Tag Archives: greenhouse

Gourds Galore

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Deanna Greens And Garden Art has gourds growing, gourds galore! We started from seed, planted our seedlings in our freshly made rich organic soil from our kitchen and plant scraps and recycled organic soil. Birdhouse, long dipper, tri-color, and hard-shell bowl varieties were planted. But some seedlings did not live more than a week after the transplant in the summer heat, while others have thrived. Survival of the fittest. Growing gourds is new for us, so not sure if the hard-shell variety survived yet. The others are huge, and seem to grow 1 – 2 inches a day along with their broad leaves and vines. These are growing on a teepee shaped trellis behind the greenhouse. The delicate white blossoms of the birdhouse variety attract the bees. An autumn harvest is not too far away. Next year, we are considering this inside our greenhouse. Colors and textures in contrasting green vines. See the photo below.
GourdsGalore

Brick Road, Skyscrapers, Suburbia, & Howling Coyote Country

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What do all these have in common? M’waw! In any given 15-hour period I can be all four places: historical small town main street, bustling city streets, tree-deprived urban avenue, or a country dirt road. The brick road, Main Street Missouri’s first state capitol of St. Charles, global skyscrapers towering over financial hub Clayton, urban neighborhoods sprinkled throughout St. Charles and St. Louis Counties, and the countryside near Defiance’s howling coyotes and wildlife; each culture is within 15 miles from my home. Today, the contrasting changes were apparent to me. Sunday, I spent 8 hours on Main Street in St. Charles, Missouri selling herbs, spices, and other food items at a niche market with literally hundreds of people during the Festival of the Little Hills, shopping at leisure and a slower pace. Early Monday morning I entered into a landscape of skyscrapers after bumper to bumper traffic at the fast pace of a city freeway. Suburbia is entered on several occasions as I get off the freeway as soon as I am able, finding quieter routes through residential areas and strip malls. And then to the greenhouse, winding down as I go out of the city, then suburbia, onto a state highway, county highway, and finally taking the dirt road near the weathered barn up the hill to our greenhouse. Most evenings we hear the owl’s hoot and the coyotes howl. Currently, I co-exist in these four cultures. Though two of them I am most at home with. Guess which two? Adaptability and flexibility have been engrained into my character these past five years while working for St. Louis County Government. Will I thrive for another 11 – 12 years in the city and its commute? Or is small town main street calling us home? More words on that subject at another time. Praying to see what God has in mind for Dean and I these last years before retirement.

A Redo and Rendezvous Weekend

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Festival of the Little Hills
If you are new to this blog, welcome! So followers, how do you like the redo of the Deanna Greens And Garden Art blog? I love the color changes and artsy design of this theme with WordPress. The floral-paisley swirls, warm hues, ruffled and rough edges represent well the greenhouse, Dean, and Anna. I have found on my journaling journey how important art is to me. Colors, designs, ambiance, and emotion play important roles in this greenhouse adventure my husband, Dean and I embarked on 21 months ago. Yes, plants and art go together in my world. Yes, a love affair of sorts. Hence, the name of our business and this blog. Oh yes, sound structure and organic science are the foundations. But the unique pots & troughs, antique wooden crates & dressers, solar lights aglow, and this literary expression about the green life evolve into garden art.
So off to the Olde Town Spice Shoppe in 2 short hours. I will rendezvous with 300,000+ locals and visitors in historic St. Charles, Missouri for the Festival of the Little Hills this gorgoeus summer day today and Sunday. Herbs, spices, local honey, and specialty food items such as “Beef Dirt” and “Goose Poop” are some of the items to be sold while at work. Check out their website: http://www.oldtownspices.com. A fun store to visit, and great mail order service as well. The Festival of the Little Hills or as the French say Fête des Petites Côtes has been a St. Charles tradition for many years, drawing crafters in from afar as well as local. The rich culture of the French lives today. For more information take a gander at this link http://www.festivalofthelittlehills.com. I promise to write more about my adventures of the celebration this weekend.
What remodel, redo, repurpose, recycle project are you involved with and/or where will you rendezvous this weekend?

Remnants Of The North

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We had crisp mornings and evenings during our Minnesota vacation, as usual for the end of July into August. It is like Missouri’s September into October season. Apparently, Missouri has experienced the change in the air while we traveled back from the north country last weekend. The signs of autumn are in the air. Others feel it too. Talk of the “f” word, “frost” was on the 550 AM Farmer Dave’s radio show this week, talking like it may come earlier this year. At the spice shoppe visitors are buying apple butter, mulling spices, teas, chili powder, and soup mixes like autumn is here. I am enjoying a cup of hot tea every morning, my newest sensation is Stash brand chai white tea. I think remnants of the north followed us home.
Our vacation antique finds include a couple boxes full of Mason jars to make non-electric lanterns. $5 for the whole load of them. Love those bargains at the annual Crazy Days Sale in Park Rapids, Minnesota. Dean will repurpose the jars and design into lanterns to use alternative energy, solar and/or battery-operated lights. We will market at the Lake Saint Louis and Chandler Hill Vineyard’s Farmers’ Markets starting in September along with some beautiful perennials baskets. I cannot wait to use these lanterns on our patio and at the greenhouse. I also found a set of four tea cups with tea snack platters in my favorite farm color, leaf green. Included in the price of the Mason jars! These will go to the greenhouse for my tea time while working at Boone Hollow Farm. Just the simple things in life to make my day artsy and colorful.
Our plants are loving the milder temperature, greening up nicely before going dormant in a few short weeks. We just put all the greenhouse plants in the screenhouse a month ago. And I have another crop of herbs to sow before harvest. Our gourd plants need some warmth and sunshine to produce their fruit. I hope they get big enough before frost blankets the Missouri earth. Local weathermen talk like St. Louis may not hit 100 degrees this summer. It would be the first time in many years. Plenty of rain now, with more coming everyday this week. If you remember my blog posts from last year at this time, it was so blazin’ hot and Missouri was in a severe drought. What a difference a year makes! But is summer over?

Scrabble Words

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I keep a Scrabble board set up in my office at St. Louis County, available at the front lobby area for co-workers, visitors, and employees alike to play at their leisure. I borrowed the board game from our neighbor colleagues one building over. One of my office break activities is to play Scrabble. It is a stress relief with the construction projects in my office building. It is like fingernails on a chalkboard some days. Spelling a word or two takes the edge off from the noise level of the drills and saws. I can concentrate better after forming words from the letters that pop in my head. I know it is strange, but it helps. Wellness in action versus taking a “smoke break”, a drag or two of a cigarette before hitting the reports and answering the 100 and 1 questions our employees and retirees have. A “game” is completed usually in 4 or 5 days, with myself the most active player. I experience this same release when I write this WordPress blog or in my journal.
My daughters call me the “Scrabble Queen”, because I love playing it and am very competitive. Though I am competitive in other games such as Monopoly, card games, softball, tether ball, etc. I can still smack that softball over the left field fence. Ask my elementary schoolmates about my tether ball game. I would beat the snot out of the boys at every tether ball game. Well, not the boys but the tether ball! There was a boy or two I may have swung at as well… So back to Scrabble, with my family I use to make nonsensical sentences with the words we formed on the board. My siblings or children and I would laugh for what seemed like hours making up sentences with the Scrabble words. The analyst in me wonders if the combination of words I form for any given Scrabble game have a subliminal significance? Yesterday’s Scrabble board has the words “dead”, “blind”, “fist”, “knot”, “whimp”, “weigh”, and “czar”. BTW: “Czar” scores big points for a short word if you put it on a triple letter or triple word score. So the above words are fairly strong, echoing my recent thoughts of this tough world. “I wish I were blind to the world, whimpy by character, or dead to my feelings, because I am weighed down with knots in my stomach from the tight-fisted czar called life.” Woo! Simply said, I am overdone and have a tude. Feeling ready for my vacation from the house, office, spice shoppe, and greenhouse, you think?! R & R is right around the corner, tomorrow a matter of fact. Thank God! Maybe my Scrabble game will have kinder words such as “zeal”, “calm”, “smile”, “peaceful”, “love”, and “gratitude” when I return from my northern destination? Good chance of it! I want to be a colorful light to this world!


What words does your life spell today? I pray God’s best in your life: color, music, adventure, health, love, and peace!

Garden Paraphernalia

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“Paraphernalia” is an underused word. In most cases it conveys “drugs”. According to Widipedia, it is “apparatus, equipment, or furnishing used for a particular activity”. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphernalia.) For me gardening is a necessity of life. As the Thomas Jefferson quote states, “no culture comparable to that of the garden.” It is my therapy, and I relish the fruits of my labor. A greenhouse, leather gloves, muck boots, dresser planters, troughs, a weather vane, and even writing this garden blog are paraphernalia. They are not necessary for a garden, but they each make the gardener’s or farmer’s chore easier, more enjoyable, gives life. Plus gardening becomes an art form, an expression from the heart as St. Francis of Assisi told us hundreds of years ago. Cooking from the heart with what I receive from my garden is an art form, too. Just as writing on this WordPress blog.
Dean and I are northward bound in 8 days. We will have a 7-day visit with friends who are family to us. The birth of a book has taken place at this destination. More of the family story will be told to us. While in Minnesota we will take a country day-trip to peruse some local antique shoppes and flea markets. We are looking for a unique, artsy weathervane to place atop the teepee-shaped trellis we made with repurposed steel poles for our gourds vines. We will scout out some narrow wooden troughs for window boxes to plant our overabundance of airplane plants and wandering jews. What garden “paraphernalia” do you enjoy?

A Raise, But Not The Barn Kind

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Barn Raising
This print I found on Wikipedia depicts an Amish tradition, barn raising. So you think a country girl like me would be blogging about a barn raising, but it is a raise of a different kind I am writing about tonight. My full-time office job as the Employee Wellness Coordinator for St. Louis County, Missouri has become more demanding each year despite the salary freeze organization-wide for 4 years. We finally had a 2.5% raise in January, but I never saw it with the federal tax relief ending in the same month. So I have been making it a matter of prayer and continue my hard work with the county job, my stress-relief greenhouse hobby job, and more recently working at the Old Town Spice Shoppe on the weekends. Ten months ago the talk of reclassifying my position came up during my annual review. My supervisor and I felt I was severely underpaid for what my job responsibilities entail … the budgets I keep, wellness events designed and executed, as well as disability claims and the employee assistance program contract and training hours to oversee for 4,000+ employees. Well, after 10-months of research and several discussions with the executive board on my behalf, the compensation manager called me today with some terrific news. A raise of few thousand more a year than I had previously earned! Hallelujah, my prayers have been answered! I am not a rich lady, and don’t need to be. I just want to be compensated fairly, live comfortable, and save for the future (mine and the future generations). Thank you, God my Father!

Herb Harvest

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Our dill is daintily charming, and so fragrant. Yesterday evening we harvest our 1st crop, and will put in a 2nd crop after the 4th of July holiday. Wild sunflowers and sprigs of dill fill a green vase today. Our chef son-in-law will use this 1st crop of dill to make pickles with his homegrown cucumbers. Maybe a jar or two of Hannahway Farm sun pickles are on our way?! The patriarch spice shoppe owner says in Europe dill is used in just about every dish. I love it with my baked fish and potato salad dishes. The 3rd crop of dill will go in early autumn, with plans to take as show-n-tell farm products to the City of St. Charles preschool classrooms Farmer Dean and I visit in November. Our 1st crop of basil screams pesto! Served with veggies, chicken, bread, and pasta, I cannot wait!
Dill
This week’s other farm chores include straightening and cleaning the screenhouse, putting extra pots and trays together in somewhat orderly fashion, and throwing broken items in the recycle pile. One recycled dresser is filled with “tea room” stuff, as well as a recycled tile-top table put aside for our meal and snack times. Another recycled dresser holds pots of blooming geraniums. We are making space in the screenhouse in case we need to move our plants to this cooler side of the greenhouse structure. Last year at this time the heat wave and drought was well underway in Missouri. The extreme heat required us to water two times a day, early morning and early evening. Our plants were housed under the shelter of shade trees in our yard while the greenhouse reconstruction plans were being modified until autumn when the heat subsided. The lack of rain has not been an issue this spring and early summer, thank you God! The growing gourd plants will go into the ground this weekend.
Growers, what are you harvesting now? What are you putting in for an autumn crop?

Visiting Critters

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ButterflyAs we frequent the greenhouse more often with our watering duties, I wonder about our visitors to Boone Hollow Farm and Deanna Greens And Garden Art greenhouse and screenhouse. What critters are there when we are not, or hiding when we are there? Ticks, bees, and dozens of bugs make an appearance at every visit. No deer seen yet by Dean and I, but we see their prints. The neighbor farmer has crops chewed on. A couple of weeks ago I placed my large planters of geraniums outside to greet us when we drive up the dirt road to the greenhouse. No signs of deer eating on them for a snack none less dinner. While in the screenhouse this week, I found a baby copperhead snake, with its shedded skin just inches from him. He wiggled his tongue at me, and I quickly hollered for Dean’s assistance. Relieved I had my muck boots on. The baby toad Dean found earlier would be this slicky guy’s dinner if we did not get him outside as far from the screenhouse as possible. I will share our plant space with frogs and toads, but not snakes. Sorry Slick. And keep your brothers out, too! Butterflies flutter about and bees buzz from the hives our neighbors have. Always good to have natural pollinators with plants. An owl starts hooting about 4:00 every afternoon. In past posts I have written about coyotes and I believe, Chuck the groundhog. God is the Creator of all these critters. So what do these critters think of us? Is our dog, Midnight, Dean, and I invading their homes? What prints are we leaving in the countryside? Maybe Midnight, Dean, and I are the visitors at Boone Hollow Farm?

Sprouts Forthcoming

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Fresh sprouts forthcoming ~
gardener learns life lessons
patience, faith, hope, love.

I was inspired yesterday morning to jot down these words, another word garden. Haiku poems flow for me as I experience nature, life, and love. A few days ago I planted more seeds, gourd seeds. Seems late once again, but I am a part-time farmer with a full-time heart. Once these seedlings grow their second set of leaves we will plant into the ground along side the teepee poles Dean and I bent from repurposed steel poles. This summer and autumn we hope some children come visit our greenhouse at Boone Hollow Farm, and play under the gourd vine teepees. With patience, faith, hope, and love some crafty garden art will be created from the long-neck, birdhouse, and bowl gourds, the fruit of these vines. Next week more seeds to sprout for microgreens to create yummy crunchy summer veggie wraps in the not too far future, another type of garden art.
Microgreens

Veggie Wrap