A Crosspatch Garden

CD Party! (via my life and times)

yarnspinnerpress — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:06:07 +0000

Hope you all can make it!

You Are Invited! Marideth Sisco and Friends CD Party Sunday, November 21, 2010 2 – 4 p.m. Heroes Coffee, 1372 Bildan Boulevard, West Plains, MO 417-256-6220 Come alone or bring a friend, buy a CD, Winter's Bone soundtrack, or Marideth's book, These Ozark Hills. Take a look at Dennis Criders photography. You might want to purchase one! Marideth will be signing CD's and books. Plan on schmoozing! … Read More

via my life and times

Falafel for Breakfast

yarnspinnerpress — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:20:53 +0000

Saturday’s another day, in which some possible high points include “Happythankyoumoreplease” and “Five Star Day.” Or I may start earlier and pop over to the Clinton School for a showing of “Citizen Architect.”

June 7, 2010

And maybe I’ll have enough sense to either stay in for breakfast at the hotel (whose chef studied with Emeril), or go out earlier, so I don’t roast, like I did Friday, on the way back from the River Market, where the food court featured offerings from basic barbecue to falafel, with Cajun, Mexican and several others in between, and flanked on each end by coffee roasteries and bakeries. I had the falafel, coffee and a cinnamon roll. For breakfast.

-m

After a day-long session with blogger Sarah Denton

yarnspinnerpress — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:53:49 +0000

After a day-long session with blogger Sarah Denton, I finally managed to start putting up some photos. However they’re from earlier in the summer, July I think, and the garden has been through some major changes since then. The cucumbers are closed for the season, the beets are acquiring bottoms, and the fall peas are up and blooming their little heads off. Some things I will do again, others not so much. But over all this odd little garden has been one of the best I’ve grown, both in terms of how much was produced and how very much I enjoyed doing it. Of course a life threatening illness will tend to make one a bit more appreciative. But my return to health, such as it’s been, can be directly attributable not just to the exercise, but to the lightening of spirit that comes with seeing nature work its miracles. Many a summer morning was spent with the first cup of coffee out next to the garden in a lawn chair, focusing on just one plant, or the light, or the breeze. My mantra changed from “Let me get through this day” to “I am blessed beyond measure.” More photos to come when they get back from the processor. And some garden thoughts that are more about the garden than about me. ‘Bout time, doncha think?

-m

First garden results

yarnspinnerpress — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:49:48 +0000

Strange weather these past days.

yarnspinnerpress — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:05:45 +0000

Rain and clouds, but a little too warm for mid-September. More rain this summer than in recent memory made for a productive garden, but one wonders if this is a fluke or signs of a real change that will last a while. I’m of two minds about it. The ability to relax about using too much well water keeping the garden alive is good. But more trouble with mold and spoilage. I’m curious to see what fall will be like. Some prognosticators have said this winter will be characterized by heavy snow. I’d take that over ice, any day.

-m

Well. Long time no blab.

yarnspinnerpress — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:13:21 +0000

In the meantime, summer has gone at a gallop and I’m now on community radio, KZGM.FM, Cabool, MO., where I have a gardening show, also called Crosspatch. What fun. I’m going to attempt to post some pictures of my little garden, but they will be more than a month old. More to come when I get the photos processed. i don’t have a digital cam. Sorry. This garden has given me plenty of tomatoes, almost enough green beans and way too many cucumbers (there’s a bushel of them waiting to be processed right now). Not that I’m complaining, of course. And did I mention chard, and eggplant, and peppers, and vast amounts (I’m assuming. They’re not dug yet) of potatoes. Best garden I’ve had in years. Anybody want to blab about containers, straw bales or small space gardening, give me a holler.

-m

Making the garden work

yarnspinnerpress — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:37:44 +0000

Howdy. I’ve asked my pal at Moonmooring to come up and take some pictures so I can show you this peculiar garden of mine and stop trying to figure out how to describe it. It’s a third strawbales, a third containers and a third in the ground. This is my first summer living at the farm, after working on the house, going broke, and numerous health problems that I won’t bore you with. The gardening problems coming in included no discernable sign of a former garden anywhere and all the reasonable places grown up in trees. There’s a level place at the front and on the west side, but its problems include a gigantic many trunked mimosa tree, a cement shuffleboard court, and non-farm-raised family members saying “You can’t put that there, it’s the front yard!” So the bales are down one side of the shuffleboard court (hereafter referred to as “the court.) with cattle panels just off the edge to give tomatoes something to grow up (also cucumbers and pole beans). The containers are of various sizes, and they round the end and come down the other side of the court, letting me water all with one long soaker hose. The containers include yard long beans (trellised), horticulture beans, nasturtiums, chard, mizuna, carrots and beets. Herbs include basil, lemon balm, garlic chives, tarragon, thyme and lemon thyme, rosemary, tansy, rue, spearmint, lemon verbena and eucalyptus.
Over under the mimosa, I had a spot plowed and tilled despite lots of tree roots, and planted eight short rows of potatoes (Green Mountain, Kahtadin, Burbank Russets and Red Pontiac) and a couple rows of late onions (they didn’t mean to be. I was just late getting them in). The north half of the space was too shady to grow food, so it’s grown up in green perilla and lamb’s quarter, and now I have many meals of wild greens volunteering to feed me.
Then a friend came over with a chain saw, took pity on me, and lopped off one particularly offending trunk of the mimosa, and now I have sun in the north half. My plan is to keep eating greens and pulling the plants, planting a row as soon as that part is clear. I’m thinking kohlrabi, sprouting broccoli and maybe some chinese cabbage to go into the fall.

Jumping The Gun!

yarnspinnerpress — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:47 +0000

Hm. Well, it seems I jumped the gun on offering a tour of the album. No photos yet on my blog, but you can see them on

Moonmooring’s blog, or wait until I get better at this. Here’s my cranky story. I was waylaid by illness this spring while attempting to start a new garden and didn’t get things planted in a timely manner or get the garden spot developed enough to hold all I wanted to plant. However, a former owner of my little farmette kindly left behind a cement shuffleboard court (they were from California — what can I say?) and I’ve used it to start a garden of straw bales and containers. The original garden has been given over to potatoes and greens, the wild kind, mostly. The strawbales are hosting a variety of eating, canning and drying tomatoes, along with two kinds of peppers, cucumbers, pole beans and an eggplant. In pots are horticulture beans, yardlong beans, chard, mizuna, and nasturtiums. Smaller containers hold rosemary, tarragon, English and Lemon thyme, tansy, rue, eucalyptus, lemon verbena, italian parsley, sage, lemon balm, garlic chives and basil.Everything’s doing nicely, thank you, helped along with weekly fertilizer and rabbit manure tea. All are watered by soaker hose. I use 2″ wide electrical tape to seal off areas of the hose that are not adjacent to areas I want watered, like between containers and such. It’s my first try at bales and I don’t know much about container gardening, but I’m loving the experiment and it seems to work no matter how much I screw up. More to come about varieties, harvests and ephemera.

-m

Visit Maridethsisco.com

Howdy!

yarnspinnerpress — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:24:21 +0000

Yes, it’s another damned little gardening blog where I plan to talk you to death about my little patch, not of earth, but of pots, haybales and a recycled shuffleboard court that is currently growing 3 kinds of beans, 8 kinds of tomatoes, chard, mizuna, cucumbers, peppers and an eggplant. Sure you don’t want to stick around? Well, stop by later and I’ll show you the family photo album.

-m

Visit Maridethsisco.com