Category: Gardening

Gardening · New House · Reading

A Gathering of Poetry | August 2025

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a small green bowl filled with dusty blueberries

It was the best of summer times – with plentiful potatoes and just the right sized zucchini, it was the worst of summer times – with chipmunks stealing succulent blueberries and cucumbers that overwhelmed.  Almost making me regret planting this last garden on First Street all the while exploring options for next summer’s raised beds on Solstice Place. While carrots were not part of my planting plan, Leah Naomi Green’s poem is fitting for this month’s Gathering of Poetry.

Carrot

Take all summer, 
your ember

from the sun, 
its walking meditation.

Store it in small vaults of light
to keep the rest of us

when winter seals 
around each day.

We'll flicker 
to the table.

We'll gather 
to your orange flame.

Please excuse my blatant plagiarism of the hallowed Dickens Tale and for being a tad bit late in joining Bonnie and Kat for this Gathering of Poetry.

Bibliographic credit:  Green, Leah Naomi. The More Extravagant Feast.  © 2020 Graywolf Press.

Gardening

Beta vulgaris (beets) ready for winter

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beets in a blue pottery bowl setting on a wood counter

There are those individuals who just naturally like beets – like Richard and Momma.  Then, there are those for whom beets are an acquired taste – and that would be me.  For years, I avoided this nutritious root vegetable complaining it “tasted like dirt.”  It was not until a local farmer shared a salad recipe with red wine vinaigrette, capers, and feta cheese that I decided to give this vegetable another try.  (It was the red wine that really convinced me!)

Since that long ago Saturday at the farmers’ market, I have evolved from buying 1-2 bunches a summer to growing beets in our small, raised bed garden.  While we have already enjoyed several side dishes fresh from the ground, this morning was harvesting day for this year’s crop.  These have been boiled until just barely tender enough to easily remove the rough peeling.  Once frozen, I can pull them out for year-round culinary enjoyment, whether roasted or dressed in herbal marinade.

Bon Appétit!

Gardening

First picking

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small basket filled with cherry tomatoes with a sprig of basil

This handful of just harvested summer favor will be perfect for personal pan pizzas enjoyed on the porch tonight. The challenge when picking these Sweet Hearts of the Patio, is to keep enough for toppings as they go easily from plant to hand to taste buds.

Another celebration of #SimplyRed Squares with BeckyB.

Baking · Gardening

Tasty Rhubarb Scones

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five rhubarb scones on a blue plate

Fresh rhubarb pecan scones arrive hot from the oven in honor of this first day of meteorological summer.  Our lush rhubarb patch with five plants on the south side of the garage sprouted early and produced crisps in April, bread and cakes in May, and dozens of scones baked each month.

Moving from the alley to our raised bed, nearly all the planting is complete thanks to the healthy selections at Sargent’s on 2nd and Annie’s in Madison: beets, cucumbers, nasturtiums, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini, as well as garlic that survived a dry, nearly snowless winter.  We revel in the wonder that is summer in Minnesota, where we experience frigid short winter days only to enjoy, just months later, long fertile growing hours.

Gardening · New House

Garden Report #1

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four whole potatoes and one cut in half resting on a white painted board

Folktale advice directs the gardener to plant potatoes on Good Friday. We opted for a more scientific approach and waited until the soil temperature reached 50°F. That occurred this weekend. The 20 hills of organic Kennebecs are the first of the plantings in this last garden on First Street.

And to boost the yield of late summer produce, I tried a slightly different approach when adding eggshells to my raised, square-foot beds. Usually, I just crumble the shells in my garden-gloved hand but after reading that smaller pieces release more nutrients, I put the food processor into garden service.

Photo credit: © Annie’s Heirloom Seeds, Madison, Wisconsin, Organic Kennebec Seed Potato (Solanum tuberosum)

Gardening

Quick time fall clean-up

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large terra cotta pot filled with geraniums on the left and two green pots with marigolds on the right

In less time than it took the banana bread to bake, the fall garden clean-up was complete, 

With a laudable goal of staying in our small Kutzky Park house and after church friends (Robin and Heather) electronically “liked” Sargent’s landscape maintenance, we committed to their services.  In August, this well-respected Rochester business took on a portion of our gardening tasks.  They trimmed the overgrown lilac bushes, as well as re-shaped and refreshed our rain garden by removing unwanted weeds, thinning overgrown perennials, and adding plantings for greater variety.  The monthly maintenance allowed us to enjoy our outdoor living space while harvesting vegetables and making zinnia bouquets without the worry of encroaching weeds.

For the two of us, fall clean-up has always been a major undertaking, a job made a trickier by Parkinson’s Disease.  There are hostas to cut back, more than 20 terracotta and bright glazed pots to empty, and no-longer producing cucumber and tomato vines to compost.  In less than 60 minutes, Sargent’s crew of seven using heavy-duty hand and power tools completed what would have taken us days and, even then, without a guarantee to finish before November snows.  We kept the potted marigolds for All Souls Day and, while the front of the house looks a bit sparse, the porch still has bright flowering geraniums to welcome the mail delivery person.

Gardening

Presto-chango Pesto!

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straw basket with many sprigs of fresh basil
blue glass plate with three slices of french bread and a sprig of basil and a small blue and white bowl with pesto and a sprig of basil

Close your eyes and think of your favorite Italian eatery. That aroma fills our kitchen.

Minnesota’s miraculous seasonal changes are a blessing that brings long days of sunshine (sometimes rain) and green – green everywhere you look. Green plants in the garden, variations of green in herb pots by the back door, and even green in the kitchen where my first batch of early summer pesto is resting on the counter.

While the fixings are simple and I can make this delicious condiment from memory: basil, garlic (both from our garden), nuts, Palestinian olive oil, with dashes of fresh ground pepper and sea salt taste (note – the Parmigiano Reggiano will be added when served), I check Beth Dooley’s recipe in The Northern Heartland Kitchen cookbook as a touchstone for perfection.

Happy Gardening and Bon Appétit!

Baking · Gardening

Lemonless Lemonade

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muffins on a blue plate and a glass of pink lemonade
Sour cream rhubarb muffins & rhubarb-ade

This summer’s crop of rhubarb is full to nearly overwhelming.  Which is why, having already baked my forever favorite – rhubarb pecan scones, as well as two loaves of bread, three crisps, a dozen muffins, and two batches of sauce for the freezer, I recently spent a rainy afternoon checking cookbook indexes for variations on the rhubarb theme.

New to my repertoire is rhubarb lemonade although, for truth in advertising, this lemonade uses no lemons. “Rhubarb-ade” is easy to prepare with the added benefit of being high in vitamin C.

Directions:  Chop three cups of rhubarb, place in a glass bowl, cover with water and let this rest on the kitchen counter overnight; strain and sweeten to taste.  The sweet-tart, pink concoction is a refreshing summer beverage (even if the rhubarb sauce ice cubes proved less than successful as they rested on the bottom of the glass.)

Cheers! Prosit! Sláinte!

Gardening

Perfection Free Zone

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small gray, three tiered fountain in foreground with blue flower pots in the background

At our house, the placement of the solar-powered bubbling fountain is a summer milestone. So, while sipping a refreshing G&T, I can toast that task done.

My potted herbs frame the backdoor and the large Italian terracotta pot is filled with geraniums – my annual homage to Grandma Kuster.  The surplus of these vibrant red Swiss-window box flowers now greets front door visitors; a very useful placement of a “more than needed” purchase.

The summer veggies are off to a good start.  They already offer easily recognizable healthy leaves, albeit in a slightly revised selection of garden goodness:  1 grape tomato, 2 green peppers, 3 nasturtiums, 4 cucumbers, and 21 hills of four varieties of potatoes.

Despite things looking good, I was feeling like whoa-is-me Eeyore; guilty for not having accomplished more especially as I watched our next-door neighbors convert their front yard from lawn to micro-prairie restoration in yesterday’s drizzly Saturday weather.

Then this morning, with a standing room only crowd for the annual flower communion, there was the slightest slip-up in the service.   (Really, it was smaller than tiny, negligible, infinitesimal – are there other synonyms?)  We all laughed, especially when Rev. Ruth declared the sanctuary to be a Perfection Free Zone.  Inspiring advice to take from church into the garden and unto the screened porch (which still needs cleaning).