the new girl

This weekend we added a new hen to our backyard flock.

Michelle and Dolley can't stop staring at the new girl

(Yes we have chickens. Have I never mentioned them before? They're lovely).

The new girl's name is Abigail, named for Abigail Adams, the second first lady of the US (except that I keep calling her Abigail Van Buren because I mix up advice columnists and first ladies, apparently). All our hens are named after first ladies, thanks to our 5 year-old's interest in them. Michelle Obama, Jackie Kennedy and Dolley Madison have been keenly interested in the new arrival, snooping around her little quarantine coop and generally being very nosy.

Poor Abigail is a sight. Before we got her, she was penned up with five roosters (FIVE! ROOSTERS!) and a gaggle of little bantam pullets. She's awfully bedraggled, missing some large clumps of feathers, and appears to have a broken toe, the poor thing. But she's still a pretty hen, a Plymouth Rock with lovely black & white feathers, young and a good layer according to her erstwhile owner.

I hope she settles into our flock happily. Three plump nosy hens have got to be better roommates than FIVE! ROOSTERS!, right? She's going to live like poultry royalty at our house: free run of a big bug-filled backyard, organic feed, lots of yummy lunchbox leftovers, all the mealworm treats she can eat, and herbal tinctures in her water jug. Basically chicken paradise. Except for being chased by an overly-affectionate toddler who really wants a hug, because that's the price a chicken has to pay at our house in exchange for all the organic grub. Toddler love, and giving up her delicious eggs. Yay, more eggs!

P.S. Writing this post led me to find that people on Ravelry are knitting chicken clothing. Of course they are. Penguins shouldn't hog all the sweaters for themselves.

the neglectful gardener

I was thinking recently in the shower (where I do most of my thinking) that I am really an expert in being a sucky gardener. I love gardening, but really I should be in jail for vegetable neglect. If I wrote a book about gardening, it would be very, very short. Basically, blog post length. So, here it is. My gardening book. Enjoy!

The Neglectful Gardener: 
Growing Fresh, Organic Veggies in Spite of Yourself
by fawn pea, mediocre knitter and sucky gardener

This year was the first time I've ever had a successful winter garden, and I'm feeling pretty full of myself about it. By "successful," I mean that there's something alive and edible out there. It's a modest success, but certainly the best I've ever had. My chest gets all puffed up when I look out the window in February and see things we could eat for dinner growing in the raised beds. I believe that this modest harvest entitles me to call myself an Expert and write breezy blog posts on gardening.

So, if you want to be modestly successful and somewhat puffed up like me, I encourage you to read on to discover the secrets of successful sucky vegetable gardening. Everything I know is contained right here. Really, everything. So... here are the secrets of being a good Neglectful Gardener:

1. Make friends with really good gardeners.

There are people out there who can grow stuff like artichokes and peaches in their gardens. They know how to keep tomatoes from getting blossom end rot, and they never seem to have trouble with powdery mildew. Make friends with these people. They like to swap seeds. They like to trade stories. They will teach you everything you need to know, or failing that, they will probably have a lot of extra zuchinni to share.

2. Chat up the lady at the farmer's market who sells plants.

I know the lady at the farmer's market who sells plants, because I am very bad at growing things from seed. Every year I read the charming stories of heirloom beans and peppers and melons in the seed catalogs and fantasize wildly about the bounteous, sepia-tinted harvest soon to be filling the kitchen of my not-too-distant future. Then I forget about my seedlings. They all dry out (PATHETIC) or get eaten by caterpillars (DEPRESSING), or just never sprout in the first place (WHY???).

At this point, I used to be very tempted to go to the hardware store for cheap flats of vegetable starts. Unfortunately those industrial vegetables tend to be coddled, weak and poorly-adapted to local conditions. Instead, the lady at the farmer's market has plants that, while a bit more expensive, will actually survive neglectful gardening techniques and thrive in local conditions, putting the "cheap" vegetables to shame. Also, she knows everything there is to know about gardening. She will steer you right.

3. Make compost.

This is the easiest, most basic thing to do for your garden. Feed the dirt. Get a cute little compost bucket for your kitchen counter, and put those eggshells and veggie scraps to work for you. Steal your neighbors' leaf bags from the curb every fall and throw those in, too. And grass clippings... hoo boy!  Most garden plants strip out nutrients and life from the soil. Compost puts it back in. Compost is an absolute requirement. Some cities with composting programs (like Raleigh) let you buy a huge load of compost for next to nothing. Make compost. Make compost. Make compost.

4. Feed the bugs.

Oh my goodness bugs love gardens. They love them! Everything they want to eat is right there! Free for the taking! But we cannot put poisons on our vegetables to kill the bugs, because that is very stupid. Poisons. On our food. Stupid. So you have to feed the bugs to other bugs (and birds and toads). Grow other stuff besides vegetables. Create some habitat. Get some wildflowers going in there. Bushy things. Things with flowers. Habitat is your friend.

5. Grow stuff in the sun.

This may seem totally obvious, but I have seen a lot of people make garden beds in shady or semi-shady spots in their yard and then act all mystified when their tomato plants never make any tomatoes (okay, I have been one of those mystified people). Vegetables need a lot of sun. Don't try to grow them in the shade.

6. Make raised beds

The soil in your backyard, if it hasn't been amended with several years' worth of compost, is probably pretty barren. It may also be rocky, 90% clay (like mine), and contaminated with who-knows-what. Was your neighborhood built on old farmland that was regularly sprayed with arsenic-based pesticides? Did the previous homeowner nuke the grass regularly with Weed'n'Feed? Have lead paint chips landed all over the ground at some point? Don't know the answer to all of these questions? Building raised beds lets you start from scratch with fresh, unadulterated, compost-filled soil. They can be as simple or as elaborate as you want them to be. Just avoid treated lumber. Yes, it lasts a long time, but it also leaches horrible chemicals into your raised beds. Strong, rot-resistant woods like cedar are a much better choice. Or try recycled-plastic "lumber."

7. Pick it and eat it!

If you think it's depressing to throw away a big old container of mixed salad greens from the store because they wilted before you got a chance to eat them, imagine how horrible it is to watch beautiful food that you sweated and toiled to grow yourself rot or dry out or go to seed because you waited around too long to pick it and eat it. There just aren't enough synonyms for "tragic." Case in point: One week in January I had three adorable little white snowball heads of cauliflower in my garden. I remember fondling them and thinking what a delicious dinner they would make when they got really big and impressive. The following week it was 65 degrees and all the caterpillars woke up, and now all I have left are three cauliflower skeletons. Don't fondle the produce and make empty promises. Just pick it and eat it.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed my little foray into the world of garden advice-giving. That will probably be the grand total of it, so maybe read it a second time if it seemed kind of short. Does the sum total of your gardening knowledge fit into a comment? Do share!

late fall

We escaped the hurricane that brought such terrifying storms to our coast and mountains. All we got here in central North Carolina was some much-needed rain. I feel almost guilty enjoying some beautiful fall weather while my relatives on the Jersey Shore struggle though yet another storm knocking out their power and disrupting their lives.

But Nature is glorious around us right now, so I will take her on those terms and be grateful.

The other day HWWLLB cut down all the faded, raggedy-looking summer flowers from our front yard - mostly zinnias and gomphrena - and stuffed them into the yard waste bin. The Little Pea took the nicest of them to school for their flower-arranging activity. We've got several this-might-be-the-last-bouquet bouquets of salvia and asters all over the place. Every time I pick a green pepper or a stalk of basil, I say a little thank-you for the harvest, in the recognition that this might be the last of it.

At the same time, the greens and lettuce are sweetening with every cold night. Now that it's generally too cold for insects, I don't have to worry about the caterpillars munching on my baby broccoli and cauliflower plants. All I have to do is pull the occasional weed and fantasize about the delicious meals they will make soon. We have enough fresh salad greens for a much larger family, and a nice selection of dark leafy greens to round out any meal.

I'm awful at cleaning out the garden. I cling to the memory of the summer bounty, even if it is a hazy memory of what I wanted it to be, rather than a clear picture what it actually was. Once the stalks are spent and the disheveled vines are everywhere, you could forget that the cucumbers never produced or the squash were all mutilated by vine borers. It was a glorious summer garden. Now it's spent. I hate clearing away the debris afterwards, even though I know it would mean fewer disappointments next year from over-wintering marauders.

Right now my eye is on the leafy green things, wondering which of them will be sweet and tasty and abundant enough to grace our Thanksgiving table. There will be plenty of mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, Russian kale and red sails lettuce. The tatsoi will be my own little treasure that I keep just for myself (and the Little Pea), my very favorite green and one that I never seem to be able to grow very much of. In the freezer are two big tubs of roasted pumpkin, the surprise harvest from the volunteer pie pumpkin plant that came up in the middle of a vegetable bed and braved the vine borers to give us several adorable, perfectly round, bright orange pumpkins.

Surprises, disappointments, bitter and sweet. I'm giving thanks for a little garden that helps me ride out life's storms every season.

build a backyard sand table

The Little Pea loves to dig in the sand. When we go to the playground, she often spends the whole time sprawled barefoot in the sandbox, happily building and destroying towns, castles and farms.

With a new baby on the way, we decided we needed to make our backyard more fun, since trips to the playground and the museum might slow down a bit this fall. So we built our own sand table. It was really easy and cost us less than $20 total. A retail sand table starts at $30 for a very small & chintzy model, and I've seen them sell for more than $100. I think the Pea especially loves hers because she helped us build it.   

Here's what you'll need:

- An under-the-bed storage box with a lid (about $7 at the store, or you might already have one).

- A wooden crate or small coffee table to mount it on (we had one sitting in the garage).

- Four large, flat screws with washers (about $1.50 from the hardware store).

- An electric drill with a small drill bit (we used a 1/16-inch bit).

- Two 50-lb bags of play sand ($5 each at the hardware store).

- Assorted sand toys (repurposed yogurt containers work great if you don't have beach toys).

Mount the storage box on the crate or table

First I positioned the storage box on the crate just the way I wanted it to go, and then drilled holes for each of the four screws. 

Then I screwed each one in place with a washer in between, which I thought might help the plastic last longer without cracking.

Drill some small drainage holes

I drilled lots of tiny drainage holes all over the bottom of the storage box so that if (when) the Pea dumped water into the sand table, it would have a way to drain out. I wanted the holes to be large enough to let water through, but not so large that sand would leak out. We used a 1/16-inch drill bit. If I had it to do over, I would probably go one size larger.

Fill the play table with sand

This part was fun for all of us! Two big bags of sand were plenty. The storage box was quite full, but that's okay because it wasn't long before sand started migrating all over our yard.

Keep it covered

We were sure to get a box with a tight-fitting lid to keep out the rain. Make sure to cover it up whenever your child is done playing - nothing worse than an unexpected thunderstorm to turn your sand table into a mud pit. If it does get very wet, just leaving the lid off on a couple of sunny days dries it out pretty well.

Have fun!

The Little Pea and her friends spend a lot of time at this table. It's fun to watch how they combine the sand play with other activities in the backyard, like garden digging, restaurant, and "beach" play with the wading pool. I'm looking forward to seeing what else they do with it, with the onset of lovely fall weather and more time outside.

recipe::pasta salad with roasted corn & fresh herbs

This tasty pasta salad was a Fourth of July invention that seemed worth sharing. Just about everything in it should be available at your local farmer's market right now - if not in your own garden! This is great to make while you're cooking some other things on the grill. It's also wonderful made a day ahead - the flavors intensify and meld nicely overnight in the fridge.


pasta salad with roasted corn & fresh herbs


prep time: about 20 minutes
feeds 3-5 people as a side dish (doubles easily)


1/2 lb pasta of your choice (we used tricolor fusilli)
2 ears of sweet corn, shucked & cleaned
1 cup of cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 of one small red onion, minced
about 1/2 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp fresh basil, minced
2 Tbsp fresh cilantro, minced
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp ground cumin seed
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your grill.

While the pasta cooks, roast the corn. Brush each ear lightly with olive oil, and then place directly on the grill. Use tongs to turn the ears frequently until they are beginning to brown lightly all over, about 5 minutes.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it, drizzle on some olive oil to keep it from sticking, and put it into a bowl & into the fridge to cool.  While the pasta and the corn cool, prepare the rest of your ingredients: halve the tomatoes and mince the onion and the fresh herbs.

Mix up the dressing: in a small bowl combine 1/4 cup of olive oil, all the lime juice, cumin, salt and pepper. Mix well.

Once the corn is cool, use a knife to cut the kernels from the cob. Put the corn, onion and herbs into the bowl with the pasta. Pour over the dressing, and toss well to mix and thoroughly coat everything. If the pasta seems a bit dry, drizzle in a little more olive oil til it looks right to you.

You can serve this right away, but the longer it chills in the fridge before serving, the tastier it is!

greetings from the backyard

Hello from our backyard. This is where I've been spending most of my time these last few beautiful weeks. Now that it's getting quite hot, most of the time in the backyard involves a hose or wading pool.



I can't say that there's been much knitting going on. There's been small knitting. Lots of friends are having babies (including one you may know), and so I've been knitting away on bootees and caps and toys and such.

But I'm not feeling very inspired to design. I have lots of sketches piled up, but none of them are singing out to me at the moment, "knit me! knit me!" The squeaky knitting project gets the grease around here, to mix metaphors, so the sketchbook is going unnoticed right now.

The garden is going like gangbusters. We recently finished up a big spring harvest of peas and radishes and lettuce, and now the garden is in a little lull before the tomatoes and peppers and tomatillos and beets are ready. In the mean time, there is chard. Always chard. I love swiss chard, I love how reliable it is in all sorts of weather, and this year even the caterpillars seem to be leaving it alone, so we're enjoying quite a lot of it.



The chicks grew up quickly. In the foreground is Pepper, a refugee chicken that our neighbors passed along becuase she was being beaten up by her flock. She has risen to the top in our little flock, where she is the eldest and is teaching the others to scratch, peck and squawk effectively. She's a year old so already laying eggs and generally earning her keep (unlike some other freeloaders I could name).

The Little Pea is going to be 2 years old in less than two weeks. I can't believe it! Every moment passes at about three times the speed that moments used to, back in the halcyon days of my youth, before I knew all that I know now. But I do know some wonderful things now.

hello spring!

It's just lovely outside. Breezy, warm and green, with so many flowers popping up everywhere.

Here are the chicks, about 6 weeks old in this photo, scratching around in the backyard. The Little Pea loves playing with them. They're quite friendly, and if she sits in my lap, they will come right up to her and allow some pats. They are now 8 weeks old and ready to move to the coop outside - that's our plan for this afternoon, since it's going to be warm and summery all week.

They are also the reason that I don't seem to have enough knitting time. Wait, do I ever have enough knitting time? Does anyone? But really, cleaning a chicken cage every day and keeping up with all their needs... it does eat away at one's free time. All the same, the Pea's little spring green hoodie is coming along, however slowly.



I'm knitting it from the bottom-up. The other day when I attached the sleeves to the body, I started to finally get excited about this jacket. Sleeve attachment is always a very dramatic stage in the process. Knitting the yoke always feels like the home stretch.

I've been wondering why this project has dragged so much. I think it might be the yarn. It's Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, which is a wonderfully versatile and practical yarn... and you know how practical isn't always a virtue. That's like saying about a member of the opposite sex that they have a "nice personality." Nice, but not even a little bit sexy. Cotton Fleece wears so well and softens nicely with each wash, but it's just a bit stiff to work with right off the skein. Not really the luxurious knitting experience that I crave when my precious knitting time is so limited. But it is knitting up into a very cute little jacket all the same. I'm sure the jacket will have a nice personality, too.

I hope to finish it this weekend. I'll have plenty of knitting time on the train - I'm headed northwards to visit the lovely Miss Bugheart. Can't wait!

what i did on my winter vacation

Apparently I took a little blog vacation this winter. I think that perhaps the vacation is over and it's time to peek my nose out again.

Now that I'm emerging from my hibernation den, it seemed like I ought to report on what I've been doing since we last visited, when I was baking a large number of apple cakes. Here's the list:



Sprucing up the garden

I made these two lovely raised beds out of cedar. Aren't they nice? (Don't look too closely). I'm a horrible carpenter, and I don't have a saw, so I had to rely on the lumber place to cut the boards down for me, and then I did a rather amateur job of putting them together. The boards were all rather wildly off the 4-feet-zero-inches target, so the boxes are crooked and overlapping and look like they were built by second-graders in shop class. But hey, they're mine, they're full of dirt and now there are even little seedlings growing in them, so I'm satisfied. Perhaps we will finally be able to grow a carrot longer than 1.5 inches!



Knitting (a little bit)

I'm not sure how it's happening, but I seem to become a slower knitter by the day. I've always been on the slow side, but now I can't seem to find more than 15 minutes at a time to knit anything. Half a row is about all I can seem to generate in one sitting, which makes for a pretty pokey pace. I made the mittens above for my sister's birthday in January, and after that made the pretty sweater being modeled by the Little Pea at the start of this post. Now I'm working on a spring cardi for her, which has not progressed much despite an enthusiastic start. I have tons of design sketches just waiting for someone (me??) to put yarn and needles together and make them real. Did I really used to crank out a design every month or two? Who was that masked woman?



reading (a lot)

Since having a child, I seem to have become a super-reader. I can kill a 1,000-page novel in the time it takes most people to read the Sunday newspaper. I don't just read one book. If I like a book, I go out and get everything that writer has ever published and read them all, in chronological order. I'm currently working my way through A.S. Byatt's back catalog, to my great satisfaction. What a joy her prose is. And I am in love with all of her characters (except the ones I hate, but I really really hate them, in a deeply joyful way, like hating Duke's basketball team or Sarah Palin).



Chasing a rambunctious toddler.

I can't believe the Little Pea is going to be 2 in just a couple of months. She is a lot of fun, and a little bundle of energy.



There are chickens in my house.

This picture was taken about three weeks ago, when the chicks were sweet, cuddly, adorable little fluffballs who hardly knew how to scratch yet. Now they are ungainly adolescents who are overcrowding their dog crate, eating copious amounts of chicken chow and pooping nonstop. All this in my back room. The room where our kitchen table and my desk are. We have a small house. I'm not sure how much longer I can handle the indoor chicken arrangement. Soon they will have enough feathers, and it will be warm enough, for them to go live outside in the chicken coop. Will that happen before HWWLLB and I run out of patience and roast them for dinner? Only time will tell.

And finally... I made a Facebook page for f.pea. Please go Like it! I'm thinking that I might send the first 50 likers a nice surprise. But I have no idea what it is yet. Maybe it will be an adolescent chicken.

where did the time go?

Oh dear, it's March already!

It's been such a cold, gray, wet winter that I must have been fooling myself that it was still January or something. Today it's bright and sunny, and I ventured out into the garden for the first time this year (I can't even believe I'm saying this). There is so much to do! We haven't even set up the greenhouse yet! What will we eat this spring?

Of course, cold wet weather is perfect for both knitting and reading, which I've been doing plenty of. I'm working my way through a stack of Elizabeth Zimmerman's books, and they have me itching to knit big wooly things for me and HWWLLB.

I'm also knitting a Baby Surprise Jacket for the Little Pea (who else?). It's a totally addictive little knit, and I find myself unable to put it down. Unfortunately, I may be unable to finish it...



With at least 2/3 of the knitting done, I'm running out of yarn. This was supposed to be one of those fabulous projects where I use up a bunch of stash yarn - in this case some Cascade Siera left over from a long-ago project. I keep having to get up and rifle through the stash to find just one more little scrappy ball hiding in a corner... but I fear I am out of scrappy balls, and this sweater is not done. Now I must do the unthinkable, and buy a skein of yarn to finish the last few inches of a scrap yarn project.

HWWLLB does not understand what an utter defeat this is, and keeps saying, "Just go over to the yarn store!" Go to the yarn store??? Now I'll wind up spending $50 and coming home with a big bag of yarn I don't really need, to finish this one little scrap yarn project. Ah, well - there are worse problems to have. Like no lettuce this spring. The garden to-do list is calls!

micro is the new green

This has been an exciting early-spring garden for me because of a new (to us) innovation: micro greens!

A few months ago during the seed swap that we had with friends, I was thinking about ways to use up old seed packets, and looking at all the expensive blends of seeds they put into the seed catalogs, and realized that I had plenty of potential custom blends of my own sitting there in the bin of old seeds.

I made a blend for micro greens with:
beets
pac choi
corn salad
zen
spinach

We also had a big packet of unopened mesclun mix from two years before. In March I got two long planters (the kind you use for window boxes), and planted each with one of the blends. These seeds are all somewhat aged, so I didn't really worry about germination rates, I just dumped them in there. They have done great!

The first time I had to thin them, we made a salad with just a few leaves of over-wintered Bibb lettuce, and a whole bunch of tasty little micro greens. They are delicious! HWWLLB, who is really not a salad-eater even on his most virtuous days, proclaimed them "much better than lettuce" and said he would happily eat them whenver I served them.

Each time we harvest them, it seems to just make more room for the left-behind greens to get a bit fluffier, but I did finally do some re-seeding last week. I plan to keep harvesting and re-seeding them til I run out of seeds. I don't know what I'll do then - though if I dig through our old-seed bin again, I bet I'll find a bunch more aging seeds that would like to become fancy salad mix.

Here's a recipe for the dressing that has become our new favorite on micro greens:

Put into a small jar:
4 Tbsp EV olive oil
2-3 Tbsp white wine vinegar
1/8 tsp honey
pinch of sea salt
one clove of garlic, peeled (but not chopped)

Shake well to blend contents thoroughly. Let the garlic steep in the dressing for a little while before serving. If you leave the garlic in the jar, it will just keep infusing the dressing with a stronger garlic flavor until the dressing is used up. Keep refrigerated.

And thanks to all of you for the tips on getting things finished (or not). I think I just need to accept that this is my M.O. right now. Too many things on my mind to worry about unfinished knitting. In fact, knitting is usually so therapeutic for me... I think if I forget about it for a little while, I'm going to come running back to the yarn in my hour of need anyway (and maybe get some of those wayward projects done).

quiet evening with vegetable stock

Things have been pretty hectic at work lately. It means I have been treasuring the quiet time at home all the more.

Tonight HWWLLB was out for a meeting, and I had the house to myself. Simon and I hung out in the garden for a while, just puttering a bit, knocking butterfly eggs off the baby kale leaves and that sort of thing. I harvested a nice bunch of curly Russian kale for dinner and ate it with a plate of noodles with white bean sauce. It was so simple, and very satisfying.

Once it got dark, I decided to do a little sewing, since I've had a small pile of mending waiting for me for some time. While I did that, I also put on a big pot of vegetable stock. I really like making my own vegetable stock - the kind that comes in a box is so salty and flavorless, and so expensive. I know some people think it's a pain, but I find home made vegetable stock to be really easy, particularly just letting it simmer on the stove while you do other things (like sew or read a book). The way I make it - full of colorful veggies - is much richer than clear veggie broth, and extremely nutritious. It's a great substitute for chicken or even beef broth.

Here's how I make it:

rich vegetable stock

1 big freezer bag full of vegetable trimmings
1 big stock pot full of water
salt and pepper

Whenever you're cooking and have to cut up vegetables, peel carrots, roast squash, etc, keep the trimmings. Just keep putting them into a one-gallon freezer bag until the bag is full. Some of the kinds of things you should definitely save for your veggie stock are:

onion ends and bits
carrot peels
sweet potato peels
squash skins - particularly after roasting
broccoli stems
kale and collard stems
garlic
etc.

The only things I don't like to add are potato peels and bits, because they make the stock too starchy for my taste. Traditional veggie broth recipes usually call for little more than carrots, celery and onions. Making stock this way you get an extremely nutritious, colorful broth that makes your soups much richer. You can easily water it down if you want a lighter taste.

Anyhow, once the freezer bag fills up with scraps, it's time to make stock. Dump the contents of the bag into your biggest stock pot and cover with water, leaving a couple inches of space at the top of the pot. You can throw in whatever spices you like - I always put in plenty of salt and black peppercorns, and sometimes bay leaves, juniper berries, or whatever else looks good. Cover and bring to a boil.

Once the pot is boiling, give it a good stir and turn it down to low heat to simmer, covered, for at least 1.5 hours. I usually go to 2 hours. Once that's done, scoop out all your floppy veggies and toss them into the compost. If you want a more concentrated broth to thin with water when you use it, keep simmering and cooking it down til it reaches half its volume (this will also save some space in your freezer).

When you're done simmering, let the broth cool, then strain it and place it into freezer-safe containers (I love to recycle big yogurt containers for this - one container holds 4 cups of broth, which is just right for lots of soup recipes). Label with the date and put them in the freezer til you're ready to use them.

Of course, vegetable stock is great for making soup, but I also find that rice tastes incredible cooked in it instead of water. The same is true for quinoa, cous-cous and other grains, and I'm sure they are more nutritious cooked this way, too.

hello again

dandelions in downtown raleigh

Sorry it's been so quiet here. My internet was down for a while. I finally have it fixed tonight and decided to just share some photos from the days and weeks since I last posted.


spring onions from the garden


happy little seedlings staying warm in the greenhouse


buds on the fig tree


wisteria buds on the railing behind our building at work

I hope everyone is enjoying some taste of spring. More soon.

first harvest

Today was a beautiful mild, sunny spring Sunday. While I was out puttering in the garden, I cut some lettuce because the patch was getting very crowded, and realized that this bunch represents the first harvest of the 2009 season! Hooray!

I am really looking forward to a season full of fresh veggies from the garden and the CSA, especially now that it really, really feels like spring. It's been pouring rain for the last week, so dark and dreary. But you know what they say about spring showers... everything is so lush and bright outside now.

This was HWWLLB's birthday weekend (he is 40!), and I think he got Spring for his birthday. The sun peeked out for part of the day on Saturday, but today was just gorgeous and sunny, and we both spent a lot of time wandering through the yard marveling at how everything seemed to have exploded overnight.

The birthday weekend was great. Lots of good food and friends, lots of decadent treats, some board games, a walk at the botanical garden, and a wonderful afternoon half-working, half-lounging in the garden.

I got some weeding done, but the weeding was really just an excuse to poke around and see what was coming up. I just love the feeling when you pull away a big pile of chickweed, and underneath you find something great coming up, like the Spotted Joe Pye Weed that was hiding under mounds of chickweed today. The promise of warm summer days to come.

HWWLLB got another half-finished knitting project for his birthday, but he seemed happy with it despite my slowness (or maybe he's so used to getting unfinished knitted gifts that it doesn't faze him anymore).

His most favorite animal of all time is the sloth, and so I'm making him a life-sized, felted two-toed sloth. The body is just about done, and then I'll start on the legs (including giant claws!). It's been a lot of fun to knit so far, so I hope it will finish up relatively quickly. It's also been fun for me to learn about sloths in the process - and of course I'll be sharing some of what I learned with y'all in an upcoming post, because I do love to share when I learn about some adorable Endangered Ugly Thing. Nature is just so cool.

swapping seeds

Sunday night we got together with some gardeney friends to share seeds and ideas for our gardens this year. I am so excited about getting my hands into the dirt, I can hardly wait! Alas, it's still January.

But we had fun and warmed ourselves with mulled cider and cake while we traded seed packets and ideas.

There were lots of offerings: seeds people had saved from their best-producing plants this past year, and 3/4-full seed packets left over from the season. I really liked the lessons that came along with the seeds; hearing about everyone's experiences with different plants was so much more informative than the glossy seed packets that sing out to you from the rack at the garden store, insinuating beautiful bounty.

Everyone had a different way of approaching the swap: PeaceNic had a checklist with her desired vegetables all listed out, so she only had a couple of things left to buy on her list once we were finished. We had already ordered our dream plants from Seed Savers and were looking to round out the garden with some fun items that others had enjoyed. Other folks hadn't really started the garden plans yet, and getting some great gems from the swap was a way to get them going.

I just wish we'd held the swap before we placed our seed orders for the year! I think I would have saved some money... ah well, a lesson for next year. I think seed-swapping in January is going to become a new ritual at our house.

On Saturday we had made a run down to my parents' farm for a load of horse manure, so we were also able to give everyone a party gift for attending: bags of poo. Yummy! Spring, here we come!

seeds

I know I'm supposed to be working on Christmas presents, but yesterday the Seed Savers' Exchange catalog came in the mail.


little sprouts getting started in the greenhouse last February

It made me really miss working in the garden, and it made me start fantasizing about getting the garden ready for spring, and what varieties I want to try to grow this year. Listen to some of these:

Charantais melon
"Considered by many to be the most divine and flavorful melon in the world. Smooth round melons mature to a creamy grayish-yellow with green stripes. Sweet, juicy, salmon-colored flesh... Ripe melons have a heavenly fragrance."

Federle tomato
"Beautiful, blemish-free 6-7"-long paste tomato, rich full flavor unlike most other banana pepper-shaped tomatoes. Productive plants. Very few seeds, excellent for processing, especially good for salsa."

I will definitely be ordering both of those. And the names of these varieties! There are tomatoes with names like Hillbilly Potato Leaf, Hungarian Heart, Red Fig, Nebraska Wedding, Blondkopfchen, and Wapsinicon Peach; corn varieties called Bloody Butcher, Strawberry Popcorn and Blue Jade; and beans called Dragon's Tongue, Charlevoix and Tiger's Eye.

Who can think about wrapping Christmas presents when there are garden plans to be drawn?

Come to think of it, seed packets would make some pretty great stocking stuffers... I wonder how long these take to deliver. Who wouldn't like to find a Rat-Tailed Radish in their Christmas stocking?

month of figs

It's fig season. Our tree grew quite a lot this year, and all the new growth is covered in beautiful little figs. I'm enjoying eating them and sharing them.

As you might already know, we've lived in this house for almost two years, and we inherited the fig tree along with it. Before us, the house was owned by the first owners, who had been here since the early 1950's. A few months ago, we came home to find this little note on our door:

"My name is L.B.
My friend live here
and died here.
If you have any
figs for sale, Please
call me I will
take as many as you
don't need, ask for
Robin. Thanks."

Since then we've been really curious about this lady with her morbidly endearing note, who clearly loved our figs in past years, and wanted to keep her connection to her old friends. All summer HWWLLB has been asking when the figs would be ready, and reminding me to call her.

Finally, we have plenty of ripe figs, so I called her and she came by yesterday to get a bagful. She had fun looking around the house and the garden, and told us stories about her dear (departed) friends, for whom she made fig jam every year for many years.

I tried my hand at making fig jam for the first time this year, too. Now fig jam on homemade bread with cream cheese is my most favorite afternoon snack.



Here's the recipe I used, from Deborah Madison's wonderful cookbook, the Savory Way:

fig jam with cardamom and rose water
makes 2 cups

2 pounds figs
1 1/2 cups sugar (I used about 2/3 of this amount)
1/3 cup rose water
1 tsp finely ground cardamom seeds

Remove those skins that come off easily and leave the rest on. Chop the figs roughly, then stir in the sugar, half the rose water, and the cardamom. Cover and allow to sit overnight. If it's hot and the figs are over-ripe, put them in the refrigerator to keep them from turning.

The next day, put them in a stainless-steel or other non-corroding saucepan and slowly bring to a boil. Lower the heat and cook slowly for about 1 1/2 hours. As the jam begins to cook, check the bottom of the pot and make sure that all the sugar is broken up and dissolved; then stir occasionally as it cooks. When it has thickened, remove from the heat and add the rest of the rose water. Turn into sterilized canning jars; then immerse in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Find some more tasty fig recipes at Chocolate and Zuchinni - yum!

adventures in the backyard

It's Saturday, and we meant to go camping this weekend, we really did, but there was just so much happening in our own backyard, we got waylaid.

First of all, I had to mow. It was looking like a pasture out there, and I do like pastures, but in our tidy neighbhorhood I am ashamed, and so I mow it. Before mowing, I always grumble to myself about how much I hate to mow (who doesn't?), but really there are some things I like about it.

I like the immediate sense of accomplishment. As you go along, you can see exactly what you've completed (especially when the "before" lawn was 2 feet tall). When you're all done you can look around and see exactly what you did, and whether or not it was good. If it wasn't good, you can always go back and tidy it up with the mower or the string trimmer. And then there's the sort of English estate look that my yard gets and which lasts for about 3 days after I've mowed. It's a low-end English estate, and utterly meaningless, but it's mine and I'm proud of it.


estate-like, no?

This is exactly the opposite of my day-to-day work. I'm very happy to have a job that I feel is meaningful and important and accomplishing something useful in the world (unlike the lawn), but on the other hand, it's very hard to quantify. After two hours of very hard work, there is usually nothing that I can turn and point to and say "look what got done." In fact, after two weeks or two months or maybe even two years of hard work... the change is not very tangible, even if it is useful and meaningful and all that. So I think this explains my secret desire to mow the lawn once in a while.

Knitting is kind of like the lawn-mowing, when I can actually finish a project, which seems to happen less and less all the time. But even when you can't actually finish the project, you can always knit a few lovely rows and point to them and say "look, I'm not a screw-up after all, I can knit in lace rib," or whatever it is you happen to be doing. I like that very much about knitting. You don't even have to finish, and still it's kind of impressive. Unless you've totally screwed it up, but let's not talk about that.

So after the lawn got mowed, there was a bed I really needed to finish digging, and compost to be turned in, and some little plants that needed planting here and there, and a lot of that sort of thing. And then it all looked so beautiful, it seemed a shame not to enjoy it, so there followed several hours of sitting in the shade while knitting and regularly surveying my low-end yet tidy estate.

Several hours of knitting, even when punctuated with regular garden-gazing, can get you pretty far. So far, in fact, that I have an almost-finished project on hand. Just a little button-sewing and blocking and I'll have a fancy new F.O. to show you. In fact, there are a couple like that, and I think the rest of the weekend's craft time will be spent in finishing so that next week I can post some lovely pictures of finished things, which always feels so good (just like a freshly-mowed lawn, only better). In fact, there may even be a Free Pattern Friday or two coming out of all this finishing. It's been a while, I know.

Anyhow, this has been a great Saturday so far. It's time to go pick something from the garden and fix it for dinner. I hope you all are having wonderful weekends!

running backwards, underwater, with holes in my pockets

Argh, work! Everything is so frustrating lately. I can't seem to get anything accomplished.



Except this sock. I did manage to finish knitting a sock during a conference call yesterday. And lookee there -- that 8 or so inches of yarn coming off the toe? That is the very end of the yarn ball. How perfect was that?? I was sweating out the last few toe rows, though. I think this about sums up my workplace productivity this week.

It's not that I'm not trying. In fact, I'm trying very, very hard. But lately it seems like every week there's a new massive setback. So I freak out, drink tea, regroup, get a new strategy, start to get some traction and then... SPLAT! Another massive setback. It's so frustrating.

But the garden is doing marvelously, so I really can't be too upset. We just noticed yesterday that the bok choi is growing splendidly in a completely different place than where HWWLLB had remembered planting it. The last few days he's been moping about how the bok choi didn't grow, and then yesterday we found it humming along in another bed. Hooray!

And the wonderful CSA deliveries started this week!

And there is now a cupcake-seller at our weekly farmer's market!

And the weather is glorious!

....so what was I complaining about? Oh yeah, work. And I need to go there in about 30 minutes. [deep, mournful sigh] Perhaps things will be looking up today. Maybe next week will be setback-free. It is Friday, after all.


and there are radishes waiting at home for some love

hello spring days

The first day of spring was delightful. Every morning this week it's been blustery. Cloudy and windy, the kind of wind that makes your bike zig across the street and makes your hair look like you've been.... er... out on a windy day in March.

It was like that this morning, but over all the wind you could still hear the birds singing their hearts out. It's a cacaphony of birdsong out there in the mornings when I go out for the newspaper.



The coffee shop was a quiet oasis this morning after such a noisy, windy, crisp bike ride in for our morning meeting.

After work Grady and I walked home. Why don't we walk more often? It's only about 30 minutes, and we get to peep into everyone's gardens to see what's growing. Zipping by on my bike, I tend to miss all the lovely details. Anyhow, we had a great walk home, and then we both went out to the backyard and worked in the garden until it was too dark to see anything.

Over the weekend I had spent a small fortune on plants, for a large bed I dug next to our back patio. It's a great spot, mostly sunny, and bordered on 2 sides by a fence. Here are some of my little plants lined up & waiting to go into the ground:



This tray has coral honeysuckle and green-headed coneflower. I also got spotted Joe Pye weed, butterly weed, Texas sage, Eastern phlox, and lots of other fun things.

I got them all into the bed tonight, though it was darkening quickly as I watered them in. By the time I got to spreading mulch, it was really too dark to see what I was doing. Tomorrow I'm going to go out there and find half of them buried, and the other half with no mulch at all.

It's also lettuce time:



Salad, anyone? It's finally time to start harvesting this beautiful lettuce. I think I planted about three times as much lettuce as last year, and am looking forward to having a big tasty salad for lunch most days this spring & summer. I've really been craving fresh garden lettuce -- the stuff from the grocery store is more unappealing all the time.

Now that we have so much more daylight after work, it's hard to find time to do the inside things I want to do, like cook dinner or work on my Crafters for Obama T-shirt. Somehow it must all get done though, because the campaign has arrived here in North Carolina, and I simply don't have a thing to wear. Unless I made a shirt from lettuce.... hmmm...

leap day

What did you do on Leap Day?

I took the day off work... yay! So I got to do a few fun things with my free Friday:

Went out to lunch with my sister and stuffed myself with Indian Buffet (that's her reaching for more rice pudding):



Made a Pay it Forward gift for someone who likes recycled things. This is a grocery bag made from a bunch of old plastic bags fused together (I had been wanting to try the technique for a while):


Watered the little sprouts in the greenhouse:


Now I'm making tea and waiting for HWWLLB to get home. We're going off to have dinner wih some new friends tonight.

New friends are always sort of a scary proposition for me. What if I say something offensive? What if they say something offensive? Or, worst of all, what if we really really like them and can never find the time to hang out with them again??? This friendship thing is fraught with peril. Makes me want to crawl into bed and read a novel instead. But I can always do that tomorrow...

Happy weekend!