sledding& eating snow & my favorite view

wheee!

planting paperwhites on our snowy day

Little Seed Saver

Last summer we hung some dill upside down in our sunporch.  It dried and started to shed seeds all over.  At some point Theo decided to collect them in a little cup and plant them in our herb garden.  It really fascinated him, so he started to collect pea seeds from our sugar snap peas a couple of weeks back, when the pods got brown.  Now he's an expert... and when I hand him a pod he'll tell me whether or not it's ready.  "No... it needs to be brownish black."   I don't know anything about it, but we'll see. I asked him if it was better to buy seeds or collect them, and he said, "Collect them. Becuase then there will be more seed things at the store for people who want to buy seeds."

At Hammonasset

We had a great day.  

June updates

If anyone is persistent enough to still be checking my sorry blog, I should at least do you the courtesy of changing that photo of our raised bed.  Much has changed-- more soil, then strings (for my experiment with Square Foot Gardening), then seeds, then seedlings, now (some) plants.  It's heading in the right direction,but it's not perfect.  Either we lost many seedlings early, or our germination rate was poor.  Anyway, some of the boxes are empty and some only half filled.  Many of our onions didn't germinate, and some germinated but the seedling looks very weak.  Our bush beans look okay, but they have been partially eaten up by... birds?  bugs?  It's hard for me to tell.   However, all told, we've done SO MUCH more this year than we did last year.  First of all, whether our raised bed is glorious or pathetic, it exists!  And we'll eat something out of it at some point this year.  We can improve next year.  Our Sugar Snap Peas are out of this world.  I have a new herb garden with Chives, Basil, Oregano, Dill, Thyme, Rosemary, and Parsley.  There is a new tomato/pepper/basil bed (courtesy of my brother who visited us in May).  We have 5 wonderful tomato plants out there-  2 Juliets, 2 Sungolds, and 1 German Johnson (an Heirloom).  We also have 4 pepper plants and if I had a little more gumption tonight I'd be able to walk out back & report the varieties to you.  We have 2 basil plants, both from our CSA. 

Which is great, by the way.  Just great.  I really like both Ty and David, the folks who run it, but moreover I love the food we've gotten already this year.  I look forward to our pick ups, and I look forward to eating the produce all week long.  The farm has a good personality-- the way they communicate with the shareholders has been so surprisingly nice.  Aesthetically, it looks good, too!  The farmhouse is painted a whimsical pink, and the pick up shed is decked out with Ty's artwork (and she's so talented).  I'll be forever grateful, also, that this farm introduced me to garlic scapes.

In our academic household, May and June are always different.  Our routines shift.  So many things we plan to do "once the semester ends" are either happening, or -- *puh*-- not at all happening.  A friend and fellow academic says this time of year she invariably gets depressed.  We're shifted out of that thing we've been doing and voila it's "summer."  But it's not the summer of childhood with those endless reading-books-in-hammocks times.  It's that quick little "ahhhh" before realizing that if you (and spouse) don't get yourselves together it will suddenly be August and you'll still have a basement full of, ahem, crap.  Our season got off to a tough start with the worst stomach virus I have ever seen tear through a little 3 year old.  Not a 24 or 48 hour thing.  A week long thing that no one else caught.  Thank heavens for small miracles.  See why I haven't written? 

I haven't written here, nor have I made any move, symbolic or otherwise, to get back to writing my dissertation.  That's one of those summer things, or so I've said to myself.  I'm seriously stalled, but starting to at least feel motivated to start again.  It's only June, right?  I still have time. 

My brave husband has taken on our basement as his special project this summer.  Our little guy is now old enough to accompany him on long sorting and organizing spells down there, and seems to have endless enthusiasm for such projects.  We're all in a very good frame of mind to let go of things that have been cluttering up our lives.  Yes, even books are leaving our house.  Many, many books.  Good books.  Books I like.  Books given to me by people I love.  Books that might be "useful someday."  Antique books and brand-new-unread books.  I'm just done with that right now.   Mind you we still have waaaaaay more books than average people.  We still have 20 copies of Moby Dick and 15 copies of Walden.  I'm just saying we're trying not to, for example, have 5 copies of Age of Innocence, when one will do.  We're just culling a bit.   We're letting go of a lot of big and little things that we have been carrying around with us for no good reason.  Do I need my senior prom dress?  Ick. I mean, why was I keeping that?  I hated the prom.  And I have a photo to prove it!

So if at the end of the summer we have a manageable basement (this goal is in sight!), I think we will both feel like we've stepped over some line in the sands of mental clarity.  Having that space available will allow us both the creative space we need.  Him for recording projects, me for sewing. 

Here are a couple of shots from the garden in front of the house: 

The little perennial geranium in the bottom right corner is pink, but this photo doesn't do it justice.  I thought it might die, but it's really picked up & continues to flower. The yarrow is really rich and lovely, and is that Salvia in purple?  I think so.  Behind the bird bath to the left is the hydrangea our neighbor gave us. I can't wait to see what color the blooms are. I love hydrangea.

Coreopsis, anyone?  Am I spelling that correctly?  And one of my pretty petunias.

Little guy's hand and some pretty day lilies.  No idea what variety, but a nice mellow buttery color. 

garden progress

This is our first raised garden bed. We had a nice big delivery of compost for it, and soon we'll put veggies in it.  I just ordered some seeds, and we will buy small plants for our tomatoes and peppers. 

Looks like we will get a few blueberries this year.  I'm dying to plant strawberries, too, but haven't quite gotten around to it.

gah blogger!

Bear with me, readers, if you are out there witnessing the circus of my blog right now.  I'm trying to switch things around and I don't have much time to learn how to blog properly (if indeed there is such a thing).  Anyway, I was getting increasingly annoyed with the multi-font & mulit-size nature of some of my posts.  I still haven't figured that one out, but isn't my new header pretty?  One of our very pretty trees.

spring & all

Easter preparations begin

Although it was a lovely and sunny day, we spent much of it inside making preparations for Easter week. Today's tasks were started early in the morning with simmering some food for dyes. This year in addition to using turmeric for yellow, we also tried onion skins.

They worked well, but the yellow was a little more mellow. However, it's a cleaner dye, since there aren't specks of the spice still in the dye when it is used. T did his part by chopping the cabbage.

Last year I was so pleased with our egg dyeing, but this year something seemed off. The dye just didn't stick to the eggs in the same way as it had in the past. I think this is because I didn't boil the dye material with the vinegar. I just added the vinegar later. We didn't get any real blue out of the cabbage. The results were still pretty.

Also, we made our traditional hot cross(ed?) buns. (And got a lot of mileage out of that nursery rhyme all day, I will add.)

kneading the dough

(T wanted to talk about the difference between "need" and "knead," be still my English-major heart)

ready for the first rising

avocado cuteness

one a penny! two a penny!

Decided

For a while I just thought that we were not going to do a CSA this summer. We were just going to plant more of our own. Then we tried to put the peas in. It took two days to plant 2 small envelopes of peas. Probably not different from last year, but pregnant me seemed to be able to get more done than baby-mama me, and that's not saying much So, we took that into consideration.

We joined Starlight Gardens.

(Forgive me, readers, if this CSA thread bores you to tears.)

Why did we join?

1) Unfortunately, NOT because it is close to us. It is still a good half hour, similar to the one we joined last year. But the difference (and this is really important to us) is that the drive is much more pleasant. No major highway that gets NYC traffic all day long and gets clogged up for any minor disruption. In fact, I have never, ever experienced "traffic" on the drive to the town where our new CSA is located. The roads are almost like country roads. Not bad or headache-inducing. The hours of pick-up and the location are both conducive to either parent doing the pick up. So, it still flies a little in the face of one of my CSA resolutions, but okay, we'll just have to see how it goes.

2) The farmer, David, returned our call and answered all my questions in a really honest, candid, and genuine way. We've met him before at markets, and found that he *loved* to talk about his vegetables, which is a great sign. One of my questions was about his expectations for pick-up days, especially with regards to kids on the farm. I wanted to know whether this would be a good spot for the kids to get out and run around, or if that was not a good idea. It was something he said that he was trying to figure out (this is their first year of a CSA). On the one hand, he said, the whole point was to get people more connected with their food. On the other hand, this is his home and his backyard and they will want/need to maintain some level of privacy and some boundaries. He basically said that he didn't know how it was going to work, but they were thinking about it. While I think it would be great if T would get the chance to see the plants and play a bit, I also think it is important to know ahead of time if that is appropriate or not. I know if I were running a CSA where I lived it would probably get too stressful and chaotic if everyone's kids were running around everywhere 2 days a week. It's good for both the CSA subscribers and the growers to communicate about these boundaries ahead of time so everyone's on the same page, and it's not just kids. I can imagine people bringing their welcome or unwelcome dogs, or even just having adults poking around willy-nilly would probably get tiresome.

3) While this is the first year of their CSA, they have been growing successfully and organically in CT for 12 years. That's a great track record! We've been really happy with the tomato plants we bought from them last year, and always happy with the greens we've gotten at markets. When I was very pregnant we bought some greens, and David said that he always has a gift for newborn babies at the market, and to bring our baby when he's born. We did and we got a nice bag of greens. I just thought that was sweet and totally unexpected.

4) Part of the reason we joined is because I really haven't had much fun at the area's farmer's markets. They can be fun on occasion, and we will still go, but I was getting weary of feeling like we had to divide our weekend up so that we would make it to a market. It will be nice to know that even if we go away for the weekend, or make plans with friends or family, we can still have fresh vegetables. We have precious few free weekend days and I'd like to have more opportunities to take the kids to forests, beaches, mountains, etc., rather than downtown to get our food.

5) Our expectations for the produce we'll get have been changed. Hopefully we will get some great food, but we're a bit more realistic now. Hopefully it will be better than last year. At least this time around I feel like I know the farmer a bit better and have the good faith that I lacked last year.

So there you have it. We will keep you posted!