hot-pink flowering sedum, etc.
Props to Costco for their affordable teak furniture and to Smith & Hawken for their portable firepit that doubles as a grill.
Succulents planted in a rusted metal bowl
Ornamental millet, angelonia, celosia and heuchera in a green ceramic pot
My garden has an inconvenient truth.
Lilium
‘Medallion’ roses and an old watering can
Hanging tomatoes (‘Sun Sugar’) and strawberries
Delphinium… also hanging because it’s the only way to save it from certain snail death.
Weed disclaimer: You will see some…times-a-lot-of weeds in my flower and vegetable beds. That is because I am lazy, just like the late, great garden writer Henry Mitchell, who confessed–
“Fortunately, I am myself as lazy a man as ever lived and you are in no danger whatever of reading here that you should stand on your head and bow thrice before planting basil in the full moon’s paralactical ecliptical balderdash the third hour after the fifth rain in March.”
You da man, Henry.
by angela@diggingbliss | Jun 15, 2006 | Uncategorized
Staying trim was never a problem for me… until I had a child. I don’t know if childbirth does something funky to your metabolism, or that by tending to another’s needs it becomes more difficult to tend to your own. I do know that many adults spend way more time sitting than we did when we were young and especially when we were carless. Not careless… “car-less”… as in “I walk everywhere”. We car-driving grownups sit at desks… we drive, we sit, we drive, we sit, we drive. Whether you have kids or not, modern adult life can be much more sedentary than it should be.
Whatever the cause of my added poundage… the reality is that I now have to watch what I eat. Oh yeah, and exercise.
Weight Watchers has been a big help to me because its Points system makes it very easy to keep track of how much food I’m consuming. On Weight Watchers, you are allotted a maximum number of points per day and once you’re out of points, you’re out. That’s it. Step away from the fridge. The other really cool thing about Weight Watchers is that vegetables and fruits have been assigned very low points values. Many vegetables count as 0. What? Free food? How clever is a diet that encourages you to eat more fruits and veggies? Very!
While my diet resolve waxes and wanes, having home-grown fruits and veggies is giving me added incentive to stay “on plan” until my summer trip to Mendocino. What happens in Mendocino… stays in Mendocino.
Sauteed Yellow Garden Zucchini
Slice zucchini (about 2 to 3 cups), saute in 2 teaspoons olive oil. Season with garlic salt and cracked pepper. Enjoy.
W.W. Points for 1 cup zucchini = 0
2 teaspoons olive oil = 2 points
Garden Strawberries
1 1/2 cups = 1 point
25 to 27 Points per day is a typical maximum, so you see you can stay quite full eating healthfully from the summer garden.
by angela@diggingbliss | Jun 10, 2006 | Uncategorized
UCD plows ahead, but lags on organic ag major
By Edie Lau — Sacramento Bee Science Writer
For the first time this fall, a university in the United States is offering a major in organic agriculture.
It’s not at the University of California, Davis, one of the nation’s foremost agricultural schools, nor is it anywhere in California, the top state in certified organic cropland.
The program is at Washington State University, which is leading a movement among agricultural schools to put organic farming in the curriculum.
Read the rest of the article.
By the way, WSU is in a quaint college town called Pullman, Washington, where I happened to live from age 11 to 15. Picture, if you will– college students, real cowboys, snow, Main Street, steep, treesy hills lined with charming homes, rolling wheat hills, the best ice cream, rock concerts, and cute boys who are now middle-aged like me so just shoot me.
