Frosty Morn

We had a heavy frost last night. I had to be up early-ish (for a Sunday) to go into town to visit the Volunteer Park Conservatory, so I took my camera outside and got some nice shots of the frost before it melted away. On my drive into town, the verges of the roadway were ghostly white grasses heavily frosted, amazing to look at. I didn't get any pictures of that, had to keep my attention on my driving, and didn't want to pull over. So here's some shots of my garden, and a couple of a tree outside Starbucks, where I stopped for a latte.

I left footprints in the grass

Little drops of ice on dead daylily foliage

Weigela foliage looks like it's covered in sugar

Outside Starbucks, fallen leaves and Arctostaphylos (I think)

Look at that blue sky! In the PNW, when we get blue sky like that in winter, it means the temps have dropped below freezing

Read 'Em All Tuesday -- A Garden Designer's Blog

There are so many wonderful blogs out there that I read, not to mention all the ones I don't know about that others who participate in Tootsie Time's Read 'Em All Tuesday are posting about! It's hard to choose which one to highlight.

I am the first to admit I know nothing -- and I mean absolutely nothing -- about garden design. I try to be a good plant steward, and put my plants that like the same conditions together, and hopefully I don't make a mistake about what those conditions are, and where those conditions can be found in my garden. So I cherish any tips about new plants and where they thrive, or how to put combinations together, or how to use certain colors, of either foliage or flowers. A good blog I've found that offers all of that and more is Garden Adventures -- For Thumbs of All Colors, written by Karen Chapman. Here's what the tag line on her blog says: "Take a stroll through the garden with me as I share insights, tips and “I wish I had known better” thoughts. As a designer, container gardener and plantaholic I have learned by simply getting my hands dirty that thumbs really can go from brown to green. Join me on a fun adventure."

And here's a little something about her from the bio page on her blog.


"I have had a trowel in my hand and soil under my fingernails for as long as I can remember, but that is just the way it is in England where I grew up. Gardening is simply a part of everyday life where plants and produce are exchanged over a cup of tea and neighbors regularly stop to admire one another’s gardens. And so it was inevitable that when we moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1996 it wasn’t long before I was working at one of the leading nurseries where I could continue to feed my plant fix and share my enthusiasm and knowledge with others."

Her posts about plants and design are interspersed with posts about the progress she is making on her own new garden. Yes, she lives and gardens in the same area of the country where I live, and like me, started over with a completely new garden after moving. But any gardener anywhere in the country, or in fact, in the world, can benefit from her knowledge and insight.

Here are links to some recent interesting and informative posts:

Monochromatic Foliage Combinations - simple, elegant

Shades of Bronze

The REALLY Big & Bold

I hope you check out Karen's blog!

Free Tomato Seeds

Most years I save my tomato seeds for the tomatoes that I liked best, to grow next year. I did that again this year, and I have so many that I want to share them with my readers. Some I have more of than others. Each packet will have about 15 seeds in it, and they are meant for home veggie gardeners only. In my experience, most home gardeners don't need more than 15 seeds. I did a germination test, and the germination rate was really good. I took pictures of the tiny little sprouts in their wet paper towels, and I'll include them at the end of the post.

Here are the varieties I have seeds for:

Gogoshari Striped -- Indeterminate 80 days to maturity (90% germination rate)

This knobbly fruit has few seeds and little juice, and open, empty spaces inside (kind of like my head when I haven't had a good night's sleep).

Tigerella -- Indeterminate 76 days to maturity (100% germination rate)

Tigerella, a very prolific variety for me

Black Krim -- Indeterminate 75 days to maturity (100% germination rate) -- these tomatoes do have a tendency to be cat-faced, so not all are as pretty as these.

Black Krim

Ukrainian Heart -- Indeterminate 85 days to maturity (100% germination rate)

Ukrainian Heart

Tigerella and Ukrainian Heart were my two favorite tomatoes for this growing season. I like Ukrainian Heart because the fruits are large, a good size for slicing and using on cheese and tomato sandwiches. I like Tigerella because it produced a lot of fruit, in big clusters rather like a cherry tomato, but the tomatoes themselves were bigger than cherry toms.

Send me an email (alison dot conliffe at gmail dot com, I think my profile on Blogger includes an email link too) with your address and I will send the seed packets out to you in the mail, at my postal expense. I don't know the rules for shipping internationally, even to Canada, so please, just U.S. residents. I don't want to get in trouble with the vegetable import/export authoritaries.

Here are my germination test pictures. To test germination I picked out ten good-looking, plump, healthy seeds and folded them up in a damp paper towel, then put the paper towel into a ziploc bag, zipped it closed, and set the bags on top of my fridge for about a week. At the end of the week, I opened them out and counted how many had sprouted. (When you're a math dunce like me, using ten seeds helps with figuring out the germination percentage.)

Only one failed to sprout

Ten sprouts -- Hurray!

It may be hard to see in the picture, but there are in fact ten sprouts here too.

And ten more!

Disclaimer: I don't know what kind of response I'll get, but keep in mind, when I run out, I run out. I'll try to let you know if I can't fulfill your request.

My Final Day in Massachusetts

On my last day in Massachusetts I visited my older sister and her husband. While there, my niece dropped her three children off for a visit. The older two knew me before I moved away.

The Queen of All She Surveys holding Barnabas

Although she's only 8, she is a big fan of the Harry Potter books. She's making good progress on the final book.

According to my sister, the Queen loves reading, and despises math. A girl after my own heart. We talked while she read, and she was oblivious to us. Just like I was at her age. My parents used to say that when I was reading, the house could burn down around me and I wouldn't notice.

Little Man hiding in the shrubbery

Cutie-Pie

I'm home in Washington state now, had an excellent but long flight (five hours).

Thanks for all the enthusiasm about my days as a thespian. I actually gave all that up about 12 years ago. I don't miss it, but I do miss the good friends. There are a few amateur theatrical groups here, and some day maybe I will get back into it. I got tired of splitting my hobby interests between theatrics and gardening. Gardening won. I was self-aware enough to know that I was a less-than-skilled actress, and didn't really have the talent to get better.

But I know I'm good at gardening.

***********************

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

What I Do and Don't Miss About Massachusetts

I've realized after only being here for a few days that there are things I miss about not living in Massachusetts any more (there are plenty of things that I don't miss too).

What I Miss:

1. Family

I visited my niece and her twins, Knight in Shining Armor and Ninja Princess on Monday. They were born after I moved, and do not know me. But I had a wonderful chance to get to know them better. They are so sweet, and despite being preemies, are talking up a storm. 

My niece, holding Ninja Princess and reading to her from a book that I sent for their birthday.

My sister, holding her grandson, Knight in Shining Armor. Barnabas wants to get in on the action!

Maybe I should put together a picture book about me, Auntie Alison, so they will know who I am.

Today I visited another niece, the daughter of Middle Sister, and spent time with her and her little boy Peanut.

Peanut, thinking "Who is this crazy woman who wants to be my friend?"

Middle Sister, Peanut's Grandma

Peanut tries on Grandma's sunglasses

2. Friends

On Sunday, I went to see a play, put on by the Burlington Players, in Burlington, Mass., the town I used to live in. I was a member of the Players for many years, and appeared in several plays there, as well as taking a techie role, as props manager, stage manager, stage crew, costumier, etc. I saw a play called The Boys Next Door, which was directed by a friend who came to visit me in Washington in September. It was very well done, wonderful performances! After the play I had dinner with her and her husband.

My friend directed me when I played a murderous old auntie in Arsenic and Old Lace. That's me seated on the right, looking much older than my true age. (at least I hope so!)

3. Fried clams (they seem to be an East Coast thing)

4. Dunkin Donuts

I don't miss their good coffee, because amazing coffee in the PNW is plentiful. It's hard to find a good donut shop in the PNW. And the PNW can keep their overly sweet, nasty-smelling, faux-maple frosted maple bars. You can't put that stuff on a donut-shaped pastry and still call it a donut. One of the reasons I want to visit New Orleans some day is because I've never had a beignet, the Cadillac of donuts.

What I Don't Miss

1. Massachusetts drivers

If I stop at a four-way stop, and there are three cars waiting at one of the other stop signs, you are not all allowed to go before I do. We are supposed to take turns. You are not all allowed to go through the intersection one after the other, ignoring me. And, most especially, you are not supposed to play chicken with me. I learned to drive here, I'm in a rental car and I took the collision waiver. I don't chicken easy.

2. Snow. Piles of dirty snow in parking lots.

In November (it fell in October). Piles of dirty snow as big as the cars in the parking lot. By the end of winter, the piles will be the size of houses. No, office buildings.

A bad picture of the pile of snow still left in a parking lot from the early October snow a week ago. See the cars behind it?

Someone should invent a blue grit for sanding parking lots. Then maybe the piles would look like the pretty blue icebergs we saw in Alaska.

3. The state of the roads.

Until I moved to Washington, I never realized what roads could be like when they don't suffer through the freeze/thaw cycle of a harsh winter. Bumpity-bump bump.

4. Traffic.

Most especially, the traffic on Route One from Boston to Danvers, through Saugus. If you live here, you know what I mean. It is one long franchise alley.

5. Massachusetts drivers II

If you can't see a way clear to get out of an intersection because of heavy traffic, you are not supposed to just blithely roll out into it and block traffic for when the light changes. Even if your light is green. And if I hold back because I can't get through the intersection, you are not allowed to threaten to ram my rear-end.

Finally -- What I Love About Washington State

1. Rain.

I don't have to shovel it. By the time it ends at the beginning of July, and our two months of mostly non-stop sunshine begins, I am just starting to get sick of it. And it keeps my garden lush and green.

2. Mountains

One in particular.

Mt. Rainier from Lake Tapps

But really, technically, all of them. The Olympics and the Cascades.

3. Fresh, wild-caught Pacific salmon

Not only can you find fresh, fairly inexpensive salmon at the farmer's markets, but you can also find it in every grocery store.

Here are some gratuitous garden shots.

Hydrangea outside the hotel lobby

I eat breakfast on the other side of this window, with this hydrangea in view

Bright autumn foliage of a Japanese maple outside the hotel lobby

Read 'Em All Tuesday -- Gardening for Sustenance

I follow more than just gardening blogs, I also follow cooking blogs (and a few craft blogs, but I don't have that much time or talent for crafts, I just like to think I do). The kind of cooking blogs that I follow and that I am most enthusiastic about are those that combine gardening for food and then cooking what you've produced.

A favorite lately is Northwest Edible Life, written by Erica. Here's a little bit of info about Erica, from the About page on her blog. (It's too long to quote the entire page, but please go to the link and read it.)

"I come to the suburban homestead life by way of really good food.  I went to culinary school, and for 10 years worked in restaurant kitchens in and around Seattle.  I worked with some amazing chefs, saw some amazing food, and even had a hand in making some of the good stuff myself.  So my backyard veggie patch started as a way for me to have a few really fresh vegetables and salad greens to cook with.  That was all I wanted: a really fresh head of lettuce.

And then, in a turn of events that will feel familiar to all gardeners, I got bit by the bug.  I started looking at my nice green lawn as the enemy of productive space.  I put in some espaliered fruit trees and a berry patch.  I dragged my husband to Home Depot for banks of florescent tube lights so I could start my own seeds indoors.  I spent entire Januaries with my nose in seed catalogs.  I became....obsessed."

Erica now gardens and cooks a huge amount of her own food, and what she doesn't cook, she preserves. And she blogs about it, sometimes long and erudite posts about suburban homesteading, and sometimes photo-filled posts showing the steps of a recipe. Her latest is a recipe for mussels, and it's one I'd like to try. But don't make the mistake of thinking that all her recipes are that exotic. The post just before that demonstrated how to easily and quickly dice an onion.

She lives in the PNW, where I live, which is great for me, because I figure I can learn from her experience living, growing and cooking in the same part of the country where I live. But everything she blogs about can also apply to any gardener/cook/homemaker anywhere in the world.

There is also a tab on her blog with downloadable pdf files, that you can use to plan your garden or your monthly menus.  But please please please follow her admonition to not sell these, but download them only for your own personal use.

Finally, and most enjoyable for me.....she has chickens. Swoon!

One of Erica's beautiful chickens

This post is part of Tootsie Time's new blogging meme, Read 'Em All Tuesday, where once a week bloggers share links and information about their favorite blogs. Please go there to find links to great  blogs that you might not know about.

My Mother's Legacy

The party for my mother's 90th birthday was yesterday. Family members came from as far away as the San Francisco area (and Seattle, of course) to celebrate. My mom was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and moved here when she was two with her parents and her older brother. Two more siblings -- a brother and then a sister -- were born after they immigrated. Both of her brothers, as well as my dad, have all passed on. But she and her sister continue to be close.

My Scottish grandmother's passport photo, showing my uncle on the left and my mother on the right

At first, when my sisters and I started planning the party, we tried to keep it a secret. But somehow she figured it out. No one spilled the beans, but despite being 90, she is still pretty sharp. Then we were going to surprise her with me showing up. But one day while talking to my oldest sister about the party, she said to her, "When Alison comes for the party..."

So, the one thing that we did manage to surprise her with yesterday was the arrival of a bagpipe player to play "Happy Birthday" to her. I grew up listening to bagpipes, and I know it may be hard to believe, but I find it very beautiful.

My mom on the left, her sister on the right, listening to the bagpiper

Pipers used to lead the Scottish army into battle, in hopes that the sound would frighten the opposing warriors. It probably did.

My mom has a bevy of great-grandchildren, all of them sweet, smart kids. They all call her GG.

(From left to right) Pony Girl, Little Man and Queen of All She Surveys (these three are the only ones who remember me)

Knight in Shining Armor, trying to figure out how to let Barnabas out of his kennel

Oldest Sister and brother-in-law holding Ninja Princess

Cutie-Pie (my brother-in-law's photo)

Peanut (my niece's photo)

I'm still in Massachusetts. I took a picture yesterday of a rose still blooming in my oldest sister's garden.