The Swamp Garden

From Cleveland.com weather report:

"It has rained in Cleveland on 51 of the first 68 days of spring."

In China apparently 2011 is the year of the rabbit, but in Cleveland, it has been the year of the raindrop.  It was a cold, snowy March and April, which meant that working in the garden early was all but impossible.   In the last week or so of May, we somehow managed to clean up the mangy, dank garden beds, weed, mulch and mow the lawn between thunder, cloudbursts, drizzle, hail, cold, intense wind storms and rain, rain and more rain!   Spring in Cleveland is typically predictable in how unpredictable the weather can be, but usually we have some breaks of glorious, mild, sunny days that allow for gardening.  And working in the late spring garden is usually a pleasure before the bugs and the intense heat of the dog days of summer drive me indoors into an air conditioned refuge.  But this spring, it's been impossible to do much at all - I wasn't able to divide the perennials or put new plants in because our already heavy clay soil was (and is) so super saturated. 

 

In the last week or so, between raindrops, I have managed to plant some of the pots on my deck and get a few herbs into the areas between the pavers on our patio.   I added some wooly thyme, creeping thyme and Corsican mint to the scotch moss, which I planted last year (and which I was thrilled to see survived the frigid temperatures and abundant snow of the winter of 2010-2011:

Anyway, in the last 10 - 15 years, my garden has evolved from a full sun garden - gloriously easy to grow almost anything - to a shade garden (oy).   Consequently, it's much more challenging to grow much of what I love and certainly more difficult to get color.  I have to be more clever and thoughtful about shades of green, texture and variations in height, and I'm not there yet.   So, here is what one bed looks like - the azaleas, bearded irises, hostas, bachelor buttons, columbine, and of course the mud seemed to have thrived this year:

And, here are some pictures that Abby took:

It's now May 31st, 90 degrees - hot and humid outside.   I'm sitting inside, in air-conditioning, typing on my computer, looking out at the bumper crop of mosquitos buzzing around in the garden.  In the words of the Bearded Iris (well, what I think it looks like it's saying anyway), "blech!"

Leftover clayware for mother's day feast

Mother's Day 2011 has come and gone - it was a day of many emotions - it was a sad day as it was the first mother's day since my mom died - although it's been many years since her true self, the mom I grew up with, was there.  I had my mom's picture up as my facebook profile and I almost had to take it down because it was so painful to keep looking at her all week.  But like so many things, this was a weekend of contrasting emotions - painful as the feelings of loss were, it was also a happy and joyful day because of my amazingly wonderful (if challenging) daughter.  Plus, it was a crazy busy weekend, which distracted me.  Abby was in an ice show (Friday & Saturday night), and I had ice show/synchro mother volunteer jobs preparing (stripping) roses and selling them all weekend PLUS a woman's artisan's sale that I participated in all day Saturday.  By Mother's Day on Sunday, I was toast. 

So, my sweet and supportive husband who helped me set up and dismantle my pot shop on Saturday, also then got all my favorite foods and helped cook on Sunday.  I then insisted we serve the food on my new clay ware that didn't sell at the artisan sale.  I don't know why I insisted on using the new stuff instead of saving it to sell another time - I think I was discouraged and it made me feel good to enjoy the "fruits" of my labor by filling my pots with delicious food, sharing my hobby in this edible way with the two people most special to me in the whole world.  Actually, I'm kinda glad these pieces didn't sell! 

The Mother's day feast capped off a day of sleeping in (Andy and Abby that is - I got up early as usual to walk Romeo), cleaning up in the garden (finally), planting some flowers in our pots (finally) and generally enjoying being together (after they woke up).  It was a gloriously beautiful day - bright and sunny, not too hot with a nice cool breeze - perfect.  They also gave me a gloriously beautiful orchid - my most favorite flower in the world, which reminds me of my mom who also loved orchids.  Of course Abby decided to throw in a last minute school project, which she started SUNDAY NIGHT and which she was panicked about, but that got done too, so it was all good.  If only the Indians had won (lost to California), but you gotta have something to complain about, right?

So here is our dinner table (left).  We used my new irregular rectangular textured platters glazed with green tea (left) and one you see on the right that was glazed with red gold, but got burned in an overheated kiln, so it looks nothing like red gold is supposed to look - I don't generally like yellow on pots, but I don't mind this one.

We had grilled salmon - I love love love grilled salmon - there is no reason to eat anything else on a special occasion - or any occasion for that matter.  It was served on a textured, collage platter that was glazed with Capri Blue - a perfect contrast color for the salmon!  This platter was also a victim of an unfortunate kiln accident -  a small piece of white kiln wash flaked off the kiln shelf and fell onto the platter while it was being fired and it is now baked into the glaze, which, of course made it unsellable!  (you can't see it in this picture because the fish is on top of it).

Along with the salmon, we had cherry tomato and fresh basil salad  - I bought a little basil plant for the garden today - so after I planted it, I pinched some fresh basil leaves, chopped them up and added them to the tomatoes with a little salt and pepper and a drizzle of olive oil then served the salad in one of my favorite pieces - a textured bilobite bowl with an eggplant glaze.  

OK, so, "bilobite" you ask?  Not so complicated.  I found a stamp at Linna's that I like a lot and have used on many of the textured pieces I have done. Here you can see a "bilobite" on one of my textured vases:

I like the undulating lines in the stamp contrasted with the straight lines on the rest of the pot - I also like the stamp because it reminds me of a trilobite, a little prehistoric crustacean that once ruled the oceans everywhere:  

However, trilobites have 3 sections - hence the "tri" part of the word - and Linna's stamp only has two sections - hence "bi-lobite."

Anyway, in the picture below, behind the tomatoes/basil salad is a sauce Abby and I like to make when we have fish.  Once, when traveling to one of her synchro competitions, we saw this sauce - a lemon/parsley/horseradish sauce - made on a cooking show on TV.  It was served with talapia and it looked and sounded so good that as soon as we got home, Abby insisted we find the recipes and cook them.  We searched, found and cooked - and as we hoped, the fish and sauce were both delicious.
Talapia with lemon/horseradish sauce then became a regular meal for us until a couple of years ago when we found out, much to our dismay, that farm raised talapia is not healthy.  Apparently farm raised talapia is as unhealthy as a cheeseburger with bacon - so, unfortunately, we don't eat cheeseburgers with bacon, and we don't eat talapia anymore.  But for mother's day, Abby decided she wanted to try the sauce on the salmon.  It's made with fat free mayo, horseradish and lemon zest - easy.  We served the sauce in a bowl glazed with peacock, my erstwhile favorite (beautiful, rich bluish green, translucent) glaze that almost always misbehaves in the kiln, drips down and destroys a shelf and the pot it is on.

I also love love love grilled veggies of any sort, but it was getting late, so we just roasted them in the oven -  roasted veggies are really good too.  We cut up vidalia onions and yellow, orange and red bell peppers and cooked them in my brand spanking new textured casserole dish that is glazed with gunmetal green - my all time favorite glaze.  This exquisite casserole also has a piece of kiln wash baked into it (!).  We added some roasted potatoes to the veggies - and again, just a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper for flavor.   Dessert - chocolate hershey kisses, blueberries and raspberries!  A divine mother's day with leftover clay!

Mother's Day 2011!