Not-so-sweet pickles

Many years ago, when my mother-in-law, Ruth Cox, was still living, I brought her some cucumbers from my garden and she made them into crisp, sweet, refrigerator pickles, and they were yummy. I've since learned that it must have been a tradition from the Scandinavian side of the family; I've had similar sweet cucumber pickles at the Swedish Institute, served alongside Swedish meatballs and potatoes, and at the Minnesota History Center on Sittende Mai, or Norwegian Independence Day.

I asked for the recipe and made them a couple of times since. I enjoy bringing them to my sister-in-law's house during the holidays—bringing something made from her mother's recipe feels just so, you know, nostalgic and all that, and they do complement the array of foods, both traditional and new, that other family members bring to share.

So when two of our neighbors gifted us with cucumbers from their gardens, I naturally pulled out Ruth's refrigerator pickle recipe again. Reminded that the recipe includes onions and bell peppers, I happily traipsed off to the Midtown Farmers' Market to add to the bounty.

But it didn't occur to me to check my supply of sugar before starting, and when the vegetables had had their hour or so with the salt and spices and were ready to be bottled up with the vinegar-and-sugar syrup, I found that I was a half cup shy of the two cups of sugar it called for, to be dissolved into one cup of white vinegar and poured over the cucumber medley.

I spent some time searching for the sugar bowl, hoping it had a half cup of sugar in it, only to finally discover that it had been washed and returned to the buffet some time ago. So I went ahead and made the pickles with what I had, reasoning that the amount of sugar probably isn't essential for preserving the pickles, since the vinegar is undiluted and the jars are stored in the refrigerator.

And when I sampled them after they had chilled an hour or so, I discovered that I rather like them a little less sweet. They're still sweet, but now they have a bit more tartness as well. I'm pretty sure Ruth wouldn't mind. Don't all hand-me-down recipes evolve a little from one generation to the next?

Pardon me while I indulge in a little shameless self-promo

So, as some of you already know, I have this Etsy shop under the name Arty Didact (see link at right; or just click on the name, since I turned it into a link too), a name I coined kind of on the fly when I was marketing some dice games I invented back when I was homeschooling my kids and I wanted to find a game that used multiplication in scoring, and I couldn't find one, so I got some dice and made one up. Since unschoolers are really autodidacts, the "arty" play on words seemed to fit, so I set up the shop without spending too much time thinking about the name. If I wanted to be taken just a little bit more seriously as an artist, I probably should have set it up in my name instead, but due to some odd bit of probably false humility, I felt uncomfortable using my own name as my shop name.

Speaking of false humility, I'm also rather ambivalent about promoting myself, and am not particularly comfortable with churning out the hype and doing the whole rah rah look at my stuff! spiel. I just like to create unique and useful objects that are attractive or at least interesting, and put them out there and see if anybody besides me values them. And sometimes somebody does value them enough to buy them and, really, I couldn't be more thrilled.

So when I learned that the HandmadeMN Etsy street team, of which I am a member, was looking for people to offer items to give away as a way of promoting both the team and participants' shops, I thought, um, yeah, OK, sure. Why not?


So, if you'd like a chance to get this useful and attractive little zipper pouch, click on over to here and follow the instructions, OK? I'll even cover the shipping cost if you win it, so what have you got to lose?




With that kind of enthusiasm, you're probably wondering why I didn't go into marketing, aren't you?

My walk to the mailbox

I don't walk the dog nearly as often as I should, but when I have something to mail that doesn't require a trip to the post office, I enjoy walking to the mailbox about a quarter mile away, taking a mini tour of my neighborhood, and marking the progress of my neighbors' gardens over the course of the season. I often think I should have taken my camera with me, but I never think of it before I head out the door. So this time, I went back on my bicycle and photographed a few of the vignettes that caught my eye this time around.

A few days ago this beautiful new retro-style bicycle showed up locked to the stop sign on the corner. First it had paper covering the fenders and chain guard, but today it was uncovered. Perhaps it is somebody's surprise gift and they haven't shown up to claim it yet. Anyway, I thought I had better take a picture soon, since it wasn't likely to stay there much longer, and, sure enough, when I came home this afternoon after riding my bike to the coffee shop to do some proofreading, it was gone.


Just a few steps before I reach the mailbox, I pass this charming garden on 42nd Ave., with its pensive gargoyle sitting on the porch. When I went back to take a couple of pictures today, a man pulled up in front and I asked if it was his house. No, it belongs to his friends, whom he was visiting, but he said he would pass along my complements on their garden. I was a little embarrassed to be caught photographing the house, but he didn't seem to think it all that odd, so I guess it's OK.

This grapevine, which I assume to be our native riverbank grape, has climbed right over the top of the  privacy fence to show off the way its red stems match the fence's red paint (in truth, it didn't look quite that red to me when I saw it, but I was pleased that the photo turned out to enhance the color without me having to tinker with it.). Soon the birds and squirrels will likely feast on the grapes.

And here's my destination. I kind of wish the homeowner on this corner would plant something to decorate the mailbox, but at least the house is occupied. Last winter it was empty and no one was shoveling the walk for a while, so it became impossible to even get to the mailbox. Maybe once the new owners are all settled in they'll get around to planting a mailbox garden. Do you think?

Hydrangeas are for butterflies, too

I hadn't really thought of hydrangeas as a butterfly shrub, and I don't recall noticing any butterflies on or around the Annabelle hydrangea that grew at our last house. However, it had only been planted just before we moved in there and it didn't really start blooming in its characteristic profusion until last summer, when we moved out.

Still, I was genuinely surprised when I was going for a bike ride about a week or so ago and spotted a tiger swallowtail happily sipping from a panicle hydrangea in an alleyside garden just a block away. The same shrub played host to a small blue butterfly (like the one I had spotted in my yard only a few days before and wrote about here) and several bees. I really like most hydrangeas, but because I believed that they didn't have much wildlife value, I've tried to temper my enthusiasm for them somewhat, wanting to emphasize wildlife-friendly plants in my garden as much as possible. Now I feel like I've just been given the go-ahead (by a butterfly, no less), to add a hydrangea or two to my landscape plans.

But the one kind of hydrangea I have not so much cared for are the Endless Summer macrophyllas and their mophead kin. They were introduced by Minnesota's own Bailey nurseries several years ago and received with great enthusiasm because they were the first mopheads that can survive our zone 4 winters. I'll admit that my tendency to be suspicious of anything that's too trendy may have somewhat influenced my tepid response to these popular flowers. But it's more than that. Try as I did to appreciate them, I just found them to be a bit too artificial looking for my taste; and I don't like the extra fussiness of tinkering with the soil pH through the use of various additives (most commonly aluminum sulphate) required to get the intense blue color that makes them so popular.

I don't know whether Endless Summer appeals to butterflies, but I do know that the more showy flowers are the ones that are not fertile, so they have no reason to offer nectar to entice pollinators. The kind of hydrangeas that have both the showy flowers and the nonshowy fertile ones (which tend to look like little buds, either clustered in the center, like in the lacecap above, or mixed among the nonfertile blooms, as in the panicle at top), are more likely to offer something for the butterflies. (I admit, I'm speculating here, but it stands to reason, doesn't it?)

I photographed the blue lacecap, above, at a bed and breakfast in Ludington, Michigan, last week when we took a road trip up and around the top of Lake Michigan after bringing our daughter, Nora, to college in Albion. I love the pale blue of the outer florets paired with the deep indigo blue of the small fertile flowers in the center, and was thinking that it would sure be nice if I could grow a hydrangea like that at home. But most of Michigan is in a much milder climate zone than Minneapolis. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that one of the newer introductions in the Endless Summer series, called Twist and Shout, looks just like that!

I'm still considering the different panicle hydrangeas and haven't decided which one I'll plant, or where. But now it looks like I may end up with an Endless Summer hydrangea as well, once I find out whether their soil pH preferences match up with my front yard, where two overgrown fir trees (slated to be removed this winter) have been dropping their needles for a few decades (which may have acidified the soil).

Baby Blues

I was out in the backyard today when tiny pale blue wings fluttered by. I had my camera handy, so I grabbed it and took some shots as the lilliputian butterfly flitted about among the white clover in my lawn. I know there are a few types of blue butterflies in Minnesota, all of them with a wingspan no bigger than about an inch, and so easy to miss unless you're keyed in to spotting pretty little things. Maybe I'm even a little obsessed with them; I think they're adorable and will make a point of planting their favorite flowers to encourage them to stick around.

All the blues are small; in fact, the tiniest butterfly in the world is the pygmy blue, native to the American Southwest, according to Stokes Butterfly Book. Its wingspan is less than a half inch.

The upper side of the wings is the blue part, a pale almost lavender color that you only glimpse as it flutters about.  This guy would not spread his wings when he perched on the clover, so all I could get is a shot of the underside of the folded wings, which is more silver, with distinctive spots. But that's how you identify them, so he was actually being helpful. See the hint of orange in the two splotchy spots near the base of the wings (you should be able to click on the second photo to get a larger view; it doesn't look as orange in these photos as it did in real life), and the two rows of black spots with white margins, and (this is really hard to spot) the really tiny threadlike "tail" by the not-quite-orange spots? All those markings identify this guy as a male Eastern tailed blue. (And you thought I was being sexist, didn't you?) The females don't have the orange spots and aren't as blue.

It won't be hard to provide both nectar and larval plants for these and the other blues—silvery blue and spring and summer azures are also found in Minnesota (and far beyond, of course). They all like legumes, such as clover, vetch and alfalfa, for both caterpillar food and nectar. The silvery blue also likes lupine and dandelions, and the spring azure goes for dogwood, wild cherry, and meadowsweet. (I believe that's the wild spirea, S. alba, although some sites that came up on a quick search say it's filipendula; that's why I often find common plant names a bit annoying, even if they are more poetic than their scientific counterparts).

Eastern tailed blues also like to take nectar from goldenrod, asters, fleabane, white sweetclover (that's our native clover) as well as the Dutch white clover often growing in lawns and pictured here. Did you notice how many of those plants are common weeds that many people work very hard to get rid of?

It's good timing on the butterfly's part, since I am in the process of planning the gardens; a delicate reminder to remember all the butterflies that may find their way to my yard, and not just the big showy ones (I already have a few species of native liatris planted to please the monarchs).

A poppy pops up most unexpectedly, and other reports from the late summer garden

I went outside to bring out some trash this morning and was surprised by this sweet little poppy growing amongst the daisies and thistles next to the sidewalk. It's at the edge of the area that is slated to become our kitchen garden, and I am planning a mixed border, including self-sowing annuals, to run along the outside of the as-yet-to-be-installed picket fence, to attract beneficial insects and serve as a cutting garden for bouquets, as well as to simply look pretty. And here's a cheerful reminder to include poppies in that mix!

I have no idea how it got here, of course. I am pretty certain there were no poppies in any part of the garden last year (though it is possible I overlooked them or forgot). At first I thought the seeds may have come from the compost—mine or someone else's—but I don't think it's breadseed poppy (P. somniferum), that's usually taller and most likely a "single" blossom, not a flouncy double like this one. Perhaps it came from someone's wildflower mix, but how it got here remains a mystery. Birds? A squirrel or chipmunk? One of our many nonhuman gardeners of happenstance, surely.

The abundance of rain during this heat wave has certainly taken the edge off, at least for the plants. The lavender seems to be thriving, as you can see here. I envisioned something of a mini hedge of lavender when I planted these four earlier this summer. Even the most hardy lavender is only marginally so in Minnesota, though, so it remains to be seen if it will come back in the spring. It is currently on the west side of the garage, but I am thinking of moving it once I have some of the other gardens prepared. But digging new garden beds is not a project for 90-degree days!

The black-eyed susan and garden phlox are just coming into bloom. They, too, are slated to be moved, probably to the south side of the house. My current "plan" (more like an idea than anything so organized as a plan, really) is to have a wide strip of tall sun-loving perennials, both native and cultivated, all along the south side, except where the faucet and air conditioner are. I need to build up the soil a bit there, to get that gentle slope away from the house, and then plant deep-rooted plants that won't require supplemental watering most of the time, but will seek the moisture way below the surface. I'm envisioning something of a cottage/prairie garden hybrid, with some of those taller prairie forbs and grasses to the back, and the not-quite-so-tall cultivated perennials in front of them. Or something like that. That's a September project, though, when it's safe to move the peonies, which are the only plants (other than weeds) growing there now.

It definitely helps to be in no big hurry to get these various gardens installed, because my ideas have evolved over the past year as I've observed what's going on all around the property, where the sun shines most, where the rain water tends to puddle, and so on.

Let's Put on a Show

A note card featuring my drawing

This post is, eventually, about a craft show I'm in this Saturday. But first, a little context.

So I have this Etsy shop, for which I chose the rather obscure name Arty Didact, trying to convey the marriage of art and information that appeals to me and characterizes some of my work, and playing off the meaning of autodidact, a self-educating person.

Informative back of the lily note card

Quite frankly, I haven't sold very much at all on Etsy. I tried reading the forums for advice, and joining a couple of teams, and adding more and more items to my shop, because everyone says that's what you're supposed to do (that is, those participating in the forums on Etsy say this, repeatedly and emphatically). And when you don't have something new to add, you're supposed to "renew" listings, which means that you re-list them as if they were new, because when someone is searching for a category of items on Etsy, the most recently listed ones generally show up at the top. So it's like keeping something in the front window at all times.

A paper mache bowl

But when I was being as obsessive as I could about promoting my shop, I wasn't spending as much time making stuff. And I found that spending time each day listing and re-listing and promoting my shop isn't really very interesting, and the people who say it pays off to do that appear to be even more obsessive about it than I was. There are websites and blogs where you can offer give-aways, for example, and some people offer discounts and deals through their Facebook page and blogs, and, well, really, I'm just not into all that. I don't go for promotional offers and hype as a consumer, and it's really against my nature to try to promote my shop in that way, too.

So I've eased up on the re-listings, and I haven't added anything new to my shop in a while because I've been kind of busy with other things (house, garden, freelance work, family...). But, the one thing that I have found to be helpful and fun is the local network of Etsy shopkeepers, called the HandmadeMN Etsy Team. They are a great group of creative people, and through the group forum, I learn about a wide variety of show opportunities, including the smaller ones that fit my budget and level of commitment.

Most notably, this Saturday is the HandmadeMN Summer Market, and the way it came about was kind of cool. First, it started back in March with Erika Herker posting an announcement that she learned that she could reserve a large pavilion in Roseville for free, and maybe it would be cool to put on a mini art fair there consisting of members of our team. From there, an enthusiastic series of messages followed, and eventually, the summer market was organized. It made me think of Spanky and Our Gang: Let's put on a show!

Photo by Erica Herker

I'm looking forward to it, despite the forecast of 90-degree heat that day—and am so glad we will not only be in the shade, but also will only be operating from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. No getting up early on a Saturday and no lingering in the late-afternoon heat! I am grateful to the ladies who chose that time frame!

If you're in the Twin Cities area, it would be really swell if you'd pay a visit. Sorry I'm not offering any coupons or specials or snazzy promos like that, but I will have some cooling peppermint candies on my table to share. I guess that's a give-away, isn't it?

HandmadeMN Summer Market
Saturday, July 16, 10 a.m.–3 p.m.
Rainbow Community Pavilion
1201 Larpenteur Ave. West
Saint Paul, MN 55113

A little harvesting, here and there, despite the chaos

Even though the chaotic transitional state of our landscape means I haven't done much planting of my own yet, I have been able to gather what I may from the existing gardens, as well as from the little bit of planting I've done so far myself, in pots or baskets.

Harvesting bouquets is easy, of course, with the abundance of flowers and greens; sometimes I use a few leaves of the plain green lance-leaved hostas in bouquets. I find this particular hosta rather ordinary as a garden plant, but its medium-to-dark glossy leaves do complement flowers and showier foliage nicely. I also have two kinds of ferns: the common ostrich fern and a more lacy one, probably a type of lady fern (athyrium).

I used the lady fern in a bouquet recently, with a speckled orange Asiatic lily that started blooming about a week or so ago, combined with several of the wild oxeye daisies that are growing everywhere.

Edible plants include the rhubarb, which I have neglected to pick so far (I think of it, and then I forget! Or, when I remember, it's too hot to cook anyway). I should really pick some to freeze, at least. Conventional wisdom has it that you don't harvest rhubarb after the first of July, but my sister-in-law once gathered several stalks in late summer, shortly after moving and discovering that the garden boasted a robust rhubarb plant. It ended up none the worse for the late harvest, and the rhubarb tasted fine, so I don't think it really matters much. Perhaps plants that are only a few years old need a longer period to recover from early summer harvesting, but that old, established plants can take a season-long harvest. 

I planted a large pot with a tomato, which is just doing so-so, and some basil and marigolds and thyme, and next to it another pot with some more thyme and marigolds, and a dill. I also included a couple of parsley plants in my kitchen window baskets, which I can harvest through the window when I want a sprig.


I especially like to use the fresh herbs to make my favorite summer salad dressing—a large dollop of plain yogurt with enough olive oil to thin it to a just-pourable consistency, then chopped fresh herbs and a bit of salt and pepper (I also include some cilantro from the farmers market, but since they sell it in a rather large bunch, I froze most of it and use the frozen herb just like fresh ones). It's delicious on sliced cucumbers, too!

More Garden Discoveries

I was digging out a weedy patch between the house and our newly laid patio in back when I unearthed a few bulbs and then remembered there had been daffodils here in the spring. Darn!

I am trying to go around and take stock periodically so I know what's hiding amongst the weeds before I dig, but I haven't been as diligent as I need to be with that. Julia had an abundant flower garden in this sunny backyard, and I'm told by neighbors that she kept up with it right up to her final days, when she was in her 80s. But the house sat empty for two years, and last summer when we moved in, our attention was on the inside of the house, so that made for a third summer of neglect. Now all the gardens are completely overrun with weeds, as well as with raspberries and daisies—which may or may not qualify as weeds, depending on how you look at them. I see them (raspberries and daisies) as plants with desirable traits that tend to be a tad too exuberant in their growth habits. A few more years of neglect and I think the whole yard would become a raspberry-daisy thicket-meadow.

Daisies and sundrops oenothera

The daisies are really pretty easy to deal with, and I do enjoy them when they pop up in the lawn or cluster around the clothes pole where the mower can't quite reach them; and they harmonize nicely with most of the other flowers, such as the sundrops oenothera.

But the raspberry thicket is another matter—I know that it's hiding some real gems under its thorny arching canes, and yet the promise of their sweet berries had me reluctant to start cutting them down and digging them out while it was still cool enough to wear long sleeves for the job. It's not that I have any intention of removing them completely, nor any illusion that I can—they originated on my neighbor's side of the fence and will continue to volunteer on my side for, well, as long as my neighbors have theirs. And that's alright by me, I love raspberries. But they need to be confined to the area alongside the fence that directly corresponds to where my neighbors have them, and the flowers that are growing in the raspberries need to be relocated—I wouldn't have even known I had a pink dictamnus (gas plant) had my neighbor Bonny not told me. I found it blooming in amongst the raspberries, almost completely hidden by them.

But I don't want to move them in the middle of summer, and not while they're flowering, and not until I have prepared a suitable new garden bed for them.

Coral bells amongst the weeds and an emerging hibiscus

So in the meantime, I am taking pictures and making notes, and really should be shoving plant markers into the ground to identify them, especially the ephemerals, before they finish blooming and I forget what they are! Even those that are easy to ID from their emerging leaves, like the lilies, need to be labeled as to their color and height, so that I can group them in vignettes that I find pleasing.

Even though we paid frequent visits to this backyard last June after our offer was accepted, and were here every day after July 1st when we closed on the house, and moved in at the end of July, I'm "discovering" all sorts of flowers that I didn't remember seeing last summer, or had forgotten their color. Here are a few gems amongst the weeds that are currently blooming or nearly finished.

Rosy lilies that were all but hidden behind the raspberries—until they bloomed.















A surprise discovery of a white penstemon mingling with the oenothera.

Some rose-colored salvia that will need to be untangled from the grasses. Behind this (on the other side of the downspout) are two platycodon, which are not yet blooming, but which I photographed last summer and so was reminded of them when I looked at those photos (below).

Last summer's platycodon: white ...

















and blue.

And more, many more. I have an abundance of perennials here, I just need to divide them and relocate them, after not only preparing new beds, but also making a plan for how I want to group them.

Good thing we're going to be here a long time!

An Urban Stone Garden Wall

Craig removes sod and starts digging out the slope

You'd think a guy would feel entitled to take it easy on Fathers' Day. But no; we had planned to build a retaining wall across the front of our yard this weekend, and yesterday's rain left us with only today to tackle the job, and Craig was determined to get it done. He had suggested that we allow ourselves a leisurely start to the day and that we would begin the project at noon, but at a little after ten, he was done with all that lounging around and ready to get to work. With shovel in hand, he headed to the front yard and started to dig.

The first layer is set on a ditch filled with gravel.

I rode my bike to Mother Earth Gardens to buy something to plant in the wall, and settled on a creeping veronica called 'Waterperry blue' (you may think that's a typo, and I would agree with you that 'waterberry' makes more sense, but it's spelled with a 'p' on the tag). Besides the pretty sky-blue flowers in the picture on the tag, and its creeping habit, and the notation that it's a good rock garden plant, and its tolerance for part shade, I was sold on the care instructions: "Thrives in nearly any soil and requires little attention." It came in a pack of six small plants, just right for placing here and there in the wall.

It's getting there

Yesterday we had gone to Klier's garden center on Nicollet and 59th to get some class 5 gravel for the wall's base. Klier's has gravel in bulk, and we put a tarp in the back of the car (a Honda Fit, which is a hatchback) and brought a couple of shovels. Just when we got there, it started to pour. The wet gravel was pretty heavy and dense (class 5 is a limestone gravel with the crushed dust included, which makes it pack down to a firm base while still providing drainage, but it also makes it a lot like cement when wet), so we soon decided that we had enough.

Craig sweeps up

For stones, we had decided to use the broken chunks of sidewalk that Craig has been removing from the backyard. That wasn't our original plan; we were going to have all the sidewalk chunks hauled away and then at some point in the future buy nice limestone rocks to make a wall. Then we had to admit that we're not as rich as we sometimes think we are, and, besides, there's something appealing about recycling the sidewalk on property. Also, a polite note from the city inspector persuaded us that it was time to do something with that pile of concrete by the alley.

So, we built a wall. Our original plan was to build one on both sides of the steps, but we're kind of rethinking that right now. We'll see how we feel about that next weekend.

A lady's mantle (Alchemilla mollis) accents the corner

Not Quite a Room of One's Own

My basement art room in progress

Ever since we moved last summer, I have been looking forward to having a real art studio space where I can get all my stuff organized, with enough shelf space to keep my work table clear so I can just plop down and dive in whenever I get the urge to create.

But it hasn't quite worked out that way. Just as the garden had to wait until other more pressing home-improvement projects were completed, the basement finishing, with art room and TV-watching room on either side, has been on hold, first because of those other more pressing projects (kitchen, bathroom, central air conditioning that still isn't working), and now because this is the time to act on those gardening and landscaping projects.

And, to be fair, it's not that I'm constantly feeling the urge to create stuff with no place to answer the longing. For a while, I was digging around in the various boxes in the basement whenever it was time to make ATCs for a monthly exchange I participate in with a few friends (two of whom I've never met in person, but still regard as friends—or perhaps I should say comrades in arts). I would bring the selected supplies up to my desk in our nicely appointed home office in the second bedroom on the main floor, complete my project-in-miniature (ATCs are artists' trading cards, and they are the same size as other trading cards), then, eventually, gather up the tools and supplies and bring them back downstairs.

An art bunny photo shoot using the natural light of an east window in our first-floor home office

When I brought things back downstairs, I also started to gradually move them into the space that was slated to become my art room, and get them somewhat organized in some freestanding shelves that didn't require finished walls behind them. That was going pretty well, and I was beginning to think that I might be able to create a serviceable interim studio, when I was persuaded that my art room and the family TV room—really two sides of the same large room—should switch places.

Now, my husband is far more expedient than I am, and I will sometimes admit that if it weren't for him, nothing would ever get done around here. So, he moved my shelves and various storage containers to the other side of the room, and, to be fair, tried his best to keep everything in the same order that I had it. But, since my "order" follows a spacial logic that exists only inside my head, he failed.

So I found myself back to spending fifteen minutes looking for something so simple as a glue stick. Compounding that was the return of my creative and lovely daughter, whom I adore, from college for the summer. She tends to borrow my stuff and doesn't tend to get around to always putting it back.

Grandma's sewing machine, from the factory

If you follow my Etsy shop at all (see how cleverly I slipped in that link?), you may well wonder how I could post so many items there if I have no space in which to work. I will tell you. All of the drawings were done before 2010, the note cards are made with scans of these drawings, and most of the rest is either knitted (which I do in my living room chair) or sewn. My sewing machine (a fabulous old factory machine that my grandmother used when she worked at Lockets Liberty Garments in the Wyman building in downtown Minneapolis in the 1930s and '40s) is located in the laundry room, and my small projects don't require much table space to cut out.

Grandma at the factory, ca 1940

And a good thing, that; because it is my capacity to create something, at least, that keeps me from being completely frustrated these days. The garden, too, involves a good deal of creativity, both in the form of problem-solving challenges and good old freewheeling artistry.

But I don't intend to wait until gardening season is over to get back to doing some paper arts, including making ATCs. In fact, with some muggy days in the forecast, and the a.c. sitting idle until Wednesday (crossing my fingers), I may be spending a little more time in the basement soon.

Rescuing the Peonies

Last June, before we actually closed on our purchase of this house, I stopped by with a handful of Popsicle sticks and a Sharpie to label the peonies along the south side of the then-empty house, noting  the color of their blossoms. I reasoned that by the time we moved in, their petals would have long since dropped and withered and I wouldn't know which were pink and which were white, and I thought I might want to dig them up and move them in the fall, with an eye to some to-be-determined color schematic.

But our house offered plenty of projects to keep us busy and I didn't get to the garden at all last summer. That's just as well, because it allowed me a full growing season to observe and photograph the garden. Among the things I observed was that nearly all the peonies were afflicted with splotches on the leaves and spots on the stems, most likely caused by one of several fungal diseases of peonies, especially if their spent stems and leaves are left to rot in place over winter. It also looked like some of the buds had failed to open at all.

Not remembering the blossoms themselves as anything special, only that some were white and some were a medium pink, I had pretty much decided they weren't going to be worth the bother and that I would just discard and destroy the plants and start over, planting new ones in a different location to avoid infecting them with the same problems.

Bloom of, possibly, Peony Annisquam

Then they bloomed, and I was smitten. As I hope you can see from the photos, the "white" ones are really a very pale pink, and their blossoms are so full of petals that even after dozens of the petals fell to the floor when I was rearranging them for the picture, they're still large and voluptuous flowers. And of course they smell wonderful, as do all peonies. A Google image search has me thinking these are probably Peony Annisquam, a 1951 introduction, and available from a Minnesota nursery, Hidden Springs Flower Farm. Since Julia Johnson had tended this garden from the 1950s on, and, from what I have learned from her children (who sold us the house) and our neighbors, was a pretty sophisticated gardener, it's likely she would have bought a few stylish new plants to enhance her yard. At today's prices, the several specimens that grow alongside the house would cost me $25 each to replace. I think I'll keep them.

Even the "ordinary" medium pink ones are, of course, beautiful and fragrant. How could I have thought I could so cavalierly discard them? Besides, ridding peonies of a disease such as this is pretty straightforward and amounts to nothing more than a few good cultural practices: adequate sun and water, good drainage, good air circulation, and—especially important in this case—a thorough cleanup of all plant debris in the fall.

Note the spots on the stem and browned edges of petals

Since I want to move them anyway, preferring a good swath of prairie next to the house (the reasons for which will be the subject of another post), I'll do so in September, a good month for dividing and planting peonies. When I do, I'll rinse the roots to remove the soil, which likely carries the spores of whatever is infecting them, and plant them in fresh soil amended with compost and manure. And as soon as the first frost zaps them, I'll cut all stems off at the soil surface and discard them and all the leaves (or, more likely, bury them at the bottom of a hugelkultur bed). I have treated similar peony problems this way before and did not have to do anything more, except to continue to remove the plant debris after frost.

Peonies are extremely long-lived perrennials, and I'm looking forward to many years (decades, really) of these luxurious flowers. It's also sweet to imagine that long after I'm gone, those peonies will still be here to delight future occupants of this house.

A (mostly) leisurely South Minneapolis bike and bistro tour

A flowering tree at the Lyndale Peace Garden (rock garden)

Last Tuesday was our wedding anniversary, so Craig took the day off from work and we planned a day of leisurely bike riding, ending with dinner at Cafe Maude in SW Minneapolis's Armitage neighborhood. We chose Cafe Maude not only because it is a very nice restaurant and we especially love their lamb skewer appetizers, but also because going there by bicycle means following the bike trail along Minnehaha Creek for most of the way.

Never mind that we chose to head west on a day when winds from that direction were averaging 25–35 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph! (Hence the "mostly leisurely" reference.) I kept thinking that once we got down by the creek and more or less into the woods, the wind would be buffered. But not so much. And, of course, the creek being in something of a valley through the city, as soon as we parted from the bike path to head into a neighborhood, we had a steep uphill climb. So, we got a good workout as well.

We left before noon and stopped first at Patisserie 46 at 46th and Grand where we shared a sandwich and salad for a light lunch. Just as we approached the counter, the barista announced that he had made an extra latte by mistake, and he offered it to us. That plus a delicious chocolate chip cookie make a very lovely dessert. After browsing a cute and friendly gift shop at 48th and Grand called A Little Bird, which featured a chic/trendy mix of old and new items, we headed over to the Roberts Bird Sanctuary by Lake Harriet for a stroll.

Roberts Bird Sanctuary on May 31

All of our recent rains had rendered parts of the sanctuary more like a bayou, and in places the plank path along what should have been the edge of the bog was either submerged or squelching mud when we tried to walk on it, so we turned back and chose an upland route instead.

Jack in the pulpit in the bird sanctuary

The overhead branches of aspen and cottonwood swayed vigorously in the wind, and may have blown the birds away! The only one I recall spotting was a glimpse as we were leaving, shaped like a black-crowned night heron but smaller; I didn't get a good enough look at it to ID it. We did see of lot of jack-in-the-pulpit, with its huge leaves and distinct hooded spadix, and it was a pleasant walk anyway, despite the mud and absence of birds.

It was still too early for dinner, even after our stroll through the bird sanctuary was followed by a walk in the rock garden, so we pedaled uphill again into Linden Hills to Cafe Twenty-eight to enjoy a cold drink and a snack. After lingering on their outdoor patio for an hour or more, we rode to the Paperback Exchange used-book shop on 50th and Penn, where Craig found a Barbara Kingsolver book (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle) and I found a few gems, including Words Fail Me by Patricia T. O'Conner, to add to my collection of language usage books.

Cafe 28 in Linden Hills

We arrived at Cafe Maude in time for their "leisure hour" specials on our salads and wine. We then split the lamb skewers appetizer and a steak dinner (splitting everything so as to pace ourselves, still), but didn't stay for dessert. Instead, we headed back east along the creek, with the still-strong wind at our backs this time, and finished the evening at Three Tiers Bakery Bistro in what Craig likes to call "downtown" Nokomis, for a couple of petits fours and some rhubarb sauce over house-made vanilla ice cream. We thought we had carefully paced our eating, but we were quite stuffed after that!

In the whole day, we had probably biked about 14 miles total, not exactly an ambitious day of bike riding. It really felt like we had spent the day as tourists in our own town, appreciating a few of the delightful cafes and bistros and bike paths and serene natural spots that Minneapolis has to offer.

Not everybody's cup of cappuccino

I wandered around on my bike yesterday, wanting to pedal a little more than a trip to my usual neighborhood haunts would require. So I headed west along Minnehaha Creek, our wonderfully wild and natural urban bicycle byway that leads through little passages of woodland right in the city, then turned north at Pleasant Avenue and headed up—literally—through the neighborhood known as Tangletown. It's so-named for the rabbit warren of curving streets that lace through and across each other as they climb up from the creek. It's an excellent workout, especially since there's no way to get any kind of momentum before you find yourself on a rather steep incline.

I intended to end up at a new little bakery and cafe known as Pattisserie 46, at 46th and Grand, but discovered that they're closed Mondays. So I headed over to Anodyne Coffee, just a few blocks (and at only a slightly higher elevation) away.

The baristas were in good spirits, as they usually are there. A regular customer came in and the barista asked how's it going, and the customer said she'd been working in her yard all morning, digging weeds. "My back yard is almost completely purple with creeping charlie," she said with a weary sigh.

"Sweet," said the cheery barista, her gaze on the espresso machine as she prepared the customer's drink.

"And my front yard is full of dandelions," added the regular.

"I love dandelions," said the barista, seemingly oblivious to the exasperation in the regular's voice.

Gotta love that barista.

Sweet Violets

I've been seeing lots of violets lately, in lawns and gardens and the crevices of sidewalks. They appeared about the same time as the dandelions, right after we had a hot day followed by lots of rain. I have no understanding, and certainly no sympathy, for those who consider them such a menace that they'll part with their hard-earned money to have some chemical company come and poison their lawn just to get rid of them.

Amongst the various definitions of insanity,  I'd suggest that poisoning your lawn and, subsequently the birds and other innocent creatures who visit it, in order to destroy a harmless little flower growing amongst the otherwise boring blades of grass really ought to be one of the top ten.

Common sweet violets (Viola odorata) and their cultivated cousins the pansies (Viola tricolor), and also all members of the viola family, are not only pretty, but also tasty mixed in a salad or decorating a cake. They're mildly sweet and, in truth, offer more in the way of edible decor than flavor. One of our neighborhood bistros, Al Vento, has grown pansies in the planter boxes surrounding their patio, and last spring, I remember the waiter snipping a few for the chef, who used them as a garnish with dessert.

Of course, we're not the only species that can enjoy violas as food. Rabbits will happily munch on them rather than on your garden plants, if the supply in your lawn is plentiful. Fritillary butterflies prefer them as larval plants, and recently emerged bumblebee queens appreciate the nectar after their long winter nap—and anything you can do to get bumblebees to stick around will increase the yields in your garden, especially on the tomato plants, which bumblebees pollinate better than any other insect.

Despite their delicate appearance, violets are tough and sneaky little flowers. Hence, all the efforts to eradicate them from lawns eventually fail. They spread by underground runners as well as by seed, which is why they tend to colonize a given area once they get started there. And when they are ready to go to seed, they nod and tuck their little inconspicuous seedheads out of site and near the ground, so regular lawn mowing doesn't even affect them.

They have some medicinal uses, too, though I've never tried to use them in this way. According to this site, the ancient Greeks used them to "moderate anger" and strengthen the heart, and one of the common names for both violets and pansies in old England is Heart's Ease. A delicious bit of irony, when you think of the people so irritated by them that they'll do anything to kill them.

Julia's Garden: Emerging and Transforming

Julia Johnson was the former owner and gardener at this house. She passed away a few years ago and the house sat empty for a couple of years while the family waited for the market to improve, or so I understand. I'm glad they decided to sell it when they did, because it was right when we were looking last spring (actually, I think they had listed it in January and by spring when we saw it, they had lowered the price—must have reached that point when an asset becomes a burden!)

We closed on the house on July 2 last year, spent the month of July madly doing as much as we could to upgrade and spruce up the house, as well as simply to make it better suit our own tastes, then moved in at the end of July. So, our focus all last summer and fall was on the inside of the house (except for installing gutters to redirect the rain from the roof, but that was for the sake of the inside, as well, of course). Now it's time to start on the outside, my favorite part!

Julia was quite an avid flower gardener, but apparently not a vegetable gardener. The space at the back that we had assumed must have been her kitchen garden because it enjoys such terrific sunlight and is completely overrun with weeds, raspberries, and a random assortment of flowers, was, as it turns out, where the family used to park their second car. That would explain the two slightly skewed rows of heavy concrete pavers we've been hauling out of there! (We hardly noticed them last summer, when the weeds were three feet tall!)

Our neighbor Joe informed us that Julia "threw some raspberries in there" because she didn't know what else to do with the suckering canes. Ah, raspberries; a mixed blessing, indeed! There is a thriving thicket of them against the fence that we share with Bonnie and Joe—a thicket that grows on both sides of the fence, and it's not clear which side it started on! Taming that thicket is one of my daunting tasks this summer. But, fortunately, we all love raspberries, so it'll be a labor of love.

I imagine the same explanation applies to the clumps of lupines, blackeyed Susans and echinacea in the former parking space, all of which also grow elsewhere in the garden. Chances are she needed to divide these robust perennials and couldn't bear to discard them. Who can blame her? I have started potting up clumps of them to bring to a spring plant swap or two. It'll nice to have something other than orange daylilies to offer!

And then there are the daffodils, tulips, and grape hyacinths. What a treat to see these emerging and opening up this spring. I should not be surprised there are so many daffodils, because it would seem that Julia really liked yellow. We painted over a few faded yellow walls last summer, and when we visited the estate sale for this home last June, I selected this figurine dressed in yellow as a memento of Julia. The daughter-in-law taking payment said, "This one looks like Julia, too." Whether that's true or she just said it because I told her why I was buying it, I like to think of this pretty little lady as Julia's totem, or maybe I should say "avatar." I named her Julia, anyway. She's too fragile to keep outdoors, but I brought her out to the garden to pose alongside Julia's daffodils for a photo.