Flowers

First Rain

October 7, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

Autumn. I love the first rain of the season. After a long, hot, dry summer, the first rain is always a most welcome event. The dust settles. The leaves are washed clean. The first storm, however, is often not a gentle one, not an easy transition into a new season. Our gardens are a little worse for wear after the storm.

The deck is littered with leaves from the beautiful oaks overhead.

The grasses are leaning.

Impatiens and coleus can't lift their heads.

Storm-battered butterfly

Some things, however, seem to flourish in the cooler, wet weather.

The phlox still smell wonderful!

Elephant ears are thriving.

Hyacinth beans are growing rapidly.

Hyacinth beans are beautiful!

Moss and lichen look beautiful on this rock.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the moss revives after a long, hot summer. A week ago it was brown and dry. After just one storm, it has become moist, luscious and a beautiful green.

The birds are busy this time of year, making the most of the flowers that are going to seed. Not long ago I ran across an article about untidy gardens and the value of leaving many things in our gardens untouched for the benefit of the wildlife. The author would be very proud of my untidy garden!

Gloriosa Daisy

Gloriosa daisy gone to seed.

The birds, finches in particular, love the gloriosa seeds. They hang on the plants and eat their fill.

Sunflowers seeds are another favorite of the birds.

The first storm was just a teaser.

Here comes the sun!

Filed Under: Featured, Flowers Tagged With: autumn, elephant ears, fall, first rain, Garden, gardening, gloriosa daisy, hyacinth bean, phlox, storm

Treasures

September 20, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

I’m pretty sure I mentioned to you that while Butterfly was cavorting in Hawaii, my sister, Kathy, and I were busy cleaning her house. Butterfly was gone for 2 weeks. Kathy and I didn’t finish the job. We ran out of time. Let me put it this way: Butterfly is a collector of all things bright, shiny, soft, useful, useless and clever. Or whatever happens to catch her eye. On top of that, people, all people, feel compelled to give her things. These things are usually butterfly-themed. People, I’m here to tell you she does … not … need … one … more … thing.

What Kathy and I did accomplish was cleaning everything in plain sight. We had a huge collection of things for Butterfly to peruse upon her return and she agreed that the vast majority of it could be donated! She had so many things crammed into a small space that she couldn’t see half of them. Her house still clearly looks like Butterfly lives there, but now it is a little more manageable.

Now we are tackling her cupboards and drawers, which are also crammed. For instance, she has a kitchen drawer that is full of envelopes.

“Look,” I said to Kathy when I opened it, “I found where she files her mail!” Then I looked a little more carefully. “What the heck? Almost all of the envelopes are EMPTY! Why is she saving empty envelopes?” Neither of us knew. These are envelopes that she had received mail in and had tossed out the contents.

When Butterfly called me from Hawaii one night, I asked her, “What’s up with the drawer full of empty envelopes in the kitchen?”

She laughed and said, “So you found those, did you?”

“Not funny,” I said, “tell me why you have them!”

“Well, I use them,” she said.

“FOR WHAT???”

“Each month I write on the back of the envelope what I spend my money on and slip the receipts inside,” she explained.

“Ok, so you need what, 12 a year? You do realize there are more envelopes coming in the mail every day, don’t you? Why do you have hundreds?” I asked.

Again she laughed (apparently she cracks herself up) and said, “Ok, ok, save 2 for me and recycle the rest.”

As I said, we cleaned everything in plain sight. We have just begun to tackle cupboards and drawers. And no, we haven’t yet gotten to the drawer full of envelopes. But we will. Our most recent project was cleaning out beneath her kitchen and bathroom sinks, as well as the storage areas under the stairs (we only got half way with that one – we almost suffocated on the gazillions of plastic grocery bags she was saving).

I must share with you the treasures from yesteryear that we uncovered.

Far back under the kitchen sink, I was quickly returned to my childhood when I spied this:

our old spray bottle - it's glass!

Really! It's a Windex bottle!

This was the squirt bottle she used for the ironing, and that I used as soon as I got big enough to iron. I think I’ve seen her iron twice in the last 12 years, so I’m not sure why she hung onto this. And she came to my house both times to use my iron and ironing board, since there was no way she could have found her iron. We found it behind all those plastic grocery bags.

Another treasure I found under the stairs (who remembered that there we actually shelves behind all those grocery bags?) was this:

Food Chopper

plate #3

Made in the USA

It's a Keystone #5

Butterfly used this for such tasks as making sausage, grinding nuts and making potato pancakes.

Only part of the original box survives.

Important Info

all the parts

the various plates

When I first saw this I asked Butterfly where the rest of the plates were. Then I read more closely and it says that the “food chopper” comes with plate #3; the others cost 35 cents each.

I found the price tag!

Who knew? $1.98!

How’s that for a price tag? Relatively speaking, the plates were pretty expensive, which explains why Butterfly never bought them.

Since the original box was falling apart, Butterfly slipped it into a replacement box (as you now know, she never throws away anything).

I wonder who ate the Neccos?

Again, made in the USA!

Next I pulled a crumpled brown paper bag from the shelves under the stairs. In it was “Handy Hannah” – remember her?

Handy Hannah Hair Dryer

It even has a temp control!

This is from the 50's.

I’m here to tell you that this beauty actually works!

Last but not least, I found this:

Kool-Aid, anyone?

This was the pitcher that she filled with Kool-Aid when we were kids. Cherry was my favorite flavor. And there was none of that sugar-free nonsense! The sweeter, the better!

And now I must share a current treasure. Butterfly just trotted down the hill with a plant in hand.

“You have to come outside and take a picture of this spider lily,” she ordered. “It’s the only one we have blooming.”

spider lily

Yes, ma’am. Who am I to argue?

Filed Under: Butterfly, Featured, Flowers, Shenanigans Tagged With: antiques, Butterfly, CIC food chopper, flower, Flowers, Handy Hannah Hair Dryer, red spider lily, spider lilies, spider lily, treasures, Windex spray bottle

It’s 4 O’clock Somewhere!

September 18, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

You can always tell a true gardener and lover of plants. They can’t give away their plants and seeds fast enough. When flower lovers leave our place, their vehicles are always overflowing with bags of plants that Butterfly has helped them dig out of our flower beds, pots with various plants she has started from cuttings or seeds, cuttings from any tree she can force upon them and, of course, little bagsful of seeds.

A while back, a friend of mine, Meg, gave us a bunch of seeds from one of her favorite flowers, the Four O’clock. The seeds look like black peppercorns, so even I can’t lose them.

pick a color, any color

What’s not to love about this flower? There are multiple colors are one plant, and those colors are brilliant – so I’m happy!

yellow, pink, orange ... does it get any better?

Why are they called four o’clocks, you ask? They bloom twice a day – early morning and early evening. I’ve taken to calling mine seven o’clocks, which is when they like to bloom – 7am and 7pm. The blossoms close up in the heat of the midday sun.

Another friend, Cindy, tells me that she first saw these flowers in Italy. There they are called “Buongiorno, Buonasera”, which means “Good Morning, Good Evening”. Makes sense, no?

look closely

If you look closely at these pictures, you’ll see that I’ve had to apply my special deer repellant to these plants. The four o’clocks had grown almost 18” high, were getting ready to bloom and the deer came through one night to “prune”. They mowed down the four o’clocks along with all of the phlox in the area. To give the four o’clocks a second chance, I put sections of old field fence over them. They have since grown through the wire and continued on their way to their full height, but the wire kept the deer away long enough so we could enjoy these gorgeous blossoms. The phlox are once in again in full bloom, too.

delicious color

Since it is so dry in California right now, I’m expecting the deer to come through any night now, and gobble up every blossom in sight.

so bright you almost have to wear your sunglasses

perfection

Even though my 4 o’clocks are blooming at 7 o’clock, I don’t lecture them and tell them when they’re supposed to bloom. I just tell myself, “It’s 4 o’clock somewhere!”

Filed Under: Featured, Flowers Tagged With: Flowers, four o'clocks, gardening, gardens, Mirabilis jalapa

Where’s Butterfly?

September 3, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

“Where’s Butterfly?” was all I heard last Monday, when I made the mistake of delivering Meals on Wheels while my mother was on her way to Hawaii. I probably should have called in sick. Instead I spent the day explaining to people that my mom was off on a little vacation.

I got up early to make sure I had plenty of time to get her work done, as well as mine.

flowers and veggies (and watermelon!)

Our garden is at a stage where we are getting more cucumbers and tomatoes that we can handle, so I took the extras to the Seniors Café.

August flowers

I even managed to put together a respectable bouquet, which is quite a feat in this August heat. Hey – that rhymes! Maybe I should put this on the poetry page!

But as much as people liked the veggies, and enjoyed the flowers, they were mostly concerned about Butterfly’s whereabouts. At every delivery stop on my route, I was greeted at the door not with, “Hi, how are you?”, but “Where’s Butterfly?”

It’s really rather sad. I used to have an identity. Then, long, long ago, I became Chelsea’s mother. And now … well now, I’m nothing more than Butterfly’s daughter.

She’d better get home quick, before I become totally invisible.

Filed Under: Butterfly, Featured, Flowers, Shenanigans Tagged With: Butterfly, Flowers, Meals on Wheels, Vegetables

Veggie Garden

August 11, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

Butterfly and I have never been big vegetable gardeners. It’s not because we don’t like vegetable. It’s because there are too many battles to wage.

Yum!

Here, for instance, is her dog, Linus, harvesting cherry tomatoes. Granted, the only reason the plant is there in the first place is because some dog ate a tomato and then relieved itself in that particular spot. We have volunteer tomato plants all over the property, thanks to the dogs. Still, when your 5 dogs love tomatoes, it’s just more competition for the crop.

I love tomatoes!

Linus visits this plant regularly.

sweet cherries

He’s looking for these juicy red ones, but occasionally grabs a green one.

these are "close"

I found this mutant creature on the same plant. I should pick it before Linus eats it.

In addition to marauding dogs, we must contend with deer (who just ate all the blossoms off my beautiful phlox!), rabbits, gophers, moles, voles and insects of all sorts.

This year, though, I got the bright idea to build some raised beds. We need more work like a hole in the head, but for some reason we can’t stop ourselves.

The new veggie garden is inside a fenced area that used to be one of my fawn pens during my wildlife rehabilitation days. I reasoned that if the fence had kept out coyotes, fox and lions, and kept in deer, it would surely be a safe place for our vegetable garden.

breaking ground

Construction on the beds began in March.

progress!

We made 6 beds, each 4’ x 8’, with 4’ wide paths in between. Water lines were put in each bed, as well as a lining of heavy-duty small-mesh wire to discourage tunneling visitors. We then filled the beds with new soil and steer manure.

Butterfly and I began planting on April 15^th, mulching everything well. Every plant thrived; ever seed sprouted. We enjoyed lots of delicious lettuce during the cool spring months.

squash plants (front) before moles killed them

Three little squash plants (above, front) took off and started production that soon had us overwhelmed with squash.

squash blossom

I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the time to notice, but squash blossoms are gorgeous!

a few months make a big difference

We actually had to cut away part of the lemon cucumber plant because it was trying to overtake the pathways. On the side opposite the path, the cucumber plants are headed down over the side of the bed to heaven-knows-where. There is no shortage of cucumbers!

We planted plenty of flowers to attract birds and beneficial insects in attempt to control the not-so-beneficial bugs; delphinium, penstamon, sweet alyssum, marigolds, straw flowers and a row of giant sunflowers in the back of the garden.

straw flowers

I’m trying my hand at drying the straw flowers.

flowers fight with veggies

sunflowers make me smile

The sunflowers are my offering to the birds. The finches absolutely love shredding the leaves. I guess the leaves are their “lettuce”. Soon there will be seeds aplenty for the birds to enjoy. In exchange, I hope they will be busy keeping the garden insect population under control.

As any gardener knows, despite your best plans and intentions, Mother Nature will always throw you a curve ball. Our lovely squash plants have gone to the compost pile, thanks to the dastardly work of a mole or vole. So much for lining the beds with wire! I guess this guy traveled overland to set up his new home.

I first tried a repellant to get rid of the pest (the active ingredient being castor oil). I sprinkled it on all the beds and watered it in well. He liked it so much he moved to the next bed, which is chock full of tomato plants. I then resorted to a trap (and I cannot find a humane trap, which I’d prefer because I would be happy to take him for a hike, like I do the rattlesnakes). The first night he managed to spring the trap without getting himself caught. I reburied and reset it. The second night he didn’t even spring it – he just filled it up with dirt. DRAT!

Due to my own procrastination, we got hit with a batch of tomato worms, which did a fair amount of damage to a few tomato plants. Nothing will make you groan louder than walking out into the garden in the morning and seeing fresh worm doodles all over the path. Butterfly and I each got a clothespin and got busy picking worms off the plants. They are masters of camouflage, so it’s a challenge to find them all.

oogly squiggly squishy

She wanted to squish them, but instead I took them down into the pasture for the wild turkeys. They must have thought they found a gold mine when they ran across those fat, juicy worms!

As we worked, squealing whenever a worm squirted us with its “worm juice”, Butterfly said we sure could use Ginger to help us. Ginger was the dog we had when I was a little girl. Ginger loved nothing more than hunting tomato worms – and eating them! She would come out of the garden with a green, foamy muzzle. Good dog! Instead of worm-eating dogs, I’m now stuck with tomato-eating dogs.

I’m now spraying BT on a regular basis and we haven’t seen a tomato worm since.

Despite these setbacks, all is not lost. The garden goodness pours forth on a daily basis. The tomatoes are ripening nicely. Cantaloupes and watermelons are growing bigger each day. Nothing tastes sweeter than strawberries freshly picked. For some reason, the strawberries rarely make it into the house.

some of the harvest

The garden produces way more than we can use, so we always are handing extras to friends, as well as taking a good supply to the Senior Center every Monday when we deliver Meals on Wheels. Yes, it’s more work, but it’s worth it.

Filed Under: Featured, Flowers Tagged With: Flowers, Garden, home grown, Insects, Moles, organic, organic farming, Raised Flowerbeds, Tomato Worms, Vegetables, Veggies

Monday Mish-Mash

June 13, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

Butterfly is working on a puzzle that is driving her crazy. She knew it was going to drive her crazy before she opened the box. She made me take a picture of it before she took it apart because she fears it will never be seen this way again.

Holy rocks, Batman!

Once she took it apart, this is what she was faced with.

salamander shapes

the right way and the wrong way

You know you’re in trouble when there are these kinds of “hints” on the box.

Mother Nature was at her best and her worst this last weekend. Robby’s and Rita’s offspring are thriving.

baby robins

Both parents are busy gathering food to keep their brood filled to the brim. Our weather has turned very warm, so Rita doesn’t do much sitting on the nest. Robby spends some time sitting beside them, watching over his little ones.

One of our projects last weekend was to start cleaning the barn. This included moving hay, in preparation for a new load of hay to arrive. We started finding dead baby rats.

baby rats

There were 2 dead babies out of the nest, and 4 more in the nest. Apparently Mom was killed … by a snake, or an owl or …??? Mother Nature can be cruel.

On the happier side, Mother Nature does see to it that beautiful flowers continue to burst forth in our gardens.

tree rose gone crazy

This “Little Fairy” rose started out as a tree rose. Butterfly moved it to a fence and allowed it to go wild.

little fairy

iceland poppy

iceland poppies

Last year Electric Horseman picked up some flower seeds at the Amsterdam airport.

red poppy

Butterfly now has quite a big patch of these gorgeous poppies blooming. We’ve started transplanting them to my part of the yard.

peacock pose

This guy lives at a neighbor’s house, much to the neighbor’s dismay. He’s called me asking how to catch it and remove it. They are noisy and messy, but I see that he has not yet been captured!

I think you know that Butterfly and I deliver Meals on Wheels every Monday. Butterfly makes sure to take a bouquet to the Senior Center’s cafeteria, where we pick up the food to be delivered.

another beautiful bouquet

The matalija poppy in this bouquet is a stand-out!

How was your weekend?

Filed Under: Featured, Flowers, Shenanigans, Wildlife Tagged With: Flowers, jigsaw puzzles, matalija poppy, peacocks, poppies, puzzles, rats, roses

Bouquets

February 15, 2011 By Sallysue Stein

I almost hate to tell you that we’ve been enjoying some lovely spring-like weather. I feel a bit guilty working in the garden in a t-shirt, while a good part of the country is shivering. Last weekend we finished pruning our crepe myrtle trees. Years ago I bought 6 and when Butterfly moved into the guest house we built for her, she bought one. Now we have 25! Those extras are all volunteers that Butterfly found and nurtured. I’ll tell you what, though … if I find one more crepe myrtle tree anywhere in our gardens, I’m pruning Butterfly.

We pressed Tony into service to help with the pruning job. My neck and shoulders can take only so much of holding up that pruning saw/lopper. I bought a lighter version pruner for me and Butterfly to use. With the 3 of us working (me and Tony pruning, Butterfly cleaning up) we made short work of the last dozen or so trees that needed attention.

The warm weather made my flowering quince burst into full bloom.

flowering quinc

flowring quince blossom

The quince has always been a favorite of mine, with its yummy color and early bloom to usher in spring. The only problem with it is that it comes with a nasty set of thorns. Luckily we have enough property that we could tuck the plant into a spot where it’s pretty to see but it’s out of the way and can’t snag humans.

Last week Butterfly made a very pretty bouquet with cuttings from the quince bush.

ancient vase

This is one of my favorite vases, mainly because it’s the “vase of my childhood”. I remember it always being on our dining table, full of flowers cut from Butterfly’s garden. Butterfly tells me she bought the vase in 1949 at a church rummage sale for a quarter. I think it was a steal.

Winter is returning to our neck of the woods in the form of a heavy-duty wind and rain storm. I decided to bring some flowers into the house before they get beaten down by the storm.

First I picked a few sprigs of daphne, which I absolutely love. Does anything smell better than daphne? Then I snagged a few blossoms from the pansies.