Note of the Living Deb

Covid led some of my friends to make our monthly craft night into a weekly online craft night. It's only half as fun, but we get to invite people in other states and it happens four times as often, so we don't have to worry so much about if other things happen at the same time because even if we miss a few, there are still a lot more.

One of my friends likes to give us a summary of her week, and I've decided to do that, too, but right here.

We had a cold snap (expected to possibly freeze), so I took the opportunity to snip some basil to propagate, as described here. It should be ready to plant on the 15th. I've tried this before and it worked great right up until I planted it. Next time I'll water my planter ahead of time so the soil is ready.

I've also been re-training myself on how to deal with cold. I at first was forgetting about scarves and hot drinks.

In socializing, I ran into an ex-co-worker on a neighborhood walk. She had left our employer to work for the state which paid much better. Thirteen years later, she's still there. For a while she was counting down the months, days, and seconds until retirement; then covid happened and she got to work from home. Suddenly working was not so bad, and she gets to continue working from home, so she's sticking with it.

Like me, she'd thought that with so many more fun things to do at home it would be harder to motivate herself to do work, but she says that did not turn out to be the case. Interesting!

Also, with the state, she got free parking right across the street (instead of costly parking across campus), but the commute was still awful, often taking 45 minutes to make the 3-mile trip home after work. So that part is better, too. She's also disgusted that although she gets a raise this year as a state worker, the people at our old employer do not--sometimes they are called state workers, and sometimes educators, often depending on which one screws them over the most.

I also made my annual visit to my neighbors who used to live next door, but now live at the end of the block (they'd try to buy the house they were renting, but instead they were forced to move to a nice place when they bought). They always do Trick or Treat on Halloween, so I get to visit. (I see them other times, too, but those are unpredictable.)

But I also failed in a social task. Another friend organized a birthday archery event, and we had to RSVP by a certain time. There was plenty of notice and it was clearly explained and yet I let myself get distracted until I'd missed the deadline. Robin's job has been stressful, so he was counting on me.

I was pretty annoyed with myself. I only get to see my close friends in person every month or two and I blew it. I'd been so proud of myself for getting yucky things done that I had been prioritizing over the last couple of weeks (I researched the election, posted my findings, voted, finished a book for which I am a beta reader, finished various sections of a book on the climate crisis that's emotionally quite difficult to read, and got my car inspected and registered) forgetting that in-person socializing should be prioritized. I'm getting back into using my bullet journal, so that should help me keep from forgetting things, but I also need to organize a few things.

Luckily, my friend was able to add us to his event after all, so we are not punished for my negligence. Yay!

And now a question. Many folks in the Rebel Badge Club are sewing their badges onto a "camp blanket." This is a small blanket that often is turned into a poncho by cutting a hole in the middle for your head. I had never heard of this before. I always sewed my Girl Scout badges on my uniform's sash or vest and my extra patches that wouldn't fit on a lined windbreaker.

I had thought that badge blankets/panchos were a British/European thing. But one Rebel said, 'When I was in Guides, we didn't have camp blankets.' (Europe has Girl Guides rather than Girl Scouts.) So maybe it's a modern thing. Do you know?

And speaking of the Rebel Badge Club, November's monthly badge is Science Fair, where you choose a science project from a provided list, or if you are a scientist, you can make up your own project. One of the items on the list is to make a solar oven. I've always kind of wanted to make one, so maybe now is a good time. One of my friends from craft night even provided a link on how to make a windshield shade solar cooker, which is different from the box ovens I'd seen before, and gets hotter, so it sounds good, but on the first reading, I'm not really parsing it. I'm remembering, no matter how you go, you also need something clear for a greenhouse effect (like a turkey roasting bag or two clear glass bowls (one inverted over the other)) inside which you need a thin black metal pot (to absorb the heat), so I have some thinking to do on how to accomplish those things. Have any of you made or used solar ovens?

This week's craft project is to continue knitting a hand towel. I think I'll actually finish it this week. One thing about crafting virtually ever week is that things actually get finished!

I really enjoy spring. It's by far our best season even though our winters are mild, and so there's only a moderate amount of relief involved. That's because our land can make all kinds of beautiful flowers. And not only can it, it actually does, in large part because state taxpayer money goes toward seeding the edges of highways with wildflowers.

Even if you plant only native plants because those are the kinds of plants that know how to deal with our weather and the kinds of plants the native wildlife is used to, you still have a functionally infinite number of flowers to choose from. (Northerners have to learn a whole new repertoire, but it's really not that painful. You probably only really mourn a few varieties for which you cannot find suitable replacements.)

All the early-blooming plants are now in bloom including our state flower, the bluebonnet, and including my favorite local tree (which blooms for only a week or two each year), the Texas mountain laurel [which is sort of like wisteria in that it has bunches flowers hanging and smelling like grapes (or grape bubble gum), only it's a slow-growing gnarly tree instead of a vine].

Ah, but it's also the time of year when the evil tries to take over the lawn. In movies, evil is dark, but in my yard it is green.

One form of evil is a beautiful bright green plant. The entire plant is sticky, and if I pull it with my bare hands, I get what feels like a mild rash. (I don't know what it's called.)

The other early springtime favorite of my yard is a beautiful dark green feathery plant with dainty white flowers. The millions of tiny white flowers turn into millions of tiny burs that stick to everything and replant themselves everywhere. These flowers are called beggar's lice. They are just about to flower right now. RUN! I mean, PULL!

These are both super-fast growing and super easy to pull, at least if it has rained recently as it often has in spring. But if you leave one plant this year, you will get twenty next year. If you leave two hundred, well, let's say there are reasons that I don't like gardening.

When I first got my house, one of the things I did was plant a "fruit cocktail tree." This tree had the branches of five different related fruits grafted onto it: peaches, nectarines, two kinds of plums, and apricots. I planted it in the front yard, fantasizing about putting up a sign for the neighbors advertising "FREE FRUIT."

It started as a twig, but did turn into a tree. It's now actually tall enough that I can't reach the top (without bending a branch). I have very carefully done no pruning so I wouldn't accidentally prune away an entire fruit.

I've seen flowers and even a few fruit, but they never got very big and then birds would eat them.

Then finally I realized that this tree likes to be watered and we watered it all spring (with a lot of help from Mother Nature). This plan worked. (Or maybe it was that we had just the right winter.) There were fruit and lots of them. They were all fuzzy, like peaches, making me wonder if the other fruits start off fuzzy and then lose their fuzz. Then they started turning colors.



They are all peaches and they all became ripe at almost exactly the same time. Good for orchards, bad for me.

Birds were eating them. Bugs were eating them. Worms were eating them. I shared with a few people people who happened by at just the right time, but eating them required washing, slicing, and cutting out the bad bits. Indigo Rose explains in Organic Peaches.

I washed all the peaches from my first batch, but ate only one. It had some parts that were the ripeness I like and some that were the ripeness Robin likes. I never was in the mood for slicing and let them all go bad.

But I did slice up the peaches from my small second batch. Not enough for pie, but there were enough to make a peach milk shake and to have for breakfast with cottage cheese.



For next year, I'll have to look into anti-bug/worm/bird treatments. (Soap spray? Netting? Early picking?) And also water. And then actually cut up the peaches and freeze some, maybe can some, and definitely (get Robin to) make a pie.

I made it to this weekend's Wildflower Center's fall plant sale and bought eight plants. I love that sale because they have only native plants and mostly only drought-tolerant plants (some native plants grow near creeks). Also, it's fall, the perfect time to plant things in my part of the world because plants have the whole mild winter to get established and prepare themselves for our harsh summer.

First I got a walnut. Not the usual black walnut that grows 60-80 feet tall, but some other kind with small walnuts that grows only 16-18 feet tall. This is because it sounded a lot easier to grow. Like this one is really going to grow. (The last one I got, planted in a hurry right before we left for our cruise, did not make it.) I would love to be able to harvest walnuts one day. Growing a walnut tree could also be considered a long-term investment in a very nice wood.

I paid for it and carried it to my car. Carrying a five-gallon plant half a mile is decent exercise, which is why I did it.

Then I went back and bought seven smaller plants and carried them back.

Then my seatbelt alarm went off even after I moved the plants around and buckled all the seatbelts in the car, so I had to listen to it all the way home. Next time I got in my car, the alarm was no longer going off. Magic!

Buying eight plants was risky, though. I'm a terrible gardener and can't be trusted with plants. You can tell what a lousy gardener I am when you see what my goals are for new plants:

1) Plant them as soon as possible after buying them. This is half the battle, by which I mean that if I do this, the plant has at least a 50% survival rate.

2) Keep them watered until they are established.

3) Do not accidentally mow them.

I have almost completed step one. The walnut is in the front yard near the street.

One blackfoot daisy is in my moonlight garden (all pale plants near the back door) and the other is between my two red yuccas. I have had really good luck with this plant before even though it likes rocky soil and I have clay soil. It loves the sun and the heat.

The pale yucca, a small grey-green twisted yucca, is in front of the orange-brick planter. The silver pony foot, a light grey ground cover plant, is in front of the living room window, on the other side from the rosemary. Both of these love the sun, and I should mention that I didn't buy a single plant that isn't drought tolerant (at least not to my knowledge). Also, they all are perennials, though the blackfoot daisy is short-lived.

The dwarf Barbados cherry, an evergreen shrub with an edible but supposedly not yummy fruit with possibly lots of Vitamin C (the regular Barbados cherry has lots of vitamin C) and which I heard is good for bonsai, has been added to my row of plants in the front yard and is the mostly likely to be mowed. It grows into interesting shapes and makes lovely small pink crinkly flowers.

I planted the red turk's cap, a good shade flower, under my pine tree.

And that leaves the flame acanthus, a deciduous shrub full of orange flowers loved by butterflies and hummingbirds, which I cheated with and planted in a bigger pot for now.

While I was pulling weeds, something stuck me in the thumb. So today's score is Debbie: 7.5 and yard: 1.

Overall, my yard looks pretty much exactly the same as when I started. (And much worse than it sounds in this entry.) And I am totally used up.

If you have some bottles you like but really can't find any excuse to save, you might look into using them for garden edging. I saw the following at Chez Zee:



They also had some interesting garden sculpture: