fff nov 24

We’ve had Santa Ana winds ruining the hey-we’re-into-autumn-like-everyone-else vibe this past week with temps in the mid 80s. But it’s made for gardening-able days to do minor trimming, repurposing pots for planting (finally sowing some of those hoarded seeds), and non-garden activities like lazing on the bench with the cats.

I popped into the local nursery to see if they had a plant I’ve had on my list (rhodanthemum) and saw some double yellow freesias that roomie had wanted. Also picked up a couple of perennials (geranium biokovo karmina, pelargonium sidoides, and a helichrysum ‘lemon licorice’)). The cashier said I had $25 on my rewards account and would I like to use it? Yes!

Roomie’s mom had had excruciating neck pain when she woke up one morning. Roomie was able to relieve her with some gentle massage to loosen up knots. While we were at a ladies’ gathering, the hostess recommended her chiropractor who uses a very gentle method to make adjustments, especially helpful for someone as slight as roomie’s mom. So thankful for someone knowledgable and thoughtful to help her.

There’ve been some really sad developments in one pocket of our family, but it’s been good to see God nudging the right people to step in at the right time and others offering tangible support. And to witness that family member stand firm in her faith, trusting in God’s good purposes, and listening intently for His promptings.

At our Thanksgiving dinner, we were all extra thankful that my uncle’s radiation treatments had successfully dealt with his cancer and that my aunt’s dizzy spells were due to nothing more serious than dehydration. She almost got two glasses of water at her place at the table.

Stay hydrated, friends!

with a grateful heart

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends. It’s been forever since I’ve heard this sung at a church, but it’s a favorite nevertheless. Here’s one rendition.

Let all things now living a song of thanksgiving
To God the Creator triumphantly raise,
Who fashioned and made us, protected and stayed us,
Who guideth us on to the end of our days.
His banners are o’er us, His light goes before us,
A pillar of fire shining forth in the night,
‘Til shadows have vanished and darkness is banished,
as forward we travel from light into light.

His law He enforces: the stars in their courses,
The sun in His orbit, obediently shine;
The hills and the mountains, the rivers and fountains,
The deeps of the ocean proclaim Him divine,
We too should be voicing our love and rejoicing,
With glad adoration a song let us raise,
‘Til all things now living unite in thanksgiving
To God in the highest, hosanna and praise.

fff nov 17

westringia ‘Wynyabbie Gem’ has tiny lavender blooms

That friend who said time just get accelerated after October? She was right. Friday’s Faves are here already! Let’s get started:

When roomie went on the short term trip to Belgium last summer, she worked alongside a Belgian pastor and his wife, both of whom were in her youth group when roomie served there back in the late ’80s. The pastor and his colleague were here in the States visiting several churches to give progress reports. Their final leg was in California. We hosted them for breakfast one morning and heard their impressions of philosophies of ministry and adventures thus far. One of the guys has to be gluten-free, dairy-free, and egg-free, so I made a potato hash based on this recipe and dotted it with dairy-free cream cheese (I pan fried chicken sausage, bacon, butternut squash, mushroom, bell peppers, onions, potatoes and roasted them the next morning). Two flavors of this multi-option overnight oats were also hits. Roomie picked blueberry almond and apple cinnamon. The only dish that had eggs and cheese was this one. Making everything the night before made the morning so much easier.

The Belgian guys had four presentations over the weekend. Roomie and her team had worked hard over the last months to coordinate and schedule fellowships joining together as well as a lunch for the last group. We are all grateful for the completion of this fruitful tour to connect with so many.

Our small group topic this week was from John 4, Jesus’ conversation with the woman at the well. We had rich and lively discussions comparing with the previous chapter’s conversation with Nicodemus. I love these precious friends.

Rain is coming! Three inches? Oh, now only one but on Wednesday. No, Thursday. Yes, late Wednesday. Actually, only 0.3 inches. With light sprinkles, I left my dixie-cup-sized seedlings to soak it in. So lovely for the garden to get nice, steady rain. A little bit more tomorrow.

It was time to put the order in for my friend’s ten-year tee-shirts (a business anniversary). We’d finalized the design and wanted to be online at the same time to ensure details were in place. There was rather a lot of tinkering with the shirt company’s design tool, switching to a compatible browser, enlarging the artwork and uploading the appropriate file, finalizing artwork sizing, and confirming all the details. Hurray! So happy to have this work behind me. It’s one thing to design with inappropriate software (Pages) and come up with something she liked, and quite another to get that artwork to work with the manufacturer’s site. I had poked around with Inkscape but wouldn’t have built enough competency in time to recreate everything. Yes, there are other programs that would convert the files, but they would require my upgrading my operating system and lose functionality of one key piece of software I neeeeed. It’s complicated.

Hope you have an uncomplicated weekend, friends.

euphorbia ‘Silver Swan’

fff nov 10

variegated gaura leaves

Time change is not my favorite time of year, but nights are cooling (finally) and we may done with daytime 90s for the year. Shall we jump into what are the faves?

I’d planned to go to the local free compost event when they opened (7:30am) since the rest of the day was full of projects. As it turned out, it was a good thing. The line of cars was backed up for about half a mile. But once at the site, volunteers efficiently directed vehicles around a looping path where bags of city compost sat at the ready. Other volunteers whipped those two(?) cubic foot bags into resident trunks or truck beds (each person got up to four bags, but they were already reducing to three by the time my turn came), and then residents are directed back down the hill.

It’s been a week of yard tidying. One of those projects was setting up the new potting bench with blocks and tile planks from my generous neighbor. While I organized that, roomie was hard at work trimming the boxwood hedge out front. She’d just done the backyard hedges a few days before. While we were done with furniture refinishing, our seasonal Santa Ana winds were bringing a light dusting every afternoon. To protect the coffee table between use, I sewed a cover using fabric from my stash.

Roomie and I were scheduled to video-conference with our friend to finalize her tee shirt design celebrating her tenth year in business. Since there was so much going on with her family (brother-in-law just diagnosed with cancer), family flying cross-country to support them, and schedules up in the air, we appreciated getting reconnected and caught up on family news before getting to the business at hand. We made great progress. And even decided on a sticker design she could consider.

After lunch and errands with Mom this week, I borrowed her masticating juicer (as opposed to my aging and leaky centrifugal juicer) to get all my pomegranate arils juiced. It was rather a messy affair while I was learning the ropes of her unit. And while we had all the equipment out, we got her first harvest of fruit processed as well. She’d been feeling low on energy, so it felt good to get that first batch done and off her list.

There are a lot of opportunities for volunteering in my Wednesday women’s Bible study. I’d originally signed up to make photocopies of prayer requests during the morning’s break. But a few weeks into the study, I helped with some technical difficulties projecting the worship songs and my job got swapped to managing the sound and light boards and microphones. Thankfully, I received a lot of good pointers from long time users (and created a how-to for myself). Still, every week, there’s some unforeseen glitch. This week was the first that’s gone perfectly smoothly.

these boards are overkill for the tiny fraction we actually use, but they were donated ages ago by a guy who used to run the boards professionally for big concerts

Happy weekend, friends. We are looking forward to the first rainfall of the season for our area.

iochroma has turned out to be an easy-growing (large) shrub that can take hard pruning

plans and revisions

this leaning wooden crate has been my potting bench for a while now

There were never any definite plans for a specific potting area in my garden since I hadn’t had a need. I tended to sow seeds where they’ll grow and tried not to buy plants that don’t have an immediate home. Any potting was done closest to where the plant would live. But when I started attending the local plant shares, my interest in making cuttings and sowing seeds grew. Soon, pots of various sizes began proliferating and finding any flat surface they could be tucked into became challenging.

The most protected sunny-but-not-too-sunny spot that also had easy access to water was along this western wall. Various makeshift shelving materials were used on the south side of what used to be a gate.

Last year, neighbor was considering some kind of potting bench for herself and liked several made from cinderblock — no wood to protect, no metal to rust, impervious to our intense summers. She had a friend who could give her the dozen or so blocks needed and her company made long planks of tile that were naturally weatherproof. (Her friend’s company only sells by the pallet load, but they always have odds and ends blocks they could give her.) We brainstormed a bit a few weeks ago when I realized I needed to get a bench assembled for myself.

Yesterday, neighbor visited her friend’s shop, got loaded down with the blocks, and drove them to my place. I set them and the 48″ tile planks under the citrus trees until roomie and I could prepare the location.

When I briefly considered buying a small potting bench of weatherproof material, I considered location A. It was where my crate-on-end stood and nothing else would have to be moved. Roomie wasn’t too keen on it since it backed onto the garage wall and she was concerned about too much water or damage to the aging stucco. She’d recommended location B and I liked it because it was nearly where the seedlings and cuttings currently lived (sunny-but-not-too-sunny with easy access to water) and they were doing well.

But as we dug into the dirt to set the paving stone foundation, we discovered a couple of irrigation lines that were not very deeply laid. We also forgot about the drip system line. Digging and resetting them would be a much bigger job and the risk of nicking them was high.

So we went with Plan C: relocate two of the large terra cotta pots to the other side of the gate and set the blocks and tiles in their place. Exposure shouldn’t be much different and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting the blocks level.

Of course, there was much sorting through containers, old bird baths, bricks, rocks, and other junk that had accumulated the way things always accumulate. And, of course, deciding where everything would go on the new bench. There will likely be some adjustments, but here it is:

I’m hoping things will work out here and that the local wildlife won’t pay any mind. The block wall (painted to look like bricks) is frequented by Silver, George, and other critters like possums. Maybe I can set up some speed bumps…

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

fff nov 3

threshing chive seeds

Hello, November! How the year is flitting by and yet a friend said from here on out, things just go faster. Sigh. So I’m thankful for these moments to recall and record.

When the first pomegranate develops a split, it’s my signal for harvesting most if not all of them. There were two that the birds had already started to partake from and I left them to it. This year’s crop amounted to around thirty that the grocery stores would categorize as “jumbo”. Shared some with friends and collected a couple of gallons of arils, some of which will be juiced. When I visited Mom’s garden, we noticed her pomegranates were ready for harvest, too.

With rooted cuttings (both mine and neighbor’s), fruit (limes and jumbo pomegranates), and seeds (mostly flowers), we had a nice range of offerings for the October plant share several new folks were in attendance. I made it home with only a few items that were planted right away — that, to me, is a sign of success.

In the mood for organizing and thinning, I got out my box of seeds filled with packets from seeds sown, seeds exchanged (saved for ages for sentimental reasons), partial packets, unopened packets, as well as jars of seeds collected from my own garden. Outdated seeds were scattered onto some open space in the garden — maybe birds will get a snack. A few got planted; empty packets given up. I made up a few more seed packets for the November plant share.

My small patch of dahlias did not appreciate summer in their sunnier location. Plus, some hungry bugs kept chomping at their new leaves. In August, I cut their sorry foliage and twisted stems to the ground thinking they could try again next year. However, they had other plans and, this last week, produced a couple of blooms. This one is ‘Cafe au Lait’ looking more like just the “au lait” part. But still…

One evening was an annual fundraiser event for several missionary families serving here and abroad. Fellowship class members displayed talents ranging from magic shows to instrumental duets with grandchildren to recitation of major scenes from Macbeth to beautiful cakes for the cakewalk. One member read out the remarkable story of Svea Flood’s legacy, a highlight for me. Over cheesecake and entertainment, pledges were recorded at the back of the room. All celebrated as funds exceeded the previous year’s generosity.

The last time I visited my aunt who lives in the next town over, she gave me a butternut squash. She said it came from a mystery viney thing that was growing in her front yard. She has never planted butternut and doesn’t normally eat them (no seeds would’ve gotten into her compost). But it produced these beautiful squashes. I halved one and roasted it (425F for 40 minutes) with a head of garlic wrapped in foil. I’d inherited roomie’s mom’s stick blender that nicely buzzed up the slightly caramelized butternut and half the roasted garlic, along with a cube of bouillon and a cup of oatmilk. So good, roomie and I finished the lot for supper.

Neighbor was going to be traveling and asked if we’d keep an eye out for Silver. We didn’t see him over the weekend, figuring he must’ve eaten at neighbor’s house. When we still didn’t see him Monday or Tuesday, we began to worry — it’s a scary time of the year for black cats. Wednesday, we were so relieved to see him in one piece looking unworried and eager for lunch.

photo is from earlier this year

Happy weekend, friends.

one lone valencia orange, miles ahead of the rest