tools

Sometimes, I like to look at things that I absolutely cannot have.  Call it wishful thinking, or anything else you want, but this is the reason why I can't walk past Anthropologie without "taking a quick look" and why I always ask to see the dessert menu, even when I'm way too full--or way too poor--to order dessert.

So the other day, I was doing some of this wishful wandering over at Terrain--which frequently features items that would require multiple paychecks for me to purchase.  But then, I was cruising through the first page of the 'new arrivals' and found myself saying, "Hey, I have that."  Twice.

For someone with no ground to garden in, I have an awful lot of gardening tools.  And some things that might be more accurately referred to as "farm implements."  There's a tractor seat on our back porch.  And two chicken feeders.

And, apparently, I'm also the owner of a pair of okubo shears.  Who knew?  I came across these a few years ago at my old job and have been using them to prune herbs ever since.  Terrain says that theirs are made in Japan, and I'm guessing that mine are, too.

As for the other thing, it's a bit of a stretch.  Terrain has some cute little herb snips that are four inches long and kind of pretty.  Mine are over a foot long and too big to use for clipping little bits of oregano.  In fact, I'm pretty sure they were used to shear sheep.

Which is way more interesting than snipping herbs.

The sun is out, so I'm planning on spending some more time sifting through the collections of stuff on the back porch, seeing what other exciting things I've managed to bury under more recent acquisitions.  If you're too organized for anything like that to happen to you, then here are a few other fun things to keep you busy:

a spring bike tune-up how-to

roasted strawberries!

olive oil cake to go with the berries

cheesemaking in the big city

a string garden

Happy weekend!

beginning

They're tiny--and they're not terribly photogenic--but I'm excited they've come.  The arugula sprouts are here.  These are the first sprouts of the season, and they herald the beginning of a season of fresh greens and backporch harvests.

To be honest, these weren't the very first sprouts of the season.  The first was a little radish that pushed its way out of the soil sometime yesterday morning.  Sadly, the radish sprout was stolen by a small, furry thief.  Thus begins my annual battle with the squirrels.  My tactics involve lots of physical barriers accompanied by occasional bursts of hollering.

I think the fencing might be more effective.

Fortunately, once the little seedlings have gotten big enough that they can't be harvested in one small snack, I can take down all the ugly chicken wire and old window screens that have become my last line of defense...

My weekend plans involve making granola, baking some more bread, and working on a secret project that I'm hoping to unveil in the next week or so.  If you're looking for something new to do, here are a few fun things for you:

sweet pin and bead baskets

bacon+corn+zucchini+avocado+cheddar=awesome

sweet top, favorite kids' book, & adorable photo shoot

more book-inspired beauty

cookie cutters--and some cookies

Happy weekend to you!

divided

On my garden chore list for the weekend was dividing the "hens and chicks" that have been populating--and overpopulating--one of the planters at our front door.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a "before" picture, but let me assure you, these little succulents were growing all over the place, including on top of each other.

In short, they needed more space.  I pulled out some of the worst offenders and gave them pots of their own.  Everyone seems to be getting along a bit better now.

I love succulents and I've written about them before.  They're beautiful, versatile, and they put up with my particular brand of garden care, which I'll broadly term "attentive negligence."

If you're interested in learning more about the "proper way" to divide succulents, i.e. not exactly how I did it, here's a short little video from Sunset that should give you enough confidence to tackle your own.

Happy Monday to you!

gardening

We've had several days of sun and blue skies here in the Emerald City, and I'd like to think I've taken full advantage of it.  I've planted pots of arugula, radishes, calendula, garlic chives, plain old chives, nigella, and peas.

I also shoveled and sifted about three cubic feet of compost from one of our backporch bins.  Since there aren't many macro- or micro-organisms living in the potting soil I use in my containers, I try to introduce as much "real" life as possible by adding lots of fresh compost each spring.  Sometimes that means hauling bags of commercially-made stuff up our back stairs, but this year, our little home composting operation has generated more than enough to get the season started.

Today is shaping up to be another gorgeous one, which means it's probably time for me to go back outside.  If gardening is on your to-do list for the weekend, here's some green inspiration for you:

find yourself some land

print up a garden journal

start some seeds

plant some onions

dream about flowers

Happy gardening--or garden-dreaming--this weekend!

official

Now that the first day of spring has officially arrived, the glorious blue skies we've been enjoying all weekend have turned gray with clouds that promise rain by mid-afternoon.

Which sounds about right for spring in Seattle.

I have plans for this season.  Mostly my plans involve being outside.  For one thing, I'm long overdue to get back to the Children's Garden.  I've also got some gardening of my own to do here at home.  Now that I've given up my little community garden plot, I'm back to growing food in containers on our funny little back porch.  Right now, things back there are looking pretty bleak.

Obviously, I have some work to do...

As you're welcoming spring today, I thought you might enjoy this little snippet from SouleMama.  It certainly brightened my morning, in spite of the clouds.

to bed

This will be my last season at our community garden.  While it's hard to give up the little plot that I've kept for the past five years, anyone who's grown food at a community garden knows that the experience comes with some unique challenges.  After plenty of ups and downs, I've decided to focus my attention on container gardening here at home, which will make my tiny allotment available for some other eager gardener next spring.

This morning, I went to do the last of my gardening, tucking the plot in for the winter.   I didn't want to leave a big, weedy mess for the lucky soul that inherits my little chunk of real estate.  And honestly, I haven't been a very active gardener this summer, so I definitely had some work to do.

In the course of an hour and a half, the plot went from this:

To this:

I know, I know.  It just looks--sad.

Usually, this time of year, I clear out what's left of all the summer crops, put in my garlic, and scatter cover crop seed everywhere else.  I decided not to plant cover crop this year, partially because I didn't want to make a bunch of work for some new gardener next season.

Instead, I did some lazy "sheet mulching"--layering greens and browns and then covering it all with cardboard.  The organic material will break down over the winter, feeding the soil a bit.  The cardboard helps keep everything in place and will also, hopefully, keep the weeds down during this "off" season.  Again, it's lazy, but it should do the trick.

I had a good time in the garden.  I collected seeds from the calendula and nigella, so I'll have some souvenirs to sow in the spring.

And I spent some quality time with the last of the summer's pollinators.  A male Rufous Hummingbird came and went all morning, zipping past me to get to the tangerine sage.  Of course, I couldn't snap a photo; hummingbirds are much faster than I am, especially now that I've cut my coffee consumption to half a cup a day.

This little lady, though, wasn't in any hurry to move on.

I left the garden with a little bag of seeds and a clump of wild onions descended from some that my cousin smuggled off a Canadian campsite a few years ago.  I'll take a few months off from gardening, but at the tail end of winter, when the seed catalogs show up in the mailbox, I'll start scheming again, building a little garden--this time a container garden--in my imagination.

I'm trying to spend this weekend getting things done.  I've got some plans for November that might take up quite a bit of my time--I'll let you in on the excitement next week, I promise.

We're also planning on attending the annual neighborhood pumpkin carving party tomorrow night.  And of course, the trick-or-treaters will be here on Sunday.  Which means that I might have to buy some more candy for them.  I'm not sure what happened to the last two bags I picked up...

Maybe Halloween chaos is enough to fill your weekend.  If not, here's a to-do list for you:

Design your own alphabet.

Put vanilla in your soup.

Make a Halloween mess.

Download some wrapping paper.

Make a last-minute costume.

Order customized cards.

Have a lovely--and spooky--weekend!

harvest

I went to the Children's Garden today, just like I have nearly every Friday for the past five years.  You can learn a lot by gardening with kids.  And a little bit of what you learn is actually about gardening.

Today, I learned--or, at least, was reminded--that the harvest is the most exciting part of the garden year. There were shrieks, giggles, oohs, and ahhs for each radish that was yanked from the ground and every squash that was wrestled off the vine.  A good time was had by all, and I was lucky enough to be there to join in.

Hopefully, the rest of my weekend will involve a little knitting, a little cooking, and some top secret maneuvers that involve my man's quickly approaching birthday.  If I have any extra time, here's what I'd like the rest of my to-do list to look like:

Make a moose.  Or, okay, a deer.

Trick you-know-who into eating eggplant.  

Dream of cheese.

Repaint the bedroom.

Start  a new collection.

Buy another sewing book.  And also, learn to sew.

Here's hoping you all have a lovely weekend.  See you next week!

champion

I have officially harvested my first pumpkin.  It is a little undersized, but given that it's the only surviving pumpkin of the season, I'm incredibly proud of it.

I've been so immersed in the gardening world for the past few seasons--I can go on in great detail about the ideal backyard compost pile and when exactly one should plant peas in USDA Zone 8-9.  It's easy for me to forget sometimes that I've only been growing food for five or six years.  There's a long list of things that I have yet to try planting.  After this summer, though, I can cross "pumpkin" off that list.

For a long time, I thought that pumpkins were beyond me because, with only some containers on the back porch and a ten-by-ten community garden plot, space is incredibly limited.  This spring, though, my man and I decided that the big wooden crate that last year's sickly blueberry died in would be plenty of room for two pumpkin plants.  And up to a certain point, we were right.

The vines tumbled out of the container and wandered eight or ten feet down the sidewalk, right up to our--very patient--neighbors' front porch.  The blossoms came on beautifully, but then, one by one, they withered and fell off the vine.  I talked with my friends at The Garden Hotline, who diagnosed the problem as "incomplete pollination."  It was a rough year for bees in Western Washington, with a cold, wet start to summer.  Apparently, this created some pollination problems that extend well beyond my little pumpkin blossoms.

I could have tried doing some pollinating of my own, by going from blossom to blossom with a little paintbrush, but the timing of it never really worked out.  In the end, we were left with one handsome little pumpkin, turning round and orange on the sidewalk.  It might be small, but I couldn't be more proud.

Pumpkins ripening on the vine really do mean it's fall, and as I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm thrilled about the change in seasons.  I've always considered myself an autumnal soul.  Maybe it's the September birthday.  Or maybe it's because I'm from the Midwest, where fall is one of the more tolerable seasons on the calendar.  Whatever the reason, I'm ready to settle in for a few chilly, gray months of falling leaves and mud puddles.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be spending my weekend baking, knitting, and spending time with family.  I'm also planning on doing some cooking, starting with tonight's dinner, enchiladas baked in this.  Maybe you've got a grand plan for your weekend, too.  If not, here's a to-do list to get you started:

Download a quilt.

Protect your dinner table.

Fall in love with fatherhood.

Find a use for that pumpkin.

Knit a lampshade.

Subscribe to something new.

Happy weekend, everyone!

monsters

I harvested my garlic this afternoon.  You can't tell from the photos, maybe, but these garlic bulbs are ginormous.  They're practically the size of baseballs.

If you're a gardener, then you know that this is not necessarily a good thing.  It certainly wasn't intentional on my part.  Remember a few weeks ago, when I was delighting in how capable my garden was of looking after itself?  Well, that might be true, for the most part, but I probably should have kept slightly better tabs on the garlic.

It might be fine.  We'll have to wait and see.  Before we store the garlic for eating, I'll bundle the heads together with some twine and hang them somewhere with shade and decent ventilation--the back corner of our kitchen, probably.  Hopefully, this extra step will help the garlic avoid mold (ick!) and maybe make it last a bit longer in the storage bin.

Not that it will be lying around for long.  We are garlic people, my man and I.  It tends to wander into most of the dinners I cook--and sometimes breakfast, too...

I've mentioned that my partner-in-crime is not a soup-lover, but I'm hoping that when we're flush with garlic from our CSA along with this little batch from the community garden, I'll be able to trick him into trying a bowlful of this.   I'll have to let you know how that one goes...

in the meantime

After catching up on the boring stuff like dishes and laundry, I finally spent some time yesterday in our community garden.  I'd been a little worried about how things would go during my three week absence, but it was immediately clear that my little plot had gotten along just fine without me.  Funny thing about gardens.  Plants just do whatever it is they need to, whether you're around to watch them do it or not.

I actually don't have a whole lot planted right now.  There's the garlic I put in last fall that's not quite ready for harvest yet.  The raspberry canes are doing well, and the little squash and pumpkin plants have been busy, too.  Everything else, though, the calendula and nigella and borage have all just kind of happened.  Even the sunflowers that are growing--they're about four feet tall now--are volunteers.  It's all making me feel kind of lucky, like I haven't done the work to deserve these plants, but I get to enjoy them, anyway.

Before I left town in June, I did ask a few people to keep an eye on my garden, in case things started looking thirsty.  June in Seattle, though, was--well--June in Seattle.  It rained a lot.  It was cold.  That's how we roll here.

Rumor has it, though, Seattle's going to get a bit of a heat wave this week, and for the people who shivered through last night's fireworks in a chilly mist, warmer temperatures probably sound a little more, um, summery.  If you're like the folks around here, wondering where summer's been, you should read today's post over at Orangette.  Molly's blogging has been a little spotty for the past year or so while life happened to her, but I can't help feeling like she's making a comeback.  I, for one, am happy to see her.

And if Molly's summer list-making doesn't get you in the mood for popsicles and picnic blankets, there's always this...

Happy summer, friends!

interrupted

It might be hard to see from where you're sitting, but that right there is a sock.  Or, most of a sock.  It's been sitting on the needles for a long time.  So long, in fact, that when I picked it up tonight, a poof of dust lifted off the top.  It's kind of sad, really.  Especially when you figure that it's only the first of what I originally planned to be a pair of socks.

Most of the other "making and doing" categories of my life are in similarly sorry shape.  My ability to do things like write a letter, bake muffins, or fold the laundry has been in a downward spiral for the past several months.  I didn't really notice, at first, but it's become pretty obvious that all the time spent on "wedding stuff" has been nudging nearly every other extracurricular to the bottom of a long, long to-do list.  (You might notice that I've designated "folding laundry" as an optional activity.  I should point out that some people do not share this view.  My partner-in-crime, for instance.)

I would be more upset by all the disruption, maybe, if I didn't realize how temporary the situation really is.  When the wedding is over and done with--along with the subsequent traveling, the second reception in Washington, and the general cleaning up afterwards--I'm going to suddenly find myself with time again. I'll go back to plain old "because I feel like it" crafting, instead of all these funny little projects with deadlines and consequences.  Hopefully, life will feel less out-of-balance.

In the meantime, though, things are going to be a little rough.  Especially for my poor, nearly-abandoned mini-farm on our back porch.  I might have to carve out at least a little bit of time to get things growing there.  Food is pretty important.  After all, a girl can't live on Once Wed alone.

Or can she?