Good Stuff

This spin-off from the Farm has been sadly neglected, in part because it takes so much effort for my aging brain to curate the ephemeral events and objects I run across. Other blog-wunderkammern (like those on the blog roll) are much better about this than I am, and continue to inspire me, but my writing-energy is almost wholly devoted the mother blog, at least until I can get myself better organized. Nevertheless, I occasionally run across things that group themselves into curatorial categories--even as nebulous as "good stuff"--so I'll keep posting them as they collect.

My ambivalence about technology, frequently commented upon on the Farm, doesn't usually come into play here. But I do appreciate some of the mod cons that make it possible to enjoy the cultural benefits of living in a place like New York, even though I'm unlikely to get there any time soon.

In my weekly newsletter from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was reminded of the new(ish) Cloisters blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed, about which I posted back when it started up back in 2008. Like many of my favorite web places, it slips my mind frequently, but it's such a welcome and informative place to spend time that I thought I'd bring it up again. The blog itself is full of useful information on Medieval life in general, and plants in particular. The photographs are also lovely, offering a virtual visit to the Cloisters that almost makes up for not being there.

Anyone with an iPhone might be interested in two terrific apps. The new promotional freebie related to the J. J. Abrams film, Super 8, is almost more fun than you can have legally. I got it for my iPhone 4--newly acquired when the old Silverback version just got too clunky for my digital needs--but apparently also works with a 3GS and iPad2. In essence, the designers have given us our own miniature Super 8 camera from which we can shoot grainy movies that work like a time machine to take geezers like me back to "the day" when home movies were made like this. Similar, though not as sophisticated, apps are widely available for still photography as well, such as Old Photo Pro (free), which allows you to convert your iPhone photos into Daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, infrared images, and the like.

The second bit of technological wizardry I've come to admire is the New York Public Library's new app for the iPad, Biblion, an interactive multimedia tour of the 1939 Worlds Fair. I find this especially cool because this particular fair introduced all manner of forward-thinking ideas (not all of which transpired), including a decidedly Art Deco view of art and design. "The World of Tomorrow" was the source of many a science-fiction fan's dreams of the future: robots, cars (not flying ones, though), and utopia. There are quite a few shots from the Fair featured in Robert Hughes's episode "Streamlines and Breadlines" from his rather epic treatment of the history of American art, American Visions.

The Beloved Spouse has just begun to grind up wood-droppings into mulch for the garden, so I'd better go help. Our own garden should benefit immeasurably from this effort, and will perhaps spark another post before too long.

Image notes: I couldn't resist a doctored "flying saucer" sighting constructed in PhotoShop Elements, which came with my new scanner. I may alter it even more when I have some time, to make it look more like something I could get from Old Photo Pro.

Garden Oddities

It's been eons since I've posted here, but I'm hoping to make up for it by aiming for a couple of posts a month at least. I'm not sure why I ever thought it was a good idea to break the original Farm into three bits, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

My so-called holiday is almost over, and I've spent the entire morning updating the slide list for my first lecture on Monday. But before I head out to the garden for some R&R (despite the fact that workers are tearing down the back of one neighbor's garage immediately adjacent to the potager, and major repairs are being inflicted on the house across the alley), I thought I'd post the pictures I took last week. Later I'm going to saw off the legs of an old wooden dining table to make a perch for feet and food (not necessarily together) and place my grandmother's old metal lawn chairs around it--so this is part one of a two-part effort on the cranky things we're doing in our garden these days.

I had got the idea for the bottle fence pictured above from the traditional bottle trees that show up all over goofy back yards in the south. But it's also connected to a Sherri S. Tepper novel called The Visitor, in which bits of DNA were "bottled" and put into a wall for reasons I won't go into here. When I was looking for ways to keep the Terrifying Space Monkeys out of the kitchen garden, I put the following equation together: saved blue glass bottles + all the rebar we inherited from the previous owners = bottle fence. At last my packrattishness bears fruit.

Beloved Spouse kindly nipped bars of iron into more-or-less random lengths (some are a bit too uniform and will have to be modified later), and impaled them in the ground at intervals too small to let largish dogs in. We then upended the bottles on the bars, and voila!

We also dumped about five big bags of cedar mulch in amongst the herbs in an effort to cut down water loss and maybe keep the mozzie population down. Then we moved the copper/tree-trunk bird bath off the sidewalk and onto the dirt to help close up where the dogs get in. It's not 100% yet, but I've figured out a way to put a gate in that we can lift up easily, so now I just have to tie together some twigs (as artfully as possible, I suppose) to make that and we should have a dog free garden.
But not toad-free, I hope. There are now two places for toads to hide, although one is probably a bit too open for them. The one above is an up-ended broken clay pot that got smashed up a bit during the big storm I wrote about on the Farm. The ceramic pipe shown below doesn't work as well, but it has the advantage of being next to a shallow dish of water. So far the robins love the water dish and occasionally perch on top of the pipe. But no toads in either place yet.

The final shot is of the newly moved bird bath. There was just enough space between the concrete and the Salvia, and room next to it for a pot of basil (the grille behind it is from the Smith & Hawken copper firepit that got smashed when our neighbor's tree fell on it; we replaced the firepit, but then had an extra grille, which last year supported a pot of Stevia).

The weather has been so lovely the last couple of days that I've gotten spoiled. No air conditioning, a spot of rain, Sunday morning on the front porch with coffee, newspaper, and no bugs. Most of the baby birds are fully fledged (although there was a baby blue jay tragedy yesterday when the little Manx that occasionally hangs out under my car caught herself a nice little morsel, much to the very loud consternation of its parents), so the mums and dads are getting a rest and occasionally lounging in the bird baths. By tomorrow the temp will be back up in the high 90s and all this cool peacefulness will evaporate. Still, it's reasonably nice most mornings, so the summer isn't a complete bother yet.

Hope everyone hasn't given up on me--I really will try to post more frequently and get back to looking at all the blogs I get such a kick out of, including a couple of new additions.

The Medieval Garden Enclosed

I remarked to a colleague during a meeting this week that the only people who read blogs are those who write them--or who are related to the bloggers. But occasionally I come across a blog that needs to be shared because it has worth beyond the blogosphere, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new effort, The Medieval Garden Enclosed is one of these.

The Cloisters Museum and Gardens at the Met are among its most popular exhibits, in part because medievalism enjoys frequent revivals in popular culture, but mostly because of the Unicorn Tapestries and the gardens. The exhibit itself is an exercise in virtual reality, with its reconstructed Romanesque enclosures, and the variety of works that transport us back to the Middle Ages. I've spent a good deal of my adult life studying the effects of medievalism on the development of modern art, and the Cloisters is always my first stop whenever I get to New York. Since I don't get there much any more, this blog will provide a nice touchstone.

The most recent posts are on lavender, an herb that grows beautifully here in Texas (even though I don't have much success with it), and is the best sleep-inducer of all time.

I look forward to reading the blog regularly, not only for its inside view of the Cloisters exhibit itself, but for the practical advice on medieval herbs and plants--a topic many of us just can't get enough of.

Photo: the Cuxa Cloister Garth Garden, nicked from the blog.

In Praise of Figs

Before I moved into this house eight summers ago, I didn't particularly care for figs. I must have retained some odd childhood association with them or something, but aside from the occasional fig newton, I seldom had contact with them at all. But my grandmother, not a notable hedonist, would positively salivate over a plate of fresh figs, so I should have suspected that there was something more to them.

The spring after we moved in, the two fig trees on our property had bumper crops--one in late April, and another later in the summer. They were quite simply ambrosial. I made fig chutney, fig jam, and (best of all) fig confit (or konfyt, as my South African sources would have it)--a laborious but rewarding effort. I wish I had a photo of the jar of confitted figs I made to give to one of the chefs at school, because it looked like a container of liquid green jewels.

More often than not, however, I'd just eat as many of them straight off the tree as I could, because the mockingbirds do their best to beat me to the ripe ones. 8 oz. of figs provides a whopping 30% of one's daily fiber requirement, plus numerous other nutrients--and fig leaves help mitigate diabetes.

I have also learned that our fig trees are probably San Pedro (or at least some kind of Adriatic variety), and that the current crop (on last season's growth) is parthenogenic, whilst later fruits will have required pollination. A video on the interaction of figs and fig wasps (contributers to said pollination) can be found on Figweb. It's won awards, and is most certainly worth watching (if you're 21-minutes worth of interested).

Two years ago, the figs died back because of the drought, and I really missed the summer crop. Last year, they miraculously sprang back to life, but so much of their effort was put into rebirth that I got no figs. This year, the little nubbins started early--and for the first time, I saw them growing up the stalk, like Brussels sprouts. They're finally beginning to ripen (the cool spring seems to have held them back a bit), and today I said Shehecheyanu upon eating my first fig of the season. Although I'm one of little faith, certain traditions adhere--especially when they mark occasions like first fruits; I am, in fact, happy to have reached this point. Or, as my daughter would (less poetically) put it, I'm glad I'm not dead yet.

Figs are, in fact, ancient fruit. They're mentioned in the Bible, loaded with symbolic import, and included in early cookbooks. Apicius boils ham with figs and bay leaves, according to The Roman Cookery Book: A Critical Translation of The Art of Cooking by Apicius, for use in the study and the kitchen, by Barbara Flower and Elisabeth Rosenbaum (George G. Harrap, 1958). A newer interpretation by John Edwards (Hartley & Marks, 1984) includes a modern recipe, but--if you'll forgive me--it pretty much boils down to the same thing. Several other out-of-print translations are available through alibris. Ilaria Gozzini Gicosa's book, A Taste of Ancient Rome (University of Chicago Press, 1992; translated by Anna Herklotz) is still available (and Google Books has a preview). She notes how the Romans dried figs, and how they stuffed them (and dates).

Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger more recently wrote The Classical Cookbook (Getty Museum, 1996), and it's making the rounds with various Roman art exhibits (including In Stabiano at the Dallas Museum of Art last year, where I got it). They suggest wrapping fish in fig leaves (terrific idea I can't wait to try). Still not much on figs--but they seem to have been a staple, both in sweet and savory cooking.

If you're interested in trying the Green Fig Konfyt that wowed my chef friend, it can be found here, with a link to a printable version (the page works badly on Firefox). Its origins are Medieval, but it seems to be a favorite in South Africa, where this one comes from.

And finally, a word about fig leaves. In the interest of misapplied modesty, leaves often used to cover the genitalia of ancient and Renaissance statues. The Greeks and Romans thought nudity to be natural, but the pre-Renaissance Church couldn't handle intimate body parts and so typically covered them with leaves. Durer's Fall of Man uses strategically placed branches and leaves, for example, but not figs. Tullio's Adam is easily distinguishable from its Greek predecessors not by a fig leaf, but a grape leaf (he's currently under restoration; I wonder if it's to remove his leaf . . .). The best example of real fig leaves can be seen on the Adam and Eve figures on the Ghent Altarpiece--if anyone's interested. I'm just trying to clear up a common misconception, in the interest of ridding the fig of its bad rap.

I was really disappointed to find that the God Hates Figs web page, which promises to prove "that figs are the source of all the world's evil. Includes propaganda, resources and FAQ" appears no longer to be available on the web. It was a parody website in the tradition of The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which would undoubtedly offend some who read this blog, so it's probably just as well. One never does know exactly where Google will lead one in the quest for blogfodder.

I think I'll go have a fig.

Magnolia, Blooming

I'm stumped for a clever title; I had intended to post a little item on random chunks of granite, but that will have to wait, because I walked into the breakfast room a few minutes ago, and was greeted by an Event.

Yesterday, my husband trimmed a pecan tree that was interfering with the growth of our neighbor's big southern magnolia tree. It's about 50 feet tall, and quite majestic, but the pecan was encroaching on its territory (as well as over the property line), so the request to trim it back was certainly reasonable. When he was finished, the neighbor presented him with two large magnolia blossoms, each the size of a luncheon plate.

At first I had them in a green glass vase, and they were nicely framed by the glossy green leaves that surrounded each of the blooms. They scented the air all yesterday afternoon. But the cats knocked them out, and I finally split them up into separate containers, and this morning put one in the breakfast room and one in the dining room. When I did so, they were both closed up into cup-like formations, and I left them to their own devices.

When I went to make a late breakfast after a morning of working on The Farm, I was delighted to see what had happened in the ensuing hours. They had not only opened, but dropped their stamens. Obviously, I have little experience with magnolias, and so this phenomenon was truly wonderful for me to behold. I only wish I had been there to experience the whole process.

While I was looking around on the web to find out more about what was going on, I found a nifty site called Evolution of a Magnolia Blossom, which does a nice job of showing the steps. If you're not fond of the theme song to "A Summer Place," however, you might want to turn your sound off. It's rather apt, though, from what I remember of the film.

One rather amusing coincidence: the green book with the Japanese writing on the cover is about Ikebana, the art of flower arranging. I found it at Half Price Books a couple of months ago, and bought it because it was beautiful and reminded me of my early childhood, when my brain got steeped in Japanese aesthetics, never (thankfully) to recover.

At any rate, I thought it interesting that one of the blossoms deposited its stamens on the sideboard, while the other held onto them, holding them in one of its petals--as if not wishing to damage a book on arranging flowers . . .

Here are two more pictures: one is a slightly closer view of the pile of stamens, and the other shows remnants of pollen on one of the petals.

And they both still smell heady and redolent of summer, only about three weeks early.