On things botanical and familial.
À la manière de Blue Witch, a Friday Question: if you were a shrub, which one would you want to be?
Myself, I quite fancy being a ceanothus. I ask, you understand, because we’re starting to think about things we’d like to grow next year, and at this point I have to remind myself that there are things besides vegetables which would form a rather nice addition to the ol’ botanical kingdom – I love the mock orange, for example, and the pieris, despite my tendency to incline towards rainbow chard and beets. The idea is that perhaps if we think of various plants we’d like, we could pull our fingers out and grow them from seed, rather than buying them as fully-fledged plants.
So, what would you be?
In other news, stuffed courgettes (from the toe-curling cookbook I mentioned in my last post) are very lovely indeed, particularly with the addition of walnuts and potatoes; having friends round for an afternoon of chatting, eating, and fillling each others’ watering cans (if you are under three, that is) is also pretty good.
Less good?
The impending arrival of Quercus’s mother, who has only been gone for two weeks, and who will be with us for another ten-day stint. Not that I don’t appreciate the help, which is lovely and super-useful for Quercus, who is otherwise almost always single-handed on the house work, but still – ! Ten days. I mean… TEN DAYS. It’s quite a while to have anyone stay, particularly when your house is small and they are, well, a little challenging, personally-speaking. I have a plan, though: provide lots of food. And wine. I know – not the world’s most thrilling idea, but still, if an army marches on its stomach, I feel fairly sure that my mother-in-law does likewise.
It could be worse: at the end of this month, I am due to go and see my father, for the first time since he moved north. He’s been in his current house for nearly eighteen months, and I feel on the one hand a bit shifty about not having been before, and on the other, rather ‘well, what did you expect, given that you bought a house five hours’ drive from us, with no spare room, and filled it full of lunaticly annoying people?’. I will attempt to stick to the former attitude, though the latter keeps popping its head above the parapet when I least expect it. He seems relatively happy, or, I should say, as happy as you can be when your younger step-daughter has tried to kill herself in recent memory and is now seeming oddly compliant and happy following months of therapy regarding gender reassignment, while the elder continues to frustrate with attitude and lassitude. Juuuust the ticket if you’re inclined to the Old School Of Parenting, the one which goes something along the lines of ‘Put Up AND Shut Up’.
As you can imagine, I am not completely at ease with the idea of the impending visit. For one thing, there’s a five-hour drive, probably at night to see if the small girl makes a better traveller when it’s dark. And then there’s the old sod’s wife. Who in lots of ways is lovely, but my, she presses my buttons in terms of annoyingness. She advises, you see, when advice isn’t sought, needed or welcome; she just can’t seem to help herself. And she calls me, and always has done, by a shortening of my not-obviously-shortenable first name which is generally reserved for people I actually love, as opposed to people I am stuck in a liftshaft with, metaphorically. And let us not speak of the constant eulogies to which the small girl and I will be subjected: the wife is brilliant, the wife is artistic and SO PRACTICAL, and look at the tiling she has done, and didn’t she design this well, and have you seen the dress she made for herself when she was only eighteen months while dandling fourteen Romanian orphans on the other knee and speaking fluent French? And that’s before you get on to the daughters, who are both, depending on the time of day, musical geniuses destined for great things, incredibly talented artists, thoughtful, caring and helpful, and probably culinary greats too, come to think of it.
I think the worst of it is that I can stick the wife and the step-daughters, but what I find really hard is the person that my father has become since he’s been part of their family. He’s sentimental, fractious and distant most of the time, interspersed with moments of savage resentment and suppressed anger about the various bits of his new life which haven’t gone quite to plan (and there have been, ahem, quite a few). It’s not quite the happy new start that I’d hoped it would be when I decided to just Not Say All Those Things I Thought, when he announced he was getting married, and sometimes I wonder if I did him no favour in being what I hoped was tactful.
Urgh. This has turned into a bit of a rant. Let us draw a veil over it, and return to plants. Plants. Yes. Them. So, courgettes, then:
Stuffed Courgettes
Ingredients
For the courgettes:
Four large courgettes
Several onions
A big chunk of garlic
Some parmesan
Some ricotta
Herbs
A stockcube
Some ground almonds
Some flaked almonds
Some chopped walnuts
A slug of olive oil
Then…
Top and tail the courgettes, cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the flesh from each half using a spoon. Sling it in a frying pan with some oil, some chopped onion and a few herbs, and give it a few minutes to cook through before adding the rest of the bits and bats. A handful of each of the nutty bits should do it, for those finding this recipe frustratingly vague; it’s vague only because it departs considerably from the original recipe because I couldn’t find half the things in the right quantities in the cupboard, and of course I hadn’t planned in sufficient detail as to have bought the things I’d need in advance. So, you’ve got a cheesey, nutty sauce with onions, garlic and courgette flesh, basically, with some herbs and a bit of stock thrown in for good measure. When it’s all heated through, pop the courgette shells on to a large tray, and heat the oven up to something suitably diabolic – 200°c or so should do it. Fill the shells with the cheesey mix, and drizzle a bit of oil over the top before cooking them for about twenty minutes. Which just leaves you time to make…
The sauce:
A tin of tomatoes, or about six fresh ones
An onion or two
Some garlic
Some herbs
A stockcube
A spoon of brown sugar
Some herbs
A slug of Tabasco
About five small potatoes, chopped into quarters
Then…
Fry the onion and the garlic up together, and then sling everything else in, basically; the taters take a little while to cook through, for that strange ‘there’s something other than water in this pot! I protest in the strongest terms!’ reason. When the courgettes are done, pour the sauce over the top, et voila: scoffalicious.
That recipe is a definite goer! Walnuts, parmesan, and ricotta – whacko!
The familial visitations and excursions sound less appealing, but I have to agree about throwing food and wine at the situation, (well, at least the MIL). Makes everything much smoother, really. Possibly…good luck hey?
As for shrubbiness, I fancy myself as a buddleia (butterfly bush). Wishful thinking on my part, but I am extremely fond of these gorgeous (fast growing yay!) butterfly attracting, all-round fabulous shrubs.
Shrub? Pah! I am a tree. I would be a quercus robur, naturally, although I can spend whole days staring up at fagus sylvatica.
And if you try to cut me into a hedge I will trip you up with my roots.
Hello Earthenwitch, I have been following your blog for a while now and love it. Your turn of phrase often has me giggling. I can sympathise with you plenty on the in laws thing. They are definately as dose of the good the bad and often the ugly too.
If I were a shrub it would have to be a Berberis, lovely colours which change in various lights and throughout the year, but if you get too close there is plenty of prickles too.lol I would love to be able to say an Oak, with its sturdy strength and regal nature but it would be a lie, so prickles it is.xxx
i fancy myself a honeysuckle — if that counts, not really a *shrub* per se……all viney and climby and smelling nice and fodder for hummingbirds and bumblebees. But that’s wishful thinking….realistically I’m probably more of a boxwood.
really feeling your pain on the in-laws and the steps and whatnot. we have a saying in our family something along the lines of “putting the ‘fun’ in dysfunction’…” i concur with Nettles…food and wine in great abundance will do wonders to smooth out the bumps….
wishing you strength!!
Spiraea japonica, preferably ‘Firelight’. Has foliage for 9-10 months of the year, starting off bronze-red fading to gold-yellow and, by Autumn, back to bronze-red again. Good at filling corners and looks particularly lovely if planted so late season sun catches the top of the foliage as it almost glows.
Cotinus ‘Grace’, again, looks lovely planted so light shines through the purply leaves.
Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’. Looks dull as ditchwater throughout the warmer months but fantastic late Autumn foliage followed by red spidery-looking flowers late Winter which smell delightful.
Sorry, I couldn’t stop.
Is a rhododendron a shrub? If it is, don’t get one. The only faintly interesting thing about it is the whole blue/pink acidity thing, which is quite cool when you first learn it, but doesn’t make up for an otherwise thoroughly boring plant. It is, to my mind, the Ikea item of the garden.
is a peony a shrub? i vote for that as it’s one of two shades of pink i can take for any length of time. urg! much luck on the family visit! gods, saints & perfect people are hard to take…
ah. family. Yerse…
Shrub – something, perhaps anything, NOT IN A DESERT. This answer could possibly be influenced by the past six weeks of tediously, carefully, endlessly, expensively hand watering all my plants just to keep them from flopping over and dying. Possibly.
Or it could be my utter and total ignorance of planty things (which I am TRYING to remedy but it’s hard when the options are: yucca, agave, other pointy thing I don’t know what is, barrel cactus, prickly pear…). Does my Meyer lemon count? If so that’s what I’ll be because it’s lovely and it has gorgeous scented flowers and it grows beautiful and useful lemons. Also there are days when I do suspect I’m a bit of one – lemon that is.
Oooh, mock orange, indeed! I am also quite fond of a staghorn sumac, myself. The branches are fuzzy and lovely and the leaves are exotic-looking, turning a dark red in autumn (my favourite time of the year).
I would suggest, if you’re interested in some “less expensive” plant options: make friends with some of your local garden associations and/or neighbourhood gardeners. I inherited about 80% of my current garden. Daylilies, irises, hostas, barberry, elderberry, lilacs, forsythia, lavender, sedum, mock orange – all free. Seriously. All I have to do is make nice and show up to help out in the garden from time to time and payment comes in the form of divided plants, shoots, shrub branches (you jab them into the ground and PRESTO! new shrub in a couple of months) etc. A large number of my neighbours also put cast-offs at the end of their driveways and sell them for very cheap – that’s where the other 20% of my garden came from. I’ve never paid more than $5 for a plant (when the same plants would cost 3x that much in the nursery).
Good luck!
A buddleia, definitely. But one of the posh ones, not the common version found on wasteland
Good luck surviving the family visitations.
Gah. Tea?
I have so many favourite shrubs that I don’t think I would be able to decide. I think my most favourite is Edgeworthia chrysantha, which flowers in February with pretty, furry, yellow bunches of tubular flowers and which smells delicious. But maybe I’d be a yellow Hammamelis, or Magnolia stellata. Or one of the tropical ones I used to study, with aromatic leaves and edible fruits. I’d be a NICE shrub anyway, not a spiky one.
Ah, another courgette recipe to add to my collection. Appreciating them all.
I’m going for a lavender, which some people say is a shrub and others say a semi-shrub. I’d love the bees buzzing around me.
Don’t feel you have to accept all the freebie plants from neighbours. Everyone is happy to pass on prolific growers, which take over more of the garden than you need.
Good luck on visiting relations. The journey is off putting enough. I did a solo six hour trip with two of mine when one was a new born and the other a potty-training toddler. Fun and games,but we all survived, which is good.
We have a lovely purple flowering hebe lurking in a corner of our garden…that would suit me…not that I am a lurker – or purple – or even the flowerly type. I have a 70 year old mother in law who acts like a petulant child and feels she is entitled to say the most outrageously rude things to all and sundry because she is a ‘free spirit’ who won’t be shackled by convention…and an old besom besides! I find I am left over-using the sentence ‘I’m sure you didn’t mean to be rude but….’. Husband is just grateful that I don’t have screaming rows with her as some of his past paramours have done…Smile and nod and smile and nod and by the way always remember that it was his decision to send his life in this direction, when one makes the bed one must lie in it…have fun now!
A chokeberry bush. B/c it looks fiery lovely in the autumn and in the winter has little black berries on leafless branches.
I’ve been reading your blog for years and years and never really ‘related’ to your father posts… but now my parents are divorcing and my father found a girlfriend with shocking speed and really this new women has some funny notion that she is something other than a peanut gallery who tells us what she thinks about our behavior towards our father. Good grief, why does this dumb horse open her mouth?
I do SO love how you depict the aged mother-in-law as this skatty old british ninny. How you said she makes salads really does say it all.
Hebe came straight to my mind too. Good-natured, unobtrusive, evergreen – I think I’d be one of the neat sort that never needs trimming back, just for a change. Scented, of course.
I see a gorgeous shrub every day I work and had to come back to recommend it to you: Euchryphia glutinosa it is in flower at the moment – as in covered in many huge, gorgeous, white, scented flowers which bees love. It seems to grow reasonably big though, more small tree than shrub.
I just wanted to say that you are a marvelous writer. I don’t actually read many blogs (despite having one myself), but I seem to keep coming back to yours.