Last weekend we went to stay with friends in London. I went on a short walk around Kensington Gardens and took some photographs. It was a really hot day and there were a lot of people around. The formal gardens were lovely – I’d never seen them before  and neither had my friend, despite the fact that she works about five minutes walk away from them, so it was  a nice surprise for both of us.

A statue of William of Orange

A swan

Beautiful lawn - my dad would be very envious!

Lovely formal garden

Lots of people enjoying the sunshine

The other morning I took some photos of the wild flowers growing on a bit of ground on campus. I don’t know whether they are truly wild or whether someone once planted the seeds there, but anyway, they are very lovely things to look at on my way to or from the Temporary Library of Not Sure What:

Popped out to Christianson’s the other day to pick up some replacement cannas (all of mine seem to have rotted). The nursery is a paradise of flowers and ferns and moss and cats. I love it there.

It figures that when the garden is just getting really good is also when I’m far too busy watering, weeding and doing other things to get around to taking pictures of anything. Suffice it to say, things are growing quickly. I’ve never seen such consistently hot weather this early in the summer.

We did, however, recently spend a weekend in Santa Barbara for a family wedding, and had time to visit the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden. When we lived in Goleta I used to volunteer at the gardens and got to know them quite well.

Unfortunately, a fire just ran through the hills above town, and the botanic garden did not come out very well. It should rebound, but right now many of the paths are closed off, and some of the plants are looking less than fresh. Apparently the ceanothus grove completely went up in flames – all those volatile oils.

I can’t say I ever thought about what a burned cactus would look like. Interesting.

Hopefully by the next time I visit the garden it will be back to its normal, beautiful self.

The traffic out to West Mount Vernon is about as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Come to see tulips at your own risk! Mostly I prefer my own garden to the bulb fields, but I admit it is pretty cool when all the colors are blazing away in the sun like huge vibrant quilt.

We flew into Missouri last weekend, right on the tail of a major storm. It snowed overnight, but the next day was astonishingly warm and beautiful (albeit rather windy). Everything was damp and somewhat squashed, but the flowering trees were in their full glory.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Chase Ledebur, my cousin Kären’s son. Chase has been gardening this summer for the first time at home, and I wanted you to hear from this wonderful and talented 12-year-old in his very own words.

Hi, I’m Chase – welcome to my garden. This is the first vegetable garden I’ve had at home. At school I was a part of planting a community garden, but it is a flower garden.

My Mom and I built the raised bed together and then planted 4 varieties of tomatoes, summer squash, three kinds of peppers, zucchini, Japanese eggplant, basil and oregano.

I have really enjoyed watching the plants grow and bear fruit. At first it started out small, but it’s now out of control. It’s so out of control that we had to cut back all our plants, stake some of them, and we are constantly harvesting all of our vegetables.

I love the whole process. Next year I think we’ll plant less, or maybe we’ll add another bed.

On my way out to Oakland from Iowa, I made a stop in Grand Junction, Colorado, at my cousin’s house. She and her son Chase had planted their first vegetable garden in a beautiful raised bed off one side of the house. Tomatoes, squash, basil, oregano – the garden was still filled with seedlings when I got there, but had the promise of an amazing summer of production.

Chase gave me a tour of the garden before I headed out toward Salt Lake City, where I had a dinner planned with Kalyn of Kalyn’s Kitchen, and I started shooting pictures almost as soon as I got out there. Chase put up with my paparazzi-esque behavior while he weeded the garden, but only did so for so long.

“Genie,” he said, looking up at me with a pointed look. “You really could stop taking those pictures and start helping me with the weeding.”

Well, I did help. A bit. And just recently, I asked my cousin if Chase might be interested in giving my readers an update on how the garden is doing, now that the summer season is in high gear and veggies are popping out all over. As it turned out, he was interested, so stay tuned – on Wednesday, I’ll be turning the floor over to Chase, who is more than just an excellent gardener – he’s a fantastic kid!

Tomatoes in the Victory Garden

Bed 10A. That’s the location, on the official Victory Garden Map, of the tomato plants. During my first morning as a volunteer, I kept wandering over there, checking out the tiny yellow blossoms, eyeing the green tomatoes weighing down the branches, and admiring the basil and Italian parsley companion-planted throughout the bed.

Then I noticed suckers growing from the stem junctures on some of the tomato plants, and reached down to pick one. Even in the chilly mist, there was no mistaking the smell that wafted up. That green, tomato-plant smell that I love so much? Turns out it’s just as good even when the garden isn’t really yours and you aren’t even going to get to eat any of the tomatoes.

I’m already looking forward to Saturday, when I might just stand by Bed 10A for as much of the day as the Garden Educator on duty will let me. I don’t think I’m quite ready to talk to the plants, but I’m definitely going to be looking for suckers to pluck.

Heck. If no one’s looking, I might just have to hug one of the plants. Trust me. In that neighborhood? That kind of behavior wouldn’t even come close to making me stand out in the crowd.

I very nearly left the house without a jacket on Sunday morning.

Two hours into my first stint as a docent in the Victory Garden, I was simultaneously applauding my decision to actually grab my favorite grey hoodie and kicking myself for not grabbing my fleece jacket to go over it.

“I’m freezing,” I muttered to Lauren, who was volunteering with me that day. “I cannot believe I almost didn’t bring my hoodie.”

Lauren shook her head and zipped her fleece (while I stifled inadvertent envy) up a little further. We both eyed the cloud-thick sky. I wrinkled my nose at the mist. It felt like early spring in Iowa, not even close to what I consider summer.

Regardless of weather-related challenges (Note: bring many more layers this weekend…), this was a fairly low-key volunteer effort. I spent much of my time wandering around the garden taking pictures, and having conversations with the English-speaking visitors. As much as I like opera, I was of no help with the busload of Italian tourists who came through about 45 minutes into the morning, and even though I live in Oakland’s Chinatown, I wasn’t any help with the Chinese tourists, either.

At one point, the Garden Educator on site to keep us on task asked me to help her water some plants. I said I would, but then a woman walking by stopped at the fence around the garden to ask if there was a need for more volunteers, and so I wrote down the volunteer coordinator’s email address for her and talked to her for a few minutes about the garden, and by the time I turned back around, another volunteer had picked up the watering can and had taken over that job.

Dirty hands? Not really. But I can’t complain about spending a few hours wandering aimlessly through a pretty spectacular garden.

When I looked for apartments near my work in Oakland, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. I knew I had some very simple, non-negotiable criteria: I wanted to be able to walk to and from work. I wanted a decent kitchen. I wanted something safe, and I wanted to try to avoid paying my entire annual salary in rent.

Slow Food Nation's Victory Garden sits in the shadow of City Hall.

It might come as a surprise, based on the name of this blog, that having some space to garden or plant was not on that non-negotiable list. But I had this feeling that, somehow, I’d figure out a way to get my hands in the dirt, even if that way was unconventional.

Sure enough, a way presented itself. Slow Food Nation is bringing its foodie parade to town over Labor Day Weekend, and one aspect of the conference/festival /concert/celebrity-chef-sighting-opportunity is the Victory Garden planted in front of San Francisco’s City Hall.

Patterned after the Victory Gardens that fed the nation during World War II, the main garden at Civic Center is slated to provide fresh vegetables a few weeks after the Slow Food Nation gathering to those with limited access to produce in San Francisco.

The garden’s been attracting a little bit of nay-saying, particularly over at Garden Rant and the San Francisco Bay Guardian Politics blog. It’s temporary, they say. It’s expensive and a waste of resources. It’s a photo op. It’s a pale imitation of a real urban gardening program.

Victory gardener at work

I went down to see the garden on my birthday, the day after it was planted, and I’ll admit, the temporary nature of the garden surprised me. I expected something much more permanent. But I have also noticed that I have yet to mention the project to anyone who hasn’t heard about it and who doesn’t think community gardening is a good idea.

Now, to be fair, a lot of people I talk to in my ordinary life are foodies, gardeners, or public health folks who are predisposed to applaud veggies growing just down the steps of City Hall. But this story is being told, and there are people making sure the story doesn’t end on Labor Day. Besides, Alice Waters is behind this, and I defy anyone to say she’s not vehemently committed to the principle of equal access to fresh, local produce for all. This might be a photo op, but awareness has to start being raised somehow.

Regardless, I’ll be able to get a firsthand glimpse of how the garden is growing and how people are responding to it. Starting Sunday morning, I take my first turn as a garden docent, a volunteer position that might include giving garden tours, answering questions about vegetables (Apparently the volunteer coordinator doesn’t read this blog…), and helping with garden maintenance.

I may not have my own garden right now, but I’m about to start experiencing the photo op up close, and I can’t wait to get in there and see what it’s all about.

One of the things that has been most strange to me about the Flood of 2008 coverage is that I actually recognize the landmarks. In the past, most of my flood experience has been virtual – I’ve watched the news and sympathized, even sent money for relief, but never actually recognized the locations involved. It’s a completely different experience, the recognition something akin to seeing an ex-boyfriend on the street with a new girl. It’s the same sickening drop in the stomach, no matter how glad you may have been to leave him behind.

Now the floodwaters are being to recede, but that means the recovery is just beginning. And what a recovery it’s going to be. After all, floodwater is dirty-nasty-foul stuff. Oh, toxic sediment, thanks for stopping by (not that you were actually invited to the garden party).

Yeah, speaking of that garden party, I had never given a second of thought to what happens when your home garden floods until I read the Johnson County Extension’s list of warnings and admonitions. The basics? If you had raw sewage in your garden, don’t eat the food. In fact, quit growing any more food, because now you have contaminated dirt. For 90 days.

There are some other suggestions from the Extension: Get rid of leafy greens. Don’t eat your strawberries. Discard anything that was covered with water, even if it was a root vegetable like potatoes, carrots or garlic.

I realize I’m not there to work in my old garden, but when I read that advice (wise as it is), I felt that corresponding sickening drop in the stomach. As if the flooding wasn’t bad enough already, the thought of missing the entire growing season (because a 90-day growing ban would, for all intents and purposes, cause just that) is pretty horrifying.

Back in the 1980s, when the farm crisis was breaking America’s heartland, my Uncle Charlie got involved. He was an economics professor at Iowa State University, and he focused on Extension and public policy issues. He, along with my Dad and their four other siblings, grew up on a small dairy farm in Upstate New York, and they knew what it meant to be farmers and to be poor.

In 1988, my Uncle Charlie sat down with the good people of Ottumwa, Iowa, and started a strategic planning process to help them recover from the devastation the crisis had wreaked on the community. He stepped up. He used everything in his toolkit to do what he could for the state he had adopted as his own.

My Uncle Charlie died in December 2006, so he’s missing the mess left behind by the Flood of 2008. I’m sorry he’s gone, but I’m glad he’s not seeing the water pull back slowly—the effects of the flood are just beginning. From the towns that were underwater to formerly-submerged farmland, word from there is that now the problem is clean-up and recovery.

As I said earlier this week, the team at Edible Iowa River Valley and other organizations like Local Foods Connection are doing everything they can to help out the farmers affected by this flood. On Wednesday, they worked with Farm Aid to get a donation program off the ground. Farm Aid has done so much, starting with that farm crisis of the 1980s, to help American family farmers get on—and stay on—their feet, so it makes perfect sense that they’re involved again this time.

Farm Aid seeded the pot with $10,000, and they’ve got the venerable Willie Nelson putting his weight behind the effort. He’s playing in Tama, Iowa, on Saturday night, kicking off a several-night stretch where he performs in Iowa and Wisconsin, raising awareness as he goes.

The money will go to help the farmers who aren’t involved in ginormous agribusiness operations—although those folks are no less affected by this natural disaster. The difference? The farmers this fundraiser will help are the small and mid-size farmers who run community-supported agriculture operations and help supply the local farmers’ markets with fresh food and generally make Iowa a better, healthier place to be. But these are the farmers who don’t have flood insurance. Or crop insurance. These are the farmers who have to have their wife or husband work an office or factory job so they can get health insurance.

These are the people working on sliver-thin margins, and those margins just drowned.

If you think you can help, please visit the flood relief donation site and give what you can. I admit I’m feeling pretty helpless from here, but in the spirit of my Uncle Charlie, I’m using what I have in my toolkit. I have some money, and I have a blog. I can use those tools to help rebuild the state that let me make it home for nearly three years.

I ask for your help and your support. If you can’t give money, help raise awareness. Pass the word about this fundraiser to your friends, neighbors, and fellow bloggers. Food bloggers, I’d love it if you’d post something in support of this.

But most of all, if you’re at a farmers’ market this weekend, stop and take a look around. Be grateful for what’s there. Imagine if it was all gone. Then decide what it’s worth to you and help out these farmers. You never know when the good people of the Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri might just need to return the favor.

Note: Part 1 of this story appeared on Monday.

The heavy wooden door opened onto a series of squared-off brick passageways, open to the elements, yet almost private, with their series of variegated columns and keyhole windows. We stepped into a series of garden rooms, high above the rest of the city.

According to the signs, the gardens feature a café in warmer weather, but I was glad it was too cold for icy glasses of Coke and petit fours. The gardens belonged to me and Alex, and we roamed through it, peering through windows and looking at the wildness that had been brought on by the waning Fall.

“I bet this is beautiful when it’s all blooming,” I said.

We stopped to look at birds playing in a dry fountain, admired the stone work, peered through an opening in the wall toward the George Washington Bridge in the distance.

Then I caught site of the tree I had seen from below the Cloisters.

“I don’t think that’s an apple tree at all,” I said. “It’s a quince!”

And sure enough, it was. Smack in the middle of the more open of the gardens, there were four quince trees still laden with overripe fruit.

The last time I had seen a quince tree was by the pool that our townhouse community in Madrid shared when I lived there growing up. All it took was the smell of the slightly decaying fruit to take me back there.

The rest of the garden showed what an amazing place it must be at the peak of its season, too. Ivy clambered the walls in thick swaths; three kinds of sage, each one bushier than the next, stood together; a huge ornamental cabbage would have lumbered about if it could have picked up its roots.

I spotted Lamb’s Ear and made Alex touch it—it is, after all, the softest plant in the world. And we took photos of each other in a variety of archways—if you can’t be photogenic at the Cloisters, you might not be photogenic anywhere, really…

In 20 minutes, we were thoroughly chilled by the November air and ready to return to the medieval art. We ducked back in the heavy door, and a few folks in the museum itself looked at us with surprise. Who would be outside on such a day? What could there possibly be to see?

All I can say is this: sometimes the best things in the world are behind the doors we aren’t sure about opening. The Cloisters gardens? They rank right up there.

As we approached the Cloisters from further down the hill, I pointed up to a tree peeking over the top of a walled garden. “Look, an apple tree!” I said to my friend Alex. “I wonder if we can get in there?”

Inside the museum, we wandered amidst Madonnas and child, friezes and tapestries, but seemed as if we were up far too high to access the garden where we would find that tree.

A guard stood to one side of a gallery, his eyelids drooping a bit. We sidled up to him.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“A little tired,” he said.

We talked about the weather, and why he was tired, and George Bush before I finally felt like we’d had enough small talk to broach the issue at hand. “From outside,” I said, “we could see an apple tree. Can we get to it?”

A slow grin spread across his face. “Down these stairs and to the left, and you will see a door right in front of you. Go outside it, and there it will be.”

Alex and I scurried down the steps until we came upon a heavy wooden door. It had no sign on it, and for a moment, I feared we were about to set off an alarm.

“Do you think it’s OK?” I asked, my hand poised to push.

“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this story, which will appear on Wednesday…

The South is running out of water.

I discovered this after I asked some fellow members of the 9rules community about how they had celebrated Blog Action Day, and one linked to their post on the mess that is the Georgia water table.

I’m clearly losing my edge out here in the Midwest. Ordinarily, the fact that there wasn’t going to be enough water to cool the power plants that run Christmas lights from North Carolina to Florida would not escape my notice. But somehow, I’d heard nothing.

The last Friday in October, I boarded a plane bound for Raleigh, North Carolina, heading to visit good friends and show my support for the NC State Wolfpack. I’d gotten the weather forecast from my friend and commenter NC Heather – rain all week, but dry for the game. Besides, my friends are not ones to have any kind of shortage of NC State clothing, and that includes a prodigious amount of rain gear. If the rain didn’t stop, I’d be covered.

As the plane ascended, the pilot said something about downpours that were expected to have passed over by the time we landed, and, in fact, North Carolina was soaking wet when I arrived. Out in Rob and Heather’s back yard, all the plants looked luscious and thrilled with the water infusion.

But the newspaper the next morning reminded everyone that water restrictions were still in effect-even with five inches of rainfall in a week, drought conditions still held steady.

This week, the news has continued to be dire. The governor of Georgia has apparently been holding prayer services with the specific request for rain, and he’s going to have a little sit-down with the governors of Florida and Alabama to try to address the problem.

I’m not really sure how you address the problem when you aren’t the sky, but whatever. I wish them luck. In the meantime, according to reports I’ve been reading, there’s a town in Tennessee where the mayor turns on the water for three hours each night, then turns it off.

I know there are gardeners out there who consider it anathema to actually water their plants, preferring instead to let their flowers and vegetables and herbs just roll with whatever weather happens to be in play, whether that be drought or wet conditions. I like to think I wouldn’t be the neighbor sneaking out to water my tomatoes in the dark, but they would be my tomatoes… I just might crack under the pressure.

Every time I visit my parents, there’s a little pile of things to read on my bed when I arrive—a conglomeration of programs from my mother’s concerts, news clippings, and other things my parents think I should read or see.

(I can hear my Dad right now…”Things your mother thinks you should read or see!)

This past weekend, when I arrived at their house, the pile included something a little bit unusual: a paper bag that had clearly once held produce. Interesting to look at? Sure. But it wasn’t until my Mom said hello to a mother and her son in the aisle of a jazz concert Friday night that I learned the true significance.

“Andrew, did you enjoy the concert?” she asked. The boy nodded fiercely, a giant grin on his face. As he and his mother continued up the aisle away from us, my Mom said, “He’s such a great kid. And such a wonderful singer. And he sells tomatoes!”

“Wait,” I said. “He’s the one who sells the tomatoes in the bag?”

Clearly I had already mastered brand recognition. And, in fact, that’s who it was. I had met the famous Andrew: Children’s choir member, jazz lover, tomato salesman.

The scoop is this, according to my parents: Andrew sets up a big sign that advertises his wares; has negotiated some sort of deal with his grandfather, who supplies the tomatoes (and by deal, I do mean deal…my understanding is that Andrew’s supplier offers him something along the lines of a 100 percent discount on his supplies, which has to work out to a heck of a profit margin); wraps the tomatoes up in self-branded bags; and sells them to one and all within the neighborhood. [Note: this information has been updated to reflect inside scoop passed along in the comments below!]

It’s definitely a step above the average lemonade stand. I’m pretty impressed.

For two years, plants with dark green leaves and small blue flowers have wound their way around the base of my tomato plants, appearing as suddenly as fireflies and disappearing by the next day. I would think to photograph them, then forget, then return to find only green, no blue.

This year, I remembered to capture them, and I planned to post them up, see if anyone could identify them. After all, there are times when even Google doesn’t come up with the right answer for “small blue wild flower that looks like it should be on the side of a china cup.”

Lucky for me, I know people. Before I could even post my own shot of one of these beauties, Don of An Iowa Garden identified it for me: Asiatic dayflower.

This is one of those weeds, like Queen Anne’s Lace, that I would plant on purpose if I had the right set of seeds. Especially now that I know what they are.

I don’t think I managed to beat Chigiy and her Red Currant Tomatoes, and I’m late to the Ritual of the Tiniest Tomato, which was founded by Carol of May Dreams Gardens, but I want to offer up my entry to the Interwebs.

Because, really…tomatoes this tiny are too cute to keep to myself.

Yes, they are both lying on top of a dime. Also, they were delicious.

I’d like to tell you that I have a very simple philosophy for living, but in truth, I am a woman of many corollaries. Among these is that I believe strongly in taking leaps of faith—trying things out just because they have potential. The way I see it, at worst, I end up with a lot of good stories to tell. Or I move to Iowa. Or both. See how this works?

There are others like me. They might not move to Iowa, but they do things like grow ten-foot-long gourds or 1,400-pound pumpkins, just because they can. This goes well beyond growing a tomato bigger than my hand, or even beyond my fellow blogger Michelle’s quest to grow the perfect pumpkin in her own back yard. These people have taken a huge leap of gardening faith, and as a result, have a great story to tell.

Susan Warren, who is a deputy bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, followed the 2006 giant pumpkin growing season in Backyard Gardeners: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever, which hits bookstores tomorrow. From the challenges of weather to disease to outright sabotage, Warren chronicles everything that can go wrong—and the miracle when things go right—for those growers obsessed with these behemoths.

I received an advance reading copy of Backyard Giants from one of the author’s friends, and agreed to take a look at it just because the concept intrigued me. Giant pumpkin growers do their thing exclusively for the glory—it’s not these bad boys end up good for making pie, and even carving them is a challenge, and as the book discloses, often the giant pumpkins don’t even come close to resembling the Cinderella-carriage ideal.

Susan’s book vines through the stories of several growers, but focuses primarily on Ron and Dick Wallace, a father-son team on a quest to break the world record for Big Pumpkins. Besides bringing with it the coveted orange jacket that, presumably, is really only appropriate to wear to a pumpkin-themed gathering, growing the biggest pumpkin of the season brings with it the attention of this select group of fanatical growers, a certain amount of prize money, and the satisfaction of knowing one has accomplished the impossible.

There is always a slow point in the growing season (although, I have to say, with just under two years of growing seasons under my belt, I’m probably not qualified to say “always…”), and the book does have a central section that seemed to hover longer than necessary on the minutia of pumpkin growing, but the action gains momentum rapidly toward the end of the book. By the end, even as the pumpkins’ growth slows, the action carries forward, leading to a most satisfying conclusion.

Whether you long for the Great Pumpkin’s appearance or not, Backyard Giants is an interesting look into a world of obsession and, for many, total futility. Whether you’re a gardener or not, I don’t know anyone who can’t identify with the quest to make something totally improbable happen in their life. As tomato season gives way to a more pumpkin-like time of year, I encourage you to check out Backyard Giants.

Yesterday, The Mint Killer and her family and I headed out together to Acoustic Farms, the home of Farmer Mark and his lovely wife Barbara, who provide us with fabulous veggies as part of our community-supported agriculture (CSA) share. Mark and Barbara invited us up for homemade sausage gravy and biscuits, with the caveat that they were going to put us to work once they’d fed us.

I think we were all expecting something akin to hot, sweaty, tough labor. I mean, farming’s supposed to be hard, right? But when it got down to it, with three extra hands on the job (not that the four-and-a-half-year-old didn’t help, but she alternated helping with cavorting through the fields), we probably didn’t spend much more time actually working than we did tearing through breakfast.

We helped out with planting tomato seedlings, asparagus, onions and potatoes, and watched while they put in an experimental row of peanuts. I ignored my allergies and snuggled a kitten, and pet a chicken for the first time ever. Then we sat on the porch, sipping iced tea and listening to Farmer Mark strum his guitar. It doesn’t get much more idyllic than that.