Halloween Memories

I don't think I'll be spending much time online this weekend, so today's post - albeit a few days ahead of time - are a few stories from Halloweens past.

I loved Halloween as a child, and my older sister Ann shared my obsession. I don't remember how we ever came up with the idea of a Halloween party, but the first party was held while I was in third grade. The Halloween of third grade remains bright and clear in my memory. Mrs. Ruisi gave us mimeographed sheets to color with Halloween pictures on them, those purple dittos the teachers ran off in the teacher's lounge, where the ink perfumed the air with a heavy chemical scent I can smell to this day as the machine overheated from all the copying.  I can still see my sheet; I colored it and hung it next to my bed. I had the lower bunk on our bunk beds and I loved to hang pictures next to my bed, mostly horses of course, but I'd also hang up Christmas things from school and Halloween things, and I can still see in my mind's eye the witch, the pumpkin, the moon.

Somehow Ann and I concocted the idea of a Halloween party.  My sister Ann is 6 years older than I am, so she was no more than 15 or 16 years old at the time.  My parents did not pay for our party either - we did! Ann did, actually.  I cannot tell you how grateful I am to my sister for all that she did to make bits of my childhood bright. The Halloween parties were one such memory.

Weeks in advance, I sat on the floor of our basement playroom, watching old Andy Giffith reruns on the black and white television set in the wall and making construction paper chains. Do you remember construction paper chains? You'd cut out strips and glue together circles to make links in a chain.  I worked weeks on the black and orange chain that festooned the ceiling.

We walked to Grand Value, the five and dime store up the block, and bought cheap paper decorations, plates and cups, and junk food.  We planned games:  pin the tail on the donkey, limbo contests using an old broom handle as the limbo bar, musical chairs, dunking for apples.

Planning took weeks.  Our basement playroom had to be cleaned from top to bottom, which for a child of 10 took a lot of work.  Remember that my mom was sick by then and could not help; it was me and Ann doing all the work.  But it was fun.  We were throwing a party!

We even made "shrunken heads" that were creepy and scary all in one.  How do you make one? Apples. All I remember is peeling and carving an apple, or doing something like that, and putting it on the old-fashioned oil burner in the basement to dry. They'd dry with these puckered, nasty little faces, and we'd put a string on them and hang them up.  They'd smell okay for a few days but then....

The highlight of the party was the pinata.  Ann blew up a balloon and fashioned paper mache strips of newspaper around the balloon.  When it was dry, she popped the balloon, leaving a round shell which she decorated with orange crepe paper.  Black noses, mouth and eyes and a green top made a great pumpkin pinata.  I bought candy at Grand Value and Shannon's candy store and we filled it to the brim. It was so heavy my dad had to help us put a hook in a major beam in the basement ceiling.  We made it too heavy that first year and nobody could break it with the stick; we resorted to taking it down and letting everyone take a whack at it with the broom.

What a great party it was!  Our Halloween party became a yearly tradition, which I carried on until 9th grade, the last party.  By then, I felt uneasy about the party.  Was it too babyish?  Should I invite boys? 10th, 11th and 12th grade found us enjoying Halloween, our close set of friend from high school, at Jen's house or Danny's house, playing Uno, watching scary movies, and stuffing ourselves with junk food, but I never forgot those Halloween parties past. 

Thankfully I went to Catholic school back then, and the day after Halloween was All Saint's Day - a holiday, with no school. So the party was always held on Halloween itself, with the day after devoted to cleaning up the carnage.

What times we had. I think back now and marvel at how we, two kids with limited pocket money, pulled off a party that was such good fun.  Would kids today do this? Would their friends expect fancy bouncy castles and party favors, or would they be happy with homemade pinatas and dunking for apples?

My sister Ann continues her Halloween madness now as an adult. She and her husband Tom deck out their house with amazing special effects and more.  And I think she makes Halloween extra special for her children.  After all, she got lots of practice with me!



Happy Halloween!

Fall Color on the Farm

Early this morning I was chatting was a pal and she mentioned she would love to see our tree farm.  Then a short while later, a friend who lives in southern Florida emailed me, bemoaning the lack of seasonal color in her area.  So I got the bright idea to capture "fall on the farm" here.  What does fall look like on a timber farm? Well since most of the trees we grow are pine - they don't change color! But the understory trees are another story altogether....

View looking east from the driveway - the bits of white are the supports for the fruit trees. The orchard is to the left.

Woods

Sumac explodes with color

Not much is blooming in the flower garden, but the background trees add color!

Little Ottie Cline Powell

Yesterday we laced up our hiking boots, drove to the Blue Ridge Parkway, and hiked to the summit of Bluff Mountain. It was a strenuous hike up a steep mountain, with leaf-covered scree and tumbling cliffs making it especially slow-going. Shadow was a trooper and her four-paw drive helped steady me on the other end of her leash as she led the way. I felt like there wasn't enough oxygen left on the planet to satisfy my lungs. It was like hiking two hours up the steepest flight of stairs you could imagine. Why do hiking packs get heavier as you go along, even when you're drinking water from your water bottle and thereby supposedly lightening the load?

Up through mostly bare forest, past groves of wild laurel and maples we hiked until the rough trail opened onto a sun- dappled meadow.  There we stood on the summit of Bluff Mountain.  The cement pylons from an old fire tower were still visible, so I sat down to catch my breath while John poked around looking for a marker or something to tell us what gorgeous valley we were looking at.  The rolling valley and tiny houses looked like a model train set, with each white house and farm a tiny model on a scale map of a valley.  The wind blew softly through the trees and golden leaves shimmered on the mountain slopes.

We weren't sure if we had made it to the summit of Bluff Mountain or its neighbor, Punchbowl Mountain, so we set off to look around the cement pylons for a U.S. Geological Survey marker.  They usually tell you where you are plus include the summit height.  As we poked around the underbrush, I came across what I first took to be a grave stone - then realized it was a memorial marker to a little boy, Ottie Cline Powell.

Off to the side of the meadow, under a scrubby tree as the trail picked up again in the forest was a low stone marker with a bronze plaque on it.  Someone had left a small toy car on it and there were smooth, tumbled pebbles left as mementos (see Blue Ridge County's article detailing the story. The fully story of Ottie's disappearance is told very well in the article.  Wikipedia also has an entry about the event).

The plaque said that little Ottie Cline Powell, aged 4, had wandered away from his school building in November 1891 and his body was found on this spot in April - 7 miles away from the school building.

How had a four year old child wandered up a mountain that we had found so difficult to climb? What had drawn him away from his school? How had he died? My heart just broke thinking about how frightened he must have been as he lay down under the tree where he died. 

When I got home, I searched online and found the story.  Apparently, little Ottie was at school that cold November day. A storm was brewing and the teacher in the one room school building asked the children to gather firewood at recess, something they did frequently. When she called the children back to the building, Ottie was missing. She immediately sent the children home to fetch their parents and the community began a search, spreading out in circles from the school.  Ottie was not to be found.  The community searched until snow made it impossible to keep combing the mountains for the boy.  His distraught parents put up posters as far away as Lynchburg offering a reward for his return but no clues - not a single one - turned up.

Then the following spring, in early April, a party of hunters found the remains on top of the mountain.  Evidence suggested that Ottie had made it to the summit the same day he disappeared for he still had chestnuts in his stomach - the snack he had eaten at school.  The night he disappeared, an ice storm hit the mountain, and the assumption is that he died of exposure the same night.

While I could not find any evidence that Ottie's ghost haunts the mountain, I will tell you that there was a sense of lingering sadness up there, perhaps enhanced by the toys left on the old marker.  It was a good hike, but I wish I'd brought a little flower or something to put by Ottie's marker. I still couldn't shake the feeling that somehow he lingers on the mountain, a wisp of sadness in the wind.

Frugal Gardener Strikes Again: Bulb Sale

 After Mass I headed to Walmart yesterday to pick up a few necessities - cat litter, apples, lettuce, you know the drill. There's always something running out or about to run out in any home.  On a hunch, I meandered into the garden center area. It was a mess. They were unpacking Christmas ornaments and artificial trees, lights and garland.  Walmart employees in blue smocks scurried hither and yon with price guns in hand like they were about to have a shoot out at the OK Corral.  Lots of shouting and bubble wrap flying.

And there at the end of an aisle...bulbs.  Spring bulbs.  With 50% off stickers on them and a huge sign that read: All Bulbs. Clearance.  $2.50



Wait, that can't be right....it was right Quick as a wink,  your frugal gardening friend snapped up four bags of bulbs.  One bag of Apricot Impression tulips, two of mixed dutch iris, and one bag of crocus bulbs. Something like 105 spring flowers for about $10.  It doesn't get any better than that. It can get a tad bit cheaper - I've hit sales at the dollar store like this, but nothing at Walmart or Lowes this cheap.

I spent Saturday weeding, thinking we were going to work on the flower garden paths. No dice.  I worked for five hours hauling up the amazingly resilient weeds that grew up around the pile of slates we'd had delivered over a year ago.  There are now sapling trees there - sumacs and a loblolly pine.  I'm going to need helping getting those out and reclaiming the area.

My hard work paid off, however, since Sunday's find at Walmart needed a home.  Now I have two new spots of color to anticipate in the spring.  The best part is that we planted bulbs that bloom early (crocus), mid (iris), and late (Darwin hybrid tulilps), so I will have continuous blossoms starting in late March, God willing, all the way through May.

That is, if the deer don't eat the tulip flowers, the rabbits and squirrels don't get the bulbs, and it doesn't snow like it did last year, covering the lot of 'em...

 We also ordered 200 more daffodil bulbs for the orchard.  They should arrive this week.  Last year we planted a little over 430 in the orchard, a mixture of daffodils, narcissus and crocus.  This year we focused solely on daffodils; given the space to cover, they gave the best show in the spring, and although deer nibbled on them, they mostly left them alone.

I love planting spring bulbs. They give me a much needed boost of color after long cold winters. There's joy in them. It's like planting a time capsule, or perhaps a little present marked "Open when the robins arrive."

The Gardening Library

You may be surprised to learn that I have few gardening books in my home library.  The ones I do have tend to be reference books: an Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs, a pictorial encyclopedia of Annuals and Perennials, a reference guide to iris and roses.  I also have a battered, stained copy of Crockett's Victory Garden, my dad's gardening bible. He used to read it in the bathtub, fall asleep, and drop it in the water. I'd find it spread out on the furnace in the basement to dry.  My copy has wavy, water stained pages.  I have a few organic growing manuals, mostly for commercial farmers, and books like Clara's Kitchen and Five Acres and Independence, two books on self sufficiency that I love. 

Recently, however, I've been hankering for some good gardening books.  This Friday marked the town of Pamplin's first library book sale. I love library book sales! In Floral Park, the annual library sale was one of the highlights of the year for me.  I'd find many of my favorite horse books, for instance, now retired from the library shelves and offered for sale; for a quarter (hardcover) and a dime (paperback) I'd pedal home with a bicycle basket filled with books.

Pamplin's town library is located in an old train station depot, and half of the building was open to the sale. Picture a train station straight out of the turn of the last century, complete with an old rusty pot bellied stove in the corner, brick walls, and sanded wide plank floors.

We found reference books for our respective writing, and then I pounced on some gardening books. I came home with a new encyclopedia of flowering houseplants, a large volume on vegetable gardening, and a really interesting book chronicling the lifecycle of flora and fauna on a farm.  The author's purpose  is to encourage people to learn the plants, animals and natural cycles on their own farms.  Now that's someone whose book I will enjoy.

There's nothing like a library book sale to find new treasures. Some people do not enjoy used books, but half the fun is opening them and finding mysteries inside.  For instance, the previous owner of the houseplant -encyclopedia must have had many problems with her plants, for typed on some yellowing 1970's style stationery was a log of her house plant's health, what she did to rescue it, and the results. Unfortunately, the results trail off in February, so I can't tell you whether her log abruptly stopped because her plant recovered or if it ended up on the compost pile.

Five Frequently Asked Questions About Growing Tulips

It's that time of year when gardeners everywhere plant tulips. After having worked the reception desk for a large garden center for a while, I know that people have questions - lots of questions! - about growing tulips. Please enjoy my latest article for Suite 101 by clicking the link below to read the five most frequently asked questions about growing tulips, along with straightforward, simple answers.


Five Frequently Asked Questions About Growing Tulips

Autumn Outdoor Adventures

 

Welcome to my kitchen

I spent almost the entire weekend outdoors.  Saturday I gardened, digging up those 79 pounds of sweet potatoes, clearing the watermelon bed, and taking in the late season tomatoes.  Today I'll harvest all the tea herbs and hang them on my CD shelf rack turned herb drying rack in the garage (talk about frugal gardening!).  Saturday afternoon, we worked outside doing fall cleanup around the house, scrubbing some algae off the siding and sweeping the porches and walkways.

I thought that the hummingbirds had finished migrating, but on Saturday evening I sat out on the back deck with a good book, and as I was reading, a female hummingbird buzzed down to alight on the big tubs of geraniums I have there.  I quickly ran to the front porch and refilled their feeder; if they're migrating they need all the food they can get. 

On Sunday afternoon, we went for a hike at Featherfin Wildlife Management Area.  We parked at a small entrance and hiked down an old farm lane.  The hillsides were ablaze with crimson sumac, and a touch of ochre and gold along the treeline and among the birches hinted that autumn was here at last.  Featherfin is a wildlife management area, used mostly for hunting. 

I wish the Virginia Department of Wildlife website had more information on the land because the old farm lane led to some absolutely fascinating buildings. The VDW site said that the park once hosted 'Virginia's most prominent citizens' but it doesn't say who lived there, or when!  I did not have my camera with me but I will describe them as best as I can.  The old farm lane led uphill, past fields overgrown with golden rod, but not yet overtaken by small scrub trees and woodland trees.  Shadow flushed birds out of the fields; I tried to identify them but couldn't, and I'm wondering if they were migratory birds.

At the top of the hill stood a homestead consisting of several old farm houses, what we took to be root cellar doorways, a spring house, and a big barn.  There were two homes connected by a sort of dog trot or breezeway; both homes were covered with wood plank siding, which was falling off in spots revealing log cabins chinked with mud underneath.  An old well out back had been fitted with an electric pump, but the mechanism was exposed.  The doors were open on the house but the "Safety Zone" signs indicated it wasn't safe to explore, so we peeked in.  The main room of the bigger cabin had a stone fireplace; we counted three visible fireplaces and chimneys in all.  The house must have been inhabited until fairly recently because there was a small, newer-type satellite dish mounted on a small, functioning chimney.

Throughout our hike, we came across ruins of old buildings but one thing stands out;  no matter where we go, houses fall into ruins, but a lot of the time the barns are still standing.  I think half the time our ancestors built the barns sturdier than the house!

We did a second hike down another old farm lane.  This time there were no intriguing buildings, just lovely hills decorated with rustling autumn leaves, black vultures circling overhead, and a terminus at the rushing waters of the Appomattox River, where we sat for a while to catch our breath and watch leaves swirl among the light rapids.

Shadow loved her walk around the wildlife preserve.  It was her third birthday, by the way.  She celebrated with some of my homemade apple pie, which I made when I came home.

Talk about the perfect autumn weekend!  Here are some random photos taken around our farm over the weekend - enjoy!

Mums near my back deck

79 Pounds of Sweet Potatoes

79 Pounds of Sweet Potatoes!

Remember my sweet potato adventures? I bought slips from Parks back in the spring. I had no idea what I was doing. I just thought sweet potatoes sounded like a good idea.

Totally clueless, I planted the slips in the big 20 x 20 bed.  I read a book and made long hills for the potatoes just like it said in the book.  I thought they were all dying, they looked so wilted and sad!  This was back in April.

Over the summer, the vines grew vigorous and healthy. So did the weeds. The entire bed was one big, matted tangle of weeds. I tried to pull the out once, but managed to pull up a sweet potato vine, so I just left it.  This summer temperatures were ridiculously hot and a drought persisted over several months.  The sprinkler barely touched the sweet potato bed, but my neighbor Joan, who had raised them many times, said, "As long as the vines look healthy the potatoes will be fine."

In September I thought it was time to harvest them.  Remember that? I dug up one vine and was so disappointed.  I thought the whole crop was lost.  Now I know better....

Yesterday was sunny and hot. It was time to dug up the watermelon bed and discard the vines and weeds. I thought I should try again with the sweet potatoes.  I dug into the raised bed and thought I hit a rock. I dug again.  Suddenly, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but...

sweet potatoes! HUGE sweet potatoes!

Two hours and one grubby gardener later, I had a wheelbarrow full of them. Some of these sweet potatoes are more than a foot long.  We dragged the bathroom scale down to the garage, piled the potatoes in a box, and weighed it.

79 pounds of sweet potatoes.

They were grown entirely organically, with minimal fuss and maximum beginner's luck.

To celebrate, I made mashed sweet potatoes last night from some that I accidentally sliced in half with my spade while digging them up.  They were delicious, sweet and delicate.

Now they're all tucked into cardboard boxes, which I lug out of the garage every night and into the sunny yard to let them cure.  I hope beginner's luck carries me through the curing process.  There's nothing like sweet potatoes all year long, and I look forward to storing these in the cellar alongside my bountiful garlic crop.

HAPPY GARDENING!  

Chrysanthemum Time

It's really and truly fall, with night time temperatures dipping into the forties and daytime temperatures remaining in the 70s and 80s.  Leaves crunch underfoot as I take my daily walk to the mailbox with Shadow in tow.  I've got the Halloween decorations out and the fall centerpiece my dad made almost 20 years ago. I can't believe that this October he will be gone 13 years, and my mom gone for 20 years now.  Their birthdays are both in October, and the anniversary of my dad's death is at the end of October. Fall now reminds me of my parents and of times gone by.

I've written before about how my dad grew chrysanthemums for the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society, and my sister Ann, too.  I was hesitant to plant mums here at Seven Oaks because of the deer. My friend, Mary Alice, once told me a funny story about her mums in her home in Pennsylvania. One bright autumn Saturday she went to the garden center and bought a dozen yellow chrysanthemums. She planted them along one side of her house among the shrubs.  After gardening for an hour she went into the house to wash up.  About an hour later she made a cup of tea in the kitchen and gazed out the window at the flower bed where she'd planted those bright yellow blossoms. Imagine her surprise and shock when all she saw was green!  And now she saw the culprit - deer - daintily chomping off each blossom and flower, leaving her with nothing but green stalks.

Since deer wander into my yard every evening, I thought I shouldn't plant mums. I think having Shadow helps, though.  Her scent is all over the flower garden since she loves to be next to me while I weed or plant.  I also leave hair from her grooming sessions near the flower beds, hoping that the scent keeps the critters away.

Last year I planted a small purple mum. This year it is the size of a shrub!  I am waiting for the mums I bought at the April Master Gardener sale her in Farmville to bloom.  The plants grew huge and healthy, but I lost the labels. The leaves are the type that my dad grew, so I am hoping for some unusual colors or varieties.

This year, we planted yellow, burgundy and purple mums near the front walkway and along the driveway in the flower garden.  So far (fingers crossed!) so good - the flowers are still there.

I love to look at the mums.  They used to make me sad because I thought about my parents, but now they make me so happy.  As time goes by, bad memories fade and only good ones remain. I think Shakespeare was wrong when he said, "The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones."  For me, only good memories remain.  Maybe, like weeding a garden, I weed out the bad ones.

Holiday Gift Ideas from the Garden for the Gardener

Holiday Gift Ideas from the Garden for the Gardener

And another article posted today - gifts you can make from items in the garden. I love to give seeds as gifts. Do you make garden gifts?

Click the link above. Enjoy!

Moving Shrubs, Roses, Perennials and Houseplants

Moving Shrubs, Roses, Perennials and Houseplants

When we sold my dad's house, my sister dug up the rose bushes and moved about half his brown gold - the compost pile - to her home. My father in law dug up his iris rhizomes and moved them from New York to our garden here in Virginia. Have you ever moved your plants to a new home? Please enjoy my latest article - click the link above - about moving with your plants.