Happy National Wildflower Week!

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said about the wisdom of using blooming native plants in your garden spaces.  To my mind, choosing wildflowers is its own reward.

Pink Evening Primrose and Winecup

Pink Evening Primrose seed pods

Purple Prairie Verbena and Pink Evening Primrose

The flowers make everybody happy, bees and birds and butterflies included.

Lemon Bee Balm

Native flowers push up and carry on through drought, and most of them laugh away deer.

Mexican Hat

There's one to survive in just about any microclimate you have on offer.

Yellow Coneflower 

Bluebonnets

Bluebonnet seed pods

As if that weren't enough, many natives either set easily gathered seed or multiply happily in place, creating an opportunity to share passalong plants with your family, friends and neighbors.

Hill Country Rain Lily

Rain Lily seed pods 

The next time you are considering adding a plant to your mix?  Do us all a favor.  Go wild!

Pokeweed

Happy National Wildflower Week everyone!  And Happy Mother's Day!  When you garden, it is no exaggeration to say you are mother to millions.  Here's hoping you will be feted and celebrated as you so richly deserve.

Looking ahead

This weekend we celebrate Mother's Day.  Officially.

I doubt you could be unaware. Everywhere there are constant reminders to do this, plan that, buy this, that or the other, all to celebrate the love expressed between mother and child.

This year I am thinking especially of a couple of women I know who are freshly suffering the recent loss of their own dear Mommas.  I am hoping they will feel not only the inevitable pain and loss that the death of a mother brings, but also joy and gratitude for the love they did share.

Whatever their relationships with their mother, they were shaped in so many ways, and continue to be who they are directly as a result of who their mother was and how she loved them.

I believe with every ounce of my being a mother never really dies.  Her children and then their children will go on to echo her life as long as the sun rises and the birds build new nests in the Spring.

However you celebrate, whoever you remember, Happy Mother's Day.

     

Smells like...

I was frazzled earlier this week.

Canning jam can do that.

Trying to pull off more than I am used to can do that.Defending caterpillars against the Hub's insistence they "look" like they'd eat tomato plants, only to discover after losing track of where they went that yes, indeed, these sphinx moth larvae will potentially eat tomato plants, can do that.

Putting together ingredients for chicken stock that look old and tired and done for trusting that every chef I've ever read who says that is precisely what these "past their prime" ingredients are good for, can do that.

But now?

The jam set. In a few minutes I will toast bread and enjoy the first taste of the results of a few hours spent in the kitchen that will continue to provide rewards for a year or so.Despite some fretting I am happy to have provided what seemed to be a positive celebratory experience for what many consider a milestone birthday for my son who has not had an entirely smooth past couple of months.

I found and relocated the two largest of the three potential tomato eating caterpillars far away from my pepper and tomato plants. I successfully identified the plant they were munching on. Euphorbia dentata.

I suck at identification so to have discovered what type of caterpillar and what type of plant is a true victory for me. I submitted photos to the website that helped me ID the caterpillars and helped them expand the host plant listing and that felt good.Most importantly I realized, finally, that this is precisely what we had been hoping would happen in the back garden beds.

We have been seeding in butterfly attracting and native wildflower plants for several seasons running and...it worked! We now have moths nectaring in the back area and laying eggs as the three sphinx moth caterpillars spotted yesterday prove. We actually do have a wildlife habitat establishing itself, by golly. Sidebar: they never label the flower seeds as Moth Attracting because we, myself included, are typically such speciesists. Moths are important too only not so acceptably gorgeous. I am a little ashamed to admit I feel that way but there you have it.

The chicken stock smells amazing. It is making my mouth water and has me thinking with excitement about what I will cook for us over the next few days. It has been a while since I was excited about cooking anything, well, except for the carnitas, and I put more pressure on myself for that than I should.

"It is just dinner" you might say and you'd be right. Only every time I try something new and assure others in my family that "this will be great!" I feel as though I am setting up a test. If I somehow fail that test, well I don't know what exactly would be so awful about that, but I know I don't want that. To fail. At anything. Ever.

Everything is not perfect today but for me, that is what makes these moments of contentment so rich and rare. Perfection, the elusive bar I struggle not to consistently set for myself, has nothing to do with the way I feel just now.

So. Today. Just for a bit. I am feeling, well, successful. I have jam made. I have chicken stock cooking.I have garden beds that are feeding insects and people's physical bodies as well as their spirits, their sense of beauty. I let my son know in a hundred different ways that I love him and support him and am proud of him. Same goes for Law School Girl who survived her first year, finals, and will soon be driving back cross country, coming home to us for the summer.

It feels good just to write the words. Home for the summer.

I have a loving family and I will get to see them each over the summer without it being a big deal. What could make for a happier Mother's Day weekend than knowing that to be true? Over at A Season for Everything I posted a poem for Mother's Day. You'll find it here if you are interested. Otherwise, won't you stop and smell the stock cooking, and together let us mull over how lovely these small victories of life can really be.

Family Planning

No no, not what you are thinking when you first see the term. I am talking about Mother's Day and more specifically WHAT YOU WILL GET YOUR MOTHER FOR HER BIG DAY.

Mother's Day is Sunday May 10th and that is not so far away. If you are busy (and who isn't?) then you will want to plan ahead and I have some helpful advice and linky love to share to help make that happen.

Yes, many of you might say (and mean) "well, as a result of becoming a mother my Mom got me, and I am quite possibly not only gift enough for her, but for many many others as well, perhaps the entire world..".

To which I will reply nicely (for now) "Be that as it may, if you are indeed intelligent enough to be a gift to the world at large, then you are surely smart enough to know that a gift to your Mother is always a good idea. A. L. W. A. Y. S." This is not about deserves this is not about needs or wants, this is about what kind of person you are going to be. I promise you. You WANT to be that person who gets your Mom a nice gift for Mother's Day. Trust me on this one.Or you may have some not quite suitable for public sharing legitimate claim because your Mom makes Agusten Burrough's Mom look like Mother Teresa by comparison? Well let me state again. This is bigger than just you and your Mom. This is about what kind of person you are, or are going to start being, beginning this Mother's Day. You with me?

OK. Now we have established that you ARE going to get Mom a gift, let's take a quick look at what you will get her. This is where the planning portion of the title applies.

If your Mom is at all like me (or is, in fact me) that means she is of the Old Hippie genus. Old Hippies (in common with younger ones) like to think that whatever gifts they are given are simultaneously improving the universe in some way. Old Hippies, if they are old enough, also still have the occasional hankering for flowers and/or candy and/or both. But (and this is important children so pay close attention please) they do NOT want factory farmed flowers or chocolates that are the result of child slave labor.

In fact, they do not want ANYthing that while delicious or gorgeous or stylish or whatever, has been grown or produced in some way that is adding to that huge "don't care if we destroy the earth before our children have children of their own" pile.

Before you throw your hands up and start thinking about how it is already too late to make your Mom a matching decorated plastic cup/pencil holder or a homemade card on recycled paper (which you know, she would like very much as long as it came from YOU) here's a little bit of a head start.First, FLOWERS. There is a source to help you find responsibly grown and produced posies. Check out VERIFLORAChocolates and other gifts? They need to be Fair Trade Certified. Try GLOBAL EXCHANGE for a sampling and they also have links there for all sorts of other responsible gifts for your Mom.

If your Mom is not the flowers/candy type but is still one who would be pleased to know that you hold her and other women in high esteem, try The Women's Bean Project out for size. This organization offers food kits and gift baskets, the production of which helps disadvantaged women get on the job training so they can get back on their feet and become self-sustaining. Your Mom would like that!

Finally, if your Mom is anything like my mother was, she might be overhead saying something like "I don't need anything at all, really, not a thing. All I want is for you and your brother/sister [or father/aunt/uncle/cousin etc.] to get along. Really!". 

This may be a genuine sentiment, I am sure my Mom meant it every time she used it on me, but I always found it frustrating. I wanted to get her a present and I wanted her help to make sure that gift was meaningful, dammit! The whole "I just wish you'd get along better with..." gambit did not strike me as a fair way to respond to my earnest inquiries. 

I mean, OK OK, I promised I WOULD work to get along better with, well, everybody, you know, but I wanted to try to do that AND get her a good gift to boot. Just in case the whole "getting along better" thing didn't pan out long term.

Here is a Good Gift option that might melt the hardest heart. KIVA. You can make a gift to KIVA in your Mother's name, in her honor, or if she has already died and you want to do something for her day anyway, you could make a gift to them in her memory.  

Let the KIVA folk tell you more in their own words (from the site)
Loans that Change Lives:Choose an Entrepreneur, Lend, Get Repaid
How money gets from you to a developing-world entrepreneur, and back.
1) Lenders like you browse profiles of entrepreneurs in need, and choose someone to lend to. When they lend, using PayPal or their credit cards, Kiva collects the funds and then passes them along to one of our microfinance partners worldwide.

2) Kiva's microfinance partners distribute the loan funds to the selected entrepreneur. Often, our partners also provide training and other assistance to maximize the entrepreneur's chances of success.

3) Over time, the entrepreneur repays their loan. Repayment and other updates are posted on Kiva and emailed to lenders who wish to receive them.

4) When lenders get their money back, they can re-lend to someone else in need, donate their funds to Kiva (to cover operational expenses), or withdraw their funds.

Very cool, yes? So, unless you are reading this and are actually one of my own kids (hey kids! I promise - I don't want a thing - I just want all of us to get along better!) now you have something of a head start to make this year's Mother's Day the BEST EVER. Just like your Mom is.

No, no, don't thank me. I don't need or want your thanks. I just want us all to get along bet............

PS - there is one gift my oldest could "give" me - ChefSon, I love you more than words can say. I am incredibly proud of you for who you are not for what you've done with your life. If you could pretty please start lying about your age? Thank you forever, Moms.