Taking Time for Autumn

   Being down here on the Bayou by myself most of the time, I sort of lose track of time.  There is no need for it.  This sounds strange for someone who collects and repairs antique clocks.  "There is no need for keeping track of time."  But...here I am.  I pretty much live by the "feel" of things.  Most days are centered around the weather not time.  I plant when the weather is right.  I work when the weather is right.  I fish when the weather is right.  There are days when I cannot tell you the time, the day of of the week or even what day of the month it is.  There is no "rat-race" when the rats are doing their thing and I am doing mine.  I go for months without ever leaving the place. 

  That said, I do pretty much keep track of seasons!  Those are hard not to recognize when they flip.  Today, it occurred to me that autumn must be near.  As I was working the Small Gardens for my fall planting, a sure sign of the seasonal change was evident.  Next to the gate of the vegetable garden, two stalks of blooms wafted gently on the breeze.  One was the chives that now dot the hillside in wild abandon and the other was a nerine lily.  Usually, hundreds of these blooms (both) can be spotted around the place but with the severe drought that has befallen us, these are the only two to be found.  Both of these are spindly due to that lack of rain.  It saddens me but, at the same time, gives me hope.  If it is autumn, perhaps we shall began to see some rain coming our way. and the summer heat will be pushed away for a few months.  I am ready for that change and thankful that the plants are doing their best to remind me that it is "time" for the seaonal change.

Wildflowers, Momie and Memories

   So the yard work continues as I have decided to rework the entire thing.  Perhaps spending so much time confined to the Small Gardens while I healed has made me grow weary of the hodgepodge arrangement.  I am now doing a much more (not) organized hodgepodge arrangement.  Seriously, my gardens will never be tidy and well-manicured.  Personally, when I see yards like that, I cannot help but think of how bored I would be.  I need the surprise of what may be just around the next corner.  So, I am busying myself creating "corners". 

  While putting the finishing touches on a weird piece of yard art made from hurricane donated wood, I was pleasantly surprised to see tiny wood sorrel blooms peeking out from beneath the chives.   While most folks see these as weeds, I find their unique way of popping up in unexpected places quite appealing.  Wood sorrel was one of Mark's grandmother's favorite flowers and she kept a large concrete urn of them on her tiny porch.  Even though she never did a thing to care for them since she was unable to venture outside, they bloomed profusely all spring and summer.  Whenever I would take the kids to visit her, she would always mention her lovely flowers.  

  It is sort of funny how things stick with you and memories come hopping out with a simple view.  The wood sorrel blooms brought a flood of memories of happy times spent with "Momie".  She and I got along famously perhaps due to our love of simple things.  I sure miss her.  Thank you, sweet little wildflowers for brightening my day with happy memories.

Anyone Want Some Chives???

  When something in the garden grows well, it only seems right to share it.  As far back as I remember, it has been a family thing to share plants.  Granddaddy used to tell me that if I wanted plants to do well, I needed to give part of them to someone.  Well, the chives are doing well.  Want some?  These things are doing far too well!  I was telling Son, just today, that I need to be a chive farmer!  I am sure there has to be a need for one!

  Several years ago, I planted a small packet of seeds and that was a beginning...a beginning to being overrun by chives!  They are everywhere!  It is bad enough that they multiply by spreading and making new bulbs but each fall, they make umpteen billion seeds to strew the place over.  To be totally honest, I can only use so many chives even though I like them.  Chives, chives everywhere and more to come once those seeds hit the ground.  It won't be long now before the entire place is covered.  At least, the bees love them...and moths...and a myriad of other bugs.  I guess they are good for something.

THAT is an herb garden!

  For the past few months, the gardens have fully been neglected.  Other obligations called my attention away from the weeding, tilling and planting.  We have no fall garden and will likely not see any fresh vegetables until next spring.  I feel guilty, in a way, but then, I feel too tired to fret over it much.  

  This afternoon, I took the old dog out for a slow stroll around the hillside.  He is not doing well and it is a struggle for him to walk much.  He does seem to enjoy the slow paced strolls with many rest stops along the way, however.  On one such rest, I piddled in the herb garden for a bit.  Chives are about the only thing that is thriving at the moment and, sad to say, I may regret the neglected patch come next spring.  As it is, I already have far too many chives, but each and every plant has gone to seed.  Thousands of seeds are being flipped to the ground with each breath of wind.  At this rate, the entire lawn will be chives soon enough.  Next spring will find me cutting chives instead of grass!

  On second thought, perhaps this overabundance of chives is not a bad thing!  Maybe my lackadaisical style of gardening has a bit of hidden wisdom!  Cutting the grass around here takes a good six hours of pushing a lawnmower and swinging the trimmer.  If the chives are allowed to grow where they may, my yard time may be cut a good deal!  Instead of mowing, I can leave the place be!  My reasoning?  I no longer have a lawn!  It is now an herb garden and we all know that you do not mow herbs!  Now, that is thinking ahead!

September Garden

  September is drawing near and that means that both the garlic chives and the onion chives will be in full bloom.   Since chives are so easy to grow and so prolific, the gardens will soon be filled with the purple and white blooms.  In fact, that is just about all that is in the garden at the moment.  Time has been short due to house renovations and care given to an ailing elderly dog.  (I am happy to say that Mr. PJ does looks better these days!)  Thank goodness chives can thrive on their own and give a bit of cheer to an otherwise drab spot.

  September also means that the lovebugs will be on the move.  For the past few years, this mass mating ritual has been light.  The swarms have not been enough to cause complaint.  Dry summers usually see fewer of the bugs but this summer, with all of the constant rain, may be different.  Hopefully, the critters will find some place else to go.  

  Since both the chive blooms and lovebugs appear about the same time, it is only natural to find them together.  While the larvae feed upon decaying plant matter, the adult lovebugs dine primarily upon nectar.  The bugs are also attracted to light colors...especially white.  Obviously, my lovebugs adore chive nectar and the white blooms advertise the sweet nectar.  Within the week, the garden will be filled with both..blooms and bugs.  At least, these critters do not bite or sting!

The Life Cycle of a Wheelbarrow

  Back in the day, things were made to last....and last and last.  Tools were not something that would be purchased and then left to rust.  The tools were prizes and passed down from generation to generation.  Now, however, there is no pride in workmanship so things are made sort of slipshod and are lucky to withstand any bit of wear.  Take for example...wheelbarrows.

  Actually, there originally was nothing wrong with the wheelbarrow.  I do get aggravated at the cheap tools and poor workmanship on others but the wheelbarrow in question had its problem due to weather and my own laziness.  Since we had no shed at the time, the wheelbarrow was left outside and the bottom rusted as things are prone to do here on the Bayou.  Salt air chews metal like some weird, alien monster. Once the bottom had a hole that made it impossible to tote anything, Son rigged it as a planter box.  The once useful tool now became a garden decoration as it was filled with seasonal flowers and chives.  (Chives make everything wonderful!)

  As a planter box, the wheelbarrow was still useful.  I liked the bit of charm that it added to the garden and loved the ease of caring for it. But all of that was before today.  Today, the wheelbarrow finally crashed...literally.  The bottom rusted more and the barrow became completely detached from the wheel.  Over went my garden!  It tis no more.  My poor wheelbarrow is dead!  As soon as I feel well enough, I will remove all of the chives and any bulbs that remain in the dirt and move them to a new home.  The wheelbarrow, itself, will become just another rusted tool to be junked.  Its life is over.

Oh, September....

  Oh, September, why must you always plague us with your problems?  I look so forward to your coming merely because after you leave, there comes October!  BUT...you! You always have to come in so merrily and shower us with LOVEBUGS!  Lovebugs!  Those pesky little critters that get in the hair, plaster the fronts of cars, creepy-crawly into every nook and cranny and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Lovebugs! Ugh!  I do not love thee, Lovebug....at all!  Bad part is...May has taken to following your lead, September.  Now, the  May brings the same critters to see us.  We cannot handle this much "love" so just stop it already!

  Actually, I pretty much ignore the clingy critters.  Since I do not often leave the Bayou, I never have the problem driving through the clouds of black and red flying nuisances, the geckos have never feasted so well as they do in September (except maybe in April and May when the termites and lovebugs are swarming) so having the lovebugs on the sides of the house is not all bad and I have to admit that I have had worse things in my hair (think termites again.).  At least, these critters do not bite or sting!

  One thing that I have noticed about the lovebugs is that they seem to love the nectar from chives. With the chives in full bloom at the same time the critters make their appearance, I guess this is more than pure coincidence.  The larvae of the critter munches away on decaying plant material but the adults love nectar.  While they fly around attached doing their lovebuggy thing, the critters make a beeline for the chives.  Great clouds of them hover over the blooms and crawl about sipping nectar from each flower.  Something must be pretty tasty about chive nectar!

  The bugs have been here for nigh on a week now so their invasion should start dwindling rapidly.  We will have seven or eight months before this onslaught begins again.  In the meantime, I will continue to sweep the critters out the back door and hope the window screens do not get a tear in them.  Carry on, Lovebugs.  We will just look the other way.

Oh, those Alliums!

  I have been lax in my gardening duties as of late.  The Second Annual Clue Hunt on the Bayou took up far more of my time than I expected this year.  We had dozens of interruptions which put us far behind schedule making the final weeks pretty hectic.  The garden took the brunt of this hullabaloo.  The neglect showed immensely so today I proclaimed as "Work in the Garden Day"...and I neglected all other duties!  Still, the garden does look better and I feel better.  Although it was chilly out, the sun was bright and so was my attitude!  First on the list was to transplant the tiny cabbages.  When I seeded them in the planter box, I was a bit heavy-handed so the seedlings were far to thick.  I planted out forty-eight but the box is still "thick as the hair on a dog" (to quote Pop!).  Tomorrow, I will transplant more.  Weeding then watering rounded out the morning.  

  I did pick chive seeds as one of the chores.  Not that this task is worrisome or tiring but it does come with the drawback of making the hands smell highly of garlic/onions.  The tall seed heads were snipped back and toted inside like a bouquet of flowers.  After carefully squeezing the heads together so they would fit in a gallon bag, I tied the tops together.  Then came the fun!  Whacking the whole shebang against the side of the kitchen table, I was able to separate the seeds from the pods quite easily.  Using the plastic bag instead of the paper type, I was able to hit with wild abandon and not worry about tears.  A cloth bag would work just as fine.  Another advantage of using plastic or cloth is that the seeds do not hide in the folds of paper.  (I always know that more seeds are in the bottom of that bag!  I can hear them but never can see them!)  This method made it easy to separate the seeds.  Within thirty seconds or so, a cup of the black seeds had been collected.  These will soon find homes in seed trays in the greenhouse.  

  Chives are great herbs to grow in any garden.  They do well in ground or in containers.  Once you have them started, leave them be.  Chives need very little care to produce well.  Having the advantage of being cold tolerant, they grow throughout the winter here.  It is nice to have fresh herbs whenever I want during the winter months.  

  *Just so you will be "in the know"...chives seem to have properties that prevent a number of cancers.  Belonging to the Allium family of herbs and veggies (which also includes onions, garlic, scallions and leeks), chives have compounds that are being studied as tumor growth inhibitors.  There is no magic to using the chives or any of the Alliums. You just need to add them to your diet! Sounds good to me!  I happen to love each Allium on that list and use them regularly in my cooking!  Kitchen herbs or medicinal herbs...chives are wonderful!

Just doing what comes "natural"....

Everything on this old earth must have a use..right?  Things were not created just to sit there being totally useless..that just cannot be! This thought hit me today when I was pondering the mass of lovebugs that has hit the Coast.  Has anyone found any use whatsoever for these bugs?  I mean think about it for a moment.  If some (so-called) smart person made red food dye from squished up bugs and "natural" strawberry, raspberry and vanilla flavoring from the secretions of a beaver's anal gland (really, now?....eww!), then why has the lovebug been omitted from the world of magical use-making.  Is this bug just so insignificant that it has been overlooked all these years?  Just imagine!  Someday, you might just be ingesting some delightful substance that involves this little critter!

I was out in the herb garden when I first noticed the lovebugs.  My niece, Eva, had mentioned that they were "in town" but until today, I had not seen any here on the Bayou.  Perhaps I just have lazy lovebugs!  Plecia Nearctica as they are known in the scientific world, do not bite or sting.  They are just here, there and everywhere!  Other than being a nuisance, they are not a particularly bad type of bug.  The adult bugs eat only nectar during their short few day life and that is exactly what the critters were doing!  I did find it a bit strange the they were not fond of the zinnia nectar like the butterflies.  The lovebugs were hovering about the chive plants that were in full bloom!  I suppose this had a lot to do with the color since these bugs seem to prefer white over any hue. Which should come as warning to people!  Since the lovebugs do their thing in September..Do not wear white after Labor Day!  (Well, at least we solved that mystery!  I always wondered why we were banned from wearing white after the start of September...and now we know!)

Still, I ponder the fact that these bugs are totally useless!  Perhaps if they slurp down enough chive nectar, we can use them as "natural chive" flavoring!  Which brings up another ponder-worthy thought..are natural flavorings really natural?  I, personally, do not find it natural to douse my hot chocolate, jam, candy or ice cream with something that comes from the back end of a rodent!  To me, those words on food labels can be highly misleading!  Folks are always told to eat "natural..it is better for you!"  Yeah, right!  Maybe you do not mind but to me, the ick factor is pretty high on that one!  Just because a label screams "all natural" does not necessarily mean it is something I want on my plate!  I pass..you can have your "all natural flavored strawberry ice cream"!  I will stick to fresh berries!

*It is true about the Beaver and flavorings.  Just take a few moments to look up Castoreum.  It is approved by the FDA for use in foods.  The dyes made from squished bugs are Cochineal and Carmine.  These are used extensively in cosmetics and in food.  Still..the bug thing does not bother me near so much as the flavorings!  Who in the world ever tasted what comes out of a beaver's anal gland to see if it tasted like strawberry, raspberry or vanilla?  EWWWW!!!!!!  Now..will you ever look at that delightful cup of raspberry hot chocolate again without that thought whisking through your mind?

Happiness is where you find it....

I have said it before that sometimes you just have to smile.  There are so many things around us on any given day that could bring wide grins to our faces if we would just allow the happiness to flow.  I find some of the most mundane things totally elating!  There are things around the Bayou that most folks would either shrug at and walk on past or would find remotely repulsive...I find them fascinating and wonderful.  These things bring smiles to my face and joy to my heart.  Son always says that it does not take a lot to make me happy and I guess he is right.  Bayou life is not for everyone but those of us who can find the beauty and joy in simple things, find the situation down right perfect.  This is our little "land of paradise"!

Today while we were in the garden, Michael made the proclamation again.  His words made me realize that I had a broad grin on my face while grubbling around in the dirt. I was happy!  What better reason is there it smile than being happy in what you do?  Actually, I was bubbling over with a bit of happy...the ginger plants had made wonderful roots!  I use a lot of fresh ginger root in both my cooking and in my home remedies.  It is one of those all-usage herbs that can go from spicing up stir-fry to seasoning a pie to healing most every ailment the body can have.  A ready supply of fresh ginger root right outside the doorway should be reason enough to make anyone happy!  It does me.

Another smile brought on by the herb garden was the overabundance of chives!  There are bundles and bundles of the oniony-goodness spilling over into the basil!  The tops of each plant was covered with black seeds!  Handful after handful of these seeds were picked and brought inside.  These will be planted in spring in hopes of extending the herb garden.  The chives will overwinter fine in the garden but I did not want to lose all of the seeds as I plan on creating more herb gardens.  It will be much easier just to plant new seeds than to transplant existing plants.

After a full day of smiles in the garden, I had one last smile late in the evening.  The sunset over the Bay was gorgeous!  What a perfect ending to an absolutely wonderful day.  A happy day filled with smiles..smiles made entirely possible by being able to find beauty and fascination in all things.  The Bayou life suits me just fine.

Waylaid by the cold...

Today was supposed to be several things..too bad none of them came true! First there was to be the shopping trip of all shopping trips. This was intended to get all of the Christmas gifts that were left on the list. Then I was going to head to the pier to get that elusive tree decorated. I so want to try out those strings of solar lights! Lastly, in between the chores of the day, I was going to bake! I bought a new cookie cookbook and in it are some of the most delicious-looking albeit fattening cookies recipes. At least, I had good intentions to get to all of these activities. Nope...did not happen! The morning started off with a visit from my sweet sister-in-law. She came bright and early, had coffee in front of the woodburning stove...then more coffee...and finally more coffee. It was nigh on noon before she remembered that she had errands to run and I had chores to do! After this, the realization that a major cold front was about to slam us set me into high gear! The remainder of the day was spent preparing the Little Bayou House for a wintry couple of nights. The wood bins were piled high with the split pecan logs and the starter box was filled with "fat" wood. These seasoned heart pine slivers soon filled the house with the most delightful aroma of pine! It smelled so...."Christmasy"! Then I headed out to tend to the plants. The few remaining potted plants were covered with blankets for the night but I will not worry about the vegetable gardens. It is fully time for the peppers, squash and peas to be gone so I can fill those areas with more cold-friendly crops. The greens can stand the cold so no worries there.

Purple Basil intermingled with Banana Shrub and Cosmos.

Purple Basil that has gone to seed.

While out and about tending to all of these chores, I noticed that the basil and chives were going to seed. My once beautiful plants were now putting out their seed pods in preparation for next Spring. The old, basil plants had served me well but there was not a lot of use in trying to overwinter them. I have enough dried to carry me over until the new plants produce. I did stop and gather a few seeds just in case I forget and pull out the newbies when prepping the gardens next Spring. The chives are cold hardy so again...no worries there!

Chives in the herb garden while they were in full bloom!

The filled seed pods of the chives..the black seeds are ready for picking!

As the sun dropped behind the pines on the west side of the Bay, I figured it was high time for me to get inside and warm up a bit! Both woodburning stoves are aglow with nice fires and the smell of persimmon/cranberry muffins is wafting in from the kitchen! Let me ask..can you think of a better way to spend a cold, wintry night? Perfect! Now to get my mug of hot chocolate and prop up the feet!

On the wish list!

Puttering around in the garden today, I noticed that the chives were in bloom. I have both the purple-flowering and the white-flowering types..the purple being the more common chive. To me this one has the "oniony" chive taste where as the white one is Garlic Chive and hence, has a "garlicky" flavor which is much stronger taste. I know that you can dry or freeze chives for later use, but I have never had the need for this since I try to overwinter a pot of them in the house. Most of my herbs do well in the sunny windows of my entryway. There are windows on three sides of this small room with a long shelf that is perfect for flower pots. This year I plan on adding a grow light to help the herbs flourish. Having fresh herbs in midwinter just makes everything taste better. This also provides for better home remedies since fresh herbs are "full strength". On the wish-list for this year..a greenhouse/herb house! I would love to have a full size greenhouse to grow a full herb garden during the winter. I am thinking that should be a project ...soon! I have accumulated a variety of old windows that would be suitable for this, now the problem is talking my husband and son into building it! Maybe the promise of homemade soups and breads made with the herbs will convince them!

Today, too, I had a visitor in the garden. A small raccoon wandered in as I was watering the Butternut squash plants. It seemed quite oblivious to my being there and meandered down the pathway to the compost pile. I had just put out a watermelon rind and I suppose it could smell supper. By the looks of its muddy legs it tried to find shellfish on the marsh banks before ambling my way. This could possibly be one of the three small raccoons that the dog "treed" on the pier post earlier this summer. Those should be about this size by now. Perhaps that is why this little rascal was not afraid of me, but I know as cute as it is, I know eventually I will have trouble with this one foraging in my garden patch. Ezzy the mutt might have to stand guard a tad more vigilantly that she has been..she seems to be getting lazy lately..maybe the "dog days of summer"?