The Answer is Blowing in the Wind

daphne on April 11, 2011

The question, of course, was the one I posed in a round-about way last week:  How do you protect your sprout-lings from the cold winds that blow?

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.

Well Good Morning to You Too

daphne on March 7, 2011

Oh.  Hello.

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.

Stupid March

daphne on March 14, 2010

This was yesterday.

The sun was shining on my hard-working husband as he measured out the twine. It’s all going according to plan…that is, our grand plan for square foot gardening in our brand new sun drenched garden plot.

Isn’t that a sight for hyper-organize, Type-A eyes?   All orderly and grid-like and ready for methodical planting that will result in plentiful vegetables for our happy homestead.

Here, in our new southern backyard locale, the sun warms the soil for long stretches of time; this is where the magic will occur. Here, tomatoes will swell to globes of obscene size and cucumbers will twirl up a hand-wrought trellis and squash will at last feel free to fornicate do what it takes to make little squashies.

I sat in the dirt and let the sun drip its Vitamin D all over my pale self while overseeing the work over at Fairy Village.  They were receiving a much anticipated upgrade over by the dwindling snow bank–

All was good.

The birds were singing.

Even the garlic poked up a tentative scape to greet the Spring.

The children were frolicking and the garden was brimming with promise.

I was warm.

I was happy.

Today, it is snowing.

Stupid March.

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.

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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.

My house smells like dirt (in a good way)

daphne on May 8, 2009

Coming back home after eight days away I am hit by one particular fact: my living room smells like dirt.  No, I can’t blame my husband for letting things fall to pot. The kids are in one piece and the house is still standing.  The house smells like dirt in a good way.  Forest path in the rain dirt, not dust bunnies beneath the bed dirt.  It smells like dirt in here because a few weeks ago I started some seeds inside, but then life got in the way and I high-tailed it to Boston and I just haven’t gotten around to the moving them out into the garden part of the plan yet.

But as they say to Marvin K. Mooney, the time has come. The time is NOW.  And I’m looking at a weekend of planting in a garden that is more than ready to go.  I think we’ve had some success with the sage. It’s coming back, and that bodes well for a summer full of my favorite pasta with sage leaves.

It also seems that taking that rhubarb risk is paying off in a big way.  All is going well with our original plant and her little rhubarbarinos.

The leaves are lush and green, but I can’t touch them without breaking out in hives. For some reason, the toxic leaves don’t bother the kids at all.  The stalks are ruby red and thick, harvest-able very soon, which means that days rich in rhubarb crisp can’t be far away.

As Dr. Seuss famously told Marvin K. Mooney, the time has come to GO GO GO.  I’m all about frenetic activity, and can’t wait to break out the shovels this weekend.

Which may work fine for me, but sweet Acadia sails on a different tack.  She’s slowing it down, making some time to stop and smell the tulips.

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.

Spring, sprouting and flinging all over the place

daphne on March 15, 2009

Sometimes nature is cruel. Other times, while it’d be an exaggeration to call nature cruel, she’s not exactly helping things by subtly antagonizing the underlying issues of sibling rivalry.

Thanks, nature, for this.  One more reason to pit sister against sister in the eternal contest for who is best.

Allow me to settle the question equitably, in the interest of protecting their loving sisterly relationship.  IT’S ME! I’M THE BEST. LOOK WHAT I DID!

Yesiree–that’s a tulip. Or a daffodil.  Or something posing as a flower-to-be in exactly the same spot where I presciently dropped bulbs about a million years ago.

As I mentioned already, I was not all that excited about digging in the dirt as the first hints of winter swirled through the air.  It’s unreasonable to have to wait season upon season for something to rear it’s lovely head.  Like a pinata that you smack in the midst of a party and then wait and wait and wait and then finally as you are growing weary of all the waiting you are showered by a cascade of delicious snacks. Oh the joy.

Would you look at that?  Time, as they promised, has flown.

I was wrong to be smug about the waiting. It’s a delightful treat after all these months to get something as magical, as beautifully incredible and special as this:

Really. That’s two sprouts.  Try to contain your excitement.

I’m sorry, but did I hear a GET REAL?  Am I sensing a lack of bubbling enthusiasm over the little nubs that are popping from the earth in front of my house due solely, I remind you, to my brilliant foresight?  Fine.  I’m no dummy.  I know not everything can be chard crisps and amphibian sex.  You remember frog sex, don’t you?

I don’t mean to lead you on.  Springy though it may be, I am not going to delve back in to the birds and the bees.

But guess what boys and girls?  It is time again for the annual elementary school Spring Fling.  Seems like just yesterday that we boogie-oogie-oogied ’til we just couldn’t boogie no more.  This year it was time to spring back to the most totally boss, righteously bitchin’ decade of them all…the 80s!  Here are the two cutest valley girls of the year–

Give me a break before I gag you with a spoon. I know what you’re thinking, and no, I did not send Acadia to her school dance wearing a shirt that says Eat Flax.  I’m the real deal, baby.  All eighties, all the time. Her t-shirt, of course, reads Frankie says… RELAX as it flash-dancingly dips over one shoulder.

My family, much like spring itself, is so totally tubular.

Happy Bodacious Spring.

Who is this chick?

daphne on November 6, 2008

Yeah, that one. The one planning for a flowering spring. The one with a song in her heart and a belief in the future. The one dancing with hope.

That’s me, really. With just a few tweaks to the old personality.

I am not known for having patience. A fondness for delayed gratification didn’t make my list either. But hey, if America can climb on board with a big plan for change than the least I can do is try for some changes of my own.

So recently while the girls helped Dave rake yellowing leaves into billowing piles,

I planted something that would not emerge from the soil for 6 month. Talk about delaying some gratification. Talk about hope. I’m talking about lovely ladies that demand a nice six-month nap in the dirt before rearing their pretty faces. Tulips. And daffodils.

I’m never one to jump up and down at the return of warm weather, but I do like the bright colors that litter my neighbor’s yards while our property remains the sole landscape slumbering away beneath a blanket of blandness.

And each year I am reminded that these April flowers demanded attention way back when the first snows were threatening. They require planning ahead. Way way ahead. Which has always been enough to send those tulip-thoughts tiptoeing out of my head.

Not so with the new me. After an eternal election cycle the idea of waiting a paltry six months for flowers seems reasonable. So I read the back of my little packet of seeds. And I dug the holes. And while I may have skimped a bit on the suggested 12 inches of depth and 6 inches of spacing, I remain confident that my yard will look very much like this.

Ok, I can’t say for sure that my yard will blossom like that. But after a long long time I find myself believing in a future bright with rainbows and gilded with hope. My dreams are rich in solar paneled rooftops, electrically-charged cars and daughters bedecked in white lab coats out to change the world.

So why not? Anything is possible. And come springtime I believe we will be dancing in daffodils.