Sconeday: the art of gardening

I approach my garden as much for art, as for plants or food.

I started life as an artist, actually making a living at it all through my 20s and even into my children’s toddlerhood. It’s hard to paint with little kids around, however; you cannot pick up a baby when your hands are covered in cadmium yellow. It is poison. You can switch to pastels, but then the baby is always Technicolor and anyway, who knows what’s in those as well? So you switch to charcoal, but now the baby looks like you let him crawl around on the cellar floor, which in fact you do, and oh my god what is he putting in his mouth.

So I switched to gardening. This became my canvas, and it is a living one that changes and grows, literally, year after year. I’ve just spent the morning looking at old photo CDs and seeing how the garden has changed over the years— it is a work that is never done, the god’s canvas. The Painter’s Palette dies and is replaced by Baby's Breath, which dies and is replaced by Pineapple Sage. A “water” garden made from pebbles and rocks gives way to an actual pond; a vegetable garden becomes a mulch patio becomes a vegetable garden; the lilies move from the shade to the sun and take off. The coleus really doesn’t like the sun, but pansies and marigolds make a beautiful statement in the same place.

How can you make your garden into art?
Put other people's art in it: A little bronze frog, a clay Medusa, ceramic luminaries.
Put in your own art: A painted gate, a hand-built trellis made of sticks, plant markers.
Make the layout a canvas: Lead the eye through the garden by laying paths, and interrupting the movement of the eye, or letting the wanderer pause with architectural elements like a special plant, or a bench, a luminary or a sculpture.
Paint with flowers: frame a lupine with a green shrub, or create a themed garden (Shakespearian plants, or a color theme)

The words are interchangeable— I am an artist. I am a gardener.

How have you made your garden into art?

Goat cheese scones
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
>1/4 cup white sugar if you like sweet scones
1/8 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 T goat cheese ( a crumbly one works best)
3/4 cup sour cream (thin with milk) plain or vanilla yogurt
1/4 cup honey

½ cup sugared, plumped raisins

Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, cinnamon, and salt into a large bowl. Cut in butter using a pastry blender or rubbing between your fingers until it has the consistency of corn meal. Cut in the goat cheese. Mix liquids together in a measuring cup. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently until well blended. (Overworking the dough results in terrible scones!)

To prepare raisins, plump raisins. Place in a microwaveable container, just cover with water and heat them in the microwave on medium for about 3 minutes. Drain and pat dry, then coat with about 1 teaspoon of cinnamon suger. Mix these into the scone batter.

Glaze with yogurt mixed with cinnamon

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and drop batter by generous spoonfuls. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are golden brown, not deep brown.

Sconeday: Where are you from?

View on flickr

According to my astrological chart, I should have lived in a large town in a rural setting. I’ve suggested to my husband that I would love to retire to such a setting, in rural Wisconsin or Michigan; he just looks at me like I’ve grown another head.

I read with such envy my rural and small town friends on the web; I would love a life that allowed me to do something as simple as walk to a farmer’s market, or to know my neighbors. I spent my high school years in a small city, but at the very edge, where there was a farm across the street, and full blown country an easy bike ride away. My parents hated it, but I still get a thrill when I manage to get out under the sky, where you see what we city folk call “nothing” from horizon to horizon.

My family, and my husband’s, have no farmers in our backgrounds for at least 5 generations. The first farmer we’ve been able to possibly identify are my Irish triple greats who came here in the 1850s or 60s, although that’s a guess; they may have been urban victims of the Irish troubles; we’re not really sure why they came. Other than that, we know that they all emigrated from cities to cities-St. Louis, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, LA. I have an uncle who was an engineer that moved his family from NYC to a Christmas tree farm in upstate NY, because he invented the machine that allows pine farmers to plant them mechanically (if you know a Christmas tree farmer, he probably uses my uncle’s invention). But he’s the outlier.

My yearnings for dirt come out of nowhere. No one else in my family shares it. They support it, and love the food, but the desire to grow things and be part of the cycle of life has been bred out of their genes for the last 150 years or more.

Coconut lemon scones
Adapted from: Group Recipes

4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 cup oats
8 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp kosher salt
>1/4 cup cane sugar

1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup thin yogurt
5 tbls butter
4 tbls shortening
1 cup Coconut Milk
Zest and juice from 2 lemons
1 tsp vanilla or lemon extract

1/2 cup diced dried pineapple (NOT the sugar coated kind)

Pre-heat oven to 425 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Stir together dry ingredients (including zest) in a large bowl. In a separate bowl (or measuring cup) mix together coconut milk, lemon juice and vanilla and set aside for the moment. Take butter, shortening, and lemon zest and cut in to dry ingredients until you have a crumb-like texture. Mix the wet ingredients in to the dry ones until a sticky dough forms.

Turn dough out on to a floured surface and using floured hands, gently pat out the dough to 1" thickness. Cut out scones using a round cutter (a juice glass works fine) and place with sides touching on parchment lined baking sheet.

Bake for approximately 10 minutes, or until lightly golden.

Sconeday

Since I make scones once a week for breakfasts and snacks, I decided that "Monday" is now "Sconeday" Watch for a new scones recipe on most Mondays! This is the only recipe idea I ever had that I could not find that someone else had already come up with it.

Beet scones
a Mahlzeit original recipe

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
1/3 cup sugar

1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
about 1 cup grated cooked beet (1 medium beet)

1 large egg
1/4 c honey
1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream
1/2 teaspoon orange extract

Preheat oven to 425°.

Boil beet(s) until just al dente (don't overcook, because it needs to be firm enough to be grated). Allow to cool enough to handle, then grate it.

Mix together first 6 ingredients. Cut in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add beets and mix until just blended. Whisk together egg, buttermilk, and orange extract in a separate bowl until blended. Add to flour mixture, and mix just until blended and slightly moist. Dough will be sticky, and pink.

Spoon large tablespoonsful onto a lightly greased baking sheet (or line a sheet with parchment paper). Bake at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes (shorter time for smaller scones). Makes 9 large or 12 medium scones.

Bonding over the compost

There's a new blogger project on gardening with your kids called "Kinder Gardens- Let's Get'em Dirty!" that makes me wish I still had some child victims of my own around to dig in the dirt with me. (The one in the picture turned 21 on Wednesday.)

I've spoken a lot recently with my kids about what they remember about the garden growing up. Surprisingly, they don't remember how much they loved sticking seeds in the dirt, or picking up worms, although my daughter did recall that she liked planting out potted plants. Mostly what they remember, as I wrote about in a prior post is the "forced labor." Although, to be fair, they also both remembered and miss the delicious fresh veggies.

They also have all bonded with their peers over their hatred of feeding the compost, which I find absolutely hilarious, and charming.

Gardening with kids is lots of fun-- you have to let go a little bit, because things get trampled, and planted wrong, and picked early, but that's part of the entertainment.

In this stage of my life, between generations as it were, I pretty much garden alone, but it's made me think about how to get my young adults involved in the garden again. I'd love for them to see it as bonding with the goddess, and with me, and bring them back in for the joy of it.

I could try bribing them with food I suppose, but here's the question: How do you get apartment-dwelling, time-crunched young adults back into the garden?

Ginger carrot scones
from myrecipes.com more or less

3/4 cup all-purpose flour plus 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup old-fashioned oats
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
>1/3 cup sugar or substitute 1/4 c honey
1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup finely grated carrot (about 1 1/2 carrots)
2 tablespoons diced crystallized ginger or 1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 large egg
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon buttermilk (if using honey, reduce to 1/3 cup buttermilk or sour cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 425°.

Mix together first 5 ingredients and 1/3 cup sugar. Cut in cold butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add carrot and ginger and mix until just blended. Whisk together egg, buttermilk, and vanilla in a separate bowl until blended. Add to flour mixture, and mix just until blended and slightly moist. (Dough will be sticky.)

Spoon in large tablespoonsful onto a lightly greased baking sheet (or line a sheet with parchment paper). Bake at 425° for 15 minutes or until golden.