Blog Archives

Clouds In My Coffee

8/28/2019

Such a morning!

Clouds in my coffee and....

This morning, I was up early watering and I kept getting hit in the face with clouds. Beautiful, cool, moist clouds on a day predicted to be sunny and warm. I love the mountains so much - especially when things like this happen. It was gone before I knew it and my day started and didn't stop until 12 hours later. But I had this. I carried this with me throughout the day.
I spent the morning at the Farmer's Market in Westcliffe, encountering friends and vendors. I have a cast iron dealer, a tamale dealer, a clean, lean Valley grown meat dealer, a CBD oil dealer, a Hippie Jelly dealer, a homemade pretzel roll dealer, and a peaches and cream corn dealer.
After that I joined Cord at the latest greenhouse in Silvercliff and was present as the building inspector came to give Cord the green light on the foundation. Of course, he was duly impressed with the quality of Cord's work. He builds strong and true and it all passed with flying colors. They will pour the foundation on Friday with our sons helping of course.
Cord then returned with me to the Farmer's Market - where he is considered a unicorn - a rare sighting - and he got to hug friends and talk shop and eat fresh, home-made jerky. (The salt is the 6th ingredient!)
Just before we left, some brilliant guy named Bill appeared on the street with a truckload of clean, SEED GROWN fruit! It was beautiful and perfect and inexpensive. By the time I was done there were cases of glory - apples, pears, Italian plums and peaches, beautiful, beautiful peaches. He was from Avondale and grew his 500 trees from seed so they adapt and are naturally selected - very little bug damage as they grow resistant to bugs and disease. We even graduated from the same high school! We wheeled and dealed joyfully and I came home with the motherlode and WAY too much to do.
We discussed making peach leather and he was so helpful. I have only made it on parchment paper and he told me his delightful method. He butters a large piece of glass, (like a sliding glass door size!), and then uses an industrial blender and pours the peach puree on the glass and spreads it out thin. He surrounds the glass with fine screen attached to wood and places another piece of glass over the top to keep out the bugs and for aeration. Brilliant! He was lovely and we loaded the car inspired.
After lunch, Cord and I hurried home so I could grab Wulfgar and take him to the dentist in Salida. I drove through the construction on the way there and he drove all the way back - (he's got a permit), while I gazed at the Arkansas River and the rocks and played John Denver all the way home.
For dinner we had grilled, clean, lean, Valley-grown beef burgers (on pretzel rolls except for me - lettuce burger), and grilled, clean, in-the-husk Peaches and Cream Corn. Oh my belly! I should be in bed but all I can think about are those clouds...

Took this with the flash - I'll fix it tomorrow!

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August in the Rockies

8/17/2019

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My favorite time to be in the garden - or just outside. The whole sky lights up and there is an aching beauty of hope that we're all gonna be alright. I feel the stress diminish on the breeze and become hyper aware of the birds and the silence. I am aware of my breath and turn in slow circles to take it all in. I should be making dinner but August in the Rockies means dinner's not ready until 10pm. Not exactly healthy so we stay up later digesting. One of my favorite songs on earth is the song of the coyote - always different, always hilarious, always joyful. Sometimes I am lying in bed with the cool, silky mountain air coming in the window and I hear them as I drift off to sleep. What would I do without them? The ground animals would take over our life. Coyote does good work.

Last night we ate the last of Joseph Lofthouse's glorious Maxima Squash mix. From last year! They were still as fragrant as a melon and the seeds were perfect. I will be offering this amazing squash Grex this fall. This is obviously a long storing squash as in the heat of August, and without a root cellar, they have stored perfectly. How I loved them. Another crop is coming on beautifully amongst the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant. Since it snowed and froze throughout June, we will need September to finish many things and I am calling that in. I have talked to Mother and she assures me we can have September. Since our season is something like June 1 to September 1 - it is a lot to ask. But hope springs eternal. This squash went with beautiful Eggplant Parmesan, from eggplants I got from growers down below. Delicious! Comfort food! Color! Beauty! Ahhhh.

Cleome serrulata, to know it is to love it. In the apricot light of evening it glows and glows. In the morning it buzzes and buzzes with bees and other pollinators. This is the Rocky Mountain Bee Plant - it grows all around us here in the west - high and low. It is a glorious thing to see en masse. Another name for it is Stinking Clover - ha! The plant has a smell I have never noticed to be unpleasant as I strip the seed pods that burst into my hand each fall. Cattle and deer do not touch it but the pollinators are out of their minds with joy over it. It is called the fourth sister by some tribes, as they knew that wherever it grows, the bees come. That is why it is encouraged to volunteer in the Maxima patch.

Today on my early morning walk I was blessed with this image. Winterfat, backlit and glowing in the morning sun. I love this plant. Krascheninnikovia lanata, starting to bloom and blow my mind with it's wonderful luminescence. It greets me on my walk. Its medicinal properties are mysterious and wise and it beckons me to touch it and feel its soft power. I had to report this to you. It will be in full bloom soon and you will see it from the lowest desert all the way to the high high. A great textural plant for the perennial garden, it lives long and strong. In the bottom left corner of this image you will see the flowering tops of Artemisia firgada, Fringed Sage, another fragrant favorite. Our beloved Doberman Coco used to roll upside down and backwards in the new growth of this staple plant, cleaning her coat and perfuming herself with sage - she knew what's what. I put springs of it in my car to keep it fresh.
The Rockies are full of food, flowers and medicine - all coming and going as Mother decides. Each year is different and this year has been just amazing so far. Snow = Wildflowers! Thank you Mother!

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Rocky Mountain Summer

8/9/2019

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It's been a while Mountain Types! I've been hiding in the woods for a bit - I like it here. Our Mothership Greenhouse Facility is ROCK AND ROLL! Although it's kind of a mess - it's still amazing. Nothing can touch these greenhouses - they perform like a dream come true. I am slowly getting my tropical fruit in - but was too late to purchase organic Guava and Bananas from the source I prefer. Meanwhile, Kava Kava is gorgeous, Ginger in bloom is a thing to see, lemon grass is wild and free, the Fig is growing with gusto, the orange tree has all new growth, the Lemon Verbena turned into a tree, Rosemary is holding it's own against the volunteer tomatoes and I had to use loppers to cut out the spent Broccoli and Cauliflower plants - whew! Pomegranate and Passion Fruit are waiting their turn to be planted.
My tomatoes need strung up, my trees need planted in the ground instead of growing through the bottom of the pot, I need to plant another round of greens and meanwhile seed happens in there all the time and then I can't pull it out until it's finished. It is magical in there - and the Seed Room - a safe place, a cool and quiet place. I retreat to it and sit in front of the fan I have in there to dry 2019 seed. The Rockies are full of wildflowers, there is rain every afternoon, we've dug trenches and installed a French Drain to divert flash flooding and this spring the Dream Team rebuilt all the outside structures that grow tomatoes. They also mounted hail guards over all of the tomatoes and squash growing in the open. Whew!
The picture above shows the ultra fast Candy Mountain Sweet Corn growing in front of the greenhouse - not only does the corn benefit from the water coming off the building but the corn and mulch cool the ground so the air moving in through the vents via natural convection is cooler than the air being pushed out the top vents. Sweet!
Notice how short the corn is and it is beginning to tassle! Candy Mountain gets busy putting on ears and they will come to fruition so fast I can hardly keep up. It was bred to grow short - only 5' but it often grows even shorter. It takes less water to grow short corn...
I am going to try to blog more - there is so much to share - soon pics of the seed room and the jars, jars, jars of seed on the wall - so beautiful.
Cord and Beau build Smart Greenhouses day and night, Wulfgar is helping me in the garden and acting and singing his butt off and Max is interning at a law firm and will begin his second year of Law School soon. They are all 4.0 students and they are all thriving and striving. Thanks for listening - I'll be back... Oh... more soon on Cord's Heart - he continues to live and love.

I think tassling is about as thrilling as germination....

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Author

Penn Parmenter is a high altitude gardener, seedswoman and student of the earth. She is married to Cord Parmenter - an awesome gardener, gorgeous man and a master blacksmith. Together they own and run a sustainable greenhouse design company, Smart Greenhouses LLC and Penn grows seed for her seed business, Miss Penn's Mountain Seeds. She is a mother of three sons and an outdoorswoman. Penn forages wild food, hunts big game, fishes, preserves, maintains a huge organic forest garden and occasionally makes dinner. At home you can find her in her greenhouses as well as in the wilderness - nose to the ground, butt in the air, trying to identify Colorado natives.