Jamapalooza Five

Our canning circle reached a milestone in March -- we've gathered once a year for five years to make jam and chutneys, to try recipes from the humble to the exotic, and to catch up on each other's lives. We've always gathered in mid to late winter, when we really need a pick-me-up. This year may have been our best year yet. We made bruschetta in a jar, brandied cranberry-orange marmalade, maple-onion conserve, mango chutney, lemon curd and lime curd.

 Ingredients, recipes and an assortment of jars.

 The range gets a workout.

 Bruschetta in a jar gets ladled into jars. Find the recipe from Ball here.

Janna and Holly are the experts in the group.

 Brandied cranberry-orange marmalade is ready for lids and the water bath.

Connie zests limes for the curd. 

 Curd takes a lot of eggs. We used eggs fresh from Janna's Fat Chicken Farm.

Lime zest mixed with sugar. The kitchen was smelling pretty good at this point.

 The lemon curd is delicious. We dipped thin, crispy lemon cookies in it.

Part of the fruits of our labors.

For someone who is not a natural cook, I love these canning sessions. It's so satisfying to combine ingredients in a jar that you can hold in your hand, and know you can enjoy later. And it's great fun to do it with friends. I'm already looking forward to Jamapalooza Six.

Garden tour inspiration

Kathy

It's a day for looking ahead and looking back. Despite the cold that reaches deep into the bone, I'm thinking about spring and how the garden will evolve this year. For inspiration, I'm recalling the Secret Garden Tour hosted by the Lake County Master Gardeners last July. My favorite garden on the tour was the first one, a typically-sized backyard in town that was anything but typical. Kathy, our host, showed off a yard with minimal lawn and wide, raised beds. But what was really charming were the bits and pieces of old bedsprings, mailboxes and other "found sculpture." Kathy has a good eye for adding surprise without going overboard.  

 Squash grows out of this heavy metal cauldron that also would be suitable for a witch's brew.

Simply inspired

This is Rosa. How can you not love her? Her beehive-inspired hairdo is made of rose petals. Her earrings appear to be tiny grass flowers. At her neck is a wildflower gathered in El Salvador.

Rosa was created by Roxhana, a member of Arte Comasagua, an artisan's organization that handcrafts designs, such as this line of greeting cards, from native plants and flowers in El Salvador. Arte Comasagua is affiliated with Hope for Women, a company that helps provide sustainable employment to economically disadvantaged women worldwide.

Rosa caught my eye on a shopping trip to the Cities. I love the way this card uses the old-fashioned craft of flower-pressing and mixes it with a few simple strokes from a pen to evoke a fresh, contemporary design. 

Colorado dreaming

It may be called a children's garden but this scene at the Gardens on Spring Creek captivates adults as well. Love the painted pots as heads on the scarecrows.

If I still lived in northern Colorado, I'd be heading over to the Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins to get tickets to a presentation by Lauren Springer Ogden, author of "The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resilient Beauty." (She also is the namesake of 'Lauren's Grape' poppy. The stunning single purple flower first popped up in her garden.)

My copy at home.

"Undaunted Garden" recently has been revised and updated -- I have a copy of the first edition and it is one of my go-to books for inspiration. How can you not appreciate an author who talks about surveying a garden pummeled by hail after a few stiff drinks? (Substitute deer damage for hail damage and you'll see what I mean.)

The presentation on Jan. 22 is a fundraiser for the Gardens on Spring Creek, which, thanks to friends Kevin and Mary, we visited last August. It's still very much a work in progress, but I was impressed with things so far. Its 18 acres include a Children's Garden, Entry Garden, and the Lauren Springer Odgen Garden. The Garden of Eatin' has a spiffy outdoor kitchen for cooking classes.

I've never had the chance to hear Springer Odgen speak, but if her talks are anything like her book, it would be well worth it. If you're in the area, go. And then let me know what you think.

Giant watering cans mark the entrance to the Children's Garden.

Espaliered apple trees screen part of the outdoor kitchen.

The pavilion's green roof sports a variety of plants.

I want some of this. It may be marginally hardy here, but I think it's worth a try.

Window Box Week

This is the window box Angela worked on the day I was there.

Here's the vision: Window boxes and pots full of greenery outside every home and business in town from now through the holidays and into March. It's not such a crazy proposition when you listen to Angela Stocke, the creative brains behind Angela's Bella Flora in Duluth.

The sign welcomes visitors.

Angela wants to create a winter container movement. We live in a part of the world where it's mostly cold and snowy from November through March -- a window box arrangement on the porch or outside the front door can help take the edge off until spring.

I learned some of the finer points of outdoor window box design at one of Angela's demonstrations during the recent Window Box Week celebration at her shop. Here's how she built the box with the bird and the flame willow in the photo at the top of the post. It took her less than 45 minutes to pull it off.

 A bird's nest is tucked into the bottom of the window box.

Start with a base of greenery using a variety of traditional greens such as spruce, pine and balsam. The display is meant to be viewed from one side so build up the back so you have a background against which color and do-dads can strut their stuff. Mix up the texture with other greens such as Port Orford cedar and yellow incense cedar that are more wispy and lacy. Add some leafy branches of boxwood and seeded eucalyptus. All are stuck into water-saturated blocks of floral foam in the bottom of the box. The greenery hides the foam.

Angela works on a second window box.

Angela had decided on a color palette of orange and pink for this box so she added branches of pepperberry and some fake orangy persimmons. The pink blossoms on the right are protea, a tropical plant that Angela is experimenting with in cold-weather window boxes. She expects it will dry in place and look good for several months.

The bird perches on flame willow that Angela buys from a farm in Wisconsin. The stems are flexible and malleable. She stuck some on either side of the box, bent them toward each other and used a wire wrapped with brown tape to hold them together. (The bird hides the connection.) 

The final touch was a bird's nest with eggs tucked into the foliage. A surprise, Angela said, for people who take the time to look a little deeper into the arrangement.

MORE ADVICE FOR DESIGNING YOUR OWN

1. Choose a color palette. Sticking to a palette keeps you on track and allows you to collect various tchotchkes over the years to add to your design scheme. That also keeps the budget in check because you're not buying all new stuff every year.

2. Look at what you have in your own yard and garden. Maybe you can build a base with stuff you have for free and then spend a few dollars on pepperberry or variegated boxwood or sparkly balls or sticks. Add and subtract items so the display doesn't shout Christmas or Hanukkah around Valentine's Day.

3. Use standard floral foam and make sure it's super-soaked. Put the foam on top of the water in a bucket and let the water slowly fill all the pores in the foam. Don't force it.

4. These boxes are meant for cold-weather display. Use wood or plastic containers. Once everything has frozen in place, you won't need to water. And the display will last for months.

Those are brown magnolia leaves among the evergreens. This box is a nice balance of humble (readily available conifers) and Hollywood (sparkly balls).

Pheasant feathers and huge sugar pine cones are easy companions in this box on display outside the store. The cones don't come cheap -- almost 6 bucks for one -- but they are impressive.

Shoppers examine the fresh greens and other natural wares.

This simple crate brims with evergreens and glittery purple stems and balls.

 Don't stop with boxes. How about a hanging basket?

Or a simple swag?Sweet!

I'm inspired. The silly dog and I will be out gathering supplies. I think I can do something fun with that lingonberry we're growing.

Touring (and a small rant)

Michael Tonder creates impressive sculptures from glass that otherwise would find its way into a landfill. Last weekend, his work became a temporary sculpture garden on the shore of Thomas Lake.

This week, autumn is showing her spectacular side with a bounty of colors that shimmer in the sunshine. It's a great time to do a little touring along the North Shore, and the Crossing Borders Art Tour is a great excuse for getting out and about.

For 10 days a group of artists from Duluth to Grand Portage open their studios to the public and you can meet the people behind the pottery, metalwork, woodturning, weaving and more. We visited several of the studios last weekend and feasted our eyes on all the beautiful things ... except there were no plant-pots or other specific garden-related gear.

This seems to me to be a wasted opportunity. Especially when it comes to pots. I saw many, many beautiful pottery pieces on my tour -- some probably could be used in the garden -- but nothing that said "plant me." I asked one of the potters why I was seeing only plates, bowls and mugs but no planters. Was it competition from mass marketers? Was it economically silly for an artist to produce planters when the plates and bowls sold so well? He agreed that it probably had something to do with the economics of producing a planter. He pointed out that a reasonably-sized planter takes up the same amount of valuable real estate inside the kiln that several smaller pieces take up. And he'd have to charge more for the planter than the smaller pieces. But the less-expensive, smaller pieces are more likely to sell. So, at the end of the day, he doesn't see the market supporting him making planters when there are so many nice-looking pots coming from places such as Vietnam.

His argument makes sense, but it doesn't completely persuade me. I'd love to see local artists do some cool pots that would be appropriate to plant in or use as cachepots. These wouldn't be the workhorses of container gardening, but there are certain plants or certain locations that deserve something with a little extra kick. Any ideas where I can find some?

P.S. The Crossing Borders studio tour and sale continues through Sunday. For information, see crossingbordersstudiotour.com.

I like ... slowlovelife

During a recent purge of the bag-lady room I recycled a bunch of magazines, but not before I ripped out and saved some of my favorite columns written by Dominique Browning. I also had to keep a few copies, including a special garden issue from 2000 and the final edition in November 2007.

I love magazines. Especially those with beautiful photography, great design and well-edited features. Which is why, when House & Garden folded in 2007, I was really disappointed. It was full of gorgeous homes and gardens, the likes of which I probably never would visit. They were way too rich for my blood, but I loved the peeks into the lives of the homeowners and garden-makers the magazine showcased. But what I really loved was editor Dominique Browning's column. It was smart and beautifully written and touched on topics I cared about. I often said that even if the rest of the magazine disappointed (it never did) I would subscribe to House & Garden just for her column.

So I was happy to rediscover Browning and her blog at slowlovelife. I read about her job loss here and found much in common with her experience. Her work inspires me; maybe it will inspire you, too.

Borlaug obituary

The Washington Post reports that Norman E. Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution," died Saturday in Texas. In Borlaug's lecture accepting the Nobel Prize in 1970, he described an adequate supply of food as "the first component of social justice . . . for all mankind. If you desire peace, cultivate justice, but at the same time cultivate the fields to produce more bread. Otherwise there will be no peace."

So much of late has been written about the virtues of home gardening and growing your own vegetables to save money and eat better, we sometimes forget about the bigger picture of hunger and just how many people this Earth can sustain.

Rainy morning reading

Washington Post garden Adrian Higgins has an interesting profile of garden designers Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd of North Hill garden in Vermont. I've been a fan of these guys for a while and it was fun to check out the photo gallery of North Hill.

Two really good takeaways from the online chat:

1. Use a votive candle softened in the sun to plug the drainage hole in large clay pots that you want to use for water gardens. Add some mud at the bottom and plant. I've always used the clay/ceramic pots as cachepots for my water plants that are planted in ugly plastic pots. It's still a good system because it makes it easy to bring in the plants for the winter. But I'm intrigued by the candle idea and may have to give it a try next year.

2. Winterrowd and Eck say Seneca Hills Rare Plant Nursery owned by Ellen Hornig is the new Heronswood. High praise, and the online catalog is definitely worth a look.

Pen and trowel

Janna Goerdt built two plastic-covered houses for growing vegetables for selling at farmers markets. The houses aren't fancy, but they have everything she needs for growing. She amended the soil under cover with horse manure.

Food writer Tom Wilkowske reports on duluthdish.com that Janna Goerdt, market gardener and former DNT reporter, has agreed to do some writing for the Northern Minnesota foodie web site.

Janna left the newspaper business recently to devote her energy toward Fat Chicken Farm near Embarrass. She's growing edibles such as heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, sweet potatoes, basil and squash in the two hoop houses she built last spring. When I visited in mid-June the tomato seedlings were just starting to rev up and the basil was tiny. The plants apparently liked their new digs because as of last week, Janna says, "the hoop houses are like jungles, the tomatoes and cucumbers are taking over and I have to LEAP over and around foliage to get from one end to the other."

Sounds divine!

I'm all for supporting farmers like Janna (you can find her at farmers markets in Ely and Virginia) or growing your own if possible. I like being able to pluck lettuce for tonight's salad from my back yard or buying a few tomatoes from the farmer who actually grew and harvested them or purchasing eggs from the folks up the road who have a henhouse of Black Star chickens.

But I hadn't really thought much about the connections between my home garden, Janna's venture and other agricultural pursuits. In the New York Times, Dan Barber, a chef and co-owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns, shares some thoughts on the food web in light of the late blight that has decimated the tomato crop in the Northeast. Here's a taste of what he says:

"There’s another lesson here for the home gardener. When you start a garden, no matter how small, you become part of an agricultural network that binds you to other farmers and gardeners. Airborne late blight spores are a perfect illustration of agriculture’s web-like connections. The tomato plant on the windowsill, the backyard garden and the industrial tomato farm are, to be a bit reductive about it, one very large farm. As we begin to grow more of our own food, we need to reacquaint ourselves with plant pathology and understand that what we grow, and how we grow it, affects everyone else. (Potato farmers in the Andes, for example, plant disease-prone varieties at high altitudes where the cold keeps pathogens in check — to protect themselves and their neighbors. They don’t get as big a harvest, but they decrease the risk of an epidemic.)"

If you want to know more about late blight (Phytophthora, the same fungus responsible for the Irish potato famine), read this post from Leslie Land's blog. Wow!

Janna gives some individual attention to a few plants on a warm day in June; she's also installed a drip/weeping irrigation system.