Finish It Friday ~ Garden Beds

 I really had zero to do with this project, so there's no good reason for me to post about it, except that it looks so great! Earlier this month, C finished the raised-bed garden that he's been working on for at least five years, possibly longer, methodically building beds, paving the intervening space with bricks, and, finally, fencing the whole thing in. This shows an amazing level of stick-to-itiveness, and is further proof, in case we needed it, that C is the ant and I'm the grasshopper. I'm all about the instant gratification, and once I get a project in my craw, I want to get it done as quickly as possible.

And, look! We already have peas. Like tons of peas. Normally, you hope to have peas by the 4th of July here, so this is astoundingly early. We've also had one crop of spinach and we're working on the second. Radishes, lettuce, and arugula are coming out daily, and the garlic is almost ready. Tomatoes and peppers are on their way. I dug up a photo of what the garden used to look like, ten years ago, and you can see it's come a long way.

What's growing in your garden?

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October in Review

October seems to have gotten away from me—there were many things I meant to post about, but somehow never got around to it.


It was a beautiful month, sunny and dry, until it wasn't (more about that in a minute). I got the kids to walk through our woods a few times and we even went on a family hike once (I have mentioned how no one likes to leave the house, haven't I?). Unfortunately, I didn't take along my camera for documentary evidence.

E and Z and I did a Van Gogh art project, with various interpretations of what that meant.

And we all made tie-died t-shirts, which is so much easier now, with squirt-bottles of concentrated dyes, than last time I tried it, 30 years ago, with dipping shirts in and out of buckets of watery Rit.

C and I did our best to wrangle the last of the garden produce. He made several large batches of tomatillo salsa and I boiled or roasted the rest of the tomatillos and froze them for winter cooking.


With the last of the VERY LARGE harvest of chile peppers (jalapeño and habanero), I made hot pepper jellies, hot sauces, roasted and frozen peppers, and dried peppers. That was a lot of peppers.



With the end of the month came a crazy wind-and-rain storm, which knocked power out for most of the state, littered roads with fallen trees and downed power lines, and drove most of the leaves off the trees (though the beech and oak hung on tight).


The upshot for us was NO SCHOOL for this whole week, with power out almost everywhere (except, thank you sun and solar panels and batteries, our house) and roads too hazardous for buses to pass through.

Three people in our house were pretty psyched about this development. I even got into the spirit of it for the first couple of days, playing Snow Day, baking cinnamon rolls and watching movies, but a whole week with a houseful of kids (and no internet) put a serious dent in my work flow.



Despite calls here and there to postpone Halloween until Friday (to which we said "Phooey"), we braved the dark and tree-littered streets to make our usual trick-or-treat rounds.



Our usual hay wagon being unavailable, we made do with C's work truck, which worked out nicely, as grown-ups got to sit inside for once (although it was such a mild night, it wouldn't have been bad to be in a trailer).



The power outages and candle-lit homes made for an extra-spooky Halloween-i-ness, and I think people appreciated a diversion from sitting around in their dark houses, listening to their generators run. And I think the kids appreciated being part of a lower-than-normal turnout that led to even more candy in their buckets than usual.

Indoor Garden

I used to love to garden. Back when I lived in dorms and treehouses and apartments, I kept houseplants and windowsill herbs. I worked in community gardens and other people's gardens. And then we got our very own house and our very own, lots and lots of, land, and suddenly gardening didn't seem all that appealing to me anymore. At first I blamed the baby. And then the other two babies. But recently I saw a neighbor rototilling with a baby on her back, so that excuse doesn't hold water. Also, those babies aren't really all that babyish anymore. Certainly no impediment in the garden. So I don't know what it is—the busy-ness of May, with three birthdays and baseball season and stuff. The bugs? The overwhelming sensation of "where to start?" on 20 acres? a preference for wild plants and wandering? Sheer laziness?

Whatever it is, I found myself getting back to my windowsill gardening roots last spring when I planted a parsley plant in a little orange pot. It did so well, even while we were gone over the summer, I decided to start a couple more herbs—the ones I always wish I had fresh but never do (basil and cilantro). I don't know if either of them does well as a potted plant, indoors, in the winter, but I'm giving it a try.



Right now they're in the sun room, hopefully getting ready to sprout, but after the holiday decorations come down, I'll move them to the kitchen window, where I can snip off bits of tasty herbs whenever needed. (Maybe that's what I don't like about gardening…the very long walk through the house, down the stairs and around back to collect my vegetables. Maybe it's time for indoor hydroponics).

Growing Mushrooms

I'm generally too lazy for any kind of gardening or yard work, but we got this shiitake mushrooms kit for Christmas and since I'm the only one who enjoys eating mushrooms, I knew I had to be the one to put the kit into action.



The process was fairly simple--drill holes in logs, place inoculated plugs into holes, cover with melted wax. The drill bit, wax, and wax dauber all came with the kit. All we needed was the logs, which C had conveniently cut the previous week, a drill, and something in which to melt the wax.

I don't have any pictures of the process because C was making a movie so I had to do all the work, but here is the finished product: our mushroom logs. Now we just have to wait a few months, and then--feast!

Weekend Things ~ Chili-in'

Way back a month or so ago, after our first frost, I picked all of the chili peppers off the plants, cooked the few poblanos that made it to maturity into chile rellenos, and stuffed the rest in a bag. C used quite a few in making salsa, but the rest, we just kind of forgot about, ignored.

Once in a while, one of us would say, "We should do something about those chiles," and the other would agree, and then nothing would happen. Then this weekend, C pointed out to me that they were starting to rot, and the crisis that I usually require for action spurred me on. 

I sorted out the still good chiles from the nasty ones and had enough to make two jars of pickled jalapeños, using Catherine Newman's brilliant refrigerator pickle anything recipe. I had some brine left over, so I threw a bunch of mini rainbow carrots in a jar and pickled them, too.

The rest of not-rotten chiles, which are a different variety (I'm not sure what), were already starting to whither a bit, so I strung them up to dry.

I suppose the crisis-response method of food preservation is not the most efficient, and it's fairly wasteful (oh, those sad chilis I had to throw away), but sometimes it's what's needed to get the job done.

Garden Things ~ Early June

I don't feel winter is truly over until I eat something grown in the garden. Last week, our first harvests came in--spinach, chives, mint, and lots and lots of radishes. 

I can't take credit for any of it--I'm not the gardener around here. I didn't even plant the garlic--my domain--last fall. I used to love to garden, before I had land of my own, but nowadays I'd rather spend April, May, and June wandering in the woods looking for birds and wild plants. I haven't been able to motivate myself to want to work in the garden at all (Sunday I spent a few minutes weeding my sad little flower bed and the whole time I thought about how much I don't like to weed--which a bit too much like my 9-to-5 life--with added mosquitoes--for comfort). 

Luckily, C loves to garden, and the minute the snow melted from our garden beds (and a considerable while before it had melted elsewhere), he put peas and radishes in the ground. They're well on their way to a fourth-of-July pea harvest.

And this year we're going to finally have tomatoes, after a couple of years of mishaps with the seedlings. I hope they don't succumb to blight. Do you know how to prevent that?

The spinach is coming along nicely, with lettuce and chard close behind. I've bought my last box of greens for the season. I forgot how much I love the meaty denseness of raw spinach leaves. I know some people say it's not good for you due to the levels of oxalic acid, but it tastes so good. 

After the three days of rain we just had, things are going to grow even wilder out there.

How does your garden grow? And what's wrong with me that I don't care for gardening? Am I just lazy? And if so, am I the only one?

Around the Garden, Early August

We didn't need to go all the way to Baxter State Park to see a moose, 

When one walked right through our garden while we were gone.

(Close-up of its track above, the pair of them longer than my foot; tracks through our poor woodchuck-demolished beans here).

In other garden news, the cucumber flowers are flourishing,

Along with some beautiful borage. 

I harvested my garlic, right on time for once. Only about half as many bulbs came out of the ground as cloves went in last fall, but they're beauties.

Being one who loves flowers, but is too lazy to actually plant or take care of them, I'm loving this black-eyed Susan that sprang up under the deck.

The chard is coming along and, ever so slowly the tomatoes (about half are self-starts transplanted from the compost pile and the other half C direct-seeded into the ground. We could use some good sunny weather to get them moving along while summer lasts).

Broccoli, I think, is enjoying this cool rainy weather, however.

As are the blueberries. (These are on Blueberry Tree--the world's hugest high bush blueberry bush. I brought home 20 pounds of farm-raised blueberries last night, most of which I froze, making some into jam. Two of my jars didn't seal, and when I tried re-boiling them, on jar broke. I've had the worst jam luck this year!).

Our peach tree died over the winter, after one glorious harvest last year. Inside the house, fruit flies have taken over despite not much fruit for them to eat (oh, but that compost bowl!). They'll be happy to know I'm on schedule to pick up ten quarts of plums, which means more jam attempts (perhaps better luck!?). Any other ideas for preserving plums?

The big darner dragonflies have taken wing, and I'm starting to get that clingy, panicky late-summer feeling of oh no, it's almost over. Trying to breathe deeply. Crossing fingers for more sun and more beach days and lots of ripe goodness from the garden.

How does your garden grow?

Raspberries

Berries just might be the second-best part of a Maine summer (the first-best being, of course, the beach).

Each berry season unfolds into the next: strawberry--raspberry--blueberry--blackberry.

So that you're almost never without berries from the Fourth of July to Labor Day.

E has been scouring our wild raspberry canes for about two weeks, but they give up only scant handfuls at a time.

Luckily, we happen to have neighbors with a gorgeous raspberry field. 

And even more luckily, they always go on vacation right at the heart of raspberry season, and call us on their way out of town, "Go pick our raspberries!"

C left a jar of maple syrup on their front porch as a thank-you, which is a good thing, since my strawberry jam was a disaster (I abandoned it mid-boil to read to E and Z and it way over-cooked. And, yes, I know you're not supposed to turn your back on boiling sugar, but what's a mama to do?) so I didn't much feel like making raspberry jam, even to reciprocate.

In the midst of picking, I lay down in the grass nearby for a short nap (C, our slave-driver, was sitting in the middle of the canes and could not see me slacking). I listened to the bees hum and M do Napoleon Dynamite impressions and sing (his latest favorite is Weezer), and watched a yellow spider the size of a pin-head crawl through the jungle of the fine cotton fibers of my shirt sleeve.

We put most of the berries in the freezer for winter enjoyment, and the rest I made into a pie that E claimed to be "the best pie I ever had!" (Though C was somewhat critical of the runny nature of the filling).

While we were picking, I happened to catch a glimpse of this Northern Pearly Eyes resting on the garage window. A very accommodating butterfly, it let me get in up close to take its picture.

Lady's Slippers

It's important to go to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in June, because Lady's Slippers.

More grow there than anywhere I've ever seen. Even along the parking lots (let's not think about how many were in the places the parking lots now are, okay?). And even more along the coast trail. But first, the Children's Garden.

I am madly in love with the book house. If I could do my house all over again...

Z loves the drying house.

Which right now is filled with little fairy houses. Maybe we could do this in our playhouse (but how do they keep out the bugs?)

The boys even spent a few, fleeting minutes cooking in the play kitchen.

Which also happens to be my dream writing studio (I think I take this picture every time we go, as if I could make it mine by taking enough pictures of it!).

I busied myself taking pictures of bees

and dragonflies

while they caught frogs and polliwogs. I think if I didn't have an agenda (lady's slippers and rhododendrons and a hike on the trails), they could spend an entire day at the frog pond. Next time, perhaps.

But this time, there were rhododendrons to see.

And lady's slippers.

(I crouched in a nest of biting ants while I was trying to draw this one).

The boys built fairy houses

and climbed through the giant pinecone

and "meditated" (I'm not quite sure the designers had this in mind for the reflecting pool in the meditation garden).

Then we hiked the longest trail in record time, the boys running ahead the whole way, like puppies, leaving arrows scratched in the pine needle duff so I'd know which way they went. Which I think means they're officially Big Kids, because they didn't whine or complain or require lollipops to bribe them along the trail.

E found some feathers

Along the way, we saw a number of flowers like this plant, perhaps some kind of lily? I should probably look it up in Newcomb's guide, or at least ask C what it is.

and, of course, more lady's slippers.