My Cottage Garden

Although it is too hot to spend much time outside now (typical for end of July, early August -- but it's been this way since mid May!), some of my favorite flowers in my yard are beginning to make their show.  I love the cottage look that my blue front door has, with the checkerboard frame around it and the screen door.  The yellow rudbeckia (black eyed susans) are beginning to really come into bloom around the front door and elsewhere in my yard.  In a couple of weeks Obedience Plant will show its pink spires against the yellow, but for now you can see the red blooms of Dragonwing Begonia.  It is in a pot to raise it a bit higher so it can be seen in the border.  It has been a real trooper throughout this hot summer, blooming continuously since I planted it in May.

In that same border, bringing in some pink are the rain lilies (also known as surprise lilies, and most often called "nekkid ladies" here in the south.  They are bulbs that send up leaves in the spring, die back to the ground and then after a long bout of heat and drought in July send up a bare flower stalk that bloom with these gorgeous pink flowers after you get a rain storm, which we got the other day. These are "passalong" plants in the southern tradition (see Felder Rushing's book entitled Passalong Plants)-- you mostly don't buy them, people give them to you or you dig them up from old abandoned homesites.  Mine came from the house of the parents of an old friend of mine after they passed away and the house was to be sold.  Some others came from the homesite of a 1920's Mediterranean style mansion that was torn down in 2007 to build a subdivision (which of course has not been built) a few blocks from my house, on what is now called Dogwood Road.  In the 20's the road was called "Hot Tamale Road", which makes me smile every time  I think of it.  Maybe that's why they built that spanish looking mansion there :-)  .

And below you can see some more pink on the other side of the door -- a native plant called Sea Mallow.  That beauty can take the heat and the drought -- comes back every year with no effort and no special watering.  Other than my plants that are in pots and a small vegetable patch, I seldom have to water my front yard, even in the most severe drought.

And now, let's cool off in the shade by my frog pond, with a nice cold glass of . . . .

I'm linking to Cielo's Show Off Your Cottage Monday and An Oregon Cottage's Tuesday Garden Party

some altered book club art

I have a few pictures I have taken of some pages I did for our round robin altered book group for the last three or so months.  Since these go to the book owners/theme choosers it's nice to have a place to keep pictures of the pages I did in other members' books.

theme:charm bracelets "Do you collect charms?"

theme:the way we were "Off the Grid"

tags

theme: wheels "para bailar La Bamba"

Cuando hace calor -- Hace Agua Fresca!

When it's hot, make Agua Fresca!

There is a Mexican tradition of flavored water made from freshly pureed fruit, water, and perhaps a bit of sweetening -- agua fresca.

I saw this recipe on Lovesown a week or two ago.  It is so refreshing, and what a good way to use up those cukes that, um, got a bit past their prime in the refrigerator while hiding behind the past week's produce.

Cucumber Lime Mint Agua Fresca:  a couple of cukes chunked up, a half cup of fresh mint (I used a combo of regular, chocolate, and pineapple mint from my garden), a half cup of sugar, a half cup of lime juice, and 1 1/4 cup of water (a white wine or other alcohol could stand in for part of the water).  Whiz it in the blender until liquified, then put it through a sieve.

ready to blend

blended

poured into a sieve

pressing the pulp

So good and refreshing!  I took the pulp left in the sieve, and chopped up a bit of red onion, some jalapeno, added some salt and it made a very nice salsa -- a sweet salsa with spicy notes, kind of like the mango or peach salsa that is sold.  Actually, with the tortilla chips it made me think of an edible margarita.

linking up with Tuesday Garden Party

It's been a long wait

Like watermelons and fresh berries, fresh figs are an iconic fruit of summer.  They are nothing like their dried version, and once they ripen they are good to eat only for a day or so.  They are so delicate they don't ship well and I have seldom seen fresh figs available at grocery stores.  Even with home grown, it's a challenge to pick the fig at the proper ripeness, but before a bird pecks holes in it and ants infest the interior of the fruit.  But the sweet juiciness of a ripe fig, throbbing with the life force of sun and earth, eaten right there, on the spot . . . .

Here in the south a fig tree was always a given in the yard of the grandparents, providing loads of fresh figs to be eaten out of hand or rendered into "mammaw's fig preserves".

brown turkey fig tree

My grandparents didn't live in the south, nor were my parents from the south.  And I never experienced a fresh fig until I planted my own brown turkey fig tree as an adult.  My current fig tree was given to me by my artist friend Mary Cour Burrows.  She lives in her grandparents' (mammaw's) original farm house across the road from the house she grew up in.  The house is a craftsman style bungalow built circa 1920, a rarity in our upscale suburb of Memphis which was a tiny farming community from 1830 until a huge building boom in the 1970's.  About 11 years ago Mary had a "period" sleeping porch added on the back of her house, which necessitated uprooting her fig tree.  She was pregnant at the time and she didn't want to mess with finding a new spot for it, so knowing I was missing my fig from my previous house, she sent this one over for me.  When her husband hauled it out of the back of his SUV he knocked the top of the tree out.  Between that incident, and the increasing shade cast by a small oak tree, the fig grew more laterally than vertically.  But two years ago we got rid of the oak, and storms did away with some trees of the neighbors, and now the fig is growing upright and producing buckets of figs.  I picked the first ripe ones this week.

decorative garden cat "Belle"

linked to Tuesday Garden Party

coughing coughing

A couple of weeks of some kind of respiratory virus, along with a sinus infection (first I've had in years and years!) and now I'm coughing, coughing, coughing.  It's getting really old and is totally zapping my energy level.  Each day is a bit better so I hope to be able to put something up worth reading sometime soon.

We've been transitioning over a little 2 yr old terrier mutt named Trixie, who will be staying with us permanently beginning tomorrow (our 15 yr old miniature dachshund had to be put down last December).  Number 3 daughter just has one more year of high school and then number 4 will be all by her lonesome here -- so Trixie will keep things enlivened over the next number of years.

Art in my Garden

bird house in front yard, living bottle trees behind

Thought I would share a bit of art from my garden.  I'm very fortunate to have a great group of longstanding friends.  We all met up about 18 years ago through homeschooling our children and La Leche League.  The group has been an amazingly creative bunch, and two women have become successful artists, with works in galleries and works in both the Memphis Botanic Garden and the addition to LeBonheur Children's Hospital here in Memphis.  Below is a piece by MaryJo Karimnia, mojo fine arts, who does a lot of mosaic as well as painting and drawing.  I have it sitting by my patio resting against the tulip magnolia.

This is my screen door from the patio into the screen porch.  This was done years ago, so it's very weathered and faded so it's hard to tell from the picture, but it's painted up with a carnival of blues, yellows, reds, flames and check patterns, snakes and eyes, and messages for the visitor ("Knows all, Sees all", "Madame Luna is in" -- a reference to our mini dachshund who passed away this last December -- "past present and future", and more painted on the inside.  This was done by Mary Cour Burrows

Now this below is a mosaic-ed concrete table and benches in my back yard.  In our circle of friends we have a custom of doing a group quilt (everyone would do a square or portion and all would help with the quilting) to present to those of our circle who were pregnant.  As we all got older, we would do a group project when one of us would turn 50.  This table is what my friends did for me for my 50th birthday.  Mary Jo supervised the project and designed the table top.  Each participant (there were 9) designed and mosaic-ed a section of the benches.  We joke that we can never move now, because how could we get the table and benches out of there (it was a job getting them here from Mary Jo's garage, which was the work site).

table top

bench detail

second bench detail

third bench detail

over view

And below is a painting by Mary Cour Burrows done for my 40something birthday, not in my garden but in our house, entitled "Diana Finds Her Church in Her Garden".

Linking toTuesday Garden Party

What I Won

A little while ago I won a blog giveaway that Manuela at A Cultivated Nest had.  I won a hand made journal from Gadanke.  The journals that Gadanke carries are unique and explorative.  My journal came wrapped in tissue paper tied with artsy bakery twine and was a pleasure to unwrap.  I'm not really a journal-ly kind of person, but I'm looking forward to exploring my thoughts and feelings with this one.

hmm.  too bad there isn't an edit feature to focus out of focus photos.  I think it was windy.  Plus I can't really see the picture clearly in the view thingy so I can't tell what I'm doing anyways.  Especially outside.  That page says "then she created 3 bigger goals for the month" with 1, 2, 3 down below to list the goals.

You can see that the prompts are actually in the third person ("she" and "her" -- do men journal?), which kind of puts a different spin on the whole process.  There are also little envelopes, tags, and decorative papers inserted, and the whole thing is held by rings so you can add to it, insert other papers  and things, and further customize it.  A thoroughly charming little journal.  Thank you Manuela, and Katie at Gadanka!