Elizabeth Loupas

We’re awaiting two new additions to our rose family this year—our venerable “Peace” bush (from which I cut the flowers I carried when The Broadcasting Legend™ and I were married) gave up the ghost this past summer and we have a spot to fill. Enter “Scentimental” and “Double Delight,” from my favorite purveyor of all things rose, David Austin Roses.

“Scentimental” is the peppermint-striped one—beautiful and unusual, with no two flowers alike. The scent is a very rich rose-spice, ergo the name.

“Double Delight” looks rather like a “Peace” that’s gone over to the dark side—deeper crimson edges to the petals and a creamy-gold heart. It also has a fabulous fragrance (one of our requirements for roses), described as both spicy and fruity.

I’m looking forward to planting these and nurturing them along, although I must say that the names “Scentimental” and “Double Delight” are not as romantic or literary as the names of some of our other roses. How can they compare with “Jude the Obscure” or “Fair Bianca” or “Eglantyne”? Once we have them settled in their new homes, we may have to re-name them so they feel comfortable with their siblings.

Our antique roses are blooming like mad in these last weeks of the season (in Texas, anyway). We keep cutting them and bringing them inside, and as you can see we have half a dozen vases lined up on the kitchen counter. These are “St. Cecilia” and “Eglantyne” (the pinker ones) and “Jude the Obscure” (the gorgeous golden-pink-apricot one). The fragrances are simply stunning. There is nothing like an old-fashioned English rose for fragrance.

As you can see, we have a few (!) other plants as well. Sometimes I think it’s a tossup between the number of plants we have outdoors and the number of plants we have indoors!

My central character Rinette Leslie would have known roses somewhat similar to these—”Damascus and “Provence” roses—in the royal gardens at Edinburgh Castle and Holyroodhouse. In her unique (meaning that I’m mostly just making it up) system of floromancy, roses are classifed by scent and number of petals rather than by color as they are in the later Victorian “language of flowers.”

This year I’m rocking a natural, low-maintenance garden. After reading The $64 Tomato, I decided I’d just stick in my plants, water them every morning, and see what happened.

 
So far it’s working. The tomato plants are strong and sturdy (well, other than the one “Early Girl” that Cressie trampled), with burgeoning fruit and blossoms. The cucumber vines are exploding, twining up their posts with a little help from some plastic tape, and covered with bright yellow blossoms as well.

  
As you can see, grass and weeds abound. I whack off a little grass every so often, but that’s all. I didn’t rototill, didn’t fertilize. So far I’ve spent $23.28 for six tomato plants (I’ll have to charge Cressie’s account for the plant she broke off) and $2.95 for a packet of cucumber seeds. So even if I only get one tomato, I’ll still be doing better than the $64-tomato guy!

This morning the Broadcasting Legend™ happened to look out our front window, and this is what he saw among the plantings:

He called the doggies. (Who could resist?) Chaos ensued. It turned out there were actually two bunnies under the bushes. They calmly went on eating our tender new calla lily leaves as the dogs howled their heads off inside and I tried to fight my way to the window to take pictures. We have three or four generations a year of rabbits in our neighborhood, and by now I suspect the “Pay no attention to the man beagle behind the curtain window” gene is bred into them.

A fine start to a gray, stormy Sunday.

We have lilies:

And we have Peace roses:

My beloved Robert Browning’s Pippa knew of what she sang:

Although here along the Elm Fork of the Trinity, it would most likely be a mockingbird instead of a lark.

I think the frost is over, and I’m about to sow my cucumber seeds. Mmm, fresh cucumbers straight from the vine! That means TZATZIKI!

Tzatziki is a Greek sauce for souvlaki and gyros, although we gobble it up as a dip with pita triangles (or, to be frank, with just about any sort of chip we can lay our hands on). If you can find thick Greek yogurt, use that—it’s turning up in grocery stores more and more. If you can’t find Greek yogurt, use regular full-fat yogurt, well drained.

There are as many recipes for tzatziki as there are Greek cooks. Here’s the Broadcasting Legend™’s version:

1 quart plain full-fat yogurt
1 cucumber
1 clove of garlic
The zest of one lemon
Kosher salt to taste—start with half a teaspoon
2 teaspoons of dried dill
Fresh dill for garnish

The night before (don’t you hate it when recipes start with “The night before…”?), strain the yogurt. It’s easy—line a large strainer with cheesecloth (a couple of dampened paper towels will do in a pinch), put it over a glass bowl, and scoop in the yogurt. Cover the whole shebang lightly with more cheesecloth or paper towels and leave it in the fridge overnight.

In the morning, discard the liquid in the bowl. In the strainer you will have delicious thick yogurt. Put this yogurt into the rinsed and dried bowl. Rinse the strainer because you’re going to need it again.

Peel, seed, and rough-chop the cucumber. Put it in a food processor (yes, we take the easy way) with the garlic clove, the lemon zest, the salt and the dried dill. Process until combined. Leave it slightly chunky so your tzatziki has some texture. Drain this mixture in your strainer. Press down hard. The idea is to remove as much liquid as possible so your tzatziki is delectably thick.

Add the cucumber mixture to the yogurt and fold them together well. Taste and add salt if necessary. Divide into serving bowls and garnish with sprigs of fresh dill.

Our jessamina vine (at least that’s what the Broadcasting Legend™ calls it—officially it’s a yellow jessamine or Carolina jessamine) has burst into bloom, and who can look at its tumbling waves of bright yellow flowers without feeling cheerful?

When I was growing up in Illinois we had forsythia to give us sunshine-yellow flowers in the spring. For some reason nobody seems to grow forsythia here in Texas (or lilacs, which I miss), but the jessamina is just as lovely. It has a sachet-like, faintly lavender/rose scent which reminds me of small hard candies I sometimes ate as a child.

What heralds Spring for you?

We’re in “zone 8” here along the Elm Fork of the Trinity, which means our last frost-free date is in early April. Time for me to start thinking about my garden for 2009! I do love my garden, although I’m not quite as intense about it as Isabella was about her pot of basil!

I always start with a salad garden—tomatoes, red and gold peppers, cucumbers and lettuce. The garden plot is a twelve-foot square divided into four quarters: one quarter for the tomatoes, one for the peppers, one for the cukes and one for the lettuce. The cukes and the lettuce I’ll grow from seed. I’ll buy plants for the tomatoes and peppers. Mmmm—tomatoes fresh out of the garden. There is nothing like them.

I like to plant herbs in containers, in nooks and crannies around the yard, and in the salad garden between the vegetable sections. This year I want oregano and a couple of types of basil, dill and mint, Italian parsley and cilantro, some thyme and sage and mint and lavender, plus chamomile and lemon balm for teas. I have to admit that I don’t cook with fresh herbs as much as I probably should, but I love growing them because they’re so fragrant. And they’re infused with so much history. When I pick leaves of thyme and sage and lavender and breathe in their scents, I feel as if I’m part of a long, long line of women who’ve grown and used herbs back to the dawn of time.

I am going on adventures with Flat Stanley for a very special little girl (you know who you are). Last night we had one of our every-few-years-whether-we-need-them-or-not ice storms, and so of course Flat Stanley had to go out and explore. He found a mass of tiger lily plants with their leaves curled up like tangles of green-and-gold ribbons, spangled with ice.

Fortunately the sun is out and the ice is melting. I’m going to have popcorn for lunch and think up more fun things for Flat Stanley to do. Any ideas?

Here are seven things that keep me going, day by day, hour by hour. It’s a tough world out there in Hopeful Publishing Land and we all need a little help sometimes.

1. Writing about what I wish I were writing. I just start tip-tapping, stream-of-consciousness style, about what I wish I could write and all of a sudden I realize—surprise!—I can write it. I want to write it. I probably am writing it.
2. Taking a shower. I always have great ideas in the shower. As a bonus, I get extra-clean. Sometimes I get wrinkly.
3. Walking while talking to myself. Or maybe it’s talking to myself while walking. In either case I take one of the dogs so I can pretend I’m talking to the dog.
4. Cleaning. The grittier, dirtier, and more mindless, the better. I think, “I could be writing instead of doing this.” Pretty soon I am.
5. My writing talisman. It’s a chunk of llanite from the Llano Uplift. Yours could be a lucky hat, a statuette, special pen, a piece of jewelry, an artifact from a historical era. The more you associate it with your writing, the more it will encourage your writing. Really.
6. Plants. Fill your writing space with as many plants as you can fit in. They clean the air, and cleaner air means a clearer head. You can talk to them, too, if you don’t have a dog. Even if you do have a dog.
7. Laughter. Find something that will always make you laugh. I like Cute Overload. Laugh good and hard, until your belly hurts. It truly loosens up all those impacted words you’ve been wanting to write but haven’t been able to.

What are your writing tricks? Enquiring minds want to know!

I love to make lists. I live and die by my daily lists—I have a little gadget on my Vista sidebar where I can make a list with checkboxes, and check things off as the day progresses. Another holdover from my corporate days, I suppose, when I kept comprehensive lists of things to do on yellow legal pads, crossing off and dating things as they were done and saving the pads when they were full, just in case. Those pads came in handy sometimes.

This is just a list of things I’m thinking about at the moment.

• Christmas decorations are put away, all safe in their beds, for next year.
• No stargazing for the past few nights—it’s been cold, cloudy and rainy. I miss it.
• Revisions of Duchess are proceeding apace. Some really good stuff is happening, I think.
• I’m re-reading The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge. It started to call to me after I wrote up my post about Goudge being part of my fantasy writers group. What an extraordinary book.
• Time to start thinking about this summer’s garden. Also to order a new rose bush from David Austin Roses. We have a spot where an ancient Peace rose gave up the ghost last summer.
• Did I mention that revisions are going really well?

Here we are in the dark of winter, and on my desk I have the 2009 Burpee seed catalog. I am paging through gorgeous scarlet tomatoes (“slicers,” as my father used to call them), crisp green lettuce and cucumbers, berries and melons bursting with juice. And then there are the flowers—pansies with teddy-bear faces, dazzling marigolds, ruffled pink begonias and old-fashioned truly blue bachelor’s-buttons. More and more of my garden is being given over to herbs, too, partly for cooking, partly for scent, and partly just for pleasure—basil and dill, oregano and Italian flat-leaf parsley, lavender and peppermint and rosemary and rue.

I love reading the seed catalog in the middle of winter and dreaming of summer gardens. What better expression of faith could there be? As with all versions of scripture, however, the seed catalog can be contradictory: this year’s cover veggie is a “seedless” tomato, which one grows by purchasing (very expensive) seeds.