Tea House Sans Mosquitoes

They are gone, the little buzzing devils. I can sit in the tea house and drink a pot of Peppermint delight without swatting anything. I always think of the wonderful supple woman in Japan who did a tea ceremony for us. She was the epitome of measured grace. I pass so many piles of bamboo and I take some of it and carry it home. It becomes the walls and the roof of the tea house. No charge for creativity.

Tiny Frozen Emeralds

Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doc, says pick the green tomatoes and then put them between layers on newspaper to ripen. I am trying that. It breaks my heart to see the little gems hanging on the limp limbs.

Someone else said cook Emeril Lagasse's Green Tomato soup. I did. Yum. But a bit too spicy for my tastebuds even though I cut out two of the three peppers. I think, folks from New Orleans can really bear more heat than the average Floridian.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

First cold snap of the winter. Hard freeze for four days. The roselle is dead. The fig tree looks wounded.The ambersweet oranges don't appear hurt. I picked bushels of green tomatoes. Thanks to Emeril Lagasse for the incredible green tomato spicy soup. Even with only one of the three peppers stated, that soup was dragon's breath HOT. Thinking about fried green tomatoes with goat cheese. Yum!

The House in the Garden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYJNnrT07MI Watching me wave my hands too much in this video, makes me self-conscious. I am too much the teacher. I point out things in the garden just as if I were going to quiz the viewers at some distant time.

Mallory the Wonder Cat

The armadillos know that she is gone. They have marched in an armored battalion across the river yard, rooting with their sharp little snouts. I thought the holes were dug by squirrels on speed but a guest biologist identified the holes as armadillo holes. Once again, I need to concentrate on the fact they are aerating huge expanses of lawn. Yes, they provide the holes and I fill them with compost thereby making the dredge spoil river lawn a better place.

Still, they never invaded when Mallory ruled the garden.

Camellias and A Warm Beating Heart

The Christmas camellias have returned. They always take me by surprise. First they are just shiny leaves and then SUDDENLY they burst into huge red blossoms, almost artificial in their elegance. I remember when I was talking to R. long before we were married. I think even before we dated much. He was in Yellowstone on vacation. I was on Cherry St. While I talked to him, I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the giant camellia bush that covered so much of the tiny back yard. The camellias were all encased in ice from the hard freeze of '89. As we talked, the ice began melting. At a distance the scarlet blossoms looked like hearts in melting ice balls; that certainly should have been a clue.

As for the HOCS camellias, I do nothing for them. I guess, they are simply a good example of right plant in right place.The section of the yard they are in gets good morning sun and almost no scorching afternoon rays. That combo seems to work.

The Labyrinth is Bleeding

Red Virginia Creeper has inundated the little labyrinth turning the passages into a crunchy spiral. The flaming creeper bolts up the big oak and makes the tree look like a silent movie screen star wearing a crimson feather boa. The entrance stone which says LISTEN is hidden by the scarlet leaves. I walk out at dawn to take my daily trip around the spiral. I remember Jerry Wright's statement that the first part of life is a ladder and the second part is a labyrinth. I'm definitely in labyrinth time now.

The GROW Spirit Hawk

She glided in this afternoon, just after I had begun to say goodbye to a dear soul friend on the river porch. I blinked back some tears and looked out at the GROW sign. Something was strange. Then the black presence turned sideways and I saw the curved beak. I realized the large red tailed hawk, the one who had cast a shadow over me many times while I gardened, had come to sit in the garden herself.

She brought back memories of the two hawks I had flown three decades ago....Grecia and Sanchos, a huge red tail and a diminutive sparrow hawk, both trained to my fist. Hawks represent power and purpose to me. They always have. I am glad to see the red tail because I need both of those energies. I am glad to see her, too, because her presence signals to me that my urban green space has become suitably wild at last.

My Mind is a Bad Neighborhood

....and I shouldn't go out alone in it. That is true. My mind does tell me stories and the stories evoke feelings. Frontal lobe creates, limbic system participates. Two garden examples. Recently I was awakened by lots of dull clunks on the dock nearby. Thinking it was inconsiderate folks infiltrating the usually quiet neighborhood, I began to fume and devise short( but eloquent) speeches of annihilation. The second night it happened I lunged for the door around midnight only to have ROF tell me it was shrimpers emptying cast net catches on the dock. Suddenly the same clunks were music to my ears. The clunks meant the shrimp were running; my beloved St. Johns River was not dead.Folks were gathering local food.

Fast forward one week. I walk out onto the river lawn to admire my lush, velvety rye grass carpet. Rye is a grass that keeps the B&B's winter lawn green. It caresses the grandkids' toes and requires nothing of me in the way of water and fertilizer.

Horror of horrors, there were lots of squirrel excavations in the rye lawn.Tunnels and domes existed where there had been flat grass. I filled and flattened each one. The next day there were more. I began to create stories, remembering my father, the Captain's hatred of the "furry rats." I remembered how they gnawed the soy bean covered electronics on his beloved Cadillac and how one had even taken down NASDAQ.

For three days I filled and flattened and fumed. The fourth day, I stormed out and began to fill the holes once more. Suddenly the story of the Chilean miners floated past on my mind's marque. At first I was puzzled, then it hit me. The squirrels were miners indeed. I was filling each sandy tunnel with richer soil than they had excavated, thereby enriching the lawn. The "furry rats" provided were a free lawn service specializing in aeration.

Playing the revised squirrel saga in my brain,the veins went down in my neck and my hands ceased their death grip on the shovel handle. The squirrels were working for me not against me. My mind's "bad neighborhood" had gentrified.

Kaisin Gumbo

Kaisin is a Japanese term that I learned not in Tokyo but in Vermont. It means to take very small steps toward a goal. The theory is that most of the time, we try to take giant steps, make giant changes. When we do that, we upset that part of ourselves devoted to status quo. There is a startle reflex in all of us that becomes alert and anxious when we hit it with the big change. Kaisin is an end run around this reflex.It is an appreciation of the small change.

Last year I went into okra in a big way. I sent off to Seed Savers in Iowa,the great mother ship of all seed companies. I ordered okra seeds which were listed as Black Belt of Alabama,heirloom okra. I planted, mulched, watered, danced, fertilized and imagined the many pots of steaming gumbo I would enjoy.

I got two pods.

This year I planted six organic okra seeds and I got two pods, then two more, then two more. Not enough for a huge pot but enough to slice into a baggie and freeze two pods at a time. When the baggie filled, I made the gumbo. It was even better than I dreamed it would be.

A few pods, a few plants, a tiny harvest. Still, each bite keeps me mindful of the miracle that plants use sunlight to produce food. They can. We can't.

Collards, Yum

The old collard plant that I did not pull out has new leaves. I will pull ten of them tonight, roll them like a good Cuban cigar and julienne them to the texture of Easter grass. I will then chop and add a Granny Smith apple, grate a carrot,dump a handful of craisins and anoint it all with rice wine vinegar and roasted sesame oil.It will make a salad that everyone loves and everyone is SHOCKED when I tell them the ingredients. I call it the Governor's Collard Salad because the night I discovered it I was supposed to be dining with the Governor of Ga and instead was stomping down Peachtree Street looking for chicken soup for a sick spouse.

Ebb Tide

Occasionally the rain gods see fit to inundate the street by the garden. This only happens when the storm sewer doesn't work properly because folks have let trash flow into it. Styrofoam pellets are a huge culprit. They are usually born in Amazon.com boxes thoughtlessly thrown in the apartment garbage pile. When will they ever learn?

More Sweet Potatoes

More rubies under the vines. I made a cold, curried sweet potato soup that was pungent and redolent of New York. How incredible to eat food that is two minutes from the earth.
And now we've had the first rain after 32 days. Thank heavens I put the rye seed in today. As I pushed the seeder back and forth I thought of the first time I saw anyone plow a garden. It was Daddy Ralph plowing with a recalcitrant mule. DR was not a farm boy. He was a chemist and the mule knew it. Still, I remember the smell of the morning and I remember Mimi coming to get me so that I would not hear the interesting language DR was using with the mule.

No Bend Gardens for the Honorable Elders

Brad, the remarkable, built this one for me on the base of a neighbor's discarded table. The interior is three concrete mixing tubs from Lowes. Punch lots of holes in the bottom and they make elevated square foot gardens.

Manna Gardens

My latest passion is the MANNA garden. This is an acronym meaning Making Authentically Natural Nutrition Available. The garden itself is in a portable planting bag AKA Publix recycle grocery bag. I pulled out the piece of plastic in the bottom, turned it inside out, painted a catchy logo, filled it with great soil and planted. Granted, I will not be able to feed lots of folks, but it does provide excellent herbs and a cuke or two. One of my friends takes hers to work and puts it out on the hood of her car while she is inside making networks hum.

Manna was the Hebrew for WHAT? This was evidently the reaction the first Hebrew had to the flaky stuff they found on the ground during the Exodus. Manna was food for a day...one day. It rotted if you got greedy and tried to collect too much of it. Only on the eve preceding the Sabbath could one collect two days worth of it. The little Manna gardens are one day's worth of food...not even an entire day's worth. They are one or two bites of food. Still they serve a purpose. They keep me mindful of the miracle that is food production. Only plants---the original solar collectors...can photosynthesize. No human can. As Wendell Berry said, " Lots of us are not interested in GROWING food. All of us are interested in EATING it.

Vivi's You Tube Debut

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUOaAMcbm4M

I'm Not Stumped Yet

Because I begged, the city cut the giant oak to pedestal height rather than to stub. I put a giant container of ferns on it and a bobbing egret. Somehow I feel better because it is not so obviously decapitated. Also, the raw sawed off top somehow reminds me of the short story, " The Giving Tree" which I hated because it seemed to show that the results of a loving heart are destruction. The boy is sad and the tree gives itself to him as lumber. The boy sells the lumber and is still unsatisfied. The tree offers more. Finally, the boy grows up and is still unsatisfied as an adult. The tree has nothing else to give.

I think I fear that I will never be satisfied at least not with praise from the outside which I discount as " If they only knew." When am I satisfied? When I play with Ryn or when I cook a good breakfast for guests or when I finish an elder interview that seems to ring true...or when I turn an oak tree stump into something less horrific or when I plant a garden or a tree for my grandchildren.

Footnote. Keith Richards heard the melody line for " Satisfaction," one of the Rolling Stones great hits, in a dream.He said he used to sleep with a guitar and a tape recorder.

Green Thumbs Don't Cry

This is the tea house. It was in the shade of an ancient oak tree. Recently, the oak tree next to it was cut down. Lots of folks cried. The oak had stood through several hurricanes not to mention world wars. The oak was tall when Elvis was in town under the judges order to keep it clean. The oak stood through several hurricanes. Now it is a pedestal. Sadness.