spring - grace grits and gardening

Birds and Blake Shelton and Home

April 21, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

I’m a little obsessed with birds and Blake Shelton. On Sunday, I spent the day at home, trying to write, but mostly I watched the birds eating from the feeders outside our kitchen window. How many photos of birds can one take? Tons. Unfortunately, none of them are very good. I don’t have a fancy camera (only my iPhone), and if I get too close, they fly away. Even so, you can see the bright red cardinal. He’s a regular, and he’s gorgeous. I call him Blake. There’s a female too (not pictured). I call her…

wait for it……………Miranda.

I also spent lots of time watching a robin build a nest in the bend of the gutter downspout. (I call her Robin.) I wanted to say oh honey, that spot doesn’t look very safe. But what could I do? We don’t know each other very well yet. She flew back and forth from the boulder in our yard picking out bits of moss growing on it and carrying it to her nest. As she dropped each bit inside her new home, she wiggled her little tail feathers around to get everything just right, then returned for more. I’d never known a bird to use moss in nest-building. She knows what she wants, and that’s a soft cushion for her egg-laying business.

Later, while attempting to clean the front porch of pollen (pointless), I noticed a second bird nest made of twigs. Although I didn’t see the owner of this particular home, I believed it to be new construction.

Location, location, location! Prime spot in my opinion.

Just before sunset, a storm blew in. Swift and strong. The sky turned eerily sepia-colored, the way I imagine the Martian sky to look. The wind blew like that of West Texas. It was a short-lived event, and I managed to watch ~~the CMAs~~ Blake Shelton (the real Blake Shelton) without interruption. I’m not much of an awards show sort of girl, but I couldn’t miss the CMAs with Blake Shelton hosting. I heart him from afar. Okay, not that far…he and Miranda (I-hate-to-admit-it-but-I-have-a-girl-crush) live in Oklahoma, you know.

The next morning, the sky reappeared blue and bright, clear and clean. The noisy, hungry birds returned to the feeders, but the robin didn’t fare so well. Her nest lay on the ground, mushed and flattened by the wind and rain.

Seeing that nest on the ground started my day on a sad note. One little bird. All that hard work. I was glad I spent part of my Sunday with her.

Now, I’m not trying to get all preachy here, but the two nests reminded me of the Wise Man / Foolish Man Bible Story. You know, the wise man built his house upon the rock and the foolish man built his on the sand… (The porch nest survived the storm.) I was also reminded of Winnie the Pooh. And the rain, rain, rain, came down, down, down… I don’t think the hardworking robin was foolish. I think she was doing the best she could. Since the storm, I haven’t seen her again. I hope she’s busy rebuilding her home in a better spot. Live and learn. That’s what we do.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

[tweetthis]Blake Shelton, Birds and Home. My 3 current obsessions. @BlakeShelton #notastalkerthough [/tweetthis]

Musical Pairing:

Blake Shelton & Miranda Lambert – Home

the Colors of Easter

April 3, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

iris

I recently told my friend Laurie that my dream job would have been working for Crayola, specifically naming the crayon colors. Since I was a kid, everything about crayons fascinated me from the fresh smell of the wax to the way something so simple could transform a plain piece of paper into a refrigerator-worthy work of art. A new box of Crayons with the colors lined up sharp and perfect, or an old coffee can filled with broken stubs and unraveled wrappers—I’ve always loved them all.

Since my Crayola dream job has long been taken (I checked their website) and the crayons have already been christened, I decided to match up crayon names with the soft colors of Easter. It’s something I automatically do while walking the dogs. Those daffodils popping up everywhere? They come in various Crayola shades including canary, unmellow yellow and sunglow.

During this Easter season, Fayetteville is bursting with blooms. Pastels as soft as spun sugar. Tufts of fresh green grass begging to hide a dyed egg. The color of someone buying me an ice cream cone for no reason at all (Lemony Snicket). Happy, happy colors.

Easter is such a gift. A gift I don’t deserve.

Outrageous Orange

Banana Mania

Spring Green

Goldenrod

Inch Worm

Cotton Candy

Carnation Pink mixed with Wild Strawberry

Razzle Dazzle Rose

Blue Violet

White

If you are a Crayon nut like me, here are a few fun facts from ColourLovers.com:

Crayola crayons currently come in 120 colors;
An average of 12 million crayons are made daily;
The average child in the U.S. will wear down 730 crayons by her/his 10th birthday;
The first box of Crayola crayons was sold in 1903 for a nickel and included the same colors available in the eight-count box today—red, blue, yellow, green, violet, orange, black and brown.

There’s nostalgic goodness in every box of Crayons. Sometimes that’s just what this world needs. Especially at Easter.

Grace Grits and Gardening

Farm. Food. Garden. Life.

Musical Pairing:

Discovery – Swing Tree

Gardening, Writing and Making Enchiladas.

March 31, 2015 By Talya Tate Boerner

Gardening, writing and making enchiladas will keep a girl busy. My mother (aka The Bat) thought I had either croaked, lost my phone, or dropped it in the toilet because she had texted me several times over two days, and I hadn’t responded. I hadn’t posted on Facebook or blogged either.

First of all, I never received the texts because of a mysterious change in my iPhone settings. How does that happen? Anyway, after a bit of research, I fixed it without a call to AT&T (which would have severely cut into gardening, writing and making enchilada time, for sure). Yay me.

As far as being absent on social media, I’ve been on a self-imposed schedule that involves a) working on my book in the mornings, and b) gardening in the afternoons. And yes, I did make enchiladas the other day, but more on that later. So here’s an update. The book? I think it’s going well, but it’s taking longer than I expected. That’s mostly okay by me because when I’m done, well there’s the whole finding-a-publisher-thing which is way harder than breathing life into dead pansies.

And the gardening? You already know it’s one of my most favorite things to do in this life.

Here are a few of the plants John and I bought at Westwood Gardens, my go-to local (Fayetteville) garden center. A trunk full of plants leads to an afternoon well spent.

One of the things I did yesterday was attempt to spruce up our front porch pots. After the snow and ice, last fall’s pansies were soggy and shriveled and looking rather pathetic, BUT since the pansy growing season in Fayetteville is soooo much longer than Dallas, I decided to revive them instead of throw them away. I dug them up, trimmed the dead leaves, added more soil, and replanted them with snapdragons and asparagus fern. The pots look much happier now, and I believe the pansies will make a recovery.

Believing is an essential part of gardening.

End of Winter (left pot) / Beginning of Spring (right pot)

Here’s another before and after shot showing my pansies going from pitiful to perky.

Check out this cute little succulent. This one is named “Pig Ear”. Perfect for Razorback land, don’t you think? I put him in one of our most unique pots, a container we purchased at Redenta’s in Dallas. (It was handmade by an Arizona artisan whose name I don’t know, or I’ll tell you.)

My sister-in-law gave me lots of irises, day lilies and onion sets from her yard! “Dig up whatever you want,” she said. Now that’s a gardeners dream, right? Receiving plants from someone else makes the world even more special, and some of these plants originally came from my mother-in-law’s garden which makes me happyhappyhappyyyyy.

I planted a row of them along our rock wall. This is a hot spot, so they should flourish.

Others I planted around this boulder (along with phlox).

So where does making enchiladas come into this story? I made a big platter of chicken enchiladas last weekend using an old favorite recipe from my Baylor Cookbook (recipe tweaked a bit and coming later, maybe). We ate supper outside around the fire pit while enjoying the beginning of spring.