Basil Roots!!! Time to Transplant!!!

Happy happy happy!

Sometimes "Making" Involves Killing

     A potted "sweet mint," for making mint iced tea, has graced our desk for months, but a few weeks ago it began to "look poorly," as my Mom would say.  It was already stressed by the dry air of our apartment and the lack of adequate sunlight; I should have taken it outside two months ago.  But I love to touch the leaves and enjoy the scent wafting around the desk.  A memory, and a tiny little suspicion began to work their way to the forefront of my mind, still dulled by long COVID.  Time to pull out the antique, but still extremely useful, microscope.

     With some white paper, Scotch tape, two fallen leaves, and after a lot of adjusting and re-adjusting the lens and sliding the paper back and forth on the , the culprit came into view.  Two-spotted spider mites.  The leaves look very dry and dull to the naked eye, but under the lens, the surfaces cells' transparency is visible, along with microscopic droplets of water, spider mite feces, and long blue-grey threads here and there that might be fungal hyphae.

     Because this is an edible, and I don't want to use a chemical pesticide - even a supposedly "organic" one such as a pyrethrin - an alternative form of murder is worth a try.  As you can see, I have no qualms about killing certain insects.  Experts recommend spraying them off with a hose, but we don't have a hose, or an accessible outdoor spigot, anyway, so I'm trying to drown the evil little monsters.  And this plant is too fragile to endure even the kitchen sink sprayer.  I absolutely cannot remember if it worked the last time or not.  But here goes!

Plant, soil, and pot, completely submerged in water (pulling the garbage bag over the plant and pressing all the air out ensures the entire plant - and hopefully all the mites - are fully submerged).  We'll see what happens.

Rooting a "Magic" Basil Cutting

"Magic" basil cutting, keeping company with Annie the gnome

        Last week I felt safe attending our monthly Master Gardener meeting.  Why?  Because it's held in a gigantic, many-thousand-square-feet, extremely high-ceilinged room (higher than in a Walmart Supercenter), those of us there were like a few ants in an empty swimming pool, and I sat at a distance from everyone else.  Almost no one walks up and gets right in my face trying to talk to me, and if they do, there's nothing in the way (e.g. a church pew, table, row of chairs, or bathroom or church foyer wall) to keep me from backing well away from them.  (You wouldn't believe how many people don't take the hint and keep getting closer as you back away from them!)  The restrooms are very large, with many stalls, and well ventilated.  Of course I wore an N-95 mask with a second mask over it - and was the only person wearing a mask.  Of course.  A woman has to do what she's got to do to protect her immunocompromised self from everyone else.

        The presenter for the educational portion of our meeting, a fellow MG, spoke on herbs, and brought seedlings and cuttings to share with the rest of us.  She's an expert on culinary herbs; every time she speaks I learn something new, and leave inspired to keep experimenting, both with growing new herbs and cooking with them.

        This is a "Magic" basil stem cutting; I don't know if it's "Wild Magic," which doesn't produce viable seed, or some other cultivar, but regardless, Linda said these root in water, and are "too sweet" for her traditional Italian cooking.  Now it's time for me to learn the difference between sweet and not-sweet basil in cooking.  And even if I don't use it to cook with, the fragrance is delightful!  LIFE is finding its way. It's only been three days and already, tiny root hairs are visible coming out of the upper node!  

"Magic" basil cutting

Saturday August 20, 2022

Magic in the Garden!

        Sometimes my "making" involves observing that which needs nurturing, watering, transplanting.  That's what today's post is about.

        I love gardening because it is full of magic.  I don't mean Harry Potter cast-a-spell magic.  Rather, magic that is the delightful surprises that come because, as Dr. Ian Malcolm said in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, "life, um, finds a way".  As when plants revive in spite of extreme heat and dryness, in spite of freezes, in spite of neglect.  Yes it often does.  This morning brought several magical surprises.  The fact that I have to sit down every minute or so to relieve the pain in my back is a gift, because it forces me to be still and simply be.  Observe.  Look, listen, feel, smell.

Common Paper Wasp

        A large sturdy wasp hovered, then landed on our half-a-century-old rocker.  Along the edge of the slats it landed on, the wood was very pale - as if someone had taken a plane and scraped off a few inches.  This mystified me until the wasp grasped the corner edge of the slat with its jaws, and worked them a bit.  Wow.  It was chewing on the wood.  And apparently had been doing so for quite a while.  I never knew that there are species of wasps that eat wood!

Cope's Gray Tree Frog

        As I was watering, something pale jumped away from the small watering can.  I sat and gazed in the direction of the movement, and there was a new-to-me species of frog, sitting, watching me back.  The lovely creature is a Cope's Gray Tree Frog (Hyla chrysoscelis)  To hear its song, go to https://srelherp.uga.edu/anurans/sounds/hylchr.mp3 .

Jade Plant

        Our jade plant, a gift from a dear friend, is sprouting tiny leaves all over.  Even the leaves that have fallen off are producing rootlets.  Propagation is one of my favorite garden activities - especially when the plant itself gets a head start producing "volunteers".

Pothos

        Early last year my attempt to propagate a beautiful Pothos failed; more often than not, such failures occur because I forget to water the plants.  Out of sight, out of mind.  The Tradescantia I planted in the same pot thrived, but every one of the five or six pothos cuttings dried up.  This morning, right in the middle of the soil in that pot, these two brilliant green leaves screamed "I'm ALIVE!"  My heart nearly burst with joy.  I had not seen this particular color of Pothos in over a year!

Dragon Fruit???

        We will see.  The leaves are sending roots, desperate for more nutrients.  Notice the Southern Anole resting a few inches away?

Split-Leaf Philodendron

        The plant pictured below is sending roots up the inside of its pot... this is a severely pot-bound split-leaf philodendron that has managed to both survive a move and being stuck in its too-small pot for far too long - and now it's seeking new ground to obtain nutrients and water.

        The fact that, yes, life will find a way, is magic to me.  It doesn't matter that I could give lectures on aerial roots and phototropism, on dormancy and propagation and plant anatomy and composting and shade gardening in the South. What I've learned, so far, is but a drop in  the ocean of botanical and horticultural knowledge.  For me, the joy comes in discovery and learning.  JOY JOY JOY!!!

July 21, 2022, Thursday

Readying the Ground Garden for Spring

        This is what our front porch patch looked like a few days ago.  A few freezes had destroyed the tender tissues of the three perennials we'd been growing in that space, and they'd browned and gone limp.

The hori-hori knife has done its work!

        This is what it looks like now, after cutting most of the butterfly ginger to the ground, as well as the canna lilies and 'Black Jack' ornamental sweet potato.  I'm preparing this space for a spring planting of as-yet undecided plants.  Undecided because we've had big problems with the landscaping crews spraying glyphosate (Round-Up) and other herbicides along the edges of and far into the planting beds, despite my repeatedly asking them not to.  They destroyed the perfectly healthy, original beautiful perennial plantings put in by the landscape designer many years ago along our neighbor's entrance sidewalk - and then didn't bother to replace the dead plants, even a year later. It's remained an ugly brown-grey scar.  So I'm afraid to plant any edibles in the soil here, and our awesome ag agent was also concerned about the soil being contaminated by the bleach and detergent coming off the roof and walls when the building is cleaned.  So, ornamentals only in this rather damp soil.  But I can make magic with containers!!!

        That's because they haven't sprayed herbicides on anything I have growing in containers. There's always the risk of blow over when they're spraying, but all I can do is ask them, again, to NOT spray any kind of herbicide near our apartment.

        While mulling over options for vertical growing, in this patch, or just behind it, I've considered using containers, cord, and the old shepherd's crook we've been hanging hats on.  Before we moved here we used it to hold a hummingbird feeder (forbidden here - no feeding the "wildlife") on one side and a hanging planter on the other.  YouTube has turned out to be an excellent source of information about vertical growing, recycling plastic containers for growing edibles and ornamentals - especially videos by incredibly creative Vietnamese people who do not have yards, yet find ways to cram in as many plants as possible in their rooftop and balcony gardens.  There's no narration, no speech, but they do a great job of demonstrating how to turn water bottles and soft drink bottles into planters, how to build a frame from which to hang them, etc.

        I have some rather old flowering vine seeds and some fresh  nasturtium seed to grow (nasturtium blossoms and leaves for salads).  My extremely old nasturtium seeds failed to germinate.  They were really old, but it never hurts to try!  As our wonderful LSU AgCenter agent says, 'if you get just one plant out of it, it's worth it'.  And I never tire of experimenting - there is always something new to learn!

Reclaiming Something Lost

 

One morning a week or two ago, my "making" most certainly wasn't a material one - and besides, adding water to a bowl and popping it in the microwave isn't really "making" something, in my mind.  Although I routinely say "make" instead of "fix".  E.g. "Make a bowl of soup."  In other words, dump out a can of soup and pop it in the microwave.  As opposed to making a pbj, which requires at least three ingredients, a knife, a plate, messy application of sticky stuff to bread, and an often maddening amount of cleanup, because I invariably get both the peanut butter and the jelly or jam on my fingers, on the edge of the plate, on the counter, even on my forearms and the floor.  Because every other time I lose my grip on the knife and it hits the floor, providing the barking scavenger at my feet a lick or two of sweetness.  Sigh.

Instead, this making was of the soul... making a connection with my younger self and with my long-deceased father.  I don't know if he ever ate ramen; he probably did, because he dined in any Japanese restaurant he could.  He loved Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, German, and some New Orleans Creole dishes - any "ethnic" cuisine available to him.  Daddy somewhat patiently taught me how to eat with chopsticks.  We weren't allowed to eat Chinese or Japanese food with fork and knife - to do so would be disrespectful to their people and their culture.  We ate Indian food with the fingers of our right hands, once again, showing respect for the culture whose food we were eating.  (And deeply offending my mother's Southern Belle manners.) This was my father's teaching in the 1960s and 1970s.  He didn't show the same respect for my mother's family or their "White Trash" (not his words) food, which was virtually identical to Black soul food, and which, other than the weekly "wash day" red beans and rice which he despised, was never served in our home.  Luckily Grandma taught me to appreciate it.  Well, most of it.  No one's succeeded in getting me to eat real hog's head cheese, pickled pigs' feet or trotters prepared any other way, much less brains, tripe, chitlins, ears, or raw oysters.  It should be noted that Mama was the only one of us who refused to eat with chopsticks, most likely a tit-for-tat act of defiance toward Daddy.

I hadn't eaten with chopsticks, at home, for decades.  To an almost overwhelming extent I'd abandoned my own family's comparatively sophisticated food culture and embraced (mostly) the simple "white-bread" foodways of the family I married into.  It's a blessing to be married to a man with simple tastes when it comes to food - he's never demanded the time-consuming, labor-intensive "gourmet" foods that my father preferred. It was just as well, because the sicker I became, the harder it was to make from-scratch food anyway.  I basked in my mother-in-law's comfort food and tried to learn how to cook everything she cooked, and yet still craved almost anything that wasn't "Amurican".

But decades later, poverty, pain, illness, and overwhelming fatigue caused this "foody" to resort to eating packaged ramen noodle soup on an icy cold day.  I suspect Daddy would've sighed in disgust and added a large quantity of his favorite condiment - the original red Tabasco sauce.  To his dismay I did not inherit his cast-iron stomach, nor his taste for vinegary-spicy things, so that particular delight remains on our shelf, unopened, as a sentimental reminder of my favorite gastrosnob.

This morning, though, the frustration of seeing noodles slip off the edge of my spoon and feeling them slap against my chin sent me to the cutlery drawer, not knowing if we still had chopsticks.  I remembered watching diners eating ramen on a travel show, using both a spoon and chopsticks to control the noodles.  The spoons were identical to the ceramic ones we used growing up.  Time to re-learn how to eat properly.  Yes!  We have a pair of chopsticks!  Sure  wish I could remember where I got them - probably purchased them at Trey Yuen, or they might have come from my favorite French Quarter gift shop when I was a kid, a small place off the beaten path, owned by an Asian couple.

As I ate, I felt something wonderful happening deep inside my heart.  A sweet recognition of familiarity and memory.  A remembering of Daddy's presence, his ongoing efforts to broaden my mind and fight what he accurately perceived to be the stultifying influence of Southern religious and cultural mores on feminine intellectualism and creativity. A re-awakening, a reclamation of a part of myself so long buried.  One more step in the journey back to myself, in the journey to embracing the real me buried for so long.