A Stroll Through Gardens Past

Gardens Calling...

faintly I can hear their delicate voices whispering to me...
"Gina.... 
              Gina....

what are you thinking!? 
Go back inside!  The heat out here is suffocating the life out of us!"

True that!  They have a point.
Why would I choose late July to start a gardening blog in Oklahoma?!?
All the plants are well into their summer "nap-time droop and defoliate" to conserve energy in this crazy heat.
If I take photos of plants right now and post them on my new blog, no one will ever want to visit my blog again!

So...
During this summer-time lull (but not so much a lull in the weeds and, therefore, work!), I thought I might take you on a brief stroll through some of my past experiences in gardens around the world.

I'll start with one big garden named
Switzerland.

Swiss Flag in Lavender

Yes, I am aware that Switzerland (d' Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera, Svizra) is the name of a country in Europe.

But seriously, have you been there?  The whole place is like one gigantic garden!  Seriously!

Filzbach chairlift overlooking Walensee

See what I mean?




(I hope those of you who live in Switzerland don't take for granted what you have!)



Take notice - the Garden of Switzerland has its own garden shed and rope-and-pulley system for transporting items up and down the slopes.

Vierwaldstaettersee from Rigi

Seriously!


If you want to learn about gardening on slopes, this is the place!  Slopes galore!
(Unlike central Oklahoma, where you would first have to build the slope, and then learn how to garden on it.)
 
This garden is also complete with its own abundant and unique ponds and water features!


 

Kapellbruecke/Chapel Bridge
Reuss River, Luzern

Yet another water feature, complete with a water tower and a footbridge covered end to end with gorgeous red Geraniums.

Amazing.
I want one in my garden.

Sunflowers & Squash near Hinteregg

Vineyard overlooking
Schaffhausen

a closer look

   They even
 plant villages
in the middle of vineyards!














Yes, the Garden of Switzerland is broad and vast - I could show you photos for hours. Days!

But I won't go to that extreme.

Actually, there is one specific garden adventure from my time spent in Switzerland one summer several years ago that I want to share with you.

I was invited, for two full days, to help with the cherry harvest on a farm not far from Basel.
What a wonderful experience, learning how to judge between the cherries that were ripe enough to harvest and those that needed to stay a bit longer on the tree.  I got to wear a wicker basket tied around my waist to put the cherries in (the goal was to put more in the basket than in my mouth - but we were told from the beginning that they wanted us to eat as many as we wanted to or were able to).

And I got to climb the simple wooden ladder propped up against the tree.
One very impressive bonus - I did not fall out of a tree or off a ladder, not even once.  (If you know me, you know how impressive that really is.) 

When our wicker baskets were full, we emptied them into larger plastic trays on the back of a tractor.

The weather was warm and almost quite hot at times (even by Oklahoma standards), but really it seemed to be perfect weather for spending two days hanging out in the cherry trees.

I have to admit that one of the best parts was the full-on banquet of a lunch that was served to us both days.  Not so many cherries went into my mouth after those lunches!

Happily eating...
uh, I mean picking... chriesi.

Here is proof that I really did pick cherries, on a ladder, in a cherry tree, in Switzerland.  Notice the red-stained hands and the big smile. 

And notice also - no red stain around my mouth...have absolutely no idea how I ended up with not a drop of cherry juice on my face!

















A small part of that day's harvest.
Notice the branches heavy with unpicked cherries, and the simple wooden ladder propped up against the tree. 




During the times we would break for lunch and gather at the farmhouse, I enjoyed hanging out around the little garden just outside the house. 

 These beautiful Fuchsia flowers were in containers on the porch of the farmhouse.

Inspired by these beauties, I tried to grow Fuchsia in a hanging basket in the shade in Oklahoma a couple of summers past.  They did not last long in our extreme heat, even though the variety I ordered said they were hardy for heat.

I'd be glad to hear from anyone in Oklahoma who has success with Fuchsia in our summers.  Let me know the secret to success.

 One of the daisies from the daisy patch, complete with bee, and....


(Warning:  the following photo may be too graphic for those faint of heart or faint of stomach...or those who just plain faint at the sight of anything disturbing) 

 ... a hungry spider.
I was a little surprised that the bee wasn't quick enough to get away.  Oh, the hard and painful truth of life in a garden.






And that is a brief stroll through one of my "Gardens Past."  
I would like to invite you to stroll with me through other gardens from other great locations I have visited and lived.
But that will have to wait for another time.

Tune in again soon for another trip down Memory Lane in Gardens Past.


I'll leave you with one other photo from this trip.  

It is not actually from Switzerland, but rather is from Colmar, France.

I took a day trip to Colmar during my stay in Switzerland, and this is a view of some of the flowers planted along the river.


Until next time, 
enjoy the gardens in your life!

     
 

Shhhh...the Elephants are Sleeping!

I just have to start this post with a story.  It really has nothing to do with anything I'm writing about - except babies, which is the whole theme of this particular post.  So, really, I guess I just gave myself permission to start with this story.

Back in the day when I was much younger, I was invited to spend a week at the beach in Florida with a dear friend and her family.  At the time her oldest daughter, who is now grown with a son of her own, was all of maybe 5 years old.

Most afternoons, after hanging out at the beach for a few hours, we would retreat to the nearby pool and restaurant to have a snack and a swim in water without sand (and without sharks, which at the time I did not think was a problem at that beach...but that's another story).

The name of the restaurant/pool area was The Elephant Walk, and my friend's daughter loved to pretend that the elephants swam in the pool with us.  Sometimes if we raised our voices a little too much, she would caution us with "Shhhhhhh!  The elephants are sleeping!"

I ended up spending a week at the beach with this family for many summers, even after the kids were grown.   That was the only summer I remember her talking about the sleeping elephants.  Maybe the elephants moved up north after that summer.

Thanks for enduring my little story.  Every time I think of babies sleeping (or anyone sleeping, for that matter) and the need to lower our voices, I hear her little voice in my mind saying "Shhhhh!  The elephants are sleeping!"

So that brings me back to the babies.

I have some babies, and I want to show them to you!

I don't have any baby elephant ears, which would go along perfectly with the story, but I have something even more exciting than baby elephant ears!

Ready?  Hang on to your seats!  Okay......

Look!

Isn't he/she so cute?!?
I think I will name him/her Medjie.

Now you are probably thinking "big deal" in some sort of sarcastic thinking tone.  And you are probably wondering what it is.

It's a baby Medjool Date Palm Tree!

I travel to Israel every winter for a few weeks, and I always bring home Medjool dates as gifts for various people (and some for me).  They are SO yummy!

Well, I forgot that I had spit two of the pits into a tissue and put them in my handbag.  I found them in April, and rather than just throw them into the trash, I decided to keep them and maybe plant them and see if I could get them to sprout.

So I planted them both together in this little clay pot at the end of May.
And look what popped up about 2 weeks ago!  (Talk about slow-growing!)

There is no sign of the second one, but one is enough excitement for now.  I don't know what I'd do with twins!  I wouldn't know where to buy matching outfits for Medjool Date Palm babies.

As soon as I saw that little head breaking ground, I went Googling to find out all I could about how to raise a Date Palm baby.

Well....let me tell you.  If I knew how complicated this would be, I might not have planted that seed.
No, I'm sure I would still have planted it.

But, what I discovered is that Medjool dates are so expensive and so yummy because of all the hard work that goes into pollinating and thinning them out.
First of all, this baby tree will either be a boy or a girl (maybe I should call them by the correct botanical names - either male or female).
No problem so far.  I wait and see if my tree produces pollen or flowers.

Then I read more...turns out that most good Medjool Date Palm Trees are grown as suckers from the root and trunk of the parent tree.  Seeds are never used to produce good Medjool Date Palm Trees.

Okay, so now I know I don't have to worry about waiting to see if the tree grows to produce a 10 pound pollen sheath or loads of flowers.
And I don't have to wait for another seed to sprout that happens to be the opposite sex of my baby tree.  And I don't have to wait years for them to grow old enough to reproduce.
And I don't have to collect the pollen from the sheath and thin out most of the flowers and pollinate each flower by hand.
And I don't have to move to the desert where cold winters won't kill my baby tree.
And there is so much more to this trick of growing Medjool Date Palm Trees.
(check it out online for yourself - it's actually quite fascinating!)

Now I can just be content knowing that I am raising a baby that will never grow fully and will never produce babies.  And I will be content knowing that my baby will have to stay in a pot and come inside every winter.  I will just watch him/her grow (slowly!) week by week and enjoy the fact that one of my Medjool date seeds actually sprouted!!


In my amazement at this sprouting, I must also share a sprouting much more amazing and formerly thought impossible (so now you know there is no way the sprouting was done by me!).

During my winter trip to Israel in 2012, my tour group visited a kibbutz named Ketura in the Arava Desert.  They grow many innovative crops (including crops of a special kind of algae).
They also provide the permanent home for Methuselah.

I'm not talking about the old bones of the very old man in the Bible.
I'm talking about the young bones (fronds) of the very old seed of a date palm from the Masada excavation.
That makes it about 2000 years old (but just a few years since the sprouting).

Here is a photo of Methuselah in 2012 (with the tour group members erased as much as possible - sorry for sloppy look).

Apparently they have discovered that Methuselah is a male (appropriately), and they hope to use his pollen to pollinate females to end up with a date palm with characteristics from a heretofore extinct date palm tree!

You can read more about Methuselah at the website of The Arava Institute.
And if you would like to read more about what Kibbutz Ketura is up to, check out their website.


Here is one more photo from my trip to the kibbutz. This is looking at one of their current date palm groves from inside the grove.  If you look closely you should be able to see two dots at the base of a tree.  These two dots are actually two donkeys eating weeds in the grove (and applying a fertilizing mulch).  That's how huge these trees are!

Now back to Oklahoma....
Before I put the babies to bed, I would like to share a few more baby photos from my nursery (pun intended).

Wisteria...now in it's second year.
One of the people I do some gardening work for gave me this as a 3 inch tall runaway sprout coming up in his lawn.  I'm going to keep it potted and see if I can do a large bonsai/small Wisteria tree.

And speaking of runaways...this is a 3-month old lawn shoot-up from my landlady's prolific blackberry bush.  These shoots pop up 5 and 10 feet from the mother bush, in the middle of the lawn.  They usually get mowed over, but sometimes I uproot one and pot it to give away as a starter.

My parents have a large thriving bush from one of these lawn-starters.

This one is going to its new home tomorrow...one of my gardening customers would like to have it.




One more....

These are sprouts of Mexican Petunia (Ruellia), the dwarf clumping kind.  They also came from a gardening customer.  I love these plants for Oklahoma. They do well in the heat and the dry summers.  They seem to overwinter just fine.  And the purple blooms and spiky dark-green leaves are a great combination.
Oh, and those little plants surrounding the Mexican Petunia?  Those are baby purslane seedlings...I have thousands of them!

But purslane will have to wait for its own post later - it's one of those great edible weeds!

I have a few more babies in the nursery, but these are all the photos I have at the moment.
And it's bedtime (at least for me...been a long hot day), so I will say good night.

Thanks for letting me share photos of my babies!

Consider the Daylilies...and then EAT them!

The garden variety common orange daylily.
For those who don't know and want to, the daylily is a flowering plant in the genus Hemerocallis (NOT a true lilium).

If you do any gardening in most any part of the US, you already know that these are everywhere, to the point of sometimes being considered invasive or downright obnoxious.
Good thing!  Because if something ever happened and all the grocery stores and convenience stores and organic specialty stores all closed down, at least we would still be well-fed!

Yes, the daylily is beautiful...and DELICIOUS!

This particular specimen (photo above) is one of the hundreds of blooms put on proud display just outside my apartment.  And the unopened bud right next to the open bloom in this photo is probably one that became part of my dinner just after the photo was taken.

I never knew!  For years I've seen these flowers everywhere, and I've pulled up my fair share of them. Until last year, when I really started to take notice on what "invasives" and "weeds" were actually edible nutritious gold-mines, I would hardly give these orange beauties a second look.
Now I know!

What can you eat?
Let's start from the bottom.  The tubers (which is one way to positively identify this plant, lest you put something more toxic in your belly), resemble tiny new potatoes (after the dirt is removed) and can be used like tiny new potatoes.  No need to kill the plant.  Dig up a plant, cut off the healthiest and largest tubers, and then stick the plant back in the ground to continue growing and reproducing this orange-gold treasure trove.  The tubers are best eaten during autumn through spring.  Otherwise they turn to mush - not fond of eating mushy tubers.

Cut off any roots, give them a good wash (no need to remove the thin skin), and cook them in whatever way seems good to you.

Disclaimer:  I am NOT a cook.  I don't enjoy it.  I only do it to live.  No recipes on this blog (unless some guest blogger materializes with some great recipes to share).  

I will tell you that I have used them in soup (yum) and have sauteed them in a skillet with garlic (yum). Let your imaginations run wild!

Next up, the tender young baby leaves (which is another way to positively identify this plant - no true lilies please!).  These can be used raw in salads or cooked (stir-fry, soups, etc).  They are best when young and small, usually pulled from the center of the leaf group.

Young leaves and unopened
flower buds from my daylily patch.

A little higher up, the unopened flower buds.  I think these and the tubers are my favorites.  Snap them off the flower stem, cut off the green ends where they were attached, and cook them like string beans, or like asparagus, or stir fry, or in soups, or pop them in your mouth raw...the possibilities are endless.

The opened blossoms are also edible.

Before you go daylily hunting, be double and triple-sure that you have the right plant.  Check other sources that deal with edibles to help identify the correct plant.  And inform yourselves of which look-alikes might be toxic or dangerous.

Just to clarify, I am only writing about the orange common daylily.
I have never tried nor know any details about whether or not other varieties or colors are edible.

And I should also warn you as I've been warned - apparently about 5 percent of the population are allergic to daylilies (gladly, I'm not one of them!) so proceed with a bit of caution at first...just in case.

No daylilies in your garden (you and maybe three other people in the world!)?
No problem!  Ask you neighbor for a starter plant or dozen.  Don't eat the whole thing right away...let it start doing it's invasive thing for awhile (well, maybe a little nibble here and there).

Consider the Daylilies...and thoroughly enjoy them!