Random photos

The kids are busy with softball, basketball, swimming, and training to run Boo's second/Nea's first 5K. 

N has been transforming our unfinished basement into different rooms. Laundry and workout rooms are nearly complete. A large family room to come. 

I'm still me, but with more work hours, larger granola batches, yet more triathlon training, and attempts to transition volunteer work to others as much as possible. Only another year left at the grade school! Need to start handing off my pet projects.

So, here's some things that happened this week, in photos.

On the way to pick up a new guinea pig from a rescue group, a call to update the blog:

Here she is, the new pig. Her new name is Pepper. Ain't she cute?! We never renamed a pig before (and this is our 4th rescue pig), but "Peggy" didn't do it for us. Before that she was apparently "Piggie Pig" which is pretty weak. So, back up to 3 pigs currently.

And lastly, the first sprout of the season! Front left, if you can't find it. Late start, with it still snowing and all. Might have to buy my tomato plants this year. Oh well.

Asparagus

Holy moly, there's a lot of my purple asparagus this year. And it's mostly just me that eats it. And weeks left of the 4-week harvesting period! Just made a double batch of this Cream of Asparagus soup for tonight. I'll report back on how it turned out after dinner. (Note that the recipe leaves out garlic. Typo, probably.)

And I just had the most delightful salad. I can't quite pin down what made it so good. It was:

• A little Romaine lettuce
• A chopped hard-boiled egg
• Some blue cheese crumbles
• Sprouted lentils
• Fresh from the garden organic gorgeous thick purple asparagus cut lovingly into tender beautiful chunks
• Caesar dressing

It's a very nice time of year. Planted 27 tomato plants and 15 pole beans today. Cukes, herbs, whatnot went in yesterday. Still having trouble with the potatoes being eaten by chipmunks, and something is eating my beet leaves. This means war, vermin.

Edited to add: The soup was fantastic! N couldn't get enough of it. Naturally, the kids hated it, but oh well.

Updates on 2013 resolutions

I made an abundance of resolutions this year. I don't know what possessed me. I'm not going to talk about all of them. This is more of an overview.

Eco and volunteer work

Work on the new school vegetable garden. This has turned into quite the time suck. I organized volunteers to build the raised beds, shed, and benches. I've got nearly the whole summer covered for watering. I procured the seeds. When I look at my email sent folder, I’m a little shocked at the level of work I've put into this thing. Think happy non-raining thoughts tomorrow at 3:15 when the students are supposed to move dirt and mulch around! We already had to postpone once. For the record, there are other parents also putting in huge amounts of time and effort. It’s really quite a project.

Organize triathlon fundraiser. I got two people to sign up. I was hoping for more, but hey, two. I’m still sending out my own fundraising emails.

Grow one new vegetable at home. Kale! Lemon cucumbers! And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to mention that my fruit trees are all blooming out of control this year, including the pear tree and Russian quince. Let’s hope I actually get to eat some of it this year. Garden in general is looking great. Lots of work still ahead, putting in my tomatoes are all that.

Hobbies

Finished two jewelry projects.

According to Good Reads, I’m slightly ahead of schedule, having read 17 books since the first of the year.

Travel

Looking good! Big trip planned.

Me Me Me

Buy some new clothing. Got some great stuff at a rummage sale. That probably doesn't count.

Sprint triathlon training is going well. I can run 4 miles now, which is more than the race requires. A first for me. Biking is fine, swimming is fine. No complaints. Does take a lot of time, though. Exercising.

Household

Uh. OK, probably should buckle down here a little.

 

Late start to Zone 5's Spring

I finally got my seeds started a couple of weeks ago, which is crazy late, but I just couldn't get excited about planting stuff when there was still snow on the ground. Winter came late and stayed late, in stark contrast to last year’s insane 87 degree days in March. Here we are, mid-April, and we've only had a small handful of nice days. Lots of rain, though, which considering the drought we had was very welcome. For awhile. Now it’s mostly just boring.

So, the rhubarb is coming up, but there’s no sign of the asparagus yet. I ate my first thing out of the garden today – chives! On my egg salad bagel for lunch. Yum. I direct seeded radishes, beets, carrots, peas, bok choi, lettuce, spinach, and broccoli raab. Mostly the radishes seem to be sprouting. Inside I started all the usual stuff, plus kale. I started tons and tons of cukes, including lemon cukes. I want enough to give a lot away, esp. after last year’s non-cuke production.  I think after school today I’ll finally buy my seed potatoes. I have the pots ready to go, but last time I went to Sneed's they weren't in yet. See: late snow mentioned earlier.

I put garlic in last fall, and that’s looking pretty good. Parsley continues to self-seed. Egyptian walking onions are also growing nicely.

I have so many seeds. I was in charge of getting them for the school garden, and I did not disappoint. I went to a local seed swap, and the woman in charge was nice enough to give me the leftovers. She had gotten 50 packets from High Mowing Seeds, so I applied for the same type of donation ($5 for 25 packets of seeds packed for 2012). They can’t take requests, though, so some of the seeds weren't what we needed. So I picked up the rest at Sneed's.

Speaking of the school garden, I was in charge of getting the build team staffed to build the veggie garden. The principal and 11 parents showed up, which was fantastic. Didn't take too long to build 6 raised beds (from kits), 2 benches, and a storage shed. Luckily, since we've been all DIY for years I knew who to ask to help. I wanted only people who knew how to work a screwdriver. The dirt and mulch will be delivered in a few weeks. We plan to have the students move most of that around. That’s the low-skill end of the job, so that should be fine.

Last week I invited myself to help make newspaper seedling pots with the school's Garden Club (4th grade, including Boo). We managed to churn out 150 in an hour, which is pretty good if you consider that they were very interested in getting the best possible photo to be showing on the outside of their pots. Kids are not very hard workers these days. Blame the unions.

Busy busy busy

So, exciting things are underway at our grade school. Our neighbors are landscape architects, and they made up a fantastic, ambitious and wonderful plan to change our school property from a dull wasteland that regularly turns marshy to a vibrant eco-system, with a vegetable garden, butterfly garden, two play areas, a peewee soccer field with a running path around it, native plants in the village-owned floodplain, a better engineered baseball diamond that doesn't flood, an outdoor classroom, etcetera etcetera!

Even better? We got our first grant, which will be used for the veggie garden. Everything else will come in later stages, but let’s face it. This is the best part. And it’s coming this spring! While my kids are still there! So I've been writing grants and making fundraising plans with a bunch of other parents, and it’s all been very exciting. One grant is pretty much my baby, and if we win that one, I’m adding grant writing as a skill on LinkedIn. I’ve always thought that sounded like fun. Whee!

So that thing I did, with the fruit and vegetable tasting during school lunches? That’s being heavily touted in these grants as something we are doing to fight obesity and promote wellness in the community. I’m happy that all worked out so well! Plus it's listed on the back of the school phone book as something the PTA offers to the students. Which is too bad, really, as I was sort of tired of doing it. Now I'm thinking kiwis and cauliflower for next time. Need to set up some dates.

So, because I don’t know how to do things in small doses, I said I’d put together one of the fundraisers. I thought I’d do something that fits in with my role as the PTA Wellness chair, so I said, how about  we participate in local races and raise money for the playground? Get some parents exercising, maybe do a little community building in that direction. I’m hoping for 20 people, at several hundred raised per person. The current plan is to offer training runs and bike rides this spring to get interested people ready for a 5K run and/or sprint triathlon.

NOTE: I've set up a new email account for this blog. If you've emailed me in the last few months, um, I didn't get it. I got locked out of that account. So embarrassing to admit. 

Bringing in the harvest

So, yesterday I took some time to bring in the apple harvest. I'm so grateful we have a large basement with a full-sized freezer. I also have a lot of canning jars to freeze excess produce.

I'm not too sore today. You would think working in the fields like this, for a white-collar professional like myself, might be hard on the back. But I feel good.

I find it satisfying, giving my family organic food that we've raised ourselves. This should really help cut costs at the grocery store!

Here the entire harvest, from both trees. 

Garden 2012

Well. It’s been a bit of a year, in terms of veggie gardening. I guess you can’t win them all. The spring was confusing, with record highs, then normal cold temps, up and down. It was the hottest July on record; we’ve had several violent storms, including one massive hailstorm. All during a drought. It’s not ideal. Our apple CSA was cancelled for lack of a harvest.

Add to that the damn varmints. Something is eating my large tomatoes. On the vine. Even the green ones. My very promising peach tree started out with 60 peaches. I finally brought in the last three green ones, in a fit of spite. I put out extra water bowls (we always have two filled birdbaths) hoping that that would help stop the destruction. It didn’t. The vine stem borers are slowing killing my zucchini. A total of 2 zukes harvested to date.

N put up a fence. Today I saw a baby bunny inside the fence. I think it’s keeping out exactly 0% of the animals. But it makes it harder to weed and harvest, so there’s that.

Behind the garage I started out with 4 melons, 4 pumpkins, and 4 winter squash. I’m down to one acorn squash plant. The others were trampled. What kind of jerk opossum or chaotic evil raccoon do you have to be to do that?

We moved the green beans. Turns out it’s not as sunny as we thought in the new location. Getting some decent yields now, but not like last year.

But to focus on the positive, I have a decent-sized cantaloupe hanging on the vine. One Red Rome apple left (all 6 Honey Crisps were eaten by squirrels). I’ve got some potatoes, and I didn’t even plant any this year. The peppers have finally set fruit. The carrots and radishes did well. Oh! And I grew daikon radishes for the first time, which was fun. Have also harvested a few cukes. Enough for two batches of pickles.

However, the real plus this year is the various neighbors I’ve been trading with. I got Egyptian walking onions (a perennial! woo!), some big zucchini, and a bunch of cukes. I handed out fresh basil, oregano, parsley, and pole bean seeds. I still have some. Wanna trade?

Touring the estate

When we stroll around our garden, we like to call it "touring the estate." Aren't we fancy? Sometimes we wear hats and sip fancy drinks, too. I'd like to take you on a short virtual tour today. Last year N ripped out the strange half-wall on the side of our old wooden front stairs. We immediately received a code violation notice from the village. So he applied for a permit and that shut them up. Here it is, over a year later, and he just finished the last finishing touch, which is the lattice under the stairs. (The permit was closed last year.) 

Also of interest in the photo is the giant coffee cup planter on the platform. I love it an unreasonable amount. 

I'm going to pretend this is a magazine article, and include notes on where to purchase the items shown.

Deck and railing: Azek

Hostas and front planter: trashpicked


See those porch windows above? They are the windows shown below. This is most of our collection of birdhouses. 

Birdhouses and rocking chair: Nearly all of them from garage sales
Bench: trashpicked


Last year we added another small raised bed. At left rhubarb, moved from a too-shady spot. Front is onions and peppers. In the cold frame, two tomatoes (one Brandywine, one sweet 100 cherry). Between them is a potato that just showed up. That's known as a "volunteer."

Rhubarb: Chivilo Family
Onion sets and tomato plants: Sneed's
Pepper plants: Long Family
Big Honkin' tomato cages: Menard's


And my old bean area (see the last photo) was becoming shadier year by year, plus I was really sick of climbing a ladder every day to harvest them. So N had to build another bed. Hmm. Seems like we're averaging one new bed a year. Interesting. 


The beans are blooming, so we should be eating them soon.

Trellis and magnolia tree: Schwarz Nursery
Bean seeds: Duffin Family

Garden 2012

I could be weeding, but it’s pretty wet out, so I’m on my porch swing with a sandwich and a laptop instead. Only a few more Fridays that the kids are in school, and Fridays are my only non-working days, so gotta soak up the lazy while I can.

It’s been an odd Spring, here in Chicagoland. More Springy than usual. Other years we go Winter, Winter, OH HELL SUMMMMER! But this year has been (very mild) Winter, Winter, OH HELL A WEEK OF SUMMMMER! Then cold and dry. Then cold and wet. Then one day of HOT. Now back to Springy. It’s very confusing, but the plants seem to like it.

Been eating plenty of asparagus already, and the radishes are doing great. I’ll be making rhubarb pie this weekend, I think. Or cobbler if I’m lazy. And I might be. Moved the strawberries into a strawberry pot to make more room for tomatoes. Plus the chipmucks eat them all anyway. I have ideas about how to prevent that, now that I have a portable pot. Onions doing better than normal. Bunch of stuff self-seeded, like the bok choy, orache, broccoli raab. We’ll be eating lettuce soon. The raspberries that came over the fence from the neighbors are spreading a lot, but I like raspberries, so that’s fine. Peas, carrots, beets all coming up well.

Started seeds, of course. Green zebra and brandywine tomatoes, cukes, melons, peppers, basil. All pretty happy. Haven’t started the zukes and other squash yet. Can’t quite decide my game plan on them, vis-à-vis vine stem borers. Plant late, like last year? Worked, but the harvest is so late …

The beans are being moved to a new sunnier location. I’m hoping this means I won’t need a ladder to harvest this year, but only time will tell. I’ll post a photo when it’s looking like something.

Gave up on potatoes for this year.  Bah.

In a stunning upset, both the dill and oregano are coming up gangbusters. I know!

One more story. The neighbor kid was over here recently, and he said he loooves chives. I said, oh, you don’t have any? Here, I’ll pot you up some. So I randomly dig up a little dirt to put in the wee pot, and find N’s wedding band that he lost almost two years ago. What are the odds? So I asked N to marry me. He said yes.

Oddly, my grandfather also lost his wedding band in his garden and found it again years later. Apparently this skill skips a generation.

Garden news thus far

This Spring has been crap. Cold and very rainy. We haven't even mowed the lawn since it hasn't grown, although it is nice and green.

Here in Zone 5, it's still at least 2 weeks until the average last frost date. I should have started a lot of seeds earlier (I finally did the pole beans, brussel sprouts, cantaloupe, and cucumbers yesterday!), but the weather didn't exactly motivate me.

I did put in the potatoes (Katahdin) and onions almost a month ago. The onions look good, but nothing is showing in the potato bed. They may have rotted from all the rain. I need to dig one up and look.

In the cold frames, the carrots, radish, and beets look really good. Almost time to eat some radishes, even. And the carrots came up! That never happens for me.

My garden guy recommended not putting out the zucchini and winter squash until the end of June. That way you miss the entire vine stem borer life cycle. I don't know if I can wait that long, but I will start them indoors soon in bigger pots and wait as long as I can.

In window boxes, the bok choi and lettuce mix look good. The Red Mountain Spinach (Orache) self-seeded and is doing well. I have peas coming up in a pot. I hope we get a good crop this year, as the kids really love eating them right off the plant.

I'll be buying tomato plants, since only 3 of my heirlooms sprouted. Sigh. My seeds are old.

Basil -- one tiny spring coming up. Pathetic. The parsley came back.

New this year: salsify. I started it outside today. I was supposed to start it with the radishes, but I couldn't find any seed locally. Luckily my brother got me some for my birthday! Hurrah!

Almost ready to harvest: rhubarb and asparagus! Very late this year, but thems the breaks. As always, the chives, oregano, and sage all look good.

In other garden news, we found another old well! We filled in one when we moved in. The idiots we bought the house from had just put a piece of plywood over the top. Can you imagine? Total morons. It was 30 feet deep, with maybe 8 feet of water at the bottom. Sure, that's safe! Anyway, we've always wondered why we have this little sinkhole in the lawn. Every year we throw a little extra dirt on it and scratch our heads. The other week Boo tripped on it, and it's two feet deep, and you can see the bricks along the sides. Yup. She's lucky she didn't break a fetlock and have to be put down.

Lastly, I know I've posted this before, but if you missed it, use this planting guide! It's so helpful.

Why aren't you growing fruit trees?

As you may remember, I predicted a good year for our peach tree. And lo, well into September, it has come to pass that 30ish peaches were saved before losing more to the varmints. And they are so damn tasty.

The story starts nearly 30 years ago, when I first ate a peach off a tree. I fell in love. I bought peaches from the store several times after that but eventually learned that there was no point. Then I learned that peaches rank second only to celery for worst pesticide offender. Here, kids, have some chemically coated fruit! It's good for you. I mean, how can a parent hand that crap over without worrying what the ramifications are?

So at some point I said, Hey, how about we grow our own? We bought it at a nursery. It's not very old. I have never sprayed it with anything. And the fruit is gorgeous. I think that's one thing holding people back -- thinking that if you don't spray, you won't get any useable fruit. And space. Dwarf trees are small and convenient!

I bought two apple trees and a pear tree at Stark Bro's, and they are growing very well. Good prices, too.

Zone 5 here! You can grow peaches, apricots, plums, pears, apples, cherries, etc. Apricots go down to Zone 4! Shame about mango trees being Zone 9B.

Today's Botany Public Service Announcement

Do not plant a Goldenrain tree (Koelreuteria paniculata). Do not encourage others to grow one. Do not buy one for a friend. If your next door neighbor talks about getting one, do whatever it takes to dissuade them. Offer to buy them something else if need be. It would be well worth your investment.

If I never have to pull up another damn 10,000 seedlings, that would be ok. If only my neighbor didn't love the stupid thing so much. I've already pruned the hell out of it on my side of the fence. And the damn tree is technically on our property, which just pisses me off more. God, I hate that tree.

The word "invasive" should always preface the name of the damn tree. I'm outside CHICAGO in ZONE FIVE. Winters apparently don't slow this devil spawn plant.

If you would like to view the Goldenrain tree in a safe virtual environment, that is probably ok. Probably. Check your shoes when you're done, though. Don't carry any seedpods out with you.

Update on killer tomatoes

I normally don't use a chainsaw when harvesting my tomatoes, but it takes all kinds to make a world.

Veggie gardening in small spaces

La la la. Tum tee tum tee tum. Walking to the public pool. Hmm. What's this?


Hmm. Looks interesting.

Ooooh. They look like they are almost ripe! No need to start a raised bed or do that awkward mowing-around-the-plants thing.

To think some of you claim not to have enough space to grow your own food! I hope you see new possibilities opening up for you. Grow your tomatoes in an elevated garden, I say.

Photo evidence

You know, in case you don't really believe me when I talk about this "garden" I "work" on and "enjoy" so "much."

The main garden, overview. In the forefront, what's left of the Three Sisters, namely the hubbard squash. Under them, strawberry plants.

Now panning in sections from right to left...

On the left is the red orache, at full height of four feet. In the foreground one giant massive plant, aka yellow summer squash, with zucchini next to it. Behind them, 5 tomato plants. Behind them, very successful raspberry bushes (barely visible).

Some overlap with previous photo, but here we see the small brussel sprout plants in the left coldframe, asparagus plants (which look like wispy ferns) in the background. Insane oregano and chives in the front of photo.

Left front, tiny basil and swiss chard. Then giant peas, with the out of control cukes behind. Another 8 tomato plants. Parsley going to seed in front right. What a wall of green.

Container with a tomato plants and two eggplants. Behind are the windowboxes with lettuce.

Part of compost bin on left. Potatoes and winter squash growing on the ground. Pole beans growing up side of garage. Nea ate about 15 green beans yesterday! Hurrah!

Veggie Garden 2010: a mixed bag

The spring foods went well. We ate asparagus, rhubarb, and two whole strawberries that the chipmunk didn't get to before us. The lettuce is still going. The herbs are out of control, as usual. I wish I'd known oregano would spread aggressively. Treat it as you would a mint, people! There's an actual Red Rome apple on our new tree. We'll have to split it four ways when it's ripe, I suppose. Peaches looking good. Quince didn't set fruit despite blooming for the first time. Maybe next year.

Almost two months since the last frost date, and things are really getting started now! We ate our first pole beans. I didn't get as many plants established as I wanted, though I started a lot of them. They didn't like all the wet weather either. Every day we have a few peapods, and the plants are six feet tall. The kids like those. The zukes and cukes should be producing by the weekend, since they are all finally setting fruit. The plants themselves are huge. I have high hopes for FRIDGE PICKLES this year, as last year we barely had any cukes. Stupid cold wet summer it was.

This has been the best year for raspberries we've ever had. They were free, too, as they came over the fence from the neighbors. Boo is a fan and will now go out and pick her own. Success!

I'm a big fan of orache (red mountain spinach) now and will no longer bother with normal spinach which bolts much too early. The orache is nearing four feet tall, and I use the leaves in salads.

Managed to get two swiss chard plants going and one cantaloupe.

The traditional Three Sisters of corn, pole beans, and squash has been a total bust. It's just the hubbard squash now. Some animal ate the corn plants. The beans sprouted and then disappeared. Pumpkins are coming up all over the yard, and I'm just letting them go. Maybe some are butternuts. I did plant a few butternuts, but I haven't seen them lately under the massive potato plants. They've been digging all the rain. I expect to get more than the 50 pounds I harvested last year.

The onions are hiding under the asparagus, but seem to be happy. Earwigs are eating the Bok choi again. Radishes went to seed much too early.

Tomatoes are growing well, esp. considering the cool wet weather. Well, I guess we had some heat, too. Along with the regular raised bed tomato plants, I did two containers of one tomato plant with two eggplants. Since they love the heat, I thought the containers might help them, and they seem very happy.

There's five beets, after putting seeds down twice. One carrot. Pathetic. Boo (who doesn't want to be called Boo in real life anymore. That's … impossible. But I'm trying.) thought that the carrot plants would come back next year, and would produce more than one carrot per plant.

The brussel sprouts are coming along slowly, but you don't harvest those until around the frost, so no rush.

My gardening mentor, my aunt, died on my birthday this past April. I miss her advice already. It was the corn seeds she gave me (Royal Red corn) that were destroyed by pests. Sigh. But the orache seeds were from her, and that's going well, so I guess it's win some lose some, right?

Photos to follow soon.

Walk through my garden

My life, illustrated

From http://www.gocomics.com/bliss/2010/05/12/

Odds and ends

I'm working on my next big post (the annual amazing trashpick!), but in the meantime, you'll have to make do with a few small items.

1. Nea read the word "look" in a new book yesterday. HURRAH.
2. She managed to get 19 books on her "would like to purchase" book fair list, despite an inability to talk or write. That, my friends, is talent. Getting some poor older child to write down 19 book titles for you.
3. I'm having a rocky start to the gardening season. The bad news: apparently sprouting beets and carrots is too hard for me. The good news: the Russian quince tree is blooming for the first time, and the planted-last-year Red Rome apple tree is, too. No action on the stupid HoneyCrisp apple, also planted last year. Peach tree, as previous reported, is going gangbusters.

Should be a good year for peaches