The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Swami's: Yoga and gardens and surfing, Oh My!

One of the koi ponds in Swamis

I have had a bad cold, which has slowed me way down, and therefore, I have a chance to write about the beautiful garden I went to see in place of Lotusland.

As you may know, my plans for Lotusland went down like tomatoes in a hard frost, after speaking to some unhelpful vagrant who answers the phone there.

Swamis

Instead, my friend Jennifer and I made our way further south to the Swami Meditation Gardens. Swami’s was started in 1937 by Paramahansa Yogananda, a world famous guru of Kriya Yoga. Yep, yoga and meditation was as popular then as it is now with the Hollywood crowd.

Swami’s also sits right on the famous Encinitas surf break.

The surf below Swamis. Note the many surfers in the water.

Imagine my delight: this garden combines my three favorite things, yoga, surfing and gardening. What could be better?

The day I went to Swami’s it was 78 degrees. The crystal clear sky was the exact color of Jennifer’s car, and the tide was very low. I sat in one of the many corners of the garden created specifically for meditation, cradled in lush green and cool shade.

And meditated my way right into a fantasy of living in Encinitas.

I would wake up in the morning in my little beach cottage. I would hop on my beach Cruiser

My bike Gerard Butler.

(Gerard Butler) and ride downtown for an early yoga class. Afterwards, I would have coffee or breakfast at Café 101. Then I’d ride Gerry home and pick up my surfboard. I would slide my board into Gerry’s cool surf rack and cruise down to the beach for some surfing. After and hour or two of catching waves, I would pedal Gerry over to the Swami Meditation gardens for a little communing with my third eye, and finally, I’d bike home for a nap. I would wake up, shower, and get dressed up.

Me and Jen's Karmann Ghia. She doesn't have a name for it yet. I want to call it "Mine" 

Jen would pick me up in her turquoise Karmann Ghia and we would drive down to the Beach House for a Hawaiian ahi & king crab stack and a basil pepper martini while watching the sunset.

Yes, when my brain is not bouncing from subject to subject, mired in useless bits of information and endless lists of tasks, life can get prettygood in there.

Back to reality.

Swami's is a fun place to visit if you are ever in Encinitas. It lies at the south end of town and it’s not very big, so go eat at Café 101, and then walk off your breakfast at Swamis. You might even have a vision.

Secret Tart Recipe

My yummy fruit tart

For years I have been driving the 50 mile round trip to Aptos and back to buy the most luscious fruit tarts from a store called The Farm. 

The Farm is a cute little bakery and café with an eclectic gift shop just south of Cabrillo College.  It is mostly famous for its amazing fruit tarts. The fruit is fresh, and not coated in that thick, overly-sweet, gelatinous glaze. The base of the tart tastes similar to a cheesecake.

Because of the Farm’s geographically inconvenient location and the fact that I am a cheapskate, I just recently tried to make my own.

After my second imperfect attempt, I thought to myself, “What is that stupid acronym?  Oh yeah, K.I.S.S. -- Keep It Simple, Stupid.”  So on my third try, I got it right.

Here is the 411:

Take a Trader Joe’s pie crust and lay it down on the bottom of a tart pan.  Bake it according to the directions. Take it out of the oven –duh - and let it cool.

Beat together with the paddle attachment of an electric mixer one 8 oz. package of cream cheese, ¼ cup sour cream, 2 tsp vanilla and ¾ cup of sugar.

Beat them together, some would say cream them together, for a while -- somewhere in the 4-5 minute range -- then spread evenly over the crust. Slice up your favorite fruit or combination thereof, and lay the fruit on top of the cream cheese mixture.

Start working from the outside in, or from the middle out, or go straight across or up and down. It don’t make no never mind. It still tastes real good.

Slice and enjoy, and enjoy even more because you didn’t just spend $24 and a whole bunch of gas for the indulgence.

My kids say my tart is even better than The Farm’s, but of course they know they’d better say that, or I won’t feed them again…ever.

Gardening Boob With a Good Mojito

You can go ahead and say it.   Go ahead, you know you want to.  Here, I’ll say it for you: “I don’t know the difference between a melon and a cucumber.”

There, feel better? I don’t. I am a dork.

I have been waiting for my lemon cucumber to turn yellow and become ready to eat.  But they were so big, and covered with this weird, dry, cracked skin.

I decided to leave them alone and check my melons.

The melons were so tiny and anemic looking. I felt like the worst gardener ever.  So I went inside to make one of my new garden delight cocktails (recipe to follow) and mull over the idea that perhaps this whole gardening thing just isn’t for me after all.

While I was sipping my cocktail and killing a few more of the precious brain cells I have left, I suddenly realized what I had done:  I had switched the nursery tags. I am such a doofus.

Now everything makes sense, and I don’t feel quite so much like a garden goober.

Chigiy’s Vodka- Cucumber Mojito:

(please help me think of a better name)   

 First of all, I use good vodka. Life is too short to use crappy vodka.  I use Ketel One, you can use your favorite. (Do you think someone at Ketel One will send me a bottle for posting this on my blog)?  I can dream can’t I?

vodka

two or three sprigs of fresh mint

one lime

simple syrup 2-3oz

one small cucumber

8oz of club soda

 

Peel and thinly slice a small cucumber.

In a small jar, add 6-8 oz. of vodka to infuse the cucumber.

Refrigerate overnight.

The next day (try to make it after noon if you can), muddle together simple syrup with the sprigs of mint, pour in vodka and club soda.

Throw in a squeeze of lime

Garnish with mint and cucumber.

Should make at least four drinks.

 

Wonderful on a hot day.

Zucchini Grande

Zucchinis scare me. I always have the most normal intentions when I buy zucchini plants. I just want to plant them, let them grow, develop fruit, and then eat them.

But this so-called “fruit” has life of its own. As a matter of fact, I am not so sure they are not aliens. I know this may sound far-fetched to some people, but I guarantee that those people have never, ever, grown zucchini.

Last week I had a busy week, (not unlike all my other weeks and everybody else’s weeks). So when I finally got around to picking a zucchini for dinner last Thursday, this is what I found…
My son had to help me extract this 14 lbs of squash from their cage.

I turned my back on them for barely a day or so, and they turned into gargantuan squash. It is hard to convince me that they are really vegetables and not some alien life form. Why else would they grow so fast???

Momo wieghs less than this squash. Momo also seems a bit fearful of the large squash.

As I Googled what to do with giant zucchini, I noticed that even the examples featured on the internet weren’t as big as mine.  The larger of my zucchini is bigger than my older son when he was born.

What am I supposed to do with these things???

Enter my wonderful Italian neighbor Patrizia. She likes those zucchini grande!

I gave her one of the alien zucchini and then I took this portrait of her with my behemoth squash. She calls it Madonna and Zucchini. This was actually the smaller of th two zucchini.

I asked her what she was going to do with it, and she said she likes to slice up the zucchini, fry it in butter, and throw it into pasta…enough pasta to feed a small Italian village.

Basta Bene

 

Gardening, Friendship and Martinis

My first lemon basil martini...yum.

When I need a break from reality, I go visit my buddy Jennifer.  Jen and I have a lot in common: we both have teenagers that drive us crazy, we both have husbands who drive us crazy, and we both like to drink martinis, taking brief breaks only to shop and eat. We love the beach and the sun, but most of all we both love gardening.  And, well…martinis.

Jen's garden

We used to be neighbors. We started a friendship over mommy stuff. The friendship grew over gardening, and it really took off after the discovery of our mutual affinity for vodka.

Jen's garden

Jen's putting green

Jen's Pool.

Jen, Gandolf, and Pixie relaxing between martinis.

And then she and her family just up and moved to San Diego. All she left me was her worm composter, a cruel reminder of what once was.

Cedros Gardens.

Oh, but there is a bright side. Now every few months I get to go visit my home girl in the Beach hood, where we gossip, eat, drink and stumble around various nurseries.

Cedros Gardens

Ah, sanity

margaritas and guacamole

Poppy Fair Farm

Nurseries are like crack to me.  Throw in some bluegrass music,

cute goats, 

wonderful vending booths with native plants,

great art,

hand made soaps,

specialty plants, home made beauty products and jewelry, beautiful original paintings, and cool crafts then you have Poppy Fair Farm.

 

And Happiness.

My friend Erin, who owns Native Revival Nursery in Aptos, put on her first annual Poppy Fair Farm last Saturday. I went over to be a part of the festivities, and they did not disappoint. There was something for everyone—and their five senses.

The bluegrass music—banjo, mandolin, guitar, and bass fiddle—was particularly good. 

When Erin was asking for information from the lead in the bluegrass band, Jimmy Chickenpants, for the poster, this is what he said: 

"Some people make the mistake of spelling Chickenpants as 2 words. That's just plain wrong"

 

Perfect.

Canker is an ugly word

Fallen apples on the ground, rotting and mocking me

At first it’s really exciting and fun making all those apple pies from your very own apple tree, then, pumpkins come along and bump apples out of the way in the pie department and oops, some of those little apples fall to the ground. 

I run by them on my way back and forth dropping my kids at school, picking up and dropping off dogs, shopping, running, gardening, biking, blah, blah, blah. 

I finally get a moment to myself. I make a delicious cup of coffee and walk to my front porch, take a deep breath of the clean autumn air and look around, awwhhh, it would be perfect if it wasn’t for those damn apples sitting there on the ground in front of me. 

They would still be sitting there too if I hadn’t read about Brown Rot and the evil “canker.” 

A word that anyone in his or her right mind would want to avoid. A canker means necrosis, ulcerous thrush, and inflammatory parasitic infection, open lesion an oozing sore. 

How do you avoid the word canker?

Please, for the love of malignant infection, clean up your rotting apples.

 

This is the End...of the Tomato Season

I mentioned this song, “The End” in my last post.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the King's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...

Then he paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside

~ Jim Morrison

This is not the end of the song but I decided to stop there because it gets a skosh violent.

People end their tomato season in many different ways. I like to end my tomato season by singing “The End” by Jim Morrison and the Doors, harvesting all my viable tomatoes and making a big vat of sauce.

I try to freeze the sauce but I usually end up using it all up before I can.

Now, Jim Morrison originally wrote “The End” about breaking up with his girlfriend, but as he performed the song over and over again he started to add to it and this is what he eventually said about it’s meaning:

“I really don't know. I think it's sufficiently complex and universal in its imagery that it could be almost anything you want it to be."

I like to think it’s a song about the end of my tomato season.

 

Happy Ending For Lunch and Dinner

My friend Ruth asked what finally happened to the roosters, so here’s their story:

Here is the reasons why I couldn’t keep the chickens.

When we first took the roosters in, people asked, “Why can’t you keep them?”

I even had someone tell me to keep them because ‘they’re fun.’ I couldn’t smell alcohol on her breath but then I remembered you can’t smell hallucinogens.

Roosters? Fun? Sure, why not, if you like big birds waking you up at dawn, slashing at you with their spurs, and trying to peck your eyes out, they are a barrel of laughs.

Even if I wanted to keep the merrymaking roosters—I can’t—see?

  My dog stood like that for fifteen minutes straight just waiting for their cage to disappear.

So, as much as I wanted to keep those amusing roosters, a nice man named Richard adopted them. He picked them up two days ago and took them home to be with his family of hens to make pretty babies.

I want to believe that Richard didn’t eat them. The reason I think he didn’t eat them is that when I asked him if I could take a picture for a story I was writing, instead of telling me that he was in the witness protection program, and holding a folded newspaper in front of his face, he agreed and posed happily.

  Note my dog still hoping for lunch and dinner

Before the roosters left, I gave them names. I named the one on the right, Lunch, and the one on the left, Dinner.

Bye-bye, Lunch and Dinner.

Tim the Tomato Salad Recipe: Faster to make than to eat

A friend once said “If it takes longer to make it than it does to eat, it, than I don’t bother to make it.” 

I was talking to my tomato friend Tim, (that’s him with the big nose in the photo) about tomatoes and recipes.

Tim the tomato.

He suggested this very simple salad—one I’ve been making daily, and will probably continue to eat every day until I run out of fresh garden tomatoes:

Ingredients:

Fresh peeled tomatoes, between 2-4 depending on the size (Use whatever you have. They’re all good fresh.)

A quarter cup of goat cheese

1 tablespoon strawberry balsamic vinegar

Coarse salt to taste, (I use about ½ teaspoon)

Directions:

Peel tomatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.

Crumble goat cheese.

Combine all ingredients in bowl.

Eat.

Shortly after I wrote down this recipe, I stabbed Tim, cut him up, skinned him, and ate him with the rest of the above ingredients. That is his nose on the top of the salad.

Tim's nose in the salad.

He was very tasty.