Author Archives: thesalemgarden

I love to garden, and blog about gardening, horticultural therapy and gardening adaptations and Salem Massachusetts!

What We Do With (Old) Pumpkins

Get this, we bury them, strategically, around the yard and woods… We really do! We have put them into the compost before but they take a long time to break down and we’ve been known to end up with crazy pumpkin plants coming up everywhere. So, we prefer to make a sport of choosing some good growing spots and plunking them into or sometimes, onto, the ground.

I love this white pumpkin. This one wasn’t carved this year because we  didn’t get all of them carved. It’s kind of a long story that involves the emergency room and stitches. We won’t go there today.


Michael and I worked together to clear off the front steps and load the wheelbarrow… (not barrel, barrow, thank you spell check!)

Winnie was helping us, he loves to help whenever he can!

Did I mention that it’s very cold here today… 38 minus the wind chill. The wind is blowing at 30 or 40 miles per hour… it’s cold!Hence, the lovely hat and scarf  🙂
We identified a spot for the white pumpkin on the hill leading to the woods… This gets a good amount of sun in the summer and the vines will have a place to spread out.Michael just dug a little hole and buried it in..
I helped him… we are a team after all!  Now, its good to go. In the spring the vines will come and if weather conditions are good and the bee population does it’s job, we’ll have lots of pumpkins from this. It may be run over by sledders all winter, but that’s okay. I think the kid activity actually helps things grow in a weird way… it’s just good energy!And the process is repeated with the hardy mums, they’ll likely re-emerge to enjoy next year. We just look for a good spot, plunk them in and see what happens…

Spring will be here before we know it! This gives us lots to look forward to all winter..

Stay safe and warm today!

Love, Michele (and Michael)

Beans, Beans, Beans

A week or so ago as I was cleaning up I encountered my usual fall “crop” of dried bean pods.  Every year some are just left out there and I always consider them to be one of my gifts of procrastination. They can be hulled and brought in. It’s kind of a fun activity and the kids enjoy it too!

Here we have Kentucky pole beans just as their ready to eat!And here we have the dried out, worn out looking remnants of the season.  I think that most of us find these! It can’t just be me!  I take them out and let them dry for another week or so in the air.Same story with my scarlet runner beans. I grow them as an ornamental, but I’ve read that  they are eaten in Central America, so they can be considered edible. They are lovely growing on a fence, trellis or even a telephone pole and hummingbirds and butterflies are attracted to them. These are truly finished for the season!
Coming out of the shell…And full of color! The kids love to play with these. The last few years I’ve had much more than I’d ever need for the following year. They make pretty decorations in a cup or bowl during the winter.

After their dry (about a week or so) I place them in a labeled envelope and store them in a cool dry place until next spring. One important note is that you need to stick with heirloom varieties. Hybrid beans won’t produce when planted.  Don’t try this with beans harvested from a big box store plant. You’ll likely be wasting time.

Whew, okay, maybe I’m back!  Not a bad post for someone who’s struggling with blogger’s block!

Enjoy Everything!

Michele

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Stuck

I’ve been feeling kind of stuck for the past several days. There’s so much going on in the world and in my world right now that I just don’t know what to say. It feels wrong to write about things like drying out beans or next years pumpkin crop or the fun that we have here in Salem. I love all of that, it’s where my heart and head usually are, but lately my thoughts have been elsewhere.  I guess the thing to do is just jump back in like nothing has happened, like people haven’t lost their homes and lives to the ocean and wind and cold. Like the small  battles that we’re fighting here in our house right now are all just fine, no big deal.  One of the things that I love about blogging is how much of a vacation it is for me. I want The Salem Garden to be a  vacation minute for everyone who takes the time to stop by.  I love the sense of community, the people all over the world who connect and comment and share.  Who’d have ever thought we could do this fifteen or twenty years ago? So, today I will make a list of posts for the week, and tomorrow I will post about beans.  But when I’m posting about beans I’ll be praying for those in need and for those who have lost everything or who are having difficulty. That’s not what The Salem Garden is about right now, but it is what I’m praying and thinking about, every day, especially when I’m in the garden.

The Day After Sandy, the Day Before Halloween..

Today feels like such a weird day. The storm has mostly moved west of here so we are in cleanup mode in Salem. That’s good, because tomorrow is Halloween, our most celebrated day of the year. We made it through the storm in good shape. There were power outages, although not to us, our lights just flickered a few times. Lots of trees and branches came down and people lost siding, boats and things that weren’t secured well. Overall there is a strong sense of relief. I can’t feel it yet myself. I keep looking at photos of the devastation in the mid-Atlantic states and feeling a huge sense of loss. That’s where I grew up and where most of our family and so many friends still live.  The damage is overwhelming and the story is just starting to be told. It leaves me feeling uneasy, unsettled and not able to celebrate anything other than our good fortune this time.

Here are some photos that Michael took at work yesterday. He posted the last one on facebook last night with the caption “a bird’s eye view of Sandy”… That made me smile for a minute  😉

Halloween Saturday in Salem–A Smile for You!

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Yesterday I promised that I’d post photos that would make you smile today and here they are! Salem was packed full of people having fun last night.  Here’s a little bit of what we saw… Enjoy!

Watching and Waiting

The title of this post has changed a couple of times since I took these photos the other day. I started with something like “Fall Color, Now and In Years Past”… I was going to include photos of past years too, when the colors were brighter and prettier. Then I went to “The Colors Before the Storm”.. thinking that all the little bits of color that we had this year would be gone by Tuesday. Then it went to “The Calm and Color Before the Storm” which morphed into “Watching and Waiting”.  I’m pretty settled with this one. It best describes how I’m feeling here on the coast of New England today. Hurricane Sandy is projected to track south of us a little bit.  We will likely experience strong winds, rain and very high tides.  That’s our best case scenario, which isn’t too bad for New Englanders who don’t live directly on the ocean. I’m thinking a lot of our countless family members and friends who live on the water or  right in the mid-Atlantic area that may be hit the hardest.

My “fall color in the garden” photos are pathetic this year. Here’s what I have:

A little pink and yellow and a happy looking spruce tree…Bits of yellow..and red..and the garden. That’s it!

As you can see, we went from green, to bits of yellow and red to brown. I kept waiting for the day when I’d get outside and take those beautiful photos! It happens some years.  I never made it out of town during the peak times to see the foliage north of here but it was probably quite lovely. This is a very small concern when we have much bigger worries on our minds this weekend.

I’m thinking of all of my east coast friends and family this morning and sending you love and safe thoughts!

I hear that Halloween is being celebrated wildly downtown.  If I make it down there later today or tomorrow I’ll posts some photos that will be sure to make you smile!

Love, Michele

Pumpkins Pumpkins Everywhere!

It started with these two pumpkins that we grew…

then a few more were added to the landscape in the front yard…and onto the front porch…

Some of those came from our Columbus Day trip to Russell Orchards..

All of our kids were with us that day, nothing else makes me happier!

This sign ended up in the front porch planter this year..So, we now have this…Then the older girls went to youth group and came home with these amazing creations!And my oldest daughter baked a cake with fondant pumpkins…

That looked like this 🙂 It was four layers, with chocolate mousse filling…seriously…

We really have a lot of pumpkins.

Do your pumpkins multiply like ours do?

Just wondering…

An October Saturday Night in Salem

Last night we took the kids for a walk downtown with the idea that we would visit a Haunted House that Michael had tickets for. We got there and looked around the entrance. This is everyone hanging in the door making the decision about whether or not to go in. I was very clear, I don’t do haunted houses, sorry, but I did strongly encourage the rest to give it a try if they wanted to… The final verdict was “not today, maybe another night”… Just call us “the brave family”!We walked by the Salem Witch Museum, where my oldest son was at work. The museum erects these canopies for the month of October so that guests don’t have to wait outside in bad weather. The line stretched out the door and way down the street! Needless to say I had a very tired teenager coming in at 10:45 after work.There are lots and lots of places like this right now… we, of course, say hi and keep going  🙂  but the crowds waiting to vist are huge!Here’s one of many guided tours that we saw. There are lots of these right now with different themes, everything from “ghosts of Salem” to a food tour that stops at different restaurants. They look like fun!Salem Common is the place to head for carnival food and games…
There’s a cute hay maze on the common for toddlers and small children (and they don’t have to be “too small” to enjoy it)!Donations collected at the maze benefit the schools.
This young lady was encouraging people to visit one of the haunted houses. She said that we just had to say “monsters be gone” and they would back off if we were too scared.. still no takers from my crowd! Michael looks ready to go!There’s lots of interesting shops to visit..and a witchcraft and wizardry school..
Or for a lighter experience you can relax on the ferris wheel…My little kids loved this ride..So did Dad, but he was concerned about the safety of it. We’ll stick with the ferris wheel and merry go round next time.You can win a great witch decoration at the water gun game..

And there are ghosts in windows everywhere…

Just a very small glimpse of an October night in downtown Salem. Next Saturday the costumes will be out! We just saw a few last night, nothing too exciting, but their coming!!

Great Achievement at Salem High and 1000 Varieties of Pears in Salem!

It’s nice to wake up at 5:45am to good and interesting news in the paper.

The front page story in today’s Salem News is about our high school’s AP program. The rate of students taking advanced placement classes has risen dramatically and the success rate on completion has too!  Here’s today’s coverage of the Secretary of Education’s visit and the Massachusetts Math and Science Initiative Program’s recognition of our students. This creative program provides cash incentive to students who pass the AP exams, and to their teachers. My oldest son has benefited greatly from this program and I hope that his siblings will too.  The Salem Public School system has it’s challenges but the schools, students, parents and community are working tirelessly to overcome them. I’m so proud that my children attend the Salem Public Schools. Their education is amazing in many, many ways.

I also have to share this interesting letter to the editor, written by Jeanne Stella of Salem. It describes some of the horticultural history of the northern part of Salem and how the street names reflect that history. North Salem was once farm land and orchards. Imagine growing 3000 trees, with 1000 varieties of pears!  You can read Jeanne Stella’s letter here. We are a city of gardeners. It’s in the soil and it’s passed down through many generations!

I’m hoping to do a little bit of Halloween touring later today and tomorrow. We’ll see where the kids and I land. Photos will be coming!

Enjoy everything!

Michele