My Life In the Season of Big Zucchini

It's been a big zucchini summer here at this household. Not big as in numerous zucchini, big as in BIG zucchini. The big fat green zeppelins that happen when you don't pick your vegetable patch on the regular, so that all the squash get seedy, tough, and outrageously over-sized. 

I like summer squash. I like the advantage of growing it in your own garden, so you can pick them when they are small, young, and tender. Sauteed in butter and herbs, they are a fast, easy, tasty side dish to all the grilling going on during the season. I like them on the grill too, and as a substitute for noodles in lasagna. 

But these giant squash? Yech. Don't tell me to shred and put them in cake or sweet bread, because zucchini is a savory food only for this girl. Desserts with green vegetables in them? No, thank you. Yes, I have tried them, and I think y'all have gone straight crazy. 

Up until this summer, I've considered it a sign of failure, a sign of even (Lutherans all gasp in judgement) laziness, that I keep missing, and then picking, these big green brutes instead of the tender little lovelies that we prefer to eat. I dutifully go out into the yard with my wire basket, peek under the giant umbrella leaves, and -- "Dang it. Again?!"

At the beginning of the summer I took all of this zucchini-picking failure quite seriously. If I'm going to go to the trouble and expense of gardening, I want to do it well. There is a small window (just shy of three months) where I can supply most of my family's fresh produce needs; I want to optimize that. Coming from a family that has experienced poverty, I hate wasting food. Large zucchini seemed to represent a lot of things to me: poor resource management, inattention, waste, and even ingratitude to the processes of Nature which provide for us. 

But zucchini is a distinct season of the summer. We watch it come along in expectation in early May, when the earth finally warms up enough in Iowa to germinate squash seeds, and in June, while the plants spread out their giant leaves and start to bloom. Come July and August, there are pyramids of squash crowding kitchen counters. The reason for all the jokes about summer squash stuffed in mailboxes, left on neighbors' doorsteps, piled on break-room tables at work is because we know that they are prolific. Sometimes too prolific. We balance our gratitude for all that plenty with the relentlessness of it. So, so much. And while we are grateful, we are also tasked with it. Peeling it, slicing it, sauteeing it, roasting it, pickling it, tossing it into omelettes, soups, quiches, pasta-- even if we love summer squash, we know it takes up space in our lives, requires work, and sometimes, is just too, too much. 

This summer, big zucchini do not represent laziness, or ingratitude, or even inept gardening. They do, however, still represent overabundance-- a distinct season in our lives. In the last several months our household has seen multiple major appliance failures, major house repair, a car vs. deer accident (property damage only, thank God), and storm damage. We've done several home improvement projects, and have several more that are needed or that we are considering. We have a grandchild we are over the moon for, and love to help care for him and nurture him. We have aging parents who sometimes need support. We are gone multiple weekends in a row, honoring milestones like a son's entrance into pharmacy school, or another son's move into his first home. We have welcomed home a son-in-law who was deployed in the National Guard. We have visited a sister in Georgia, paddled the Boundary Waters with a blended family of menfolk, gone fishing. We survived a school year complicated by the pandemic and are about to embark on a senior year of high school that is looking much the same. We are navigating menopause. We lost an extended family member unexpectedly. We're looking ahead at college enrollments, helping autism spectrum children find their way in the adult world, and empty nesting.

All of these things are piled up on our metaphorical kitchen counter, and we need to process all of it. Slice and dice, cut out the bad parts where we can, create our own recipe out of these ingredients we've been handed, simmer, chew, swallow, and digest. All that growing, celebrating, repairing, nurturing, grieving, planning, sharing of time with people we love, closing one chapter, opening others. A great deal of it is joyous work, and for that we are grateful. A great deal of it is work-work. Labor and grief and frustration and exhaustion and loss and expense and time. So, we balance our gratitude for all that plenty with the relentlessness of it. It is also so, so much. 

We are in a season of life where things are coming at us fast and thick, both the gifts and the trials. Big zucchini aren't our ideal, but can be expected when we'd rather take care of a grandbaby, or help an adult kid move boxes. They can be expected while we sort through trenching a new water main to our house. They can be expected when we neglect garden work in favor of ceremonies, milestones, funerals, jobs, and much needed rest. 

For that reason, I will make of big zucchini what I can. Some days, that will mean preparing, seasoning, and cooking those parts we like, and enjoying the results. Some times it will mean sharing our overabundance with others that can make better use of big squash than we can in the moment. Some days, it means I will send that big ol' squash sailing over the compost fence and into the pile, so that it can feed some vegetable garden of the future, in another season, where life will assuredly be different than it is now. 

Things I have been doing: 

Enjoying this, this, and this recipe as a way to use up those big zucchini. When I don't, you know, compost them out of sheer lack of time to do anything with them. 

Not reading. But looking at The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain sitting on my end table, and deciding it's a better book for cooler and cozier fall nights. 

Painting buckets of primer and paint on the walls of a basement craft room that we are working on. I'm looking forward to having a permanent home for my sewing machine. 

This Dip: It's Kind of a Big Dill

 

I've got a lot of dill in the garden this year. Like, a LOT. Mind you, it is totally my fault that we have this predicament. When I first started vegetable and herb gardening many seasons ago, I started some dill from seed inside, and transplanted the little herblets out when the weather got warm. Now, every season, the dill grows tall everywhere, with lots of full feathery fronds and giant seed heads. I let it come and go as it pleases, for the most part. 

This year it's been a little, dare I say, out of control. Even for a person who likes dill. It's shown up in places I don't really care for it to be, like driveway cracks and perennial beds, and I've even had to pull up some of the plants so that they don't shade out other things, like my peppers, which need their fair share of the sun too. 

It's hard to hate the situation, though, because I love the smell so much. Along with cucumbers and greenbeans, it's the smell of high summer in the vegetable patch. I like adding it to flower bouquets, and sometimes I like big bunches of it as a stand alone; it makes the kitchen smell great, even if I'm not making pickles. I'm a refrigerator pickle person. My canned pickles are straight up terrible, and I don't seem to have a knack for heat canning them. 

It's a shame, because if there were a year I could be hitting the dill hard for pickles, it would be this one. I've got plenty of material to work with. And I have stuffed plenty of dill into the few jars of refrigerator pickles I've made so far. But there are only so many refrigerator pickles I can make, and then I'm looking at my dill-weedy garden and wondering why I was so confident, years ago, that setting this plant loose in my garden was such a good idea. 

Another thing I've been trying to do is reduce the number of additives and preservatives in my food. I've discovered that I am sensitive to a few of them, some of them make my eczema worse, and not all of them are great from a healthy diet perspective either. And since one of the worst offenders in this area is salad dressings and dips, I've been experimenting for awhile with homemade ones. I've made a few really tasty and relatively healthy dips (I say relatively, because we're talking mayonnaise here, and there's only so much I can lie to myself), and because of that ongoing kitchen exploration, it seemed like a natural place to use all these bunches of dill. 

And I do mean bunches. I'm not a measurer of things, which gets me into trouble. If I make a terrific and tasty version of something, and didn't measure any of the ingredients while putting it together, I can't replicate it. If someone likes it and asks for a recipe, I have to say I don't have one, which makes me sound like I don't want to share. But I do want to share, and after several rounds in the kitchen with a notepad and paper to jot down what I'm doing, I have a recipe that is worth sharing. 

The only not-a-measurement measurement I will make for this recipe is for the dill itself. You need a big handful of fresh dill, like you see at left. How much is that? No idea. About a 1/3 cup to 1/2 cup chopped, loosely packed? Probably. You can wing this a little. I trust you. 

So, a big handful of mostly dill, but also stuff some chives in there too, also as shown. I'd say this amounts to about 1/4 to 1/3 cup chopped and loosely packed. I know "big handful" is relative: I have rather small hands, and so my big handful will be different than your big handful. But it won't matter, because this is a dip recipe, and it is flexible enough to cope with this inconsistency. 

Strip the feathery leaves off the dill stalks and roughly chop the dill leaves with the chives. Don't go crazy, because the food processor is going to do most of the work. Throw the herbs in the food processor with:

1 cup plain greek yogurt. I am picky about greek yogurt. I use Fage brand 2% fat, and I really recommend it for it's thick texture and mild but tangy taste). For a full fat version, you can use sour cream.

1/2 cup mayonnaise. I'm also picky about mayonnaise and want to eliminate some of the fat calories, so I usually make mine with Hellman's Low Fat Mayo or Hellman's Olive Oil Mayo. You can also use full fat mayo if you like. I will still recommend Hellman's/Best Foods, or Duke's. 

Juice of 1/2 lemon. Or if you don't have a lemon around (it happens), use a tablespoon or two of apple cider vinegar. 

1 T. minced garlic. That seems like a lot. It is. Trust me. 

1 T. dijon mustard. I prefer coarse ground. 

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

a pinch of sugar

You need to pulse this only a few seconds in the food processor until it is thoroughly blended. Seriously, you will spend more time rummaging around in your condiment rack and scooping stuff out of tubs and jars than you will processing this up. Most of the time I make this, it is a thick pour out of the processor, and it sets up a bit once it's had a chance to meld flavors in the fridge for a few hours. Other times it's very thick and a tablespoon of milk will help get it to the right consistency if you'd rather use this as salad dressing, which you can totally do.  It makes just shy of 1 3/4 cups of dip, and you can double the recipe if you've got a crowd coming, or if your people are just total dip hogs (we know who we are). 

This dip is great with raw veggies and crackers or chips as a dip. It is fantastic on the side of fried green tomatoes. Toss a few tablespoons of capers in it and serve it with grilled salmon. Throw in some grated, drained cucumber and a drizzle of olive oil and it becomes tzatziki sauce for Mediterranean food. Put it on a buttered baked potato. It's great on salad greens and tomatoes. I'm also thinking (though I haven't tried it yet) that it would be good as the dressing for pea salad, or maybe egg salad too. As long as my dill patch holds out, we will have plenty of chances to experiment. 

What is my seed starting mix?

 

Living in a small Midwestern city like I do, I'm grateful that our community has a locally owned greenhouse and nursery. I don't just try to support it, I pilgrimage there as soon as they open their doors (usually late January-early February) for the season. I breathe in the smells of dirt and liquid fertilizer, which in late winter in Iowa is basically the smell of Hope with a capital H, for those of us that struggle with dark winter days. 

I am a particular fan of their seed starting mix, a special blend that is light, fluffy, moist, and just right for germinating all the things I like to grow in my garden-- annual flowers like zinnia, marigold, calendula, sunflowers, and amaranth; and vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and cucumbers.

This year I wasn't as successful starting seed as I usually am, though I'm not blaming my local nursery's bags of soil-- they are only one factor in the complex and tiny miracle of unfolding new plant life. So many things I did wrong this year-- I tried to use up older packages of seed that wouldn't germinate; I started some seeds too late, and others too early. I tried to grow some seeds that I have yet to conquer successfully (Bells of Ireland, Nigella) when I was too distracted by work stress; I failed to grow some stupidly easy plants because of the same distractions; I discovered too far into the game that my lighting timer wasn't working properly, denying them the light my veggies and flowers needed to truly thrive. 

It's weird to be writing about seed starting right now, as we are well past the seed starting stage, well past spring and into high summer. But this year has been weird. We've had March days in the 90s (Fahrenheit) and June frosts. The plants and I have had multiple trips out to the patio, back into the screen porch. We've had weeks of nothing but rain, but are now verging on drought in Iowa. Up and down. Back and forth. Forward and backward. Start and stop and give up for this week, try again next week. Even now, that hot weather seems here to stay for awhile, the garden is upside down. The chrysanthemums are too early. The cucumbers, running late. 

It's been that way emerging from the pandemic, as well. Vaccines have been very much progress. My strong reaction to them (hives) was not. I have been eager to get out, see people, do things. I often come home from these first-in-a-long-time activities a sweet and sour pickle of attitude-- delighted to be out of the house, full of vinegar about the how exhausting humans (including myself) can be sometimes. I thought I had missed them. I return from their company not so sure.

So I put the mask back on and flew to Georgia to see my sister. We hiked the Appalachian Trail to Preacher's Rock on Big Cedar Mountain. It was beautiful but I was out of shape and clumsy, skinning my knee falling on the steeper switchbacks. It was embarrassing and yet how could it be any other way, after more than a year of eating and drinking my feelings, and trying to get a grip on a new managerial position from the sofa? 

We ate lunch out and had midday margaritas. We went for walks. We shopped for anything and nothing. We talked. We talked a lot. The topics weren't necessarily important-- we talked about kitchen cupboards and plants and running shoes and dogs. But the talking is the medicine. It is a way to be with our ancestors. It is a way to straighten our girl crowns. It is a part of my seed-starting mix. 

Since coming back from that trip I've been able to distinguish a few maddeningly conflicting truths about seed-starting. I know that the same seeds that failed to grow carefully planted in the shelter of my house in March are springing up in random places in June from seeds that were accidentally strewn last fall while cleaning up the garden. While my carrot seeds were too old this year, I know scientists have resurrected a date palm seed from Biblical times, and I myself have grown hollyhock seeds that were at least a decade old. While March is long gone and it is too late to start peas and spinach, there is still time for planting sunflower seeds and another crop of basil or dill. We are always simultaneously out of time, just in time, too early, too late. We grow amazing things with planning and care and also by marvelous accident and benign neglect. It's how the beautiful weeds wind their way through through our carefully planted rows, both pushing stem and leaf upwards toward the sunlight. 

Things I have been doing: 

Binge-watching Home Town. I fell back in love with the fantasy of reviving an old house in an hour. 

Making whoopie pies. They are good straight from the fridge with a glass of milk. 

Planning to carve out a small craft room in our basement. Lighting and waterproofing come first!

Cleaning the bathroom supply closet. 

A Secret and Inward Working of Powers

"Winter should not be considered as only negation and destruction. It is a secret and inward working of powers, which in spring will burst into visible activity"

--Henry James Slack

It's January in Iowa, pandemic month 4,682. We're indoors and home-bound, more or less, both by the normal cycle of the seasons, and by an uber-virus. 

This does not sound at all like a "secret and inward working of powers." It sounds like drafty upstairs bedrooms in an old house. It sounds like being sick of cooking every. damn. meal. It sounds like I haven't had a beer at the taproom with my coven in forever. It sounds like a barely stifled whimper. 

January, thankfully, is also when the seed catalogs come, and with them, the power to imagine the Garden that Might Be. 

 

There is a lot of daydreamy goodness to that when the only thing keeping my fingers warm is a mug of tea, and it is still a long time (in pandemic months or normal ones, for that matter) until spring.  

I know that I am at my most perfect self as a gardener in January, when all things seem possible, and the pages of the catalogs are full of bright vegetables and soft blossoms. Seed and plant catalogs are the storybook version of real gardening, a storybook that I am all too willing to read, over and over again, like a young child. What happens between April and September is sweatier, buggier, full of earthy delights (I can literally stop and smell the roses) and equally earthy disappointments (just what the hell ate my collard greens?)

I like to consider myself a gardener. A planty person. Herbal witch. Urban farmer. Green thumb. Horticulture geek. But I am not convinced that I am or can become a gardener in any fully adult way. I can't have some sophisticated color scheme, because I want to use all the crayons in the box, from burgundy black dahlias to snow white daffodils. My perennial garden is organized much like my mind's thoughts, with a random assortment of plants crowding the borders. What may have started out with a plan slipped out of bounds as my interests grew this way and that, and so did the bee balm and black-eyed susan, all over the place. And while I came for the flowers, I stay to feel the dirt in my fists, nudge a strange bug along a leaf, and stand still watching, while a possum toodles along the back fence line at dusk. If I were without neighbors, I might make mud pies and sour smelling mashes of dandelion petals and water as I did when I was five. I'm a little less tame in my garden. I like it that way. 

While I have no interest in the perfection of award-winning landscape design or neatly trimmed lawns, I still want to be better at growing things. Better at nurturing green life. Better at raising my own food. Better at taking care of the small patch of Mother Nature under my stewardship. 

That part of January garden planning requires putting down the pretty storybooks, and engaging in honest reflection on my past history. (Are you listening, America?) Not just the successes, but also the total failures, and everything in between. It's where reality and daydreaming meet, and it is the fertile ground where a future garden begins to take shape, the one that with any luck I'll get to tread with dirty bare feet come June. 

Last summer, I grew beautiful little red peppers. We stuffed them with chives and cream cheese, and roasted them. It was my first real success growing peppers from seed for this garden, and I am proud of that accomplishment. It took some research into the best varieties for our region and a heat mat for seed starting, but I learned better ways to grow a healthy food I wanted to eat. 

I grew gorgeous dahlias like this one, a variety called David Howard. But that is only half the goal in tending these half-hardy perennials in a cold winter state like Iowa. They require their tubers to be dug up and stored inside for the winter. The last two winters, I've killed the tubers-- once by keeping them too dry, and another time by keeping them so moist they rotted. This year they are stored in the basement trying yet a third storage method. I may be too stubborn, but I am awfully fond of these lush sunset blooms. 

Sometimes I am a good or terrible gardener on what seems like a purely accidental basis. I discovered I am good at growing geraniums, or pelargoniums. The photo below is Lady Plymouth, a scented leaf variety. I give them a sunny window or a spot under the grow light indoors during the winter and water them once a week. In summer I toss them outside into the patio boxes, where except for regular watering and some occasional feeding, they go do their thing without a whole lot of angst on my part. I've been told they're not for amateurs. And yet here I am, with a growing collection of them.

I am accidentally terrible at growing alocasias, a beautiful tropical houseplant with what appears to be a lengthy list of finicky demands that must be met in order for them to flourish. I've read up. I've searched the internet. I've watered them more. I've watered them less. I've watered them more, but less frequently; and watered them less, but more frequently. I've watered them from below. I've watered them from above. I've misted them. I've kept their leaves clean. I've watered them with distilled water. I've watered them with room temperature water. I've inched them closer to the window. I've inched them further away from the window. I've praised them, named them, petted them, begged and pleaded with them, prayed for their little planty souls. They all come home, put out a few new leaves just to make me think I've got them figured out...and then slide into a slow death spiral I can't seem to pull them out of. It's maddening. 

 

I sometimes keep the dead bodies around to torture myself about the money I've wasted watching these things die on me. 

Here's what they're supposed to look like, from the florist at my grocery store. I didn't bring this one home, because I'm beginning to feel like a serial murderer. I am bad news for you, plant babe. 

Last summer I also managed to grow slimy, inedible cauliflower, overcrowd my entire vegetable garden to the point that it underproduced, and kill a rather expensive flowering mandevilla vine. We also decided we missed green beans, which we did not grow last summer, and can cut back on tomatoes, which we love, but that we are almost too good at growing. 

By Jan. 19, when my local greenhouse opens and I can go buy this year's supply of seed starting soil, I will have spent hours with the storybook side of this exercise as well as the honest assessment part, along with seed inventory, list making, sketching on paper, and making decisions half-driven by the cook that is me (leeks! squash! tarragon!) and also by that inner five-year-old (cool rocks! snapdragons! marigolds as big as your head!)

Garden, I'll be ready for you when you wake up. 

Things I'm doing right now: 

Reading a history book: 1066: The Hidden History in the Bayeux Tapestry, by Andrew Bridgeford

Enjoying a Facebook page where you can all-caps vent your spleen on its "Shouty Thursdays": Tales of a Kitchen Witch

Making calendula salve from Homestead and Chill

August Serving Suggestion: BLT Sandwich

On packages of the nonsense they sell as food in grocery stores (rice cakes, ranch dressing, Count Chocula), they often use the term "serving suggestion." For food conglomerates, it's a legal disclaimer. For me, it's that I don't consider writing about a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich to be a recipe. I don't really consider this cooking. I'm not talking about measured amounts of anything-- and if you can't figure out how to make a sandwich at the same age you should be able to read this sentence, I can't help you.

Writers who are more hip than I (read: nearly all of them) might speak of "curating" ingredients. I kinda hate that word being used unless you work for an art gallery or a museum...and we're talking about a sandwich, for crying out loud. But, the BLT is nearly worthy of that kind of particularity, if not in the ingredients list, at least in the how and where they assemble-- a kind of feng shui of pork fat, summer heat, and vegetable garden excess. It's a very specific experience. 

It's best for supper, not lunch. It's a kitchen sandwich. I've never had a good BLT at a restaurant. Never. Better places will destroy a BLT with "improvements" like pepper bacon and arugula and herbal mayonnaises. Chain restaurants always have weirdly dry and tasteless tomatoes, the harried teen boy in the back kitchen won't toast the bread precisely the way you like it, and they'll be stingy with the bacon. Nope, nope, nope. Kitchen is best. So much so, it's part of my serving suggestion.

For one BLT sandwich, you need six things:

1. Your own kitchen. Ideally, you've come in from a few hours of yard work, you've got dirt on your bare feet, and you're not really sure what to have for supper. But you have a shit-ton of tomatoes from the garden sitting on your counter you don't know what else to do with, and you're too tired for anything more ambitious. If there are other people involved, they are the ones who have seen you every damned summer Saturday in your paint-stained Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt and still love you anyway (but wish you would go take a shower, like, right now). You know that the knife that slices the tomatoes best is in that drawer over there. The skillet that fries the bacon just the right shade of crispy is within reach. You don't have to wash your feet or comb your hair or find the car keys to get this sandwich. 

2. You could say about bacon what is often said about pizza and sex; even when it isn't that good, it isn't bad. Trying to be fancy about bacon is ironic. It's a blue collar food; it's got a job to do and it is going to do it as the earthy base layer of the sandwich. I've used store brands. I've used the good stuff you can get at a decent butcher counter. I like the thick cuts for crisp/chewy bacon, but can appreciate the position of people who prefer thin and crunchy. Either way, the whole point of bacon is the smoke, fat, and salt. 

3. Iceberg lettuce. I know. I once denigrated iceberg lettuce as the salad of my grandmothers, but what was I thinking? Grandmas are smarter than we are; that's how they get to be grandmas. Iceberg lettuce has its place and it is as the capital L in the BLT. Its layers of cold, sweet, and crunchy are the yin to the bacon's yang. You can't really be fancy about iceberg. You can't grow it either, and you shouldn't have to-- grocery stores on Mars have iceberg lettuce. And unlike the sissy baby boutique greens that we grandchildren have wasted our hipster spending money on, iceberg lettuce will last forever in the bottom of your produce drawer. Or at least until the next time you make BLTs, which will be soon with as many tomatoes as you have to get through. 

4. Tomatoes. I think of the BLT as the Sandwich of August, because that's when I have tomatoes from my own garden. I put a lot of thought and planning into growing my tomatoes, starting seed indoors in February, just so that I can have this particular sandwich in this particular month. Look at that bad boy: 

This one weighed over a pound, and a single slice made a whole sandwich. There are, in any given August, about eleventy-billion of these things growing right outside my back door. There are few better ways to which they could be put when they are this perfect. And by perfect I mean that the juice from the tomato will soak your bread, run down your wrists, and require multiple napkins. 

5. Mayonnaise. The mayo isn't part of the acronym, but it should be. BLTM. I have my strongest opinions about the mayonnaise. First of all: obviously pro-mayo. If you live east of the Rockies, it's Hellman's; if you live west, it's Best Foods. If you live south, I'll let you folks have your Duke's. It's a fine mayo and we've got bigger things as a country to argue about. Kraft people, you're excused from the conversation. And Miracle Whip people? Satan get behind me. As for getting it on the sandwich-- load up. This is no time for halfway measures. 

6. Toast. As a snob in general about bread, you would think that I would be a snob about it when it comes to BLTs. But really it's just a vehicle for getting the BLT (and M) combination from plate to face. Honestly, almost anything will do as long as it's toasted and not too weirdly flavored. I've used hamburger buns when out of sliced bread. I've had a pretty darn good BLT in a pita pocket. I like multigrain bread best, but my husband likes white. You can be fancy about the bread in a way that you really can't be about bacon, but the truth of the matter is that no matter how awesome the bread, the bacon grease and the messy tomato and the Grandma lettuce and the kitchen table and your Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt will drag this right back down to the proletariat. And that's okay. Better than okay, because you have a BLT sandwich. 

Hate the wabbits, eat the squash. It's July in Iowa.

Gardening, it turns out, is an ongoing lesson in the fact that you cannot control Nature.

It's always in July that some switch is flipped, and the heat and humidity that is an Iowa summer comes steaming down. It's the seasonal trait that makes us known for our corn. Iowans wear shorts, sweat through our deodorant by 10 a.m., drink Arnold Palmers by the gallon, consider Dairy Queen drive thru a medical necessity, and try to move slowly. 

It's about this time, too, because of that humid heat, that the garden becomes more bristling with life than even the spring. The cucumber vines grow six inches or more a day. (It's true. I measured.) The lawn needs mowing every three days. Everything looks shaggy and a bit too much, like a woman who's only managed a single haircut in the seven months of this pandemic year.  (That would be the head gardener. That would be me.) Everything needs weeding or trimming or harvesting. 

I cannot control the rabbits. Heck, the rabbits cannot control the rabbits; their reproductive prowess is already legendary. I garden in a mid-sized Midwestern college town, where the term "urban" is used in the mildest of senses; it's no concrete wasteland. We have older homes set close together, but people have more or less landscaped properties and there are city parks with trees and paths through wildflowers and prairies. It's lovely for its citizens, but also for the rabbits, who take advantage of this as a 24/7 free salad bar. 

Don't tell me they're cute. I'm not buying it. With no real predators, they maniacally chew through my hostas, my lilies, my marigolds, my zinnias, my dahlias, my hydrangeas. The only reason they don't make off with the vegetable garden entirely is that it is a raised bed further topped by a two-foot high fence, a kind of horticultural West Berlin. Then the rabbits have flagrant, frenzied sex on my lawn, raise dozens of hungry babies, and the carnage to my landscape intensifies. Nothing seems to slow them down, and my early efforts to live trap them and relocate them was short-lived; they got too smart to fall for it. So now I have smart, hungry, sex-crazed rabbits eating and procreating, and I'm pretty sure they are laughing little demonic bunny laughs every time I come home from the nursery with more fodder (literally) for their evil world domination plans. Elmer Fudd sang about killing the wabbits. I wish something would; owls, foxes, hawks, and feral cats, where are you?

This was a hosta, before the toothy little mammals got to it. 

In West Berlin, er, the vegetable patch, I have summer squash. "Having" summer squash is not the same as growing it or eating it. Summer squash is a lot like life. It is easy. Until it's hard. And then it's really, really hard. And sometimes it's all or nothing, which also sucks. 

Starting squash from seed is ridiculously easy. It's one of the seeds they start in paper cups in kindergarten classes, because dirt + water + squash seed + sunshine = sproing! An itty bitty little squash plant. It lures you in that way, with its charm and simplicity. 

However, every other summer I have been able to grow zucchini or patty pan or yellow squash, I have had beautifully healthy plants with loads of blooms. Some of those years, the plant even gave me a squash or two, just to be a tease. To lift me up to that smug place where gardeners think, "I am a goddess of all things green; behold my produce." We are precisely at that point in this annual exercise of hope and, sometimes, denial. 

It is at this point that a tiny little caterpillar known as a squash vine borer is born, burrows its way into the juicy thick stalks of my pride and joy. I didn't notice the adult moth hovering over my veggies earlier. I definitely didn't notice the teeny little brown egg clusters the moth laid on the underside of the leaves. And then one day the entire plant goes limp. I think it's heat stress, but it's worse than that, the borers have demolished my squash vines from the inside out, and all those baby squash are not going to grow up to see my dinner plate. It is over. It is compost heap. It is maddening. 

Or, the exact opposite happens. Somehow, through a combination of old folklore (wrap the part of the stem emerging from the earth in aluminum foil), worried examination (is that brown spot an egg? Or is it dirt?), application of organic pesticides, pure dumb luck, or the laser beam of my focused anxiety, the squash plants somehow make it through the infestation, and thrive. They become the verdant version of the rabbits, and I am stacking up squash on the kitchen counter in disorganized pyramids. So. much. squash. We eat it grilled and in kabobs, sliced raw with hummus, covered in tomato sauce and cheese, sautéed with butter and tarragon, baked into lasagna, diced into vinegary salads, and yes, even made into zucchini noodles (I will not ever say zoodles, because I am a grown-ass woman and I have standards.) Every night I go into the garden with my basket, and return with more gold and green wealth, out of only two plants that are falling apart in the business of making squash babies. We share our squash with family. We share with neighbors. We share with friends. We share with coworkers. 

We don't share with the rabbits. To hell with them. 

Heavenly Shades of Petals Falling, it's Iris Time

One of the upsides of the work from home status has been the ability to step outside, into my garden, any time I want. Usually I work in a windowless office that requires a long hallway walk and two sets of heavy double doors to get to any sunlight, and while our university campus is beautiful, it's just not the same as having ready access to the little corner of the outdoor world you call your own.

This year, the iris are spectacular, and within 20 paces of petting distance from my desk chair. Do you pet flowers? I do. Iris are particularly nice for flower petting, because you have that marvelous contrast between the fuzzy bits (so soft), and the smooth ruffles of the petals (so silky).

My iris bed was enlarged last fall, when I lifted an entire bed of daylilies in our perennial bed, and bumped them to the front, near the sidewalk. It seemed like a better place for the daylilies, where the clumps will eventually crowd out weeds, and the flowers are on stalks light and airy enough to see through. That left more room for iris in the space left behind, in the spot where the garden is pretty high and dry, a situation that iris corms prefer.

Sometimes the garden goddess will let you know that you made the right decision by rewarding you with lots of blooms the first year you rehabilitate a part of your garden, and that was certainly true this May with iris. How gorgeous is this?

I'd had several varieties already in my iris bed, but also ordered some more. My two favorite sources for iris are a local one here in Iowa, Rainbow Iris Farms, and Schreiner's (note: this isn't a paid endorsement or sponsored post, just two plant suppliers I like and trust.) I wish I could say I had a sophisticated color scheme or plan for iris, but no. I have all the restraint of a two year old with a box of crayons, and I tend to order what appeals to me and chuck them in the bed any which way.

At the same time, I also received some iris from my dad, and from my dad's girlfriend. These are doing great as well, but may need an extra season or two to reach their full potential. I think they had a degree of transplant shock moving from their Ozark gardens with thin, rocky soil to their Iowa garden, with a much colder winter and clay/loam soil. I love the significance and depth and sentiment a garden has when it's made up of plants from the gardens of people you care about. It's a living album, with plants that evoke stories and memories instead of photos.

Even though I understand the merit of native plantings and prairie habitats for my state, I have this unapologetic fancy for the flowers that were at home in our grandmothers' gardens. I long for the ruffly, showy, pastel blooms of peony, gladiolus, dahlias, and iris, the queen of the grandma garden court. Iris blooms are just so "extra" as my stepdaughters say, that I find them hard to resist. A flock of them reminds me of ballet dancers, Van Gogh paintings, and silk lampshades.

Iris also remind me, just to keep this post weird, of the Platters song from 1958, "Twilight Time." I don't know why. Maybe all those lavenders, blues, and mauves evoke twilight? Not sure. (Also as an aside, Twilight Time also features in one of my favorite episodes of the X-files, "Kill Switch," which may give you a troubling amount of insight to the way my brain free-associates random stuff. You're welcome.)

The iris bed rehab was just one of the ways my front perennial bed has been switched up this year. I'm more fond of the close-up photos (because subtle color changes and raindrops), but I will try to document the garden more as a whole. It is a patchwork of new problems and long term success this season, and well worth the work it takes to turn the former into the latter.

Trees I Have Loved

I am not a January person.

Living in the Midwest, January means the the arrival of truly cold weather and the ice, snow, and bad roads that go with it. I joke that I must be part bear, because hibernation until about April or so seems far more attractive to me than scraping the windshield of my Subaru, crunching down the snow-packed roads to work, and hoping to warm my bone marrow drinking pots of tea in my windowless office.

The hibernation bit is probably not so much a joke as a strong tendency to seasonal blues and depressions. I found out a few years ago that my body is terrible about maintaining enough Vitamin D levels to keep me, well, sane enough to function during the dark winter months. Knowing that and supplements have helped.

So has lowering my expectations. Not in a defeatist sort of way, but acknowledging that I am not at my best in January, and that maybe some forms of hibernation are not only okay, but a good idea. Recent interest in the Danish concept of "hygge," which I think Americans have culturally translated to mean "fireplaces, warm socks, and hot cocoa?" Definitely a good idea. Going back to the actual roots of the word, which mean something like "courage, comfort and joy?" For Pete's sake, sign me up for all three.

In the last year or two my interest in all things green and growing has intensified, and so I've also attempted to embrace the concept of hibernation in that cycle of plant-life sense too-- it's not a season of death, or nothingness. It's a season of necessary rest. I suspect that humans are not as immune to the cycle of seasons as we think, and that winter is the time for me to give in to what my body is pushing me to do--sleep a little more, keep my thoughts and perspective inward so that when the time is right, I have the energy to flourish.

It makes me think of trees. They cycle through periods of necessary rest so that they can flourish later. Their life spans in some ways are similar to we humans; we relate to them in that way. But they also spend their life rooted to one spot, achieve immense size both above and under the earth, and age often through generations of humans. Trees are about as monumental and immortal of a living thing as we'll ever be able to know. I see them as a metaphor for a larger truth about existence that we can't grasp with our small minds. Those are the sorts of things I think about, while hibernating in January (and waiting to write about them until February). It also makes me think about the trees in my life which have brought me "courage, comfort, and joy."

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Like my sweet gum tree. It grew right outside the window of my bedroom in a little ranch house in southern Missouri where I was a small child. I thought that because it was outside my bedroom window, it was "my" tree. And maybe the little girl me meant that in terms of possession, but I like to think of it as the first real friendship I had with a tree. It was young, and so was I, and so we understood each other the way childhood friends do. Every September and October it filtered sunlight into my room in dancing bits of fiery yellow-gold and purple. When playing outside I picked up the spiky seed balls for pretend kitchen cooking, threw them at neighbor kids, and hooked them together into improbable shapes and stacks. Sweet gum tree is a playmate I remember fondly, miss some days, and wonder what has become of it. I hope it grew up, like I did. I hope it belongs to another little person looking out that bedroom window.

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If my young childhood was a sweet gum tree, my tween and early teen years were the backyard ash. It was the 70s, we lived in a duplex apartment full of harvest golds and browns in a university town in Iowa, and I was disinterested in everything life was serving up to me at that time. My parents had split, my mother was struggling to start a new job and a new life in a new state, my baby sister was SUCH a baby sister, and junior high school was SO junior high school. I was outraged that I was not allowed to go to rock concerts, and equally outraged that I was teased for playing with my sister's dolls. I did not feel like I really had anything mastered, except for climbing that tree. I think of ash trees as being the plain vanilla ice cream cone of the tree world. There are fancier ones out there, but vanilla ice cream is better than no ice cream at all. This was true. I could grasp two small lower branches and hold on, walking my rough bare feet up the bark until I could hook a knee over the first large branch, and haul myself the rest of the way up by my hands into the canopy. I often did this with a book tucked under my chin; there was a little crook that exactly fitted my behind and lower back so that I could recline and read. That tree wasn't so much a friend as a necessary shelter from long, boring, hot summers when I was too young to do anything, and too old to do anything, and too confused to know which was worse. I discovered Ivanhoe and Judy Blume and Lois Duncan and Kurt Vonnegut and How to Care for Horses (that I would never own). I hurled a copy of Little Women down to the ground when I grew impatient with it, and then felt guilty about returning it, the spine-end a little grass-stained, to the public library. I owe a debt of gratitude to that tree, for giving me the space to just be.

Magnolia was a tree at the southeast corner of my mother's house, and somewhat of a miracle. Iowa isn't exactly the place for saucer magnolias; they don't thrive in windy frigid prairie winters. And yet, she was elegant and spreading and magnificent--as if she'd relocated to the rough frontier from a garden square in Charleston and simply refused to accept that she wasn't a Southern lady anymore. She was pretty dramatic. When she bloomed we'd all go out into the yard and just stand and look at her and say, "Wow." But the porcelain pink blooms were fleeting, and fell to the grass like breaking teacups in just a few days, even fewer if we had a badly timed windy day. Her satiny leaves shaded a little green cavern of hosta, astilbe, and ferns from hot Midwestern summer sun, and the saucer of water for the birds. Altogether she struck a somewhat ridiculously romantic pose at the corner of the patio, but we loved her for it. It was the best thing about that modest house. Eventually her high maintenance ways and flair for drama caught up with her, and her demise was a hurt that I still feel when I think about her. But I do think about her, for the guts to bloom where planted, and to do it without apology in a foreign landscape.

I say hello to this crabapple nearly every time I take a walk around our neighborhood, where the houses date from the 1910s to the 1940s. It's growing on the backside of a condominium complex that used to be my husband's elementary school. The tree has likely not been there as long as the school, which was built in 1924, but still qualifies as a senior citizen of the tree community here. I am glad she survived the remodeling of the school and grounds into condominiums. I'm glad she hasn't fallen into the hands of people who deem trees like this to be "too messy" for city street trees. I love that she produces her guts out in September, so much so that her branches wobble under the strain of all the fruit. I love watching the birds clamor around her, eager to get every last bit they can before the winter freeze. It's my "way to be" tree, because it seems to understand itself, and glories in being that very thing-- a crabapple tree, the best damn crabapple tree it can be. I wish I could be half so aware of, and accepting, of myself.

I don't often name things. But when I do, it's not because I made it up. It's because they introduce themselves and tell me their name. This is Harald, the patio cedar in my back yard. My relationship with Harald (yes, that's with the second "a", probably because the house was built by a Dane, and I expect that the trees would also have picked up the Danish way of spelling) is complicated. First of all, he's not all that pretty in many ways-- his top was lopped off at some point well before I purchased the house, and so he tends to spread out in all the weird ways that conifers do when their main leader branch is lost.  He likes to snuggle a bit too close to the eaves for comfort and needs a regular pruning back so he doesn't wipe the shingles off. He sheds needles like crazy and we're forever sweeping the patio. But. He shades the table where my family and friends gather all summer. He holds aloft the string lights that make the garden so enchanting in the evening. He protects the back half of the house from the worst of the late afternoon summer sun, and the worst of the northern winter winds. He is a filtering protector of my houseplants, who get kicked out of doors for their own good every May. He has been witness to some of my worst frustrated ugly cries over the years; and the canopy to my wedding day. We grumble about Harald, we sweep up after Harald, we love him anyway. There are actual people like him in our lives, so we should be able to see and accept that best-and-worst sort of dichotomy in a tree. I think. Ask me again when he's dropping his tree schmutz into my chardonnay in July.

There are so many trees on the place my Dad calls "The Hill," that I could forgive people for overlooking the little cedar. He's cuter than Harald, but that's because my Dad keeps him groomed for a string of Christmas tree lights during the holiday season, and it explains his picture postcard shape. He's situated in a picture postcard landscape too, in the Ozark hills where my Dad lives, and where my paternal side of the family came from generations back. It would be too simple to say this landscape and that little cedar are a part of me. They are. But I also had to lose them and win them back, and that part is complicated. I reckon that is a story many people could tell, not just about trees and landscapes, but about the struggle to grow a fully functioning human heart. Maybe there are more majestic trees to symbolize that kind of stuff; but for me, a scrappy little cedar up on a rocky ridge seems just about right.

My children call this the White Tree of Gondor. It's a sycamore, beautiful in summer, but at its best in winter, when all the white branches are bare. While it's spectacular against a clear blue sky on a sunny winter day, I prefer the soft look of it against gloomy clouds and the gentle monotones of the winter landscape. It's in a difficult location, at one of the busiest intersections in town right next to the entrance of our large public university. I'm always driving past it, admiring it, and wishing it was some other place where I could walk past or around it instead of buzzing by on my way to whatever life was dishing out that day. I realized I couldn't write this blog post without getting a photo, and that a photo wouldn't happen without actually walking to it, even though that street corner isn't particularly pedestrian friendly. I ended up parking on a side street during my noon hour, crossing a bridge over the creek, stumbling a bit on the path that hadn't yet been cleared of snow. I had nothing but my car keys and my phone in my coat pocket, and knew I probably should have brought my 35mm camera but dammit, at least I was there.  I was highly aware of all the cars whooshing by. The snow on the side of the road was black with the tiredest kind of dirt. The tree, in contrast, seemed to possess its own clean quiet, even so close to the road. I gave a twig-end a polite little jiggle with my bare cold hand, like a hand shake. Close up, the bark was even more subtle and beautiful, with markings that can't be seen in a speeding car.

January is like that stumbling walk to the corner just for the sake of seeing a tree that I love--inconvenient, incompletely planned, cold, and I hate to admit it-- necessary for the sake of its own discoveries. I'm still working that concept out in more detail, but intend to revisit it next year when I need to. And, it being January and all, I know I'll need to. Until then.

Acts of Rebellion

I grew up believing that acts of rebellion were large and spectacular and often involved young, extremely idealistic people who smelled like patchouli, belonged to "movements" and crowded public streets to chant and wave signs. I also knew that it often involved violence and destruction. The 1960s were just beginning to hit the history books when I was in high school, and those pages showed things like the self-immolation of Thích Quảng Đức in Vietnam and U.S. cities that convulsed with rage during the "long hot summer of '67."

That, paired with my upbringing, which insisted that I be polite, quiet, cooperative, responsible, and well-behaved, meant that rebellion didn't fit my or anybody else's idea of who I was then.

Now at 51, I'm a whole lot less enchanted with cooperative and well-behaved, but I'm still mostly quiet. Patchouli is one of the worst smells in the world to me, and it's really not in my character to march about with signs and shout about injustice. To be clear, I'm not criticizing those things in other people (well, except for the patchouli. I'm going to criticize that no matter what.)

It's just that my introversion and quiet make me a bad bet for those loud, crowded, and strident demonstrations of resistance. On the other hand, doing nothing is not an option for me in these turbulent, frightening times. Pretending everything is okay is a luxury increasingly fewer people have. Pretending everything is okay is exhausting to an even half-aware soul. Pretending that everything is okay is giving away my own power in situations where what I really want is change.

I decided that my definition of rebellion needed some reframing.

Which is why the photo accompanying this blog post is of my kitchen compost bin. It's an old lidded enamel container that sits to the right of my kitchen sink, and it's where I throw all our plant- and paper-based refuse.

It was a new practice as of this year, to reduce the amount of food waste going to the landfill, to provide fertilizer for our small backyard vegetable garden, and to create a small but self-supporting environmental circle between our table and the soil.

So was buying cotton mesh produce bags for carrying home fresh produce from the grocery (we already use cloth grocery bags), and my switching to solid bar shampoo instead of using bottled, to reduce the amount of plastic our household consumes.

So was turning over a little extra territory in our yard this year, expanding what is already a Monarch Way Station, to continue providing habitat for pollinators-- not just monarchs but other butterflies, moths, bees, and wasps that are so vital to the production of the foods we eat.

So was continuing our experiment in vegetable growing this year, trying out carrots, collard greens, Brussels sprouts, and asparagus for the first time.

In the context of these times, I believe them to be acts of rebellion. Not the sign-waving, marching-down-the-street kind, but the kind that reflects upon one's own behavior, and quietly resolves to do things differently. Differently enough that it subverts the status quo.

Composting is a rebellion against waste.

Reducing my plastic use, even a little bit, is a rebellion against the kind of consumerism that encourages convenience at the expense of the environment.

Planting vegetables and eating what I grow is a rebellion against corporate agriculture, and returns control over the quality and kind of foods I eat to me.

Planting flowers instead of lawn is a rebellion against wide-spread use of the insecticides and herbicides that harm our ecosystems.

Is it perfect? Oh hell no. My zucchini crop failed spectacularly this summer, I still need to grocery shop, I can't avoid all plastic, and I'm not a big enough hippie to go into subsistence farming or veganism (or wear that danged patchouli). Is it enough? Also no. No one person is enough. Is it better than nothing? I think it is, especially if my acts of environmental rebellion, however quiet and small, are being repeated by others across my city, state, nation, and world. That's how the needle moves.

I'm not likely to rebel by protesting. I'm glad other people are out there who do a fantastic, loud, noticeable, sign-waving, yelling, First Amendment with a capital F and a capital A push-back to those who are doing harm. We need that volume right now, for the environment and a long list of other enormous concerns.

The rest of us need to bring our gifts, whatever they are, to an increasingly difficult situation. My gift is growing things, and I can use it to address the threats our environment is facing. For that, I consider myself a rebel.

Can we find a better word than 'staycation,' please?

I've never been that crazy about portmanteau words, and out of all of them, 'staycation' is one of the most annoying. I mean, for most people, if you are not at work, aren't you on vacation?

I took a week and half of vacation, but stayed in town. Current family finances are tight, so it seemed better to stay home than to make thing more stressful by adding travel expenses to the equation. Instead we hosted some of our kids over the Independence Day holiday/weekend, and then I spent a week doing nothing much really.

I don't feel the least bit sorry for myself. It was the first time since I was in junior high, when I was too old to be babysat and too young to have a job, that I had something like those long and lazy summer vacation days. I got caught up on my sleep and my laundry. I picked berries and made pies. I walked at the local botanical center, and around my neighborhood, and at parks.

It is high summer on the prairie. It's one of the most beautiful things about living in Iowa.

I also worked in my own garden. We expanded the front yard perennial beds a bit, and I spent a day transplanting hostas, mulching, adding pavers and river rock, and building a very short retaining wall.  That deck you see in the background in the photo below is on the short list for next projects around here, but we'll wait until at least fall to start. 

Together, Tom and I cooked up an idea for a discarded floor lamp he found. It's out in the backyard right now, scaring the bunnies and amusing the neighbors. It's intended to be yard art, but it's not quite done yet. I'll write more about it later when we've arrived at its final state. It's still in the middle of the creative process. And there tends to be a lot of middle to my creative processes. Messy middles. We'll see what happens. 

One of the fortunate things about my job is a very generous vacation policy, but for the most part I haven't always taken advantage of that. When I do, it's because family is visiting for the holidays, or we're leaving town for a destination trip of some sort or another. What vacation time I do take, I tend to spend on engagement. 

Engagement is great. It's how you meet new people, discover new places and experiences, embrace the breadth and depth of your relationships both local and distant. I love that part of vacation. 

This, however, was a vacation of disengagement. I stayed home. I slept in. I read books and let my bare feet get dirty in the vegetable garden and I didn't always comb my hair. I took walks alone. I thought about people in my life, some of them pretty hard, and I wrote some, too. 

All of this was deeply calming in a way I didn't expect, but suspect I deeply needed. Vacation so often implies the expectation of a strong "woo-hoo!" factor, knocking things off the bucket list, fulfilling a dream itinerary in a dream location, seizing that day or weekend or week and stuffing every last bit you can into it. 

Instead, this vacation seemed more like an act of self-care, of stepping off to the side of life for a bit to let my own thoughts bubble up to the surface. I'm surprised how long and calm and beautiful the vacation seemed, and yet I have very little to report from the experience. No woo-hoo, anyway. Maybe more along the lines of a-ha. We'll see what comes out of that messy creative middle, as well. 

I still don't have any better word to replace the annoying "staycation." I just know I'd enjoy more of them, more often. 

The 'Laundry Basket of Home Improvement Updates' Post

It's not that I've been holding back on my blog readers, exactly, but there's a point at which you're so busy you can't put down the paint brush/nailer/shovel to write about what you're doing. I suppose "too much to write about" is a good problem to have, but it does tend to pile up like baskets of clean laundry. Sooner or later you feel guilty that you haven't gotten around to folding it and putting it away. So this post is a folding and putting away of home improvement news, a big update with lots of things to offer, including sunflowers at the beginning and at the end. Ready?

There have been a lot of exterior home improvements checked off the list in the last few months and even more going back almost a year. I mean A LOT. As in punch-drunk with exhaustion and still juggling paint brushes, power tools, sunscreen, and wasp spray a lot.

Well, at least I am. The exhausted part, anyway. Boyfriend Tom is one of those cheerfully energetic people who can work their way through a long DIY to-do list with amazing speed. That's mostly awesome. But on the days where I think I might need a nap, or a beer, or some time for my anxiety-predisposed brain to hyper-analyze the situation, he keeps the table-saw running, and pretty soon I've got another paint project to follow up with.

Except for one thing: the roof. That we hired done. It was well overdue; it was past 20 years old and while I had not had any problems with it yet, I didn't want to wait until I did. Here's a before, from June of last year:

Not only was it looking pretty tired and worn out, it was a pale gray that didn't really "go" with the warm red/browns of the brick foundation and chimney So we picked out shingles that we hoped would pull the entire exterior together. Here's tear-off day. The house is old enough the roof was decked with boards rather than sheeting. Still sound, after all these years!

Here is the finished roof: 

Not shown is a new gutter and downspout system which went in a few days later, routed in a different direction to address some damp basement issues we'd been having. While it has been too dry of a summer to really say for certain that it solved the problem completely, our foundation stayed dry through the last two flash-flood level rains that we have had, which makes us hopeful.

It is embarrassing to admit how long exterior painting has gone on around here. Seasons. Years, even. Too long. That's totally on me, but I'm going to plead single parenthood. But guess what? It's done! (hugs herself, giggles maniacally)

Here's a "getting close" photo of the south (driveway) side of the house.

We had to borrow a longer ladder to get to the peaky-peak of the gable.

And here's the back of the house, a screen-porch, kitchen, attic bedroom shot:

But we are not done with exterior home improvement yet. Wait, there's more!

Tom, with help from me, and various of our boys at various times, built a fence across our back property line.

We "stole" the design from a fence in a neighborhood where we like to walk. Here's some during shots. We also had the yard all torn up, since we were not only digging post holes, but planning a garden bed.

Here it is finished. We plan to let it weather. I like the silvery gray of weathered wood with garden greenery and flowers. 

Here is what my backyard neighbor sees. I think she was as tired of the peeling pink paint as I was, and now we have our backside (ahem) all spanking new. 

But wait, there's more!

A vegetable bed!

This was my son Grant's gift of labor to me while he lived at home between college and the start of his new job. It was an enormous undertaking, and Tom is still hauling dirt for it, since it has settled some since we first filled it.

Here's what it looked like yesterday evening.

The bed was done in the last weeks of May. We got a late start on the actual gardening part, but we put in tomatoes, peppers,  and summer squash, and we've had a decent amount of produce considering the season was shortened on the front end. The tomatoes caught up pretty admirably.

And here's the fence row again, now in late August:

I got a packet of sunflower seeds that said it was mixed varieties 4-6 ft in height, to fill in some space quickly in a flower bed that was just getting started with new perennials.  Um, yeah. Right now we seem to be in the 5-8 ft. range with these babies, and no end in sight. There's a rose bush hidden in there somewhere, believe it or not. The rose will survive the shade in the short term and I don't plan to plant any annuals that are quite so large next year. But they're impressive, aren't they?

While Tom has taken the lead on the outside projects shared here, I've been working on the inside of the house this summer. I'll share some of those with readers soon. It's been a busy year!