Each Little World

Spring officially arrives

Yesterday afternoon about 3:30 p.m. I glanced out the living room window and was taken aback to see our resident ducks — Fred and Ethel — had arrived. As you can see in these photos, there is so little open water in our pond that I had no expectations of seeing them for another few days — if at all. They've been coming each spring as soon as the snow melts off the pond, typically arriving in mid-March. This is the latest date that they've landed since they started coming in 1998.

The life expectancy of Mallard ducks is 20 years so they must definitely getting up there in years, given we've been seeing them each spring for 16 years. And we have no idea of their age when we first saw them. They always look the same; Mark and I are the ones who are visibily aging.  

But it is a joy to see them as we've come to count on their annual visit. They animate the garden in a way that few other creatures do. Seeing them is the surest sign that Spring is really here despite the snow that's still on the ground.

 

No foolin'

Many parts of the country have suffered through a long, cold, very snowy winter. Unfortunately we count ourselves among that group. Though the temps have risen significantly and we've seen a fair amount of sunshine, the snow is lingering to say the least. You can get a sense of what I mean in this group of photos that comprise a brief tour of our front and back gardens. I wish it were an April Fool's joke but we're not laughing!

Looking west from the driveway:

Looking towards the house from the street:

A tighter shot of the same view shows how dirty, hard and crusty the snow is at the end of the season. Nothing pretty about it. The brown leaves you see on the left are Acers that hold their leaves all winter.

Looking from the east edge of our lot line where you can see our neighbor's bags of chopped leaves in his annual Maginot Line of demarcation:

We've come around the east side of the house and are now looking up the dry stream and across the pond (in the center) to the tea house:

Snow or no, we did grill out on Easter yesterday. Looking west across the deck:

If you enlarge this photo, you can see the clump of bamboo is righting itself after being buried under snow since Dec. 19. Pretty amazing recovery. This view is looking southwest from the front edge of the deck:

The next three images were all taken in the southwest corner of the garden where the big Austrian pine came down in December and took out two other trees. You can see sawdust, logs, the big stump and broken tree trunks:

The stump in the background (above) is a crabapple that we took out a number of years ago. The one sign of Spring that has me excited is the arrival of the first snowdrops. These are all doubles growing next to the cement foundation of the house on the south side. I picked my first bouquet to put on the kitchen windowsill for Easter. 

"Inside the Gardener's Head in Spring"

My concept for a fall silhouette using pine needles, seed pods, stones and other natural materials from the garden proved so frustrating that I gave up on it — and decided that maybe my winter silhouette was going to be my lone fiber project. Then, a book I'd placed on hold at the public library came in and changed everything.

"The Art of Embroidery: Inspirational Stitches, Textures and Surfaces" by Francoise Tellier-Loumagne is the most inspirational embroidery book I've ever looked at. It is less about technique and more about how to interpret your ideas in fiber. Great photo illustrations (also by the author) including stitch samples all done on heavy white paper making for the clearest instruction I've seen.

I was so excited by Tellier-Loumagne's book that I sat down and started another textile silhouette. This time I focused on Spring with all the greens pushing through the snowy winter detritus. I cut two silhouettes out of dark green net and then cut them into pairs of puzzle-like pieces. I experimented with a number of techniques for stuffing, stitching and attaching them to the black background. 

They're filled with felt, fabric, ribbon, threads pulled from assorted fabrics, and bits of green plastic bags. Some pieces have small pieces of white lace inside them but most of that fabric is melting across the large silhouette image, held in place with beads and sequins.

I've started a summer silhouette but my concept involves more preliminary background stitching than the first two pieces, and it feels more like a chore than creative work. Hoping to be ready to move on to the fun parts soon!

You can read about my winter silhouette, the first work in this four-part series, here.

Snowdrops!

I looked out the library window this morning and was amazed to see a tiny clump of snowdrops had pushed through the crusty snow. The temperature was only 17 degrees F. so I didn't expect them to open or to see many more for a while. 

But today's sunshine helped two more tiny clumps to poke through the snow by late afternoon. Though it feels like we've had an endless winter, my snowdrop stats suggest they are appearing pretty much on schedule. 

Snowdrop stats:

• 2005: March 30
• 2006: no photos, so no recorded date
• 2007: March 21
• 2008: April 6 (after the winter where we had more than 100 inches of snow)
• 2009: March 14
• 2010: March 10
• 2011: March 14
• 2012: February 17
• 2013: March 17

A new year and a new garden

This is not about what you probably think based on the above heading. We just had the worst storm-related damage that we've experienced in our garden since we started creating it in 1997. This view of the driveway — after we'd spent the better part of two days clearing it out — gives you an idea of the volume of snow we had.

As a result of the Dec. 20th snowstorm, a 60-year-old Austrian pine came down and took out two other trees — the mainstays of my most successful shade garden, formerly known as The Sacred Grove. I won't know how much shade I still have in this garden until Spring when the snow is gone and we can really assess the damage. We are pretty sure that a lot of evergreen shrubs were affected as well.

Sixteen inches of wet, heavy snow with high winds, falling branches and trees played havoc in almost every area of the garden. Not to mention the utility guys clomping around repairing the wires the trees took down. The snow was lovely when you weren't hearing the branches as they broke. 

Our Pagoda dogwood, planted just off the deck in 1997, suffered at least four major broken branches in the center of the tree. After pruning, it will really have that wedding cake look; actually more like a cake with a layer missing! 

A big old lilac had its limbs tossed all over the garden. If you didn't know better you would think it was the top of a shrub buried in the snow instead of the top of a tree.

The evergreen tree in the center of the picture below is an Austrian pine, one of a group of three that were all planted around the time the house was built in 1954. This one lost its leader early on and a secondary branch clearly took over as the new leader. The positive result was a wonderful curving silhouette that added a nice visual punch to the garden.

The negative result is the fact that this growth pattern weakened the tree and made it susceptible to twisting — and breaking — in December's big storm, as you can in the picture below. This image was taken the day after the worst of the snow. Look closely and you can see the break in the trunk in the right side of the picture about 8-10' above ground.

This next picture gives a clearer view of the damage. It was taken from the same location as the photo above but a couple of weeks later, after Mark and a friend had done some pruning and much of the snow had melted. You can see how the trunk is secured by ropes to a neighboring tree. This is to keep is from dropping on a Pagoda dogwood that is growing beneath it.

Amazingly the tree did not damage the fence and gate since its many branches kept most of the tree elevated above ground, hinged in place where the trunk had not completely broken.

Mark took the following shot from the ladder and it gives you a view of the bare trunks of the 15-year-old Washington Hawthorn that the pine took out when it fell. This area is planted with ferns, Hellebores, primroses, dwarf conifers and on and on. The loss of the pine, the Hawthorne and a Magnolia sieboldii may spell the end for this garden which faces south but was always nicely shaded.

Mark bought the orange sled to haul the branches and logs down to the curb where the city told residents to pile their storm debris to have it picked up. After he finished hauling brush over a number of days, he sat down and slid down the 200' of sloping paths he'd created from the back garden down to the curb. 

Our lot is about 100' feet wide and the debris from our downed trees was piled the width of it and about 3' deep. We watched the city worker picking it all up with big claws on the end of an articulated arm and dropping everything into his big dump-type  truck. Mark went out to thank him for his great work and he was really taken aback. Folks are more likely to complain than compliment him, he said. He also noted that he lives outside Madison and that folks in his community don't get the kind of municipal services we have in Madison. We pay a lot in taxes in Madison but we definitely get Cadillac services, worth every penny. 

Now that I've had almost a month to get used to the loss of these trees, I'm beginning to calm down and accept the fact that a big change is coming to the garden. It's too densely planted in that area where the trees came down and too inaccessible to just put in another big tree. I am most likely going to just enjoy my plants when they come up this year and then pack them up for the plant sales. I think this area is about to become a low maintenance sun garden: a few peonies, some evergreen shrubs and groundcovers — and great memories of the glories that won't come again. 

A taste of Nepal (and elsewhere)

Mark arrived home from the grocery store late Friday morning just in time to beat the snow storm. He then spent the afternoon cooking spicy Nepalese dishes which he proceeded to serve in courses spread out over a couple of hours. He cooked, we ate, we read by the fire and then he cooked some more.

Strange as it may seem, Madison has a wealth of fabulous Nepalese restaurants. We've been going to the grandmother of them all, Himal Chuli, for more than twenty years. We finally decided we needed to learn how to cook some of our favorite dishes at home, which is how Mark wound up buying Taste of Nepal by Jyoti Pathak.

We began our meal with Taareko Alu or Spicy Sauteed Potatoes from that cookbook. Mark had made these before and this time decided to cut them like chunky French fries and to serve them as an hors d'oeuvre with a glass of Guinness Black Lager. They are fabulous and would work well as a starch with any number of grilled or roasted meats.

This was followed by bowls of Dal a la Himal Chuli. There is nothing more comforting, more warming, more sustaining than Himal's Dal. We'd tried to replicate it at home without much success. I decided to look on-line to see if the restaurant had ever published the recipe; no such luck. But local blogger Jessie Bluejay experimented until she came up with her own recipe to recreate Himal Chuli's Dal at home.

We tried it and thought it was a match. This time Mark served us leftover Dal that we had frozen when we made it after discovering Bluejay's recipe not long ago. De-frosted, and heated up, it still held up quite well both in texture and flavor. Mark served the Dal with Capital Brewery's Winter Skal. We emptied our bowls before I thought to have Mark snap a photo.

(Note that Bluejay's recipe has a couple of visual glitches in it; they appear to be related to accent marks and do not affect the recipe itself or ingredient amounts).

The Dal was followed by Tsak Sha Momos or Tibetan Beef Dumplings, a recipe that appeared in the New York Times not long ago. Momos are a staple at Himal Chuli and these were close enough to their version to satisfy us. Mark served them with Potosi Brewery's Cave Ale and a No Cook Tomato Chutney from the Taste of Nepal cookbook, similar to the way they are presented at Himal. The Tibetan Hot Sauce in the NYTimes sounded too hot for the subtle flavor of Momos. 

He was going to also make a stir-fried Ramechhap-style cabbage (from Taste of Nepal), but we ate so many potatoes that we decided to forego that dish.

Huma Siddiqui is a native of Pakistan who has lived in Wisconsin for quite a number of years. She's well-known locally for her televised cooking show, spice blends, and her evocative book, "Jasmine in her Hair." Part-memoir, part-cookbook, this little volume focuses on "culture and cuisine from Pakistan." It is a touching family saga filled with fabulous recipes.

Here you can find more versions of Dal, as well as a recipe for Saag Aloo (spinach with potatoes), one of Mark's favorite dishes from Himal Chuli; though they add black-eyed peas. And Huma also has a recipe for Samosas: pastry stuffed with spiced potatoes. Huma deep-fries hers while they are baked at Himal Chuli. Either way, another great dish winter or summer.

Here's a little video of Huma cooking. Having worked as her assistant during some of the cooking classes she taught at Orange Tree Imports, I want to point out that — though you can't tell from this video — Huma is always wearing heels and never wears an apron. You will also notice that she never seems rushed or tense when she cooks. Being in a kitchen with Huma is an almost meditative experience. If you live in Dane County, consider taking one of her classes or sitting in on the TV tapings. At the very least you will want to add her lovely book to your cooking library.

 

Editor's note: Just caught up with last week's edition of Isthmus where I read that Himal Chuli was the first Nepali restaurant in the country when it opened in Madison in 1986.

Another snowy weekend

I don't think any of us really believed the mid-week weather forecast that predicted a big snowstorm for Madison and environs on Friday. But by about 11 a.m. yesterday morning, it was snowing steadily, if lightly. It didn't take long for the storm to get serious. Wet, heavy snow started to come down quickly and to stick to everything it touched: wires, roads and walkways and every tree and shrub were soon coated.

It was so gorgeous we kept running to different windows for different views. While many of our trees and shrubs were bowed down under the weight of the snow, nothing looked like it might turn into the garden crisis that resulted from a similar storm in 2009.

We took photos, ate in front of the fire and then went out after dinner to clear the driveway. When we were done with that chore, we threw a few snowballs at each other and toured the garden by snowlight and faint moonlight.

These photos show the drape and droop of the trees, except for the last picture which shows the geometric patterns made by shards of snow falling off the roof and onto the deck. Hard to reconcile the sticky snow on all the vertical surfaces and the crisp design on the horizontal deck.

Good-bye snowdrops. Hello snow!

Early last evening it started to snow: huge fluffy flakes that immediately stuck to everything they touched. It's wasn't long before it was the proverbial winter wonderland in the garden. I kept turning on the deck lights so I could enjoy the view. We got about 3.6 inches of snow, which may be the biggest storm of this very quiet winter. Here are a few shots of what it looks like this morning. At the moment, big clumps of snow are falling from the highest trees, knocking snow off the middle layer on its way down. 

Recall weather

I went for a walk today as I've been doing every day for the past week. The pavement was dry, the sun was out and the temperature was 52 degrees (Fahrenheit). So far it's pretty much been the winter that wasn't. We've only had a little over four inches of snow, compared to our typical amount of 20 inches by this point in the season.

My Thanksgiving Hellebore from the late Seneca Hill Perennials is blooming and my earliest daylily is sending up green spears. Because we haven't had extremely cold temps with this lack of snow cover, I think most things in my garden will be OK. I actually cut a foliage bouquet this afternoon of Hellebores, Arum italicum, Epimediums, Autum fern and a couple of small branches of Gentsch White hemlock.

The other day I took a break from my walk to introduce myself (and Mark — that's his shadow) to a neighbor who's been taking advantage of the nice weather to sit at the end of his driveway and get recall signatures. Ray Coleman (below) lives just around the corner from us and he's set up a signing station that's had a big spurt in drive-by signatures these last few days. 

Ray and his friends (below) are just a few of the thousands of Wisconsinites who've used the mostly warm and dry weather we've been experiencing for the last two months (the recall drive began on Nov. 15) to be out and about in their communities gathering signatures on the petitions to recall Gov. Scott Walker. The deadline for signing is Friday and our first real snow storm is scheduled to start sometime tonight.

The timing is just about perfect. Ray said he thought about just shoveling out his driveway and continuing his recall vigil until the weather forecasters began to talk about the 30 mile an hour winds and blowing snow. To say nothing of the 30 degree drop in temperatures compared to what we've been enjoying.

So he'll be turning in his petitions, but if you still need to sign, you can do so at the locations mentioned here. This site lists all the recall headquarters around the state; locally look for the Dane County east and west offices. You can also sign the petition (and turn in any signatures you've gathered) at the United Wisconsin locations here.

A transitional week

On Monday, Mark and I were outdoors working in the garden in shirt sleeves for much of the day. I took a break to enjoy my mini maples which had finally colored up.

On Tuesday the temperature dropped but it finally rained . . . 

and the paperbark maple tree just off the deck exploded into its fiery red fall color. Most years it does this at the same time the nearby Pagoda dogwood, Japanese maple and Fothergilla are peaking, giving us a spectacular show. This year all of them turned color in succession.

Despite the wind and rain, we still had lots of bright leaves on the trees when the rain turned to snow on Wednesday.

Now, here it is the weekend and it's back to work outdoors with hoodies again the order of the day.