Back Yard Garden, June 16

We had a couple of mid-nineties days, and then four days of drenching rains and nighttime temps in the 50s, and even hail. The garden is confused, and I'm not a good enough gardener to know what it needs now. I'm just watching it. Propping up the flattened tomatoes, pruning off the dead leaves and making sure the bottom leaves aren't sitting in the mud. But everything seems to be doing ok. The tomatoes and peppers and eggplants have some hail damage, not as bad as the flowers and salad greens. They are kind of sitting there and not growing, like the cucumbers. But they look healthy, and we are back into hot temperatures this week. The beans are growing, I'm planting new ones where they didn't come up. Behind them are two strips of sunflowers, covered with screens because something keeps digging them up every time I plant them.

Hail-battered beans. The front yard garden and flowers are worse. But it's nothing like what they got in other parts of Colorado. Entire crops are ruined.

Charlie through the peas! You have never seen "alert," until you have lived with a border collie.

I planted these peas the second week of March. I think I thought they would be setting pods before now. But I'm so happy with the delicate flowers and the baby pods. The flower is exquisite, it tastes like a pea. Maybe some year I can find room for a whole field of peas, just to harvest the flowers and not feel guilty that it won't turn into a pod.

Dancing peas.

We have had some beautiful salads from the garden. Walking out the back door while dinner finishes cooking, picking ten kinds of greens and having them on the table five minutes after they're picked . . .that is something I don't think I will ever want to give up.

French Breakfast radishes.

Potatoes, coming along.

They start out in such neat rows. Even after weeding, it's a tangle of peas and lettuces.

Monkey Bars

June is going by so fast. I hope we're able to slow summer down this time. Many days it's been too cold and rainy for the pool, and the first week of June R went to a camp at another Catholic school. Her last day of camp, we took her to a park in Englewood that has a little petting farm and a train.

The train winds around and goes over a river.

The playground has bigger monkey bars than she's used to, and she was eager to try them.

Then she got discouraged because she couldn't hold on. She kept dropping off.
We suggested that she take a breather and play on something else for awhile.

She walked away and said she just wanted "peace and quiet" so she could think about it.

She climbed back up and tried it again.

And she fell down again. But this time she thought it was funny. If you were expecting an inspiring story about how R went back again and again until she mastered the monkey bars . . . this isn't it.

I love my funny little girl.

Grape Leaves

We should have pruned our grapes earlier. But we did finally get to it, and I did something I've been wanting to try for two years. I canned the leaves.

Wash them and trim off the stems . . .

. . . wrap them loosely in bundles . . .

. . . and blanch the little bundles briefly in boiling water. They immediately turn army-green. The blanched leaves all by themselves have a lemony, pickle-y taste, which surprised me. Whenever I've had stuffed grape leaves, I thought that taste came from the brine.

Pack them into pint jars in a salty, lemony brine. A wheelbarrow full of leaves turned into six pint jars of rolled-up leaves. Ready whenever I want to stuff them.

My first batch of dolmades. I made a green pesto with sorrel, some spicy greens from the garden, walnuts and parmesan. I mixed it with brown rice. Each leaf got some rice and pesto, a little dab of goat cheese, and a red pepper sliver. I put them on a plate with grape leaves and more salad from the garden.

This is my favorite time of year, when the peonies and red roses bloom briefly at the same time.

Our new bare-root roses along the driveway are budding. I hope by next year everything will burst into bloom together.

Underneath the roses are a handful of old strawberry plants with these tiny, intensely sweet alpine strawberries. Some day I'll transplant them and add more plants and have a whole strawberry patch. And raspberries, and more fruit trees! One step at a time.

Margaret's House

My high school friend Margaret lives in Hygiene, in the St. Vrain Valley near Boulder and Longmont. She is a sculptor and ceramicist, and they have a house filled with her artwork and an amazing garden and menagerie of goats, chickens, and a sweet dog named Agnes. They have a zip line between their trees.

They have the choice of using city water, installing a cistern to store river water, or periodically opening up the ditch to flood their property with water from the St. Vrain River. They chose the most environmentally friendly and labor-intensive option--periodic flooding. I couldn't picture how it worked until we visited them two weeks ago.

When the farmer upstream is finished irrigating, Margaret's family can open up the ditch. They have long plastic irrigation tunnels, which they move around their property. They poke holes in the tunnels, and the water flows out.
It's a big, tiring, dawn to dusk affair. It's amazing how much labor and logistics are involved. Positioning the tubes, turning on the water and letting it flood, then turning off the water, draining the tubes so they are light enough to move, putting them in a new position, and starting all over again.

It was a big watering-day party. The kids get gloriously muddy sailing leaf boats down the ditch.

It was a great lunch too. Margaret makes hummus with white beans and almond butter, and it is so much lighter and better than the tahini-garbanzo version. I have been making it like that ever since. You are always in for several revelations at Margaret's house--that was just one.

Margaret tends her flocks.



She has a beautiful garden. Tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, onions, lots of different squashes, beans, herbs, salad greens. I know I'm forgetting a lot. We brought her two tomatoes and a Japanese eggplant, and she sent us home with a big bag of straw for mulching, which THRILLS me.

R was thrilled with their pet rats, Sammy . . .

. . . and Valentine. (My apologies if I got that backwards.)

Violas, chive flowers, and (Sammy? Valentine?)

Feeding the goats. Who are as sweet and friendly as dogs. Margaret says they're like that if you raise them from babies and bottle-feed them.

Geyser!

Baby girl in a tangerine towel.

We drove home as a rainstorm was collecting itself.

We stopped at Harlequin's Gardens on the way home, a sustainable nursery that my other high school friend Tom keeps telling me about. We came home with a Rosa Bianca eggplant, a lovely Coosa summer squash, and another exotic summer squash that I can't remember the name of. It's apple-green, round and good for stuffing. The rain was beating down by the time we got home, and I bet we all slept well that night.

Charlie is One Year Old!

R worked hard on his party invitation.


They delivered them to two neighbor families.


She also worked hard on a sign and decorations for his party. A recurring theme in all his party decorations is, "The biggest bone in the WORLD!" I love to see her testing the limits of the paper to make the bone as big as she can imagine.

She made him a card. She had this all planned out months ago. She has been asking me about Charlie's first birthday party since we first got him.

The guests arrive!

It was a very fancy party.

We made him a birthday cake from a recipe I found on the internet, with chicken baby food, whole wheat flour, carrots, and banana/peanut butter frosting. The humans had carrot cupcakes.

Charlie really didn't like the "party" part of his party. I tried to be sensitive to that, to give the kids their big moment, but not freak Charlie out too much. He loves kids, loves attention, loves to play, but singing and the candle flame and Dan having to hold him because a couple of the neighbor kids are afraid of dogs . . . he was a very good sport. He did not enjoy it.

The kids sang happy birthday, then we hustled him outside so the dog-lovers could play with him and the not-so-sure-about-dogs kids could watch him through the glass door if they would rather.

He did really like his cake.

He loves kids, loves all people so much that I am impressed when he follows his training and doesn't jump on them. He just quietly explodes inside his body, but from the outside, he is perfectly behaved.

I think because he is a border collie, and feels like he is in charge of everyone on his property and must know where they are at all times and protect them against unexpected dangers like open flames and loud noises, he especially appreciates the quiet aftermath of a party.

Charlie is one of those remember-all-your-life dogs. I already had one of those, another border collie named Gracie. I didn't think I would get another one. I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting a companion for R and a dog we could all run and walk and play with. For awhile, that's what he was. A funny and beautiful little puppy, who made us all laugh and fit right in to his space in our house and took to his training like the brilliant dog that he is. When he got his second set of puppy shots, it must have really hurt. He climbed on me, up me, as far as he could go, and buried his head in my neck and then relaxed his body like he thought he was safe. I remember thinking right then, oh no, this is not going to be a dog that I love like that. Who utterly breaks your heart if he gets hurt or sick or dies. I remember steeling myself against it, trying to get back to the much easier role of detached friend and care-giver, which I was taking on for the sake of my daughter, you know. But of course, they are all dogs that you love "like that." Especially Charlie.