The Underappreciated Hosta

Underappreciated by me anyway—not the bumblebees. With all the plants I try, and fail, to grow, the hostas that our friend Cecile gave us are flourishing. Hostas are so reliable. And now they're in bloom.

Dinner Monday night—on the back patio, overlooking the hostas—was once again Roasted Everything in the CSA Share. And you know what I love? This frozen organic brown rice. Three minutes in the microwave, topped with roasted veggies and a squeeze of lemon, mmm mmm.

Backyard Developments

In news of the World's Tiniest (and Most Half-Assed) Garden, I would first like to announce that the green pepper plant is doing splendidly.
The tomato plants—not so much. They outgrew their tomato cages and kept collapsing whenever there was a gust of wind. Now they're leaning against the back fence and producing feeble little green tomatoes. You don't want to see the carnage. Oh, you do? OK, fine.
Next year I'll train them up the fence to start with. I still don't know if I can make tomatoes work with so little sun, but we'll see.

In other yard news, I stopped by Nagel Lumber and noticed this cute little garden shed on sale. It was just what I had envisioned for this spot by the house.
Now I can store my garden tools and they won't get rusty in the rain.

What Is It, Lassie? Timmy's in the Cistern?

Recently I noticed that an area of our yard about ten feet from the house appeared to be caving in. Some poking around revealed an entrance to a concrete-lined cavern that goes down several feet and extends at least several feet back. Our neighbor Jim, homeowner extraordinaire, took a look and said he thought it was an old cistern, used to collect rainwater for use in the house in the days before running water. Then he noticed some garlic mustard in our yard and advised pulling it.

Sure enough, I looked in our basement nearest the cistern and there was a (now sealed) drainpipe sticking out of the basement wall. So a hundred years ago, the people who lived in our house went downstairs and got their water out of that tap in the wall.

Jim recommended filling the cistern with "debris." I'm not sure we're advanced enough homeowners to generate much debris, so in the meantime we have this gaping hole. All I knew about cisterns previously was that they were a convenient place to stash a dead body if you were a rural murderer, and children fell into them. Probably what makes me more worried is the more realistic possibility that it would make a nice home for our giant groundhog or other slightly menacing beast. For now I've covered it with a board from someone's roof that landed in our yard after the tornado of '06.

Covering an old cistern with a tornado-generated door? This is all so pastoral!

Thoroughly modern Mr. Flossie asked: "If they didn't have running water, why didn't they just order their water from Culligan?" Har, har.

Mulch Better

We went out to the landfill to get mulch on Saturday. I was wrong—it wasn't $1/ton; it was free. Maybe because we got less than a ton. We really needed mulch, as you can see from these before pictures.

M. and H.'s truck to the rescue. This was just one load of two.Et voila! Ready for our baby perennials to return (and keeping fingers crossed they survived the winter permafrost).

Sunday Garden Report #1

As of this weekend, the Not Sunny Enough Garden is officially open for business for the season, with five tomato plants in the back row and two eggplants and two basils in the foreground. I asked the tomato-plant guy at the farmers' market for an assortment of easy-to-grow tomatoes, and he gave me the following: Black Prince, Brown Berry, Early Girl, red and yellow striped Roma, and Yellow Pear.

Also, in the left foreground, I planted some seeds from two years ago I came across among the gardening things—I don't know if they'll even germinate after all this time. They're Queen Anne's Pocket melons, which Stud McMuffin gave me because the miniature melons were carried around by Victorian ladies for their sweet scent and she thought that sounded wacky, and so did I. Can I work pocket melons into my dissertation somehow? Hmm....

The Tree, One Year On

The prairiefire crabapple seems to be filling in nicely, despite having been encased in ice for most of the winter. Here is a comparison of the tree just after it was planted a year ago to the tree yesterday at sunset.

(Yes, we've had some landscaping done—goodbye steep, hard-to-mow front lawn, hello mulch! And yes, I think someone moved the rock.)

Blue Flower

We had a dinner party on Saturday and I found these little guys in the yard for the centerpiece. They seem to be Scilla sibericas that "escaped" (as the web site terms it) through the fence from a neighbor's patch. They're toxic, so back outside they went at the end of the evening.

I'm glad it's spring!

This Oak Generates a Lot of Leaves

Last fall I was overworked and didn't quite get around to raking leaves in the backyard. "They'll mulch" was the way I rationalized it. Well, by the following spring they were still there, and the lawn ended up with huge brown patches. Worse, I spent the whole winter being annoyed whenever I walked by the leaves, which got mushier and mushier with every snowfall and melt.

I've been reading about Victorian women's autobiographies and how they fall into the categories of the domestic memoir and the professional memoir. The earlier Victorians embraced domesticity; the later generations were more feminist and hoped to escape the bonds of the home. That tension feels very much alive when I find myself choosing between work and chores around the house. All I know is, I left the library at 3 pm today and spent the rest of my Sunday afternoon raking leaves. It felt nice to be outside. It was overcast, like deepest winter, but about 60 degrees and breezy, and of course there were no bugs. I raked until well after dark.

No professional gain or public acclaim will result from the way I spent my afternoon. But I couldn't care less. It made me happy.