Dahlias – Dear Liza

Garden Update July 2024

Dear Liza,

My veggie garden grew like crazy while we were visiting you! Auntie Bridgett kept it watered and weeded and Mother Nature did the rest.

Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, are as tall as I am and have a couple dozen blooms. The bright yellow blossoms are fat and ruffled and almost as big as our dinner plates. I cut some to decorate our table and left some others for the bees.

And speaking of bees, they have been busy pollinating my zucchinis! We picked one, cooked and ate it before I remembered to take a picture of it. But I did paint a picture of the dinner for my garden journal! The corn on the cob was from the Hollywood farmer’s market and the chicken meatballs were from Trader Joe’s.
Yummy!

And last but not least, my tomatoes are beginning to think about, maybe, someday, getting ripe soon. The Chocolate Cherry tomato plant is slowly getting red!

And that’s all the news from my plot at the Blair Community Gardrn.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Flowers of Astonishment

Dear Liza,

You know I love flowers and gardens. I got this love from my Momma Billie who was a gardener just about every minute she was alive. Today I will share some stories about remarkable blooms.

If you look closely, you can see that this is a rose in Lompoc, California. It grew, and just kept growing, in Momma’s garden. It grew up from under her orange tree, through the orange tree, and right out the top! She didn’t notice it until one of her visitors on the Garden Tour pointed it out. “Well, how about that?” she said.

We saw this giant bunch of lilies get on the funicular train going up the bluff of Montmartre in Paris. The lady carrying them walked with assurance that she and her flowers were making the world more beautiful.

We found this astonishing field of sunflowers on Sauvie Island, just north of Portland. Every summer the farms let the public in to explore, shop, eat barbecue, and celebrate the beauty of the countryside. Auntie Bridgett never wanted to leave!

And this year, we have Laverne. She and Shirley, her sister dahlia, are growing in my community garden plot. Laverne opened up first and we were very impressed!

Our friend Lynn called this a dinner-plate dahlia, which I didn’t know existed. But there she is, all right!

And that is your flower show for today.

Love,

Grandma Judy

July Garden Update

Dear Liza,

It has been such a busy summer, I feel like I am squeezing gardening in between everything else! But veggie plots are relentless, both in the care they require and the joys they give.

This week, I have good news and bad news. Some of my yellow squash are being hit with a blossom end rot. I have looked it up and the solution seems to be ‘maintaining a consistent moisture level’ in the soil. Easier said than done, but we’ll try. We have harvested several of the tasty squash and want more!

The good news is that we are having free salads every day from the curly lettuces and raddichio, which we combined with that lovely squash and some basil from M.J. down the way. The currents and anise are from the community plots of the Blair Community Garden.

Our first tomato, “Isis Candy” by name, came ripe and was delicious.

We are finally seeing success in pumpkins, with “Ribsy”, our fourth named pumpkin. His predecessors (Beezus, Ramona and Henry) shriveled, but this fellow is resting on a step of the ladder and seems happy. The newest pumpkin, “PickyPicky”, had started forming four feet off the ground and needed shifting to the top of the ladder. We’ll see how he adjusts.

And finally, the two gigantic dahlias, Laverne and Shirley, are ready to pop! They are both nearly four feet high and were threatening to topple over last week, until we improvised a support from an old tomato cage.

Now, it looks like they will stay vertical long enough to bloom, feed some bees, and recharge their roots for next year.

And that’s the news from the garden!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Vegetable Garden Progress

Dear Liza,

This past week has been a combination of showers and sun, and the garden is definitely loving it.

I planted a bunch of seeds; carrots and radishes in parallel rows, pumpkins by the ladder, and zucchini by the trellis. The radishes are up already! I will need to thin them a bit. The carrots should be poking up soon.

I strung up some shiny old cds on string as a ’bird be gone’ and they seem to be working. I love this picture of Momma’s ant figure up on the ladder, guarding the garden! Momma always said that farmers and gardeners were the most superstitious people because they never knew what worked, or why, so they just tried everything!

Of course, all of life isn’t honey, as your Baba Alla says. The Delicata squash seedling got eaten down, like the cucumbers I put in before it. I will cross my fingers for the zucchini.

Auntie Bridgett’s dahlias seem to be happy, however. Their buds are opening as they get taller, and I look forward to lots of dahlias for the table this summer.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Walking Out in the Last Day of Summer

Dear Liza,

Grandpa Nelson and I took a walk down to Zach’s Hot Dog Shack on the last day of Summer. The day was bright and warm.

We enjoyed the Morrison Street Chickens on the way, and then had a tasty Chicago hot dog and soda. Zach’s summer assistant, Haley, put on the Elvis Pandora Channel, which also includes folks like (really) Englebert Humperdink. (His real name is Arnold Charles Dorsey).

Once we were full and rested, we wandered through the neighborhood. This wonderful, colorful hodgepodge of a front yard was created by the owner, who we got to visit with.

Some of the balls are glass, and some are old bowling balls. There is even a Virgin Mary, a Hotai, and a few random ceramic animals. It is amazing.

The late summer flowers are so pretty. These tall Dahlias, which are Auntie Bridgett’s favorite flowers, are going strong.

By the time we got home, we were happily worn out.

Love,

Grandma Judy

On the Cusp

Dear Liza,

It is still a week until Fall, but the weather is starting to change. The awful heat seemed to have passed, though I expect there will be one last Indian Summer heat wave before we kiss summer completely goodbye.

The summer flowers are still blooming…. wisteria, roses, and dahlias.

Summer fruits are reaching their peak… apples, tomatoes, and grapes.

And yet, we are getting rain, lots of rain, cooler temperatures, and it’s dark by seven o’clock. Fall is on its way.

Pumpkins are ripening in the Sunnyside School garden, reminding me that we need to use up the frozen pumpkin purée from LAST fall so we can go get more pumpkins!!

When I grew up in Southern California, all my relatives there lamented the lack of “seasons”. A friend from Oregon once said the bright blue skies of Salinas were “obscene” in January. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Now I do. The seasons changing are like breathing out after breathing in, or hearing the splash after you throw the rock into the pond.

They are what comes next.

And now I understand that.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Evening Walk in Laurelhurst

Dear Liza,

In case you missed me and my blog over the weekend, I have decided that I will only be posting on weekdays, and taking weekends off. I am feeling like I’m so busy writing about life, I’m not having time to DO life. But for now…

We are at the part of Fall where it can be warm during the day, cool in the evening, but still light enough to walk after dinner. If I am quick to get out and careful, I can take some nice photos.

In the neighborhood around Laurelhurst Park, there are signs of Fall everywhere. Leaves changing, seed pods doing amazing things, squash and pumpkins swelling and getting fat for Halloween, crows scavenging.

Sitting by Firwood Lake, the pond inside the park, I kept seeing reflections and shadows, trying to channel my inner Monet.

Dahlias, one of Auntie Bridgett’s favorite flowers, are still blooming, catching the lower light in their dense petals.

And, of course, chestnuts! The scary-muppet looking ones that you can eat, and the studded-motorcycle-jacket ones that you can’t are both falling like rocks from trees all over the neighborhood. Keep your hats on!

And, as Edith Ann used to say, that’s all I have to say about that.

Love,

Grandma Judy

New, Old, and Changing

Dear Liza,

Here in Portland, Summer isn’t willing to give up just yet. The roses and dahlias are blooming in what looks like a joyous shout before tucking in for the colder months. Portland is known as The Rose City (since 1888, anyway) but all flowers do well here.

We are having days that start damp and grey with wet sidewalks, burst into sunshine for lunch dates, then get cloudy again by dinner. It is dramatic and beautiful.

Our painters are almost done with the outside of the building, so today I get to put all Momma’s geraniums back on the patio. The poor plants have been holding their collective breath for two weeks, in a foyer with not enough sunlight or fresh air.

The Green Rain trees in the neighborhood are putting on their big show: seeds pods! They start as small swellings on the bud, and are now these bunches of pods that rattle like maracas when you shake them…which I do, every time I go by! Hey, it’s a toy, I’m a just big kid…what do you expect?

Today I will walk up to Yen’s and have her cut my hair. I am feeling too shaggy and need to spruce up a bit. Also, I want to show her this photo of the ginger cutting she gave us when we were last in, about 7 weeks ago. Bridgett put the cutting in water and, after a rocky start, sprouted roots like crazy! I am sure she will be happy to see her baby doing well.

Off to make the day happen!

Love,

Grandma Judy