My Constant Gardening Companion & Her Constant Companion

Penny is my shadow as I move around the gardens, no matter what I am doing. If I am walking, she walks along. If I am working, she waits. Sometimes she stands to wait, sometimes she settles in for the long haul. And always with her is the ball. Sometimes it is in her mouth. Occasionally, it is beside her as in this picture. More often, it is positioned behind me so that I step on it if I take a step backward. I live to garden; Penny lives to play ball.

1st Buds

I noticed the first buds on my daffodils yesterday. Spring must be just around the corner! Granted these are close to the brick wall on the south end of our house, but those count, too. It's interesting to note that the row closest to the wall is further up than those less than a foot farther from the wall. Microclimates within microclimates!

Seed Orders

I just finished my seed orders. This year, for the first time, I am ordering seed rather than buying it all locally. I've spent a lot of time over the past month selecting varieties, using the book Designing the New Kitchen Garden and the UA Agriculture site. If I want to really use all this research and planning, then I can't depend on being able to buy the varieties that I've chosen locally. I'm very satisfied with my choices right now. I hope that holds true at the end of the summer.

This year will be my first year to garden in the kitchen garden surrounding the pool, so it is very important to me that it be as beautiful as it is functional. I've tried to choose varieties that capitalize on color and texture, while not sacrificing taste or reliability. I suppose I will know more at the end of the season.

I ordered from three sources: Seed Savers, Reimer Seeds, and Henry Field's Seed. You can find all of those sites along the right margin of this page. The seed I chose is a mixture of hybrid and open pollinated varieties. I'm going to try my hand at some seed-saving this summer and fall. Mother used to save certain seeds, so it is a time-honored practice in our family.

Since I did set a budget to work within, I had to cut back the orders from my original choices. It was tempting to just order every thing I wanted, as I kept thinking how much I would spend on produce (or even bedding plants) compared to the cost of seed. But I made myself trim my order, and I'm glad I did. I mean, do I really need three varieties of eggplants, when I don't even know how to cook one? (Mother always sliced them and fried them: there must be a better way!) I kept in mind my "gardening for life" mantra and approached this year as a starter year. No, it's not the first time I've grown vegetables, but it is the first time I've tried to grow them for aesthetics. I can always add more next year!

Pecan Wrap-Up

We are nearing the end of this season's pecan harvest. I am down to picking up a couple dozen nuts each day as I make my walk to the compost bin. As of this evening, I have harvested 245 pounds of (unshelled) pecans this season! And friends have harvested a few pounds more. But much of the work remains to be done: we still have about 1/3 of the crop waiting to be cracked and shelled -- or given away! Want some?

Winemaking 101

Wow -- today I finally did it. I started a batch of wine. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years: I even bought the stuff about this time last year, but I just kept putting it off and putting it off. Right now, I feel like I just sat through a 3-hour chemistry exam. But I learned so much! Like how to use a hygrometer and how to convert Imperial gallons to US gallons. And that a liter and a quart are quite close in volume. And that fermentation takes place best at 70-75 degree F.

I used frozen blueberries from last summer's crop. The recipe specified that frozen blueberries work really well, as the freezing and thawing process pierces the skin of the blueberry, which is necessary for making blueberry wine.

Now, I only have to wait somewhere around 15 months to see how it turns out! I figure this wine will be ready to drink somewhere around April 2010. That's quite a wait, but we should have wine before we have asparagus, and asparagus before we have apples from the newest apple trees. That's part of why I call it "Garden for Life"!

Hunting & Gathering

Since today was cold and windy, I went hunting and gathering with Skye rather than gardening. What did we find on our mission? Well, we found wine-making supplies at The Home Brewery for my first foray into wine-making, using frozen blueberries from last year's crop (more on that tomorrow).

Our next stop was Hobby Lobby, where we found two garden-related treasures on the 80% markdown Christmas shelves: tree lights and broken candy canes. Yes, both those items are gardening treasures! The strings of 7-watt tree lights (indoor-outdoor) will help keep my hoop-beds warms after first frost next year. If all goes well, we'll have tomatoes and peppers until the weather gets really cold. And the candy canes? This, I have to admit, was Skye's idea. We're going to make mint chocolate chip ice cream with the broken candy canes! And just how does that translate into a gardening treasure? Ever since I read Phelan's recipe for mint extract last summer over at A Homesteading Neophyte, I've wanted to make some. Combine next summer's mint crop with Skye's broken candy canes, and we'll have some fine ice cream! (Although we plan to use mini-chocolate chips this year, as we think that will improve the recipe.)

Third came Harp's, our local grocery store. There Skye and I had a long discussion about how we see the produce section so differently these days. We got Red Delicious apples for Love, and Skye asked if she could get some Granny Smiths. She admitted that she had sworn she would never eat another grocery store apple after tasting our Fujis last fall, but she misses apples. And the fujis we have left are past the eating stage. In fact, I've spent the afternoon processing the last of those into applesauce. No more homegrown fruit for us until the blueberries ripen in June. :(

Our last stop was Target, where I finally bought myself a salad spinner. It's plastic and cheap, but I thought I try out a cheap model before sinking money into a better one. With leaf lettuce and mustard the only things in our garden these days, I've been washing and drying a lot of green stuff. I'm hoping the new salad spinner will improve my processing of these precious fresh veggies!

A successful foraging trip, I must say!

Not Quite What I Was Planning

"Work for money; garden for life."

So goes my six-word memoir. Check out other six-word memoirs at Smith Magazine's Not Quite What I Was Planning.

Resolutions....

New Year's Day was Thursday, but here at The Realm, the "real" New Year begins tomorrow. Skye will be back at school -- she's ready -- and I will be back at work -- surprisingly, I am, too! Love started a new job last Monday, so he will be heading off the place tomorrow, too. Each day we will all make our ways in the world, and return home in the evening to our haven, the place where we trust everybody and know that everybody loves us. The animals will welcome us home: the dog will dance and the cats will raise their heads and glance our way (maybe).

I have menus planned through March 14 -- Spring Break. Yes, it's obsessive. No, I won't follow it every day. But the hardest part of cooking for me is to decide what to prepare with enough lead time to be able to get it ready. If I don't plan meals ahead of time, I'm planning them in the parking lot as I leave work. When I was a classroom teacher, I avoided parking-lot planning. Why should I inflict it on those I love most?

Skye reminded me that my New Year's Resolution last year was to feed my family better, and that it was really nice for a couple of months because we came home from school to supper in the crockpot lots of days, and I made salads and bread on the weekend to enjoy during the week. I really think that's a resolution worth repeating, but I'm tweaking it for this year. Here goes:

I resolve to feed my family better in 2009 by
1. Planning meals in advance and do some food prep on the weekends
2. Growing more of our own fruits & vegetables
3. Getting chickens so we can have fresh eggs (& because I promised Skye 2 years ago!)
4. Serving good meals so Love & I snack less (I'll bet you can guess why that's important!)

So resolved!

Winter Lettuce

This winter, for the first time, I built a temporary coldframe. Six bales of straw, a doubled sheet of 4-mil plastic sheeting, and four boards --- and, viola! I've been amazed at the difference it has made. The pictures above are lettuce planted about the same time. The picture on the left is in my cold frame, the one on the right is in an open bed. We had a salad with fresh lettuce on New Year's Eve. Yesterday, we had mustard from the cold frame. This is definitely a practice I will continue. I had no idea that this little bit of shelter would make such a difference. We have had temperatures in the single digits already this winter. The worst damage to the protected plants happened while we were gone to Texas last weekend. We got 1 2/10" rain, which crushed the plastic against the plants in spots. More than 24 hours of that was pretty rough on the plants. While I do have two crossbars (tomato stakes) to help keep the plastic off the plants, this is definitely a refinement I will need to work on for next year. But I've already declared this experiment a success!