Lazy Compost

Compost is nothing but decomposed organic matter. Nature makes compost continuously and without any effort, but gardeners who make compost tend to favor a faster way that involves containers, watering, and back-breaking labor to turn the pile as it decays. That’s fine for them, but we favor Nature’s way, with only the difference that we pile up vegetable matter rather than leaving it scattered as Nature does.

Ours is a two-pile system: building and harvesting. We don’t water the compost that is building and we don’t turn it. It isn’t in a container. It is just a heap of garden refuse, kitchen scraps that the chickens won’t eat, and coffee grounds. Over a year’s time, only the bottom third or so of the pile has decomposed. In order to get at the good stuff, Dennis flips the top two thirds to an adjacent spot. This is the start of the coming year’s pile.

Yesterday Dennis harvested some compost from last year’s pile. As you can see in the background, this year’s pile is already substantial.

We used the compost as potting soil for our new container herb garden. I wanted the convenience of having herbs on the deck instead of in the garden. So far we have, from left to right in the photo, curry plant, rosemary, parsley with a basil plant carried over from last year’s garden, oregano, and thyme. Soon as the new basil seedlings are ready to plant we will remove the old basil.

We’ll use the remaining compost to give transplants a boost and for top-dressing perennial flower beds like this one in front of the house.

And that’s how the lazy gardener makes compost.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

My Tulip Mania

People here are saying that this spring is the only perfect one in memory. For me, that’s a span of at least 40 years, about as long as I’ve really been paying attention to weather, flowers, fruit trees, and gardens.

Everything outside is so beautiful this year I’m drawn from the house several times a day for a ramble. Who could resist the lure of this path to see what lies around the curve?

This year I’m especially captivated by the tulips. When I read Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, I understood the sections on potatoes, apples, and marijuana, but I couldn’t appreciate the section on the early 17^th Century tulip mania. I couldn’t understand how the European world became crazed with desire for tulips, but I now see that was because I had never seen tulips in their glory.

In the past, our tulip blossoms seemed to last about 15 minutes after an unseasonal hot wind from the south fried them. Often the blooms were sparse or malformed.  For example, this parrot tulip never amounted to a hill of beans in all the years it has been in my garden. The flowers always were runty and mostly green. Take a gander at it this year…

This year every tulip bulb has produced several perfect flowers. Currently, along with the parrot tulip, these dark pink ones are in their glory days.

Best of all is a tulip I swear I never planted. It’s what is known in biology as a “sport,”

A plant or animal that looks strikingly different from its parent. I don’t know whether it came from bulb division or a seed. (It could be a seed. I have been neglectful about deadheading tulips in the past.) The only tulip near the sport is a deep red one, about 4 inches away. There’s never been a white tulip in my garden, so the white must be from a recessive gene.

I’ve been reading about genes and mutation in Bill Bryson’s book, *A Short History of Nearly Everything, and here it is, happening in my flower garden!

The tulip season is nearing its end for this year. I am thankful to have lived to witness it.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Be-bop-a-re-bop

Rhubarb season is in full swing and this is the time for pie.

This is an 8-inch pie. I used three cups of ½-inch rhubarb slices, 1 cup of sugar, and 2½ tablespoons of cornstarch for the filling. It is just a bit too juicy, so next time I’ll use 3 tablespoons of cornstarch. (Don't forget to dot the filling with butter before adding the top crust.)

Served with a dollop of vanilla ice cream it was heavenly.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Perfect Spring in Paradise

Paradise is downright paradisiacal these late April days. For once the spring blooming flowers haven’t been blasted by occasional hot winds out of the south, nor have the fruit blossoms been killed by frost. The weather has been consistently cool with a few well-timed rains.

I’ve loved watching the parade of perfect spring blossoms, one kind succeeding another. First came the daffodils and forsythia, then narcissus, then tulips, early, mid-season, and late. A couple of days ago the first humming bird showed up just in time to sip nectar from the opening columbine blossoms. Lilacs have come and gone, and now the purple iris are in their glory along with the more modest wild blue phlox scattered here and there along the woods’ edges.

Dennis’s vegetable garden is going to town, producing rhubarb, early onions, and greens in abundance. He has been thinning the thickly planted lettuce, escarole, and spinach; we’re eating salads of the thinnings that are even better than the baby greens sold in grocery stores.

The apple trees and gooseberry bushes bloomed in abundance and busy bees are making sure every blossom is fertilized. It looks to be a banner year for fruit, including black raspberries and even the newly planted strawberries. Our 17 hens, some of them four years old, are doing a spectacular job, laying a dozen or more eggs every day and bragging about it.

Tonight the spring peepers are croaking down by Chicken Creek and all is right in our world.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer

Taking Inventory

Strawberry Blossoms

My eightieth birthday is looming at the end of the coming summer. It sits there hunched like a cougar ready to pounce, waiting for its prey. Somehow I never imagined I would live this long. Now I’m watching younger friends pass, while I live on with a continually deteriorating skeleton. This seems a good time to conduct inventory. What have I irretrievably lost? What do I have left and how much of that can I preserve for a few more years?

I hope to keep enough physical ability to engage in some creative pursuits, for without creativity life would seem barren. I’ve already given up many interests – fine sewing, wood carving, gardening, maintaining flower beds and pruning trees. In the kitchen I can’t lift even moderately heavy pots and rely heavily on tools that enable me to open containers and mix and chop things. Lifting a book or a bag of groceries can be a challenge. My hearing is shot and although hearing aids are helpful, they are a long way from perfect. For 38 years I frequented our hilly woods, but haven’t ventured there for almost two years. I no longer feel comfortable driving to or in Kansas City, a mere 40 miles away. The steep basement stairs scare me, especially when I need to carry things upstairs.

So, what is left? I can still walk thanks to hip and knee joint replacements. My eyesight with corrective lenses is still 20/20, although little cataracts are developing. Apparently my mind still works pretty well. I can still cook and bake, especially when someone is around to lift heavy things out of the oven and wash big pots and pans. I can still use my camera and probably could do watercolor paintings if I wanted to. I can write, too, using the thumb of my left hand and all the fingers on my right on the keyboard. I still do my laundry (but can’t put clean sheets on a bed).  I can drive my car around town, do shopping, and visit friends and doctors’ offices. Ironically, except for rheumatoid arthritis there’s nothing wrong with me physically. Most important, I still have loving friends and family with new ones showing up from time to time.

Clearly I cannot be an active participant in most of our rural life in Paradise. I can admire the place. I can photograph. But I can’t do the labor. All of that falls to Dennis, who is no spring chicken himself. Although he is in superb condition he, too, is getting some arthritis and has given up certain chores and activities. We see that our days here are numbered. This is a place for younger people in their prime who can do hard work. It requires active human participation just to keep the woods from overrunning the house, yard, and pasture. We are beginning to plan for selling our home of forty years. We’ve given ourselves a maximum of five years to do that, but realistically we must to do it before a health crisis hits one of us.

We probably won’t see many more springs here so I’m enjoying every aspect of this time of incredible renewal and fleeting beauty.

Copyright 2015 by Shirley Domer