The Red Chair

Princess & the Red Chair

We didn't move, not really. But my best guy did bring his painting studio back home, which meant that the TV room had to take over the computer space, which put the computer stuff in my workroom, which… you get the picture. Too little house for too much furniture.

So we've been re-arranging stuff, recycling stuff, selling stuff, and just generally moving stuff along. Including giving stuff away. Some things have been easy to part with, and some have been a lot harder. In the middle range was the Red Chair. The chair that was given to me by college chums and in which I wrote my graduate thesis. It wasn't red then, but at some point it got painted red (Guilty. I confess. I did it.) and brightened up a corner of the small alcove just off the living room. Obviously a great place for a small, furry animal on a sunny afternoon. Like Princess, for example.

Luckily, Jackie and Adrian, with a new home to furnish in Alameda, saved the day and the chair. It's new role is to be Jackie's work chair, assuming that she can ever reclaim it from Mushu…

Mushu & the Red Chair

Photo courtesy of Jacquelyn Frost

Volunteers of Oakland #3

Gosh, I wish I'd heard about this sooner. I could have lived with so much less garden-guilt. All those little plantlets and no place to put them, so off to the composter they went. Yeah, yeah, I understand that they certainly are useful as compost, but they still had to die.

But now, all those extra plants, bulbs, seedlings, vegetable starts and all that other green stuff can be given a new chance at life at The Plant Exchange on Saturday, March 29th at the First Presbyterian Church in (guess where?) Oakland!

Very briefly, it works like this: you bring your items to donate (click here for a list of what they accept), and then go "shop" (dangerous, ve-e-ery dangerous) among all the other plants and items donated by other generous gardeners. And the lovely people at The Plant Exchange even help you unload your donations and reload your car with your new acquisitions.

For the complete read-remember-and-follow instructions, click here.

I wish that I could say that I will see you there, but I can't make it this time. Even so, I'm dropping my donations off early - they accept them anytime after noon on March 15th at 2619 Broadway (along 27th Ave, near the handicapped parking spaces) - and marking my calendar for their next event in October.

Bottom Rot

2012 San Marzanos.  No Bottom Rot That Year.

Technically, it's not called bottom rot but "blossom end rot (BER)," but we sometimes are a bit more blunt - crude, even - around here.

But so what is it, anyway? A disorder of tomatoes and peppers, featuring lesions at the blossom end (dah!) of the fruit which all too often expand, turn funky and black, and ruin the fruit for eating. Ick. Sometimes you can salvage part of the tomato, but usually it's only use is for target practice in the green bin. Sadly, it seems to occur most frequently on paste-type tomatoes, such as our family favorite, San Marzano.

What to do? Well, BER is generally associated with a calcium deficiency in the plant and/or soil. And lots of expert-type people have all sorts of remedies. I also have one:

Save your empty egg shells, allow them to dry out for a few days, or weeks even, it doesn't seem to matter. Then crunch them up into little pieces* and mix a small amount of these crushed shells in the dirt at the bottom of the planting holes for your tomatoes.

If you do a web check, you will discover that many people have proposed this same idea, but they will also instruct you do crazy things like store the eggshells on top of the refrigerator (do they have a magic refrigerator? Mine only seems to collects dust). Or grind them up in the blender (just what you want… more dishes to wash).

Why mention this now? Because March is the time to start thinking about sowing your tomato seeds for this year's bountiful harvest (all fingers crossed). And adding a smidgen of those crushed eggshells to the potting mix certainly can't hurt.

OK, OK, so why grow tomatoes from seed? Because you need one more project to worry about.

No, really because it's the only way that I know which pretty much guarantees that the variety of tomato I want to grow will be available. Most nurseries only stock a few types, which may or may not be suited to your garden and/or your taste buds. Also, you are less likely to import diseases, such as late blight which decimated the tomato crops in 2009 and 2012.

*I first start with my fingers (easy to wash) and simply pinch and crush the shells. To reduce them further, stick them in a plastic bag, loosely tie or knot the bag shut and run your rolling pin over it a few times. Nothing to clean up. Does not collect dust.

Rainy Day

(FYI: Color photograph)

It's only a drizzle in the bucket, just enough to make Princess the Cat cranky (as if she needs any help) but the flock of cedar waxwings doesn't seem to mind. Usually I locate them by sound - first you hear this thin, high whistling, and then you look around - up high is a good idea - until you see a group of small birds. As often as not, they are not in a tree, but flying around, whistling together.

Even on rainy days.

At Last, the Leeks

Early and small (with a red onion thrown in just for confusion) leeks.
Photo taken 11/17/13

Some people claim that the Bay Area's climate is ideally suited to growing leeks. Perhaps, but leeks sure do take their time, even under prime conditions. And yes, I know that most members of the onion family (allium) are leisurely growers, but these guys should perhaps be known as allium slowpokeyum.

I started my leek seeds indoors in January, 2013 and transplanted them out in March. By November, they were long, tall and stalwart (and probably thrifty, trustworthy, reverent and brave as well), but pretty puny in girth. And this is after ten long months of taking up garden space.

Full-sized leek. Photo taken 1/13/14
(hand clippers for scale)

But oh, what a difference two months makes. By the time the remaining leeks (sure, we ate 'em, even though they were a bit undersized. They may have been small, but they were tasty.) were around a year old, they had sized up considerably. They were at least 1 1/2" in diameter and put the ones at the market to shame.

I don't think that my personality is suited to the leeks' lifestyle, and my gardening space is extremely limited. So that should have been the end of it, right?  But I did have some leftover seeds….and I just wanted to see if they would sprout…and now I am committed to a row of leeks again this year. At this point, I wonder just why it is so hard to throw away a handful of tiny sprouts. But come next winter, it should all become quite clear. 

Cat? What Cat? I Don't See Any Cat...#3

She's done this ever since she was a tiny kitten - hidden behind the transparent curtains in the house  and waited there for someone to notice.  We can't decide whether Princess is just really shy, likes to play dress-up or has ambitions to join an order of nuns.

DON'T Miss the Zorn Show(s)!

If you haven't yet made it out to the Legion of Honor for the Anders Zorn show, you'd better get a move on. The show closes on Sunday, Feb. 2nd, and of course it is much better than any old silly Superbowl game could ever be.  So rearrange your weekend and make that journey way, way out to the nether lands of San Francisco.

You will be impressed. Especially with his watercolors (heck, I didn't even know he did watercolors. I thought he mostly did society portraits like John Singer Sargent).

Elsa Gonzalez Zorn

There is another Zorn worth knowing about, who also is a marvelous painter in both watercolor and oils. She is Elsa Gonzalez Zorn, not Swedish, but Spanish with a German mother. We met at my best guy's painting workshop in Italy this past fall. She was a star.

In Elsa's family, there is a clear understanding that it is a very good possibility that Anders Zorn is part of their tribe. In her own words:

Anders Zorn's father was Johann Leonhard Zorn, German Beer businessman, and, as you know, he never had the chance to meet him. Apparently, this affected him all his life, as we can read in his autobiographical notes. Anders' mother was a worker in the beer company and she became a single mother, so she had to work hard while raising the child.

As Anders was born in 1860, his father would be related to my mom's great-grandfather Zorn. That part of my family came from the very East of Germany, the Prussian part, which nowadays would be Poland. I have asked my mom many times about the origins of this name, since it is not a very common name, not even in Germany. She says that there is no information at all, because everything was destroyed during Germany's sad history before and during WWII.

I have been asked so may times if I am related to him, mainly at the Art Students league in NY, and I always said no. Now I see there is no way to know, so I think I will leave a door open to the possibility, as my mom says, it could be and no one can prove the opposite. :)  And I prefer that version, too.

To view Elsa's paintings, visit Siempre nos quedara (We will always be here)
And to see her films, visit ACIB: Elsa Gonzalez Zorn

A Good Use of Fame and Fortune?

Collect art. Own a large tract of land in the Napa Valley, use it, live on it, grow stuff on it, even plant your art collection all over it. Then turn it into a museum. With your name on it: di Rosa. Strange, though. It seems that it used to be known as the "di Rosa Preserve." I guess those two extra syllables just didn't measure up.

At any rate, the di Rosas did a damn fine job. I can't say that I appreciated all of the objects in the collection, but I did enjoy the experience.

To visit the preserve you will need to sign up for a tour. But no worries, our tour group had a total of three people and a knowledgeable, albeit a bit chatty, guide.

di Rosa participates in the Discover and Go programs of both the Oakland and the Berkeley public libraries, so reserve your tickets that way and save a chunk of dough.

Then you can spend it all on a fancy lunch after the tour...

Rain, Rain, Please Come Again, Any Day

Yeah, yeah, everyone talks about the weather, but these days when you're talking small with friends and neighbors, it's not really about the weather. It's about the rain. And its total lack. And how, even though we are into the new year, there still is that "wait-wait" look and feel of November: the anticipation of those winter storms that will clean out the air and the streets, perk up the plants and make going to the matinee on a dreary, wet afternoon great fun.

Oakland registered just shy of 4 inches of rain for 2013 (the Gobi Desert averages 7.6 inches). Typically, the annual rainfall for Oakland is somewhere around 23 inches. So that's a big gap, from 4 to 23 inches. That's even too big for grade inflation to disguise.

For 2014, who knows? The Old Farmer's Almanac is predicting January to have 8 inches of rain; it also predicted 2 inches in December and we got slightly over 1/2 inch, so don't go hunting for the umbrella quite yet.

Even though we can talk about "average" annual precipitation, the Northern Californian climate is characterized by enormous variations in rainfall from year to year. Not surprisingly, the climate change experts expect it to only get worse - intense winter storm seasons (think floods and landslides) alternating with very dry years. Oh jolly.

What to do? Since going through life without a shower is not an option around here, I'm considering:

Learning how to harvest the rainwater,
Building a water cistern like the ancients, or maybe even,
Practicing the art of Native American rain dances.

My Aunt Bess

Aunt Bess (right) with her sister (Aunt) Kate

Everyone has an Aunt Bess. Or should have one. Or at the very least, an Aunt Maude. You know, the one from whom you inherit things. Cool things usually, but not things that you really know quite what to do with.

Well, my Aunt Bess left a recipe for homemade mustard which is hard to beat. My dad loved it. Even as a kid, I loved it. And now that it is the season for salmon with mustard sauce, or crab with mustard-mayonnaise dressing, or even roast beef with mustard-horseradish sauce, it's time to share her wisdom with a wider audience.

I looked up my copy of the recipe but somehow I was doubtful that a mustard recipe would call for flour, so I double-checked with my mom. Turns out I was wrong: many mustard recipes - especially those including beer - call for either flour or cornstarch.

This annotated version comes directly from Aunt Bess, via my mom:

Aunt Bess's Mustard (original recipe from Bess)

6 level Tbs Coleman's dry mustard
6 level Tbs flour
6 level Tbs sugar
6 Tbs herb vinegar* (about)
1 level tsp turmeric
1 tsp dry mixed herbs

Mix dry ingredients together and add herb vinegar. You may need a little more. Place in jar and refrigerate overnight to blend. Keeps forever in fridge.

Herb vinegar:

1 quart white vinegar
1 tsp dry mixed herbs

Heat to boiling and allow to cool. One whole clove garlic may be put in also if desired.

If I remember correctly, she did not use Italian seasoning herbs - more like French herbs - tarragon, parsley, etc. types. I used plain white vinegar once without the herbs and boiling, etc. and it wasn't nearly as good. Likewise, only Coleman's mustard has the right flavor.

Enjoy. And Happy New Year!