To Cure a Rant: Do Something

This week our master gardener group hosted a three day rainwater harvesting specialist training course. I helped. Mostly I put out food and talked about plants I like, but I was there if they needed me.

The course leader was a man who lives very near the Texas hill country. The water source for his home is rainwater. That's right rain water and only rain water. The average rainfall in that area is less than 30 inches. Pretty impressive system, I think.

Our educators and speakers believe in acting as stewards of our land. They spoke of the unique position we find ourselves in today. Most of us do not live off of the land. Therefore, we do not have to exploit it in order to survive. We are in an enviable place. We can care for the land - really care for it by restoring native plants, returning water to our aquifers, and replenish the soil. We can do it one little bit of land at a time.

I came away from this week feeling empowered. I watched this small group of gardeners walk out of this course hauling off their bright shiny new rain barrels with plans to plant rain gardens. These few people now have the knowledge to help prevent storm water run off and return some of that water to our precious ground water.

We rant and rave about how nobody is doing anything and our environment is going to hell in a hand basket. Well, today I watched a few people, myself included, go out into the world with a little knowledge that can make a difference. And so it begins.

Ponytail Trap

I love this blog. This girl is seriously funny. She has caused me to share that, occasionally, I have slammed my ponytail in a sliding glass door. A ponytail is a young woman's hairdo. I am really too old to wear a ponytail on my head, yet I do. About once a week, I walk through the back door, shut said door, and get yanked back by my scalp. Most of my hair is outside while my body, all of it, is inside. Ouch and humiliation.

Lemon Verbena Pound Cake

I like to bake bread. I have my own sour dough yeast growing in the fridge. Very rarely do I bake cakes or cookies. Last night, I needed to make a cake for a rainwater specialist training course our master gardener group is hosting. Do I do get a box cake? NOOO. I have to use something out of the garden. Here is how I did it with the help of a couple of monkeys. As a reward they have their own cake to eat.

Lemon Verbena Pound Cake

3 cups sugar
1 cup butter
6 eggs separated
3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup milk
2 tsp lemon extract
1 cup lemon verbena chopped fine
3 tsp vanilla

Cream the sugar and butter. (Middle Monkey's job)
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks, but not dry. (Teenage Monkey's Job. He could not believe what an egg white will do).
Add the egg yolks, lemon extract, vanilla, lemon verbena, and milk to the creamed sugar and butter.
Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together and add to the wet ingredients and mix.
Gently fold in the egg whites.
Poor the batter into a bunt pan and bake at 350 until a tooth pick comes out clean.
Cool and wrangle the cake out of the bunt pan (good luck).
Drizzle with lemon glaze.

Lemon Glaze
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar 2 tablespoons lemon juice.

Now a note on lemon verbena.

Lemon verbena smells awesome. It has the best lemon scent of any herb I have ever grown. I like lemon scented herbs; lemon balm, lemon basil, and lemon thyme. I even grow a Logan's hardy lemon tree. We have never had a lemon off of the lemon tree. Lemon verbena tops them all.

GBBD July 2008

We are in the hot dry part of summer here in North Texas.

The ground is dry and the plants are waiting for rain.

Blooms this time of year are the tough bunch, the tried and true, the natives.

Here is the Texas Star hibiscus. Just the flower this time. No silliness

Grandpa Ott's morning glory comes up from seed every year. It begins to bloom in July and keeps on until late fall.

These are the very first Turk's cap blooms. A little pitiful, but give it a chance. Come September this baby will put on a show with a nekid lady. Sorry, silly came out.

Thanks again to Carol of May Dreams Garden for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

Gardening Injury

I don't like to water my perennial borders. The plants need to be tough to make it around here. This means plants that can live on very little extra water, so I rely on native and adapted plants. There are no ferns, no hydrangea, no hostas, or any other water hungry plants in my perennial beds. At this time of year these plantings look pretty pitiful. I have really let them go and the weeds were pretty bad. The ground was so dry that I had to turn on the water hose, soak the ground, and then pull the weeds. It is a pretty effective weeding method, water hose in one hand, weed with the other. It is also pretty fast, the weeds just come right out.

So anyway, I was watering and weeding and watering and weeding and then it happened. I pulled up hard on a particularly stubborn weed, the weed came free, and my elbow went right up into my most thorny rosebush. I ended up with several rose thorns in my upper arm. One especially big one right in the softest part right above my elbow. OwwWWWwwww.

Got any weeding techniques to share?
Any gardening related injuries?

Camping Exhaustion

After a lot of acting like this.

We all feel like this

Salsa: Another Vegetable Massacre

I was going to simply post a recipe, but thought I picture would be better

Tomato, onion, jalapeno peppers, chili pequino, garlic, lime, Worcestershire sauce, sea salt, cilantro (dry this time).

Can't keep the teenage monkey out of it.