PEAS AND LETTUCE

I seem to have gone overboard in planting lettuce this year. It is abundant, and this Romaine is truly lush and delicate. Even in the beastly heat of last week, it was crisp and dewy each early morning I picked. It provides a large, full, wooden maple bowl of Sicilian salad every evening.

This morning I took my bucket to the garden to pick our first peas. The vines are laden with sweet, sweet peas, and for a first picking, I feel like I got a lot of peas, though after shucking they don't seem like quite so many.

This is the bountiful bowl-full from the first picking. Later this afternoon, I will sit quietly on the lawn with my grandmother's china bowl, and shuck these peas. I know many people greatly dislike shucking peas, but I truly love this quiet, contemplative, repetitive time. It brings back memories of my grandmother's garden and how she sat in her housedress, with her apron tied on, and shucked peas in the late afternoon.

This is my grandmother's bowl, though I don't really know if she put her peas in it. I just know that shucking ours peas into it, is a true pleasure for me.

Our first meal of peas is always, Peas and Lettuce. This is not something I had as a child, and honestly, when I first saw the recipe I kind of 'yucked' at it...cooking lettuce?? But it is our very favorite way to eat peas, and is truly delicious. Try it.


*A large bunch of cleaned Romaine lettuce leaves
*1 large onion, sliced
*2 tbls. butter(or more if you amount of peas is more then 8 oz.
*fresh garden PEAS
*nutmeg
*salt and freshly ground black pepper

Roughly shred the cleaned Romaine lettuce leaves. In a saucepan, lightly fry the lettuce and onion in the butter for about 3 minutes. Add the peas, nutmeg to taste and seasoning. Stir, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes. You can serve it drained, or as we like it, slightly wet.

Carpet Bags....well...Rug Bags

Anyone would think, at 12-15 minutes per braid, I'd have had enough after completing a series of five rugs, but no, I wanted to finish the warp on my loom, and as there wasn't enough to make another rug, I decided to try something smaller. I thought making a couple of 'bags' would be fun, and decided to add decorative rya knots as well as incorporate some woven loops. Above is bag # 1 on the loom.

Here is Bag # 1 off the loom.

Bag # 2

This is the second bag, though after constructing the first once I'd taken it off the loom was so difficult due to the density of braided rags, I'm surprised I prevailed with this one.

Both bags, and actually I'd like to make more. They are clearly durable, and should last a lifetime. They aren't really Carpet Bags as Carpetbags..."were made by saddle makers in many town and cities and were many sizes and shape. They were called Carpetbags because the makers would buy old carpets and construct the bags from the pieces of carpet that were not completely worn out"...These bags are Rugbags, but somehow that just doesn't sound as romantic! How about Ragrugbags (that doesn't even look like English) or Rag Rug Bags??? Rag Bags?? Anyway, this project was different, fun and until I run out of rag balls, which at this rate will not be that far off, it is a nice break from wool, to weave with cotton in the summer. And I must say, the grandmothers still deeply entice me as these sewn rag strips braid and weave through my fingers.

A Typical Day on the Farm: Surrounded By Beauty

Most days, especially the sunny ones, the beauty of my surroundings is stunning. These Iris' bloom just outside my cabin, along with Rogusa Roses, Service Berries, and sundry other things. A wren lives in a tiny birdhouse on the deck of my cabin incessently chattering at me while I work, causing an almost constant grin on my face.

This fig tree sits on our front lawn during the summer, and lives in the darkest corner of the basement in the winter. A slip from its original 'parent' was carried over from Sicily on the boat to Rochester, N.Y., by my Aunt Rose's father-in-law many, many years ago. They planted it in their back yard, and it yielded figs each and every fall of its mature years. I remember picking the first of these soft, warm, rather funny looking 'sacks' each fall, and biting into it. It always felt like a secret had been released in my mouth. Pa, as Aunt Rose's father-in-law was called, pulled the branches down each fall, laid them on the ground and covered them with burlap and straw until the coming spring. I tried planting this fig outdoors, but it is simply too harsh a winter in Wisconsin, so it spends its winter inside. My tree has yielded a few figs, though it is a tough battle with the birds to reach them first.

This sweet little spring house sits alongside our driveway. The water in our house is entirely spring fed, and is pumped from this house. On the right-hand side is a pipe that pours out cold spring water at a rate of a 7 1/2 gallons per minute, and a dipper is always handy. The constant pouring from the pipe has created a little pool just beneath it in which Freddie always keeps a few cool ones.

They always seem just the right temperature on a hot summer afternoon.

This is my cabin (workshop) that sits not far from the house. It is a wonderful refuge, work space, and we sometimes take cheese and bread and wine and sit on the deck of an evening.

This Prairie Smoke grows in each corner in front of the cabin. I had never seen Prairie Smoke before, and find it fasinating.

Here is a shot of my cabin from the vineyard, which is itself a lovely place to be.

And this is a shot of the vineyard from the cabin.

Some of my days are made happier with this little one's presence. Here she plays with the 'sandbox' I have set up on the deck. Aren't I truly blessed!

And finally, I just could not resist taking a picture of this beautiful serpentine garlic scape which was just pulled from the garlic in my garden.

A Feat of Fancy: Double-Faced Woven Braided Rag Rug

I found another box of rag balls way back in my closet the other day. When I opened the box and revealed all the colors, prints, and various sizes of these balls I was a bit overwhelmed. There is something so beautiful and compelling about them, and I could feel something stirring inside me, a recognition of the time spent by the grandmothers of old to not waste anything. The cutting apart of all the old 'housedresses', which they had probably made in the first place, in order to either weave into rag rugs themselves or take them to a neighbor with a loom, seemed daunting to me, though I doubt to them. I could envision them sitting in the evening with sissors, needle and thread, and piles of old clothing, patiently snipping and sewing. These balls represent hours and hours of work. I felt I needed to honor and use them and I felt inspired.

When I gave Iris her first 'baby' doll (organic by the way), I made a tiny baby doll for her baby doll and recently I decided to make a couple more of them.

and then I thought of braiding some of these rags into a small 'basket' for one of these dolls. That led me to braid a couple more baskets. In the braiding, which is a wonderful, rhythmic, medatative exercise, I wondered about braiding strips and weaving them into a rug... might this be something interesting? Certainly it would honor the grandmothers. So, upon finishing the third basket, I decided to venture into braiding strips to weave.

And here I am 'at the end of my rope'. After cutting 5-6 yard lengths and braiding them, I cut three equally long strips for the underside...or the double face, of the rug. I used a different rag ball for every braided strip. Trying to braid lengths of 5-6 yards is no easy feat, especially when the rags have trailing threads that entangled all over the place.

This tangled knot is a result that happened all too often while braiding. Each length of braid took about 15 minutes to braid and made five to six shots across the rug, there were 160 shots (far more than I thought) in the final rug, (the last of this warp seemed unending) so I spent a minimum of 8 hours just in the braiding.

This is the side of the rug with no braiding, but with three shots of rag strips from the same ball as the braided side. To say I love the look of this rug is hardly adequate...I think the grandmothers shine through making it somewhat translucent in nature.

This is the braided side of the rug, and it seems so 'deep' that one can simply fall into it.

A Green, Green Weekend.

As I walked out the back door this weekend, these tall and stately fern stood at rapt attention, except of course for those that bend and sway just over the walkway. They are so lush and thick and seem to give and get joy from being there to greet us.

My main goal this weekend was to get the garden in!! I presumed that the frost danger was behind us, and as I have had my garden plants (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, etc.) for several weeks now, they were bursting out of their containers, surely aching for the garden soil. Pleasantly, I get to walk past these profuse and colorful primroses on my way up to the garden.

This is my main garden, with the corn garden to the west, off by itself.

Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, melons, cucumbers all 'breathed' a grateful sigh Saturday night, though they must have curled up tight when it reached 30 degrees. Except for a few 'burned' leaves, they seem to have made it.

And much to our dining delight, we had our first salad made entirely with greens from our garden, fresh radishes and lots of dill weed.

It is difficult on days like these to tear myself away from the outdoors and come into the workshop and answer my other creative calls, but I managed to get a few projects started, some completed, and others, well...let's just say they are...waiting.

Birthdays, Fishing, Sewing and Growing

A beautiful Sunday for Freddie to fly fish the West Fork, while I simply basked in the beauty, sunshine, solitude and silence. It hardly gets any better than that.

Monday was spent on the farm, contemplating the asparagus!


At 8:00 this morning, I decided to place a yard stick behind one asparagus spear because I am astounded on a daily basis as to how fast asparagus grows. Some days I can pick a large batch in the morning and another in the afternoon. Here this stalk measures 6 1/2 inches tall.

It is a bit difficult to see, but at 1:30 today, the singled out asparagus stalk was at 8 inches, and today was not a particularly good growing day at that.

Knitting Needle Cases

My daughter Jonel's 37th birthday was Friday, and she asked for a Knitting Needle case. I decided to make one for her, which is on the far left. Making that one sparked the making of a few more as well. I think there are still a few more in the making, too.

Biking Caps

New creative endeavor courtesy of Andy...wondering if I could replicate his winter biking hat with a summer one. After much study, some pattern 'making', and trial and error, I made one that was too big on the first try, and fit on the second. He went home with it but I still felt the urge, so the above two are today's effort. I think, here too, a few more are in the making.

Fanny's Gardens

Just one of the many paths in Fanny's garden.

I did bring home some Bleeding Hearts.

Working in the yard and the garden...abundant sun, gentle breezes, looking out over this valley, just across from Jug Creek and I get the urge to make my seasonal visit to Fanny Gingerich's. It is simply breathtaking, and comes as close to a 'fairy garden' as I've ever seen. Each season it seems even lovelier. I'll never forget the year Freddie came with me and we wandered the many paths that wind among the flowers when from an open window came the most angelic voice singing a hymn. I asked Fanny about it and she said one of her daughters likes to sing while she irons. We remained rooted to the spot for quite some time.

This year, as each year, it was difficult not to continue choosing plants far beyond what I had come for, though I finally cut myself off. This is a trip to make, if for no other reason but to be entranced and momentarily transformed.

Read on to the next entry, as it follows from this.