Peace and Quiet

Madame A. Meilland a.k.a. Peace, Gloria Dei, and Gioia

was the first rose to bloom in my garden this year 

About 20 years ago, I decided my grandparents' house needed roses. I plunked 6 rose bushes into the ground way at the back of the rear garden, and lovingly cared for them for a good five or ten years before I lost interest. Besides, they were well-established by then and needed relatively little care.

Last spring, I lost one (either Heaven or Fragrant Cloud, I always confuse them) to ground compaction, and then I lost Queen Elizabeth this winter, likely for the same reason. You can see her brown carcass in the left background of the photo, I left her there in case she magically springs back to life. I was devastated. Roses were the first plants that brought me out to the garden and sparked something of an interest in grubbing in the dirt! So now I'm giving love to the four I have left.

My roses usually start budding in late January or early February, but with the freakishly cold storms this year, they held off until March or April. Finally, two weeks ago, Mme Meilland busted open a bud! I ran out to take a photo before the rains came again. I'm so glad I took that shot, because it rained that night, and while the bud still bloomed last week, it looked a little water logged.

Madame Meilland was developed in France by Francis Meilland between 1935 to 1939, not a good time to be a new cultivar in France! Meilland was able to send cuttings to friends in Germany, Turkey, the United States and Italy just before the Germans invaded. Mme Meilland was released in the U.S. at the Pacific Rose Society's spring show under the trade name Peace on 29 April 1945, the day Berlin fell, by Conard-Pyle Co. And on 8 May the same year, each of the 49 delegates at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco received a Peace rose with the note:

“We hope the ‘Peace’ rose will influence men’s thoughts for everlasting world peace.”

Obviously, it hasn't had much influence on that front, but Madame A. Meilland is one of the most popular cultivars in home gardens, and one of my favorites, along with Taboo, which is still alive and well in my garden (yay!) and Queen Elizabeth (heavy sigh). Given the record number of natural, and not-so-natural disasters recently, let's hope that this late spring brings us all a little Peace and respite.

The Great Sofa Experiment 2010

People have been complaining about my father's sofa for years.  When you sit, you sink almost to the floor and good luck standing back up!  It never bothered him until he had problems getting up from a nap one day, so he wandered aimlessly in a store for a few minutes and left because no one came to help him.  I told him I could probably reupholster it, but no guarantees.  He gave the go-ahead and I stripped that puppy down.  Here it is mid-strip.

 

I began the re-covering process from the ground up, reinforcing the springs from underneath with webbing, and re-tying them. This was the easy part for me, because nothing on the inside has to look pretty.

Here it is reinforced and ready to be padded and covered.  So far, so good, but from this point, I was regretting not taking better notes when I took that upholstery class.

I blind-stitched the front on first.  Except I couldn't remember EXACTLY how to blind stitch, so it was more like visible stitching.  Luckily, that portion is covered by the cushions!  Then I did the inside of the arms and inside of the back.  You can't exactly tell from this photo, but the back is lumpy. Oops.

I put on the front of the arms next, then when I tried to do the outside of the arms, discovered about 3/4 of the way through the process why there is a specific order to do these things in.  Off came the outside and fronts of the arms.  And back on they went, outsides first, then the fronts. After that, finishing the back was easy.

But I still had to make the cushion cases.  I started one evening, measuring and cutting the pieces, starting to sew that night, but the thread kept breaking.  I cleaned and oiled the sewing machine, checked the needle, put the piece in, and was halfway down the seam before I realized the thread had broken again!  Frustrated, I completely changed the thread ... and was fine.  The other thread was too old.  I finished the case, measured it, and realized I'd allowed too much for the seams (which is better than not leaving enough, but still a pain).  I had to rip it apart, cut it down and start over.  Somewhere around 5:00am, I headed to bed.  I followed that same process for the other two, but finally finished.  I stuffed the cushions, stuck them on the sofa ... and somehow they were still too large!  There was no way I was going to do them over AGAIN, so it will stay this way...

Well, that was March and April for me. How was yours?

It's National Poetry Month!

Statue on the Moselle

Metz 2009

Alas, I'm no poet, and have nothing of my own to offer, so I must steal from someone else.  It is spring, at least according to the calendar -- I jinxed myself with that last post and the creeping cold, driving rain, and wild winds have returned -- and thoughts turn to what else other than love?  Who could be better than a Latin lover? And which Latin lover could be better than Pablo Neruda during the Matilde era?

Neruda's third and final wife, Matilde Urrutia, was his muse for his 100 Sonnets, and also the love poems in Captain's Verses, and Bacarole. When I read his sonnets for her, I can almost imagine that I am a woman who inspires and fosters greatness in the man she loves, that I am someone in whom someone else sees something so special that he is motivated just by her essence. In real life, though, I'm not muse material.  I'm far too much of a cynic to inspire anyone to anything even resembling greatness!

Sonnet XVII from 100 Love Sonnets


 I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
So I love you because I know no other way than this:

where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

My comprehension of the Spanish language is horrible, but if you read his original writing out loud,  the words flow more lyrically than the English translation...

No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal, topacio
o flecha de claveles que propagan eñ fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.

Te amo como la planta que no florece y lleva
dentro de sí, escondida, la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,

Sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

Spring May Have Sprung!

I am cautiously happy to say that the weather seems to be turning warm and sunny and I can finally work in my garden.  Cautious because we've had several false starts this year.  Below is my "before" photo. Yes, it looks like this every spring -- my compost pile is 6 x 10 x 4 feet.  Every year.  It will be bigger this year, because I haven't been as good about tending the garden in the last two years with all the country hopping and haven't grown vegetables in 4 years.

One afternoon in mid-March, I cleared about 500 square feet of weeds for vegetables with the help of a rake, a mattock and a quart of lemonade my housemate made from the meyer lemons in the front garden.  I also started seeds for tomatoes, basil and cucumbers.  That night, the cold and rain returned with a vengeance and continued for the rest of the month, with a day or so let-up here and there. In the meantime, the cherry and paste tomato seeds sprouted unwillingly, angry that I'd forced them out into the cold.  The Siberian tomatoes, which are supposed to do well in cooler climes never bothered to sprout at all! The cucumbers were decimated by snails the minute they sprouted. And apparently, the basil pot had coriander seeds in it!

See the seedlings above? This photo was taken 13 days ago. They still look like this, except there are fewer of them, because they hate me for drenching them in torrential rain and freezing them in polar winds. Luckily, I bought seedlings ready to plant from the nursery as insurance and plunked them into the ground, along with various bean, chile and corn seeds, on the first of April, one of the nice days.  Below is Piglet standing next to the little chicken wire fence we put up to keep her and other miscellaneous critters from trampling and digging. In the foreground are beets and garlic my housemate planted last fall, and swiss chard that has volunteered itself for the last 15 years. I only bought swiss chard seeds once, but it's reseeded itself every year since then.

We have had four straight days of clear, warm weather and among the new weeds that sprouted during the last rain onslaught, I saw little bean sprouts!  I am so glad that bean seeds are fairly hardy. These pole beans are an Italian variety that have a red pod when they go to seed.  The bush beans have sprouted, but don't look quite as vigorous.  No sign of the corn or chile, I think they might require another insurance run to the nursery for seedlings.

It feels good to be grubbing around the garden again. I seem to feel more "connected" with the food I eat when I've had a hand in being responsible for at least part of it. And I have to say although I enjoy the sorbet I made from strawberries I got from the farmer's market (red), I prefer the one I made from my oranges and meyer lemons (yellow).

Speaking of having a hand in growing food, my housemate is talking about chickens for fresh eggs. He got the idea because the neighbors have hens. I think that's too much like work! Has anyone here raised chickens?

Waiting for Spring to Arrive in Full Force

Usually by now, the rainy season is over and the temperatures have begun to rise, but this year, the skies have remained grey and the rain (here, and snow in the mountains) continues to fall.  I can't complain too much, since California is in perpetual drought.  A certain resident of Germany also reminded me that it never gets truly cold where I am, although I challenge him to come to San Francisco on a foggy night.  The air temperature is not as cold as Germany in winter, but the moisture in the air drives the chill into your body

All this said, we have had a few beautiful days so far, and being unemployed, I was able to be outside to take a few photos, when I haven't been toiling in the vegetable garden, in the house with spring cleaning, or at my father's reupholstering his sofa.  Since I've been completely uninspired with regard to blogging, I thought I'd share a few of these photos.

Ranunculus in a border in front of a house along Palm Avenue. 

This street has a lot of arts & crafts style homes, mostly California bungalows and Mission Revival.

A good example of one of the Bungalows on Palm Avenue.

It seems like any remodeling done has stayed pretty true to form.
Craftsman Perspective has information on the Arts & Crafts Movement
About.Com has some examples of common Arts & Crafts styles

Landscaping at the local public golf course. 

 

Left, a pond facing a fairway. 

Right, a nandina plant outside the restaurant.

I hope to have photos of my gardens and my father's sofa project up soon.  Maybe I will feel inspired to write something in connection with those photos...