Confession #4

Confession #4: I’m not as good a driver in the Fall as I am in other seasons.

          And I bet I’m not the only Flower Floozie with this seasonal affliction. I don’t talk   on my phone or reach for buttons to change the radio station but I do gawk at all the colors around me from the trees.

          I’m not such a terrible driver that I need to reveal the make and model of my car and the route I take to work so you can be sure to avoid driving in the general vicinity of me- it’s just that the trees capture more of my attention than other drivers.

          The Chinese pistache- ginkgos, big leaf maples and even the walnuts create a visual feast. If it makes you feel any better to be on the road with me, I have excellent peripheral vision.

          Fall is one of my four favorite seasons. I’m not a big fan of using the word favorite or the words ‘the best’ because I feel I’m limiting myself and experiences. I do sort of admire people so sure of themselves that they can use these words, but that’s just not way I am.

          I have used the word favorite on occasion like when I tell my son he is my favorite child. I only have one. And one time I made the best kettle of borscht I’d ever cooked and I think it’s because I used the best bunch of beets ever grown.  And I do have a favorite coffee cup. Someone gave it to me when I was eighteen and it’s sort of a miracle I haven’t broken it. Ziggy’s on the cup. He’s looking into his mug with a tea bag floating on top and he’s holding the string.

          So, you get the picture of me and favorites. I have lots of them and depending on the situation or season, my favorites (note the plural usage) change.

          So here’s an example of a typical fall drive for me…I was in my car yesterday morning at around 9:15 heading southwest. About 50 feet in front of me, I noticed a swath of yellow leaves drifting down from the sky heading across the road. I slowed from 30 MPH to 20 and my timing was perfect. The leaves swallowed me up and for the two seconds it took me to drive through them…plink, tink, tink.  I looked in my rear view mirror and no more leaves fell into the road. Too bad for the other travelers.

          Attention is important when you're driving. I know that, and I just want to reiterate that I really am a pretty good driver. I’m courteous and don’t speed so my glancing at the scenery is fairly safe (refer to example above).  And if I do feel I just cannot drive safely because I’ve spotted a tree I can’t look away from, I pull over to stare at the beauty in front of me. I breathe in the orange and scarlet hues that capture my soul and its need for some essence in this world then I get back in my car and hope I’m not late for work.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

                                                                             -Albert Camus

Confession #3

          I want to talk about harvesting – the joys and pitfalls. The color of fall is orange and lots of orange things hang from trees right now and I’m not just talking about Halloween pumpkin decor.

         

          Persimmons abound everywhere but BEWARE of the unripe persimmon. Sure, they may look orange enough to pop off the tree and bite into (the Fuyu variety that is) but watch out. If it’s not completely ripe and just only slightly ripe, your teeth are in for a terrible treat. Think about this when you’re passing out Halloween snacks this week if you want to play a little joke.

          But seriously, this year more than any other, I have played tricks on myself. I love persimmons (I have three trees) and have bitten into several not quite ripe ones.  That horrible pucker feeling on my teeth from the unripe lasted for hours. Okay- slight exaggeration.

          If you don’t know what I’m talking about, find a persimmon tree, pull one off that’s only a little orange and take a bite. I feel it’s something everyone should experience at least once in their life. A green banana will give you the same effect as will an olive off the tree which leads me to my next confession.

                             Confession #3: I’m bathing with olives.

          Let me explain…

          I am an olive picker. I love the picking part which probably goes back to an evolutionary part deep inside my psyche. If I were a monkey, I’d probably be the resident nitpicker in the group.

          Last week, a friend and I picked olives and I am in the process of curing them. The process isn’t difficult and can be found in books and sources on the internet so I won’t bore those of you who are only olive eaters not curers with the details. Those of you interested can read on your own.

          If you do want to make your own olives, find a tree and ask the owner if you can pick their olives. Most likely, the owner of the tree will shower you with hugs and kisses which you do not have to accept. Olives left alone on a tree turn black, fall off and makes a big mess.

          If you do end up picking olives, try one while you’re gathering. My grandma did it to me so I feel it is okay for me to do it to people I care about and I have. It’s not mean. It’s a life lesson.

         

          Anyway, I use lye to cure my olives which involves soaking the olives in the lye to remove the bitterness and then soaking the lye out so the olives can be eaten. Bucket of olives and water are involved and buckets are heavy when they aren’t empty even though I use the small two gallon size. When I was forty, I thought nothing of picking up a five gallon bucket filled with soaking olives. I’m smarter since I’m over fifty…and not as strong.

          Well, the rinsing has tweaked my back and neck anyway, because I have to lift the buckets over the edge of the bathtub to rinse the olives, fill the buckets up again with water then take them out of the bathtub. Yes, I have removed the buckets from the tub with just the olives in and filled a jar with water to pour over the olives sitting on the floor, but I’m still left with having to lift up the buckets to dump them on the next rinsing.

          So, I decided to just leave the buckets in the bathtub until the rinsing phase is over which is about three days. Don’t worry, each bucket have a lovely Fiesta wear plate covering it to keep out the germs which is a lot more protection that we give our toothbrushes.

          And my bathtub looks sort of cute with an orange, yellow, pink and blue plate over each bucket against an avocado green tub. I’m reminded of a Van Gogh painting, sort of.

         

          I only have one more day of rinsing which means only one more shower to get through.

          In my life so far, I’ve bathed with my siblings when we were kids, my son when he was a baby, various adult who shall go unnamed and even insects which wasn’t my idea.

          Each year as the fruit on my next door neighbors’ loquat tree ripens and falls off, gnats infiltrate my bathroom. I swat them as wash my face but they multiply every thirty seconds so eventually I just let them hang around and fulfill their voyeuristic need.

          So really, bathing with fruit isn’t that farfetched in my world. Lots of people put plants in their bathroom and I know people water them in their bathtubs so why not go one step further.

          The trickiest part is keeping my balance against the wall while I shampoo my hair, but it will all be worth it when I serve my garlic flavored olives at one of my famous dinner parties and the guest ooh and ahh over that flavor they just can’t pin point.

You’ve got to go out on limb sometimes because that’s where the fruit is.

                                                          Will Rogers

The sunlight softens the shadows of sunflower stalks and the leaves swirling in the street sing a song of fall.  Oh yeah and I’m not sweating.

                                                 Ahhh…Autumn.

          Confession #2: I have neglected my garden for the past several months.

          Oh, I’ve wandered around my garden paths and spoken to the hummingbirds and bees about the blooms they’ve visited all summer. I’ve made sure my plants had water (I have drips and timers). And I’ve spoken to the phlox and lion’s tail and told them how much I appreciate their late summer flowers. So you can see... it’s not complete neglect.

 but…

          I haven’t weeded much and that stupid weed that winds itself up and into anything it can and then gets powdery mildew just to spite you is everywhere in my garden. This weed has a stranglehold on my Echinacea, white sage, lavender…you get the picture. You know this weed too? The root goes down to the earth’s magma and so it’s almost impossible to completely eradicate it.

           

          I haven’t deadheaded either. Sometimes I don’t deadhead on purpose so the birds can eat the seeds and also I like it when plants reseed-it saves me time. But as I look around my back yard, I realize my veronica and vervain are begging me to find my clippers. Their blooms are gone and they want me to cut them back so they can rest for the winter. So I’m off to find one of the five pairs of clippers I own. Another confession which I will address at a later date is that I don’t put my tools away and so it takes me a while to locate what I’m looking for. That’s why I like to have five or six of every kind of garden tool I use.

Only ten minutes later and I have my sharpest pair of shears. As I prune the hyssop, I tell her how beautiful she was this summer with her azure flowers and that I know she’ll be even more lovely next year when she’s two. And the bees, I say to her, will visit you all the more.  Flower Floozies give pep talks to our flowers. Regular people might do it too but they may not admit publicly to this behavior.

         

          The afternoon feels warm on my skin and as I prune and snip and pull the weeds in my way and around my plants, I apologize  and tell my plants I’ll try and be a more attentive gardener next year.

         

          Flower Floozies are ever hopeful, and we mean to do everything we set out to do and in our minds, not one project goes unfinished.  The new planter beds get built. The trees get pruned to a manageable height, and every single plant that was purchased last year finally gets a new spot in the garden.

          And now that it’s Fall…  I will pull every single weed in my garden or pour boiling water on them- my latest attempt to get rid of the weeds that plague my life.  After I make a pot of noodles or steam some veges, I take the strainer outside and empty the pot over a patch of weeds.  I highly suggest this form of weeding for the satisfaction factor.  I love to begin my day by going outside and gloating at the boiled weeds the next morning all brown and withered. It makes me smile.

          So now that it’s Fall…  I will prune back all the plants that ask me for a haircut. I’ll harvest my dill and fennel seeds. I’ll gather my lemon grass and lemon verbena for teas this winter. I will do it all or at least in my mind I will.

           

                    In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

                                                                             Alice Walker

Confession #1

          My name is Rebecca and I am a Flower  Floozie.

          Being a flower Floozie doesn’t mean I love or even like all plants. I have definite dislikes and many true loves of particular plants. Other plants are just okay, but I think I’m getting ahead of myself as the prior thoughts could be another confession I’ll address later.

          I need to stick to my first confession of being a Flower Floozie. I’ve met dozens of Flower Floozies. You know who you are. You buy a six pack on your way home from work and it isn’t beer, it’s petunias and because of that purchase, you don’t have enough money for that loaf of bread you were asked to pick up before you got home.

          Or, you obsess over a Black-eyed Susan you spotted in your neighbor’s front yard and you can’t stop thinking about it until you possess one of your own, but you can’t find one because we’re all sold out. No problem, you think to yourself. Pretty soon the rudbeckias will go to sleep for the winter and then you’ll have your chance to sneak over with your trowel and dig one up. Or, you could knock on your neighbor’s door with an offering of your own: an Echinacea or a daisy and see if she’ll make a trade.

          Flower Floozies will go to extremes to get the one or two or three dozen plants they can’t possibly live without but usually we try not to break the law.

Confession #1: I am Flower Floozie.

So, if you already are a Flower Floozie or want to become a flower Floozie or just want to understand why someone you care about can’t stop planting perennials long enough to get a drink of water, join me on my inner journey – where I will unbury my deepest confessions for the world to see… or maybe just the ones I can print for the public.

By the way…the Plant Barn will be having a division swap in November. Similar to a seed swap but easier to see what you’re trading.

                   The way to avoid housework is to live outside.

                                                        -Sandra Blacksmith, 1900