Random thoughts from the cottage

 

Looking at Jordan, like,
Where are you taking me?

Sophie went to the vet yesterday. Poor dear leads a sheltered life. She’s either in the cottage or in our relatively small backyard, but at least she can come and go between the two at will.
Still, she gets excited when we bring out her leash, and a car ride is a real joy. Somehow she

Looking at the world

never figures out that the vet is at the end of the ride. But she got a good bill of health yesterday, some new medicines—ear drops which she acts like are the most painful things in the world, an anti-bacteria pill for an unhealed sore. Jordan took some cut pictures of her in the car (why wasn’t my daughter’s attention on driving? Maybe these were all at stoplights.)

Resting, all is well.
We're going home.

Some odd food notes: today from my favorite grocery store I saw an ad for personal watermelons. Stopped me short—I can’t think of what they are unless they are individual-sized watermelons, and I’ve never seen such. In other food news, for the past two nights we had happy hour company and never really had a proper supper. Last night I wasn’t hungry but thought I should have something solid and substantial, so I decided on scrambled eggs—my go-to. I had watched a video of Jamie Oliver’s foolproof technique for making an omelet, so I thought I’d try it, even if I wasn’t going to put any cheese in the middle. Major fail convinced me I will order omelets out and give up trying to do one at home.

Not an omelet

Tonight I made lamb burgers and put lettuce, mayo, and feta in the buns. So good. And satisfied my longing for a substantial meal. Added a cucumber salad with a yogurt dressing that had, of all things, a bit of mustard. You couldn’t taste the mustard, and it was really good.

But speaking of food, a friend emailed today and wondered if Irene ever made clafouti, the French dessert of fruit, traditionally black cherries, covered with a flan-like batter and baked, then dusted with powdered sugar. After all, she reasoned, it’s French so Irene must have made it. The subject came up because I said pitting cherries is too much trouble, and I intend to make a blueberry dump cake. I don’t even want to imagine what Irene would say about a dump cake (fruit, cake mix, and butter) but I have promised to mention clafouti to her. (In France, it’s called calfoutis.) And by the by, don’t plan a trip to France for your clafoutis—they are having serious problems with too many tourists.

Big news at the cottage today is that we got new sod in the backyard—a variety of Bermuda called TurfTen I think. It was fun to watch the guys install it—they scraped out the old, dead, beat the new into place and affixed it with a huge roller thing, a much more complicated process than I never thought planting grass was. Grass in our back  yard is a sore subject—we have tried everything—zoysia, St. Augustine, winter rye. And I always end up having to replace it. The part of the yard that is grass is relatively small, and I’d be all for decorative grasses and ground cover, but the dogs need someplace to poop and pee. And that, of course, is what kills our grass. I don’t expect it to improve a lot now that we have only two dogs instead of three, but my lawn service friend assures me this should come back next spring (if it survives this summer).

I read today that in thirty years it will not be uncommon for the Texas temperature to hit 125^o.  I am advocating for replacing the front lawn with native plants but am stopped by cost and lack of knowledge. Christian showed me one such front yard in a nearby neighborhood that he said was the only way he would do it—plants grouped by variety and still a bit of grass. I would like a wilder look. Probably a pipe dream since I am hit with vet bills, hearing aid bills, and other big expenses. At this point in my life, the odds of making a fortune with a bestselling book are pretty slim.

Take heart, my friends. Tomorrow is supposed to be a tad better but still pretty hot. After that, though, we begin to head down into the nineties, which I find reasonable, and there’s the promise of a breeze and a hint of possible rain next week. I keep remembering a year when Colin and Lisa came for the fourth—at least twenty years ago—and it was downright cold. Guess climate change has made that unlikely to happen ever again.

Stay cool and safe.

How does your garden grow?

A botanist friend and I were corresponding about gardens, and we agreed that we both like free-form gardens, with plants allowed to grow into the shapes they want—within reason, of course. But we weren’t in favor of the sculpted, manicured look so favored today by much of suburbia. What you like in a garden tells much about what you like in life, just as do the foods you eat, the books you read, the things you choose to surround yourself with.

At one time in British history, garden were carefully delineated, neatly plotted and formed. Beyond their borders, nature could grow wild, but the garden kept the wilderness at bay and gave man a sense of control, creating order in an unruly universe. Sometimes during this period, carefully manicured bushes and trees came into popularity. The topiary tree and other shapes. While I wouldn’t have one in my garden, I have seen recently beautifully sculpted topiaries of animals.

The Victorian era saw gardens as an extension of the house, to be lavishly decorated as evidence of taste. Not only were geegaws, from gazebos to benches, desired, flower displays were lavish and colorful to fit the exterior of Queen Anne homes with their gingerbread trim. Today most of us would call these gardens fussy and overdone.

In the early nineteenth century, the Craftsman style became popular as a protest against mass production and the standardization of parts. When houses all began to look alike, designers used natural materials—wood, stone—to distinguish their houses and give them individuality. Similarly, gardens around Craftsmen homes were allowed to grow free rather than sculpted and carefully trimmed into an organized pattern. The typical Craftsman home’s garden has the feel and appeal of an English garden.

Today in the United States garden take many shapes and forms—we have tried to surround our homes with manicured and mowed lawns, which proved to be a mistake in some parts of the country. In the desert Southwest, for example, the cost of maintain a lawn, in water alone, is astronomical and suggests we should think of a new way to garden. It’s not easy for some—one of my sons routinely mowed down the evening pinks which sprouted in my lawn. I loved them, but he said, “They’re weeds, Mom.” In our neighborhood newsletter, a contributor complained about people who do not used weed-and-feed regularly and thus provided a crop of dandelions for the whole neighborhood. I wanted to tell him to make a salad out of the greens and enjoy.

But I like gardens with lots of native plants—yarrow, cone flowers, coreopsis, Mexican hat flowers, oleander, rosemary, mint, lantana and a long list of others. I don’t have much sun either on the front or back of my house, so my choices are sort of limited.

Some of us do like to let nature take its course. Granted, some plants need a little taming. Yaupon holly, for instance, does not need to be painstakingly trimmed, it’s interior opened up as one friend showed me years ago—talk about a time suck. But neither does it need to grow out of control until it shouts neglect. What I ideally aim for is a moderate course between two alternatives.

I have neighbors who have been growing vegetables in their front yard. The result is plants of all sizes and shapes with no discernible pattern—I find it distracting and think such gardens should, like the traditional kitchen garden, be in the back of the house.

And much as I like free-form growing, I don’t like when a jungle sprouts in the bushes to the west of my house, with volunteer trees offering to get out of control. I guess maybe in gardens as in politics, I’m a moderate liberal (no hooting, please, from friends and family).

How does your garden grow?