I received a recent thank you from my daughter for her birthday gifts from June, and in it she included a light apology for what she perceived as a small housekeeping faux pas.  During my recent visit, their home in southwest Minneapolis, like most, received some heavy rain (and a 12-hour overnight power outage).  Not unexpectedly, the backyard had its muddy areas.  My grandson likes to swing on his stomach, and throughout the weekend was often covered toes to knees in mud, which necessitated frequent baths, and she felt the tub could have been cleaned more thoroughly in between.  I was more impressed by her ability to calm the kids (5-year-old George and 9-year-old Piper) in a noisy thunderstorm by making a game out of finding every candle in the house and camping out, indoors, than with the state of her bathtub.

Knowing my girl to be something of a germ-a-phobic, I assured her I never give the slightest thought to her house being anything but clean, and as a wanna-be farmer myself for all these years, I don’t blink an eye at a little misplaced black dirt.  This short back and forth followed a conversation with some women friends last evening about housekeeping in general and how our attitudes toward it have changed. It has me thinking more seriously about the subject.

Those friends of last evening and I are all grandparents, all still working, still busy with life, but for one reason or another, move a little slower now.  We concurred that like many women of our generation, we’d all been energetic housekeepers at some point in our younger lives, but now have other priorities that allow (or force) us to put housework on the back burner, the far back burner, in fact. Energy level is key of course, and as one ages one also quickly learns to pick individual battles within those limited perimeters.  For me, it’s my kitchen and my garden.  If my cupboards and refrigerator are clean and organized, my utensil drawers are free of crumbs, and my garden is watered and reasonably free of weeds, I’m pretty much on top of my game for any given day.  .   

I am also reminded of the late Peg Bracken, whose books reflected a high quality laissez-faire attitude toward domestic labor, and think I’ll read some through again just for the pleasure of her humor. Her I Hate to Cook Book was written before slow-cookers and microwaves changed the way we prepare our meals. In those days homemakers were encouraged to open a can of condensed soup in lieu of a carefully developed sauce and just get out of the kitchen.  Given modern concern about nutrition and healthy lifestyles, cooking is an area I also find important, fresh fruits and veggies, whole grains and all, but I still appreciate that fix-it-and-forget-it attitude whenever possible, still throw together a hot dish from time to time.  

We friends also remembered moms from our own childhoods who didn’t clean much of anything, who spent their summers in the backyard on a lounge chair, hanging out with the family pets (such women usually had not one, but at least two dogs, and perhaps a cat or two) sucking on frozen confections and reading books while their children played in the pool. Yet they showed up at September PTA meetings along with the more meticulous mothers, perhaps dressed in pedal pushers and camp shirts instead of sensible dresses and day pearls, but their kids turned out just fine.  My companions and I had to ask ourselves why we went to all that trouble if ignoring all we thought was necessary still worked in turning out good kids, and why it was so hard for us to let go of what we saw as societal expectations in the housekeeping arena. The end of that story for me (and for my friends as well, I think) is that for many years, I did my best to belong to the equivalent of the former day-pearl set, but now find pedal pushers a better fit. 

So get out and enjoy your garden, get out and enjoy our short summer and your kids.  I’ll share here the best advice my step-mom ever gave me, and I know many other women my age will remember the same if they were lucky enough to have been blessed with not one, but two laid-back moms like mine. Your children (or grandchildren) won’t remember how clean your house was, but they’ll never forget the time you spent with them.  I’ll back that up with my own example.

As mentioned in an earlier entry, I spent Easter in California with my son’s family this year, and he and his wife arranged for a spectacular elongated weekend on the Monterey Peninsula for us all, lovely, luxuriously appointed cottage, visits to the awesome aquarium and other sites, time on the beach, wonderful food.  It was a long weekend we South Dakotan’s dream of.  On returning to their Sacramento area home for the remainder of the week, I had one morning to just sit at the dining room table, making some rudimentary doll clothes with almost 7-year old granddaughter Amelia one morning while her 3-year old brother Henry put together the fire truck floor puzzle I had brought him. We sewed scraps of felt with embroidery thread laced into huge needles into a doll-sized purse, another piece into a cape etc. for the doll I had given her for Christmas.  At the end of the week when I asked her what her favorite time had been during my visit, she responded without hesitation, “Making the doll clothes.”

The garden is finally starting to jump!  The tomatoes and peppers are taking off, and Piper’s small patch of carrots have just been thinned, as have both her and my yellow wax and green beans.  She has zinnias with their second leaves, and I’ve just done a second planting of beets and beans—and dill!  Hoping to stagger the bounty I anticipate and give me time to get it all put away.  I have five over the railing deck planters I’m trying this year, most have herbs and impatiens in them, but I also tried a six pack of mild banana peppers in three and an overflow of beets in another, all strategically placed to catch what I hope are at least six hours of sun. The older I get, the more I gravitate toward raised beds and planters of any kind.  Here again, one has to dole out energy in portions, and any labor saving move is a good one.   My MPLS girl and her husband got innovative this year using horse troughs (these are a bit pricey new, around $200 each.  They bought theirs used from a local famer who only used them for feed). You’ll see that pretty much anything will work as long as it drains well, so get creative and start saving your back.

I ended my last season a but abruptly due to a few health concerns, but am back in the garden saddle for another year.  My venture into the yard this afternoon was to clean up after my English springer spaniel (she joined me just before Thanksgiving and is now just eight months old) and do a bit more raking of the tree debris in the back yard.  The city has picked up curbside in my neighborhood twice now, and will likely have to make a third trip around, and indeed, I see that is scheduled for Monday May 13th in my part of town. There are still piles and piles of limbs in the boulevard. Thought I had my own cleaned up and bagged, but the city trimmed my boulevard trees and so the (slightly smaller) mess is back again. Still I am grateful for the assistance.  I am 62 years old this season, and still a little asthmatic, so looking forward to the end of that routine. 

This spring season will go on record as being the most destructive in most of our memories.  I remember the blizzard of 1967 (I was still at home as a teenager in northwest Indiana that year) and it was bad. Although winter wasn’t all that difficult for us locally this year, the ice storm was the worst I’ve ever experienced.  I actually turned on an electric fan to drown out the sound of breaking tree limbs early on. It was like something out of The Lord of the Rings, terrible, sad destruction of our natural world.  Yet nature rebounds.  I was one of the lucky ones.  Near twenty-year-old trees planted by my late husband were damaged, but not lost.

So this afternoon my raised garden beds were just manageable, and I put in a measly two tomato plants and two Anaheim peppers, and the chives my Minneapolis girl gave me last season came back again.  This year, I will have to protect them not only from the foraging critters (squirrels and those rascally rabbits) but also from my puppy Molly, who has a penchant for chewing sticks, rocks, and probably garden plants.  She has thwarted the local mallard duck pair from re-nesting in my yard however, and that is a good thing.  As you may recall, I never did get to see those little ducklings last year.  They hatched and left in one big hurry.  

So the garden centers are full of plants.  I would urge all to check out the Market offerings first.  They are locally grown and will do well in our area.  My four plants were started from seeds I managed to save from the plants I bought from Seedtime and Harvest last year.  Two of each is all that I could muster, but it’s a small start.  I will purchase more from them next week.  They are certified organic and were they ever good. 

Here’s a success story!  Last fall I picked up some tulip and daffodil bulbs at the end of the season, and never got them into the ground.  Well, the tulip bulbs rotted, but the daffodils still looked firm from their spot on my garage shelf in February.  I potted them in a big planter on my deck in that month, hoping they would survive. They did!  I have daffodils peeking through the potting soil.  I believe our moderate late winter temps helped in this, but am not sure they would survive one of our complete harsh winters in a pot.  I’ll post some directions I found in a magazine on the MontereyPeninsula in California of all places, during my Easter week visit to my son and his family this year.  Hoping to experiment with those directions later on, fall and winter into next spring and I will keep an update going.

 This year, just turned nine on May 4th granddaughter Piper says she wants to have her own garden, so I am giving her 2/3 of one of my raised beds (the other 1/3 has a second year asparagus bed in it).  We will purchase seeds this weekend for her favorite carrots, lettuce and green beans.  Photos and progress reports will be posted throughout the season.  It’s a great way to get children involved in growing things and learning where their food comes from. 

 In the meantime, enjoy the temperate weather and let’s get planting.  Just keep an eye on the nighttime lows for the next few weeks and be ready to cover as needed.  Looks like we may have a cold dip overnight Saturday, but Sunday looks good.

What a gorgeous rain yesterday!  By my estimation, it started around 5:15 AM (in my part of town) and remained steady until almost 10AM.  At 10:15, I could still hear the water working its way down my gutters.   JuJust a lovely, quiet soaking and I swear everything growing from the parkway to the greenway behind the house seems to be standing at jubilant attention.  The smell of it from the opened window before dawn was wonderful.  Oh, a fun note here:  KELO’s website had a sweet article on why rain smells as it does last week.  Once should still be able to locate it on their site: Why Does Rain Have a Smell? Ben Cathey, published August 13th, 6:25 PM

Well, just an update on the growing things in pots experiment.  Although I am certain the extreme heat of July took its toll, overall, one can certainly do this.  I do feel that tomatoes fare better when planted in a traditional plot, be it in a low-level garden or raised beds in yards with poor soil, but over all, I am seeing some success.  If one wants to can from the harvest of a patio, one would certainly have to have it full of tomato pots, but for the table and a bit to share with immediate neighbors, I think this is a good alternative.  My son in Sacramento CA posted a photo of a “gynormous!” tomato grown in this fashion, about the size a small cantaloupe, so I guess that’s more proof to the positive.

I do have to state that my own yield has been spotty, first the problem with blossom end rot, and just in the general yield.  I have been purchasing supplemental tomatoes from the market to aid in canning sufficient amounts of my pepper, tomato, onion and garlic “mixture” pretty much every week, as my peppers are far out-producing the tomatoes.  Next year, I will put the tomato plants in the existing raised beds and mulch, mulch, mulch.  I would love to have enough to cook and can sauces.  

As for my second crop mentioned earlier; well, I did put in a few more beans and peas, and they are sprouting!  The first crop is canned, as are the small amount of beets (so labor intensive!—anyone know how long to steam them, or an easier way to remove the outer layer?).  One forecast calls for continues above average temps and general dryness into October, so we will see if this second planting comes to fruition.  My “Charlie Brown” great pumpkin vine has one pumpkin the size of a child’s toy basket ball and just a few more baby-sized fruits, so we’ll see.  I always consider pumpkins just for fun, anyway, unless you have enough to consider them a cash crop, of course, and I know many do, but anything we get we’ll be just for fun on this end. 

As will many homeowners, I have to admit that my yard is a mess.  I’ve managed to keep up the front to respectability, but my back yard has weeds going to seed on its perimeters, and I will cut if for the first time in six-weeks?), tomorrow after work   I know my mower still works, as I cut the front a good, long week ago.

Finally, the fall magazines are out and I think we are all already considering the lovely warm days and cool nights of autumn.  Last evening in the dusk of early evening, one of my neighbors had a fire going in one of those portable fire pits in the driveway; the smell was lovely.