and a whole lot of that

I haven’t had much time to pay attention to what’s going on in my own backyard.  Yes, you’re seeing right.  It’s time for the Aerial Squirrel Olympics.

And the garden, while not defying gravity, is worthy of some medals of its own.  Fat snap peas hang from stalks that sail skyward

We’ve had fresh salad every night

The strawberries are ruby red gems of tasty goodness

Even those I have neglected are putting out.  Ignore an onion long enough and she’ll do something to attract your attention –

Likewise the weeds.  I knew it would pay off to put off pulling this guy.

And just like that the summer is sailing past, and it is time to hang up the jump ropes and the swim goggles, wish the veggies good luck with their battle against the weeds, and load up the car for the jumbo July road trip.

We’ll catch you from the road.  ‘Til then…Wagons East!

Not a chicken:

Hang tight. We have just about reached the end of my knowledge about chickens.

They have beady little eyes.

The color of the eggs they lay is directly linked to the color of their earlobes.  Impressive sounding, right?  At least until you get to the obvious follow-up question.

So no, I do not know how one locates a chicken earlobe.

I also do not know how the eggs decide who will go on to become a big chick and who joins us for breakfast.

Nor do I understand what drove the children to spend copious amounts of time passing weeds into the coop.

Perhaps it had to do with the pathetic state of farm strawberries this year.  Hail damaged and dusty, we picked barely enough to squeak out 4 jars of jam  Hardly enough to get us through the summer, let alone the school year, but I am not concerned in the slightest.

Who needs cowboy-hick-farmland berries anyway?

Not us.

We are partial to their beautifully bountiful backyard suburban cousins.

]]> http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/06/what-i-dont-know-about-chickens/feed/ 6 http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/05/blame-it-on-the-rain-that-keeps-fallin-fallin/ http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/05/blame-it-on-the-rain-that-keeps-fallin-fallin/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 14:47:32 +0000 daphne http://www.greenerbiener.com/?p=4742 Ahhhh.  Hello my beautiful sunny iris.

If you squint just right it don’t you think it almost looks like that smoking hot orb that used to hang in the sky above this fair land?

Forgive me the sarcasm.

It’s not as if I’m one of those cheery sunshiny types.  I don’t need the sun to make me smile.  I like dreary rainy days that dispense permission to lounge in sweatpants with each thirst-quenching drop.

But enough is enough. I’m getting kind of cranky.

Maybe that has something to do with swim team practices in the cold rain and my inability to differentiate between a character-building, commitment-keeping lesson and being a mean parent.

But never mind a couple of wet, whiny kids, we’ve got strawberries bursting out of their patch–

My favorite flower flax is flexing its, um, floral-ness

And speaking of things that are taking delight in this everlasting deluge, there’s this, er, thing

This unidentified random weed that I neglected and it grew and grew and just when it started towering over me and hungrily licking its chops it burst into lovely light pink blossoms and now it’s not that scary anymore. In fact, I’m renaming it ‘flowering bush’ and inviting it to stay.

This is the garden.

Unfortunately, that big bare spot to the south represents the broccoli, pepper and eggplant sprouts that, like my shivering swimmers, proved not to be fans of icy rain.   But it’s okay, because I’m sure these guys will fit in just fine–

They look so hearty and tough.

And I’ll just bet they don’t complain to their mother even though she’s hardly the one who voluntarily begged to be signed up to swim.

Outside.

In Colorado.

In stupid old unpredictable May.

]]> http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/05/blame-it-on-the-rain-that-keeps-fallin-fallin/feed/ 5 http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/05/mouse-skulls-and-mothers-day/ http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/05/mouse-skulls-and-mothers-day/#comments Tue, 10 May 2011 14:22:04 +0000 daphne http://www.greenerbiener.com/?p=4670 Do you want to know the best thing about this plastic baggie full of mouse skeletons?

It’s not my maternal pride over the obvious CSI skills my daughters’ exhibit.

It’s not knowing that our neighborhood owls are eating well, controlling the mouse population, and selecting our pine tree for the repository of their pellets/gifts.  Though all those things are clearly good things.

No, the best part about this cluster of doom is that it was not my Mother’s Day gift.

Because while I appreciate the heck out of every thoughtful token my daughters have bestowed over the years, it would have taken considerably more energy then I’ve got to muster up the necessary ooohs and ahhhs over this bag o’ bones.

In between dissections, the little naturalists did make themselves available to do mom’s bidding.  They scowled and declined happily lent a hand.  All it took was a subtle reminder that IT IS MOTHER’S DAY THAT’S WHY.

And in honor of Mother’s Day the hammock was to be hung.  I held the image all day as I seeded and weeded, knowing that soon I would be rocking gently beneath the trees.  Relaxing.

Sure enough, there was plenty of relaxing on Mother’s Day.

I know what you’re thinking, but you’re crazy.  It’s enough for me to simply watch my offspring relax with a good book.

Besides, between the children reading in the hammock and these love doves being all lovey dovey

And strawberries putting out their flowery best

And rhubarb so ripe it practically crisped itself,

And our future salads poking through to say hello

The day was perfect.

Especially since the mouse skulls weren’t destined for my room.  They were for the 2nd grade teacher.  Because nobody musters up excitement over mouse-parts-in-a-bag like a teacher.

You can plant the seeds.

You can nurture the little guys as they poke their heads into the world for the first time.

You can shower them with smothering love and affection as you watch them grow with pride but soon enough they will be begging to be set free, demanding to stand on their own out in the wild blue yonder

Oops.  Wrong sprouts.

Pardon the mistake but that’s bound to happen when you take parenting advice from a gardening site.  Which I have.  I read that in order to prepare your sprouts for the real world, you must blow on them.  This simulated mini-hurricane hardens your sprouts, making them stronger, thereby preparing them for the strong Colorado winds.

Or big bad life lessons, whichever nemesis applies.

The answer is blowing in the wind.  Or blowing on your plants.  Or letting your kids out into the world despite the fact that it can be a dark and scary place.

And so it was that our veggie sprouts began their training regiment of standing up to the fan.

And I, with a kiss and a forced smile, relinquished my sprouts to a panel of 12 judges.  The girls bent calmly into the wind.  They put themselves out there, faced their music, and wham bam 13-hours-in-a-gym later, they came away intact.

Not just intact, but ecstatic.  And bedecked with ribbons.

Here are the videos–

Kira’s Freestyle took first place for her age division.

Acadia’s Freestyle took first place for her division.

Kira’s Pairs Freestyle also took first.

Though to the dismay of their basketball-loving father that has not necessarily translated into an interest in basketball.  Given the circumstances, Dave did what any sport-loving guy would do; he called for back-up.  It’s good to have nephews.

Five year old Felix watched.  He commented and talked stats and aside from a notable absence of beer and nachos it was game-watching perfection.  The fellas even took a break at half time to play a little hoops of their own.

And then the ladies stepped in to show them how it’s done.  My girl’s got some serious ups.

But enough with the silly game playing.  It’s March, and madness or not it is time to do some planting.  When it comes to work in the garden I am an equal-opportunity slave-driver.  I pressed all my indentured servants into compost spreading and plot prepping.

I put the girls to work.

I put the boys to work.

Heck, I would have put the mailman to work if he weren’t so darn speedy in that little weather-defying truck of his.

Thanks to all of these helping hands, the south garden has been seeded for snap peas, lettuce, onions and spinach.  Now we wait, and hope that March decides to keep its snow to itself this year.

Our new garden window is practically bursting with trash creatively re-purposed plastic containers.

Hope springs eternal in the form of this nascent plantings, but alas . . . you can’t count your veggies before they sprout.

I didn’t see you there.

No, it’s fine.  Of course I didn’t think that just because I took a little time-out that the world should stop turning.  I mean, there are lunches to be made and dictators to topple and yes, teeth will continue to fall out and hey even the sprouts are defying logic and breaking through the chilly dirt.

And ho, what’s that I feel? Are these tendrils unfurling from my own stiff limbs as if spurned on by the heady scent of sun-kissed dirt?

Hibernating? No, not me.  For there is work to be done.

And I’ve been busy.

Doing, you know, stuff.

Important, stuff.

Like, making sure my youngest is dressed to fight dragons.

And prepping Grandma for some good, old-fashioned village – pillaging.

Well gosh, now you’re making me feel like all I’ve been doing is trying to be a viking.  But you know they have cool ships with handsome, half-clad men rowing in time to jaunty sea shanties?

And ocean breezes that would gently blow through my luxurious locks.

The glint of the sun winking off a newly sharpened hatchet.

The squawk of an albatross in search of an Ancient Mariner…

Hey, shame on you.  Do not encourage my digressions.

For there is work to be done once dragons lay slain.  A newly acquired village will need tidying.  And so it was that the local population was enslaved and put to work waking up the sleepy garden.

They raked and they hoed and eventually the garlic showed through, it’s sweet tendrils reaching towards the light of the weak spring sun.

They whispered sweet nothings of encouragement, coaxing irises from beneath frozen blankets.

The raspberries too would prosper under new management.  The field, an unwieldy brier patch of mayhem,

was hacked into submission.  A viking must insist upon order from her berries.

No more would raspberries be left to wither on the vine.

And the viking goddess (that’d be me) saw that it was good.  And so it was that she posted sentries in the treetops . . .

And high-tailed it back inside.

For her hands were getting cold.

]]> http://www.greenerbiener.com/2011/03/well-good-morning-to-you-too/feed/ 7 http://www.greenerbiener.com/2010/06/garden-update-june-3-2010/ http://www.greenerbiener.com/2010/06/garden-update-june-3-2010/#comments Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:11:39 +0000 daphne http://www.greenerbiener.com/?p=4168 I haven’t seen an aphid, a slug or a snail, the notorious arch-enemies of spinach, but someone’s been eating my spinach…

That’s ok, because the lettuce is so soft and sweet I’m fine to let the mysterious muncher have the majority of the spinach.

The pumpkins are promising –

A self planted carrot –

Cucumbers

Potatoes

Yellow Watermelon

Butternut squash

Super sweet sugar snaps

Hearty looking strawberries –

I’ll miss you dear readers,

It’s for you that I write

But the call of the wild (that is, my backyard)

Is too strong to fight

Schools out for summer

I’ve cut back on house cleaning

Yet my time packs right up

With picnic-making and sun-screening

And there are weeds that need weeding

And ice cream to eat

And bikes that need riding

And filthy bare-feet

The children are clamoring

Long forgotten is school

They run through the sprinklers

And jump in the pool

Between following the kiddos

And watering the plants

When it comes time for typing

I’m finding…I can’t

But I’ll be back soon

With stories for sowing

‘Til then, Happy Summer

And to all some good growing

**** As always, thanks for reading.  The Greener Biener is taking a sabbatical, but I’ll be adding garden updates from time to time to chronicle the progress of our home-grown veggies.

Hope to see you again in the fall.

Even before I had one appendage masquerading in this 71,520 pound storm-trooper suit I was not what you might considered leggy.

Unleggy and unsuspecting, I simply picked out a pretty, ambitious sprout from the $1 bin at last summer’s farmers market.  I put it in a pot, and it went wild–

It’s growing like it’s going out of style, and my father, currently studying to become a master gardener, called my baby leggy.

He never called me leggy.  Nobody ever called me leggy.

In all fairness, my father did not mistake my plant for a tall blond;  he simply meant that my plant was growing too long and lean for its own good, and could do with a little trim.

Sounded good to me.  I’ve always been a fan of the short and stout myself.

I grabbed the scissors, but as I headed over to the window to work out my long leg lust to give the plants a taste of my sharp shears, I noticed this–

Long legs, gorgeous red coloring, and now a dainty purple flower on top.  Of course.  Why not.  She’s probably smart with a great personality too.

(Note Number One: although sitting on the couch with my foot up is all that and a bag of chips, I have a confession: I snuck out.  I had to.  The garden was beckoning; click here to see what it had to say.)

(Note Number Two…something completely different…) I made this cake yesterday–

Because sometimes you just have to bake with marshmallows shmeared black and totally not-organic blue food coloring.   Like when you gather with a bunch of your similarly minded geeked-out friends to say good-bye to a TV show.  Lost is no more.

Good-bye smoke monster.

Good-bye mystery island with polar bears and time travel.

Good bye hotties trooping through the jungle in search of answers.

Hello Chocolate Cake.

Baby lettuce, south garden, May 21, 2010 –

Baby mighty oak tree, Acadia’s garden, May 21, 2010 (acorn planted by Kira in April)

Baby tomato,  soaking up some front porch sun

Baby eggplant, sunny self on porch –

Baby squash –

Baby rainbow chard, volunteer (self-seeded) in north garden, May 21, 2010

Baby snap pea, May 21, 2010 north garden, from seed April 4 –

And then over to the north garden to see how the rhubarb was behaving–

He may have been waving it in the air like he just didn’t care, but I paid him no mind and got right to business.  Harvesting time.

The leaves are mildly toxic, and I can’t go near them without gloves or I’ll break out in a rash, but it doesn’t bother the girls one bit.  They are of tougher stock.

Even a child can harvest rhubarb.  All you do is grasp the stalk, pretty close to the ground, and wiggle it.  It will release from the plant with this little slipper attached–

Stalks are ready when they are thick enough (about the diameter of a dime or thicker.) They will range in color from deep pink to light speckled green.

I dice them and freeze them for recipes like my favorite crisp.  Inside the color also ranges from a whitish pink to a light green–

Also reporting in: the raspberries have millions of tiny buds, and the strawberries, recently thinned, are sporting tons of flowers.

The message I’m getting from the universe: think otherwise.

Take, for example, my rhubarb.  Up until recently it was such a well behaved plant.  And then he pulled his thing out, right there in the middle of my family-friendly garden.

I told him to put it away. He upped the ant, and went all Rhubarb-Gone-Wild on me –

And the phallus phenomena is spreading.  All I wanted to do was prepare some locally raised organic chicken for dinner.  I’m no prude, yet something about this boasting roaster gave me pause. I can only imagine how he ruled the coop.

I hoped my nephews would help me out.  Surely my own little panel of experts had some insight into males running amok in the natural world.

It’s not pretty, but I will share what I learned.  My source is one of the following fellows:

To protect the innocent I won’t divulge if it was this guy:

Or this guy–

Or this guy –

Or this guy–

Or this one –

But I well tell you that the tidbit said nephew shared did shed some light on the wild bachelors and their love of living it up in the great outdoors:

Nephew:  Oh no Aunt Daphne. You don’t have to use the bathroom.  Do you know why?

Me (kind of hopping up and down): Why?

Nephew:  At my house we get to pee outside.  In the backyard.

Me:  Um…

Nephew:  That’s why my house is lots more fun.  Because boys really like to pee outside.  Want to go outside now?

Me: Um…

I don’t have much to say about boys and their aversion to indoor plumbing, but I do know what I’m going to do about that rambunctious rhubarb.

And it has everything to do with raspberry crisp.

]]> http://www.greenerbiener.com/2010/05/put-that-thing-away/feed/ 7 http://www.greenerbiener.com/2010/05/inch-by-inch-row-by-row-gee-ive-had-it-with-this-snow/ http://www.greenerbiener.com/2010/05/inch-by-inch-row-by-row-gee-ive-had-it-with-this-snow/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 19:05:00 +0000 daphne http://www.greenerbiener.com/?p=4000 Golly gee, I wonder what on earth could be making me feel so droopy?  Could it possibly be this–

You might not recognize that shiny metal thing, but that’s what I was going to use to help these guys along–

Oh my sweet sweet snap peas.  Hang in there.  You too, my poor brave blossoms.  Confidently you woke to greet May 12th, and harshly you got slapped down by Mama Nature.  She’s sure been in a foul mood lately.

But hey, it’s okay.  I have found my happy place.  It’s right here, with John Denver, his Garden Song and the Muppet veggie singers.

Snow, shmoe, I won’t let it get me down.  The weather changes so fast around here that you might not even notice something very fishy going on in the rhubarb patch.  What, exactly, is this?

I’ve had this rhubarb for seven summers now and this is the first time I’ve seen it get so, er, excited.   Email me stat if you’ve got a reasonable explanation.

With Dave up on the roof battling his nemesis, and me here on the ground with a broken foot and looming cold nights, there was little I could manage in the garden.  Still, Mother’s Day means I get my way (kind of) and my request was simple–just pick all the dang dandelions. I know it’s short-sighted but I don’t want to look at them and I’m the mother and it’s my day so just get rid of the things, okay?

And so it was.

And the mother was pleased as she watched the children pick the “wild flowers” and construct a chain of them which they looped round the au natural trellis and they all lived happily ever after.

On to the mundane.  I hobbled to and fro to photograph the progress being made between the snowflakes.

The spinach is coming along nicely,

As is the lettuce, which had been written off but is proving tougher than 28 degree nights–

Our itty bitty peach tree even has a couple of promising blossoms–

Mother’s Day had us planting, hesitantly.  We’re going to wait a few more weeks for some warmer nights before planting the more fragile stuff, but put in another round of carrots, onions and chard today.