Corn in our garden: God send

There is a corn in our garden that we never planted.   This is God send!  Now you will understand better when Emily Dickinson said that we are “closer to God in a garden than anyplace on this earth.”

There are two ears of corns in one stem; we do not know whether they are white or yellow kernels wrapped in the husk (leaves).

Our dear friends (deer) visited the garden

These photos show 4 deer (all in the family), as Janice quipped, “trying to figure out what time that buffet line opens” in our garden. For nearly 10 minutes they were standing besides our garden like sculptures under the rain 7 o’clock this morning. We have spotted deer walking by the garden on numerous occasions, but could never capture them with camera, as they usually came in the deep of the night and left before dawn broke.

Can you tell which one is Bambi?

Some Like It Hot

(Some Like It Hot is a movie by Marilyn Monroe)

Whenever I cannot find anything literary to say about the flower or veggie in our garden, I can always turn to medicine. Pepper is genus capsicum whose active component is capsaicin, which is used topically as pain reliever. It can be used in all sorts of pain, such as pain of peripheral neuropathy (postherpetic neuropathy—pain after the shingles), diabetic peripheral neuropathy, or even arthritic pain. One can buy them over-the-counter: Zostrix (used to need a prescription), Capzasin, and Salonpas (撒龍巴斯), which is popular in Taiwan.

In China/Taiwan a feisty young lady with hot temper is called 小辣椒 (little hot pepper). I recall a British pop girl group is called Spice Girls.

Don't sit on me, please!

While facetiming with Joy’s iPhone 4 with our iPad in our garden this morning, we spotted this geranium peeking through the bench. Previously we could hardly find time sitting on this bench, now we are forbidden to sit on it. With so much (conspicuous, obscure or hidden) going on in our garden, one can always stumble onto something if one spends time in it.

We received the swing chair for the Father Day’s gift from our daughters last year and the bench also for the Father Day’s gift from Greenlees this year. We have formally requested any future gifts of chair for garden use are not allowed unless they come with the gift of “time”.

Enjoy it while it lasts: our garden refuses to die

While the tenants in Emily Dickinson’s garden “sank from color, scent, and liveliness into decay,” she wrote her aunt, Katie Sweetser, in 1880, “I trust your Garden was willing to die, I do not think that mine was—it perished with beautiful reluctance, like an evening star—.”

This post can be titled “Photo garden diary: September 16”—the day these photos were taken. As summer is on the way out, our old garden refuses to die, they just fade away.

Our first luffa soup (菜瓜湯)

Last night we had our first luffa soup (菜瓜湯). OK, I have to admit that it was not directly from our garden; it is a precious gift from Dr. and Mrs. Fan. You do not know what you have missed had you not tasted this luffa soup (菜瓜湯) with us last night.

We still can claim some ‘ownership’ of this luffa, as Katy grew the luffa from the seeds and gave seedlings to Fan in May. Theirs flourished and grew better than ours did. Katy has a theory/excuse for it and I buy it. Shortly after transplanting the luffa seedlings to our garden, there came a hailstorm on May 18 (see photos)—actually small ice balls falling out of sky. Seeing the photos, you’ll understand why hailstorm is also called hailstone, I might as well call it ‘hellstone’, given the fact that they hit and stunned the growth of the fragile and delicate luffa seedlings. It is already a miracle that they survived.

A tale of two breakfasts in the porch/patio

Gardening is a labor intensive activity; rarely had we found a leisure time which was few and far between. We once found one. The photos show my breakfast in the porch by the garden on Memorial Day, which kicks off the summer, but our garden began long before that.  

You’ll see Katy was busying around in the emerging garden while I was having a Taiwanese style breakfast, browsing the “morning newspapers” (Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or USA Today or watching CNN) on my iPad.
During the breakfast I was called to hospital, spending 3 hours on two sick patients. When I said I hold two full time jobs, I am not exaggerating.

This post shows a contrast of two breakfasts in the garden; one is country style, the other classy and elegant, which is a stylish and luxurious breakfast of Dr. and Mrs. Chang, our new friends.

During a Taiwanese Americans gathering (celebrating the Mid Autumn Festival, 中秋節) in the greater Pittsburgh area yesterday, Mrs. Chang said she used to work and manage her urologist husband’s office; she would like to say she is his boss at office. She neglected to mention that she is also his boss at home.