Ozarks Leaves

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I once ruined someone's dream. Not intentionally, but when the leaves start changing in our woods, I am reminded of the incident. I'd traveled to the jungles of West Papua, New Guinea to go trekking with a friend. We'd flown into the Belim Valley, a remote town with an airport so tiny all of the daily passengers could fit into one twin-engine Cessna.

The only accomomdations in the tiny town was a little guest house run by Ebu Hinkie, an elderly Javanese woman. The rooms were rustic, spartan, with a bathroom that consisted of a hole in the floor, and a concrete tank filled with water. To bathe, you dipped a bucket into the tank and poured it over yourself like a shower.

Ebu Hinkie (Ebu, or maybe it was Eboo, is a respectful term like Mrs. or mother) was large, always wearing big caftan-type dresses when she served our morning breakfast of fruit, eggs and toast. The dining room was a little room with a table and chairs, a big tea pot much like a restaurant coffee pot, always filled with boiling tea, and a little window. The wall behind the table and chairs, about 8 x 8 ft. held a mural of colored leaves in Vermont in October. It was a surprise to see a mural of Vermont, deep in the jungle of New Guinea, and one morning I inquired about it. "With this beautiful landscape all around you, why did you choose a photograph of trees in the United States?" I asked. Ebu Hinkie understood only so much English, and spoke less, but she replied, "It's my dream to some day, maybe see the place where trees are always like this."

She understood when I explained the leaves in Vermont are green, they only change to orange, yellow and red for about 3 weeks once a year. Ebu Hinkie's face fell. "Oh," she said and turned and walked away. Why couldn't I have kept quiet. I regretted crushing a simple dream but hopefully she had others that weren't so fragile. Here are the leaves in the yard this week. I wish Ebu Hinkie could see and enjoy them.

Sumac leaves. It's correctly pronounced shoo-mack.

Virginia creeper on persimmon bark.

Persimmons are ripe on our trees this week.

Hickory leaves.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) an herb, has yellow leaves and red berries now.

View of our Herb Shop with the hillside in the background.

I think the woods in the Ozarks looks every bit as good as Vermont in the fall of the year.

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Happy Halloween. Don't eat too much candy!

40 Thousand Pumpkins

My little pumpkin patch here at Long Creek Herb Farm didn't produce anything this year. Between the squash bugs and the 6 weeks of drought, the vines just gave up. But look what you can do if you have 40,000 pumpkins to play with. This is what I saw being constructed when I was at the Dallas Botanic Garden a few weeks ago.
Jimmy Turner, our kind host for the Botanic Garden at the Garden Writers of America conference, sent these photos along (and some pix are mine, as well).

This is the entry way into an impressive pumpkin village, which includes a pumpkin gazebo, a pumpkin house, kids games and more pumpkins than you could ever imagine.

The pumpkin hut, below, was still covered with planters filled with vines that had covered the entire walls on all sides when I last visited. (Vertical gardening is big this year, possibly a response to people who have a small place to garden; going up, on walls, takes the place of traditional horizontal planting). Here it is before, followed by how it looks now. Notice the planters covering the walls with the vines growing out of each one.

 Same building, different view, after being taken over by the pumpkins.

Here, going just for design, the various colors are arranged to surprise the eyes. And it is truly an amazing surprise, seeing all of those punkin's there in one place.

But the biggest and best structure is the pumpkin gazebo, in my opinion.

I couldn't help but wonder, who gets the pumpkins after the exhibit? Do they go to a homeless shelter for pies? Hog ranch for hog feed? Maybe they have a big compost pile at the Botanic Garden. I'll ask. Or if you're curious where all the pumpkins go after they're done with them, ask Jimmy Turner, I'm sure he has the answer.

While posting this, I had cookies baking in the oven. This is a favorite recipe a friend gave me decades ago. I'm guessing it may have originated in the old Moosewood cookbook, but I'm not certain. These are substantial relatively healthy cookies, simple, not too sweet and pretty much no-fail.

Clean out the Pantry Cookies

2 cups flour
2 cups rolled oats (quick or regular)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup butter, melted
2 eggs

Mix ingredients in the order they're listed. Then add any of the following, up to 1/2 cup of each:
Grape-Nuts, raisins, sunflower seeds, cornflakes, Raisin-Bran, coconut, peanut butter, chocolate chips.
If, after adding from the above, the mixture is too dry, add another egg and mix again

Drop by teaspoonful onto an oiled cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree F. oven for 10-12 minutes. I like my cookies larger, so I use about 1/4 cup per cookie and bake them about 14 minutes. Today I also added Craisins, pecans, coconut and sesame seed.Wonder how some pumpkin in the cookies would be?