Blame it on the Rain that keeps fallin’ fallin’

daphne on May 25, 2011

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.

In the Garden…April

daphne on May 7, 2010

April 12, and our previously perky sprouts have called it quits.

All but that one little guy, who I think is an eggplant. Our over-zealous watering took out not only our nice handwritten signs, but much of our crop as well.

At least the tomatoes are still hanging in there —

Outside things are moving right along.  The snap peas are winning.  I think it’s their super-cool au natural trellis that keeps them reaching for the stars.

The rhubarb rules–

The garlic is doing great.

I overheard at the garden store that garlic and raspberries are a recommended pairing.  Maybe that’s why both these guys are going strong.  I love the look of these early raspberry leaves.

It seems I might have had some slight miscalculations when plotting out our square foot garden, and now I can’t be sure if this square is carrots or onions.  I had been 99% sure it was carrots, until these sprouts poked through —

They do not look like the frilly tops that I associate with carrots.  Any chance they are onions?

I’m Not Getting Voted Off This Homestead

daphne on April 5, 2010

The last attempt I made to live off the land didn’t go very well.   Half pint and pa never bagged a bear, and what with all the churning and mending to be done I utterly failed at the task of putting up enough food to feed my family.  It was barely November and I had to hitch the old (station) wagon up to the grocery store trading post.

No amount of chopping wood would have saved me from being voted out of the Frontier House.

I don’t know how those pioneer ladies did it.  They were a tough breed.

Kind of like my own pioneer babe–

Don’t let the Holly Hobby dress and sweet smile fool you.  This nine year old is brimming with teenage ‘tude that would serve her nicely should I follow through with my decision to free-range her out on the open frontier.  And since you were wondering, yes I did wear this dress to school as a suburban child of the seventies.  There is simply no denying it, when it comes to fashion I’ve always been ahead of my time.

But never mind that, food failure was so last year.  My family is on target to make it through this year, this entire year, completely independent from grocery stores.  That’s us, totally self-sufficient…at least as far as jam is concerned.

Oh shush.  Don’t tell me I can’t keep a family on jam alone.  I can do whatever I want.

I made jam, didn’t I?  See–

When we polished off the last of the jars I made back in June, I simply defrosted what was left of our strawberry puree from the picking last fall.   Then I added just a pinch of sugar.

Or perhaps it was a wagon-load of sugar.  I’m not exactly sure.  Then a dollop of magic–

And Voila!  Jam!

2009/2010 will be known far and wide as the year we made it on jam alone.  Impressive, yes, but for 2010/11 I’ve set my sights a little higher.

Welcome to my lofty goal of the year:  tomatoes.  These guys may not look like much but just you wait.  These little guys have been tapped to nourish my family throughout the year to come.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

It’s Super Cali Fragil Istic, or so

daphne on March 22, 2010

Last week while Colorado was being slammed with yet another blizzard, I was off in sunny Atlanta battling a stomach bug visiting friends battling stomach bugs with friends.  News that my laid-back un-anxious husband had rushed our youngest to the emergency room with a high fever did nothing to help settle my stomach.

It was not exactly a jolly holiday with Mary.

But by the time I returned my daughter’s fever was under control and the snow, which remained firmly frozen over last year’s garden plot,

was melted completely away from the newly selected southern spot.  So I took a teaspoon of sugar to help the medicine go down, then I hit the dirt.

I planted snap peas, spinach. lettuce and onions in the lusciously warm soil outside.  Then I started the broccoli, chard, tomatoes and eggplant in a cozy nook in our dining room.

Maybe Dave had harbored ideas of lounging around, maybe he even wanted to go fly a kite, but instead he hunkered down to constructing the frame for our new plot.

Meanwhile the girls declared it officially picnic weather.  They swept the snow to the ground and snacked in the sun.

It would be hours before we trekked down to Denver to see the musical Mary Poppins (what? you didn’t catch the theme?)

Yet the feel of fresh dirt was warm in my hands.  Soon, so soon, we’d have fresh vegetables.

The girls laughed as they danced from snow pile to swing set.

My handsome hard-working husband hammered happily.

I’m a lucky lady.

It was a perfect day.

And I felt positively supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

My, What Big Spinach You’ve Got Granny

daphne on July 9, 2009

There is a chance, I suppose, that since I’ve deserted it our sweet little garden has runneth over, but I’m not holding my breath.  I’m visiting my mother, and she has shown me how a real garden behaves.  It’s not that my cute little berry patch back in Colorado isn’t special; it is.  But next to this macho New York garden with its prime beach-front location and vines reaching for the stars, mine seems a bit underwhelming.

Look closely.  Can you find my girls? That’s them being consumed by greenery as they munch their way through grandma’s garden.  My what big spinach you’ve got granny…now how about you get it to spit out the children?

It’s not just the size of her prolific garden, or the fact that it’s situated on a piece of real estate that makes broccoli everywhere envious.  Something about those leafy greens put a spell on our children.  It was all we could do to tear the six cousins out of the garden and convince them to jump in the bay.  The beach? Maybe later; hey, who wants more salad?

The snap peas are sweet and crisp, a favorite along with the cucumbers.  But surprisingly, these kids can’t keep their picking fingers off the fennel (they call it licorice, and save it for “salad dessert.”)  They also chomp with glee through the spinach and chard.  Ok, so for those keeping score, it’s North Carolina for earth-friendly, grass-fed protein, and New York for getting kids and their vegetables together in harmony.

Cousin Emily adored the mint leaves.  And I think Evan owes his Spider Man powers to the hundreds of blades of lemon grass he chewed.

My mother remains modest about her remarkable gardening success.  She suggests only that we place lo-jacks on the children to allow us to pull them to safety when it’s time to give them their ice cream.

You do remember ice cream, don’t you kids?

Hit the road, jack

daphne on June 19, 2009

It’s time. We are ready to hit the road, Jack.

Heck yeah we’re bringing Jack; who’d you think was going to do all the driving and the refueling and the feeding and entertaining of whining kids?  OK, not really.  It would be delightful to have imaginary handy Jack along, but it’ll just be the four of us cruising the country’s roads.   As you’ve probably guessed, I am busy teaching the girls the lyrics to such classics as I Ate a Peanut, and She’ll Be Coming Around the Mountain.  It’s going to be just great.

The critics say we are crazy to attempt this trip sans electronics. Concern is so high, in fact, that I have already declined, politely, three separate offers to borrow mini-DVD players.  Last night, Dave came home from work with a loaner.  His co-workers were worried about our caveman-style approach to car time.  I remain committed to old school.  How can we sing about all those bottles falling off the wall if the children have battery-operated alternatives?

I might be wrong, so to be on the safe side I will keep my mind open and the charged DVD player in the trunk.  You know, just in case Disney is the one thing that keeps me from going completely nuts.

Speaking of nuts, there’s the issue of food on the road.  Though I deny my children all the good stuff 360+ days of the year, travel time is treat time.  I’ve been loading up a box with all the means to make the trail-crossing pleasant; we’re got nuts, yes, and trail mix heavy with m+ms and licorice whips and potato chips, and more.  If our wagon loses a wheel, I am confident that we’ll stave off starvation.

And what about the garden?  Sadly, those berries did not ripen despite my repeated requests and explanations about the tight calendar.  In the interest of research, we threw more seeds in the ground, set out a drip line, and are hoping for the best.

Here’s what’s happening now, as I callously leave my fresh fruit and veggies behind in the dirt and ply my children with sugar instead:

After the first round of sprouts keeled over, I tried again for cucumbers.  Here they are, just poking up through the earth–

Dave apparently had a similar thought, so he went right ahead and dug in a baby tomato. Right on top of my squash.  See what happens when spouses don’t communicate?   It will be a fierce battle (but seeing as my squash has all her sisters and she, I don’t think his puny tomato has much of a chance.)  Only time will tell which veggie will prevail (Go squash Go!)

The potatoes trees are out of control.  What?  You didn’t know that potatoes grow on trees?  Perhaps you’ve heard otherwise, but then how do you explain this–

It’s a potato jungle out there.

We won’t be here to see all the changes in the garden over the next six weeks, but we did get to witness one marked change this week.  Ahh, Acadia.  What would a vacation be without a stopover first for some xrays?

Here she is at the beginning of the week, the happy-as-a-clam swimming cowgirl.

And here she is yesterday, noticeably sadder.

Her boldly attempted ceiling-slap-from-high-leap off the bed resulted not in a gold medal, but in a hairline fracture in her foot.  Kids!  Aren’t they a kick in the pants?

Yup, it’s me; all cool-like and laid-back

daphne on June 1, 2009

Ok so I’m starting to lose it.  School days are done and summer is upon us and I’ve got three weeks of swim team and jump practice to coordinate before packing up the car and turning our (station) wagon west east not to mention figuring out hotel stops and food and oh yeah, I’m losing it.

Have no fear. I’m working on a new me.  You can tell I’m all new by the mellow look in my eye and the way I saunter to and fro with nary a care in the world.  I’m laid back.  I’m cool.  I don’t need a petty calendar to tell me where I’m supposed to be and who I’m supposed to be picking up when.  If I forget a kid I’m sure she’ll call (note to old self — write cell number inside kids’ shirts.)

With such a blase attitude towards juggling life and kids, you can imagine that the disorder of my garden isn’t ruffling any of my feathers.  Oh no.  I am hip and if the squash wants to wind itself around the tomatoes and the potatoes are fraternizing with the cucumbers, I don’t mind.  Who am I to enforce something as dull as tidy rows of planned vegetables?

Sure I spent hours toiling away beneath a punishing sun, lining up seedlings and painstakingly pulling weeds, but all that’s behind me now.  After all, the roly polies have settled into the neatly groomed spots vacated by the vegetables-to-be and they seem quite happy.  And you know what they say–when a gal’s got happy bugs…well, I imagine they have something to say about that.

Ok. Ok. You got me. I like my garden in rows.  And I like my days planned.  But I’m facing a mutiny in the garden and a couple of weeks before setting out on the open road and so I am embracing a new attitude.  I’m throwing caution to the wind and trying out days without a plan.  (If my hands are shaking and I seem a little hyper-ventalatey that probably just means I need more coffee, right?)

I can do this.  After all, I learned my lesson last summer and I am more than ready to toss out the crazy and embrace the lazy in these my dog days of summer.  So here I go.

I’m putting down the calendar.

I’m breathing in.

I’m breathing out.

Look at me! I’m so totally relaxing.

(Ok, can I have my calendar back now?)

Your Rockin’ Rhubarb Resource

daphne on May 18, 2009

Despite a decidedly rocky start with rhubarb, I have made a remarkable comeback. Even though I was deceived as a child into believing that my beloved frozen strawberries were in fact rhubarb (and therefore off limits,) I have now gotten to a point where things with scary names aren’t intimidating.  Well, except kohlabi.  Anyone in their right mind would be terrified of kohlrabi.   Any-whoo, back to my personal growth.  I am so totally mature.  I not only grow rhubarb, but I harvest and eat the stuff too.  I’ve even been crowned Her Majesty the Rhubarb Poobah (note: position is self-appointed.)

Yes, I am the proud tender of a healthy crop of rhubarb, the successful propagator of little rhubarbarinos, and the baker of some award-winning rhubarb recipe (note: no awards have actually been awarded.)  Acadia and I pulled the first harvest last week–

She is standing in front of the strawberry patch, which has somehow doubled since last year, and behind that you can see the raspberries and the row of rhubarb.  Funny how my spinach is struggling, my cucumbers are wilting, but the pie-friendly plants are chugging right along.  Even my garden knows dessert comes first.

Do you have questions about when and how to harvest rhubarb?  Click here for a refresher on the facts.  You don’t eat the leaves, just the reddish-green stalks seen here–

You can get an idea of their size in comparison to Acadia’s kindergarten-sized hands–

As long as a few leaves remain on the plant, you will continue to get new growth for a couple of months.  This was our second harvest, only a few days after the first.

After I pull the stalks and cut away the leaves, I rinse and dice the rhubarb.  The inside color varies from light pinkish-white to light green.  The more green it is, the more tart it will taste.

I freeze the chopped pieces flat on a tray before storing them in ziplocs in the freezer.  This makes it easy to add to recipes, which I do as is, in it’s frozen state.  Here’s my favorite thing to do with rhubarb. It’s a super easy recipe and it goes beautifully with vanilla ice cream.

*********************

Notes from the roly-poly front:  The girls are starting to scare me with their mandatory round-up of these guys. The forced participation of all roly-polies born in our yard in the fun and games over at the newly opened roly-poly pavilion just seems excessive.

Here they are, not looking nearly as awful as they do in real life, going for a ride in the tuperware to see Kira’s teacher. Kira wants to know why the parents seem indifferent to the babies, crawling willy-nilly all over them without any special regard for the youngsters.  She didn’t like my answer (um, self-preservation in the face of abusive conditions?) and thinks she’ll get further with her teacher.  Apparently second-grade teachers don’t scream or use sarcasm when asked a simple question about the child-rearing habits of a billion creepy bugs.

And pretty babes all in a row

daphne on May 1, 2009

According to the gardening gurus it’s time to plant potatoes, but all I’m doing is eating a whole lot of doughnuts.  Ahhh, the anti-healthy all-terrible non-nutritional terrific-tasting doughnut.  Nothing takes the sting out of stress like a deep friend treat dipped in chocolate.  And I’ve been a bit stressed lately, what with my eight year-old almost losing an eye and my newborn nephew pulling an extended stint in the hospital. So yes, I’ve been eating some doughnuts.

I did have bigger plans.  Plans of planting potatoes and nurturing newborns but then Kira caught the business end of a boomerang with her face and then it snowed, again, covering the garden and then there were stitches to be removed and airplanes to catch and a new nephew to be hovered over and so much for plans.  You can see how there was really little time for anything other than a doughnut.

So here I am in Boston where it is springtime in spades.  With everything so lush and bursting from the ground it’s impossible to believe that this gorgeous guy has to hang out and wait for his lungs to mature. I guess he spent his time in the womb working on his fancy hair-do.

Sure, plans of planting potatoes morphed into pacing in front of digital read-outs of oxygen levels, but that’s alright. I really don’t care. The numbers look terrific. And so does little Miles.

Anyways, plans are silly. Who needs them?  The potatoes can wait.  And so can I.

Especially when it comes to snuggly newborns.

And chocolate-covered doughnuts.

Know what you can do with those growth charts?

daphne on July 15, 2008

They grow so fast. Sure, that’s what they all say but then when I shlep my kids in to the pediatrician she breaks out those charts and explains to me exactly how my little spouts are not measuring up. I feed them, I nap them, I do everything short of putting them on medieval stretcher and pulling but still my kids refuse to register on the charts. Ingrates. Not that I care. I’m over it. (Did that sound convincing? If not I could tell you what I really think of the epidemic of big-mac munching toddlers that are ruining the growth curve for everybody else.)

But again, I digress. My kids are small, be that as it may. For now let’s talk about how much my actual sprouts have grown. The green ones, that is. Here, live from the garden, are results from the 3-month check-up:

The raspberries are a’ripening. So what that my octogenarian neighbor has been harvesting buckets of his dark berries for three weeks now. He’s got all that southern exposure. Besides, my berries are coming, see that one there? It’s too early to worry that there won’t be enough for berry parfaits in January. So nope, I’m not worried.

Besides, check out our baby Georgia peach tree. Yes, that’s right, those tiny nubbers are Georgia peaches. Rock hard, yes, smaller than my fist, sure, but they’re trying, and I’m supporting their valiant, trans-continental effort.

And hey, ten points for our apples. These guys are hanging heavy from every branch. Three years ago we had enough to fill every container we owned with applesauce and keep the family in pies through Thanksgiving. I heard it through the grapevine that apples fruit in spades every three years. And frankly, when it comes to growing apples, who better to trust than a grapevine?

Meanwhile, back in the garden plot, the cucumbers show signs of doing something other than playing dead, and the good-for-nothing lazy squash finally got off its duff and set out some nice dark leaves. Things are going so well that I practically ran out and bought the next size up for my impressive bloomers; that is, until I saw my friend Emily’s veggies. Sigh. I know a mother shouldn’t compare. But seeing her leggy-green bad boys reaching for the stars made my little sprouts seem positively infantile. What? My peas should be fruiting and my squash blossoms full? But it’s only July, and they’re such sweet little leafy things, and they are well adjusted and look she can write her own name and sing the ABCs, and oops, slipped off track again. Sorry.

Squishy squash and belated berries aside, you’ve got to see the tomatoes. Here’s Acadia measuring up (well, not measuring up) against the big bad tomato plants. Yes, those are their leafy limbs crawling sky-ward above her head. And no, I’m not worried that her green cousin towers above her diminutive frame. Why not? I’ll tell you a secret: I filled her bed with compost; so you see, pretty soon she’ll be jetting back up towards that 5th percentile. Besides, I’ve got two months before her five year check-up. And with her toes wiggling in richly composted soil, and all those garden-bound cousins of hers she’ll be consuming, I just know this will be the year she’ll blow those dang charts away.