No Matter What I'm Doing

"So no matter what I'm doing, there's something I'm not doing."...Crescent Dragonwagon, on guilt.

When you do a garden well, it seems like there are two choices. You either spend all your waking hours, canning, drying, freezing and eating the excess, or you turn your head the other way and feel guilty at not using the bounty completely. Our long time Ozarks-now-Vermont friend, Crescent, described such guilt well on her blog. She and her partner, David, planted and grew, heads of cauliflower, described how they were eating a head a night, roasted.

I wish I liked cauliflower, or even broccoli. Those are full of amazing anti-oxidents, I'm told, preventing cancer and keeping the earth from shaking and the sky from falling. It's in my genes, I think, not liking cauliflower. You probably can't grow up eating cauliflower that's cooked to baby teething softness, drenched in Velveta cheese, and then later in life learn to love cauliflower that's slathered with good olive oil and broiled. Raw, it's fine, dipped in a homemade dipping sauce, maybe one from my favorite Easy Dips Using Herbs book. It's not too bad in soup, given enough flavors to give it some flavor. Give me a head of savoy cabbage anytime. Grill an eggplant with some olive oil. I like almost every vegetable I've encountered in one lifetime, broccoli and cauliflower just aren't on the list, unfortunately.

Our savoy crop this year has been outstanding. Rich, buttery, crinkled heads of the sweetest cabbage. Josh wanted to make kraut and I opined that using savoy cabbage for kraut is like spreading caviar on a peanut butter sandwich. But, since guilt had taken hold with cabbage about to go to waste (one can only eat so much coleslaw and summer salad) several severed and savoyed heads went under the kraut hammer this week and either into jars or into a crock, I didn't watch which.

The big news, for anyone who cares one bit about plants, is a new acquisition in the garden when Drs. Art and Sherry Tucker and friends from Australia were here. Art brought an Aeollanthus suaveolens, a fantastically coconut scented plant from Africa that now resides in the middle of the garden under an umbrella. Why, you might ask? Because newly planted plants, especially those having traveled by car across half the United States, have become pale and in need of a bit of protection. But doesn't this plant have a common name, you are probably wondering? Unfortunately, no. I think we will have to name it. Maybe just, "Art's Coco-nutty."

I read that Aeollanthus is used in voodoo rituals in Brazil, some kind of body washing ceremony, which is probably pleasant considering it's luscious aroma. It's used medicinally in Africa, it's home, and in fragrance and culinary processes, too. Some people say it reminds them of the beach, I think because it smells like Tropicana suntan lotion, only better. Very pleasant, and the fragrance lingers on your fingers for several minutes. We'll have to try it in a dream pillow and see if it evokes beachside dreams.

I enjoyed watching Hillary's speech at the Demo. Convention. She's good and thinks fast on her feet. The first time I met her, many, many years ago (1985, to be exact), she was holding up the lavender wand I had made for her, the first lavender grown at the Ozarks Folk Center's new Heritage Herb Garden. I'd designed and created the garden for the State of Arkansas - a garden that has evolved much differently than imagined and has a delightful life of its own now. Hillary Clinton was there to dedicate the Garden, and after I presented her with the first lavender wand from the garden, she held it up and gave a two minute off the cuff promotion of my work and my lavender wands. It came at a very fortuitous time for me. I'd had a back injury while working on the herb garden, had no medical insurance and could not work due to the injury. (She knew none of this, however). Her simple off the cuff remarks in front of a hundred or so people and news media, sold a lot of lavender wands for me that year, contributing to the pitiful little income I had.

Then in 1988, when Bill Clinton dropped out of the race for the White House, I sent another lavender wand to Hillary, this time with lavender made from my garden and including a quartz crystal from Hot Springs, AR. That wand was 18 inches long due to an exceptional lavender crop that year. In the presentation box I'd had made, I included a humorous note about how lavender has always been an enchanting and magical plant, and how some people believe that crystals have energy. In that note, I said I was sorry Bill had dropped out of the Presidential race, but if he chose to try again in 1992, to keep the lavender wand and it might give just enough boost of energy to put him over the top.

And, quite remarkably for me, I was sitting in Washington, D.C. in January of 1993, in town f the Inauguration, watching ABC news coverage of Bill and Hillary as they packed up to move out of the Arkansas Governor's Mansion. They had lived in that same public building for something like 16 years and were describing what was to be disposed of, and what was to goor with them. It was an enormous thrill for me, when Hillary pointed to a stack of memoribilia that "must go with them". The top of the stack included a basket from the Ozarks Folk Center, with my lavender wand in the very top.

That trip, with Crescent and Ned, along with a whole crew of folks from the Dairy Hollow House in Eureka Springs, AR, and including Mr. & Mrs. Workman, the publishers at Workman Publishing in New York, was to create an Inaugural Day Brunch for the Clintons. So it was with great pride that I watched Hillary's unifying speech tonight. I feel privileged to have known her and seen up close what a dedicated public servant she is and felt like that was a friend delivering that speech.

The Garden This Week

Even the Gourd People (left) are surprised at the continuing rains. This one's hiding in the malabar vining spinach, which is listed as edible, but has more oxalic acid than its all-green Asian cousin, which is the better tasting. Malabar spinach is from Africa, loves summer heat and thrives in dry conditions and produces leaves to cook all summer long. The two kinds cover an 8 ft. high arbor in the middle of the garden.

On the subject of arbors, Adam built several bentwood trellises out of native cedar, along with this very handsome arbor in mid-summer. It's already covered with Indian snake gourds and morning glories, which the goats have been standing up on their hind legs to nibble on. He has the trellises installed in the garden with beans growing on one, passion vine on another and morning glories on the third.

Here's what the garden looks like this week. We have a bounty of beans - 8 or 10 varieties of climbing beans and several bush types. I'll post photos of some soon as they have quite attractive flowers. The garden is a bit jungly, as the constant rains all season have causes everything to over grow their beds. The photo to the left was taken in early morning with a bit of light fog. And below, right is part of the culinary beds and pathway that leads to the Herb Shop.

Visitors to the garden this week and last have expressed surprise at the extremely sweet stevia plants, and the great numbers of butterflies in the garden. We saw the very first Monarch butterfly today, a harbinger of fall weather to come.

The red and white cucumbers are really producing rapidly, lots of Brandywine tomatoes and the Egyptian malokia is ready to start harvesting for greens.

Plant People Visit

(Pictured here are Rex and Carmel, Art and Sherry and our summer intern, Adam...who we've dubbed Papalo Picasso, since his budding interest in the herb, papalo and his degree and talent in art).

We were very pleased to have Drs. Art & Sherry Tucker from Delaware. They brought with them Carmel and Rex from Australia, who are commercial lavender growers. Rex said they grow 10,000 lavender plants in their fields, harvesting them by hand and running the lavender through the threshers and selling the flowers.

Art Tucker is a long time friend and Research Professor, and co-director of the Claude E. Phillips Herbarium at the Dept. of Agriculture and Natural Sciences at Delaware State University. He's the author of 2000. Herbs of Commerce, co-author of The Big Book of Herbs (with Tom Debaggio), and many, many, many more writings. We know him as the walking encyclopedia of herbs and the foremost authority of fragrance oils in herbs. One of the plants in our garden, which we dubbed, "Art Tucker's Russian sage," is a white clary sage we look forward to seeing bloom in the garden each year, and which the goldfinches also anticipate because of the abundance of seed the plants produce.

Carmel is the editor of Lavender Australia magazine and we had previously only met by email as she had invited me to write articles for the magazine. Now we have an invitation to go to Australia and visit these delightful folks and see how commercial lavender is grown.

It was great fun having serious plant people here and feeding them some of our garden produce. Even more fun were the walks in the garden, learning new things and trading information and plants. It was a great reminder to me of why it is I love to garden. Not just the plants, but the people and the food that we get from all the herbs and vegetables. What a treat for us to have such wonderful visitors.

Ravishing Rubies Red Hats

Ravishing Rubies Red Hats

We have several Red Hats groups visit the garden during the summer. Most bring sack lunches and make a morning of it. The Ravishing Rubies (aka Blue Eye Red Hats) came to visit and enjoyed a Dream Pillows workshop in the gazebo. Everyone made a dream pillow to take home and learned about the various herbs that effect dreaming. (All of the recipes for my formulas are in Making Herbal Dream Pillows, Storey Publishing).

They had cold pressed mint tea and Lemon Balm-Blueberry Cake for dessert after lunch. We gave out little envelopes with instructions to place the herbs I handed them (to smell and taste) into the envelope, put it on the dash of the car and they would have a potpourri record of the herbs they'd enjoyed. Alternatively, they could empty the packet into a pot of boiling water in which there was an couple of onion slices, a stalk of celery and a couple of pieces of chicken, and make soup!

Many of my dream pillow formulas are available on our website on the Dream Pillows pages, both as ready made pillows and as bulk blends for those who want to sew their own. We also offer Kits and individual Bulk Herbs for other projects, too.

Dancing Tea

(Baby Dancing Tea plants, left)
I've been receiving email questions regarding sources for some of the plants I've written about in my columns in The Herb Companion magazine recently. If you go to my website http://www.LongCreekHerbs.com and click on the "Looking for Plants?" button, it will take you to a page with my recommendations for sources of many of the plants I write about (and gr0w).



The dancing tea plant likes mostly shade, with filtered light. Mine is on the north side of my grape arbor and gets morning sun only and it's looking quite happy and robust. Recently 3 of us were standing near it talking and one of the people had a lot of volume to her voice. I pointed out the dancing tea was dancing up a storm every time she spoke.

Peppers in Season

Rains, 2 inches or more each week, have been hard on the peppers. Just 2 nights ago we received more than 3 inches overnight. Several of the peppers have nearly lost all of their leaves. The bell peppers and a few of the hot peppers are producing, but not a bit happy with the moisture.

The hotter varieties prefer soil on the well-drained, dry side, with weekly watering. Ours are mulched with straw, in raised beds, the method that works well each year for us. But not with constant raining. The Jamaican Scotch Bonnet (shown as the little yellow turban-shaped at the left) is a plant I over wintered with good success and it is producing small amounts of it's fruity tasting, pretty hot peppers and is less affected by the humidity and rains than some of the others.

The bhut jalokia I have written about before is doing well but not yet ready to flower, nor is the somewhat rare white habanero. Friends asked me recently, just why it is that people eat hot peppers. They were from "up north," meaning north of Missouri, and said they just do not understand why people want to suffer pain by eating peppers.

Here's what a professional chef on www.gigachef.com says about it:
"In essence, when we eat a pepper containing capsaicin, we are eating that plant's deterrent against being eaten; hence the irritating sensations it produces when we eat or even touch it. Pretty ironic that the reason we eat something is for its natural defenses against being eaten in the first place.

Psychologist Paul Rozin sites this phenomenon as an example of “constrained risk,” something that makes our body respond with warning signals, which we ignore and enjoy, much like riding a roller coaster. It is asserted by many that prolonged stimulation from capsaicin releases B-endorphins from the brain to impede and reduce pain. It is based on this idea that capsaicin has been used as a medication to aid in the alleviation of many chronic disorders, such as rheumatoid arthritis, and viral and diabetic nerve damage. However, much like a chili-eater's tolerance increases with the frequency of his or her use, extended use of this chemical leads to desensitization, and therefore a higher dose is needed to be effective."

In other words, it's a pain-pleasure sensation that become addictive, in the same way eating your favorite flavor of ice cream is addictive. (I like candied jalapeno peppers over my ice cream, combining the best of both addictions).



Above are Vietnamese fish peppers I'm growing, hot little peppers that are used when cooking seafood dishes. Even if you don't eat these, they are highly decorative with their variegated foliage and variegated peppers, too.

Fairy Hats, Fairy Corners

There's a long standing tradition in the Ozarks for leaving a fairy corner in the garden. Tradition has it that fairies come out at night, especially in the moonlight, and tend the garden plants. They give lessons to the lady bugs on how to keep the aphids off the tomatoes; they teach the praying mantises how to protect the squash and beans from marauding pests.

It's the fairies who fluff up the tassels on the corn after a pounding rain and it's the same wee ones who are responsible for chasing the lightning bugs into the air to light the garden in the early evening.

Fairies, I am told, need a place that is safe to hid in the daytime, a place that is never disturbed year in and year out. It's the constant tilling, mulching, weed-eating and Round-Upping of the soil that is the reason people seldom see fairies any more. But in gardens that provide a place, they are still around.

I asked my grandfather, when I was about 5, why there was a corner of his garden where he didn't grow regular garden plants. He kind of blushed and said, "Oh, it's too hard to get the plow into that part." And that's all he would tell me.

Much later, as an adult, I noticed that gardens of older people in the Ozarks, all had this same quality. It is the corner where the hollyhocks grow, where the poppies and bachelor's buttons come up every year. Four o'clocks bloom there as do larkspur, the decorative alliums and in some people's gardens, foxglove.

I began asking people who had these untilled corners, just what they were and was told by several sources, "It's a fairy corner, don't you know?" The tradition has come down to us today from English folklore, and it was a customary thing in English gardens of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Last week I had a group of garden club ladies from Kimberling City, MO visiting. I was giving a tour of the garden which went past the culinary herbs, over to the myoga ginger, horseradish and on to the edible leaf hibiscus. I began to tell the ladies the story of the fairy garden, and pointing to the giant allium flower heads, said, "And here's the proof. Some of the fairies last night left their hats on top of the allium flowers."

But to my amazement, the little hats I had seen earlier, were gone. I stopped in the story and said I was surprised to see the hats had disappeared. Then one of the ladies spoke up and said, "Oh, I guess it's my fault. I saw those little tufts and thought they looked messy and I pulled them all off. Should I have not done that?

I thought it very presumptuous of her to have tidied up my garden flowers, which very well ruined my proof of the fairies existence and the reason for having a fairy corner at all. I had meant to photograph the hats earlier and decided I'd wait until the garden club was over with. So after they left, I took a couple of photos of the only fairy hats left in the garden, some old discarded and worn out hats, but this is what will have to do.

And whether you believe in the old English custom of leaving a fairy corner, the more practical purpose is to have a place where the beneficial insects hide out. The mantis' lay their eggs for next year; ladybugs winter over and have a sanctuary in the daytime when they aren't doing their work. And who knows, leave a place for them, and the fairies are likely to come to your garden to help out, too!