Wow. Woke up this morning on the old hospital routine. Brain a' racing, needing some coffee. Needing to talk but Jonathan is still asleep so I'll have to let my fingers do the talking, to play off the old Yellow Pages ad.
Plus, I think the coffee maker just beeped, so if you'll excuse me for just a minute while I grab a cup of java, maybe I can put together some coherent sentences.
Ah, yes....coffee in my red dotted mug AND the surprise of remembering that Sue Blanton Giamo had brought over some Krispy Kreme doughnuts yesterday. You better be prepared. It may be a prednisone, sugar rush, caffeine rich post!
Ok, so I got off on gardening again. I still have big plans and like I said last yesterday, the crazy stuff I did....trying to get out before the Thursday trash trucks picked up the organic gold I could get for free...have begun to pay off.
At the moment I am eyeing a pile of crepe myrtle stems that have been taken off a tree around the corner, because they make great plant stakes. It is too cold at 17 degrees to even think about it right now.....but who knows about later today!
My haybale experiment wasn't the same as the one in the link, because I used mine for making raised beds, in which to contain all the stuff I was collecting, as well as wanting to try the Ruth Stout method.
I had been impressed with lasagna style gardening which actually is a variation of the Ruth Stout method. As I read about Ruth Stout, I realized she had really made gardening EASY. AND she was doing it when she WAS OLD!!!!
Mulch with hay/straw. Keep weeds down. Keep plants moist. They grow. EASY PEASY. And it is!
I also want to point you to a blog by my old friend, William Kruidenier. He is an intensely interesting and fascinating person whom I had the good fortune of meeting nearly 40 years ago.
His interest in organic food growing, vegetarianism, and other political interests that have to do with these issues is deep and powerful. In an older part of his blog, William Kruidenier, he has great pictures of his and or his son's haybale garden, where they got an early start last spring to have some incredibly beautiful vegetables.
William told me that his interest in healthy food grew in part from watching his parents suffer from chronic diseases which may possibly have been prevented by better diets. I have seen this same phenomena with myself, when I was following a GOOD eating plan, as well as watching others around me suffer with stuff could be prevented by just eating better.
OMG. I just realized I was a hypocrite because I admitted to eating a KK doughnut before typing this post.
But, I don't live off of them. Please forgive.
From food to plants again. This time poppy seeds.
Many of my readers may make and enjoy the famous "Poppy Seed Chicken" recipe from our great Winning Season's cookbook. Vegetarians and vegans won't find much in it but it is filled with some DAMN good recipes.
Anywhoo...back to poppy seeds. I also make a pretty good poppy seed pound cake. Actually if it more like one of those Sandra Lee things...not from scratch but Simply Homemade, or whatever the name of her show is. Cakes from scratch have always frustrated me.
But this isn't really about poppy seeds to eat, but delighting in looking at that TEENY TINY seed and realizing the power and might that lays within that tiny black thing.
The color, the magnificent varieties of poppies that spring from a seed so tiny that you just barely have to scratch the dirt in the spring (fall for us), throw the poppy seeds on the ground, lightly press
and keep moist a bit.
In the spring you are rewarded with such beauty that you can't believe it. HUGE flowers, incredible colors. I'm partial to the red/orange ones with black centers, though I love them all.
The petals fall, the seed heads are left. It is tempting to rip them up before they seed heads dry because they aren't that pretty. Better to throw in some zinnia seeds to let them sort of cover up the old poppy seed heads.
But when they are dried, those pods, each of which sprang from ONE TINY SEED are now filled with HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of seeds, which you just have to shake into a bag and start over again the next year.
You will NOT be sorry.
I will leave you with another Secret Life of Plants video that is very meaningful to me. Please don't think it morbid.
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