Growing Amaryllis Bulbs for the Holidays

Please enjoy my latest article on how to grow amaryllis bulbs: Growing Amaryllis Bulbs for the Holidays

Last year I had beautiful flowers in the office...this reminds me to go shopping for bulbs this weekend!

Sweet Potato Check

I follow a gardening column by local writer Edwina Covington in our newspaper, the Farmville Herald.  
Edwina wrote a few weeks ago about harvesting sweet potatoes, and how this was the right time of year to get that 'tater crop in. I was in a bit of a panic since we were leaving; would my sweet potatoes be all right? I had to leave them. No time to harvest them.  This is my first year and I don't know what I'm doing, frankly.  I'm a "trial and error" type of gardener; I plant things, fuss with them, let nature takes its course, and then figure out what worked and what didn't.  Since this is my first year growing sweet potatoes, I've been trying to learn from the locals what to do and when to do it. The vines look great, but what's happening under the soil?

Mr. Hoffman, the retired chemistry teacher who lived next door to me when I was growing up and who 'farmed' on his little lot and a half in our suburban/urban area taught me to use test patches in the vegetable garden.  If you don't know what you're doing, or whether or not a vegetable will grow well, he'd say, try a little bit in a corner of the garden and see what happens.  Well, I sowed two sweet potato plants in the beet and onion bed, and those were my test taters. The big 16 x 16 bed is overflowing with sweet potato vines (and weeds - I am growing a great crop of weeds), but I left those alone and dug up the remaining beets and the test sweet potatoes.

The picture here shows the babies. They are like 'fingerling' potatoes at this stage, about the length and width of the pointer finger on your hand.  I'm guessing that the drought this year has slowed down their growth. I'm going to leave them alone at least until the end of October....if a frost is predicted, I may need to dig them up, but looking at them they need at least another month. And rain!  It's supposed to be rainy for the next several days. I just get the feeling from looking at them that they need abundant rainfall for that last big growth spurt.

Maybe they'll be ready in time for Thanksgiving dinner in November?

No Place Like Home

Hiking in Tennessee

There's no place like home! That's what I said when I walked around my house this morning, back from a trip. We took some vacation time and handled a few business meetings.

We rented a house in Tennessee, near the mountains, and packed up both pets and family and took two cars.  On the way to Tennessee, we drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway. I'd forgotten how beautiful that part of Virginia is...and the trees were just starting to turn gorgeous fall colors.






 

Bridge in the Blue Ridge Mountains

 

Pierre travels in style

Pierre was a trooper, and the cat traveled in style in a large soft-sided dog crate that sort of folded into the well between the front seat of the car and the back seat. It made a hammock for his rolly-polly self, and with my old pink afghan on the bottom of the crate, he had a snuggly little place to hide for the duration of the car trip. Once inside the rental cabin, he was nervous for only about two hours, then he began exploring. Soon he was enjoying the mountain view from the bedroom, where we had floor to ceiling windows, and he could be safely contained.  One opinion Pierre and I shared; we did not like all the taxidermy animals in the cabin!  The cabin was rustic, and had deer heads mounted everywhere, as well as a stuffed fox and squirrel on top of the kitchen cabinets. The first few days, neither pet noticed all the stuffed wildlife....then Pierre spotted the deer head over the couch. Oh boy. It was like World War II broke out, with a hissing, spitting, stalking gray cat after...a deer head.  He'd race around the living room, hiding behind the couches, then leaping and hissing at the head mounted over the top of the couch.  Shadow took a dislike to the fox perched over the kitchen cabinet.  Every time I went to get a dish out of the cabinet, she'd throw herself between me and the counter, barking and growling.  Finally she realized that I wasn't under attack from a stray dog and just chuffed and growled at the thing.  Shudder.  I really, really dislike dead wildlife stuffed for art...yuck.  But heck, it wasn't my cabin, and it was a really lovely rental.  It had all the comforts of home, and even a dog run outside for Shadow!

Waterfall, Blue Ridge Mts

I won't go into all the details of the fun parts, but suffice to say that I learned I can still bike about 12 miles on a trail and enjoy it; hiked to a waterfall (7 miles round trip), and walked 15 miles in one day on another trail. The rest of the trip was car rides and business stuff, which you aren't interested in anyway.  I did do a lot of garden visits and took notes and have a list a mile long of ideas from all the gardens I saw!


I'll share the Gentry Creek Falls Trail stories another day.  For now, I've got to get back to work, but I thought you might enjoy seeing your humble correspondent and her hiking pal, Shadow.  Pierre, alas, does not hike.  Shadow enjoys wearing her pink bandana to match my pink t shirt.






Glad to be home.  My garden looks like it was solar baked without watering. I have nothing to enter the country fair, since all my zinnias died (sniff) but will help my neighbor bring her canned goods to the fair this weekend.  Lots of fall fun in the works here in the countryside!

Hiking, Blue Ridge Mts

Late Season Harvest

Nice blossom end rot!

The vegetable garden is just about finished. This year I won't get those wonderful late season peppers that led to my first forays into canning last year; the pickled peppers were so scrumptious we ate just about every single one by December. This year, my peppers are tiny knots of things, half of them rotten before they fall to the ground. I had to buy two giant peppers at the market to make stuffed peppers last week. And I actually planted twice as many plants this year!  The drought and heat really took their toll on everything. Even though the drought is ended now, and we've had some lovely mild falls day and cool nights, the garden doesn't have sufficient time to recover.

So I am gearing up now for the last of the fall harvest. The watermelons never attained the giant size the seed package predicted, but they are sweet, albeit watermelons with the most seeds ever. I have never seen so many seeds in one fruit! It's like the entire melon is one big seed!

The main harvest even this month will be the sweet potatoes. A neighbor who visited a few weeks ago and who grows potatoes commercially here took one look at my sweet potatoes and congratulated me. If the foliage is any indication, I should get a bumper crop. I can't wait! I have another week to go, and then I will tentatively dig up a row by hand and see how advanced they are. If the tubers are large enough, my neighbor has instructed me on the fine art of 'curing' sweet potatoes. She told me that her grandfather had a special shack out back that he kept warm with a wood fire. Sweet potatoes were placed on cloths on the ground or newspaper and cured in the hot, dry conditions.  Since I don't have the wherewithal to build a replica of her grandpa's shack, and she hasn't built one on her new farm either, I'm following her second-best set of instructions. Lay newspapers on the floor of the garden she and the garage and just place the sweet potatoes there for a week or two. Then layer them in boxes or baskets and store in the basement.  In the meantime, there are the last of the tomatoes to pick and one or two stray beets.

Now the big question remains: should I enter the five county fair?  It starts on September 24, and my friend Patty urges me to just try....enter some herbs, or flowers or what not.  I brought  out my mother's cake recipe called the Gunkehupft and I can guarantee that no one at the fair will make this buttery pound cake!  It takes an entire pound of butter (no, this recipe isn't for those watching their cholesterol) and it's a miracle if I can get the entire ring out of the Turk's head mold without cracking it but.....I may just have a chance.....or I may enter my patented killer double-double chocolate fudge chunk cookies. I mean, who doesn't like chocolate and fudge chunks? Or cookies?

I Remember

A friend mentioned on her Facebook page that the sky this week has been "September 11 Blue". I felt one of those momentary jolts of consciousness, when thoughts connect with another person's thoughts without warning. Do more people think of that color of the sky as September 11 blue? I remember sitting on the Long Island Rail Road train as it approached the East Side Tunnel at 8:40 a.m.  Lower Manhattan was outlined in silver against the blue sky. Not a cloud in the sky.  I looked with pleasure at lower Manhattan...and I had no idea that several hours later, I would be on a similar train handing tissues to a woman covered in debris weeping quietly in the back of the car, turning around to see the smoking ruins turning the sky gray.

My own September 11 story was published last year. I'm not going to repeat it.  We remember where we were on days like this. I used to wonder at my parents when they said things like, "I remember where I was the day JFK was shot."  My dad remembered with crystal clarity the moment when the news of Pearl Harbor came over the radio; he was laying on his living room floor, listening to his favorite program on the radio, and he remembers the instant he realized what had truly happened.

I can't put my finger on how I feel this year. I sat up last night watching a special on September 11. On the one hand, it brought back memories - way too many.  I felt like I was right back in my office on the 9th floor with the awful orange shag carpet and the wonderful view of the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. I used to stand at the windows in the fall and watch men unload trucks unload of costumes for the season's ballets and operas.  I felt as if I were standing there watching the exhausted walking northward from lower Manhattan, or the endless fire trucks and military vehicles travel south.

I remember the sound of the church bells in Manhattan tolling, one peal for each person who died.

At St. Paul the Apostle Church near where I used to work, the September 11 service included volunteers going up to the podium and reading the names of the dead. They rang the church bell once for each person who had died.  It took over an hour, maybe an hour and a half or two hours, to get through the list.

I remember the people left behind today. I keep thinking about Tommy. Tommy was my friend Sue's date for our senior prom, a boy she'd grown up with in Queens - not a boyfriend, but a good friend of her older brother, a boy she considered like a cousin or another brother. Tommy's mother worked in the trade towers and they assume she died when the first plane hit.  Her office was on the floor that received a direct hit.  I keep hearing Sue tell me, "He pictures his mom at her desk. She used to go down to the cart on the street each morning around 8:30 and buy a bagel and a coffee, and take it back to her desk.  He imagines her at the desk, just sitting there eating her breakfast and not knowing what happened."

I remember stories told to me by a friend who was leaving a meeting at the Department of Education when the plane hit the Pentagon. His back was turned; he felt the impact, saw people running, and then realized with cold shock, "Oh my gosh. The Pentagon is on fire."

I remember the stained glass window, fitted to one of the older altars at St. Francis of Assisi Church on west 31st street, that showed the firefighters and the twin towers.

I remember friends who developed thyroid, lung and breathing problems after volunteering at Ground Zero. They helped at the morgue, they helped search the rubble.  Many of them developed health problems and quietly got treatment for them.  They don't talk about what caused it.  They just go on.

That is what I feel like today - we need to go on.  We need to pause, and remember, but we need to move on. The gaping hole at Ground Zero needs filling.  The gaping hole in our hearts needs healing. 

I wish I were back in New York City this weekend. I am glad I am here at home in Virginia.

Slayer of Serpents

So we've had an unusual fall. First, the mice are back. Pierre was on patrol the other night and sure enough, we heard the scurrying tread of mus musculus (that's a mouse to you and me) in the laundry room.  He managed to chase it into the kitchen, where it had nowhere to hide from the plastic container we used to scoop it up.  I was delegated the mouse catch and release person, so off into the woods I trudged in the wee hours of the morning to release my stunned visitor. Pierre sat in the window all twitchy-tailed and jittery. I got such a glare from his golden green eyes when I returned to the kitchen.  He kept sniffing the now empty plastic container, clearly miffed that I'd stolen his prize.

We thought nothing then the next evening when Pierre didn't make an appearance for his evening repast or his nightly round-up of stuffed bird toys, which he loves to carry upstairs and deposit in a line leading from our bedroom door to the bathroom. I thought for sure he'd found another autumnal visitors and I'd spend another evening futilely chasing a frightened critter with an old plastic ice cream container.  I went down the basement steps to clean out his litter box the next morning, thinking nothing of it, flipped on the light, and stopped short.

There was a SNAKE curled upon the basement floor.

Pierre shot out from under the basement stairs with glee, circling the snake and making high, trilling cries of excitement. I called for Hubby and yelled "There's a snake in the basement!" Both Hubby and my father in law came on the run.  My second yell was "Pierre - NO!" as the cat ran right towards it.

I had no idea if the snake was alive or dead, poisonous or not. At least it was small. It was less than a foot long and about the thickness of a clothesline.

Pierre ran up and poked it with a paw, and by that time I realized it must be dead.  We hurried downstairs and out came the trusty plastic container. First a mouse scoop; now a snake catcher.

We took the picture above of the snake outside to try to identify it. I don't see a photo of this exact pattern on the Virginia department of fish and wildlife site, but it looks most like a rat snake, a very young one, and friends agree. We found fang marks on its back, the same size and width as Pierre makes on his stuffed bird toys, so Pierre has a new nickname: Slayer of Serpents.

So what does the slayer of serpents do on his day off?

Snooze, of course.

There is NEVER a dull moment around here.

Chrysanthemums and Pumpkins

Yesterday I stopped at Kroger, the local supermarket.  The benches outside the store that held pots of impatiens only a few weeks ago were now groaning under the weight of huge pumpkins. Today my husband brought me the Lowe's circular, and mums are on sale.  And need I remind you that the calendar page turned again today to September 1?

It's fall, all right.



Okay, so we have - technically at least - a few more weeks until the 'official' start of fall. I for one am looking forward to cool weather, long hikes in the mountains, and football season.  Thank God for football season. It makes up for baseball season (sorry, all you baseball fans, but football is my thing).

Fall also brings chrysanthemums. I've only planted a handful here since deer love mums. It's like deer candy. My friend Mary Alice once told me a funny story. She'd spent the afternoon planting yellow chrysanthemums along the walkway leading up to her kitchen door.  She went into the house and started cooking dinner. When she glanced out the window half an hour later...every single mum flower was gone!  She spotted a deer at the end of the line of flowers she'd just planted.  The deer had eaten off every single flower!

Yes, deer will do that. Still, I can't resist chrysanthemums. When I was a little girl, my dad grew mums as part of the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society.  Each spring the box from Kings Nursery would arrive and he would painstakingly start each cutting, then transfer it into the special garden bed.  Next, my sister Ann would sew a shade cloth - a big black cloth - that fit over a wooden frame.  Dad would shade the mums or put the cloth on to exactly time the blooms. Closer to the fall show date, the shade cloth would come off and plastic sheets would replace the shade cloth to shelter the blossoms from wind and rain.  The Friday of the show he would get a big flat florist box from the Covert Avenue florist, and then he would snip each flower and pack it in tissue paper. We would drive with this gigantic box tied to the roof of the car to the show, which was held at Farmingdale College, in the big round auditorium.  Then the flowers would each get an old fashioned glass milk bottle filled with water and a green card with their information on it. I would help my dad carry the bottles out to the judging tables.  Flowers were judged against each other in special categories. My favorite category was the one in which big floral arrangements and tables were set with fine china as if expecting company. The horticultural students at the college would come in with crates of gorgeous china, silverware, and these enormous themed arrangements...and it was like a giant party was about to begin, and I was the only guest.

My dad won many trophies, which my mom had engraved.  One year my brother had a caricature drawn of my dad and there he was in the cartoon, holding a mum in one hand and a silver trophy in another.

Mums always remind me of fall, and my dad. No matter how hot it is outside, when the mums and pumpkins hit the store shelves, you know it's fall!