Stephanie says

  Perusing cookbooks over the years I’ve gleaned all manner of cooking tips and food information. I’m happy to share with you, dear reader, a payoff from this flawed database.  I was online searching baked good recipes when I stumbled across a Swedish Saffron Cake which got me to thinking about the sheer number of Nordic recipes using saffron that I’ve encountered.  Why was saffron so commonly used in cooking there? How did they get it?  I had in my mind that saffron was regarded as a luxury item, like Swiss chocolates and caviar.  From Wikipedia:  Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus commonly known at saffron crocus. I’d never heard that.  I phoned Melissa to share the remarkable information that saffron threads are crocus stigma.  She said, “Everybody knows that.”  Huh? Not me.  Inner gardener kicks in:  Wonder if I can grow it?” And the answer to that question? ...

The continual rainfall since New Years has stopped; the temperature warmed providing grass with optimum growing conditions.  It's mowing season.  I took off early on Friday and have been gardening ever since - something my mid-region achingly reminds me.  But it's a good kind of sore. I did a hard prune on a climbing rose, (I have a theory about roses:  If you try and cultivate them, they'll die.  If you want to get rid of them, they'll never die until you dig out that persistent root grown so thick a power tool is required to cut it off after a deep hole was shoveled.  Which probably still isn't enough.  We'll see.  I'll likely have a scar on my knee from this encounter.  Bastard.  I hate roses.) So in other words, I've been in complete bliss this weekend.  This morning, clad in shorts, Tee, and work boots (yes, a Pacific Northwest fashionista,) pleasantly organizing my gardening day, visions of tidying the potting shed, planting...

That is a bushel basket filled with typically sized vegetables. Dwarfing the basket is a mammoth cabbage, weighing in at 17+ lbs.  The head is tight and slated to be shredded this afternoon and fermented into sauerkraut.  Sharpen the knives. Old fashioned green grapes ripened on the vine.  The fig tree produced the largest ever crop resulting in lots of dried fruit and fig syrup. My new favorite is rhubarb syrup.  The stalks cut today are macerating in sugar for a couple days.  The syrup has the flavorful tang of rhubarb.  A refreshing drink mix with club soda. 

And I can't resist the hydrangea blooms.  My new phone does a fine job.  No PhotoShop here! 

Double click for a close-up image. Thriving in door plant lobby Giant Spathiphyllum Rhododendron Western Oregon is ablaze in Rhododendron blooms.

Four photos.  Double click for larger image.

Oh but I've got the shakes.  My forearm trembles so badly it takes both hands to steady my water glass for that little journey from table to lip.  No, it's not old age.  Thanks.  Just symptomatic of a weekend (gardening) warrior who overdid.  Thankfully I ran out of weed whacker string or it'd be far worse. I may be whining tomorrow.  Nah, there's no maybe about it. I saw the biggest earthworm ever sighted in Oregon, (by me anyway, and I have some knowledge of worms being a vermiculartist.)  This one had the diameter of a pencil and was a full ten inches, now and then, as worms wiggle and stretch those segments.  It moved at a rapid pace around and around a large planter.  It would have been the full-meal deal for any lucky bird. I observed it circling and circling and circling the planter until I threw soil over the creature.  Sunlight kills worms - and they're on the extreme bottom of the food chain, thus not overly bright.  ...

This catalog was in my post office box today providing great hope to this mediocre gardener.  Flipping though the pages is inspiring as I imagine potential vegetable crops ultimately served up on my table. I've got four chickens ordered, due here 3/23, the blue egg variety.  I've been considering raising chickens for a long time, but this year I'm motivated because Henry will be here soon.  And I intend to entertain him with all manner of interesting things, much as I did for his mother. Seeing life anew through the eyes of children and grandchildren gives renewed appreciation and delight to this jaded woman.  

I mowed my lawn today, the second time this year.  Quince and violets are blooming.  Evergreen clematis have acclimated to the fence and promise a dazzling display of blooms and sweet scent. Two peonies have produced shoots.  I received a gift of five varieties that were planted last fall.  I can hardly wait for them to bloom! I planted some seeds today.  Leeks.  In eggshells. 

My next door neighbor has a enormous Ponderosa Pine, a diseased tree clogging my gutters with spiny pine needles after every storm, measuring a couple hundred feet (and we all know that my head for this sort of detail is oh, so limited.  But I lost a tree in a wind storm that was something like 175' and this puppy was taller. So I'm sticking with 200 feet.)  I also mention this tree could easily topple right over my bedroom and kill me in my bed.  Not being dramatic or anything...  I do consider this when the wind roars! This lovely Saturday morning dawned; I drank coffee and decided I'd gotten up way too early.  I went back to bed and was enjoying a snuggle with Rosie whose enthusiastic tale wagging often destroys the peace.  This morning, however, it was a mechanical roar outside my bedroom.  And lots of very loud conversation.    It was loggers and the roar was revving chain saws. That tree was coming down.  I am a loggers dau...

Annual obligatory hydrangea photo

I'm still fooling with the aperture in manual mode but I shot a few frames on automatic.  Those were the best ones...  So annoying. Still not getting what I want - but the blossoms are very pretty.

This variety of sweet pea is purported to have the sweetest scent of all.  I'd name the variety but that would involve me getting up and finding the seed packet and it's 90 degrees outside.  So no.  I planted these outside my bedroom hoping breaths of fragrance would waft through the open windows and perfume my dreams.  I'm testing my camera, aiming for a crisp foreground and a blurry background, a shot I could make in the dark with a SLR (film) camera.  Needs work.

A few Marionberries are ripe. These plums are still very hard although Moose manages to eat a few.

Maypop Passionflower  - pretty strange looking flower.  The plant tag said it takes 1 - 2 years to bloom after planting.  Not for this one!  Look at the flower buds above the bloom.  It has a very sturdy vine that dies back after a hard frost.  I was on a grocery run before getting totally distracted by racks of flower and vegetable plants on prominent display.   For sale!   How fortuitous.   I bought a horseradish plant.   I need that for Christmas prime rib.   Must tell my SIL - he’s got a deep fondness for horseradish sauce and prime rib.   Picked up a rosemary plant too.   I nearly killed mine with homemade bug spray – it looks very puny and it just might not make it and I need lots of fresh rosemary for that fabulous sausage-pasta dish. Dang, that is delicious.   Then I realized I needed to go the Territorial Seed Co. because they likely had eggplants.   The seeds I soaked and babied and...

Ripening raspberry emerges when I thwack down weeds in the berry patch! 

are being gobbled by snails.  Eau du Hosta attracts the greedy little mollusks from afar; an attack on delicate leaves ripped into shreds by microscopic tooth-like rasps.  The bastards.  I've spread new bark mulch, encircled the plants with ground eggshells and an outer ring of coffee grounds, which supposedly act like razor blades to crossing snails.  From my lack of success I suspect this is about as true as garlic keeping away vampires. I've been out in the early hours,  and out in the late hours, hand picking the pests and crushing them underfoot.  My next plan of attack is allowing them to eat hearty and fatten up and I'll be eating me some escargot.  With garlic!

Maybe plant envy is a more accurate term. Last year I built two raised garden beds in the side yard.  Brought in fill dirt And got planting. The kale overwintered and I'm eating it frequently.  But two raised beds don't seem like enough space  This is valuable real estate and everywhere I turn there are new plants to buy or seeds to sprout. My original garden is nicely fenced, which keeps the dogs from wandering through and crushing tender plants in their path, but...  it's a snake breeding zone.  I let it run rampant and now it needs serious attention and soil amendments.  Gotta do it though as there are eggplant sprouting, spagetti squash seed to sow, and I'm really craving celeriac.  And maybe okra. The (self-imposed) pressure is on with Memorial Day, traditionally post frost season, this Monday.