Category Archives: Being thankful

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Thanksgiving Plants & Food

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Have you noticed how many plants are named after food? At this time of year when we are thankful for friends and family and this wonderful place we call home, I can't help but think about food, too. It's the most important thing we share year round. We eat to celebrate, we eat to comfort ourselves. Surround yourself with plants that remind you to give thanks whenever you look at them.

What makes you think of Thanksgiving dinner more than pumpkin pie? Many versions have been created to appeal to just about any palate. If you grow Pumpkin Pie African daisy you can bring these recipes to mind whenever you admire the blooms in your garden. Flowering over a long season starting in the spring their showy, vivid orange flowers attract birds and butterflies.

Maybe you're a gourmet cook and desserts after Thanksgiving dinner are extraordinary at your house.  If you're not a fan of pumpkin perhaps a creme brulee  would be more to your liking. This classic dessert first appeared in cookbooks in 1691. Creme Brulee heuchera with its peachy-bronze leaves, Creme Brulee coreopsis with custard yellow blooms or a fragrant Creme Brulee shrub rose growing in your garden would remind you year round of this delicious dessert.

Someone often brings deviled eggs as an appetizer before Thanksgiving dinner usually sprinkled with a dusting of paprika. If you have several Paprika achillea in your low water-use, deer resistant garden you can think of these goodies every time you see them.

Who doesn't like chocolate any time of year? Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, hot chocolate, white chocolate, they're all good. Plant Chocolate Chip ajuga groundcover  with its beautiful lacy blue flower spikes in spring in sun or partial shade. It really stands out. And who could resist a rose called Hot Cocoa? This award-winning floribunda rose with ruffled, very fragrant chocolate-cherry colored blooms was first introduced in 2003 and has remained popular ever since.
 
If you don't have a chocolate cosmos to enjoy on a summer day in the garden you're missing a rare experience. Very deep burgundy flowers really do have the scent of chocolate. They make a good cut flower, look great with green and white in a bouquet and the fragrance is good enough to eat.

There are many plants that remind us of Thanksgiving with family or a get together any time of year and they all sound so delicious. Raspberry Sundae or Bowl of Cream peonies sound yummy as do Mango coneflower, Strawberry Candy daylily, Plum Pudding coral bell, Cranberry Ice dianthus, Lemon Swirl lantana, Watermelon Red crape myrtle, Tangerine Beauty bignonia or Wild Cherry azalea. How about Bowl of Cherries campanula, Carolina Allspice, Strawberry Lemonade mandevilla or Raspberry Tart coneflower?  I could go on and on.

My blooming Thanksgiving cactus says it all. Almost overnight it has burst into bloom reminding me of all the many things I am thankful for. Take the time to tell those around you how much you appreciate them and count your blessings every day.

Being thankful, beneficial insects, edibles, fertilizing, fruit trees, low maintenance gardening, pruning tips, soil, The Mountain Gardener

Happy New Year 2012

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Another year has passed in the garden and this is what I've learned.

  • Have a plan for how you want to use your garden. This is as important as selecting the right plants for each garden room. Allowing some empty places for new plants, transplants or garden art, makes your garden your own. Add whatever  makes you happy and your heart to soar when you're in your garden.
  • Pay attention to the size that a plant will attain. This will save lots of headaches later.
  • Pruning is free therapy. What better way is there to feel good than to improve the life of a plant?
  • Your garden journal chronicles your life as well as what happens in the garden. Making frequent entries, no matter how short, will make you smile when you read it again at the end of the year. Journal your successes and failures, making notes of plants that performed well and ideas to try next year.
  • Enjoy a beverage of some kind often in your garden. That clean up or transplanting will be there tomorrow.
  • Weed regularly. The 20 minutes you spend every week or so pulling or hoeing will save hours of back bending work later.
  • You, fellow gardeners, are unique. I can't imagine any group of people more diverse and feisty and independent than gardeners. Yet we have such a connection. We love and are fascinated with nature. We find our deepest satisfaction in coaxing plants from the earth, in nurturing their growth. We are enduring pragmatists.
  • Edible gardening offers more than just vegetables and fruit trees that feed the body. They are better than a whole medicine cabinet of pills.
  • Accept a few holes in a plant: Unless it is being devoured, share a little with other creatures.

Happy New Year 2012 from The Mountain Gardener

 

Being thankful

Thanksgiving Blessings

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Electric orange trees decorate our gardens and forest paths this time of year. During the summer when trees are quietly green we almost forget they are among us but then seemingly overnight they turn on the lights and glow with flamboyant fall colors. Thanksgiving is that time of year when we are reminded of all that we have to be grateful for. The world is so beautiful and we’re lucky to live in such an amazing place. Here are some things for which I’m thankful.

1. Food
It’s the most important thing we share. We eat to celebrate when we’re happy. When we’re sad, we eat to comfort ourselves. We eat for fun and the greatest thing you can do for someone else is cook a meal for them. Simple delicious food is a gift. I could never do without sharing a meal with friends or family.

2. Nature
Our sense of sight allows us to see the colors of life- an orange sunset to end the day, a rainbow after a storm, new green leaves emerging in the spring, clouds and blue skies.  Smell the air after it rains or the fragrance of a flower. Touch the softness of a velvety leaf or feel the breeze of the wind. Hear the rainfall dripping from the redwoods or the winter wrens calling to each other under the canopy. Taste wild huckleberry or thimbleberries along a forest path. I’m grateful for the beauty of nature that visits my garden.

3. Gardens
Big or small, in a pot or an orchard, growing something is a way to say you believe in tomorrow. Being able to pick a Sungold tomato off your own vine or a bouquet of flowers for your dinner table is a reward well earned. A cool spring, a heat wave in July, raccoons digging up your new seedlings, nothing can deter a gardener. Hope springs eternal each year as we plan for next years garden now evan before winter has started.

4. Lovable pets
Whether you have one or get to enjoy someone else’s you know the joy and love you receive from being around these amazing creatures. There’s nothing like that greeting from a pet when you come home. It can make your day or erase a bad one. They bring us so much happiness and ask for very little in return. Just petting their soft fur can help us cope when we’re sad.

5. State Parks, National Parks and Monuments, County Parks
This year I was able to visit The Pinnacles National Monument, Lassen Volcanic National park, Ano Nuevo, Candlestick Point, Bean Hollow, Pogonip, Wilder, Natural Bridges, Moss Landing, Marina and Pt. Lobos as well as our local Big Basin, Fall Creek and Henry Cowell state parks. Being a native Californian I’ve been to the far corners of our state over the years. I remember as a kid camping with my parents and thinking that every state had as many cool places as ours. Located on mountaintops, on the pristine shores of sparking lakes, alongside rivers, take advantage of these special places preserved because they are unique.

6. Blessings
Count your blessings. Be grateful for friends who understand. Appreciate what you have. See the beauty around you. Live in the moment. On Thanksgiving we have a chance to gather and appreciate the friends, family and the blessings around us. Imagine if everyday you took a moment to be th