Brooms

I figured that I would take a break from lots of pictures of flowers with raindrops on them and talk about something else. Back in the late 90's we went back to Arkansas for a visit and while we were there we stopped by the Ozark Folk Center. One of the things that I was fascinated by was the brooms that one of the crafters was making. They are truly works of art. I picked one up, and for years it was the broom that I used to sweep our floors. Now we have updated to a Swiffer sweeper and don't use it, so I have it out on the back porch to sweep off the patio. It has stood up remarkably well, at least until the GS discovered it and started playing with it every time she went out in the back yard. It has been left out in the rain a couple of times now, but still does the job. Next time we head up that way I will have to see if I can find another. :)

PSA: Euphorbia Maculata - Spotted Spurge

In the springtime this year I noticed a new weed growing in the garden. It had lacy leaves and grew in whorls. I thought it looked like a weed that I had started getting in the end of my time in my North Carolina garden. It starts out small and then starts to radiate stems like this:

I actually thought it was kind of pretty and was growing better than some of the plants in my gravel pathway. I even entertained notions of letting it go for a while and see what it would do. But I am very strict on what I put in my gardens and let live there, so if I didn't plant it, it normally doesn't stay there. I realized by mid-summer that the scree garden idea hadn't been executed very well. I had to spend large amounts of time weeding out unwelcome visitors. And then back about a month ago I was finishing up a class and work was stressful so I didn't get out weeding like I should. And then when we got back from our trip to Arkansas and walked into our back yard we saw the disaster that was left behind.

The Spotted Spurge had covered the entirety of the gravel pathways, you could barely see the stepping stones and couldn't even see the gravel in some places. I decided to go do some internet research and figure out what the heck was growing in my garden. After going through some identification guides, I got the ID. Then I started reading about it with a sinking heart. Spotted Spurge is poisonous. It is low growing so mowing doesn't stop it. It produces copious amounts of seeds. Once it gets started in an area it is difficult to eradicate. I went into the back garden and started working on reclaiming it. My heart kept sinking lower every time I pulled up a mat and saw all of the seeds left behind.It has started growing in the sod in our front yard too, and I'm going to have to go hand pull it because otherwise it will start to take over there too. I guess I have learned another valuable life lesson. :)

Rain

It looks like it is going to be another rainy weekend. I know that we need rain, but it has all of the weekdays to do that. So I might try to get out and get some work done in betwen showers. On the bright side, Neptune has been covered with blooms and they have started opening. Considering that it was bare of leaves a month ago, I'd say that's pretty good.

In other news, the toad lily on the porch is still blooming away, in spite of my sporadic watering. :)

Camoflauge

My eye just happened to catch this guy on my flowering quince bush. His color blended in almost perfectly and I had to point him out several times to my husband before he saw him. If you look closely, you can see that he is eating a bug. :)

Quiet Time

The Gnomeslayer woke me up this morning before 6:00 a.m. We had some breakfast, and then Q watched her while I went outside and did some garden maintenance. I didn't feel up to the task of the scree garden, so I worked on the front beds. It was a cool morning, and dew was all over the grass. I spent about an hour or so, pulling weeds and trimming hedges. Poison ivy had started growing again by the bush that I evicted it from, so I (carefully!) pulled it and tossed it in the garbage. It was the first time I have been able to fully focus on what I was doing, instead of having to chase the GS around the yard and get her out of things that she shouldn't be getting in to. Usually I give up in frustration and go back in the house before I get much done.

I took her out for several walks today to keep her busy and occupied. The first I took her for a ride in her Fire Truck, then two times we went for a walk around the block. My GS has an obsession with rocks now, and collects them as we walk. She has discovered pockets, and the rocks end up in either hers or ours. We went in the back for a bit and I got the camera out to get some pictures. While I was going in for a closeup of the honeysuckle I realized that I was standing in a fire-ant hill. Ouch! I thought I had gotten them off but missed one so I have a big ant bite on my big toe. The evening was perfect, and the cool weather made me think of fall. Too bad that's still a long way away. :)

While You Were Out

After we got back from our Arkansas trip, we stepped out back to see how the garden had fared. When we left, everything seemed to be fine. The first thing Q noticed was that the lotus container was dry as a bone, dirt cracked and leaves brown. Mind you, we were gone for TWO DAYS. He refilled it and it was bubbling up like a jacuzzi while the parched earth started to drink again.

The scree garden was overrun with weeds, the pond pump had stopped working and the roses all had black spot again. The creeping phlox that has flourished all summer had started to turn brown.

Horsetails had started popping up everywhere.
I kept repeating to myself "We were only gone two days!" It seemed that everything had fallen apart. I guess my task this weekend is to do try to do damage control and get it as cleaned up as I can. On the bright side, my Japanese Anemone finally opened up!

Day 2 - Little Rock River Market

Yesterday morning we headed to the Little Rock River Market. The River Market is a renovated area in the downtown area. There was a farmer's market:

There were fresh flowers:

There were musicians and artists: And we ate at an area set up with small street food vendors and a common eating area:
It was an interesting place to go, but it was waaaay to hot to be walking around outside. If we go again it will be in the fall.

Arkansas Visit - Day One

Yesterday we headed out to Arkansas to visit my mother and my sister. We got up at normal work wake up time - 5:00 a.m. The drive is 6-7 hours, so it isn't too challenging. We stopped about an hour in for breakfast, and just past Memphis for lunch. Things went well, the Gnomeslayer fell asleep shortly after we got back in the car. We drove for about another hour and had to stop for a bathroom break. Unfortunately when we stopped GS woke up and started crying and fussing. We tried stopping and letting her out for a while, but whenever we got back in the car she would start up again. We were about an hour from Conway, our destination so we went ahead and pressed on. After a very LONG hour we finally got to our hotel.

My sister came and picked me up, and the GS and I headed over to her place for a visit. We went to the Peyton Creek Catfish House for dinner. When I was planning for the trip, I looked up Conway restaurants and saw this place got very good reviews. It was supposed to be a family-type place, with no frills but good food, and extremely good catfish. My sister and her husband had seen it but never eaten there so we headed out. It was true to the review for the most part. It was very no-frills and basic, the food was served on an all you can eat buffet. The catfish was probably some of the best I have ever had, unfortunately the rest of the food was pretty mediocre. I tried to take some pictures inside but it was so crowded that I couldn't get any good shots.

This place was way off of the beaten path, with fields and woods around it. There was a pasture with horses so I took GS over so that she could see them. While we were standing by the fence I looked down and saw this:

There was a passionflower vine growing along the bottom of it and was in full bloom. I tried growing one of these in my backyard and it didn't work, and here is one growing wild along a fence. Go figure. :)

The Gnomeslayer

I thought I should introduce an integral member of my blog team. This is my baby girl, The Gnomeslayer. I went to visit a local nursery, 4-Ever Green in Ryland, AL. My husband was going to be out running errands and I thought it would be fun to take her out and let her run off some energy. 4-Ever Green is a fairly small nursery, but you can find some interesting things there. For instance, the pottery globes up above. You can put candles down in them and light them up at night.

They also have some really nice big pots. If I ever win the lotto I'll get one. ;)

The Gnomeslayer also had her first encounter with a cat. I don't think the cat was too impressed, but my little girl loved it. :)

Seven Hours Later....

I set out with ambitious plans on what I was going to cook this weekend. I picked three recipes from Stews, Bogs and Burgoos - a pork goulash, a beef stew and Brunswick Stew. Needless to say, my plans quickly got modified. Friday and Saturday ended up being more hectic than I'd planned, so today was the only day that I really had time to do intensive cooking. So since the Brunswick Stew had more of the different meats that were taking up room in the refrigerator I decided that's what it would be.

For those not in the know, Brunswick Stew is a regional specialty found in various locations in the South. It started out as a hunter's type stew that had squirrels, pork and beef. Since squirrels aren't exactly popular and easy to get these days, chicken has taken their place. Let me aside here and say that I was first introduced to Brunswick Stew eating at a Smithfield's restaurant in eastern North Carolina. Often we would make a Smithfield's run and I would get a couple of bowls of stew and eat it with hushpuppies. So I have very preconcieved notions of what Brunswick Stew should taste like. When we moved to Alabama, I found that there were some differences. The stew that I was used to was more tomatoey and thick. It only had pork and chicken in it (I'm assuming because the restaurant didn't have anything else with beef in it so it wasn't practical).

So I started cooking at around noon. The recipe started out with browning some bacon, then browning the chicken and beef in the bacon grease. Then sauteeing the onions and green peppers. Then you combined it all in a pot, along with a ham hock, tomatoes and spices. Then it had to simmer for an hour. Then you took out the chicken and let the rest simmer for an hour and a half. Then you took out the ham hock and picked out the meat from it. Then added in lima beans, corn and okra and cooked for another half hour. Then added in some mashed potatoes that you cooked in the meantime. Unfortunately when I was skimming through the recipe I missed the part about the additional hour and a half, and it was already around 4:30 and we still had forever to go. We gave up and ended up going out for takeout since the Gnomeslayer was getting cranky and hungry and so was the husband. So I finished it off when we got home.

It turned out pretty good, different than what I am used to, but good. I had never had beef in the stew before so that was definately interesting. This was the first time I'd ever cooked anything with a ham hock and it did add in a lot of smoky flavor and some body to the stew, once you get over the creepiness factor of the way that they look. I can safely say that if I want the stew again I am going to find an easier recipe because this one took WAY too long. I have made easier recipes that tasted as good to me.

Peach-O de Gallo

My boss went on vacation a couple of weeks ago, to Hilton Head, SC. When she came back, she brought me a present, a sampler of fruit salsas. There were several varieties - peach, mango, pineapple, raspberry and pomegranate. The only ones that I really cared for were peach and raspberry versions. The fruit in the others had an overpowering presence and I just didn't enjoy them. So I got to wondering how it would be to make a fresh salsa with peaches, and here's what I made. First, the peach that you use shouldn't be too ripe. It needs to have a fairly firm consistency. I used cherry tomatoes sliced instead of chopped - I got this idea from the bruschetta at Macaroni Grill. I really liked it and plan on making it often. The flavor of the peaches is really not overpowering, and the counterpoint of the lemon juice and salt makes it so that it isn't too sweet.

Peach-O de Gallo

1 peach, peeled and finely diced
1 container cherry tomatoes or 1 whole tomato, finely diced or sliced
3 green onions, washed well and finely chopped
1 poblano pepper, seeds removed and finely minced (if you like hot food use a jalapeno)
1 Tbs. fresh cilantro (dried is not the same)
Juice from one lemon
Salt to taste

Combine in a bowl and mix well. Tastes better after it is chilled for a couple of hours.

Break!

I am finally on break between classes for a few weeks. Time to catch up on spending time with family, gardening, reading and relaxing. When the Gnomeslayer and I went out for a walk I noticed that my toad lily has finally opened up.

Welcome Home is blooming again. In fact, all of the roses seem to be doing better. I think the threat of getting evicted made them straighten up and fly right.

The bee balm has finally started blooming too. Funny what happens when you aren't watching. :)

Cookbook Roundup - Week One

Weekend One of the Cookbook Roundup is finished. I really enjoyed being back in the kitchen and making something that wasn't pre-processed. In respect of Mr. Villas' copyright I am not posting recipes, but if you see something that interests you, let me know and I'll share my adaptation. Today I cooked the Delta Red Beans and Rice recipe. I had to make a few substitutions because I missed a few things on my shopping list. First, as you might notice, I used Great Northern Beans instead of kidney beans. My husband is not a fan of beans and he only likes white or black beans. I don't mind because I like all of them. Also, I missed getting a green pepper at the grocery store so I made it without it. I can't say that I missed it, cooked green peppers aren't my favorite thing.

The second recipe that I cooked was Colorado Curried Lentil Stew. I have been a fan of lentils since I was a young E-3 in the Marine Corps living on a tight budget. Whenever I make lentil stew it reminds me of my Uncle Roger. Roger had seven kids and never had much money. He did love to cook though, and most times when we visited him he would be puttering around in the kitchen. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. This recipe turned out very good. Thankfully the husband likes lentils too. Curry is something that had to grow on me, but I am very fond of now. I had to do some adaptations from the original recipe due to differences in things that I had on hand. The nice thing is that I have enough leftovers for lunches for the week.

So now to pick out next weekend's recipes.

• Pork Goulash Ritz-Carlton
• Liz Clark's Iowa Coffee Beef Stew
• Georgia Brunswick Stew
  

Lythrum & James?

You know, Elle has to be one of my best performing roses ever. On Tuesday evening I trimmed her up, gave her a good watering and treatment for black spot. There are blooms all over her now and they smell amazing. The Gnomeslayer loves to smell of them now too. I cut one for her and gave it to her and she carried it around for a while burying her face in it. For the last couple of weeks we have had amazingly good weather for the Deep South. Mild weather, no humidity...I even had to wear a jacket one morning it was so cool. Last night we had really heavy rains blow through, and it felt like a sauna out today. As I was walking through the yard I could feel the steam rising up from the ground. We've had some very dramatic skies too, and the clouds were lined up like soldiers on a battlefield today. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me. And my camera, bless it's heart, I've dropped it twice now on the concrete and it's still working. Good thing it seems to be a robust design!

So on to the title. I've been hearing a lot lately about the Julie & Julia movie. I've read her blog some and thought it was pretty interesting, but I really have zero interest in French cooking. It did give me an idea though. I have a pretty big collection of cookbooks, most of them American or Southern cooking. Most of them I have either cooked one or two recipes from, or none. So I thought it might be neat if I picked out one of them at a time and worked my way through the recipes and tried to cook them all. So I think I am going to start with Stews, Bogs & Burgoos by James Villas. James is my very favorite cookbook author. I love reading his stories about how he came across certain dishes. He's more of a foodie than I am, I'm not so much of a purist and I'm not going that far out of my way to get special ingredients. Most of my cooking is done on the weekends because I don't have time during the week. I have three day weekends, so I could theoretically get at least three done a week. I guess that is going to be my target to start with.

I do have some rules, because I doubt that I'll be making all of these recipes:

• I don't do organs.
• I don't do seafood.
• I don't do lamb.
• I don't do veal.
• I don't do mushrooms.
• I don't do olives.

So if there is a recipe that heavily features one of these things I'm probably not going to cook it. I guess we'll see how it works. :)

Evicted

Firstly, here is my latest acquisition - 'Cracker Red' miniature rose. I loved the deep red color and the intricate petals. I didn't really need any new plants, but sometimes they just catch you off guard.

I have had a hard time both keeping up with the garden and with blogging. The scree garden, while good in theory has been a pain in the arse in execution. There are various issues:

• To make the garden we layed down landscape fabric, added in a mix of sand and soil, and then added some gravel on top. Plantings of creepy, crawly plants were added on the edges.


• The first problem came from the grass around the edges. It started creeping over the border and making its way through the gravel. Compared to the packed clay in the rest of the lawn, once it got into loose, friable soil it went crazy.


• Birds have been frequenting the garden and leaving poke stalk seeds in their droppings. There are poke stalks popping up everywhere. I used to eat poke a lot when I was growing up, but I'm not so into it now.


• There is some other low growing weed that is spreading like wildfire in the garden and I can't seem to get rid of it.


• Planting horsetails by my pond was about the stupidest thing I have done. They got down through a hole in the landscape fabric and now I'm pulling them up five feet away, where they have popped up through other holes in the landscape fabric.


• The callirhoe that I got last year didn't do much. So I moved it and it went nuts. It started getting long and lanky and killing the thyme that was under it. I was in a bad mood when I went out back and saw the mess that my garden was and it got uprooted and tossed. I liked the flowers on it, but not the growth habit. Maybe if I had more time I could see about keeping it trimmed, but anything that requires a lot of maintenance right now isn't happening.

I like the idea of the scree garden, but I'm going to have to do some modification this fall. I think I'm going to remove all of the gravel, soil and landscape fabric. I'm going to try to get the horsetails up. I'm going to have to see about doing the edges better to keep the grass out. This time I think I'm going to put down a couple of layers of landscape fabric this time. I am going to put only gravel on the pathways and just cut through a couple of places to plant the plants in. So far the plants that have worked out best are ice plant, creeping phlox elfin thyme and creeping thyme. The rest of the plants can't seem to stand up to the heat put off of the gravel when it's baking in the hot Alabama sun. I have quite a few phlox so I'm going to see if I can find some different ice plants to add in.

My roses are another issue that I'm worrying around. It's just hard to fit in taking care of really maintenance intensive plants. I've actually been thinking of digging up my roses and getting rid of them, except for a very few special ones. I have some of the more maintenance free plants that are ready to divide - daylilies, dahlias, coneflower and black-eyed susans. I am thinking about redoing the bed in front of our bedroom at least, with plants that have flowers longer in nthe season.

One More Day

Last year I got frustrated with the Peruvian Daffodils that I planted in the spring and I pulled them up. The blooms were spectacular but they lasted maybe two days and then were gone. The leaves were big and floppy and overall I wasn't happy with their presence, so I pulled them up. So imagine my chagrin this spring when 'lo and behold they started coming up again. Having been really lazy this spring I kept meaning to pull them back up again but kept forgetting. A few days ago I walked out of the house and noticed a bud coming up. So my daffodills are on reprieve for a while. We'll see if I remember why I left them when I get tired of their foliage again.

I have one more day of work and then I will be on holiday weekend. It'll be good to get a long rest. Or as much of a rest as the Gnomeslayer will give us. :)

Could I Leave My Garden?

Gail asked this question on her blog, and it made me think back to when we left North Carolina. I had been working on my garden there for five years. And then when we got here in Alabama I started my new garden with a lot of lessons learned. The main lesson is to keep it small and manageable, especially since I am so busy with so many things. My living room is bigger than my garden is now. I am also gardening only in raised beds, decided after one look at the clay soil here.

I am already looking to my next garden, even though we aren't leaving here anytime soon (that I know of). Working in the defense industry is almost akin to being in a band of gypsies, you never know where you're going to end up. I definately have a better idea of what to look for in our next house. :)

Nile Crane

The blooms on my Nile Crane daylily finally opened after teasing me for a long time. I always felt slightly conned because although it is beautiful, it was advertised as being fragrant and I never could smell anything. Today for the first time I could smell a sweet, delicate fragrance on the flowers and I was happy.

I've been pretty busy for the last week or so, not really in the garden, but in weaning my daughter. I have to keep her busy and wear her out so that she falls asleep easily at night. Spending time sitting down and typing, with the chest in easy reach isn't in the cards right now, alas. :)

The Freight House

We have a new favorite place to eat now. It is in Hartselle, AL about a 45 minute drive from here (shorter if the spouse is driving!). It is the Freight House and it is located in a renovated railroad building. If you look at the picture you can see that I got it snapped just as a train was going by. I was also unknowingly blocking traffic while I was waiting for the perfect shot. :) Don't bother looking for a sign on the building because they don't have one.

The decor is really neat and the food is spectacular. It is basic downhome Southern cooking an the Sweet tea is spot on.
I loved this lamp, with the bubbly glass.

This clock was enormous and cool looking.

And I really, really want this gryphon in my back yard!

I Hate to Say It...

But I haven't been much into blogging for the last week. I am in the final week of a college class and I've been busy writing papers. I seem to be losing my mind because I'm getting forgetful and easily distracted. I'm looking forward to the three week break that I'm getting between classes. I'm really over the whole college thing and burnt out, but with the uncertainty at work any extra advantage will help. So I'm hoping to get back into writing a little more after next week. :)