Awesome Austin

Where do I begin? We only spent 2 days and 3 nights in Austin, but boy did we pack in a lot of fun and it will take at least 3 postings to do it justice (just a hint of what's coming...a funky, famous chicken place in Round Top, TX; Madalene Hill's gardens at Festival Hill, a trip to see Mexican bats on Segways, some great food, an afternoon watching chicken sh#et bingo, just for starters). And gardens all along the trail.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU 

CHAD AND SUZY!!!!

Josh's niece and husband, Suzy and Chad, and their delightful 6 month old son, Liam, very generously offered to come and give us a weekend on our own. What sweet people and I am so grateful for their kindness. (Of course, letting Liam and Great Grandma Barbara get acquainted, was great, too!. They bonded immediately).

It's always a pleasure to see other people's gardens and one of our first stops was at our long time friend, Lucinda Hutson's garden. Austin's famous purple house, Lucinda's home, has been on my list of places to visit for years. I know the house from her books, from numerous articles in Southern Living and many more, but I had not actually seen the house myself. We've known each other for years but this was the first time to visit Lucinda at home. What a sweetheart she is!

Lucinda is, without a doubt, the most colorful, fun-loving person I know. From her house (inside and out) to her garden, her views on food and writing, this is one fun lady. Look at the pic, below. This is the back steps of her house. (Click on the picture to see the embellished cat door). Does your back door look that good? Ours certainly doesn't.

Lucinda is a landscape designer and has a perfect eye for decorating the outdoors, and in. Even the very flowers in her garden are seemingly beyond reality. Check out this one in her front yard (sorry, I don't remember what it is).

And this vine, below, which I wish I could grow here. Notice the top of the house is purple, the wall behind the vine, is yellow. Do you have the courage to use color that way? I wish I did.

Or this, a great Mexican bathtub set in her mermaid garden. When Southern Living came to do the photo shoot of her garden, they bashfully covered parts of the mermaid with a leaf. Above the grotto with the mermaid tub is another mermaid and lots of plants. It's a small garden and it would seem crowded were it not for Lucinda's eye for design. Instead of crowded, it unfolds like small rooms, each with fascinating features that invite you to keep moving forward to see more, and more beyond that. (I've had dreams like that, when sleeping on my Creative Dreams Dream Pillow).

Lucinda's garden rooms showcase a wide variety of plants, from cactus to vines, bloomers and lots of herbs. Herbs are everywhere and Lucinda and I share a love of herbs and food. She's known for her innovative cookbooks which you can see on her website.

That's Lucinda and Josh on her back patio, her very rustic-elegant writing office to the left where she creates her books, and a garden shed to the right. What a delightful visit we had and no photos can do Lucinda's garden justice. . More of Austin to come. But today, after weeks of dry, hot weather and dragging garden hoses around - we got rain!

Here's a recipe from Lucinda's Herb Garden Cookbook for Frijoles Negros en Olla (black beans in case you don't speak Spanish). A dish of lack beans is one of my favorite meals, over brown rice, topped with fresh salsa, diced avocados and a dash of hot sauce. Last year I grew black beans, aka frijoles negros, in the garden to see what they looked like in bloom.

1 pound dried black beans
Water or broth to cover to about 2 inches over the beans
3 T. olive oil or bacon fat
1 whole onion, quartered and studded with 2 whole cloves
4-6 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp. whole cumin seeds
1 bay leaf
1-2 whole dried chile peppers (ancho or pasilla)
Salt to taste
1 tsp. crumbled, dried Mexican oregano
3 sprigs fresh epazote - (epazote is known as "pig weed" in the Midwest), or substitute. Mexican mint marigold leaves

Wash beans well to remove dirt and any stones. Cover with cold water or broth, and remove any beans that float. Add oil, onion, garlic cumin and bay leaf and bring to a boil; immediately reduce heat and cover. Add chiles and cook for approximately 2 1/2 hours. If necessary, add more water to prevent beans from bursting. When almost tender, add salt, oregano and epazote. Uncover and cook another 15 minutes. When beans are tender the liquid should just barely cover them.

More gardens, more food to come!

Home Plantin' Onions

After days in Little Rock, where it was mild and the fall iris were blooming, the trip to Urbana was for-sure winter. I've been to Chuck Voigt's Univ. of Illinois Herb Day several times, and every one of them, it's been cold. Well, what can one expect, it's January and it's Illinois!

The drive was longer than I'd remembered. I was thinking 7 hours. It's 4 hours from our house to St. Louis. But with a tough headwind and blowing snow all the way, took a bit longer. All in all, it was 9 hours of driving to get to the hotel where Herb Day was being held. There were folks from Wisconsin that were happy as clams in the cold. I, however, can't fathom why anyone would live in a cold climate. It hurts! It's painful to be hit with blowing snow and sleet. But, after crossing the Mississippi River at St. Louis, the snow quit and it was just bitterly cold. It was great to see Chuck Voigt again, the first time since his surgery and mine. As always he had assembled a great collection of speakers and vendors. Even though I wasn't an official speaker (I went as back-up, just in case) the University took all of the speakers and me out to a great dinner.

I get to hang out with honest to goodness, "foodies" (people who take food and writing about it, serious). Lucinda Hutson was the headline speaker, along with Father Dominic. Lucinda is from Austin, TX and obsessed over the weather for days ahead of time. She dislikes the cold and snow, maybe even more than I do if that's possible. But, taking on the weather in high style, after an impressive dinner, she fell backwards into the snow out front and made a snow angel!
Hers is one of my favorite cookbooks on the shelf and after about 20 years, she's come out with a new edition. What a character she is and her famous purple house has been on the cover of numerous magazines including The Herb Companion, Southern Living (check out the Grumpy Gardener blog at Southern Living, too) and Austin Living.

Father Dominic and I have shared the stage at some event or other in the past but neither of us could remember which or where. For several years he's had a cooking show on St. Louis Public TV. He's quite an entertainer and a superb bread maker and did both for the audience of 200+ people. He very kindly brought samples of chocolate mint brownies and a couple of breads to me where I was tending my booth. You can find more about him and his bread baking books here. He is a genius at baking and shows his audiences how to make bread with virtually no effort. He is oficially Father Dominic Garramone from St. Bede Abbey in Peru, IL.

One of the vendors at the conference was Chris Hopp of Farmbrook Designs. He specializes in hypertufa garden ornaments and what he had was outstanding. The designs were great, lightweight, good priced. I was very tempted by a couple of things he had but I wanted to see how well I sold my books and wound up not getting anything. But these are lightweight enough to ship and strong like concrete! You can see more of his designs on his website. He had driven from Royal Oak, Michigan, another one of those cold climate folks!

So this week I got about 500 onions planted.
I order every year from Dixondale Farms in Texas and they ship to me about Jan. 1

I've had a dickens of a time getting seed potatoes this year. For almost 30 years I've ordered from David Ronniger at Ronnigers Potatoes in Moyie, Idaho. They've always shipped to me in January and I've written about them in the newspapers I write for, for the past 17 years. Well, a new owner who's had the business for 4 years, after I'd tried to place my order, called up and said I was a liar, had never ordered from them before and he would not ship to me before, "the proper planting time in your area" meaning, to him, March 1. I explained I have 17 years of newspaper columns listing the potatoes I've grown of theirs. He once again said I was lying (I have no idea what purpose I would have to lie about being a customer all this time). Then told me how bad the previous owner, David Ronniger's potatoes were, how scab infected and diseased, that he had gotten when he bought the company. No matter what I tried, he continued to call me a liar and said he would not ship to me and that I 'd never gotten potatoes from them. (I've bought for two years in a row from him after he bought the business). So, I finally just told him to cancel the order and I would find someone who wasn't a total jerk and who wanted his business to grow.

After putting out a plea on a couple of web sites, I found these really nice folks who are happy for my business and happy to ship whenever the customer wants instead of that magical, ridiculous "proper planting time for your area." If you're looking for people who care about your business and have high quality, organic seed potatoes, check out Wood Prairie Farms, Jim & Megan Gerritsen and family in FAR NORTH Maine! They like people, they don't seem to yell at their customers. I'm glad to make their acquaintance!

In the midst of the ongoing adventure in searching for seed potatoes, Rose Marie McGee, owner of Nichols Garden Seed in Oregon, sent me potato seed to try. I've never grown potatoes from seed before but she says she thinks they will produce as quickly as potatoes from, well, potatoes. So I planted 2 packets of potato seed in flats today indoors and they're going to race with the cut up seed potatoes when they arrive next week.

Barbara Young, Josh's mother, continues watching her Aerogarden and the lettuce, grow. It's amazingly efficient and we'll have salad soon. The lettuce crop will keep up for a couple of months or more as long as it's harvested.