Tonight's dinner

Around the plate, chard sauteed with onions, garlic, and lemon juice topped with Parmesan cheese; cooked beets sauteed in butter with sweet red onions; the first green beans of the season lightly steamed and seasoned with butter and salt, pepper; two broken eggs along for the ride; Sauce on the left is garden chipotle and on the right, garden dill.

PK is outta town for a few days, and you think I'd take a break from cooking. But no. The garden screams. Chard! Onions! Garlic! Beans! Beets! Eat!  This is why we garden.

Garden Show & Tell

A morning's catch from the berry patches. Remember "show and tell" in elementary school? I think we never got over it. I've heard numerous recent commentaries about how social media is such an ego trip. We post our photos, our words, our links to stuff we think is worthy in hopes of communicating with people we know,  or people we've never met but want to, or people we can't imagine, and so don't care about, but who we want to reach anyway. The need to communicate is strong and so we do it. Facebook and other social media has made it possible, pervasive, and acceptable to "show and tell."  I got over my ambivalence about being a senior citizen on Facebook, and I  don't care that some are profiting mightily on my (our) ego trips. I'm glad Facebook is part of my life because for some reason, I am compelled to take photos and write this blog, which 25 or 30 people look at, mostly because I broadcast the posts on Facebook. This lets me know that I'm not "showing and telling" to a vacuum. Hey, 25 people! Hello! Thanks for checking in. The snarky commentators, who all confess to using Facebook, dis people who subject others to their children or grandchildren, their travels, their hobbies, and so on. I've learned to be a discerning Facebook user. Seriously, there are some sketchy communiques. The thing is, I don't have to look, and "friends" who habitually post boring or self-aggrandizing crap warrant a click on "hide." I have yet to "unfriend" someone, however. Mostly, I enjoy show and tell by people I know, and I do it myself. (Especially since I won a camera! and have decided, despite an earlier post to the contrary, that there's no such thing as too many photos.) So here is a show and tell about our voluptuous Southern Oregon garden. This is really nothing more than boasting, as the commentators would observe, I am bustin' my buttons in Rogue River, Oregon.

Lily in the front flower garden.

Day lilies, woodruff and climbing roses along the garden fence.

Garlic is about ready to harvest and will keep us supplied for a year.

Early summer 2011. Tractor isn't used in the garden, but PK uses it for hauling and mowing.  Yesterday he attached an auger to it  to dig post holes  for fencing a soon-to-be pasture. Livestock may be in our future. 

Roses with hills reflected in living room windows. 

Day lilies and climbing roses.

Lily and purple yarrow.

So-sweet beets.

Beets before harvesting. Roughly a third were taken.

Stir fry tonight!

Onions and lettuce.

Home sweet home.

Volunteers - the garden variety

Plucky Swiss chard volunteer poking through paving stones. 

This photo of a burgeoning Swiss chard thriving between a rock and a hard place illustrates the nature of the volunteers we want, whether human or plant:

• They show up unexpectedly, but at exactly the right time. 
• They never leave, except for when they die.
• They don't ask for anything. 
• They are endlessly productive and even, sometimes, provocative! (I'm thinking of the voluptuous chard, the stalwart sunflowers, the diligent dill—all in possession of the traits we desire.)
• They are strong, brave, and nutritious. 
• They fill in the spaces that might otherwise be barren and boring and prone to weeds. 

This is a now-lowly fennel plant, which will jet to four or five feet and produce marvelously fragrant seed heads and attract beneficial insects. Once the seed heads mature, I'll use the some seeds in marinara sauce.
The birds can have the rest.

Garden volunteers go forward with purpose. They're strong and they replicate. Our garden is populated by volunteers of the most opportune sort. They see a spot and they go for it.

Here we have a happy cluster  of volunteer  chard, cosmos and dill, which have survived thinning, have been mulched, and are now being  cultivated as part of the 2011 volunteer crop. Finches adore chard, so many leaves are filigreed. Still, I have frozen 17 chard meals and, as we speak, have about 10 more harvested and ready to give away or get into the freezer. I'll try for giving away first! Contact me if you want chard. 

I love this volunteer poppy and all of its kin around the blueberry patch. They make me smile. I tried to eradicate them a year or two ago (WHY??!!) but just the right number survived in the nooks and crannies. 

These sunflowers started elsewhere in our garden, planted by birds, but I relocated them to form a fall bird-frenzy area. When the seeds are ready, the birds go crazy. It's a wonder to behold. Relocation also prevents huge sunflowers from shading peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants. Sunflowers are wonderfully tolerant of rough transplanting.

Lastly, a stalwart volunteer outside of watering zones but already forming flower heads.
 Tomorrow I'm going to water this plant and give it encouragement. Come on, baby!
Think of how much fun the birds will have with you come fall!

Tourist Territory 2011- Oregon Coast

So many wild irises! We saw them in sun and in shade, in clusters and as individuals.
Coastal wildflowers are abundant in June.

Sister arrives from the Midwest for a week in Southern Oregon. What to do? We've traveled the wine routes, seen Crater Lake, shopped in Grants Pass and Ashland, attended Britt, enjoyed the Bear Hotel, been to It's a Burl, walked to Rainie Falls, floated the Rogue numerous times, and visited the Southern Oregon Coast. Now what?

This is a typical vista along the Southern Oregon Coast. The special part about this one is that my sister and I had to walk about a mile to see it, and we were the only ones. And it was a perfect day. 

One place is always fresh. We sandwiched a couple of days into a busy elderly-mom-entertainment schedule to return to the Brookings/Gold Beach stretch of the Oregon coast. We stayed in an ocean-view, sea-sounds room at the Pacific Reef Resort in Gold Beach and enjoyed a delectable meal at Spinners and a lavish breakfast at the Double D's, both walking distance from Pacific Reef.

Best of all, we had ideal 70 degree, blue-sky, light-wind balminess, which enabled us to hike a few trails in the outstanding area between Gold Beach and Brookings. Any trail could be as spectacular as these, although we did happen upon little-traveled paths, some of which required trail re-blazing. I am inspired to spend more time in this powerful place, even when the weather isn't perfect.
More photos here.

Late but great....garden is IN

Early morning sun (yes, sun!) lights up recently planted peppers and tomatoes on the right, and perks up onions and potatoes. Garlic in the forefront, planted in October, will be ready to harvest in June. We've started filling up the trenches with straw, grass clippings, manure, and compost for next year's crops. This is late May Spring has been cold and wet and we're late planting, as are most area gardeners. By "area" I mean the Pacific Northwest. Compared with more northerly locales, we've had it easy. However, temps have been cool and the ground is still wet and we've yet to see beans sprout. Heat-loving zukes and cukes are also reluctant to come out.

We fill in the trenches to keep down weeds and preserve moisture,  then the next season, dig the trenchs and pile the composted material atop the rows. Yes, it's a lot of work.

PK planting one of about 20 pepper plants. In the buckets are organic fertilizer and mycorrhizae, the magic soil enhancement.

The difference between compost and "regular" garden dirt.

In the meantime, fall and winter crops are going nuts. What to do with all that chard and kale? I traded a bunch for rabbit manure, reportedly the best of the manures, gave some to a friend undergoing chemotherapy who is juicing organic veggies and fruits, and we're eating copious amounts in salads and stir fries. A half dozen chard/kale meals are the freezer and form the beginning of the 2011/2012 food stash.