Sparkling Shepherdess

I have a sparkling shepherdess living on my dining room table and it’s not as messy as it sounds.  It’s an Amaryllis – pronounced “am-uh-RIL-us” and the name comes from Greek mythology.   The horticultural name is Hippeastrum.

I’ve bought Amaryllis bulbs for years in colors of reds, pinks, peach and combinations.  This year I have a delicious icy lime green and it’s stunning.

I’ve found cheap Amaryllis bulbs most always bloom and the blooms are wonderful.  This year I bought a huge healthy bulb from Green View Nursery in Dunlap.  When I talk cheap and expensive for Amaryllis bulbs I’m talking a range of $5 to $20.  There are Amaryllis bulbs for hundreds of dollars if that’s your thing. 

Here’s how the Sparkling Shepherdess goes:

The bulb:  The larger the bulb (typically from a nursery) the taller the stem, the more stems, the more flowers and the more varied flower choices.  The bulb must not be dried out, should be healthy and heavy;  like a firm healthy onion.  Do not knock off the dried looking roots at the bottom or the papery covering.  If you buy a more inexpensive bulb, make sure you can see and touch it first.  It’s OK if it’s already sprouted.

The pot:  Often it’s recommended you plant the bulb in a small shallow pot.  Do not do it even if you get that little plastic one in the box.  It’s how you place the bulb that is the key to success.  This year I used a pot that was 8 inches tall and wide.   It must have a drainage hole and sit on some kind of a saucer.  Overwatering or sitting in water will rot the bulb.  I placed a round coffee filter in the bottom of the pot.  Next I added about 2 inches of glass marbles, then two inches of potting soil.  I gently placed the bulb on the soil and gently spooned more potting soil around the bulb until 2/3 of the bulb was covered; tapping it to firm.  Do not cover top third of the bulb or it will rot.   The reason I chose a big heavy weighted-bottom pot is because the plant will be very top heavy when it blooms.

The Watering:  Sit the pot over the drain of your sink or other waterproof site.  Gently pour water over the soil – not the bulb.  I use the word gently because if you dump a whole hard stream of water all at once, you’ll have a mess and the bulb will rot.  Gently poor water over the soil until it is wet to the bottom.  Let it totally drain and place on the saucer in good light.  Do not water again until it has dried.  Empty any water that flows into the saucer.  Repeat through it’s life cycle.  Do not overwater and never water the top of the bulb! 

The other stuff:  I kept my bulb beside my kitchen sink, which has a west window, and this worked perfectly for light and monitoring.  Finally three leaves sprouted and then three stems started upward; reaching 18 inches.  Last week the top of one stem blossomed out into three stunning flowers.  Tomorrow there will be another stem with flowers.  In another week, the third stem will flower.   Because the stems reach for the light, I turned the pot every day.   

The Flowers:  It takes an Amaryllis bulb from 6-8 weeks to sprout and bloom.  The leaves are inconsequential to the plant’s beauty. The flowers have the shape of a lily and no matter the cost it will have beautiful flowers.  Some folks plant several bulbs in pot.

The after party:  Don’t throw the finished plant away.   Continue to treat it like any other houseplant.  Do not over water.  This is where you do everything right or be like me and forget you have the bulb because you put it in the basement and when you go down for the Christmas decorations and you happily start again.

The right way:  Give it a little fertilizer in the winter and keep in bright winter sun.  When the temps are over 50 degrees in the late spring, move outside.  Some put the pot outside and others plant the bulb in the ground (plant same depth.)  The more sun, fertilizer and water it gets in the ground, the more leaves it will grow, the more photosynthesis occurs and the bigger the bulb grows.  Lift the bulb before it freezes in the fall.  Brush off soil, cut off the leaves to about 2 inches and let the bulb’s roots dry.  Keep in a cool dark place (brown paper bag hung on the basement works for me.)   Pot up about 8 weeks before you want blooms. 

The bottom line:  Don’t be intimidated by the few rules for Amaryllis plants, they are well worth it for these spectacular sparkling winter flowers.

Old Ladies and Gardening

My thoughts wandered to my aged aunts (long gone) and how I always thought they were incredibly old.  They were much older than my parents because dad was the youngest of seven children.

I remember how the women all looked like they had bowed legs and how all old ladies bent over in that unflattering way when gardening.  They all wore summer house dresses made of white muslin printed with lavender flowers and rolled down nylons around their ankles worn with their lace up black shoes.  They always had on an apron with pockets.  All my aunts had white hair (surprise) and it was either in a chignon or rolled tightly into a long curl thing.  I say curl thing because it was a single roll from ear to ear and held in place with hairpins and a hairnet. I realized this week; they were probably younger than I am today.  I pondered this and whether I should consider a chignon.  Heaven help me if I bend over my flowers and have bowed legs – JUST MAKE THE VISION STOP!

Speaking of old, there’s a flower catalog I particularly enjoy called “Old House Gardens – Heirloom Bulbs”.   www.oldhousegardens.com

1604 Heirloom

Call me sentimental but I like having plants in my gardens with a long history of survival.  They may not all be flashy in today’s sense of gardening but they are certainly hardy with a touch of pioneer gentility thrown in for good measure.

Accustomed to driving to our nearest nursery or big box outlet store, we grab bulbs and plants as if they were grown on the blacktop the day before.  Truth is many heirlooms were saved only because someone abandoned an old home site and no one had bulldozed the site.  There was a time when if it wasn’t new, it wasn’t valued.  Fortunately in recent years, plant and seed savers have rescued many of these plants and some are now plentiful enough for sales.

For the most part (but not entirely) these heirloom plants are extremely hardy and have proved this by enduring neglect, harsh conditions and almost extinction.  What this means is if you plant them in the right hardiness zone and according to needs, they will out live you and many future generations.

Because some of them are rare or as yet in short supply, some varieties may be expensive.  Another source is other gardeners.  If a fellow gardener says, “Do you want a start?” the answer should be a quick, ”Yes!”  But only “yes” if you actually do plan to plant and care for the gift.  I think we all know someone who seeks a start and then lets it languish in the garage until it’s beyond hope.

Gift certificates for all things heirloom gardening can be great Christmas presents for gardeners.  They can choose from long (almost eternal) lasting daffodils to “must be dug every fall” dahlias and gladiolas.   Or, a daylily breakthrough in the 1800s and a Thomas Jefferson’s hybridized plant.  Books such as “Flora Illustrata” or “Gerard’s Herbal” are full of beautiful illustrations and historical data.

Excuse me now as I seek a muslin housedress with lavender flowers to cover my bowed legs as I bend down and hope my chignon doesn’t fall out of my sunbonnet while pulling weeds.  

Visualization = not always a good thing. 

            

Nature's Christmas

Pinterest

No, there's no deep meaning to this article - it's only about using natural (or nature's) supply of things for decorating your home for the holidays.

I've been a pinecone lover all my life.  First:  they smell good.  Second:  they are so wonderfully other world looking.  Third:  they can be used for decorating.  Yeah!  Add to pinecones, holly, twigs, leaves, nuts and feathers.  

If you're a gardener, you will have found loose feathers lightly laying on the ground.  I can never pass one of these beauties without picking it up and tucking it into a decoration.  I do suggest cleaning the feathers if you bring them inside because they can harbor insects and disease.  Gently wash in "Mr. Clean" and lay flat to dry on a paper towel.   

I made a giant pinecone wreath long ago and it lasted for years which is good because it took F.O.R.E.V.E.R to make.  I still use the glittered pinecones granddaughter, Katherine, gifted me one year.  

Market Alley Wines

I tucked holly and silvered hydrangea flowers into the table vases at my daughter's wine shop (www.marketalleywines.com or see her Pinterest and Facebook pages) for Christmas decorations.  Holly will dry and still look lovely week after week.  The berries may drop so I never leave them on the branches for the sake of pets, children and staining.

Pinterest

Branches add depth and design to arrangements and if you're a glitter freak (admit it if you cannot leave a project alone until there's glitter somewhere) just coat in Elmer's glue and dip in the sparkly stuff for a winter wonderland.  

Nuts are a natural for decorating.  I made little winter people one year using nuts for the head.  Twenty years later I still have them - alas in a baggie and not on the tree because they are so past their prime but I'm too sentimental to throw them away.  I know:  the kids will not even be able to put them on the hayrack one day.

Soooo:  I thought I'd check out Pinterest in an effort to find a few pictures of pinecone crafts for this article and there were so many I finally decided I needed to get my pinecone mojo working with my crafting granddaughter, Grace.  Bring on the glue and glitter - grandma is on a binge!

Writers Paradise

Writers are a mixed bag of personalities, driving forces, history and outcomes.  Really good writers take us to places we can only visit in our minds.  They paint pictures so vivid and expressive we are transported into a situation as if we lived there.  John Sloan of Galva was a transporter and more.  He not only painted the pictures through his writing but in the process he made us better for having experienced his thoughts as our own.  Today John passed away after a long difficult battle with cancer.  He leaves behind a loving family, multitudes of friends, readers and fans.

In his much too short life, we can say his music soothed, his writing inspired, and his example helped make us better human beings.  But perhaps his mirror of God’s love is his most valued legacy.  When people say, “There’s a new angel in Heaven” in John’s case we know it’s true.  A musical, lyrical, compassionate angel – what more could we wish for John if we couldn’t keep him longer.

As with all our community, I’m sending love and prayers for John’s wife, Megan, sons Colin and Patrick and their families.  May God continue to comfort you with his presence; a God John served with valor. 

Dead Gardeners Society

 A local nursery had an advertisement offering to dig a hole and plant a tree for a certain price.  Not unusual except they offer to mix human cremated ashes into the hole first.   They call it “Tree Planting and Cremation Burial Service.”    It’s called a “green option” and as a marketing incentive to the bereaved, they state, “As the tree develops, the roots grow through and around the ashes.  The Nutrients from the ashes are absorbed into the branches and leaves of the tree and becomes a living reflection of the loved one.”  (Does anyone besides me hear organ music in the background as they read this?)

To qualify for this green burial, the body cannot have had formaldehyde-based or microbe-inhibiting chemicals prior to cremation.  FYI: actual cremains are more than ashes and include some larger pieces but I’ll use “ashes” alternately with “cremains”. 

For cemeteries allowing “natural” burial of cremains, there may be rules you want to investigate before making your pre-death tree planting burial decisions. Planting a tree and ashes on your private property may involve local regulations.  Although natural burial is gaining popularity, cemetery managers and regulators base their decisions on their knowledge of the process, their biases, imaginations, spiritual beliefs, the desire to consider new options and if they want to let go of the larger fees for traditional burials.

As the funeral industry is finding out, cremation is becoming more popular. It can be less expensive and take less space.  If there’s a new idea gaining popularity, then there’s a new buck to be made.  You can be as over-the-top environmentally friendly for cremains as you have the money to spend.

Burying or burning remains is many thousands of years old and was originally necessitated by disease and mass death.  Some religions have specifics for which method must be used.   The choices are not us vs. funeral home directors, regulators, and cemetery boards.  It’s finding out the facts and then working with these entities to find a solution for your choices.

No, you cannot infringe your ashes on others.  Sounds basic but you know there’s the one person who wants to throw ashes off the top of a skyscraper and let them float down over unsuspecting citizens.  Asking that your ashes be buried with the roots of a new tree on your own land, as a tree gift to a cemetery or park or as a part of a reforestation project are possibilities but only if it’s allowed in the way everyone agrees.

Once you come to the idea of wanting to have a natural burial in the roots of a tree, you need to do the following:

Find out where this could be accomplished.  Talking to your funeral director and/or cemetery manager of choice is a good first step.  Understanding the local regulations is another.

If your community doesn’t have a natural burial space, now is the time to work to make this happen. 

Get your family and friends on board - especially the executor of your estate.  They need to make the immediate decisions after your death to insure your burial meets your desires.  They also need to know the mechanics have already been considered and problems solved so you aren’t thrusting an impossible idea upon them during a time of bereavement.    

If you’re planted with a tree on your property, understand one day that property may belong to strangers making “visiting the site of grandma remains” impossible.  There’s the possibility the tree will die or be removed; will this be an emotional deal breaker? 

Natural burial of ashes under trees can be a gardener’s full circle of gardening tasks.  It can be the simple unselfish last task before putting away your trowel for the last time.  Is the time right for this kind of practice?  Only if you’ve investigated, solved the mechanics and made sure everyone knows of your wishes.  Go forth and fertilize!  (Did I really say that?  Sorry.)

It's All About the Weather

Does anyone remember those days when you left home completely oblivious to what the weather had in store?  Not only didn't we have second-by-second reporting and predicting, we really didn't give a hoot - because we were invincible!  Thinking you're invincible tends to kick you in your not so invincible butt - but (or butt if you want) thinking you're invincible is such a grand ride unless you crash.  Most of us didn't crash to the point of elimination but most of us did crash enough to learn a few lessons along the way.  The weather lesson is one of them.  I do think you must be a geezer to really embrace the weather lesson fully.  And with that bit of pondering over, let's talk about today's weather:

We've had an early and very cold spell setting records here in Illinois.  Those poor folks in NY have frozen their off brand tomato sauce and shared some really awesome and frightening photos.  Today it's warmed up and we're getting some significant rain.  To this we will see a flood (pun intended) of complaints over it being gray and wet.  At that point I want to say, "REALLY do you not understand rain in the late fall is a good thing?"  Here's the deal from the weather geezer (and don't call me that to my face - thank you.)

Plants need - I mean really need - lots of rain in the fall to take them through the winter.  Especially in summers where we have edged towards drought conditions.  Trees are especially needy.  Occasionally they're temperamental but in the fall they are just plain needy.  To survive the cold blowing wind, they must take in enough water.  This is especially true of trees and bushes that don't loose their leaves in the winter.

If the ground is not deeply frozen, the rain will be beneficial to all your plants.  Rejoice you aren't out there watering or watching a treasured perennial die from lack of moisture.  Celebrate the gray of the day and be glad it's not in the form of snow or ice.  We'll see enough of that before winter's finished with us - trust the geezer weather forecaster on this one.

Pie in the Sky

From an old recipe book

I was raised in a farm family where we had homemade pie three times a day – sometimes more.  It was so commonplace; once I left home I figured I’d be all right without pie the rest of my life.  I then learned what I had taken for granted was actually, "My mom made the best pie I had ever tasted."  And she did this every week.  

Most of us are familiar with traditional fruit pies:  cherry, raspberry, apple, and the like.  What we don’t normally think of is the old pioneer pies.  They were pies made from what was available when you had to rely on locally grown food or starve.

Pioneer women were geniuses at turning everything this side of poison into foodstuff.  I sometimes wonder about the poor person who tried new things and realized too late “No, we shouldn’t make a salad from that funny three leafed green vine.”  But, back to pies: 

Peaches

As our taste buds are manipulated by processed foods, we become ill at ease when diving into an unusual ingredient.  As generations move away from gathering and preserving and more into grab and go, these pioneer recipes get lost or are only a collector’s item. 

Some of the ingredients for pioneer pies may be hard to find in the grocery freezer section.   But as gardeners, we may be exposed to some delicious options right in our own back yards.  And our pioneer grandmothers were experts at unusual flavoring to enhance the most mundane of garden produce.

I thought of all this after reading an old version of the “Farm Journal’s Complete Pie Cookbook”.  Not only are there ingredients we should perhaps consider again, there’s history of how women had to cook.  When recipes call for lard, heavy cream and forty-five steps, you know providing meals for a family was more involved than the freezer section of the nearest quick stop.

Crab Apple flowers

Old recipes also tell much about where those pioneer families migrated.  Old house yards often tell the same.  Since my home was build by Bishop Hill Swede, Edwin Hedlin, I wasn’t surprised to find currents growing in the woods.

Most families (both farm and city) had their own fruit trees such as applies, cherries, peach, pear, apricots and plum.  Included were patches of grapes, strawberries, rhubarb, and berry bushes.  These ingredients were preserved for use all year.

This old cookbook has recipes for pies made with:  grapes, boysenberries, gooseberries, plums, crab apples, cranberries, burgundy berries, sweet potatoes, dates, elderberries, pears, black walnuts and mulberries.

In those few instances where imported ingredients were available, pies were made with oranges, pineapples, bananas, lemons, coconut, chocolate, limes and exotic seasonings.   These items are so easily accessed today we forget they weren’t typically part of pioneer cooking.

Walnuts holding tight

For the woman who knew how to make a perfect piecrust, it immediately became a receptacle for savory pie ingredients as well:  beef mincemeat, fish, rabbit, cheese, onion, tomatoes, foul (both domestic and wild), pork, and of course eggs.  Custards and meringues were essential to pioneer pie making.

Farmers had their own milk and city folk had delivery.  No one would have dreamed of not using the butter, cream, buttermilk, and cottage cheese from fresh milk. No hardy working family would have considered not topping their fruit pie with a wonderful ingredient such as cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, cream, ice cream, sweet custard meringue, or caramel.   

Current bush blooming

Because sugar might not be available all the time, Midwest housewives used molasses, sorghum and honey in many recipes including pie.  These sweeteners provided a deep richness.  All these are gleaned from the land.  Seasonings such as vinegar and mints were used when expensive imported seasonings were not available.

I won’t lie, pioneer pie recipes are not quick or easy to accomplish.  I won’t lie, they are perhaps the best bite of pure joy you will ever give yourself.  Rich, hardy, and decadent from an era when food, even pie, was meant to “stick to the ribs.”