(late) Mid-May update

Maybe - just maybe - the weather is starting to settle down a bit.  Although putting a rash statement like that in writing does make me just a bit nervous; even if Spring has finally sprung (so to speak), things like hailstones are ever with us in the warm season.  And we have seen a few of them already this year.

 

Nonetheless, the forecast for the next 6 days shows highs of 2 digits that start with a 7 or an 8 every day, and lows well above freezing.  And that's new for 2010, so I'm hopeful.  The effect on the "crops" is modest so far - a few of the peas have reached heights sufficient to reach out and grab one of the trellising wires, and the lettuce is starting to approach an edible size (not that we're going to be having any of it just yet unless I plant some random mesclun, which I might just do).  One of the strawberry plants produced a red berry, which was promptly eaten by something (not me); I'm probably going to have to investigate netting or something in order to eat any of the ground-level berries at all.  The raspberry canes are producing flowers and branches.  Two of my tomato plants are peeking up above their wall-o-water, and I finally felt reasonably confident in putting in 2 eggplants and planting the kid's pepper plants - all of them in wall-o-waters.  And we have a lonely volunteer potato - apparently the seed potato was overlooked when we harvested and when we turned all of the dirt out to line that top box last month.

 

The tomato plants' progress is of interest for future planning.  The plants that have overtopped the wall-o-water are in one that had 2 cells emptied by leaks, creating much more of a "teepee" effect (the top more or less closed in).  In the wall-o-water that didn't have this issue, there is about an 8-inch diameter opening at the top, and the tomatoes there are still pretty short.  So next year, I think I'll leave a couple of cells dry and make sure that the top closes up for all my wall-o-water plants - I think we're getting a better greenhouse effect that way.  But I'll keep an eye on progress; maybe the shorter plants will produce more tomatoes or something.

 

Wall-o-waters are always tricky, it seems.  They really want a flat surface to sit on, and leaks in the wrong places can be disastrous.  I put one up around the pepper plants last weekend only to find that a) it had several leaks adjacent to one another, and b) they were on the low side, as far as I can tell.  The peppers survived the collapse with no particular damage, it seems so far, but I'm keeping an eye on the replacement wall-o-water.

 

As for the asparagus, I believe I have sprouts visible in at least 7 of the 8 crowns I planted now.  I've added dirt to some of the taller ones, although we have a way to go before the box is leveled out.  Most of the taller sprouts are becoming fernlike, as expected.  They're not very big, and I can't quite envision how a single summer's growth will be enough to allow us to eat some next spring.  Still, it IS only May.

 

The blueberry plants seem happy enough in their barrels of peat.  One of them flowered a bit, but seems to have thought better of it, and the other may be about to.  Since I bought them later than planned, they're both the same variety, which I hear depresses the fruit production.  If we don't get much out of them in the next couple of years, other than landscape interest, I will investigate buying a couple more of some "other" variety - a bit tricky since the original pair were labeled only "blueberry".  Although, you know, in nature it seems unlikely that they'd produce a patch of blueberry bushes of various varieties, so we must be likely to get something out of two of the same kind in proximity.

 

I think I'm going to start putting in my other warm-weather seedlings this weekend, given the forecast.  But the pepper plants are staying in the wall-o-water until they show signs of producing substantive fruit - supposedly they want a "long, hot summer", and by golly, I'm going to do my best to give them one.  Hopefully this year I can find starts of single zucchini, cukes, and canteloupe - last year's 2" pot of 6 cuke plants was a bit difficult to manage.  But the pickles they produced are extremely tasty!

So fast you can practically watch it grow

Yeah, right.  Maybe in some other part of the country, but not here.  Nonetheless, I have about 5-6 spears of asparagus surfacing, finally.  Not from all of the crowns, and the first one that showed up has since dried up and broken off, which seems a bit sinister, but I do seem to have planted them correctly enough to get something started, anyway.

 

I'm sure they weren't helped by the overnight snowstorm the other day.  We got maybe an inch on the grass and plants, and it was melted by 11 am, give or take.  Nothing seems to have been fazed by it, fortunately.  And, as noted above, the asparagus are finally emerging, ever so slowly.

 

Got more done this weekend, despite still feeling rather wrung out from a cold that has been far more influential than I would prefer.  Tomatoes are in their barrels, enjoying the climate-controlled comfort of their wall-o-waters (is that walls-o-water?).  And the backyard drip system is hooked up to its timer, in order to water the tomatoes and the window box where the remainder of the unplanted strawberries went.  So at the moment, we have a lot of drips watering not much of anything at all, since it makes no sense to put summer annuals in until things warm up a bit.  Looks a little stupid, but so be it - the tomatoes are being consistently watered.

 

And we got the tumbling composter built.  The instructions were absolutely correct - that was a two-man job.  Preferably men with 3 or 4 arms each.  Thirty pages of instructions later, it's sitting in the gravel drive next to the other composter, with some of the top layer of that box inside (and as soon as I get home tonight, a bag of grass clippings will join it).  Tumbling is much (!) easier than turning things with a pitchfork, that's for sure.  Maybe we'll get something out of it this year (please don't point out that I have 13 bags of mushroom compost sitting in that same area that I need to do something with, not to mention the 1 bag left over from last year - that would be like protesting at any plans I might have this year to plant purple bush beans, just because we still have gallons of them frozen from last summer).

 

The strawberries and raspberries and blueberries seem to be settling in nicely.  The strawberry and blueberry plants had fruit or flowers already in place, and I know that I'm supposed to strip all that off to ensure that they put their energy into roots, but I hate wasting work in progress like that, so they stayed.  I'll regret it later, no doubt.

 

My daughter tells me that I am not to plant any peppers until she gets home from school (in about 2 weeks) - apparently she has several large pepper plants growing happily in her apartment in Phoenix.  I hope they will make the transition successfully.  For some reason, I have never been able to grow peppers with any sort of yield.  Last summer, I think we got 1 fruit off of two plants - and if I recall, it was there when we put the plant in the box, so I don't think I can exactly take credit for it.  We shall see.  I'll give them wall-o-waters this year and see if that helps.

 

Thinned out the brussels sprout and lettuce seedlings last night - possibly the first time I've brought myself to thin.  But I want heads of lettuce this year, rather than random leaves of mesclun, so thinning is required.  I admit to replanting one of the thinned seedlings into an area where nothing had come up, so my "don't waste things" gene was at least a bit appeased.

 

I think, too, that I might have a little space for potatoes this year again - places where no potatoes have gone before (or other nightshade family plants).  Since I think there are sprouting potatoes in the pantry, well...

Finally!

Pictures to come later, but much got accomplished this past weekend - and not all of it by me!  I have 2 visible, definitely growing, asparagus shoots!  Out of 8 plants planted, unfortunately, but we're making progress at last.  The soil temps must have crossed some threshold or something.  Peas, lettuce, onions, chard, and brussels sprouts are all doing well with no drama.

 

It did not rain this weekend, but I came down with a cold, so I feel especially proud of having accomplished:

• Mulching around the raised beds - at last!!!  It's only been 3 years.
• Positioning and filling and planting out 2 blueberry barrels.  If they don't like a planting mix that is 3/4 peat moss and 1/4 mushroom compost, then they just aren't willing to be pleased.
• Planting out 13 strawberry plants and 3 raspberry canes.
• Re-hooking up zone 2 on my drip timer and getting it programmed.

The garden looks really good with the new mulch, and having it makes the walking a bit easier.  I'm no longer tripping when I catch my foot in the edge of the weed barrier fabric, and the mulch has leveled out a few places that were decidedly on the low side. 

 

I still have 13 of the 15 bags of mushroom compost to do something with, and the new composter to build, and tomatoes to get in, and, and, and (the beauty of a garden is that there is always something to be done in it)...  But visible progress is always a good thing - and to have convinced at least part of the asparagus to give things a try is marvelous.

 

So the tiny asparagus spears were about 2" tall when I saw them yesterday.  If they're as fast-growing as they're reputed to be, will that make them a foot tall today?

 

The "to do" list versus the weather

According to my phone (which, of course, knows all), it's going to rain this weekend.  Bother!  I have things to do outdoors, and a hint of a headcold that needs to go away, and combining those factors with rain will not come out well, I think.  I guess it could be worse - that slightly colder, solid stuff - but precipitation of any sort, if it's planning on being here all day, or both days, just says to me, "Stay indoors."

 

And I have indoor things to do, more of them than I'd like, actually, most of them to do with paint in some way, so I can certainly stay profitably occupied there.  But the blueberry stuff is being delivered this weekend - two barrels, compost and peat moss - and the mulch for between the boxes so we'll finally look semi civilized in the garden, and I could get the blueberry bushes planted and the strawberries and TBD berries (black-, rasp-, something of that sort) if the weather would just cooperate a tiny bit.

 

No progress on the asparagus front, although I got busy the other night and did something I've been meaning to do for about a year - shorten the leaky hoses in that box.  They were so long that it was near impossible to set them out evenly, so some parts of the soil were getting a thorough soaking and others left dry.  The asparagus probably won't care, but I'm happier.  I think, after reading yet more websites on asparagus cultivation, that I'm going to remove the extra dirt from the box and put it aside to add back as they grow, rather than bury them now in order to get things evened out.  Maybe it wouldn't matter in the end, but the majority of advice still talks about filling the trench in gradually, and I'd like to eat my own asparagus some day, so I'm not going to rebel.  (for the record, cutting raw asparagus into 1" pieces and sauteeing in olive oil with sliced button mushrooms until the mushrooms start to brown makes a seriously wonderful dish.)

 

Since the peas are all starting to pop up now, I got the trellis wires run between my fence-post stakes.  The only worry I have now is that the vines will find the square-foot grid wires first and I'll have to unwind them from there and coax them onto the trellis.  Kind of a minor worry, though, really.  I've grown peas before and they seem not to get too clingy until they're about the height of the first trellis wire.

 

Back to my list of outdoor tasks (not all food-garden-related):

• set up blueberry barrels
• buy blueberries, strawberries and other berries and plant them
• mulch around garden boxes
• spray the gravel drive for weeds now before the goats-head thorns mature (worst seedcasing on earth bar none!!!!)
• clean up various perennial beds
• clean out any containers worth preserving (a lot of the terra-cotta ones had frost damage this past winter - I KNEW it was miserably cold this year)
• dig out a couple of bushes which have far overgrown the available space
• paint a place on the front of the garage that was apparently behind a downspout, which has since moved

it goes on...

 

Well, it's forecast to rain today and it's not currently raining, so maybe, if I'm lucky, the forecast and reality will fail to match up in a similar way tomorrow.

A little momentum

I have read a number of websites and books that refer to how to set up an asparagus bed.  By and large, the approach is pretty similar across the board, although there does seem to be some disagreement on whether the whole plant-and-slowly-fill-in-the-trench approach is really necessary.  I think I've followed the basic instructions, and as a result, my third box is a bit of a mess right now - there being nowhere else to put the dirt from the trenches while waiting to slowly fill it in, I put it on the side of the box that didn't have anything planted in it, thinking that if asparagus truly grows 10 inches per day (it was in one of the books), I'd get the dirt back in the trenches and be able to put in the berry plants quite quickly.

 

That was about 3 weeks ago, and I'm still waiting.  In fact, I've reverted to childhood, and am having a hard (and not so successful) time not digging the crowns up to see if anything is happening.  The only sort of progress that seems to be occurring, and it might be a delusion on my part, is that the crowns are closer to the surface of the dirt than I remember planting them.

 

Short of standing outside the box yelling either encouragement or aspersions at the plants, the only thing I can think of to do is to take the excess dirt out and put it on a tarp in the corner for a while.  That, or just bury the stupid things now and let them figure it out, or not.  After all, we don't even get to harvest from these plants at all until next spring, so they have some time to get their affairs in order.

 

On the weather front, I hesitate to admit publicly that it's really beautiful right now - statements like that tend to invoke blizzards around here in spring.  The trees are leafing out and flowering a bit, and the skies are clear and the spring shade of blue, and I've been able to skip bringing a coat to work for a few days this week.  And the peas are sprouting - although I think I have something eating a few of the seeds (do squirrels react badly to pea inoculant?) along with more lettuce and more of the brussels sprouts. 

 

I finally cracked open the boxes with my new tomato supports this past weekend.  They're as tall as I am and very sturdy.  Of course, putting them into half-barrels is going to make the tops at fingertip level, I think, but they are fairly thin, so we should be easily able to handle 2 plants per barrel.  While I was puttering with them, I also set up the wall-o-waters in the tomato barrels; I'll give them a couple of weeks to warm things up and we should be able to get tomato seedlings in by the end of the month.

 

We bought a new composter this year at Costco, since the original one is very hard to work with - scraps go in, and I think compost is being created.  There is a panel at the bottom on one side that, I think, provides access to the finished product, but I can't get it to come off and it's short and difficult to get into.  I did attempt to turn it all once, and that involved pitch-forking it all out onto a tarp and then back in in reverse order.  Anyway, bottom line is, it's a real pain and we've never got anything useful out of it yet, even if it's doing useful things.  The new one is a tumbler - or will be when we get it built.  The assembly instructions, which came in three languages, are about 30 pages long and require 2 people and power tools.  Seriously?  I feel like shipping it off to Sweden to the folks at IKEA to get it redesigned properly.  So for the moment, it's sitting in pieces in the garage until we both feel like tackling it and can find the drill.

 

No progress on the blueberry front; my husband's been down for nearly 2 weeks with a bronchitis of unspecified origin (although the doctor refers to it as a fairly common complaint in the area right now - I vote for H1N1 or the seasonal flu), and can't talk for more than about a minute without doing his dying-of-TB imitation, so ordering the necessary stuff is on hold.  That, and we just had some plaster repair done in the house and have had to repaint large swaths of wall (note to self; work on the inside of the house should be started in November when the temptation to work outside is at its nadir.  Unless, of course, it shuts down the only shower in the house, in which case it should be done in August - yes, there's a story there).

Time to cross my fingers and do sun- and rain-dances, and pray for warm weather, so the rain doesn't solidify and start breaking things.

Sprouts!

A few pictures of things that are sprouting:

lettuce

onions (volunteers from last year)

wintered-over swiss chard

peas

brussels sprouts

Finally! I was starting to think that the seeds (the only new ones this year are the brussels sprouts) were no longer any good, but they're still hanging in there. I think the asparagus is doing something, although I don't know if it's the right thing.

Got the faucet repaired this weekend, so we're operating in auto-pilot now.

Apparently, some pipes froze up last fall

Early last week, we got a chore done that I'd been putting off for a year and more.  When we built the first of the raised beds, we didn't realize that siting it on a slope without lining it would cause the dirt to leak out over time - heaven knows why that didn't occur to us, but it didn't - or maybe I was just a bit too impatient to get it up and running.  Anyway, once we realized that the dirt was slowly vanishing, I put a note on my mental gardening "to do" list to empty and line it in between seasons.  And, while "between seasons" might be starting to push it as a description for this time of year, we got it lined and should be able to retain the dirt until the weed barrier we use for lining decides to dissolve (or whatever weed barrier does).

 

Once that was in place, I could finally put the leaky hoses down on all 3 boxes (the ones on newly designated perennial bed are in place temporarily until the asparagus surfaces and I can re-bury it and even out the soil level in that box).  And then it was just a matter of hooking up the timer and valve (the timer is still set and going after a winter with last summer's battery - I didn't replace it, yet) and turning on the outside spigot and we would have irrigation on all boxes. 

 

Which was great for about 15 seconds.  That's how long it took my husband to figure out where "that dripping sound" was coming from in the house.  Apparently, the spigot froze up last winter before we had everything unhooked (probably the same early and depressing freeze that wiped out too many ripe tomatoes to count), and the pipe cracked, inside a cupboard in the kitchen.  We didn't notice it at the time, but it was resoundingly obvious this past weekend.  After mopping up, we hooked the timer and everything up to the hose that originates just outside the back door (the raised beds are in the front yard), and started calling plumbers.  I'm still not entirely sure why the leak only appears when I turn the spigot on - it's a ways inside the house and I would think the valve is downstream of the crack in the pipe.  Something to do with a freeze-proof valve, I'm told (apparently that's a bit of a misnomer).

 

It took almost a week to get artificial irrigation going this year - a week in which I am hoping the asparagus were enjoying the perfect moisture of beds that had absorbed about a foot of snow just before planting, rather than deciding it was too dry to put down roots here.  The onion transplants seemed okay with the move, as did the overwintered chard, so I'm somewhat hopeful.  None of the seeds has poked anything up yet - possibly also a factor of the delay in getting the water turned on.  And I haven't actually checked since maybe last Wednesday.

 

Nothing got done over the past weekend.  The college kid came home for Easter, and I spent much of the weekend cooking Easter dinner for 13.  Nearly everything came out nicely, although the rice side dish turned into mush - note to self not to bother with recipes that feature rice in a Crock Pot again.  And as is pretty usual when I cook for a crowd, we had way too much food (leftover macerated berries and custard sauce - good.  leftover mediterranean salsa for filet steaks, with no filet steaks leftover - not so good.)  And also as usual, the "diet" croissants (from the recipe in Frenchwomen Don't Get Fat) left nothing over at all - not even a crumb.  Three days worth of steps to make them, and worth every nanosecond.

 

I've more or less figured out what to order to do the blueberries (in containers) and finally mulch the walking areas around the raised beds, so that will probably be the next big gardening activity, since we won't be planting anything else for 2 weeks or so (tomatoes in wall-o-waters, I think can go in that early).  Maybe it's time to prune the roses or something.

Spring!

Even after the most annoying winter, spring comes at last, in some form.  Unless the earth stops tilting on its axis, the sun eventually crosses over whichever latitude line it is for the equinox and our days get longer and at least a bit warmer. 

 

For us in Denver, that finally started happening yesterday.  Despite a blizzard a week ago and another midweek last week, the sun was out in full force yesterday melting the last dregs of snow off the garden boxes and I could finally get plants in the ground.  I've rejiggered two of my three boxes already - the bottom one will now be a home to perennial crops, and I pulled off the corn fence and put stakes for peas on the middle box.  That latter change may be somewhat temporary - the peas are there in rotation to replenish the nitrogen that the corn sucks up, so after a couple of years, I'll probably put corn in again - although with some sort of protection scheme to allow us to eat it, instead of the squirrels, next time.

 

We now have in the ground:

8 asparagus crowns (2 year old plants, so we can eat next year)

8 brussels sprouts (4 squares of seeds - no guidance as to spacing in the new SFG book, so I guessed at 2 per square)

1 leftover square of rainbow chard that did not die over the winter

3 squares of onions that volunteered from one I apparently let go to seed 2 years ago (some may be garlic; I just moved everything in together)

14 squares of shell peas

4 squares of lettuce - 3 of Bibb and 1 of leaf

 

In the process of cleaning up, I found a bunch of carrots that had wintered over just fine and brought them in.  I know from poking at it a few weeks ago that the soil was frozen at least once during the winter, so I'm surprised they're in such good shape, but they are absolutely fine.

 

The perennial box is exciting for me - asparagus, strawberries, and (probably) some thornless raspberries or blackberries.  I've had strawberries in various locations over the years, and none of them worked all that well.  The bed in the back yard turned out to be the dog's absolute favorite nap spot, the strawberry jar dried out, and I only got about 3 berries from the window box (and I don't think - for sure, anyway - that those plants survived the winter).  So creating a permanent bed away from the dogs may just give us a chance at a real crop - I hope so, anyway.  And I've been wanting raspberries or blackberries for a while, but have never tried them before.

 

We're also looking at a couple of half barrels for blueberry bushes.  They won't grow in our soil - it's way too alkaline for them - so we have to plant them in a peat-based soil in containers.  But if they work, they'll be my first semi-official edible landscape plants - they're going in a (to be built) bed in the front yard that will probably include lavender and jupiter's beard and russian blue sage and other flowers.

 

I bought some new tomato supports recently, too.  They arrived Saturday, and are in boxes taller than I am (I haven't had the nerve to open one yet).  If our tomatoes grow anywhere near that tall, it should be a good year.  There are 6 of them; I'm planning on putting 2 out for eggplant (no expectations of 6-foot eggplant plants, but who knows?)

 

In order to get that nitrogen replenishment going strong, I used pea inoculant on the peas.  Lots of warning labels on that stuff - eye protection, protective gloves, ventilation...  I get that they're bacteria, but are they really that dangerous?

 

There's a lot still to do in the garden.  My top box needs to be emptied and lined with weed-barrier to keep the dirt from leaking out.  I have plans to put down some mulch between boxes (weed barrier has been reasonably effective, but it's ugly and I keep tripping on the seams).  And we've planted no warm-weather crops yet, so I've only partly finished planting my middle box.  And besides all that, I have to wait on the asparagus to grow out of its first 3 inches of dirt so I can put the rest of the dirt back over the trenches - and that's holding up planting any of the rest of that box (the dirt had to go somewhere, after all).  I really need to turn the compost and see if there's ANYTHING usable at the bottom of the pile.  And we need to reprogram the drip timers and get them going.  And put up the wires on the pea stakes to support the vines once they sprout.  And, and, and...

 

I love planning for summer - and I mostly love executing those plans, time permitting.  That whole being-gainfully-employed thing gets in the way, but we have our well-lit evenings back and can get things done at the end of the day as well as on weekends.  Now if the snow will just make up its mind that winter is over!

Candles

I like candles.  Tapers or pillars, or even in a jar, with real flames.  I think they add a comfortable note to a quiet evening at home, even with lights on.  There's just something about the uneven, flickering light they give, that feels homier than a bulb - even though the bulb is, I must admit, of far more use when reading.

Candles have been taking a hit recently, on several fronts.  They are fire hazards; have you read the warning labels on them?  According to the labels, there's more peril to be had in leaving a lit candle alone in a room for five minutes than in leaving an inquisitive 10-month old in the same room with a bunch of uncapped poison bottles.  It's quite amazing that any of the churches offering votives has survived.  It's bosh, of course.  While one shouldn't leave lit candles for long periods, as long as they are not directly under flammable fabrics or paper and are set in fireproof saucers of some sort (plastic margarine-tub lids are NOT a good idea), they're really fairly safe.

Another recent charge leveled at candles are that they are polluters.  On some micro-scale, I suppose they might be considered an issue of a sort.  But they aren't in enough use - even with all of them out there - to really make a significant difference.  And there are much bigger issues to worry about on earth than the incremental increase in pollution provided by a lit candle.

Light the candles in your house.  Enjoy them.  Have candles on the table at dinner.  Turn off a few lights and sit in the comfortable, flickering, darkness for a while.  It's very soothing to the soul.

A Tidy House

Part of living the Good Life is living in a house that is homey.  I think there are a lot of factors that contribute to hominess - warmth, comfortable chairs, good lamps, fires, houseplants, the smell of something good being cooked, hospitality (ooh, more topics!) - but if the house isn't tidy, the residents trip over the comfortable chairs and the lampcords, the something good being cooked includes some unwelcome ingredients like dust and germs, and nobody wants to enjoy the hospitality.  It's chaos, not comfort.

We need to keep the place picked up.  And we need to keep it clean.  They aren't the same thing.  I suppose it's possible to live in a clean house that is cluttered; that is, it's healthy and germ-free in its essentials, but the family's possessions are strewn about and occupy all the free space.  Possible, perhaps, but hard!  To clean, each strewn item would have to be moved and replaced in its random location.  Why would anyone do that?  Better to keep the clutter down to start with, and to clean the uncluttered house.

There have been a lot of programs on TV - and self-help books - recently about helping unorganized people improve their habits.  They all seem to start in the same place: get rid of unused possessions.  Americans just have too much stuff.  I look around the room I'm in, and I see the following: several old (not antique) stand-type cigarette lighters, a plastic streetcar replica that came with a box of chocolates, 6 teapots, a nutdish/nutcracker set with nuts from last year, brochures from the Queen Mary 2, several partly-burned candles in jars, a broken clock, and a bunch of games.  I'll skip the 5 bookcases of books - books contribute to hominess as long as they're maintained neatly in bookcases.  But a lot of the other stuff can and should go.

My view of the Good Life is definitely well-endowed with nostalgia - for an era when we were not as rich and could not afford to have so much stuff.  But that aside, I find a lot of value in going through my possessions and deciding which are truly "keepers" - it forces me to decide what's important.  The rest goes to charity, so I hope the exercise is of value to someone else, too.

Keep the house tidy - and weed out the unimportant things in life.  It's important.

Home Cooked Meals

We eat out a lot.  It's a side-effect of Mom and Dad both working full-time and beyond; when quittin' time finally arrives each day, the last thing we want to do is work on dinner.  It's not a good thing to do this all the time, or even most of the time.  Restaurant meals are expensive for the value, oversized, and full of mystery commercial cooking ingredients that we might not eat if we knew what they were.  And calorie-dense.  But beyond that, I think we're missing out on something key to the Good Life.

You can't have good conversation in a restaurant.  Never mind that the waiter has been carefully trained to arrive at the worst possible moment; that's only part of it.  You're in public!  That rules out energetic ranting, revealing your innermost thoughts, and laughing until milk comes out your nose.  And if you use the time for advanced instruction in civilized behavior, the possibility exists that the people at the next table will disagree with either the style or substance of your comments, and join the discussion.

You also can't have wonderful smells wafting through your house as dinner cooks, if you eat in a restaurant.  And while some of them claim to offer comfort food of one sort or another these days, who wants their child growing up with fond memories of "meatloaf just the way Denny's used to make it"?

We need more home cooked meals.  Lots more.

Fall - and switching to thoughts of the "Good Life"

It's snowing - big, fluffy flakes that are starting to pile up.  I guess Summer's over now - for real, this time.  The tomatoes gave up the ghost about 2 weeks ago, when the temperature dipped well into the twenties and I mistakenly thought that covering them with a tarp would be enough.  About 20 pounds of tomatoes, frozen solid and weeping on my counter, convinced me I'd been too late.  A sad sight - the more so because we never got that many ripe tomatoes during Summer proper; it just never got that hot this year. 

I want to change my focus in this blog - to thoughts on the "Good Life".  I don't mean what used to be called "Keeping up with the Joneses"; rather the opposite, in a way.  Skipping over the material possessions aspect altogether; what elements are required to make life worthwhile?   You see, I work for a living - have since I got out of school.  And nearly all that time, I've been wondering why it doesn't feel natural.  I know that a lot of women fought for the right to do what I do, and I don't want to seem ungrateful that they gave me the freedom to work, but the fact is, they seem - for me, at least - to have eliminated the freedom to stay home and make a life for my family.  As a result, we basically haven't had one, and that seems egregiously wrong to me, and kind of always has.  For some reason, I am freshly struck by these thoughts every fall; there must be something about the cooler temperatures and shorter days that make me wish that home was, well, homier.

So here are some of the things that, brainstorming, would come under the heading of a "Good Life".  I think they'll make topics or groups of topics to explore.

• Home-cooked meals with everyone around the table
• A tidy house
• Comfort over high style
• Traditions
• Evenings at home with friends and extended family
• Seasonal entertainment
• Seasonality in general
• The "Sunday roast"
  
• Home canning and preserving
• Hot apple cider and cold lemonade
• Fireplaces with fires in them
• And something near and dear to my heart - civilized behavior
  

Don't know how it will work out, but I think it's worth a start, anyway.

Early Strawberries and General Progress

About the middle of last week, I picked and ate the first strawberry of the season from the plants in the window box.  They seem pretty happy there - fruiting like crazy (although with only 4 plants, I don't see getting enough at one time to make even a "shortcake for one").  The first strawberry was amazing - you get so used to eating the giant, sort of bland examples that show up at the grocery store that, at first, one fresh off the vine doesn't seem to taste quite right, it's so intense.  A few more, and I'll probably never go back.

On other fronts, the spinach has joined the bok choi in growing leggy and producing flowers, so I guess it's done for the summer.  We didn't get much before it bolted, and I'm not sure if I'll bother with spring spinach again.  I might try it in September and see if that works any better.  Neither it nor the bok choi makes sense to me - it's been kind of a cold spring so far, by comparison with last year.

The lettuce is still going strong, and 4 square feet seems to be just about the right amount.  We're staying on top of it, and eating what we pick, rather than wasting it.  As a result, I think we're eating more salads.

The peas are starting to flower; they've grown to within a foot or so of the top of the supports I'm using, and are very lush.  Barring anything weird, we should have enough to freeze and to support healthy snacks (4 square feet of sugar-snap peas - yum!).  And the potatoes in the top box are huge - well the tops are, anyway.  In the middle box, they're about half the size, even though I planted them all at the same time.  Go figure.

I'm not at all sure what to make of the Swiss Chard.  The seedlings sprouted maybe 3 weeks ago, but to look at them, you'd think it was yesterday.  They seem to be in a holding pattern, but I'm not sure what they're waiting for.  In the meantime, they're being outstripped by the carrots, the purple beans, cucumbers, canteloupe, zucchini (which I planted less than a week ago!) and the corn.  I'd put it down to location - they're in the same box with the potatoes that are behind - but so are the carrots and corn and cucumbers and beans and canteloupe.

Now that two of the boxes are in their second year, the soil is hosting some fauna - specifically, roly-poly bugs (I suppose they have a "real" name, but that's the only one I've ever known).  I understand that insects generally mean that the soil is healthy, which is a good thing, but they're eating leaves and in some cases, stems.  Cucumbers, canteloupe, and purple beans are the current victims, although they also seemed to enjoy the bok choi (at least someone got some benefit from it).  The level of damage is marginally acceptable so far, but I think I'll start picking them off and putting them in the driveway to work on weed control there.

On the tomato front, the red mulch seems to be doing well - the plants have all grown from 4" tall to over a foot, and seem to be doing quite well.  The one in the topsy-turvy container also seems undisturbed by having its roots in the air.  It's not as large as the others, but in its defense, it was planted about a month later while we waited for the last frost date to pass.

Another Spring... more veggies

I think I learned a few things from last year, so back in February, I pulled the square-foot wire grids off the beds and made sure we were ready to plant once the various mystic and symbolic planting dates arrived.  Found some more carrots too - we hadn't quite finished them all.  And a lone garlic plant, re-sprouting (I left it - maybe garlic takes 2 years to produce a head?). 

Then, in whichever weekend in March was nearest to St. Patrick's day this year, I began the planting work.  Twelve squares of peas (three different varieties).  Four of lettuce and four of spinach.  Sixteen squares of regular potatoes (I had parts of 2 five-pound bags in the pantry, all sprouting merrily, so in they went), and one square of sweet potato (ditto - but only one specimen to plant). 

Since then, I've added rainbow chard (2 squares, strictly experimental - we have never tried to eat this), broccoli (6 squares - from seedlings), bok choi (3 squares - from seedlings), carrots (2 squares), cucumbers (1 square from seed and 1 from seedling), canteloupe (1 square from seed and 1 from seedling), purple beans (3 squares so far - more to come), corn (8 squares), and eggplant (1 square, again, experimental).

If you add it all up, there are more than 64 squares there - and that's because we have a third box set up, this one 3' x 8'.  Just filled it with soil last weekend, so it only has the seedlings of canteloupe and cucumber and eggplant in it so far.

Another rather interesting surprise this year was that at least one of the onions set seed all over the top box.  I wasn't sure just what was sprouting at first and started pulling them everywhere they showed up.  And then I finally looked them up online and once I realized what they were, I left them alone - if we end up with a bonus crop of scallions this summer, it's all good.  I didn't replant onions this year - in the end, I couldn't get them to last the winter - they kept either shriveling up or getting moldy.

Everything that I've put in so far has sprouted (or it started that way), and we have the corn enclosed in the hardware cloth fence again.  I'm really hoping we get a bit more edible corn this year than last.  We took the few semi-seeded ears we got and stripped the corn off (love that Kuhn-Rikon corn zipper!) and froze it.  When we ate it over the winter, it was like August all over again - really amazingly good stuff.  So I'm hoping we get more than just one vacuum bag of frozen corn this year.

We are still eating the purple beans from last summer.  Getting close to the end of them, but they lasted the entire year. 

We also planted 5 tomatoes - 4 in the barrels from last year, one in one of those upside-down bag thingies, hanging from the pergola.  And I put red mulch under all of them that I could, after hearing from our neighbor next door that she saw amazing results from using it last year.  Oh, and 4 strawberries in the window box - it seems like the best place to keep the squirrels out of them, so I might get to eat one or two.  We'll see.  There are some pretty nice looking berries forming already.

We're already getting lettuce and spinach to eat - my parents were amazed that I was already picking food from the garden in May.  About a salad's worth each evening or so, which is absolutely perfect for us.

I'm going to train all of the vining plants up frames or cages or trellises this year - cucumbers, canteloupe, zucchini, etc.  The seeds for the canteloupe and cukes went in right next to the corn cage and will use that.

Our daughter came back from her first year of college with a small pot full of sprouting seeds this spring - supposedly the 4" pot has sunflowers, bell peppers, and strawberries in it.  I'm giving her some space in the third box to let them spread out a bit - well, the strawberries will probably go in a spot I don't intend to dig up at the end of the season.

Lots of planting to come this weekend - more purple beans, and 1 (ONLY 1) zucchini.  Spring is the best!

Fall - Garden wrap-up

I have to say that my fears of running out of storage space for all the veg were a trifle overstated.  We did okay, but in the end, we're not being crowded out of the house by food.  Here's a run-down:

• Corn: I think we got two meals of corn-on-the-cob, and one meal's worth of frozen kernels out of it.  Planted (the successful crop, that is) just too late to work properly.  It tasted good, though, and since we have the fenced-in area built, I'll probably do it again.
• Pumpkins: got two small ones - maybe 6" in diameter each.  From the weight, I think they'd be good for cooking, but my daughter has dibs on them for jack-o-lanterns.
• Canteloupe: another victim of the late start, I think.  We had two melons start; both of them made it to about 2" in diameter before they just sort of collapsed on themselves.
• Cucumbers: got 3-4, total.  They've done better in the past, so next year I'll do them again, but put something in place for them to climb.
• Peas: 1 meal, maybe, at most?  Need to start these WAY earlier in the year.  They were still fruiting in August, though.
• Potatoes: a fabulous surprise.  Planting two sprouted potatoes and sort of ignoring them resulted in a harvest around 5-6 pounds.  We're still eating them - and maybe this is a side-effect of growing up in the suburban 20th century, but I'm pleased and a little surprised to find that they taste just like the ones you buy in the store.
• Onions: these did pretty well - in fact, I'm wondering if we'll actually eat them all before next spring.  The ones that I've harvested so far (based on the stalks wilting and going brown) didn't get all that big, but they're bigger than when we started.  I even tried braiding them, and while the result wasn't aesthetically pleasing, it seems to be holding.  Some of them have not yet wilted, so I'm leaving them in the ground for now.
• Carrots: boy, do we have carrots!  They were very happy, and even without thinning, grew fat and prolifically.  Most of them are still in the ground and will stay that way over winter - supposedly they do just fine that way.
• Garlic: I think it's doing okay - it's still in the ground, and the foliage is still mostly green.  Again, assuming that what's in the ground represents heads of garlic, we'll have plenty.  I may try braiding it as well.
• Peppers: nearly a complete wash.  We planted 2 plants; one with a pepper on it, the other without.  The one pepper got marginally larger, so we picked it.  That was the crop.
• Dried beans: I had high hopes for these.  The plants were lush and the pods plentiful.  But when they came into the kitchen and we removed the beans, we got less than 1/2 cup of each type.  Unless the world experiences a huge dried bean shortage and our only other option for protein is to resort to cannibalism, I probably won't bother again.
• Lettuce: way too much to eat; most of it bolted when we were on the cruise.  We just don't eat enough salad to do more than a single square of lettuce, I think.
• Spinach: same deal.  I may try it again next year, since we started too late this year, with the idea of freezing it.
• Green beans: the true green beans did okay, but yield was underwhelming.
• Purple beans: star of the garden.  I pulled the plants up yesterday after a frost hit, and still got 2-3 meals' worth.  Next year, I'll put more plants in earlier, but these are keepers.  And they taste good, too.
• Tomatoes: we had an awful time keeping the water right in the barrels, so our Romas kept getting blossom-end rot.  Nonetheless, we've been eating them fairly steadily for the last month, and I've got 3 packages frozen.
• Grapes: the squirrels got most of the white grapes, before they really got sweet.  I picked some and brought them in the house; made raisins out of some and ate the others.  The raisins were pretty good - if I try them again, though, I think I'll get an electric food dryer.  The Concords were very prolific, to say the least.  Even with the squirrels, I got a couple of gallons worth of juice out of them.  Made half into jelly and froze the rest.  Unfortunately, the jelly did not jel.  The rescue pectin did not make it jel.  I used to be really good at making grape jelly, but it is just not working for me these days.  Now, I'm looking for recipes where I can substitute what's basically grape "molasses".  Because it keeps falling off the toast and making a huge mess.

Next year, I think we'll alter the crop mix, plant some things earlier, cut way back on others (even the purple beans, a bit).  But I'll do potatoes again, for sure, and we'll get the watering adjusted for the tomatoes.  I approached the whole raised-bed square foot gardening thing this year as a bit of an experiment, and I'd say it was, on the whole, very successful.

And what are we going to do with it all?

It occurred to me yesterday that fresh veg doesn't "keep" all by itself - it's not like I'm growing potato chips or saltine crackers or cans of anything out in the garden.  Each item has a sort of window of usefulness, and if we don't do something (like consumption or storage) with it during that window, it will end up as compost (that is, assuming I resurrect the compost bin).  So I started doing a little planning.

All told, we have the following edible stuff growing around the yard somewhere:

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Onions
• Potatoes
• Dried Beans
• Garlic
• Cucumbers
• Cantaloupe
• Pumpkins
• Shallots
• Snap Peas
• Regular Peas
• Green Beans (and purple green beans)
• Corn
• Tomatoes
• Grapes
• Rhubarb
• Herbs

And in general, we've under-utilized our garden produce in years past.  For example, the rhubarb has been there for about 6 years now; it takes over an entire corner of our backyard garden, and we've never once eaten any of it.  Partly that has to do with the fact that it has never once turned red, so I assumed we were doing something wrong and it wasn't edible yet.  This morning, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I found out that some rhubarb is just green and supposed to be that way, so I'm going to be brave and cook some.  If I never post here again, you'll know what happened.

Anyway, I'd like to avoid wasting much of what we're growing, if I can, so I'm looking into ways to preserve and store this stuff.  And finding out lots of useful information.  Like, I could have been freezing all the basil, mint, and tarragon that is taking over the back yard, instead of letting it die back every winter.  Or, I could invest about $70 in a food dehydrator and dry herbs as well as tomatoes.  But I probably won't.  I can count the number of times I've cooked with dried tomatoes on my thumbs; it will be much more useful if we peel-and-freeze them in various forms.

However, if the corn does actually produce more food than we can keep up with, I will probably buy one of those corn-cob razors that remove kernels easily - standing a cob on end and trying to slice them off with a knife just looks to me like a subtle but effective way to perform self-amputation.

The truly interesting storage challenges are the onions, garlic, shallots, and potatoes.  All of them need a cool, dry place to hang out over the winter - and the potatoes also need it to be dark.  I'd say that the back screen porch is a candidate for most of them - but we'll need some sort of light-blocking bin for the potatoes (if there are any).

Nearly everything else can be frozen, or simply cannot be stored.  I'm fairly certain that the lettuce is an "eat it or waste it" proposition, as are the cantaloupes.  And I can't quite see myself making pickles, so we will have to eat the cukes, too.  Julia Child's books include recipes for cooked cucumbers and cooked lettuce; I doubt they could be altered to accommodate frozen ones, always assuming that I could find anyone to eat either dish (my brother was once asked on a Biology test to define life, and responded, "Anything the French will eat", but cooked lettuce?  Cooked cucumbers?  Blecch!)

Anyway, harvest time, except for the lettuce and spinach, is a while out, so it's all just planning for now.  I guess by fall we'll all know a lot more about it.

Knee-high by the 4th... of June?

Hardware cloth keeps out pests.  The corn is thriving, and looks set to continue, as long as the clouds I can see from the office don't presage a hailstorm.  In fact, we'll have to remove the cover here soon, since it's getting close to that tall.  Let's hope that the original corn predators can't climb fences, since they've proven not to have opposable thumbs.

Everything looks to be doing really well.  We did our cruise - got back Sunday - and the sprinklers obviously kept working while we were gone.  The spinach and lettuce is harvestable, and we actually had some in a salad last night.  Tasted pretty darn good.  The peas and beans are blossoming and the potato plants are huge.  No guarantee that there will be potatoes as a result, since the original potatoes came from the grocery store, but I just keep telling myself that they're an experiment, so any result is good.

With the food prices likely to rise all summer and the recent tomato crisis, I'm very glad we did all the work needed to set up the garden.  In fact, I'm starting to wonder what else we could plant and eat, either as we harvest the lettuce or in the remaining empty square feet.  Maybe more green beans - I think they can still be planted this late.

I've already learned some things for next year, though.  We need to group plants by type - all the lettuce/spinach together, where I could put shade covers over it.  Tall stuff in the middle, including pea vines that need supports, so we won't find ourselves having to reach over it to get to some shorter plants.

And I think I'm going to start working on the composter again.  It exists, and there's some antique plant material in it, but I never did much with it, and at some point, it became a great place for wasps to build nests, so I started avoiding it.  But as we thin things, we should be composting the discarded stuff.  And our lawn guy is putting clippings in the trash each week, and I ought to be grabbing those too.  The square-foot rules include adding compost each time we harvest, and that will be my easiest source of it, if I just get it going again.

Winter storage is another thing to start figuring out.  The onions are doing beautifully, and I think I'll have something like 3 dozen of them, all told.  We won't be eating them all that fast, so they need a dry-and-cool spot to hang out in.  Carrots could be the same deal.  And if I don't find a place for them, it will guarantee a bumper potato crop.

I'm already thinking we should build another box for next summer.  This is just working altogether too well.  For a change!

Phew - Ow!

Graduation - and the party - went off without a hitch, from where I sat.  My daughter, whose digestive system has been one of our main areas of interest over the past year and a half, woke up with butterflies and apparently spent some of the pre-graduation moments throwing up from nerves, so I guess she'd call that a hitch.  But if she hadn't told us, we wouldn't have known.

Too much food at the party, though.  I need to go to Caterer's school or something, because 18 pounds of meat was just way too much for 50 people, apparently.  My mom thinks we had 80 over the course of the party - I'm not so sure about that.  People seemed to have a good time, and didn't seem to mind or notice that I mostly stayed in the background making sure we didn't run out of meat in the dining room.

For what it's worth, packages of barbecue pork and turkey contain an awful lot of liquid, and when it leaks all over the bottom of the oven without anyone noticing, you get a lot of smoke two days later when you preheat it to cook something.  We found that out last night, so I thought I'd share.

And the family is all scattered back to their homes or vacation destinations and out of our hair, thank goodness.  Poor things, though - we didn't plan for altitude sickness when we scheduled things to do with all of them, and making them climb up to the top seats in the baseball field, or drive to the top of a mountain pass for breakfast, maybe wasn't such a good idea.

Our last family event was on Memorial day itself - dinner with the sister-in-law-from-hell, her husband and son.  It was all about them.  The son (age 5, and basically undisciplined) wanted a cinnamon roll for dinner - at a Mexican restaurant.  When told they didn't have cinnamon rolls, he announced that he would have chips.  So when the chips (complimentary appetizers - standard Mexican restaurant practice) arrived, he grabbed them, because obviously, they were "his".  His parents then ordered him a child's burrito for dinner.  And when it arrived, he declared indignantly to the waitress, "That's NOT what I ordered!". 

Who taught him that one?  Creepy little twerp.  We had to keep the training collar on Anneke all night, to keep her out of his reach, because he had been observed earlier in the weekend smacking her in the face.  She was good; she didn't bite him.  And if I'd seen him at it, I'd have done it for her.

But they're all gone now, and our planning is now focused on getting on the ship for the cruise.

That, and finishing up (over the past 2 days), my slightly oversized Indy 500 project.  Yikes - when I decided to tape-and-mud the new wall separating our bedroom from the closet we had built last fall, I think I must have blotted out the memory of how much pain it produces.  And how bloody hard it is to do a good job at it.  The corner finishing tool kept digging trenches in the mud laid down where we'd had to patch the wallboard after removing the old wall (it moved back about a foot).  All of it overhead, all of it (for neatness sake) with my right arm.  It still moves, but movement is now accompanied by sound effects (groans, mostly).  Last night was sanding and painting night.  And I'm getting pretty good at flat surfaces - after painting, there's only a slight clue that anything happened.  But the trenches were awful - I resorted to using a sponge to soften their edges, but was unable to eradicate them. 

Who looks at ceilings anyway?  Not me.

And the family begins to descend upon us...

The thing I didn't mention yesterday was that, at the end of the banquet, my husband and I went home to sleep, and my daughter went off with friends to the midnight premiere of the new Indiana Jones movie.

And got home at 3 am. 

It wasn't a school night, and she is 18.  It was, however, a work night, and yesterday just hurt.  Fortunately, I didn't have a lot of demands on my mental prowess at work, since I hadn't brought any with me.  Unfortunately, it was another long day. 

My husband took off a little early, and he and our daughter finished up the shopping for the party (ice and perishable stuff), before he came back downtown to pick me up.  And then he and I stopped at two additional stores (looking for wrapping paper - there's been a run on it around here), met the kid for dinner, and then we finally got to go home while she headed to the airport to pick up her sister, the sister's boyfriend, and my husband's ex-wife, who flew in from Seattle.  They're staying with us (the kids) and my parents (the ex-wife).  Their 3:30 flight out got delayed by our nasty, national-news-worthy tornadoes (don't be silly, they don't have tornadoes in Colorado, everyone knows that!), and they got to the house about 10:15.  At which point we did hugs all around and said, "We're going to bed and will see you tomorrow."  And about time, too.

The rest of the family arrives throughout the day today.  Two of them are flying with FedEx.  My first thought was that they'd be arriving with the packages around 4 am and having to find their way to our house from the sorting facility in Commerce City, but apparently, that's not quite the case, and they're not here yet, although enroute.  Others are flying in on regular airlines (so they won't require a tracking bar-code), and driving.  So by the time I get home from work, our house should be full of hungry in-laws, ready to go to the ballpark. 

I've made maps - well, I've printed out Google Maps directions from either our house or their hotel to all the places I know we've planned to be over the weekend, as well as several local attractions (like the mountains, although it's snowing up there right now, which certainly wouldn't attract me).  But I know how it will be - caravan city, all weekend.  Nothing but mobs.  My husband will be in his element.

If I'm able to post at all next Tuesday, it will probably be gibberish.

Let the games begin.

Graduation Weekend kickoff

Slight digression from my recent gardening obsession for a few days, to write about our daughter's high school graduation, which takes place Saturday morning.

We all attended the Senior Banquet last night, along with what appeared to be her entire class and their parents, and all the teachers from the school.  Because, six years ago, we "forced" her to attend an academically rigorous, liberal-arts focused Junior-Senior high school that required winning a lottery to attend and which only admitted 250 students per class, the entire crowd was able to fit into a hotel ballroom - we didn't need the local football stadium that would have been required for my graduating class of 610.  My husband's class was three times the size of mine - they might not have been able to pull it off anywhere at all.

By senior year, the academic rigor had reduced the 250 to 127 (or possibly 128 - one of her friends, characterized during the banquet as the student whose absence would likely cause the school to crumble into ruins, wasn't sure of the exact number).  Most of them by now have taken one or more AP (advanced placement) classes, or classes offered by one of the local university campuses, as part of their high school program, and will start college next year with credits under their belts.  Really, an amazing group of kids.

The speakers were all confident and articulate, the musical performers were equally skilled, and the night wound up with a presentation of the "Senior Video" (produced by the same friend who had the class list memorized), which showed some real talent and promise.  It was obvious throughout the evening that there was an amazing bond between the students and the teachers and administrators, all of whom had known each other for 6 years.  A very good event.

Six years ago, when I heard that we had won that lottery and got her into that school, I joked that I'd never win the PowerBall, that this was my one instance of luck.  At the end of the six years, I know I was right - and I know I wouldn't trade it for a PowerBall jackpot.

And fortunately, after six hard years, she admits that it was a good thing, too.