Butternut Squash Lasagna, Deep Fried Brownies, and Tree Destruction

Sorry, no pics today, but thought I’d mention a pretty good experience making Giada De Laurentiis’ Butternut Squash. Turns out wifey likes her butternut squash. Who knew? Have to throw some in the ground next year. Anyway, the recipe turned out pretty good except that the cookies came through a bit much for my taste. The ingredient list is a little ambiguous in that regard. 3 amaretto cookies? What kind? How big? There may well be a standard, but even at Zupan’s High Zoot Grocery Palace, I had to substitute “Italian Almond Cookies” on the assumption that they were the basic idea. Having tasted one as I was cooking… I noted a pretty strong “cookie” flavor in the final dish.

Also put together a cute little gift jar of brownies from a neighbor, and at 30 minutes in the oven they were basically boiling in oil– the recipe called for 2/3 cup. I took them right out and poured the excess off. Anyway, after cooling, they came out OK, but again, Dutch process cocoa doesn’t do it for me for brownies. Just leaves things a little flat.

OK, finally, a GARDENING post! Had the arborist here to look at a couple of the cedars and the world’s largest weed cherry, and he gave me a bid of $2K to remove the cherry and grind out the stump. It’s a lot, but I’m not climbing that 75 foot, 3-trunked hydra to do battle. He also recommended removing the cedars damaged in the storm, but I’m going to have them cleaned up and lightened and see how that goes. Like most things in the yard, the previous owner never pruned them, and they’re doomed. Still, I hate to take them out until I have a good idea of how to replace them.

In that spirit, I took my chainsaw to the cherry laurel that I’d tried to make into a birdhouse tree last year. Cherry laurels are like… zombies… or Jason… they don’t die. Last year, I cut this huge tree down to three standing trunk pieces, carved off all the lateral branches and leaves, and mounted tree houses and perches on it. It grew back so vigorously that I couldn’t see the birdhouses anymore after a few months. So, I cut into it and poured tree death concentrate all over the stumps and into a bunch of drilled holes. Nothing. That didn’t even kill any leaves on it.

Fine, I removed all the birdhouses (and bee block) and cut it all down to a 2 ft stump. I know for certain that it would grow back if I left it at that, so I’ll have the arborist grind out the stump, too. And pour holy water on it. And light it on fire with gasoline. And pee on the ashes. And it’ll still grow back.

The longer I’m here, the more I want to remove all these weeds that the previous owner left and replace them with nicely shaped, productive plantings. We’ll start with the monster cherry and see how that feels. I want to put in replacement trees for each one I take out (I’m actually ahead by about… 6 trees). It makes me a little sad to cut down a massive thing like that cherry tree– weed or not. It’s really pretty impressive in its sheer size, but it also drops hard, bitter little cherries (that usually take root) everywhere, gets nasty infestations of aphids, and will do a real number on something when it inevitably falls over.

When you buy a place like this you have to face your own idealism. Being a environazi, treehugger, I would never have seen myself chopping down so much stuff. But the seedling cherry, the cherry laurels, the blackberries, etc. are all just blights. They choke out everything else, host all kinds of nastiness, and do little or nothing (the blackberries are good if you can get at them) good for anyone. Add the previous owner’s laissez-faire gardening technique, and you have a HUGE mess that’s more like a junky back alley than a pleasant garden. So far, though, I’ve been just working around these big guys.

Putting in a diversity of productive plantings is good for the soil, the birds, and my mental health. It’s been a lot of work and money, but I see real progress towards a place that draws us out into it. I want the kids to have a little dreamworld back there that they can watch, taste, and remember. I think it’s inevitable that most of what she left behind gets taken out. I’m not a sculpture gardener– someone who plants their yard so that it meets the basic principles of design school and then just looks at it. I want a place that I can use. I want it to feed us and to keep changing as we do.

I’ve also started to realize that I don’t care that much about four season interest. Winter’s becoming a welcome respite. It’s cold and wet and everything dies back. That’s winter. It’s a good time to clean up, gather your thoughts, and take some breaks. I like my evergreen stuff, but it turns out that I’m more OK with a dormant garden than I thought I would be.