Foxey Persuasion

It's taken him a year, but I think she's slowly succumbing to his charms.

Surprising Autumn Blooms

Loropetalum

I was pleased to find some flowers blooming in the yard today that I hadn't really expected to see this late in the season.  This loropetalum puts on a huge show in spring and is now in bloom again. Not quite as full as the springtime display, but bright and lively all the same.

This brilliant red quince was a surprise as quince usually bloom in late winter.  I was impressed by this one when it bloomed multiple times last winter and spring.  It has been looking not well, losing leaves in the late summer and I was afraid it might not survive.  If this flower is any indication, the shrub may rally yet.

I hope it will.  

I also spied a flourish of flowers on the jackmanii clematis and one lone zinnia that somehow manged to dodge the frost.  You just never know what you might find if you look around.

Birthday Extravaganza

 Sunny Peppers!

Yes, the peppers continue to ripen and survive despite cold nights.  It's amazing what a sheet of remay row cover can do to preserve and protect.  I'm not sure about this week with lows forecast in the mid 20's it could be the end, but it's been a great run.  We have loads of peppers now that I need to cut up for the freezer because I don't think we will be able to eat them all up.

I've had a wonderful birthday week with multiple celebrations in honor of turning, as someone said "double nickles".  There have been cards and calls, gifts and dinners and a general festive air all around.

I baked this gorgeous snapper from the local fishmonger on my birthday eve. Along side crispy roasted potatoes, the last of the garden beans and a salad of just picked red bibb lettuce, a nice french white Bordeaux, that was some living brother.  And we polished the night off with a flour-less chocolate torte that I baked for myself as I'd been having a hankering.

On my actual birthday Nov 8th, David went out to Prairie Ridge with me to help band birds. It was another cool sunny day and we had a big time capturing kinglets and many sparrows in the nets and putting the bands on their tiny legs before measuring, weighing and releasing them to fly on about their day.

That night we enjoyed a super dinner at Mateo Tapas Bar in Durham where we sampled 9 different plates and a fair amount of wine.

Yesterday I spent the day at the NC Community Garden Partners Annual meeting.  I am on the education committee and so was on the planning committee for this event.  I think it was a big success, we had over 100 people from across the state taking part in workshops and presentations.  People seemed to be learning lots and networking too, always good.  Our theme this year was sustainability of gardens, not on the ecological level but on the management, business, funding, longevity level. It is great to see the community garden movement growing in North Carolina and so many people interested in getting gardens started and in keeping them going strong.

Best of all- I won the raffle of this gorgeous community garden quilt!  It represents raised beds, pathways and veggies growing, and has a few chickens clucking through it as well.  Colorful and fun.  I couldn't believe it.

And so, I enter my 55th year feeling very celebrated, loved and lucky indeed.

Returning to Normal

I was trying to catch a flock of crows flying over.  You can see one- a blur, but love the red oak leaves set against that blue, blue sky.

What a day.

I am finally feeling the fog lift from having that tooth pulled.  I took a good brisk walk down along the creek, soaking in the fall colors and bright sky.  Came back home and worked in the garden for a couple of hours, weeding and tidying up in the veg patch.  Finished cleaning up the asparagus beds.  It always looks so much nicer when that's done.

Pulled down Jacks beanstalk, now dry and dead.  Pruners and scissors, cutting and pulling the twisted vines where they had climbed, wrapping themselves around the fence wire up, up, up.  Put away the posts, fence, piled the vines into the wheelbarrow for compost.

It was chilly and I kept my purple sweatshirt on the whole time, feeling snugly.  Pulled chickweed and oxalis from between the young carrots.  The soil was cold and I was glad for my good gloves.

Kept a fire going in the stove all day too.

 

sweet gum leaf  - like burgundy leather

The autumn has truly arrived and with it colorful trees, breezy clear days with leaves swirling by.  I am ready for this shift.

Also glad for the time change, to wake before 7 with some sunlight.  And at the end of the day to come inside and hunker down for long evenings of comfort food suppers and books.

Happy, Scary Halloween

Here I am in my own special Halloween costume.

Fresh back from the oral surgeon yesterday.  There I had a second molar, #30 removed, goodbye number thirty, and an implant anchor drilled into my jaw bone. Lets hear it for sedation, I was semi-conscious but didn't feel a thing.  Love this spiffy wimple holding an ice pack against my jaw to reduce the swelling. 

Armed with antibiotics, pain killers, ice packs and special peroxide mouth rinse, hoping that I will heal well over the next few days and in some period of time, can't remember how long we have to wait, I will have a new faux #30 installed.  The trials and tribulations of aging.  All I can say is I am glad to have some money set aside for such things and don't have to go around with a rotten tooth or a hole in my mouth forever. The surgeon says the second molars do 90% of the chewing, kind of a key tooth, I wouldn't want to live without.

Otherwise life is moving along.  I was happy to get my 60 cloves of garlic in the ground last week, to be 60 heads for next year. 

Discovered this cluster of hardy cyclamen popping up out of the leaf litter last week that made me want to plant loads more. What a nice surprise, those delicate pink petals sweeping up to the sky.

The first frost finally came on the night of October 18. That prompted the digging of the sweet potatoes.  About 5 gallons are currently curing under the bed.  Much smaller than last years beasts, but that's alright, I actually prefer the smaller ones to roast whole into sweet nuggets that can be eaten skin and all.  We covered up the peppers because they are still loaded wth big green fruits that I want to ripen and also the green beans, so we are still harvesting from those.

The fall crops seem happy and the frost slowed down the caterpillars a bit for which I am grateful.  So now we move into meals with many greens; lettuce, tatsoi, kale, collards and eventually I hope some cabbages and broccoli, despite their late planting.

Another cool thing recently was Leonard Bergey and his beautiful team of Percheron horses who came over to plow one of the pastures up on the creamery.  Such gorgeous animals and Leonard is masterful with the gentle giants, he is a whisperer for sure.

OK- off to a bowl of soup prepared by my handsome nurse David.  (Please forgive any percocet induced misspelling or poor grammar within this post.)

What's Been Going ON!?

Top of the Mountain

Where to begin?  It's been too long since I've been to this page.  More than a month in fact.  So what's been going on! as my brother Alex always says at the start of his weekly newsletter....

Sunrise over Topsail Beach

There was a delightful trip to the beach, our old same favorite Barrett Cottage at the corner of Trout and Ocean, down near the tip of Topsail Island. There with two lovely lady friends I whiled away days and nights eating fresh fish, walking on the beach, bird watching, watching the sun rise and set, the full moon rise and set too. We rode bikes, kayaked and swam, swam, swam.  It was about as perfect as a beach week could be and my honey Dave joined us for the last couple of days of quiet bliss.

Back at home I spent a week catching up, then a week in conferences and workshops.  I was in Raleigh at the Marbles Kids Museum for a three day intensive on early childhood physical activity sponsored by Blue Cross & Blue Shield NC - made me feel a little better about all those premiums I pay! I learned more than I have in a workshop in a long time, got loads of great ideas for easy and inexpensive games and activities to do with little ones (ages 3-5) to get them moving while having fun.  Diane Craft was there and shared all her wisdom.  They even brought in real live children for us to practice on which was super informative, our technique improved dramatically between the first group and the second the next day! FUN that's what it was all about.

Then I was two days at the Natural Learning Initiatives' annual Design Institute at the NC Botanical Garden.  This is the event to which I attribute my epiphany of career change and life change- 4 years ago I heard Phil Waters from the Eden Project in England talk about "Play Work" and thought to myself- "that's what I want to do, I want to be a play worker."  Despite its oxymoronic sound, it is indeed the work of children to play, and we don't let them do enough of it, not even close.  

I made a presentation on gardening and cooking with kids.  I had a copperhead crawl across my foot while I was standing and listening to someone else speaking during another workshop! That was exciting! The appearance of the snake was only one among multiple signs of transformation that have visited me lately, I am ready, I am watching for the big shift.

The NLI-DI was the perfect lead-in to two more days of training at the NC Zoo in Asheboro.  There I completed my third and final session in the Playful Pedagogy training.  I and four other happy folks are the first graduating class in this program that has helped us understand better the principles of play and how to make opportunities for children to play.  By providing "affordances" stuff in other words. Both natural: sticks, bamboo, leaves, nuts, water, trees... and human made: cardboard boxes, balls, buckets, pool noodles... Then get out of the way and let the children play.  In a safe space, but without great interference from adults.

Guess what?  Kids learn by playing.  They develop cognitive, social and emotional skills while being physically active and being creative.  It's a win win,  play workers just need to provide the space and stuff and then keep the parents out of the way so kids can take some risks and explore.

And we got to camp out at the Zoo!  I woke to the sound of elks bugling across the park, got up and walked over to watch the seals swim and play for a while.  It was strange, and I was surprised at the noise from all the mechanical systems whirring and humming to keep all the animal exhibits running smoothly, it wasn't as quiet as I thought it might be.

Finally back at home and with some free time - it proceeded to rain for 8 straight days.   Well, I got caught up on work and house chores at least, though had to break down and use the drier to get the laundry done.  I was quite happy to see the sun yesterday so took a long walk to the mountain top, haven't been up there since the leaves came out last spring.  It was swell to see some sunshine and spy a few lovelies like:

 Indian pipe in bloom

At home I did manage to get a fall garden planted in between everything else but we have had a killer crop of caterpillars, maybe all the rain?  Who knows, but these fuzzy buggers are wreaking havoc in the greens:

Along with wooly worms and a few other varieties of creepy crawlies.  We've been squishing loads of them and when it finally stopped raining I sprayed Bacillus Thuriengensis (BT) to try and slow them down. 

Need more sunny days to ripen up the green peppers that are still on the plants and for the ground to dry up enough to dig the sweet potatoes and plant the garlic.

So life goes on despite no blogging.  As I always say, though you probably won't believe me, I'll try to be better.  Maybe that will be part of the coming transformation?  More writing- YES!

Pepper Palooza

 Half of the pepper patch

Peppers are a crop that require a lot of patience.  Especially if you start your own plants from seed.  Around the 1st of March I prep my planting trays and sow the seeds of peppers, eggplants and tomatoes and put them on a heat mat to sprout, then under grow lights where they grow along for about 6 weeks.  At that point, I step them up into larger pots and start to harden them off by putting them outside during the day and bringing them in at night, exposing them to more and more sun each day.  Around the 1st of May I set them into the garden beds and put the cages around them.  Then it's a waiting game until the first fruits begin to show color and fully ripen up, usually around mid August.  Six months before the first fruit, that is a long wait.  From that point on, its pepper city up to and often beyond frost.

They are actually pretty easy to grow, I just keep them watered and usually give them some extra fertilizer in the form of fish emulsion in mid-summer as they are starting to set fruits.  There are few pests that attack the plants, sometimes caterpillars can get into the fruits and cause them to rot, but generally they are free of problems.

Bowl of sweet, colorful, crisp goodness

I have no interest in green peppers unless they are the hot varieties.  I grow 1 plant of serranos every season which produces enough peppers for an army.  I also grow at least one of the medium hot chiles such as anaheims, poblanos or pasillas each year.  But my true faves are the sweet and colorful bell peppers; red, orange and yellow as well as the Italian stuffing peppers.  I have Carmen this year and sometimes I plant Corno di toros which are nice as they also have yellow and orange fruits in addition to the red.  This year I have a Marconi Gold which is a bright yellow stuffing pepper the same size as the Carmen.  And finally the pimentos which are so meaty and rich roasted and either dressed in olive oil for salads or appetizers or chopped for good old pimento cheese.  

All of the peppers freeze really well too and so I roast and freeze them or chop and freeze the colored bells to use in soups, stirs fries and other dishes through the winter.  Small hot peppers can be frozen whole and the chopped peppers need no prep or cooking, just core and seed, chop and toss in freezer bags, so easy.

We are eating lots of these now raw in salads, dipped in hummus, sauteed in pasta dishes.  The only down side is that there isn't a lot of other stuff coming out of the garden at the moment, the tomatoes are finished, the eggplants are making a few, the beans are winding down, and now I am waiting eagerly for the fall greens to start up but it will be a while.

Just yesterday I sowed seed for lettuce, spinach, radishes and turnips.  I put in another batch of carrots as the first planting from a month ago came up sparsely.  The beets look good and are already about 3 inches tall, so they will be the first greens we get to eat this fall.  I also need to pull out the tomato plants dead or dying to make room for the brassicas.  Little broccoli, cabbage and collard plants are sitting in pots and really want to be in the ground.  I do have quite a few frozen greens from the spring so I guess I'll eat those  while I wait for the new ones to come on,

Truthfully, there is never a shortage of food around here, I'm only complaining because, well, I don't know why I'm complaining, it's foolish!