yard

Ducks, Geese and Chickens

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This photo postcard makes me think about my mother who loved ducks, geese and swans. Frankly she was less romantic about chickens which she grew up around although she bore them no ill will and being a vegan did not eat them nor their eggs. Mom did tell stories about her childhood and how they roosted in the neighbors trees and would occasionally torment her on her way to or from school.

It’s a pity this photo was poorly made, overexposed and with an odd sloppy line of poor printing at the bottom. (I have improved it some before sharing with you.) However my mom would have liked this card.

Those things notwithstanding, it is a compelling image and caught my eye online a week or so back and I purchased it for the house here in New Jersey. It is a photo postcard and was never used.

Photo of a photo of the house I grew up in.

As some readers know, I grew up in a house on an inlet of a river here, the Shrewsbury River. It was within walking distance of the ocean and as a result my childhood was full of time on the water – swimming in the ocean and walking the beach or crabbing off our dock or taking a rowboat out in the backyard. Mom’s nascent passion for animals first took the form of cats and dogs, strays and kittens that needed home.

However, later in life mom started feeding a flock of swans inhabiting the secluded inlet near our house. Then, slowly, she started helping out with an injured swan, goose or duck. Before long she was traveling to fetch a stranded pinioned one here or one that swallowed fishing line there. Betty became the go to for injured waterfowl for not just the surrounding counties but even in the surrounding states. Swans and geese that could not be released back into the wild were placed in areas in New York and New Jersey with appropriately large water bodies where food would be available and people would care for them.

A dahlia also on the hummingbird path of nectar.

Betty fought for these birds as well as other animals – helping to shut down puppy mills, purveyors of sick dogs. So many rescued bunnies found a home in our backyard that they were all so tame they would come right up to you if you sat out in the yard. I would come to New Jersey for a visit and the guest bathroom would be commandeered by a swan. Even at the same time, a rescued cat might be healing in an upstairs room. Somehow it all seemed quite natural at the time. Or at least it was our normal.

Strawberry plant currently on the deck which seems to be a happy stop for hummingbirds.

In her last years mom had a commanding view of the deck and the yard from the chair she spent virtually all her time in. It was planted for the explicit pleasure of birds, bees and butterflies. However, it wasn’t until after her death that I started spending time outside here and on the deck and began to realize how successful she was. Furry bees buzz busily everywhere, but especially early in the morning and evening. Hawks fly overhead, but sparrows, robins and a host of other birds amass. Bunnies of the more shy variety nibble greens in the yard – I think they and the chipmunks eat more heartily when unobserved, or so it seems from the consumption of my berries and veg.

Front of the NJ house earlier this week.

Most notably I never knew about the hummingbirds. I have loved the idea of them from the first I learned about them in sixth grade, but it was years before I saw one in person. I used to try to temp them to feeders with syrup water concoctions. It turns out that they love this yard! They appear to have a path from my dahlias, to a strawberry plant with bright red flowers and then to two Rose of Sharon trees (one white and one purple) that technically belong to my neighbor but hang heavily over my side of the fence. and amazingly enough, if I sit quietly on the porch long enough, one will pause en route, pausing, suspended in front of me in greeting.

In the Summer Time

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: It is Fourth of July morning and here in New York we are waking to wet and threatening skies after a night of thunder storms. I was never afraid of them as a child, but have grown to dislike them as an adult, perhaps in sympathy with a general sense of distrust of them among the felines. (Cookie and Blackie will bear up to a point and then, Cookie in particular will migrate to the front door, the innermost spot in the apartment, and look at us like we’re nuts if we remain on the couch by the windows.) Up on the 16th floor the winds howl a bit greater than at ground level, but my dislike is no lesser when in the house in Jersey, with rain pounding on that small structure.

Carl Schurz Park.

Having been caught in the rain while running yesterday and I am watching the fast moving clouds and calculating my opportunity for getting away with an hour of running in a bit. The jury is out as I write, but running is my only real plan for the day which may disintegrate into cleaning and organizing the apartment. In a small space like this it always seems to be a need, the cleaning and organizing.

Recently I wondered if I was neglecting the apartment in favor of work needing to be done, paid for and directed in New Jersey. Still, new carpet pads have been purchased for Deitch Studio and I need to trim them and wrestle them into place. I have replaced an especially tatty rug. I clean and organize, and organize some more!

Recent rug purchase for Deitch Studio. (Washable and largely cat proof.)

I will head out to New Jersey tomorrow and I expect that this entry will be finished there. I look forward to seeing how the garden has grown – the blueberry bushes were laden with their yet to ripen wares when I was last there and I am hoping to beat the critters to at least some of them. I understand that the tomato and pepper plants are performing admirably.

The jasmine plant I wrote about last week seems to grow before my eyes and it is embracing its trellis.

The strawberry plant is young, although it has filled out the strawberry pot I plunked it in, but I am only hoping for a taste there. I still am amazed at the simple act of growing food. It has always seemed a bit magical. The herb garden has already provided for many an omelet and a series of sauces, but somehow vegetables seem to be another story.

In mom’s honor I planted a row of sunflowers along the fence outside of our bedroom. I remember her planting some for us kids when we were very little and our shock and joy at how enormous they grew against our little house, as tall as my towering father. I am hoping to find them sprouted and on their way skyward. A friend and her small child are living at the house and I hope she too will be entertained by them.

*****

It is a week later as I write from New Jersey. Much going on in this small world. The strawberry plant, which I transplanted into this strawberry pot a month or so ago has produced its first strawberry!(Someone, my money is on a chip monk, stole it right out from under my nose however; I have yet to taste this bounty.) Multiple flowers however and a few in an early transitional state lead us to hope it isn’t the last.

One of the pepper plants has coughed up its first progeny, with many more to follow as well I hope.

The first of the bell peppers.

The tomatoes have gone “plumb wild” and are requiring constant staking to help them bear up under the burden of their produce. The tomatoes started out in a sunny back corner of the yard before an enormous bush grew to hide them completely. Luckily it doesn’t block the sun and the tomatoes are growing gloriously.

Initial harvest!

Someone, something, has neatly consumed those sunflower seeds and nary a flower has sprouted. In defiance I purchase two plants that are well underway as replacements.

The bookcases in their before mode, fresh from Suzanne’s basement.

Meanwhile, a good friend answered my appeal for bookcases and dug not one but two out of her basement. A few days have been devoted to giving one a new coat of paint and cleaning up the wood and glass on the other. It has been decades since I have done this kind of work on furniture; I think I was still a kid and doing it under my mom’s supervision. I suspect my muscles will tell me all about it tomorrow. The glass front case is a particular dandy though. I am tempted to use it for toys although it sees better suited for books.

The cleaned up bookcase after considerable elbow grease and help from a friend who had keys made for the locks on the doors which keep them closed. You’ll note the cat proofing on the chairs.

Tonight I pulled the grill out and made a pile of vegetables for dinner. This grill was new last summer. For some reason my mom was insistent that we buy it and that I break it in immediately which I did. However, the heat of the late summer made it a less attractive option than it might be in the cooler weather and I admittedly never really got the hang of it. Luckily however I taped my introductory lesson from a friend and manage to get it started and pull off a fairly credible dinner of grilled vegetables.

*****

Another raging thunderstorm woke me up early and the Jersey cat crew took advantage and got me up early to feed them. I don’t like thunderstorms any better when residing in the house in New Jersey and my real inclination is to burrow back under the blankets. These cats seem entirely unfazed.

This little fellow has camouflaged himself nicely, near one of mom’s many bunny garden statues.

When the sun comes burning out a couple of hours later I witness multiple bunnies (all different sizes!) having an absolute wild rabbit romp in the yard. They chase each other, run and jump high. Later in the day someone tells me they are eating the clover in the yard. I am sorry I don’t have a chance to film it.

Citronella growing like topsy on the deck (and doing nothing for the mosquitoes!) and an injured catnip plant I just rescued is in front of the strawberry pot. Let’s see what the kits make of that!

Despite bug spray and the presence of some lovely citronella plants, mosquitoes abound and feast on me. When I was a kid these bits would balloon up and practically take over whole limbs. Now they are just an annoying itching reminder which I will take back to New York City with me.

The next New Jersey post will likely be after Deitch Studio moves down – part and parcel, Kim, kits and art supplies in August for the remainder of the summer. Stay tuned.

Sowing

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: These are strange days for me as spring arrives in New Jersey this year. I am here for a stay of indeterminate length during what appears to be my mother’s lingering last illness. I have written before about the sense of being in a liminal space – between two periods in my life that in many ways will define the before and the after. That sense has only increased recently as I perch on the threshold of this personal sized seismic shift.

Helleborus is an early bloomer which deer are not fond of so it is all the talk of gardeners here right now.

I miss my daily life in Manhattan: my husband, my cats, my bed (we have an unbelievably hard mattress), and I miss actually sitting down with my co-workers daily. Still, it is human nature to make things as pleasant as possible where we are and I have done this by largely by dint of cooking and running. (I have written about that previously in posts that can be found here and here.) Earlier this week a friend dropped flats of pansies off for me saying it was nice to do do something for the future and today I added planting to the list.

My simple potting assignment, complete on the deck for all to admire.

While I have been around a lot of gardening as an observer, I have in fact never gardened. I suppose this is not surprising given that I have lived my entire adult life in Manhattan without so much as a fire escape. Kim has a green thumb and under his casual attention plants do seem to thrive in our bright living room window. Still, if my ability to keep houseplants alive was anyway indicative of my ability say, to care for pets or people it would be a not-green thumbs down I am afraid.

However, in her day my mother was a superb gardener. One of my earliest memories is of a huge rock garden in the back of our house in North Jersey and watching her work in it, our cat and dog sniffing around. I must have been just three or four.

When I was a tad older we had moved to the shore and I can remember my mother coaxing vegetables and flowers out of the sandy and salty soil, and fighting a freakishly high water table. I had a child’s joy over the immensity of sunflowers which towered over us and tomato plants which delighted me . Laawn never interested mom and hers was nominal. (Dad traveled for work and never really had anything to do with the yard. Mom did it all.) She was and is all about plants and trees.

Didn’t buy these sporty petunias with the stripes but was very tempted – I was very entertained by them.

In the house subsequent to that one, but still on the waterfront the garden was somewhat more elaborate with herbs, strawberry and grapevines. Bunnies and squirrels helped themselves liberally to those edibles as well as dandelions and other delectables .

So earlier this week the same friend took me to Lowe’s where I assembled a cache of potting soil, a spade, some clippers and a lone adolescent tomato plant – Jersey tomatoes being a summer delicacy for this Jersey girl. Shop Rite (as big as several city blocks) produced a length of lightweight hose. The Dollar Tree provided some lightweight garden gloves. It seems I was ready to plant some pansies.

Someone brought these by for mom and I am greatly enamored of the daffodils with the apricot centers!

Luckily this project was pretty low stakes as said pansies were already in bloom and just pleading for soil and water, a straightforward assignment for the rookie me. However, the pots I thought I would use proved too small and too deep. Luckily rooting around in the basement coughed up some appropriate vessels. The nozzle on the new hose proved unexpectedly challenging I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, but we came to an agreement without my getting entirely soaked.

Somehow, all the plants found their way to pots, fit appropriately and were watered – which was good because the promised rain never showed. Mom was pleased with my efforts on behalf of the yard and a rakish stake with a whirligig red bird stuck in the tomato plant container for a finishing touch.

The Blue Pots of Spring

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I recently wrote a post about how I was cooking a lot here in New Jersey during this long spring of my mom’s illness. (That post can be found here.) My mom never cooked in this kitchen and basic cooking implements needed to be purchased once I wanted to do more than make coffee. (I purchased a good coffee pot, a stovetop percolating coffee pot first thing.) So, a slow process of knives here, a colander there, a skillet. I cook for as many as four or five people at a time so there has also been food buying – with food buying I have needed to purchase basic spices and herbs. This New Jersey enclave is robustly supplied with a variety of discount stores – Dollar Tree, Home Goods, Job Lots, Marshalls. (There is a Shop Rite the size of several city blocks. Land of wonders.)

A too small blue for the front. Will hold herbs on the back deck instead.

The blue ceramic pots first caught my eye at a local farmer’s market turned gourmet store called Sickles. In a number of shapes and sizes the glowing blue glaze caught my eye, but endless expenses helping my mom out discouraged me from high end planters. Still, I started seeing them appear on front porches on my runs in the morning. There was no doubt, beautiful blue pots were following me.

Blue pots from a run – they were starting to follow me.

One day, while hunting down a cookie sheet in Home Goods for roasted vegetables, I was greeted by a pile of these wonderful blue pots and for a tiny fraction of the price. No two were alike so I chose two and brought them home only to realize that one is too small for that job. On my next trip I bought another larger one and placed it with the other, on each side of the front steps.

The one with bees!

Later I added a yellow one to contrast with the blues. The smaller blue pot and another yellow one (with bees on it) will go on the back porch. The woman at the register during the first purchase spontaneously offered, “Great deal! You’ll never get them for that price at Sickles!” Which made me laugh – small town indeed.

The other side of the front door sports a yellow pot too.

It is too early to plant in them, but I am already thinking red flowers like geraniums would be cheerful and a nice contrast. The ones for the back deck will likely be planted with herbs to further aide in cooking – although I am looking forward to a container or two of tomatoes too. All will have to be hardy to survive the times when I am not here during the hot summer and the nibbling bunnies, groundhogs, deer and the like.

Under the watchful eye of my mom from the house, the yard has gone from neglected and bereft to beautiful with the help of a long time gardener, a fellow named Mike. With his help I gave my mother a weeping cherry tree and a magnolia tree a few years ago as I saw so many lovely ones here in the spring. This is the first year they look like more than brave little sticks. Mom’s enjoyment of the yard is limited to photos and videos of it but not at all less for that and hopefully my few additions will make her happy too.