04.06.10
Posted in gardening, hobbies, knitting and crocheting at 5:45 pm by Administrator
Hope everyone had a nice Resurrection Sunday. Ours was quiet except for a short-lived excitement created by a little rocking and rolling from the Baja earthquake. Thank God it was mild for us considering it was a 7.2 in Baja. It was a rolling kind of earthquake rather than the jolting shaking kind. And it was kinda long in duration as far as earthquakes go. Then today I just read that there was another earthquake in Sumatra. Oye, Haiti, Chile,Taiwan, Baja, now Sumatra. . . what is going on?
Other than that, things have been business as usual here in the Brown household. I continue to read books. I’m still reading Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Still want to blog about The Day We Lost the H-Bomb, but just haven’t gotten around to it, yet. Just picked up Sugar Fix at the library today. I also bought another book that I haven’t started reading yet called Nuclear Showdown, North Korea Takes on the World. Then some of the nice ladies in my knit group have been knitting scarves for a charity. The organization is called “Handmade Especially for You.” They supply handmade comfort scarves for these abused women. One of the ladies in my group has been knitting up a storm for this charity and has recruited a few of us by giving us yarn to knit, too, heheh. Apparently, Handmade Especially for You has donors who supply them with all sorts of yarn. They wind them up and make little kits, so that all you have to do is just knit up the ball of yarn until it’s all gone. And it goes really super fast, too, because the scarves are knit on “large” needles such as 15s or 17s. I didn’t pick out the yarns or colors. They do that for you, including the fluffy parts on both ends. I still need to tuck in the loose ends. Here are how the scarves turned out.
While I’m on the knit subject, I also finally learned how to do entrelac, so I can now tick that off of my list of things to learn. I’ve only made a small swatch as I’m not sure what to do with this stitch as of yet. I was originally gonna make a scarf with this stitch, but decided that I didn’t like how the back is not as presentable as the front, and I tend to like my scarves reversible. Plus the yarn I was using is self-striping, and I didn’t like how the colors were pooling. But here’s the swatch I made.
I think I’ll reserve this stitch for something that’s not reversible, or try to figure out how to alter the pattern so that it is somewhat reversible.
We also got a little more rain the other day! Yay! That always is good for the plants, which by the way, we have our first produce. . . artichokes!
We planted this artichoke plant last year, but didn’t get anything until this year. Plus during our winding spell this plant fell over on it’s side, and I was concerned that we had lost it. Brian just propped it right back up with some rope and viola! We now have artichoke!
My seeds were pathetic. . . and before I could replant, Brian came home with these!
I feel like I’m cheating getting them all started up like this, but oh well! If all goes well, they’re gonna be organic string beans!
Then something Matty ordered in the mail a while ago finally came. . . His paulownia tree.
We didn’t expect it to be so small! Ha ha! But Matty likes it just the same. I like how he and his dad have been working in the yard this year. When it gets cleaned up a bit more I’ll try to share some pictures of our herb garden. I’m hoping that we’ll get some fish back there, too, but we’ll see. It got kinda wild while we were away in the Philippines and it rained like cats and dogs. Boy, did the weeds grow up like they owned the place. We’re still trying to catch up with that between my regular house chores and hobbies. Hopefully soon we’ll have a handle on it.
As another nice garden surprise this year, it appears that one of our random seed planting bloomed into this.
I love poppies! Flowers do make me happy. This reminds me that once upon a time I wanted to try to plant edible flowers. Hmmm. Another thing to add on my list. . .
Okay, well I think I’ve rambled on long enough, so will start working on dinner now. Oh! Speaking of dinner, I should share some pics of Aaron’s lumpia wrappers. That little guy is such fun in the kitchen. He definitely encourages me to try new things. But I’ll have to share those pics later.
Marlakins
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10.14.09
Posted in food and restaurants, gardening at 3:26 pm by Administrator
We have RAIN! I can’t remember if it was last February or March since we last saw rain this year. Since then things here have been dry, dry, dry. Because of the drought, we have only been allowed to water the yards on Mondays and Thursdays after 4PM for 10 minutes. In addition to the dryness, So Cal has been weathering fires while other parts of the country have been cold and rainy. Even the Philippines was deluged with water while things dried up here. But yesterday morning a glorious thing happened here. Rain fell from the sky. . . Aaron and I even went out and walked in the rain. In the evening, I laid in bed and listened to the pitter patter of the rain. This morning it was still raining, and as I type this afternoon, I can hear the water continuing to fall.
Rain doesn’t show up so well in pictures, so I took a shot of the welcomed water on my rose vine. No roses this time of year, so the leaf will have to do. . .
No, that water is “not” from the hose, but from the sky! I am thankful for the rain, but also awed at its power. It can give life as well as death. The last I read there were about 600 deaths in the Philippines as a result of the storms that passed through there this past few weeks. Fortunately none of my family members living there were hurt. Yes, some experienced property damage, but at least they are all safe.
Days like these make me reflect on my life and how blessed I have been. For the most part of my life I have lived rather comfortably. While the floods in the Philippines got so high that people had to stand on their rooftops to get out of the water, this is the minor commotion we have here with the rain.
Part of our neighbor’s tree fell during the rain. It just happened this morning and already there are workers outside ready to clean it up. And I think of those in other parts of the world and how long it takes for assistance to get to them. It’s as if our lives are a luck of the draw. We don’t choose where we are born, but where we are born (and who our parents, family, and friends are) can greatly affect how comfortable our lives will be.
Even amidst our drought, we still have access to a lovely variety of organic produce. Here’s part of the nice produce I got at the farmer’s market. They had a much larger variety than I needed.
And interestingly, during the heavy fires when our weather got kinda hot and muggy the fruit in my parents’ backyard ripened quickly and we got to taste their first harvest of their sapodilla tree. My parents call it custard apple, which is a very fitting name because it tastes just like custard.
Also during this drought we managed to grow a little produce in our yard. Here are a few old pics I found in my camera, which were taken a few months ago when our first fruits were starting to come in. The first fruits are always a small batch. Here’s the first batch of crookneck squash. . .
A couple varieties of string beans.
A few varieties of chili peppers.
Our Mandarin orange tree is loading up with fruit. We also managed to grow a bunch of herbs this time around, but I’m too lazy to upload all those pictures. . .
The bottom line for me on this day of contemplation is that God continues to bless us and care for us. There’s so much more to be thankful for. Today it’s the rain as well as many other things. I think I’ll go and see what my boys are up to and enjoy their company for now.
Marlakins
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07.19.09
Posted in Uncategorized, gardening at 7:37 pm by Administrator
This year’s gardening endeavors have not gone as well as planned. We did get some string beans and squash, but between the water rationing and some animal that’ve taken residence in our backyard, our yield has been very modest. Instead, my attention has focused on mostly potted herbs. Today I was pleased to see that our potted herbs are thriving. I was especially glad to see that the cuttings and sprigs we obtained from the Venice Learning Garden have pretty much all taken root except one.
The Learning Garden is run completely on donations and volunteer time. The cool thing about this place is that they have a nice variety of plants from decorative plants to edible plants to medicinal plants, and even fruit trees.
Here’s a shot of their greenhouse.
And a view of one angle of their grounds.
The garden is a bit larger than what is shown here. Off to the left of this picture was the section for the cacti and succulents. I had to take a pic of this as it reminded me of a crab, heheh.
They had a variety of ornamental flowers. This is one tiny patch.
They had a nice variety of veggies like eggplant, tomatoes, squash, etc. Here’s a pic of some onions. I took this because I’m an onion lover and I’ve never grown these before so had no idea they looked like this as they grew.
For all I knew they grew like carrots, but these look like they’re clustered and half way out of the ground. I remember watching the movie “The Onion Field” years ago, and maybe this is what that field looked like.
They also had a section that grew herbs for teas.
I believe that plant that’s just behind the sign and the pole is white sage. When we sat in on the Chumash Indian herb meeting in Santa Monica we were told that white sage was the all-around herb for the Chumash. All of their herbal mixes includes white sage. So when we visited the Theodore Payne Foundation last month we picked up a white sage plant for our backyard. We figured it should be good because it’s both a native California plant which should grow well here in our drought-prone climate, and it is also a beneficial herbal.
There was also a section for Chinese medicinal herbs that is being cared for by students at the Emperor’s School of Herbs. Brian loves herbs and so he has a lot of books that speak of so many herbs used by the Chinese, the Indians, etc. so this was a treat to see the actual plants. For instance here’s a pic of the Chinese herb Niu Bang Zi.
While visiting garden we were lucky to have met a nice man and woman who were tending the garden. They were very knowledgeable, and fortunately for us, the woman thinned out some of the plants and allowed us to take some sprigs home! Here’s one that Brian is holding called Chinese Mugwort.
We really got lucky meeting her there because as she thinned out some of the plants, she gave us a nice little variety to take home such as comfrey, mugwort, ashwaganda, etc. We took them home in a cut out plastic water bottle and replanted them when we got home. Here’s what they looked like today.
The one pot on the far left doesn’t look like it’s gonna make it, but the others look pretty good! They’re already going on three weeks, so I think they’ve got a really good chance of surviving. I’m hoping we can get them nice and big like at the Learning Garden. Maybe in another month of so we can safely transplant these into the ground in the back. I really like the idea of growing our own fresh herbs. Aside from these I’ve also been nursing some other kitchen herbs (mint, basil, chives, etc.), some of which have surprised me a bit because they sprung up unexpectedly, ha! Maybe I’ll share that another time. Oh, and lastly, to round out the efficiency of the Learning Garden is their compost section. One can not only learn about gardening various plants, but also learn about vaious methods of composting.
I’m really glad to have visited the Venice Learning Garden. It’s great that there are some really knowledgeable people out there who are willing to share their knowledge and who are actively keeping all sorts of varieties of plants alive. Often we hear about the dangers of various animals going into extinction, but that can also happen to plant varities. So I’m always very happy to know of other gardeners who value the art of gardening. Plants help to clean up our environment, are pleasing to the eye, and important for the health our bodies.
Marlakins
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06.11.09
Posted in Uncategorized, gardening, hobbies at 10:00 pm by Administrator
Today was a long day. . . Still kinda gloomy weather, so that got me on a slow start. Just barely finished eating dinner since we didn’t get home until about 8-ish. One of the things we did today was visit the California Native Plant Nursery in Sun Valley. We learned about it from the Chumash Herbal Medicine meeting we attended last Tuesday night in Santa Monica. Will probably share a little about that later as they did give us a free book called Estanislao–Warrior, Man of God. According to the write-up, Estanislao may have been the inspriation for stories of Zorro. But more later after I read the book. . . For now, here are a few shots from the California Native Plant Nursery.
Shame on me, I don’t know what the name of this plant is, but I just thought it was beautiful. Another plant I think is beautiful is the California poppy shown below. Pictures just don’t do these flowers justice because they are so much more vibrant in real life.
They also had white poppies, which looked quite different from the California poppy and was much larger. It reminded me of the white and purple poppies we saw in Turkey that were being grown for medicinal purposes, although the flowers in Turkey were even bigger than these.
Obviously, the above is a close up of the white poppy. Below is a shot of what the whole plant looks, which is much larger than the California poppy.
And here’s a picture of how they collect some of the seeds. I thought this was interesting, since I had never thought of how they managed seed collecting. Apparently, they cover the seed pods with nylon or cheese cloth. This catches the seeds instead of just letting them fall down to the ground.
And finally, here’s one of the plants I got today. We actually purchased a few other types, but this one is for my little space in the backyard. Generally I like to just take cuttings from other plants, but since I’ve never seen this one before, I decided to fork out the money for it. Isn’t it funky? It’s a succulent, and it kind of looks like string beans, heheh. . .
The other thing we did today was continue with our drawings. Here’s a shot of Aaron and my drawings next to each other. Aaron’s is on the left, and mine is on the right.
Okay, so Aaron is proving to be the better artist between the two of us! I think his proportions are better than mine, and also his looks more “serious,” while mine looks kinda cartoon-ish, ha ha ha! Well, he used a “B” pencil, while I used a 4B. So I suppose that could make a difference with details, but that doesn’t explain his better proportions. So perhaps the next drawing I’ll try using a “B”, at least. Or perhaps I’ll used Kim’s suggestion and use the different pencils as needed? Sounds good to me. And if you’re reading this, Kim, thanks for explaining how to use the charcoal pencils. Makes plenty of sense, and hope to eventually try it once we get some practice in.
Anyway, here’s a close up of Aaron’s still life.
And don’t laugh, but here’s my “cartoon” version, ha ha ha. . . Something about it looks heavy-handed to me.
My 15-year-old son is out doing me in drawing. . . I’ll have to practice behind his back, heheheh, so I can catch up. . . Or better yet, maybe I should just peek over his shoulders when he’s drawing so I can learn from him. . .
Anyway, here’s another still life I drew yesterday. Aaron didn’t like this set up, so he quit drawing and I have only my picture here. He said he didn’t like the designs on the pottery. They were too distracting. I continued to draw, but realized he was right that the pottery designs distracted from practicing with shading. And so I stopped drawing after a while. Here’s how far I got on it.
And that’s it for now. The family is playing Apples to Apples, and I want to join in, so toodles for now!
Marlakins
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12.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized, gardening at 11:50 am by Administrator
Yesterday marked the winter solstice for 2008. So, apparently, yesterday was the shortest day of the year, and today starts the increase of daylight until the summer solstice where we will have our longest daylight of the year. The arrival of the winter solstice brought to mind our seeds because now that the days are starting to get longer again, we know that planting season is not far off. It’s raining and quite dreary here this AM in Los Angeles, so there won’t be any planting here today or likely for a few weeks time, yet, but the knowledge that planting season is approaching brings to mind freshness, growth, and healing. So today I look out at the dreary rain and feel happy that the rain is only helping to prepare our soil for it’s new harvest. In that spirit, I took a peek at our seed drawer this morning to make sure they were still there. . .
Brian suggested that we try to focus more on climbing plants this year since we have such little yard space. I definitely want to do the pole beans again as they were very good and very prolific.
I think seeds are fascinating because they’re generally very small, yet grow to amazing sized plants or even animals, for that matter (sperm and egg cells, and marrow can be looked at like seeds). To think about how small and tiny seeds can be it’s a wonder that they have all the genetic material to make up a whole plant, produce and all, which is essential to nourish and keep humans and animals alive. Seeds are truly one of God’s ingenious creations, and I think every child should experience the miracle of planting. Seeds not only grow and retain all that genetic information for all the various plants, but they also go dormant so that they can be stored for years and still grow into viable plants. I’ve read of wheat seeds being found in the tombs of some Egyptian mummies that were still viable. Seeds can be carried in the wind or washed to different shores and still grow. Like the sun and the rain, God lavishes us with seeds to feed and clothe us.
When I think of the gift of seeds that God gave to us, I can’t help but also think with disdain of corporations like Monsanto who seem to work tirelessly at modifying seeds. I think cross breeding seeds are fine, but I am against genetic engineering of seeds such as the controversial “terminator seeds” by Monsanto. Basically, terminator seeds will allow corporations to monopolize seeds, so that farmers would have to go to those corporations to “buy” seeds instead of collecting and saving their own seeds from previous crops. I think that is so wrong. Here’s a short paragraph from a link that explains it a tad:
“The patented technology enables a seed company to genetically alter seed so that the plants that grow from it are sterile; farmers cannot use their seeds. The patent is broad applying to plants and seeds of all species including both transgenic (genetically engineered) and conventionally-bred seeds. The developers of the new technology say that their technique to prevent seed-saving is still in the product development stage, and is now being tested on cotton and tobacco. They hope to have a product on the market sometime after the year 2000.”
I know that there are quite a few stories and articles on the terminator seed which did alarm me when I first read about it around 2000. The news did scare me into thinking that maybe I should be hoarding seeds! I’m happy to say that here we are in 2008, but we still have access to “normal” seeds. Then I think, would it even be possible that they could gain full control of all the world’s seeds? I think it would be a difficult task, but just the thought that there are those trying to do just that does make me uncomfortable. So I will continue to try to save viable seeds and hope many others will do the same.
In light of saving seeds, I was happy to come across an interesting article by Discover dated December 18, 2008. The article is titled, The “Doomsday Vault” Stores Seeds for an Agricultural Reboot. Apparently there is a “vault” on the archipelago in Norway, which store thousand upon thousands of seeds. Yeah, the Norwegians to the rescue! Such a relief to know that there are those out there who value the importance of our seeds. The article is short enough, so I figure I might as well post it here:
“On February 26, 2008, on a rocky seashore hundreds of miles north of the Arctic Circle, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opened for business, receiving its inaugural shipment of seeds from around the world. Nicknamed the Doomsday Vault, the structure is built on Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway, and is designed to preserve hundreds of thousands of seed types from across the globe. Created by the Norwegian government and funded by foundation donors, the vault is built to withstand centuries of climate change, natural disasters, and even a nuclear attack. Now locked in the chamber deep inside a frozen mountain are seeds contributed by more than 100 countries.
“The Svalbard site is a second line of defense, on top of individual nations’ agricultural seed banks. Altogether, these banks house millions of seeds of remarkable diversity—including about 200,000 types of wheat and 30,000 types of corn—and provide backup seeds after crop-destroying events like typhoons and mudslides. Even if a national bank is destroyed, the Svalbard vault assures that the plants will soldier on.”
Now I wonder how many people realize that there are about 200,000 types of wheat and 30,000 types of corn? Oye! I knew there are a lot, but didn’t realize there were that many.
So moving right along about seeds. . . I found this article interesting. “2,700-Hundred-Year-Old Marijuana Stash.” This blog has the complete article. In short, some cannabis was discovered in a burial site in China. Here’s the short of it:
“The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.”
Hmmm, 2,700 year-old pothead? What was it again that Soloman said? “There’s nothing new under the sun.”
Well, time to make myself useful around here. Enjoy your day. . .
Marlakins
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12.02.08
Posted in Uncategorized, gardening at 3:11 pm by Administrator
The other day I went out to my yard to pick some mandarin oranges and remembered how I told Patti that it was so nice that our mandarin tree and our orange tree are taking turns bearing fruit. We had just about run out of oranges when we noticed about a week afterward that the mandarin oranges were ripening. Then I realized that I forgot to post pics of our tree on my blog. So before the tree runs out of fruit again, here’s a pic of it.
It’s a little miniature tree, but it’s been bearing a decent yield of fruit already for the past month or so. I think my post listing strip on the right is blocking the little lettuce patch I have just to the right of the tree. But it’s still down there. Then off to the right of that is our nectarine tree, and then the miniature orange tree.
Here’s a pic of what the mandarin oranges looks like, which is actually rather nice I think from such a small tree. It’s juicy and sweet, ummm.
And here’s a pic of how our miniature orange tree is doing. There are some green oranges on there, but it looks like it’s still got a ways to go to ripen enough to eat.
In case it’s too hard to make out the green oranges on the tree, here’s a closer up shot.
And that’s about it for our gardening at this time. The weather has been cooling down a lot. We even got a pretty good downfall of rain on Thanksgiving evening and the following day. For now I’m just trying to clean up and keep up the area a bit until springtime when we start to plant more seeds. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, but there’s something about gardening that’s satisfying. It’s so nice to be able to pick something fresh off the tree or vine or bush. And it also reminds me of the kindness and generosity of God. One plant oftentimes yields so much produce! And then the number of seeds that spring from one plant for the next planting is amazing! They just keep multiplying many fold! We just needed to plant and tend the seeds. Planting and harvesting the seeds again for the next season was an inspiration to me when I was recovering from AA. I remember lamenting about how few stem cells I had in my marrow at the time. But then when I saw how many seeds came from “one” seed, I realized that our marrows are similar. “One” stem cell will divide, and the resultant cells will also continue to divide on and on, until we have enough. It’s the natural way of life that God made. He shows it to us in so many parts of nature. Reaping and sowing helped me to see that beauty and cleverness of God’s work.
Marlakins
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12.01.08
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Uncategorized, gardening at 12:27 pm by Administrator
Last night I was looking through a library book I checked out called, 200 Crochet Blocks for Blankets, Throws, and Afghans by Jan Eaton. I was really impressed with her presentation of squares and colors. One recommendation Eaton made that I liked is to find color inspiration from nature or works of art. How clever since I do believe that God is the master artist. There is so much creativity and variety in nature. So that reminded me of the pictures we took while in London last May. There was a park we visited that had a lovely garden with ponds and walkways and roses of all kinds. Of course I had to take as many pictures as I could as we were there when all the flowers looked to be in full bloom. How fortunate, I thought! Well, this AM, I decided that in light of the recommendation by Eaton to use nature as inspiration, I wanted to look at all those flowers I took. . . I was hit with a harsh reality this AM that when my computer crashed about a month or so ago, I LOST ALL THOSE FLOWER PICTURES!!! Arrrghh! Fortunately, I still had some pictures on my camera of other places we visited while in the UK, but alas, going through the pictures this AM I found that I had lost quite a bit of pictures, wah. Probably about 100 of them, double wah!!! Fortunately, I took over a 1000 shots during that trip, so I still have lots of pics by which to reminisce, but there were some really nice shots that I wish I had today. Shots of all those lovely flowers! I found that I also lost shots at the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, and the London Bridge. There was no picture taking allowed in the Jewel House or the Martin House, but I did have lots of pics in the Armoury House and of a street play that was going on at the time. I also lost pics of the outside of Westminster Abbey as they did not allow pictures inside the Abbey, but I was able to get some shots in the Cloister, which I now lost, too. Grrrr! Hmmm. Maybe I can bribe Brian to take me back again? Ha! What an excuse. . . I lost my pictures. . .
Okay, now that I’ve lamented long enough over those, at least I still have lots of other shots which I realized I still have some material to continue with my travelogue. Here’s a pic of the front of the British Museum.
Off to the left was a little Asian garden with a small walkway. I’m sitting on the short cement wall looking for I don’t know what now, ha! Must have been drugs as I remember being tired from walking so much that day!
The little Asian garden had some nice plants and stone carvings on display. But in light of my search for “nature inspirations,” I’ll share some pics of a couple plants that I thought were neat especially since they’re not the kinds I see every day, here. This shot is of the base of a Tibetan cherry tree. The color and look of the bark was really amazing.
Here’s the top view of the same tree.
I think that is definitely the first time I’ve ever seen this type of tree before. I’m always in awe with the variety God has created and no wonder there have been so many explorers!
Here’s a shot of a black bamboo plant.
I guess I’m showing my ignorance here, but I didn’t even know there were black bamboo plants until I saw these. I know that the Huntington Library here has a nice bamboo garden, I gee, I don’t remember seeing a black bamboo plant there? I think I’m gonna have to go back a see.
Now I’m gonna deviate from the “nature” topic and move inside of the British Museum. I really loved this museum as it literally had loads and loads of displays! Brian and I went back three times because we just couldn’t see everything in one day. And even then, we still didn’t see the whole museum! Which reminds me. . . I lost a lot of the pics I took inside this museum when my computer crashed, argh! Triple wah! There was so much great stuff in there including tablets that described a great flood, accounts that mentioned famous people like Hezekia. Egyptian mummies of all sorts, not only human mummies, but also of various animals that were buried along with the humans in their tombs. Relief carvings of Israel in exodus, etc. So I’m bummed to have lost all those. I managed to save some pics, tho. Here’s a shot with yours truly inside the British Museum on the center staircase looking upwards where the ceiling can be seen.
At the top of the stairs is a restaurant and a passage to get into the upper level of the museum. I wish I could share all those pics I took, but they really were too many, not to mention I lost most of them. . . Anyway, here is one display I managed to save, which I “think” is only on temporary display? It was a display on pharmaceutical drugs and the extent to which a single person will commonly be exposed to drugs throughout his/her lifetime.
The above is only part of the description, but here’s a shot of the pill table.
The displays on the sides documents a family from birth to older age. Here’s a shot of how a person is first introduced to drugs shortly after birth. The birth cert is shown on the right hand side.
I believe the injections are of Vit K and various vaccines and antibiotics for both baby and mom.
Then throughout life, we continue on taking an assortment of other drugs from aspirins, painkillers, sleeping pills, etc. and on till old age when pills continue to increase. I think one of the family members developed cancer, IIRC, so there were many more drugs involved with that person’s lifetime.
Anyway, so that was one display of the many, many displays in the British Museum. If anyone decides to visit London, I think the British Museum is a must see. To top it off, it’s free! They even have the Rosetta Stone on display there, which I think I lost. . . I really would like to go again some day.
Well, better run for now. Since I lost so much of the nature pics from our trip, I think I will try to find some local nature and maybe share those pics for art inspiration. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can’t find some other pics from other trips.
Marlakins
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11.06.08
Posted in Uncategorized, gardening at 7:37 pm by Administrator
Because I like the idea of self-sufficiency and fresh organic produce, Brian and I have had a interest in planting. We are by no means the greatest gardeners, but we are trying and have at least dabbled in a good variety of roots, veggies, and herbs. There’s no better way to know that your fruits and veggies are organic and fresh, than just growing them yourself. However, I do tend to peter out and get distracted with other things, which results in the garden getting neglected, sigh. But I find that when I see other people’s gardens and hear about their wonderful harvests, it encourages me to work on our own garden.
The fall has rolled around here and our growing season has slowed dramatically. However, in Australia my friend, Helen, has started up her garden and sent me a couple pics of it just the other day. I’ve attached them below. Generally when it gets cold here in Calif, it gets nice and warm there in Australia, so she only recently started her garden for the year. I recall a couple years ago she had a nice row of cabbages, and I think, a bumper crop of zucchini that she shared with her neighbor. I believe her garden consisted of a lot more items, but I can’t recall them at this time. This year she’s got these going. . .
I hope I’m attaching the right comments for the right picture, but this is what Helen sent to itemize her plants starting with the top picture and continuing with the bottom picture for the root veggies. “Clockwise from left: parsley, snow peas, sliver beet (at the back), beetroot, red mustard, onions. They only look small but we’ve already used onions, sliver beet, snow peas, and little beetroots!!”
Yes, I think I recognize the beetroot on the far right with the red stalks as well as the onions. I’ve never tried growing my own beets, yet, but I have grown some onions. I love baked beets, so I think I’d like to try growing some of those.
Thanks again, Helen! Your garden looks lovely! I want to keep the fire going for planting. Maybe if I do it long enough it’ll eventually become second nature to me. Your gardening will help to keep me dreaming of gardening, heheh. We’re trying to clear more room in our backyard for more veggie gardening space when the spring season gets closer. And we already have seeds ready for planting. Hopefully, I’ll have some nice produce pics to put up then.
Marlakins 
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08.17.08
Posted in Uncategorized, cooking, gardening at 8:38 pm by Administrator
Patti’s descriptions of her bountiful garden this year has inspired me to share a bit of our bounty. Brian’s actually the green thumb around here, and I’m just his side kick who enjoys the spoils. Unlike Patti, who has a nice large yard, we have a small yard, which doesn’t have full sunlight in much of the area, so we have only a small section good for planting. This year we tried a couple crops that we have never grown before–summer squash and green beans. Here’s a picture of our little veggie patch.
The summer squash is in the front with the large leaves. Behind them growing on vines is the green beans. Behind the green beans is our nectarine tree, and on the right of that is our miniature orange tree.
The squash have actually started growing in rather nicely, but can’t be easily seen unless you peer in between the leaves. Here’s a pic looking in between the leaves.
Early last week we started to harvest some of the squash. Here’s a pic of Brian holding some of them. I like to take a pic of them in his hands to help with size reference. Besides, he’s very happy when he harvests anything he’s grown, so he’s more than happy to show these off, heheh.
We started to get more than we could eat in one day. And after a while, it gets to be a bit much to have squash every day, ha! Here’s another batch we collected.
So what to do with all the extras? After all there are still more outside ready for picking each day, ack! Well, Brian decided to dehydrate some for later use in soups and such. So he stuck them in our Excalibur dehydrator and this is what resulted.
It turned out that he set the dehydrator a little high, so these came out rather crispy. When we tasted them we realized that they tasted a bit like sweet potato chip, and so now the bottle is almost empty, ha!
So moving right along to our green beans. I call them string beans, the seed package called them Bean Pole Blue Lake. The back of the package writes:
“Some say pole beans have better flavor than bush beans. If this is so, Blue Lake would support that suggestion. Outstanding flavor combined with high yields make growing these vigorous 5′to 6′ vines worth the time. Excellent canned, frozen, or eaten fresh. White seeded. Mosaic resistant. See inside for instructions on how to build a bean teepee.”
Okay, so today, we got a chance to give that description a taste test. And yes, they are yummy! Here’s a closeup of the vine before we picked the string beans off. I circled the beans because they’re kinda hard to see otherwise.
And here’s a closer up shot.
And another shot with the green beans in Brian’s hand for size reference.
Here’s a pic of our arugula patch. We actually planted this a few years ago, and each year it just comes up vigorously on its own. We actually have to thin it out, ack! This year it gave us so many seeds that they were falling in between our backyard bricks and started growing in between our bricks! Yikes!
And then we also got some bananas this year. These are the types of bananas that are cooked. Here’s a pic of Aaron, my 14-year-old, holding one stalk. It actually had three tiers originally, but I cut off the top tier and gave it to my mom when they were visiting. It is also a bit green in this pic, but the tree was getting a bit unruly, so Brian trimmed it back. But it’s okay, tho, as all we have to do is wait for it to ripen.
Brian has found that these bananas actually taste fine eaten raw, but ordinarily we have been cooking them. The above bananas did eventually ripen. Here’s what they looked like fried. For those who are familiar with foods from tropical climates, bananas like these are commonly eaten with sugar sprinkled on top or some other sweet syrup as a desert or snack. There are lots of different kinds of bananas, i.e. red bananas, green bananas, finger bananas, bananas you can fry, bananas that can be eaten raw, etc.
And here’s what they look like when they’re boiled.
Okay, I’d better quit with the pics for now before my blog goes on strike again, ha!
Toodles for now!
Marlakins
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