garden — Page 2

Breaking The Fast

August 19, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

For breakfast this morning, the fridge was looking barren, so I stepped outside and picked tomatoes, warm off the vine, and collected eggs, warm from the coop:

I medium boiled the eggs (as in not hard, not soft), cut the tomatoes in two and added a side of avocado.

A dash of salt!

A dash of pepper!

A perfectly fresh and awfully gorgeous little meal!

I washed it down with a cafe au lait and a glass of carrot juice.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

What did you have for breakfast?

If yours wasn’t quite this delicious, you’re welcome to join me tomorrow!

I’ll be doing this again except I think I’ll add some basil, for good measure!

Tra la la!

Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

Give ‘Em The Beets

August 12, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

First off, let me tell you, my kitchen smells delicious right now.

I just finished roasting some beets.

It’s a complete garden dinner tonight: baby carrots, spaghetti squash and beets are on the menu. I’m taking the carrots raw. I baked the spaghetti squash in halves with butter and brown sugar and the beets, of course, I roasted!

Beets are very easy to deal with and they’re about one of the very most beautiful things a garden can grow, in my humble opinion.

Here’s how to roast these gems:

1. Remove the tip of the root and the greens from the body of the beets.

2. Pop them in a lidded casserole dish with a drizzle of olive oil and bake at 350F. Smaller beets will roast completely in about 25 minutes and the fresher the beet the quicker it will cook. If you’re roasting biggies, check them as you go with a fork POKE POKE.

3. When your beets are finished, pull them from the oven. When they have cooled enough to handle, pick them up, one at a time, run them under cold water and rub them with your hands. The skin will peel right off leaving a delicious, smooth beet meat behind.

4. Dice these babies up or chop them into chunks and enjoy them alone, on a salad, or juggle with them. Just kidding about the juggling.

I prefer to take mine with a side of plain old goat cheese.

It’s pure deliciosity.

Seriously people. Seriously.

Best summer dinner. Ever.

Garden fresh.

Cultivated with love!

Tell me, how do you like your beets?

And if you are already a lover of beets, gimmie a yee haw!

Happy eating, you skinny birds.

Filed Under: garden, plume gables, summer

Chamomile

August 1, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

This afternoon

between thunderstorms

I picked the chamomile.

It hangs from the ceiling

in the back porch.

Someday soon

I will drink it.

On the fence

beneath a plum tree

a spaghetti squash vine is climbing.

The plump white fruits of that vine dangle there
a few feet off the ground

like netted beluga whales.

On the front porch

the wooden barrels that hold the yellow flowers

have turned into unofficial graveyards.

The heat has killed my pansies.

The chickens napped in my snow peas yesterday.

I’m quite miffed with them.

Despite their most pleading clucking

I will not let them out of their coop.

They were flightless to begin with but now

they’re grounded.

This morning

when I went to a friend’s house for coffee

I took her the gift of four freshly laid eggs.

Two white.

Two brown.

They made her happy.

Now the wind comes again.

The plum trees are bowing down.

I’ve opened a window to let the cool in.

The staccato of rain against the windowpane
matches the beat of my summer heart.
It’s still working fine
though it’s slightly detached.
Pizzicato.

Filed Under: garden, plume gables

From Garden and Coop:

July 25, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

Two fresh eggs, peas, rhubarb and a spaghetti squash!

Yum.

Filed Under: chickens, garden, plume gables

How does your garden grow?

July 2, 2010 by The Noisy Plume

I try to sleep in a bit this morning but can hear Rhonda, around 6AM, cackling like a banshee. I stay deep under the covers for a moment before I realize that she could very well be laying an egg so I run out there, into the quiet cascade of yawning blue morning light, to check on the ladies. They look stir crazy so I put the sprinkler on in the garden and open the ark so they can have a good range about the yard without eating the last of my radish patch.

I am tempted to get back into bed but the hoop of dawn and the promises of morning are so wide and thick that I cannot help but grab my camera instead and take you on a garden tour.

Things are growing here.

The early summer rains seem to be finished; the flowers, vines and vegetables are bolting for the sky. It’s a small space that I tend, compared to the ranch I hope to have one day, but it’s impressive when it peaks.

We planted twelve new roses in the rose garden this year after removing some diseased plants from the patch. They’re coming on now in hues that please the chromaphile in me. White, yellow, neon salmon, hot pink, blue…

I tuck into a new book. Well it’s sort of a book. Kind of. It’s perfect for mornings like these when the whole wide world is a distraction and I can only take a page at a time.

I pull weeds. I take my coffee so slow that it goes cold in the cup and simmers softly like a spinning bowl of silk under the sun.

Winona and Judith clean up the raspberry patch, near the back gate, near that secret and magical door RW installed in this section of fence. The compost is on the other side and I see that darn weenie dog from down the street is in there eating my future dirt. Darn him. Darn that fat little dog with an appetite for moldy avocado skins and mango pits.

The ladies see him too. I command them to go peck him on his bottom until he runs away, but they ignore me; they ignore the queen of the chickens and go back to their bugs and weeds. Good work ladies! Get all the earwigs please!

I check on the grapes, all 6 or 7 of them — the concords and the whites. They reach for me as I stroll by and I carefully tuck their arms and legs back into the fence. It’s like there are too many kids in the bed and the jumble of limbs look like spaghetti in a colander. The wind will blow them free again this afternoon and tomorrow morning I’ll tuck them back into place. I love those grapes. The fruit is young and tiny now, the clusters look like dainty deposits of minute, curled and sleeping babies.

I love tending my gardens.

I really do.

Especially this early in the morning when my feet are bathed by the dew in the grass and the neighborhood is still quiet and sleepy.

How does your garden grow?

Please, do tell!

Happy Friday to you all.

Wind yourselves down for the weekend.

Roll up your pant legs and step into a spring creek for a stint.

Lay on your backs and watch the clouds roll by.

It’s summer.

PLUME

Post Script:

While we’re talking about summer and magic….watch this (thanks Dorothy):

Filed Under: chickens, garden, plume gables, summer