The Evolving Homemaker

I am thinking that from now until first frost, Thursday’s will be all things blooming.  And come to think of it, we are putting in a greenhouse, fingers crossed, in August so maybe it will be year round growing and not just seasonal.  We will see. And yes, if you are wondering, I am just GIDDY with delight at this time of year and can barely keep my energy contained.

Which is what spring is about.  Energy.  The energy of the wind blowing warmer weather our way.  The energy of the plants and new grass already poking their heads through the winter’s hard ground.  The energy of re-birth as we celebrate with eggs and seeds and bunnies.  Even the energy of the seeds who are hearing the mysterious message they receive each year that tells them, “It is time.  It is time to grow. You can do it little seed.  You can reach your full potential.”  And let’s not forget about the birds.  They feel the wind, absorbing the warm sunlight that is staying for longer and longer each day, and they realize from some intuitive sense within them, that is time to be on the move again as they point themselves north.

Yes, I am a spring nerd.  And proud of it.

My all time favorite flower is the daffodil.  When I was a kid, my family would take walks out on a point, in the woods, on a lake we had a house on.  Every spring without fail, a field of 1000 daffodils would open up where no one lived, shouting up to those of us above with the message that hope is alive.  That if those precious bulbs could survive the freezing of winter, so could we.  That even when life is hard and seems barren, new life was just around the corner begging for us to just pay attention.

Ahh…enough about the beauty of spring.  I am just flitting today because our weather forecast this weekend is on point for two whole days spent in the garden.  Between snow and wind, we have been kept mostly out, but not for long! Tomorrow is but one sleep away.

So to get things started, I am showing you pictures of our pathetic garden from last weekend.  It is really quite sad.  But change is afoot!

Oh my God.  Would you look at that mess?  We are still trying to get everything up from last year.  Then we have to hit the dump up with all those things in the back from fixing up my husbands office, and logs which have been here since we cut down the dead cottonwood we inherited, um four years ago?

Then it is on to the sprinkler system.  Don’t even get me started.  I have no idea how it will be done, but this I need to leave to the hubby cause there is too much other stuff to do.  Next Saturday it will be time to plant peas, spinach, and lettuce.  Seriously.  We have a lot of work to do this weekend.

This is my giving you the peace sign.  I realized I was in the photo and started goofing around with my shadow.

Looking at the strawberry beds and all the sunflower stalks from last summer.  Yeah.  Once the weeds overwhelmed me, I sorta let it go.  But this year?  I have a plan.  I do.  And the plan has no room in it for weeds throughout the yard and hordes of mosquitoes.

To start of this adventure in blooms, I am setting up a link party below!  On any Thursday you can come on over and share a blog post or link to photos you have of your own garden magic.  Be it flowers, food, birds, squirrels,chickens, goats, awesome things you learned, things you are wanting to try, new plants you are trying, methods you’re using, whatever it is garden/homesteading/farming related.  I have a lot to learn in the world of urban homesteading, and as I have heard that never goes away, there is always something to learn, especially when it comes to plants.

So let’s share away! This week will probably not include too much since I am introducing the idea.  But if within the week you want to link, have at it.  Next Thursday know that you can link your post here ahead of time!

Happy gardening!

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This was simply so delicious, I had to pass it along.  I have made this recipe three times since reading it, and love it all the same each time!

This Summer Corn And Avocado Salad recipe was posted a few weeks back by Emily Malone at Daily Garnish.  You can see the recipe here, and I encourage you to try it.  This was so tasty I ate it in a myriad of ways for three days.  Finally I just scooped the rest into a bowl and ate it with a fork.  I skipped the avocado each time, as avocado doesn’t keep so well and I wanted to make sure I still was enticed to eat the leftovers.

I had no idea you could eat corn raw.  Really.  I didn’t grow up in Iowa, I grew up outside Washington D.C.  There wasn’t many corn fields in the area, or corn experts to relay such information.

Last night was women’s circle, and since I had been a slacker the last few months buying hummus and carrots and the like to bring to share, I really wanted to make some wholesome loveliness for the ladies.  I headed out to the backyard first to grab some corn off our stalks.  Except there wasn’t any there.  Not one corn cob.  My husband and I are a little stunned as to what happened, whether squirrels, neighbors, or a corn thief drive by as you can see we are growing corn from the street. Whatever it was, I was BUMMED.  I made the kids get in the car and race to the local organic farm stand down the street in their pajamas!  Oh my goodness, the corn from this farm is the best I have ever had, and for this recipe, it tasted like sugar.  A sweet, sweet, end of season treat that you don’t have to feel guilty about!

I used Emily’s suggested method of getting the corn off of the cob in an efficient manner, it seemed to work great, but I don’t have any experience any other way!

My son took this photo.  Lovely.

Yes, these little gems came from the backyard, nothing stole them! Super Sweet 100′s and Sun Sugar.  Sun Sugar cherries are by far my favorite!

And here she is, corn salad ready to be scooped onto chips!  Or shoveled in with a fork…either way it is simple to make and scrumptious!

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Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I finally made it into my garden to see what had taken place in the the last few days with me away and my husband in charge of watering.  He did great!  Better than me actually.  I am sure he was afraid of any consequences that a dead garden would have created.

I poked around and discovered lots of little miracles.  What I also discovered?  My husband took our camera on his motorcycle journey with his father, which translates into me having NO WAY to take photos of said miracles. I must show you this ginormous pumpkin that I found just hanging out in the chaos!  It was stunning and such a surprise!

After I did my poking around and picking and the loading up of my new gathering basket, my mother in law was kind enough to let me use her camera to take a photo of the bounty:

There are so many tomatoes, I envision a weekend of salsa and bruchetta which I am fine with eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It is such a short season for fresh from the garden produce, I will be sad when this season is over, but also excited to spend the fall preparing for a better (a.k.a. less weedy) season next year.

In case you are interested, this is an Alaffia Fair Trade hand woven basket.  You can check out their baskets here,  I am so blessed to have a local natural market that carries these at an even cheaper price than online.  I love purple, and my daughter loves pink, and my son loves blue, as soon as we saw this one we knew it was for us!

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Sigh. 

All of the work that went into this garden at the beginning of the season, only to be beaten by time and a crazy summer.  Now that it is time for harvesting, cooking, storing, and replanting, I don’t have time to get to it.  And the mosquitoes are vicious.  They eat me alive every time I go out there.  And the weeds.  The stinkin’ weeds.  They have overtaken the space between my beds and run rampant.  We have lost complete control.

What else is new?  My best laid plans always have a way of teaching me a lesson as they work themselves out.  The lessons I have learned so far this year?

1- Trellis the cucumbers and muskmelon.  (I had an intention of doing that, but never got around to it. Will build some this fall for next year.)

2- Plant more mosquito repellant plants. (I had some marigold and lavender, but time and weeds kept me from getting them completely watered.)

3- Don’t plant a garden unless you have a good watering system in place. (We will lay the watering system down this fall)

4- Protect your paths with some kind of weed barrier, cardboard, mulch, etc. (This too will be done this fall as soon as the last veggie is harvested)

5- Plan for down time during harvest season. (Don’t plan on being busy every single day from July 20th-Aug. 29th)

Here are some photos to explain:

One giant mess.  I can barely get in there to pick!

That is a picture of weeds.  Just weeds.  When I get back from my retreat, I am going to try to lay some cardboard down on the worst parts.  Off to the left is the rows of veggies, that I have to tromp through these weeds and mosquito lairs to get too.

Again, I haven’t had time to pick in the last two weeks.  Which seems so wasteful.  I plan to come home next week, harvest, and get to work making squash cake, muffins, corn salsa, and the like.

Where is the walkway here?  The cucumbers, pumpkin, muskmelon, beans, and squash are really one giant mess of plant.  I cannot tell where one ends and another begins.

Lessons learned.  I haven’t lost my joy for gardening, nor have I lost my hope that I will get this thing nailed down by next year.  Well, at least a few of the things on my list. As much as I would like to say I will be the perfect urban homesteader next year…I know the reality…and the color of my thumb…

…and it ain’t green.

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I signed up for a beekeeping class.  It starts in October.  I am nervous already.

I am not sure whether I want bees in my backyard or not, with the whole garden on one side of the house, there may not be room to add them just yet.  I don’t need to be sure until spring, but when we get the homestead of my dreams, I am hopeful to have a few bee boxes on the property.

Without bees, we can’t eat food.  So while some people may think this is a crazy hobby, those of us who enjoy farming, sustainable living, the environment, and simple living, bees are actually a perfect addition to the lifestyle.  30,000 little friends working just as hard in your garden!

Two weeks ago, a friend of mine who is practicing urban beekeeping let me come over to watch her check on her hive.  It was really cool.  I was a little, ok a lot, nervous, which actually dissipated after a few minutes of watching the process.  She actually found out the bees were making their comb incorrectly and she was going to have to scrap what they had made and begin again.

Fascinating.

Here she is checking the width of the trays.  They need to be close enough together to force the bees to build the comb flat against the trays.

And in fact, she discovered that they were building the comb in fat columns instead of flat against the trays in some areas.

Taking off the top box to check on the one below.

Wow.  Look at all those bees!  She estimates 30,000 in her box.  I was only a bit nervous cause once I watched a show on beekeeping and the expert said once they sting one spot it actually leaves a smell so the other bees can all find the intruder and sting it too.

I didn’t want to get stung to say the least.

But being stung before in life, honeybees hurt a lot less than some other yellow and black striped creatures hurt!

In the pink bottle is sugar water.  It is supposed to help keep the bees calm in a more kind way than smoking them does.

Here she is lifting the trays out to see if the bottom trays have the comb building correctly or not.

This tray is being built beautifully!  Those bees are hard at work and the comb is being built flat against the tray.

This afternoon was certainly an incredible learning experience for me.  And I can tell you the honey from these bees was totally different from the honey you buy in the store.  The honey was not as dense, it was lighter and had this fabulous floral essence to it.  You could actually taste the flowers which had produced the pollen that the bees had collected.  I have never tasted something so lovely.

So while beekeeping at first thought might just seem like insanity, with the proper training, the proper clothes, and a willingness to get over your fears, you could help sustain the bee populations which we need to pollinate our food!

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Yesterday, the kids and I spent a few HOURS on the ‘farm’ trying to harvest and pull out the bolted produce to make room for fall plantings.  It is a tiring job and we still have SO much left to do today too.

But first we harvested some strawberries.

Oh my goodness, how good these are.  The smell alone from the bucket was stupendous.

Just a reminder, the best way I have found to keep fresh berries longer is storing them in a ball jar without washing them.  The steam on this jar is the heat from the sun in each of those little berries.  The best thing, by far, about fresh berries is the warmth on your tongue from the heat in the center.  It is so life affirming.

A ‘mini’ CSA box we brought to both our neighbors yesterday.  I don’t nearly have enough veggies, or success, to share a bounty with the neighbors, but a little box of rainbow chard, kale, summer squash, and carrots,  just might go a long way in building a strong local community.

The kids picked and picked and picked those cherry tomatoes.  And they are seriously delicious.  The broccoli did not do so well, yet again, so I ripped it all out yesterday to make room for something that would grow more profusely.  It is coming up on the time where spinach, lettuce, peas, more chard, more beans, more herbs, maybe even brussel sprouts could be planted in those places in the garden that didn’t do well, or where the plants are whose time is over and they have gone to seed.

It is a never ending experiment, this urban farming gig.  But I tell you what, it has not discouraged me from continuing to look for and plan for a small homestead of our own.

Wow.  We had family in for the last week and had jam packed days of site seeing, eating delicious food, having fine conversation and basically catching up on a years worth of things, as families are so spread out these days.  While we were busy eating, laughing, talking, and traveling, the garden was taken over by growing fairies!  Much to my delight really!

The wall of sunflowers, behind the raised strawberry beds. The are such a ray of sunshine those sunflowers, not to mention bee attractors and all of the amazing ladybugs that I find on them!  Last year there was not an ounce of life forms in the yard, besides the few plants we grew.  This year there is a smorgasbord of ladybugs, worms, spiders, ants, butterflies, dragonflies, etc.

Yum. All that needs to be said.

Spaghetti squash galore!  There are so many growing I cannot believe it. We will have heaps to put up in the pantry in a few weeks!

I love watching the Super Sweet 100′s ripen on the vine.  Always starting at the top making for a rainbow of colors to the tips.

Success!  The corn is growing SO big!  You can barely make out the Tibetan prayer flags I hung across the fence lines three months ago!

Ok, I planted the six mix satchel of summer squash this year.  The only problem?  These are the only ones that grew.  Not kidding.  I don’t have a single zucchini or crookneck, just these green globes.  They taste great, so that is alright I suppose, it is just incredibly disappointing as the zucchini and crookneck are always garden staples!

Cucumbers!  Last year my cucumbers got to shaded by the large squash plants and never grew!  This year we have all different kinds including a lemon cucumber which I can’t wait to try!

This one is a great experiment for us.  Edamame. I love this little green soy bean, and the kids love to eat them with a little salt on top, and of course, they freeze really well!  I am not sure we will get enough of anything to freeze if we are eating as we go…maybe the squash…but we are sure enjoying our bounty and I am learning SO stinkin’ much that by next year I hope to have this ‘farm’ of ours working to its highest capacity.

Our first two big enough tomatoes were finally picked on Saturday, and I quickly slathered mayonnaise on a piece of bread, sliced the tomatoes, and topped them with a dash of salt.  The seasons first tomato sandwich had arrived, and I ate every single stinkin’ bite, loving every minute of it.

I made this with an early girl and a mystery tomato whose name tag never made it home from the nursery.  It was good, I can say that much about it!

The tomatoes are going absolutely crazy.  Phenomenal performance so far this year on their part!  I have no ready ones on the plants at the moment.  I have been hovering around the sun gold cherries and taking them off and popping them in my mouth as they are ready, not to let a single one go to waste.  But the plants have already outgrown my stakes!

So yes, I am doing the happy dance.  The fresh produce season is fully on and I intend to take advantage of it with lots and lots of delicious treats!

Surprise, surprise.  I ACTUALLY have actual food growing in my yard.  Actual food we have ACTUALLY eaten.  No joke.  Here are some garden photo updates!

Our strawberry beds are doing just splendid.  I say that in all seriousness!  We have picked five strawberries, which isn’t much, but I picked all the flowers off the plants for at least a month.  They are sending out a ton of shooters too.  By August we won’t know what to do with all the goodness.  Well, actually, we will know what to do with them!  Nom…nom…nom…

What a difference a month makes, eh?  I am standing where our greenhouse will go, and looking at our pole beans and watermelon, all the peas planted in the spring, tomatoes that are taking off incredibly, and four more beds beyond the raised ones growing everything from chard to pumpkins.

These tomatoes are crazy I tell you.  Every few days I have to tie them a few inches higher than the last time to their stakes!  I think we will be swimming in fresh tomatoes in a few weeks.  I can’t wait.

Wow.  Kale. Romaine. Butter lettuce.  Beets. Carrots.  Repeat.  The kids LOVE harvesting the lettuce. While they didn’t like the whole ‘planting’ thing, they sure like the picking.

Our pride and joy…the corn.  And A LOT of weeds.  Weeding is keeping me VERY busy at the moment.  I try to do one bed a day, and sometimes I get to no beds for three or more days.  But can’t wait to have an ear of corn fresh from our own backyard.

A bunch of Oregon Pea Pods.  Just waiting to be sauteed or eaten as is.  I have been munching on the snap peas already for days!

Feeling intimidated?  DON’T.  Did you see the weeds? This has been such a learning process and there are so many things I will do differently next season! I am learning as I go, and you can too.  So get yourself a planter box this year, dig up a bit of your yard next year, and before you know it, you will be wondering why we even bother with lawns.

It has rained here for the past 72 hours straight.  Seriously.  And that is not something that happens that often on the front range of Colorado.  We may get an afternoon thunderstorm or two, but two full days of rain?  We consider that a blessing.

I felt very grateful for the moisture as it checked one item off of my to-do list for the past two mornings.  That is always a sigh of relief!  I didn’t have to water!

BUT, now I want to get in a weed.  And as the sun rises over my rows yet to be planted, I feel the ‘hurry up’ anxiety of getting the corn, beans, melons, chard, and cucumbers into the ground.  Last weekend for Mother’s Day, I spent the entire day preparing soil and planting 20 tomato plants and 8 pepper plants, so those are done.  But there is forever more to do in the life of the urban farm.

Only problem?  That entire area is mud.  I took this picture from a window.  If I went out there now in my hiking boots, I would come in with six inches of mud caked to the bottom and be lucky if I didn’t fall on my butt in the process.  So today we head out to find some rubber boots for the garden.  A pair for each of my kiddos and Mommy.  I will officially feel like I have made the turn to wannabe farmer, when I don those boots AND my floppy sun hat at the same time.

And I love it.

On this Mother’s Day, the Mama’s at Mother’s Acting Up asked me to add my two cents to the boiling pot of what mothering and activism looks like, this on a day that began not as a reason to give flowers to our mother’s but as a call for mother’s to rise up and take action with the Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870 by Julia Ward Howe.

She begins, “Arise then … women of this day!
  Arise, all women who have hearts…” and ends with the powerful, “That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
 May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
 And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
 To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
 The amicable settlement of international questions,
 The great and general interests of peace.”

Now there is something to celebrate! (You can read the entire proclamation here)

Mothering and activism.  Mamavism I like to call it, has been quite a journey for me.

It has had it’s ups and downs, twists and turns, always begging for me to stay on my toes and ask difficult questions of myself.  Am I showing up where I can?  Am I showing up at all?  Am I showing up too much?

One thing was for certain when I became a mother, in an instant I understood how universal the feelings of motherhood were.  One instant is all it took.  My son was six weeks early, he spent 21 days in the NICU after delivery.  I was terrified.  And he had the best of modern medicine around him.

What of the mothers who aren’t so lucky?  Who are terrified for their children, and there is no way they can give them to the best of their ability a chance to grow up, a chance to live out their dreams, a chance to eat today?  Those mother’s feel the same way I do about their children, our hearts are the same but our circumstances are entirely different.

I had always been passionate about so many issues, but once the motivation to get off the couch and actually take action shook me at my core, I spent a lot of time outer focused.  I got angry at every, what I deemed, injustice.  I took it personally.  I got frustrated. I carried the burdens emotionally.  I got fired up and put myself in the public arena.

I got burnt out too.

Then I began to take something my minister had said over and over to heart, “If you want peace in the world, start with yourself.”  Ahh…so often I argued over that simple statement.  I pushed against it.  I ignored it.  I disagreed with it wholeheartedly, I surmised that if you see injustice and sit on your meditation pillow you have checked out.  I always said to myself, “If you ain’t helpin’ to paddle the boat, get the heck outta the boat.”

But I started to realize I had room for improvement.  I yelled at my kids more often than I would have liked, I began to wonder if I can’t keep a peaceful heart towards my children, those whom I love most in the world, how do I expect the Israelis and Palestinians to come to an agreement? If I could so easily get angry over water spilled across my table, into workbooks and papers, why am I surprised that people become angry and take matters into their own hands when they feel that they have been suppressed for decades? If I claimed to care so much for the environment and the plight of workers around the world, how did I happen to end up at Target so often buying ‘stuff’ because I was bored, or lonely, or both?

For now, my mamavism starts closer to home.  Where I can cultivate my own compassion for those in my immediate world, and practice radiating that out instead of frustration.  How can I be an example to my children?  What changes can I make in my own life that support my beliefs instead of pointing to the outside world to change?  Can I bike more? How much food can we grow in our own yard?  Can we get almost to sustainability?  Can we live more simply? How is it we can build a sense of community in our cities and towns so that we all feel more engaged, more capable, more accountable, more supported? Can I be more present and connected with all who I interact with, instead of my head down on my keyboard or sending a text message instead of deep listening in the moment?

The world could use some more deep listening.  Luckily I don’t even know how to text…

Yes, mamavism takes many different forms, many different paths, and is forever changing based on our own life circumstances and what our mothering is itself demanding of us at the moment.  That doesn’t mean we don’t jump in when we can, it means that we show up mindfully, aware of what we are giving up to be there, who is gaining that we be there, what it is that lights our hearts on fire and when we need to kindly say ‘no’ and take care of ourselves and those closest to us instead.

Mothering and mamavism, each a delicate balance.  Every day, every moment, begs us to balance what we need, what our families need, what the planet needs, what humanity needs.  And there is no map to help us navigate, just our own inner being to let us know when it is time for action, time for rest, time for nurturing, time for rallying.  Let us learn to listen to our own voices, but ARISE none the less, wherever and whenever and however that may look.

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!!!

Ahh…the days are growing longer, the rainy season has begun-ok it lasts like two weeks here, my fingernails are permanently dirty, there is much work to do everyday, the early spring veggies have sprouted and are on their way to producing valuable food for our family!

Our strawberries are going strong!  Out of like the 70 I purchased, of scrawny root looking things, only 1 has yet to begin to show leaves!  That I call a success! We will see how they are doing later in the summer, it is not impossible for me to still kill them somehow.

The whole side yard was completely roto tilled under this weekend!  I spent an hour or so out there yesterday, but imagine it will be a couple hours everyday for the next few days!  The ground needs to be ready for post frost planting!

The peas are doing quite awesome, with some spinach behind them.  I am so glad my friend told me to plant them on St. Patty’s Day!  Otherwise I would have waited a few weeks longer and they have such a good start now!  We have five or six different peas planted, from snap, to bush, to pea pods, to shelling!  This will be a summer of pea bounty!

I am so happy with this tray of mesclun lettuce!  I staged it and planted each box two weeks after the previous box.  You can just see the newest sprouts in the last to be planted box-the first in the photo-and my muddy boots!  Those are happy boots.

My first attempt at growing directly in the ground and not in raised beds.  This should be interesting.  Our yard was all weeds previously, so the weeds are already making themselves known.  But I pulled  a bunch yesterday, have to wait to see what the difference between a carrot sprout and a weed is before I can do some of the rows, and I will get some straw once the sprouts are all up for in between the rows.  My great farming experiment.

Attempting grapes this year…another experiment.  It will be three years before they produce enough to eat I have read, so why not get started right away?

Last but FAR from least, the raspberries!  There will be lots of weeding there this week.  Every one that I planted in the fall has come out of dormancy and is growing new shoots.  YES!  The ones I have planted this spring don’t show any new growth around the bottom yet…I have faith.  We will have a plethora of raspberries…by like three years from now!  One or two this year will tide us over, and we have a lovely organic pick-ur-own farm we love to visit multiple times every summer!  Until our garden is going strong, they will be getting our multiple annual visits!

So there it is, our garden as it stands at the moment.  More work to be done, but it is so exciting!  I have a new found appreciation for all of the larger scale organic farmers.  It takes a lot of planning and organizing, and work, but I bet they get that same giddy feeling when the first shoots begin to appear!

OK, I took the line  “as soon as soil can be worked” from the back of the seed packet and went with it.  I really needed some time in the dirt this weekend, to feel grounded, literally, to recall the sheer magic of the seed to plant to food process, and to be able to focus on something so completely that my mind could be absorbed and less scattered.

I have begun to think of the spring itself as three seasons.  The first?  Cold crops for March.  Those that don’t mind the frost; peas, snap peas, snow peas, spinach, onions, scallions, chives, mesclun lettuce, broccoli, and the like.

The second season? April crops.  The 2-4 weeks before last frost crowd; carrots, beets, kale, romaine, raspberries, blueberries, grapes, and strawberries.

Then comes May.  For us in the Front Range of Colorado, that is the month of the gardener’s delight.  The last frost day.  Of course, there are quite a few differing opinions on which day it is safe to begin to plant those annuals and after frost veggies, I tend to think of Mother’s Day as the golden moment.  Of course, I may peek ahead at the weather and see how it is trending, I have heard people say May 1st is OK.

But May?  It is EVERYTHING else season.  The beans, the summer squash, the tomatoes, the herbs. ..oh man, can you just smell the basil already…corn, cucumber, peppers, muskmelon, the winter squash…the list is endless.  And I can’t wait.

But for now, I am enjoying the beginning of the process.

Last years chives sprouting next to this years row of peas.

My mesclun lettuce tray that I have used for the last three years and it is still standing!  I will plant the next two squares over the next month for continuous sprouting till the heat kicks in!

Valentine mesclun.  A new one for me to try this year.  Behind that, scallions, and bush peas, and way down at the end we have some leeks and broccoli.  There are chives coming up from last year in this bed too, along with a lonely scallion!

Making progress!  Stay tuned, the whole yard is going to be plowed under in a couple of weeks to make more room for those gems of post frost!

I threw this one in for the hubby.  He wanted you all to see that beyond our strawberry beds to the east is a yard.  With actual grass in it.  It didn’t always look that way, but we finished that part off in October.  Prior, it was weeds.  So again, our yard is a work in progress and I am rather enjoying the immense farming opportunity a cruddy yard provides!  If it was nice and perfect when we moved in, we might not have wanted to rip out lawn and plants to begin a garden, this way, there is no guilt!

Happy spring planting!

Wild Strawberries

“Are wild strawberries really wild? Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child?  Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam? Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home? Can they be trained to not growl at the guests? Will a litterbox work or would they make a mess? Can we make them a Cowberry, herding the cows, or maybe a Muleberry pulling the plows, or maybe a Huntberry chasing the grouse, or maybe a Watchberry guarding the house, and though they may curl up at your feet oh so sweetly can you ever feel that you trust them completely? Or should we make a pet out of something less scary, like the Domestic Prune or the Imported Cherry. Anyhow, you’ve been warned and I will not be blamed if your Wild Strawberries cannot be tamed.”

~Shel Silverstein

And here they are.  Officially finished! We built our raised strawberry beds, perfect beds for a sloped area!

My husband did help me with the first one, the one at the top of the hill.  I wasn’t really sure what I was doing.  Starting with trying to use the drill in which all of the batteries were dead for.  But we got it done in probably an hour or so.

The one at the bottom, it took me three hours to do by myself!  But it was well worth it!  I am so proud that I did it!  My husband still cut the wood on the sides that needed to be trimmed.  He also backed the drill bit out for me once cause I got it stuck in the wood.

I made a few mistakes along the way.  First I set the corner post in 1 1/2 inches and had to take the screws out and scoot it to the end flush with the side boards instead, so the long board would fit across.  And, I do wish I had a bit more brute strength to me, the spaces on the corners are due to the fact I couldn’t hold the wood together tight enough AND drill at the same time.

But I still think I am a badass.

Organic compost and organic topsoil to go into the beds!  I am aware I will need a whole bunch more topsoil to fill those beds.  I didn’t realize how much room there was to be filled!  We are going to work some of the dirt from the hill into the  strawberry beds, then it will be paid for soil.

After unloading the bags from my car, my hands looked like this.  I was so happy.  These are happy hands that can’t wait to get deep into the earth gardening starting next month!  Urban farming, here I come.

“I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.”

~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666

It is as if Abraham took the words right out of my mouth.

Here we go!  This is how the strawberry patch looks today:

The bed above is going to be for our sunflower wall this year.  I called the local extension office to see how those railroad ties will affect the organic strawberry bed, and they said not to worry.  With a bit more research it seems like you should definitely not plant anything you are going to eat touching the ties.

I laid the stepping stones up the hill a few weeks ago, only to have the hubby come out and explain some weed barrier should go underneath before we lay the free mulch from the city on top.

Yes, this is our yard at this point.  If you could see how much we have done to it thus far from living in it, you would be amazed, maybe I’ll post those pics next week!  But this is the storage to date for all of the inside the house construction materials we have yet to load up on a trailer and take to the dump. And yes, that is our Christmas tree.  My husband wants to cut it up for firewood for camping.

BUT, this will be an oasis of food by the end of the summer!  Against the cement wall is where we are building a greenhouse in July, to get ready for planting in early fall.  We are attempting the Eliot Coleman year-round garden.  Lots of greens, and leeks, spinach, and scallions can still be harvested in the winters here!

The side yard, which we will move the beds farther to the back and use a rototiller to finally get these weeds under and attempt the low to the ground beds which I discovered in the book Mini-Farming.

So while yes, there is a lot of work to do to get this garden started in a much higher yielding state than last summer, I stinkin’ cannot wait to get my hands dirty!

Come back next week and see how the strawberry beds turned out, that I am attempting to build all by myself! With no help from the hubbers…scary.

“Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration.”

~Lou Erickson

Spring is here.  Not literally, but for those of us who like to spend 9 months out of the year with our hands carrying a distinct tinge of the earth around with us and under our nails, Spring IS here.

I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, excited, nervous, and emotional about this years garden.  We, ok me,  have a lot planned, a lot dreamed up, and a lot of work to do.

I tooled around in the back two weekends ago, getting my shoes muddy and my ideas flowing.  My first big assignment is to make the beds in the back of the house for our strawberries.  We have a little area of slope, which gets all day sun in the summer, evidently a space in which strawberries can thrive.

The problem I am running into is finding organic strawberry plants, starters, for sale.  Only my first wall of the season.

We will follow that project up with moving our beds to the back of the yard, and then digging some new lower 2 x 4 beds in the middle of the yard. That means a lot of roto-tilling, as it is a rock haven out there, and compost adding.

Then on to the seed store, finding organic raspberries, blueberries, and whatever else our little hearts desire…grapes maybe? In July we will begin to build our modest greenhouse for ‘greens’ all through the winter.  And yet begins another year of laying in the ground seeds of life, not just of intention, but that for which a bounty for my family and friends will come forth, in spite of me.

Hopefully.

I seem to have misplaced my camera, so I can’t pass on anything with photos today.  I will post photos on Friday as the garden looks now, and at least how the strawberry beds turned out next week.  I am attempting that little strawberry project on my own, without the help of the hubby EXCEPT in the saw work.  I happen to like my fingers and am a bit clumsy, or excitable, I would like to keep them actually on my hand.

Tune in tomorrow for another darling art project I did with a friend yesterday that the kids LOVED!

Spill it: Any dreams you are having for your garden this year?  Any projects you want to share that are brewing with intention but have yet to hit physicality yet?

Oh my goodness can I share how much I love, love, loved this book!  Every second of every moment of time I had in the last week, I was peeking through these amazing stories.

The author, Katherine Leiner, travels around the United States interviewing all kinds of folks involved in the current food movement.  From chefs, to farmers, to activists, to business owners, she brings us into their world.  Each piece highlights the journey of each individual in becoming whatever it is that involves food and sustainability practices.

You’ll remember, she highlighted Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, documentary filmmakers of King Corn.  But that was way back on page 67!  There are 300 pages of astute and passionate people sharing with us their dreams of quality, environmentally aware, conscientious food.

And did I mention it is loaded with recipes?  All that I will copy before I bring it back to the library!

From restaurant owners like Chris Jackson of Ted and Honey in Brooklyn, Tod Murphy of The Farmers Diner, highlighted in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, to Katrina Blair of Turtle Lake Refuge in Durango, Colorado, and Blake Spalding and Jennifer Castle of award winning Hell’s Backbone Grill in Boulder, Utah.

From farmers like Daniel Salatin, highlighted in Omnivore’s Dilemma, Amy and Jamie Ager of Hickory Nut Gap Farm, to Benina Marie Burroughs, an almond farmer.

From young entrepreneurs like Jamie Peterson of Peterson Winery and Vineyards, Alison Baily Vercruysse of 18 Rabbits granola, Neil Gottlieb of Three Twins Organic Ice Cream in Napa, to Joslyn Erica of Hummingbird Herbals.

There are food activist and oystermen, almond growers and vegetable oil vehicle converters!  This book is chock full for anyone who is interested in sustainable farming, homesteading, urban homesteading, organic food, health, natural remedies, living simply, or my goodness anyone who needs renewed hope in our collective future.

I think the story that stood out the most, although they were ALL beautiful and inspiring, was that of Matthew Moore.  A family of farmers, Matthew went off to study art in college then returned home to work his family farm.   As it slowly was getting encroached by suburbia, he started to take his art to the fields.  From his website:

“Welcome to urbanplough.com, my name is Matthew Moore and I am the last of four generations to farm my family’s land outside of Phoenix, AZ. Within five years, my home (this land) will transform into suburbia. In this site you can explore how I have documented and translated this development using art, in the form of earthworks, video and installation. While the loss of my family’s land is not the sole focus of my work, it certainly has initiated my greater exploration of using art to address environmental and economic sustainability issues.”

I think the most fascinating part of his story, is his art.  That is what hung in my memory.  His art.

In Growing Roots, there are two photos of his work on opposing pages and they are striking.  Check em’ out:

In this photo, he had cut into a 20 acre barley field the building plan for a house that was built in his area:

Here, he planted one years crops in the shape of the new neighborhood that would be built on top of that land:

O.K., enough already!  Go check this book out, whether you get it from the bookstore, or the library, just get it.

Spill it: What stories inspire YOU?  Are they those of the sustainability movement?  A CEO?  An activist?  Do share so we can be inspired by their stories too!

It wasn’t too long ago, that our sunflower wall looked like this:

Today, it is a bunch of dead flowers that the birds and squirrels are loving, and we are harvesting in hopes of having the same wall next year but with seeds from our flowers this year!

The kids picked at the sunflowers for days with their tweezers.  Momma actually got into the action too, making sure that we got seeds from every different kind of sunflower we planted, which was a lot!

As our garden planning begins for next year, and the final harvesting continues for our tomatoes and cantaloupe from this year, I am looking forward to seeing if our salvaged seeds will have as glorious a re-birth as they did this season!  The most fulfilling part of gardening has been the sheer wonderment at how it all comes to pass.

Truly a miracle that so much life comes forth from one tiny little seed.

Spill it: Are you harvesting anything from your garden hoping to use next year?  Cucumber, zucchini, cantaloupe seeds? If you didn’t have a garden this year, are you planning or dreaming of one for next year?  What are you most looking forward to growing?

Once a month I go to a woman’s house who lives in my hood that leads all those there through Spirit Journeys.  It is somewhat like meditation, except you call in animal guides and ask them for help or clarity understanding some aspect of your life you are questioning.

This week left a strong message deep within me, and it had nothing to do with my actual journey.

At the end of the evening we were talking about unhealthy behaviors and addictions, or how community dis-ease manifests in things such as depression, addiction, hoarding, etc.

Our faithful leader, mentioned that native peoples all over the world believe that treatment for people with any sort of these issues begins with community.  She started to mention things such as depression and then looked right at me and probably really wanted to say anxiety, but since I had set my intention on grounding my anxiety for my journey, she proceeded to say, “and other things” but didn’t take her gaze away until I began to chuckle uncomfortably.

‘And other things.’

I started to think about how much I have want a strong sense of community since I can remember, but my anxiety gets in the way of it!  I get terribly nervous in new situations with new people.  At most events with more than five people, I hope to blend into the wall as much as possible.  I don’t often call my friends to get together, because I continually am surprised that they actually DO want to hang out with ME when THEY call.  After most hang outs or play dates, I just hope that I haven’t said anything offensive or rude.  I second guess everything, and am riddled with past incidences that haunt me about my many inadequacies as a friend in the past.

Funny thing, when I started this blog I really wanted to have a group of ladies that got together to do some of these activities that I was wanting to learn and build sense of community in my own little urban way.  It was really hard to get dates that worked for everyone, there seemed to always be a conflict.  So I started the blog instead, to keep my focus on those things I wanted to try; a simple life, knitting, canning, gardening, etc. Yet what I have been hearing recently is that lots of people are feeling the same need for some strong community ties!

A sense of community.

I left the circle with the commitment to myself to work on community in my life.  To building stronger relationships that I can initiate and help continue, instead of using my fear as a way to wait for others to make the investment first.  Maybe I will start that group again of those that may be interested in cultivating a simpler life, crafting, cooking, and such.  I will certainly try and call my friends and plan time together.  I will probably join a Divine Feminine group at church that meets twice a month.

So many opportunities to create community that I have been too afraid to attempt because of my anxiety and shyness.  But maybe the native cultures are on to something, that community can make all the difference for so many of us, that often we feel like we are out there in this enormous world all by ourselves.  That no one understands, that everyone else has it so together and we are the only lonely ones stuck in a catch-22 between wanting community and terror at all things unfamiliar.

Community.  Yes.  Community.

That will be my mantra for the next month.

Spill it: Do you feel like you have a strong support community around you?  Do you live near family and they are mostly your community?  Or do you live far away from family and have successfully cultivated a sense of community on your own?

Might as well continue with the song and berry theme!

To escape the smoky haze we are living in currently, the kids and I headed east to the Pick-Ur-Own organic farm again today and loaded up on fixin’s for red salsa and of course some more raspberries!

The pickins were a bit slim today, I am not going to lie.  They must have had some crazy weekend this past weekend!  It took us two hours to pick this many.  Usually, I can get a whole flat in less than a whole row.  In fact, I have never had to switch rows to finish.  Today we were switching rows like crazy for this amount!

I am not one to complain, especially since I just got off the phone with a friend who did go over the weekend and said it was a MADHOUSE.  Half hour wait to pay!

I will count my homeschooling, flexie schedule blessings.

Green chili’s and salsa here I come.  Of course I don’t have any good recipes for green chili’s, but they smelled so good I couldn’t resist!

I needed to go to the local flower shop on the way home to get two more plants for our construction site we refer to as a backyard.  A dust patch.  Death Valley in the middle of suburbia.  Yeah, that is us right now, but that is another story.

The flower shop has everything on sale right now, as I was leaving with my intended two plants I just happened to ask the gentleman if he had any raspberries.  He said, “Do we!”

He took me over and showed me all of their berries…hmmm…trouble.  They were 40% off.

Please don’t tell my husband what I have done…

SIX new raspberry plants to join the ranks in our backyard garden!

Two blackberry and two boysenberry plants too!

Hey, for the amount I just went to the berry patch, and twice in the last two weeks, we can have all the berries we need in just a couple years!  And I figured, not only did I get them on sale, but we got a jump start now on how many years it will take to get a full harvest!

Next summer…planting strawberries…another plant that takes a few years.  Which is really why I have waited to plant them, I know someone who doesn’t have that sorta patience.  And yes, that would be me.

Spill it: What do you do with green chili’s?  This Mama needs a yummy recipe!

If you are wondering why today’s post is so late in getting up, here is your answer:

We were a little preoccupied this morning, filling our bellies with berries, our hair with the breeze, and our hearts with the joy of abundance.

It is the first day we have been able to visit our favorite Pick-Ur-Own organic farm in ages.  I imagine you will find us their every chance we get from now until the end of September!

Can’t wait to make my bag of Salsa Verde fresh from the farm!  They bag it for you with a recipe attached, all you have to do is pick a bunch of cilantro and a few Serrano chili’s and you are off to the races!  I think I will get the kit for the red bag of salsa next week!  Delicious!

We could smell this gentleman’s work all the way out in the strawberry fields, wafting on the breeze, making us hungry!

This pig is HUGE.  I thought her name was Miss Piggy, but then I heard someone call her Bacon Bits.  I am not sure any name with ‘bit’ in it is very fitting!

As you can see, we will be busy eating fresh berries for the rest of the day, and yes, I often get a tummy ache the first few hours after we return…but it is SO worth it!

What a way to start our official home school year!  I feel really, really blessed and peaceful.  The smell of dill and roasted chili’s is still in my nose, and the memory of the incredible teamwork the kids and I had going will hopefully last until next week when we do it all over again for just raspberries!

Spill it: What do you make with fresh strawberries that is a MUST with this kind of overflow?  Share your ideas so I can make some!

As always when one goes on vacation, one comes home to rotting and expired food in the fridge.  Gross.

When I got to work yesterday on getting us back into our lives, I started there.  I dumped everything that had expired and actually cleaned the fridge out.  Yes you heard right, I wiped the grime and garlic shavings and mystery sauces off my shelves and the walls.

Doesn’t happen very often.

Then we proceeded to the garden center and grocery store to get a handle on our current house situation.

Before:

After:

Wow.  And yes, that bottom shelf is 99% from the garden harvesting the kids and I did yesterday after we picked up our tomatoes off the ground and re-staked them.

Before:

After:

Ahh…all the fresh, organic Colorado Peaches one could want to eat in a day…which we will do today!

And our garden harvest:

I ate every one of those cherry tomatoes standing in the kitchen.  I gave not one away to my husband.  Not one away to my children.  Nope.  I have been waiting all summer for those little orange beauties.  They can eat what they find themselves…if they are ever lucky enough to find one….hooohooohaaahaaahaaa…..

And our carrots:

I can’t believe it!  My son wanted to plant carrots in a raised bed we made exclusively for them.  I planted them diligently and then it rained.  And rained.  And rained.  So all of the carrot seeds I had painstakingly planted in rows with little signs for each column denoting the type planted, washed to the outside halves of the bed.  They began to sprout more in clumps than in rows.  A mishmash of carrot blends.

We picked one every so often just to see, and they were all puny so I figured it was because they were growing so close together that we were out of luck.

Boy was I wrong!

The kids brought them in and washed them by themselves while I was still in the garden.  Of course they washed them in the bathroom sink, which I am not sure I am actually thrilled about, cause eww I didn’t clean that yesterday, but they were so excited I couldn’t tell them to stop!

The mess was huge, but well worth the joy on their faces as they walked around their court munching on the freshly harvested carrots they grew!

Spill it: Tell me about your biggest joy from the garden so far!  What have you watched grow that you had no idea it did that (for us corn) or that you picked that tasted oh so heavenly? (for us the orange cherries and the purple tomatoes)

We arrived home late last night to find this lovely basket sitting on our table from our neighbor who had been watching one of our doggies and peeking in on the garden progress:

And the size of the zucchini…I am not sure I have ever seen such a large squash…

But boy, when I turned the corner into the garden, which of course I did at 11 PM last night just to see, I got this sight that met me…a ray of sunshine for sure…

You can see we are doing what we can to support the bee population!  This wall of sunflowers looks exactly how I imagined it three months ago.

And then there is the work I will be doing today…a lot of it evidently…cause every last one of my tomato plants is on its side crying out for help desperately!

Oh my goodness what a disaster!  I am thinking farmers, I mean gardeners, cannot go on vacation in August for three weeks!

The Beefstake Tomatoes in my Earth Boxes did not survive.  So sad.  Every year I lose them in these things, I think I give up on the Earth Box.  Maybe for herbs…

So you know what I will be doing today.  After breakfast somewhere like Starbucks I imagine, and a stop at the grocery store to get any sort of food put back in the house, and a trip to the garden center to get stronger stakes, I will be out there wrangling the overgrown, weedy, crazy beast of a garden!

And I will love every minute of it.

Spill it: What is the worst situation you have come home to after a vacation?  (For me it was my cat that peed in middle of my bed after a ski vacation for a week)

We will still have to wait and see.

But I think we are on the verge of too much garden in too little a space.

No way.  Me?  Mess up a garden?  Yeah, you can bet your life on it…it would be an embarrassingly safe bet for you to wager…

Remember this?

It now looks like this:

Holy cow. Um…I think there might be an overflow here soon…seriously…I lined the whole outside of this bed with tomatoes and pole beans and bell peppers…at the center of it all…

And do you recall these little rascals of romaine that I swore wouldn’t survive a week?

They fooled me…

These are our favorites:

The corn grows like a foot a day!  It is so fun to watch.

The funny thing?  When we were looking at houses in the town we currently live in, we looked at a house that had dried up corn growing in the backyard.  At the time I thought to myself, “What crazy person grows corn in their backyard in the suburbs…that is a bit much.”

I guess we all know who we can call crazy now.  Crazy and joyful cause I love these little puppies!  I bet that lady who grew them in her backyard loved them just as much.

Spill it: What have you thought was absolutely ludicrous, only to turn around and do it yourself?

Here they are.  The first beautiful, and delicious,  gifts from our garden for this year.  I am truly amazed by the whole process of seed to sprout to food.  Food that we actually can eat!  I want to be doing so much more gardening and not a lot else these days.  Ode to my future as a farmer with chickens, goats, enough room for rows and rows of raspberries, a horse or two, and a view of the sunrise.

My husband wonders why he has to be suckered into living out my homesteading dreams…I am hoping a few more months of these wonders will get him itchy for more room too!

This gallon size bag we filled five days ago.  Today we could fill another whole bag!  (If it wasn’t pouring and my garden a mud pit, I would be out there cutting instead of here writing!)

HaHA!  Radishes.  No one in this house likes radishes.  Me included.  But I wanted to grow them anyway just to see how it worked!  We did eat them in our salad the night we picked them, with some lettuce from above, and with a little feta I couldn’t even taste em’.  I just think it is so fun!  I will continue to put them in my salads which will be met with ever more ingredients fresh from the garden soon…

The first night with fresh lettuce, we made BBQ Tacos.  They are one of our family staples, so much so that my 5 year old son eats three of them!  As much as I do! They are delicious, so try them even if the BBQ sauce in tacos doesn’t sound right.  I promise it is to worth it and it is so incredibly easy.  Seriously.  You won’t even need to print out this recipe.

BBQ TACOS

1 lb. ground all natural turkey

1/2 jar of your favorite BBQ sauce (our new favorite is from Organicville Tangy)

1 box blue taco shells (or whatever color you like!)

Your favorite organic cheese (We have used extra sharp cheddar and feta)

carrots

lettuce

tomato

avocado

~Chop up all your veggies and grate your cheese and carrots.

~Brown up the turkey, and when it is cooked add the BBQ sauce.  Simmer for a few minutes.

~Don’t forget to warm up your yummy colorful taco shells.

~Load up the shells with the turkey, cheese, carrots, lettuce, avocado and tomato.

These are so good you don’t even need any sauce to put on them!  The BBQ takes care of salsa, sour cream, and anything else you would drizzle on top of a taco in your house.

Enjoy!

Spill it: What have you been making with your garden fresh produce?  Have you gotten any garden fresh produce?  (Don’t feel bad if the answer is no…my peas are looking a bit yellow at this juncture…)

I felt the pressure.

My brain works in this mysterious way in which it needs order.  Or organization.  Or control.  Whatever it is, I like things to look lined up properly, and outfitted in all things matching; precise.  If there isn’t order there is chaos.  If it is chaos, it is my life.  So I don’t need inanimate objects to represent chaos too, my children do enough of that.

Imagine my guilt after building my beautiful raised beds with all new supplies from Home Depot, to come across A Life Sustained re-using pallets to create her raised beds.  Like, why didn’t I think of that?

And then, as I am reading Coop the last couple weeks, Michael Perry consistently points out his friend Mills, and Mills’ ultra-amazing salvage piles at the back of his property in which guru Michael is consistently returning to for all of his needs to build chicken coops, trailers, and who knows what all else.  Mills seems to find all of these things at the salvage yard, via thrift, or when others are getting rid of ‘stuff’.

This all came to a head due to the fact I needed, and desperately, some edging for my growing garden that I didn’t originally realize we would be creating.  But as often as I looked around at the yard, the more I decided we could totally plant more.   And the more I wanted to plant more, the more ways I needed to create weed barriers and designated ‘not for weed whacking’ areas.

Instead of racing to Home Depot, again, I took inspiration from these re-users and decided to head to the pile of ‘stuff’ left by the old owners of our house and my husbands firewood pile.

I used these old garden edgers from a corner in the opposite end of our yard to outline our future fairy garden.

This one is my favorite.  Logs from the old dead cottonwood tree that stood in our backyard ready to fall over at any minute, like onto someones head, it is now housing cantaloupe seeds.

A close-up of the wood.  For the sake of disclosure, my husband is not happy at all about this.  He took one look at the lack of wood in his pile and back at my ingenuity and exclaimed, “That is the perfect campfire wood.”  He said this with a sheer look of disgust.

I was waiting for a little something more like, “Wow honey, I am really impressed with your creativity, the fact that you saved us money, and that you moved all of these heavy objects by yourself never asking me once to donate my Saturday to helping you.”

Our sunflower bed is now surrounded by a bunch of untreated lumber that was just hanging out up against one of our fences, for two years.  I am sure our neighbors are quite appreciative that it looks like our yard is coming together in some fashion, and we are finally getting rid of piles of contractor salvages.

All said and done, I think the yard looks better, even with the reclaimed wares instead of brand new, shiny items I would have bought.  I am happier too.  I made a little bit of difference in the demand on our planet by choosing not to be so anal retentive about the way everything looked, and re-using stuff that other people had collected and left in my lap.

And I love my logs.  Don’t tell my husband how much I love them.  He probably thinks he is camping with them sometime later this summer…

Spill it: What have you re-purposed lately that you are just so tickled about?  Does your brain work in strange ways too when it comes to somethings that makes it harder for you to WANT to re-use instead?

I am having a problem and I need more than feedback.  In fact, I need a miracle!

Remember not so long ago when I transplanted my gorgeous seedlings into the raised beds?  Those lovely little tomatoes, romaine, chives, basil, and kale?

I think the tomatoes are on the brink of death.  And due to my lack of knowledge about such things, I am in dire need of someone who knows a little something about tomatoes to pass on their wisdom, a gardening sage who will stick it to me straight.  Do I wait to see if these babies I nurtured inside for two months can survive?  Or do I break down and head to the local gardening center to purchase a very hefty handful of tomato seedlings for a mere $1.69 each?

Yes.  I cheated on my existing tomato plants and scoped out the options yesterday while picking up some corn and watermelon seeds.  I feel slightly guilty.  But this mama also needs some tomatoes.  If I don’t have tomatoes what will happen to those long lazy summer afternoons I dreamed about laying in the sunflower garden with the kids munching on Super Sweet Cherry tomatoes and sugar snap peas?

So here is the nitty gritty.  The lower leaves on the plants are fairly wilty and brown.  The upper ones are a forest green shade.  There has been no new growth that I can tell since transplanting.  And the stems are purple.  Not green.  Not brown.  But purple.  Looking at the old photos, the stems may have been purple when I first transplanted, but none of the stems at the gardening center were any color other than green…

Lay it on me you gardening super heroes out there!  What do I do?

These two pictures are of the same plant.  So maybe there has been growth…I am just not sure it is healthy growth!

Spill it: Am I destined for new tomato plants?  Or should I wait and see if these little sprouts actually sprout any more?

I am dumbfounded.

Purely dumbfounded.

The weather finally changed for the better, well the better for planting that is.  My flopping romaine, the peach fuzzed covered tomato plants, the tufts of chives, the lanky kale, and my bursting basil officially found their permanent home outside in the raised beds on Monday.

It is a miracle.

That they survived the two months in my house is beyond belief.  That these seedlings sprouted at all is beyond comprehension.  It amazes me I was capable of only killing a few strawberry plants and not the whole darn bunch.

But here they stand.  Ready to take on all that a summer in the West has to offer.  Sun that is. For someone who has the worst tendencies toward gardening, yes not only do I hover over my children, but I hover over plants too, this has been a much more successful spring than I ever could have imagined.

I despise the few days of transplanting shock.  I see my green friends wither and wilt and turn shades I am not sure are normal.  So I panic.  My heart is racing wondering if they will survive the shock, some of the tomatoes are weary and I think a bird ate my cucumber leaves already.  But they have a fighting chance, and I suppose it is all any of us really ever have!

Please note, there are no guarantees.  I could kill these babies off in one zealous day spent with a hose.  At this point I teeter between shear joy over the sprouts and pure fear of just hoping for the best…only time will tell.

Yeah. Not sure the romaine started inside is going to make it. Luckily I planted some seed outside too!

Spill it: Alright, I know a ton of you out there are gardening!  How is it going?  Have you killed them all, saved some, or are you knee deep in spinach already because you were so organized and on the ball in March?

When the organic soil finally made it into my gardening boxes, and the sweat of pushing wheelbarrow loads up a grass hill had dried, and the extra soil had made it into it’s permanent home in other areas of the yard, I got to get dirty.

I ran my hands through the soil, back and forth, back and forth, smelling the musty scent of the barn I spent so many summers of my childhood in.  The leather of saddles, the pine of shavings, the poo.  I rose off the edge of the bed, took a long look at my hands covered in earth, and wiped them on my pants.  I do dirty.  My spirit was pleased and renewed by the lines of dirt left lingering under my fingernails.  The promise of new life, of fresh produce, of teaching my children where food comes from, of the sweet nectar of fresh tomatoes running down my chin, was on display for all to judge and I was proud of it.

I am dreaming of long summer afternoons.  With no deadlines, no worries about my son and school, no multiple spinning plates I am trying not to drop, no need to be anywhere at anytime…exactly…I shall lay on my back gazing at the clouds floating across the azure sky, with my babes beside me, tucked away in their sunflower hideaway, where no one will find us, snacking on our freshly pulled carnival carrots…

Ah yes, and we are one our way…

Remember, there was a time I didn’t think any of my seeds were even going to grow!  Now my tomatoes desperately need to be planted!

Some lettuce in a salad box.

The kids wanted carrots in their raised bed, so carrots they got!  With some chives, they don’t like chives, but evidently carrots do…companion planting after all!

All my little popsicle stick labels…what a moment when all the seeds had been covered by Mother Earth.

I have one more bed to fill, I left it empty for all of the green beauties in my living room.  By the end of this weekend they should all be in.  The tomatoes have hit the critical point, long and lanky they look like teenage boys who’s sneakers are too small for their feet!

Then we wait.  And water.  And tend.

It won’t be long now before my dreamy afternoon lazing amongst the beauty of seeds who have reached toward the sun with all their might comes to pass.  I can’t wait to be enjoying it munching on sugar snap peas.

Spill it: How are your gardens coming along?  What are you looking forward to eating fresh from your toiling most?

For some time now, OK the entire time we have lived in this house, our backyard has been a work in progress. That is putting it mildly actually. When we moved in the earth was a dry, caked cesspool of weeds. And it still is. But we are making headway…

We put on a deck to replace the crooked, mangled miniature cement slab and lopsided, homemade overhang with nails poking through in which those over 5’11” would need to duck under so as not to get pierced in the head with a rusty remnant. We put in a fenced area for all sorts of bodily functions that might be had by a dog. Why just last week we had to induce emergency vomiting in the puppy who ate her fill of raisins off my daughter’s lunch plate.

There is still a bunch of dirt piles around the yard, which the children love to get out their shovels and dig through, and the puppy insists if she digs long enough she might actually be able to reach China. Mama hates those lovely piles due to the consistent paw prints all over the kitchen floor and off white carpeting. But, home improvement is often a slower process than we wish it to be.

Of course, as you know, we have finally gotten some gardening beds made. What a relief to this crash and burn gardener! Our dirt was delivered last Friday, and between all of our daily commitments, we got it wheelbarrow-ed into the beds. We built one 2×4 bed for the kids to manage, and seed planting will take place today or tomorrow for those that could actually survive a random frost.

But, as I was surveying the seeds at the gardening store, visualizing our backyard, and fully coming to terms with the fact it won’t be done all at once, I started thinking. Dangerous, I know, but I am very excited about what we can achieve this summer, allowing our kids an area to actually play in their own backyard and experience the grace of the natural world at the same time.

Have you ever heard of Natural Playscapes?

A dear friend of mine introduced me to it, and I have been wracking my brain on how to incorporate it into our own backyard oasis.  The philosophy behind natural playscapes, is that you provide areas for kids to play in which are as much tuned to the natural world as possible.  Slides aren’t on plastic or wood supports, but built into hills.  Walkways are nothing more than natural stone, or paths cut into overgrown grass or flowers.  Hideaways are built from towering sunflowers or willow branches.

This crazy Mama, whose muscles between her shoulder blades are sorer than sore from turning dirt everyday for the last four days, went to work on creating a doable, affordable, natural playscape for the kids.  I bought a couple extra seed packets to create wildflower areas, with lots of butterfly attracting plants.  I scrounged around our yard for flagstones left by the previous owners to create pathways behind the wildflower plot, for the kids to have a secret garden walkway.  I staked out and added some extra soil to an 8×8 area to build them a sunflower hideaway with Evening Sun sunflowers, those stunning red petaled wonders with the yellow ring inside, after the last frost.  And yesterday I dug away at yet another area of weeds and grass which will be filled with all different kinds of sunflowers, the 6-10′ Mammoth Russian, the 18 -24″ Sunspot,  the 5-7′ Flash Blend mixed packet, the 16-24″ Elves Blend, and the 4′ Peach Passion, all to attract some lovely birds.  I am still trying to put together a little seating area made out of tree stumps as a table and chairs, but we have some time for that…

So while we are working diligently on the other 2/3 of the yard this summer which won’t be play friendly, the kids will have fun exploring the world of sunflowers and fairy gardens while their Mama listens to their stories and toils away at not killing her tomatoes…

Spill it: Any ideas for creating natural playscapes of your own?  And these don’t have to be just for kids!  What kind of natural playscape do you dream of for yourself?

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you’re inspired to do the same, leave a link to your ‘moment’ in the comments for all to find and see.

~Idea from A Life Sustained via SouleMama

*FYI:  Blog post at Reality Writes today as well, and it is not this one!  Pop on over to read it here.*

I am actually terrified.

I couldn’t get my mind around it exactly this evening.  As the smell of fresh soil wafted through the house, I stood in the kitchen staring at the plethora of seed packets on the counter.  I was utterly afraid.

“Afraid of what?” you ask.

I am doubting my ability to grow a thing.  I am doubting that a single seed, that the children and I diligently planted on this glorious spring day, will even sprout.  I am worried that my husband will be incredibly disappointed after spending last weekend, and years listening to me speak of our tremendous gardening potential, devoted to making raised beds.

What if I kill…everything?

What if not a single cherry tomato, basil, romaine, leek, spring onion, chive, kale, sunflower, carrot, broccoli, or radish even take the leap of faith to break forth from the seed?  Oh God.  I am panicking that I am going to be the worst gardener ever, even though I already am fully aware that I am the worst gardener ever.

I just wish there was a cheaper way to be a miserable failure.  Oh wait, I suppose if I never even tried to grow a thing, it would be a cheaper way to be a stinking failure.  I just hope that at the end of the summer, I am not wishing I saved the money instead.

There was one shining light in the whole shebang.  I had a moment of utter glory this afternoon.  The kids and I sat on the front porch, enjoying the sixty degree weather, and filling our little seed starter trays with dirt.  My almost four year old daughter insisted on placing some rosemary and tomato seeds in their perspective trays.  I being the crappy gardener as it is, thought it best if I did it.

Soon enough however, I remembered that I attempt to grow things every year with high hopes that the kids will learn and understand the amazing process of life, and of course, it helps that they know where food comes from.  I poured some tiny rosemary seeds into my daughters hand.  She meticulously picked each one up and placed it delicately into the dips in the soil that we had prepared.

I enjoyed watching this so incredibly much, the few moments that the tiny seeds lay in her tiny hand.  For some reason, it really caught me off guard.  The innocence of her little hand, as the backdrop of the seemingly innocent seeds.  Seeds which have nothing to do, but grow.  Yet, to look at them, you would never guess the huge amount of potential they possess.

It is the same with her tiny hand.  I often take for granted that her hand is not going to be so small forever.  That there will come a day when she doesn’t even want to hold mine anymore.  That is because she is like that little seed.  Her whole purpose is to grow, and create, and produce a life of her own.  My only job is to provide the water and maybe a little sunlight to help her on her way.

I really hope that my giant brown thumb doesn’t stop her from fully blossoming.

Spill it: Share a recent sacred moment with one of your children.  Let us remember how lucky we are!

I haven’t slept in them…but I am so in love with them.  And the whole family has energy put in creating them, the kids included, wielding the cordless drill like little professionals, they did.  Of course you know I am referring to my new raised gardening beds!

We did it.  After two years of  just dreaming about this day, the beginning of my backyard garden, ground has been broken.  Well, the ground actually hasn’t been broken until we decide exactly where we want the beds to go for good.  And we are still luckily a few weeks away from seed starting…maybe.  OK, I have yet to actually checked on the seed starting dates…but if anything I feel as though I am in the window at this point.

Soon the kids and I will start our seeds, and the kitchen table will probably be out of commission for a few weeks, please don’t tell my husband if you see him this little bit of information, he doesn’t need to know yet that we may be eating picnic style for awhile.  In a few weeks we will invest in the mesh liner, for keeping friendly visitors out, and soil for our new cradles that will soon be nurturing the fresh and magical bounty of the earth.   And Mama will be oh so happy, to finally be toiling in the fresh warm spring air, sunhat on, rain boots donned, amidst the little wonders of cherry tomatoes, snap peas, zucchini, lettuce, spring onions, and herbs a plenty.

I cannot wait to go to the flower shop this week to peruse and purchase our organic seeds.  Now it is finally time to pull out the organic gardening books that have been stashed away gathering dust, just waiting for their moment to shine forth with information a plenty, and of course to bookmark possible lifesaving websites that might come in handy.

I have no idea, really, what I am doing.  I have killed everything I have tried to grow in pots for years now.  I am not deterred by this little mountain in the daydream I have created in my head.  The world wasn’t built in a day, and my organic garden isn’t going to be either, but I promise you I will love every minute of the journey…

…well maybe until I am picking giant green slugs off plants, but that must just be another one of those amazing roles husbands can’t wait to fill!  In fact, I am sure it is.

Spill it: Any advice you have about organic gardening…I will so need it, and so be grateful to you for sharing!

Are you ready for it?

It was 55 degrees today, my daffodils on the table purchased at Whole Foods last week are in full bloom, a ray of sunshine in a cloudless sky, or my thrift store blue vase.  The breeze feels warm instead of tinged with a chill.  The kiddos are playing outside, riding bikes again, going to the park again.  Mama is so happy with possibilities, she even turned her face to the sun yesterday as she was filling the gas tank, to feel the promise of spring on her skin.

But Mama is also keenly aware of what is happening at the organic farm down the street…I noticed the tiller show up parked in front of the vegetable stand, with a pile of gravel for the drive next to it.

YIKES!

If they are getting ready for planting…I am so far behind!

Last year I watched jealously as they planted their rows of seeds and starters, followed by the daily progress, closely monitored by me, of vegetables of all varieties making their healthy journey to full bloom.  I was distraught by the fact that my giant yard I had dreamed of partially turning into a fairly large garden, was still a mud pit and lacking raised beds.

We never did get around to our raised beds last year, but due to the stars alignment in my universe this week; my sons need for some project he can fell good about, his question to me two days ago about when we were going to start planting, and seeing how my birthday is tomorrow but the hubby and I are spending the evening away…we have decided to make it a family project on Saturday to build one or two raised beds before going to ice cream at our favorite spot to celebrate Mommy’s big day!

YIPPEE!!!

Can you tell I am excited???  Even my notorious brown, crinkly, deader than dead thumb couldn’t keep my spirits down today!  I will post Monday the photos of our beds, this is the tutorial we are using from Sunset Magazine!

Happy building!

Spill It: What have you been putting off due to finances or time, that you are really not interested in putting off any longer? Mommy’s well being matters too!