Miniature Bearded Irises

Bloom after Dutch Irises, but before the Florentine Irises, which are followed by the German Bearded Irises. I associate the minis with garage sales (the Michigan equivalent of yard sales because we need cover in case of rainfall) because one year everyone who walked by the blooming mini irises (one their way up the driveway to the sale) wanted to buy them. To heck with the one dollar blue jeans!






I probably could have made some money off of them, but I didn't sell them, and I don't trade my irises because I wouldn't want to plague anyone else with my iris borers. You see the shot holes in a few of the leaves? I've had iris borers for years, some years worse than others. I spoke on the subject to an iris expert in his own yard one time and he told me of the extreme measures needed to attempt to defeat borers (and he did battle them), and I decided right then and there that life was too short to use nukes in my garden.
It kind of defeats the purpose of gardening when you turn away from nature, and nurture, and life giving, doesn't it? Just wrap the whole thing in a coating of chemicals?
I'll settle on digging and cleaning, and accept the results.

Another Rainy Day

And I had a day off to play outside in my own garden, shoot!
Yes, I say "shoot", I wonder where that came from?
Shoots are good things in the garden, unless they're weeds.

Anyway, it's another rainy day, and I shouldn't whine. The weather bureau says our through-April cumulative snowfall for the winter was 2 tenths of an inch short of a record which was good. The ground and the trees need recharging.
But here with my tuna can measure I've accumulated under half an inch of rain this past several weeks when we should normally have collected at least a good inch a week.
The spring flowers have been tremendous, but the leaves of the trees could use a good rainy boost right now while they're expanding.
By the way, we had our first hearty salad meal last night, the few lettuces that overwintered in my cold frame are huge, sweet and succulent, and it felt so good to bring in a bowlful of home-grown leaves! And the baby lettuces are growing so prettily for summer salads.

So I'm indoors and maybe this would be a good time to talk a little about the Home Street garden project, of which I'm a volunteer gardener along with my gardening friend Sharron, some Master Gardeners, some Applewood volunteers, and some Land Bank people.

A few weeks ago four of us canvassed the neighborhood - I think we passed out seventy or so invitations - going door to door to reintroduce ourselves to the neighbors. Unfortunately the people we talked to the longest were unable to come to our meeting for health and scheduling reasons. But we did have some good conversations. Seven of us met at the church on the corner, the minister there is welcoming and willing to work with bringing out some of his people. If all goes as discussed, we will have a foothold in the community now.

We made a calendar, but Sharron and I showed up last week to pull weeds for a couple of hours before our first scheduled work day which was yesterday. We noted that the dead tree has toppled during the winter - part of it hit the roof of the vacant house next door. Someone needs to take care of that tree!

Yesterday five of us pulled most of the straw off of the beds and did some weeding and edging and cleaning up. We have a full lawn bag with winter accumulated trash - bottles, glass, food wrappers and so on. The used straw was going in the composting corner - somebody needs to build some bins!

I had to talk to convince Phil to keep the straw on a bed a la Ruth Stout. I read her "How To Have A Green Thumb Without Having An Aching Back" and all that straw on the compost beds being piled in the corner for future composting could just as easily be left in place for mulch to supress weeds and keep the moisture from disappearing. Only weeders and waterers would choose 'beauty' over utility, and for my gardener's eye, a well mulched garden looks healthy and beautiful.

Sharron had the idea to make a new straw-only bed near the Home Street sidewalk and plant sweet potatoes in it, which is a flash of inspiration. Why didn't we have sweet potatoes in the plan! Our new trainee volunteer, Nickie, was telling us about all the mouthwatering ways she uses sweet potatoes, and for me they are the embodiment of comfort food.

And our little depressed urban neighborhood surely needs some comfort. We hear gunfire occasionally while we're working, but I'm learning the folks there live with that as background noise, like the sound of cars and buses and smells of cooking.
A man was killed by gunfire on our block in early April, and while we were standing outside of the church after that first meeting, we had our first taste of immediate gun violence, a man on a truck was firing a handgun up the street while driving north on MLK Boulevard.
Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. What is this Beirut?
No, it is a depressed, forgotten neighborhood in the middle of the United States of America, a neighborhood with good people living there who tend their own yards and talk to us strangers, and who don't deserve these abandoned houses, and slum landlord owned rental properties, and the community decay that comes with powerlessness.
But I digress.

So we are ready for another truck load of compost to be dumped and wheelbarrowed in a couple of weeks.

Seaweed Cookies (Nereocystis luetkeana)

This morning I made one of my favorite treats - Seaweed Cookies. This is something that I have made regularly for years and have had a great time trying different variations. Seaweed is one of the most nutritious foods available, and I love incorporating it into my diet whenever possible. 

This summer, for our first year anniversary, my husband and I will be traveling to the San Juan Islands to harvest a bunch of kelp, dulse, and bladderwrack. I am especially looking forward to making some bull whip kelp pickles!

What you'll need is:
3 cups ground nuts (almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, etc) (or whole toasted sesame seeds)

3/4 cup maple syrup

1/8 cup (possibly less) granulated kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana)

Oats (optional)

Dried fruit (optional)

Coconut oil (optional)

13" glass casserole pan or cookie sheet

Preheat the oven to 350. I like to put a little coconut oil in my glass casserole pan and let it warm up in the oven. The coconut oil helps the cookies not to stick, tastes great, and is also a very healthy oil to include in the diet. If you don't have any on hand, butter would work as well.

To make this I first mix the nuts and seaweed together. I've definitely overdone it on the seaweed before, so I just add little by little until I see green specks throughout the mixture. 

I then add maple syrup little by little mixing in between additions. If using dried fruit you can throw it in at this point as well. You want a mixture that will hold together well, but is not overly doughy.

I put the mixture in the glass pan and using wet hands I press down the dough until it is even and covering the whole bottom of the pan. I then sprinkle oats over the top. I bake it for about 17 minutes or until the edges are brown. After it cools slightly I slice into bars with a pizza cutter and enjoy.

Although we really try to limit our sweets, I really like this treat as it is a healthy dosing of protein along with the syrup. This is a great treat for those with gluten intolerance - just omit the oats. If you're allergic to nuts, try whole toasted sesame seeds in place of the nuts.

Mothers Day Recap

Tony and Ashley picked out a green pear scented soy candle for me and brought the grandbaby girls over for me to hug for a little while. They are so charming.
Skip and Tree sent a pretty flower arrangement in a perfect for me ceramic box with white roses and lilies and we had a nice long phone conversation.
Patrick? You tell me. Ashley says he probably worked the Mothers Day shift so his colleagues could have the holiday off. She is sweet and I like to think that way too. But I miss him and we will see him in a few weeks now. Knock on wood.
Frankly, seeing and hearing and hugging is tops with me.



Today after I came home from the Home Street garden I was doing some paperwork and the patio door was open. I kept thinking I was breathing in the fragrance of some spring flowers, or maybe my neighbor was drying her clothes with some new fabric softener. I went outdoors for a minute ... hmm? Just everyday springish nice air ... the scent was in the house. Of course, it took a while for this old nose to figure it out - Skip and Tree's flowers were scenting the whole room. It was the lily there on the table, doing what lilies do.

Pickled Dandelion Buds

My friend Kimberly Gallagher mentioned she is trying to do one new thing with her favorite plants this year. That seemed like a great idea to me, and so in that spirit I tried pickled dandelion buds.

Recently I harvested whole dandelion plants from a local farm so that I could use the roots (for beverages) and the leaves for pesto. Once home I realized that although at first glance the plants were not in flower, hiding in the baselette of the dandelions were lots and lots of unopened buds... Hmmm, I thought, haven't I heard you could pickle these?

Luckily google came to my aid and I got this recipe from the folks at:
http://www.goodnaturedearthling.com/recipes.htm

I started by separating the flower buds from the stems. I just took the ones that were smaller and didn't have a lot of formed bracts. (Although some I just removed the bracts.) I ended up with a decent amount. When selecting your buds, you definitely want to make sure that the flower buds are close tight and have never been opened before.

I then chopped up some onion, garlic, and ginger and put all of that in a mason jar. I filled the mason jar about a 1/3 of the way with tamari and the rest of the way with apple cider vinegar. I'll wait a couple weeks before sampling.

Has anyone else used the unopened buds before? I've sampled them before while out foraging, but this is my first recipe. I am excited to see how it turns out.

Rainy day

It's damp, drizzly, and Monday morning, when I should be working at the demo Herb Garden at the Extension, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about that project.

We had a good initial meeting two weeks ago at the Extension office. I had received a list of trainee volunteers from the last Master Gardener class, and had passed around a volunteer sign up sheet at the April M.G. meeting, so I had a lot of potential volunteers. I sent e-mails to 10 and 9 showed up for the meeting. We are already doing better than last year!

Terry reserved a room for us so the cold weather wasn't an issue. For introductions we talked about why each of us wanted to work in this project - to learn about herbs was the common response, and what our assets were that we could bring to the project. All except my gardening friend Sharron are Master Gardeners and most are also involved with other gardening volunteer projects. For example Gloria is a former florist who is also working on a raised bed herb garden for seniors in her town. Mike has a small farm, selling compost, mums and pumpkins in the fall, just put up a greenhouse and planted herbs in hope of getting into
business wants to learn about the plants he's growing.

Kathy offered right away to spruce up and paint the Herb Garden sign. Margaret offered to bring a Mideastern chicken and rice herbal dish made with garam masala that she makes for our lunch one week. Mike offered to bring tubs of his compost and he has a line on some old drainage tiles that we could use in the Tea bed for restraining the mints. Sharron has graphic art talent and will finally make me a good map of the plot.
Doesn't this sound like a great group?

As a group we decided to meet on Monday mornings to work in the garden with an eye to having it in good shape for the Genesee County Master Gardener Garden Tour at the end of June.

We toured the garden, and I noted that some of our Master Gardeners hadn't even been back there yet. Terry printed up copies to distribute of a nice Extension bulletin that I'd found on the Internet, from the University of Kentucky, on growing culinary herbs, which is a good place for new herbies to begin learning about herbs.

Back indoors I had a snack ready to share, of course, tiny heart-shaped lavender short scones (biscuits, really), that I made that morning, with a delicious Queen Anne's Lace jelly that I had purchased from Donna Frawley who spoke at the Herb Symposium two days before.

We ended the meeting with a project. I brought bottles and bags of dried herbs from my garden and also from last year's Extension herb garden. We discussed making herbal tea (tisane) from dried herbs as we passed around sample herbs. I discussed my favorite herbal tea book for beginners The Herbal Tea Garden by Marietta Marshall Marcin (Garden Way, 1993).
We made our own personal herbal tea blends and each of us made two teabags to take home, using paper tea bags that you fill yourself and seal with an iron. (I got them from Nichol's Garden Nursery which you can find online.)

I dug up some more names, and sent some more e-mails out, and got no responses. (Howd'ya like that?) Last Monday we nine met in the garden and set to work. Luckily the fall cleanup went well, so the two to three hours were mainly spent cleaning up the debris of winter.
I brought dandelion tea to sample, and talked about dehydrating the leaves of the young dandelion for a spring tonic tea and the roots which I grind for a mineral rich winter tea. I brought along a package of a commercial health food store tea called Dandy Blend to compare with my bottle of home ground dandelion root. They look and taste a lot different!
Dandy Blend had a cute picture of a dandelion on the label and it is very tasty and good for you. But it is pricey, on par with instant coffee I'd guess. The label of Dandy Blend calls it Instant Dandelion Beverage, but lists roasted barley, rye, chicory root, dandelion root and beetroot. It tastes like Postum which is chicory, I think.
Dandelion root, dehydrated and ground, has a bland flavor. I rather like the Dandy Blend better but like I said it is spendy, so my idea is to mix it half and half with my ground dandelion root.

I think I'll try to do a herb oriented demonstration like this every time we meet, and the volunteers who want to know more about herbs can learn that herbs are just plants that have a use.
Growing herbs is no different from growing flowers and vegetables.
And there is no secret to using them - but there is a secret it seems in today's busy, packaged food oriented society to using herbs, and that is to learn something you want to try and then to actually DO it.
Like the Nike ad suggests.
Only... the weather has to cooperate!

Now for some photos. Here are Calendula flowers drying in my dehydrator. The flavor is so minimal with calendula petals, and retaining the color and shape are important. The dehydrator does a good job in this instance.


A closeup of a herbal tea (tisane) blend: the flowers are of pineapple sage, Salvia elegans.


I 'garbled' the dried leaves from the stems over a clean bedsheet. You can grow a large quantity of herbal tea plants in a very small amount of space and with
minimal expense. You can be confident of how they were grown and how they were harvested and processed. You can have fun making your own custom blends.
So why buy commercial?


Added Note: While I was looking through my photos for something else, I ran across this one of my dandelion project. So I'm adding it later here in this post where it belongs, with the dandelion tea tale. Which may be stepping on Blogging Ethics but I'm doing it anyway.

What you see is my bag of dried leaves, a tray of dried roots and crowns, and my dedicated to herbs coffee grinder with ground root.

Another stepping stone

My friend Norma sent me this photo of her stepping stone to share with you. She was pondering what color of grout to use, and had the inspired idea of using white grout for background but making the butterfly 'pop' by painting the grout around the butterfly with black enamel paint.

The drawing for the bracelet -

We decided that it wouldn't be any fun to just draw one name. I mean, come on! So there are some review copies of other books, a couple of t-shirts, soaps, lotion bars... ok, 14 prizes all together. I wish we had enough bracelets and could send one to everyone.

So without further ado.....Winner of the bracelet is TARA ARMER!
Congrats, Tara.

Other winners:
82 Sensational Stevia Desserts by Lisa Jobs - Michele Brown
Blue T-Shirt - Gail Odegaard
Terra Cotta T-Shirt - NancyMcQuiggan
Herbal Playing Cards - JoAnne Farrell
Spa Soap Bar - Liana McCoy
Jewelweed/Plantain Soap Bar - Christie Sarles
Antique package of borage - Karen Mallinger
Women's Herbs, Women's Health by Christopher Hobbs & Kathi Keville - Michele Rice
Garden Voices, Stories of Women & Their Gardens by Carolyn Freas Rapp - Susan Hess
Small Sandalwood Fan - Elizabeth Doutre
Lavender Lotion Bar - Jennifer Halliday
Amber Lotion Bar - Rachel Johnson
Garden Buddy Neck Wrap - Elizabeth Lalwani

Congratulations everyone. Thanks for helping to make the debut a rousing and FUN success.

Green Thumb Sunday - Daffodils for Mom

The photos are from a couple of weeks ago, but their sunny color brightens up my day and I hope yours. I used to give my Mom daffodils, so they mean sonmething to me.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature Lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

Dandelion Fritters

Wow! this has been a busy week. I guess spring is here and there is lots and lots to do. I spent a lot of time with dandelion this week and did some new things that I'll be sharing. Our lawn just erupted with dandelion flowers - it's so beautiful I just have a hard time understanding why people want to eradicate this plant.

I've made dandelion wine a few times and swore to never to do it again because it is a lot of work! But once those beautiful flowers showed up I just couldn't help myself. I am waiting for my wine yeast to actually make the wine and when it shows up I'll post about how I make dandelion wine.

We had a couple extra flowers left over so last night I made up some fritters! Definitely wild food junk food - but delicious all the same.

When I gather the flowers I try to get the biggest ones that are completely open. I put all the flowers in a basket that has some holes, or a paper bag. After collecting I leave this out in the sun for about an hour (the paper bag I put on its side) to let out all the creatures that were enjoying their dandelions before I came along and plucked it.


To make the fritters, we first started by taking the bracts off the dandelion flowers. In the picture you can see the one on the left has bracts and the one on the right the bracts have been removed. I was taught to remove the bracts because of their bitter taste.






I then made up the batter. I got my original recipe from Karen Sherwood and just tweaked it a little to fit the ingredients I had on hand.

1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flower
1/3 cup corn meal
1 t baking powder
cinnamon to taste
dash of salt
1 T of butter
2 T of honey
1/3 Cup milk
1 egg
Coconut oil

Mix the dry ingredients together and then melt the butter on low heat along with the honey. Let this cool and add the egg and milk. Mix well and then add to dry ingredients. You want to end up with a consistency like pancake batter.

I then heat up a good amount of coconut oil in the skillet. I like coconut oil because it is great for high heat and one of the most nutritious oils available. Whatever oil you use just make sure it has a high smoking temperature. (Olive oil is a very poor choice.)






Once the oil is hot enough I dip the flowers in the batter and place them in the skillet. I turn them once one side is golden brown.

Once they are done cooking I place them on a plate lined with a paper towel.You could also make these more savory by omitting the honey and adding herbs like thyme and rosemary.