Mother's Day 2021

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. - Proverbs 31:28

We are truly blessed to have a GREAT mother!  Happy Mother's Day, Mom!  We love you.

From Middle and then clockwise: Mom, my brother, Kristian, my sister, Jenny, my Dad, and me.

My kids are blessed to have a GREAT mom too!  Laura Lee had to work today, but Russ and Benjamin celebrated with Tricia.

Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. 

Proverbs 31: 29-30

Dewberries By the Fenceline

 

A week ago I showed you some photos of our thornless blackberries.  They are blooming like there's no tomorrow and there are tiny unripe berries all over the bushes.  It will be a couple weeks, I imagine, before they are ripe.  Russ took a few cuttings off of them and has them successfully rooted.  He is going to start a berry patch at his house.  That gives me an idea to do the same at our place.  It would spread the patch and give us more yield.

While we are waiting for them to ripen, we have other berries to choose from that God has propagated along the fencelines and ditches.  Dewberries.  They are similar to blackberries, except they ripen a little earlier, run along the ground instead of bushes/canes, and they are plumper and sweeter.  I stumbled across a patch of dewberries on Saturday.  What I didn't eat right off the vine, I picked and brought inside.  Tricia skimmed some heavy cream off of Clarabelle's milk and mixed the fresh-picked berries with the cream.  What a treat!

Dewberries and blackberries remind me of my great-grandmother.  I remember she would make homemade blackberry pie with a sweet-dough crust.  She made a sweet white sauce that she would ladle on top of the pie.  Good golly!  I miss her.  She made a mean pie.  I think we could solve most of the world's problems over a slice of homemade pie and a good cup of coffee.

Cactus. It's What's for Dinner

We have some prickly pear cactus growing in a pot out back.  It is prickly and grows quickly.  I can remember my father-in-law telling me that in south Texas it would get very dry.  So dry that their cows didn't have much to eat on.  Cattlemen would get propane blow torches and burn the spines off of the cactus.  Once they were burned and the cactus pads were blistered, the cows would devour them.  They had a food/water source all around them, they just needed a little help!

We have the cactus around us.  We'll kind of use the same idea to make a dish called Nopalitos.  The cactus in our back yard pots put on fresh new pads that are green and tender.  Tricia harvests a bunch (about 3 pounds) off the cactus and brings them inside.

Very carefully, she slices the edges off the nopales.

Then, even more carefully, she scrapes the spines off the pads with a sharp knife.  You want to get them all off!

Then, the cactus are diced into cubes.  They are easy to cut, believe it or not.

Now that your main ingredient is ready, it's time to put the dish together.  Here is the recipe:

Nopalitos

3 Tablespoons oil, heated
3 lbs. nopales, cleaned and dried 
1 tsp salt

Saute for 1-2 minutes, then put the lid on the pot.  Cook with the lid on for 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates.

Cactus, when cooking ooze out a slime similar to okra when it cooks.  This goes away as you saute.

After 20 minutes, add 2 cloves minced garlic, 1/2 cup onion, 2 ounces chilis, 2 cups whole kernel corn and cook for 3-4 minutes.  After that is done squeeze 1 tablespoon lime juice, put the lid on and cook for 3-4 minutes.  Then, you are ready to eat.

If you have any leftovers (big if), this is great in quesadillas.  Enjoy!

Here's the Buzz

The honeybees in our column continue to work.  They work building their colony within the column and work pollinating.  They'll also make honey although we have no means of accessing it.  We enjoy having them around.  Let me restate that.  I enjoy having them around.  Tricia?  Not so much.  She has repeatedly stated that it is not very hospitable to have a swarm of bees at the entrance to our home, but these bees have never stung anyone.  They are friendly bees.

This evening I stepped outside to check them out.  They're coming in after a hard day's work and long commute.  "Honey, I'm home!"  I think I heard one say.  (Sorry for the bad joke)  They enter the column from an opening where the column meets the roof of the entryway.

At night, the honeybees don't rest.  They continue to work.  One of the odd things they do is burial detail.  The bees remove their dead brethren and toss them out of the hive where they lie at rest for the viewing.  Then Tricia sweeps them into the flower bed.  Each night there are 10 to 15 (at least) dead bees.

As I was watching the bees, I recalled an incident from my youth - not with bees, but with hornets!  It was around the year 1976.  I was ten years old and we moved from town out to the country.  Five whole acres of woods to roam around and explore.  We didn't spend a lot of time indoors.  We made trails.  We built forts.  We dug up sassafras trees and made tea.  We dug holes.  We also found a Coral snake and Copperhead moccasins.  We found Black Widow Spiders and Bull Nettle, a stinging plant.

We were at an area of the property we named "Muddy Village" There was a stand of sweet gum trees that we needed to build a log-cabin-like camp.  With ax in hand I began to chop the tree.  It was perhaps 10 inches in diameter.  As I chopped, I began to become aware of a strange humming sound, getting louder and more pronounced with each swing of my ax.

Finally, I looked up and saw a big hornet nest attached about 20 feed up to a branch in the tree I was chopping.  Not only that.  The hornets were not INSIDE the nest.  They were quite agitated with my chopping.  They were swarming.  They identified the source of their agitation - ME, and decided to come after me.  

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I dropped the ax, hollered at my brother, and we began running at a pace that would have pushed any Olympian star you can think of.  We were scared!  We finally made it back to safety without getting stung.  But we learned our lesson.  We didn't venture out to Muddy Village again until it was winter.  The hornet nest had actually fallen out of the tree and was lying on the ground.  It was the size of a basketball.  Fortunately, its occupants were gone.  We poked at it with a stick, counting our blessings for not getting stung by a swarm of hornets.

Fast-forward 44 years.  I like our bees.  I still hate hornets.  The honeybees can stay.  If, however, hornets move in, I guarantee you, they will not be welcomed.  We will evict them - with fire!

A New Seed Variety To Plant

Back when we were attending Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) conferences, we delighted in the seed exchanges that were held on one evening of the conference.  On that night gardeners from around the south brought packets of non-hybrid seed that they had saved and would swap with seeds that you had.  It was a great opportunity to get new varieties to try.  We did the same with a gentleman in our town that gave us Louisiana Heirloom Sugarcane to grow as well as some seeds from the Tahitian Melon Squash.  

A couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity to have a seed swap of our own.  We swapped a luffa gourd seedling AND some luffa gourd seeds (we were unsure of the germination of the luffa seeds) for some seeds that we had never planted before - Hyacinth Bean Seeds.

The seeds are distinctive, black, semi-flat with a white line running around half of the seed.

Here's a little I learned about the seed.  Hyacinth beans are native to East Africa.  They vine and grow 10 feet or higher.  They have beautiful purple flowers and purple pods.  They improve the soil fertility by setting nitrogen.  Dried hyacinth beans must be prepared with care as they have a compound that is toxic.  (We won't be cooking the dried beans!)  On the bright side, these beans contain a compound that prevents the spread of Covid.  Who knew?

I immediately planted three of the beans and got 100% germination.  Even as small as the plant is, you can already see the purple coloration of the top of the stem.  I will wait until the beans get bigger and then I'll transplant them in the garden.

Due to the vining of this plant, I'd like to plant it on a fence bent over so that it creates a tunnel to walk under like you see in the photo below.  I'll have to figure out a way to keep the cows and goats from eating it, though.

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The pods of the beans are bright purple - a real treat for the eye in the garden.  Similar to other brightly colored items we've grown in the garden, when you cook them, they lose most of their color.

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Here are the beautiful flowers that bloom on the Hyacinth Bean plant.  This will be a real knock-out in our garden.  I can't wait to show you photos once this thing gets established.

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Seed swaps are fun and open your eyes to other things you've never thought about growing.  

The Lily of the Valley

We sing a hymn in church called "Lily of the Valley."  It is such an upbeat and happy song, fast-paced and joyful.  It's not singing about flowers, but of one of the names of Jesus.  The Lily of the Valley is mentioned in Song of Solomon 2:1.  Here are the words to the first verse of the hymn.  Perhaps you sing it, too?

I have found a friend in Jesus-

He's ev'rything to me,

He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul;

The Lily of the Valley- in Him alone I see

All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.

In sorrow He's my comfort, in trouble He's my stay,

He tells me ev'ry care on Him to roll;

He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,

He's the greatest of ten thousand to my soul.

We have many flowers blooming in the yard right now.  I'll show you a few.  First, we have the amaryllis.  It is a beautiful flower that almost looks like it is not real:

Next, we have red lilies.  We've moved these around from place to place.  They are hardy and bloom every year in clusters:

Next, we have the show-stopper.  Louisiana Iris.  These things are stunning:

We have given some to our son and he's planted them at his home.  We've also moved some to a bed under the drip line by our back patio.  It all started here, though:

Approximately twenty-one years ago, I pulled my truck to the side of a gravel road by the "big well."  We have an irrigation well that pumps cool, fresh water from over a hundred feet beneath the surface to flood rice fields.  There is a ditch that always had water in it regardless how hot and dry the summer was.  This ditch was the perfect locale for Louisiana Iris to flourish.  They grew there wild.  I took out my shovel from the bed of my truck and dug a small shovelful of iris roots.  I took it home and planted it in a low place in the yard around an oak tree (above).  The iris is happy there and has multiplied.  Each year we enjoy walking by the blooming flowers and admire its beauty.

We're not the only ones who like the flowers.  Check out the dragonfly in the greenery of the iris!

And there is one other critter that likes the iris!  Tricia noticed that a Rhode Island Red hen was outside the fence the other day, scratching around the blueberry bushes and generally being a nuisance in the yard.  She chased the hen into the Louisiana Iris and discovered the hen's nest amongst the flowers.

He's the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

 

Taking the Time to Look Around

“And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”  Matthew 8:20 KJV

What a beautiful time it is right now!  The temperatures are nice, the skies blue, little humidity, no mosquitoes...  I feel like we're on borrowed time, though.  This doesn't last for long.  We need to enjoy it while it lasts.  Yesterday after church instead of eating lunch at the table, we pulled a picnic blanket out and ate our meals outside under the sprawling branches of a live oak tree.  It was peaceful and comfortable.  Later we held hands and walked around the yard barefoot, taking in the sights and sounds. 

There is so much going on around us.  If you are rushed and not observant, you'll miss things.  In the corner of the northern awning of the barn, I see a bird is building a nest.  She's very nervous, so I can't get too close. 

I zoomed in and it is a momma dove preparing a nest for her babies!  I was worried about her with Ginger, our cat, prowling around.  Sadly, we had some powerful weather blow through, and in the morning, strong winds had blown the nest away.  She'll find a better place, I'm sure.  Keep trying, momma dove.

In the side yard, the Irish potatoes are growing lush, green, and healthy.  In the first mowing of the yard, I mulched the leaves into small pieces and raked them around the growing plants.  They appear to like it.

The potato plants are blooming and I'm sure there are many potatoes developing beneath the surface.  Won't be long before we dig them up.  We're looking forward to some new potatoes cooked with fresh green beans and butter.

We'll be sure to show an update when we harvest.