My Mom's Hands

 
" My mom's hands are busy, and restless. During my childhood they were often covered in all purpose flour or garden soil. (How many of us have internalized an image of that classic gesture: our mother wiping her hands on a kitchen towel?) Mom also sewed, played the piano, made crafts and squeezed music out of the accordion. Year after year, her green thumbs coaxed sweet peas, gladiolas and mammoth sunflowers to burst forth from the dry, cracked prairie soil. Her hands are strong, feminine, nurturing, and gentle."
--from These Hands are Our Hands, a chapbook by Lori Weidenhammer

I was so pleased that yesterday mom and I could stroll through the Laburnum Walk at VanDusen Gardens while it is blooming. I was also very grateful that mom and dad and I got to look at bees under the microscope as we dropped in on the Environmental Youth Alliance's citizen science program.
 

One day I heard a visitor to the gardens complaining that he had not seen an arbutus tree in VanDusen botanical gardens. Dude, they are here before you even get into the gardens and this little one is blooming its heart out.

And here's one of my favorite native mid spring bee plants, the blue camas. The last of the mason bees are feeding on these and the native lupins. I'm so happy to see them here. Hope you all had a great Mother's Day.

A Mother's Day Gift Idea: Grab-and-Go Seeding Kit

As I headed out to the garden to plant seeds yesterday, I threw all the necessary bits and pieces into an old lunch bag. It dawned on me that a grab-and-go seeding kit would be a great gift for Mother’s Day or for a friend’s birthday. This kit keeps you from hunting all through the house like an idiot for one or other of the bits and pieces needed to get on with putting in the garden.

Here’s what you’ll need:

One small waterproof container for keeping dry seed packs dry.

One small waterproof container for any wet seeds you are carrying.

String for marking lines.

Measuring tape or a small ruler for double-checking spacing between seeds and between rows.

Scissors for cutting open seed packs and cutting string.

A packet of inoculant for legume seeds.

Small package of garden markers for plant names.

A grease pencil for marking plant names.

Sandpaper and nail clippers for last minute seed scarification.

A good pair of garden gloves--the ones with rubber on one side.

Two sticks just long enough to fit in the lunch kit for holding the string to mark the rows.

 A couple of zip-lock baggies for the opened seed packets.

 One large zip-lock bag for holding seed germination notes and garden plans.

Add in a few packages of some beautiful seeds for bees and you’re good to go!

For Mom

As I was researching my talk for Stone Soup this weekend I realized how much my love of baking comes from my mom. My mom is a wonderful cook. I had a sweet tooth as a child. Still do. Mom allowed me complete freedom in the kitchen. She taught me the basics of baking and I taught myself to bake new things as soon as I could read cookbooks. Mom used to say I made better meringues than she did. I had beginner's luck and a naive fearlessness.

My mom made me fantastic birthday cakes. My childhood birthdays each had a theme.  My favourite was my Raggedy Anne cake made with coconut on the icing. Mom indulged my love of chocolate and she made really good cakes from scratch with farm eggs. Cake mixes were a joke to me. Who needs a mix for something as easy as a basic cake? In fact, cake mixes were an insult to the intelligent home baker. Icing in a tin was an abomination. Frozen Sarah Lee cakes were the Food of the Damned. We were country women and we baked from scratch.

Today sweet friend Catherine made some blackberry oatmeal squares from scratch in honor of Mother's Day which we ate in her dining room with whipped cream. She thickens frozen blackberries with cornstarch and cooks them down with brown sugar. Delicious!

Happy Mother's Day!