Hello,
Somehow, some way it’s August. It’s been a busy few months. I’m not going to kid you, it’s started to wear me down, so much so that I forgot to create a header for the July newsletter, something I only recently discovered – creating monthly collage headers is one of my favorite things.
What’s more, the fava beans have stink bugs — brown marmorated stink bugs if we’re being specific. While I don’t see any evidence of damage, nonetheless I hunt them down and drop them into a bucket of increasingly vile water to be disposed of. Apparently, the last thing you want to do is squish a stinkbug and release its foul odor, which is sort of cool but also, eww. Stink bugs aside, my garden is a place I go to for restoration (and sweet peas). Watching daily growth and production helps me to believe in tomorrow.
Years ago I wrote the following essay that appeared as the afterword in my book:
A garden makes room for our human impulse to organize while also offering us a means to comprehend wildness. It is a humble practice fraught with snails, failure, and loss, that also holds the promise of transcendent moments of exquisite beauty. Tending our gardens helps us to make sense of Nature and find our role in ongoing creation.
My garden is a beautiful distraction that taught me how to cultivate a daily practice. Along with joyous highs and days of celebration, these past several years have held plenty of hard, noisy, and broken parts. To do something—anything really—on a daily basis is to court tedium. Sometimes, all I can do is ride out the doldrums and watch for the next lifting wave of wonder and awe. It always, always arrives. My practice is the walk between this day and that.
I guess what I’m saying is pay attention to your life, including the uncelebrated, the overlooked, and the weedy parts. Look with heart and compassion, embrace the broken and the beautiful. Then share what you see with others. Our world needs your perspective.
— from Color In and Out of the Garden.
Don’t let a busy schedule or the noise of a fractious world distract you from daily moments of connection and joy that I promise you are there. We just need to slow down, look up, and pay attention. I’m so very grateful that you’re here.
xo Lorene
From the archives
A Pep Talk for Being Human
Hello, So far 2024 has been challenging, a physical and emotional rollercoaster. Am I allowed to use that analogy even if I avoid actual rollercoasters? I know there are those who thrill at clickety cresting and plunging drops, but you’ll always find me on terra firma (with a calm and settled tummy.) But none of us can escape the highs and lows of everyd…
Recent writing: Playing with Color in the Landscape on Garden Rant. Orange flowers and brown plants may not be for everyone, but my botanical zoo delights me.
Recent reading: Becoming Duchess Goldblatt (again and again, and again, again) I’ve read this quirky book by Anonymous once a year since I discovered it in 2020. I never fail to find comfort and delight.
“Writing isn’t hard. Worming my way into your heart one step at a time is hard. But it’s holy work, and I bought a boat with the overtime.”
In the handmade kitchen: Bottling the sun with apricot jam
Years ago, while visiting a garden in the Bay Area, I tasted a Blenheim apricot. It was juicy, tender, sweet, and oh-so tangy. There’s wasn’t even a whiff of the cottony texture I’ve come to expect in fresh ‘cots from around here.
Since then, every summer I chase that peak Blenheim flavor explosion by freezing several small batches of quick and easy apricot jam-that’s-not-really-jam. It’s sweet. It’s tart. And its sunny disposition is a balm in winter. As always, this is not so much a “real” recipe so much as a gentle nudge to explore the flavors of summer.
Wash and halve several apricots, I usually use eight to ten for each batch, and place them into a small saucepan. Stir in somewhere between ¼ and ½ cup sugar and leave the fruit to macerate and give up its juices while you putter about elsewhere. Like all things, we must be patient. Most of the sugar will dissolve in the juices, creating a sweet/tart syrup.
Place your apricots with their syrupy juices on the stovetop and squeeze a lemon – ½ a lemon, a whole lemon, it’s up to you. Lemons are filled with pectin, so I usually add the rind of the squeezed fruit into the mixture while it barely burbles on the stove, stirring often to avoid scorching. Be gentle, both with your apricots and yourself. Once the apricots have broken down and reduced to your liking, I prefer a loose consistency, more sauce than hard set, decant your elixir into small jars that you’ve sterilized with boiling water, cover them with lids and label before stashing your treasure in the freezer.
You’ll thank me in January.
Color Stories
Each color story is a collection of nine original 4- by 4-inch watercolor paintings assembled in a unique color palette — that is, each one relates to the others in the set and each collection is one of a kind. Some of these color studies are several years old, others may be as recent as last week.
These are not precious paintings but colorful remnants of a daily practice. Frame your color stories individually or in multiples, pin them to your bulletin board for a daily dose of color, or use them as notecards and share them with others.
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Coloring
Dusty fennel filled with flavor.
My garden helps me adjust my perception of time. Ginkgo biloba is a plant dinosaur, a living fossil that’s said to have been around for more than 200 million years. I think I can probably get through the week.
I’m new to black cap raspberries but couldn’t resist purchasing a couple of pints on our latest stop at the berry stand. Turns out my berries are pretty but bland. I plan to give them the apricot jam treatment to try and uncover their sweet/tangy side.
It’s a tea. It’s a cut flower. It’s a summer long garden companion. I always look forward to anise hyssop and the bees love it.
Hydrangea days in the garden when Nature get’s out her watercolors.
Thinking about all things ruby as we wait for Baby Ruby to arrive.
Love this today and your positive messages. And I loved reading your piece in Garden Rant about your “brown” garden - so many intriguing plants! And yay for baby Ruby!
I really love reading your writing punctuated with gorgeous bursts of color!