A Garden Plot

Photo credit to: http://www.thegardenlady.org/

This morning started out so chill and bland and then as the day tumbled on it got brighter and clearer until there was warm golden sunlight pouring in on the potted fig, leaving cozy puddles of light on the floor. If only we had a cat. But we don't, instead we have me. So, I sat in the sun pools and read books to the boys and vacuumed the rug and then flipped through another sheaf of garden catalogs that came up the steps in the arm of the postman.

Nib, big book lover

Ru, my biggest book hound. Consuming Mr. Popper's Penguins as fast as I will read.

Here are five garden problems I have at the moment

1.  I need to figure out proper up-keep for a gravel drive. Our gets all weedy every two minutes, and short of weeding it by hand meticulously (which I did do once or twice last year), how do folks really pull it off?
2. I need a reminder to put in fall veggie crops. I always, always forget. Maybe one of those, send-yourself-an-email-in-the-future things would solve this. Hmmmm.....
3. I need more chives. They are great for eating, they're completely fuss-free and they're a beautiful landscaping plant and rabbits don't eat them. That said, I can't bear to buy them. Everyone has chives, right? I'll have to get some divisions from someone.
4. I am looking for some big shallow circular planters to nab. Preferably free! Am keeping an eye out on curbs. I want to stack them up in graduated sizes inside the giant cement planter on the lawn to make a towering kind of fountain effect. Then...I'm going to fill the whole thing with a cascade of strawberry plants.
5. I have to figure out what can live under yew plants. Last year they looked like they had been plopped down into the sea of wood chips overnight. Very barren. Maybe I just need a few impatiens?

And here are five plants I'm most excited to be planting this year:

1. A bridalwreath bush. This is a beautiful shrub that has everything but fragrance. It looks like a big frothy white fountain in May or so and is so covered with little white blossoms that you can scarcely see the plant itself at all. When I was a little girl I sighed over this bush and promised myself I'd buy one when I saw it blooming, every spring in forgotten doorways of abandoned homesteads in Northern Michigan. It is one of those steadfast shrubs that outlives occupants with ease. And you have to admit the name is high romance.
2. Strawberry plants! Hooray! Am so excited to start putting in the small fruits.
3. A climbing rose. I'm thinking to buy a deeply ruffled, scented yellow variety...the kind that blooms from June till frost. Still not sure if it should live in the back and climb up over the basement door in the stone foundation or in the front to camouflage the electrical wires and box on the the face of the house.
4. A double mock-orange. This is another old fashioned charmer. A big frothy shrub that blooms all multi-petaled white during the garden's peak. Just trying to figure out where to put this one too. Too many options. I kind of fancy the idea of putting it by the back door where I'll smell it every time we walk in and out. It has a wonderful, sweet smell. I plan to be quite bowled over by it. 
5. High bush blueberries. I just dug holes and put all five of them in the ground. I know it seems early but the shrubs I ordered came in the mail and they were still dormant so I gave it a go. The ground isn't frozen and so I am hoping for success. Some are going to fill holes in our hedge and some will mix into the perennial border along the front of the house.

And the top five changes I'm making since last season:

1. I will put something in the giant cement planter in the backyard. It won't be a naked, slightly weedy odd spot in the yard. My plan is: strawberries!
2. I will mulch thoroughly and often with grass clippings to keep plants from getting weedy or wilty. Have to locate a safe source for bags of discarded, non-treated bits though. Can't just go picking them curbside if you wanna be clean and green. Hmm....still thinking on that.
3. I will get my garden in early! I was too lax last year and didn't realize that the hawks nesting above our house keep the rabbit population at bay until after midsummer when they're young fledge and suddenly whatever is in the ground and thriving is all there will be. Plants not established or tall will be munched. Not to mention I'm having a baby in June. I have no fall-back plan. I must plant early.
4. I will keep the decorative planters full of pretty things. I did this once or twice last year but there were some real odd, patchy arrangements at certain times. No reason to let little contained, manageable bits get lost. I can do it!
5. I'm carving a path through the lawn from the front door to the driveway. Everyone walks that way anyhow so you might as well go with the flow. I'm excited about putting in little stepping stones and dividing my thyme to go in between. Can't have too many pretty winding paths around!

What is on your green little hearts today? Have any solutions to my five conundrums or some exciting planting plans or changes of your own? I'd love to hear the deep, dark dish on all of it. My thumb needs a little fodder this time of year, we can't simply go mad while we wait you know!

The Part of Summer That Tastes Good

We are to the part of summer that begins to taste really good. I picked up our first CSA share this afternoon and walked back to the car with my arms full of more delicious meal prospects. The bounty overfloweth! The lettuce has started to really tumble out of our garden, there are broccoli spears to snip and the tomatoes are blossoming!

I noticed that the Lutheran church on the corner is having a Strawberry Festival this weekend. We may all have to walk down and stuff ourselves with shortcake and meet more neighbors. Somebody pinch me, I can't believe I live here!

It's a good thing summer tastes good. We're gonna need a few large and icy slices of watermelon to ease us through tomorrow's 100 degree temps. I plan to spend the day doing nothing but eating Popsicles, playing in the sprinkler and organizing the basement. You think I'm kidding? I am so deadly serious. This Northern girl does not cope well with extreme heat. I am lettuce. I wilt.

Last Jam

Happy Strawberry Season!

Today the boys  and I started smooshing and stirring and ladling out our annual batch of strawberry freezer jam. We picked berries together this past weekend and it has taken me until today to be able to finally get the pectin out and haul the boxes of half-pint jars out of the attic.

We've been busy because we've been working on pulling together bids and comps and forms and heaven knows what else in paperwork and last night it all culminated in our offer on a lovely three story colonial being accepted. We are really excited and I'm daydreaming pretty constantly about where I'll put the vegetable garden and the bee hives and which rugs will go in which rooms.

This berry jam will likely be the last big project I'll ever  do in our boiling hot, gray kitchen. I hope I'll be canning my August peaches in my new kitchen....looking out the window at the lilies in the backyard. I'll miss the sunshine in this space, all my plants crowded into our story corner under the solarium windows and the cool of the marble floor not to mention the marvelous way it hides all cooking spills and drips. But, we are moving on to greener pastures folks. Literally. There is a wide green lawn, front back and side of the house where boys will tumble happily, an apple tree of our own to love, a big one car garage where bikes can live and a beautiful sunroom where I'll paint and sew and make emerald with green growing things.

So, here's to jam! The last ruby product of our little condo. Grey eighties place, you have been a good home but, not our real one, we hope, hope, hope (pending inspections and mortgage stuff and appraisals and all manner of other processes) you will be a piece of our past by the end of July!

Ah! The Farm....

Sure feels good to be back at our CSA farm, picking up our share! We kind of blasted through the fields and coolers today, collecting our goods and sort of run/walking back to the car. Just a quick Cheshire grin greeting with the head farmerette was all we had time for...hazards of moving your whole daily routine a couple of hours earlier in the day and sharing a car with a hard-working spouse. This week it has felt like I am forever running around dashing everywhere two minutes late.

But, next week will be more sane, practice makes perfect and pretty soon we'll the new rhythm down and we get a new chance to enjoy the farm every single week, all summer long. I cannot wait to linger, and listen to crickets along the lane, watch the tomatoes swelling on the vine and look up our list of weekly goods on the chalkboard above the vegetable bins. Good times are coming!

This week: tatsoi, butterhead lettuce, fresh strawberries (farm to table to stomach in about an hour and half!), arugula and broccoli raab Mmmmmmm!!!!! Fresh food, how I do love you.

Bits of Lovely

Everything is okay again....because I found mushrooms. Heh. I do like foraging a lot and boy do I instantly feel like all is well with the world after running into a giant cluster of wild food accidentally. This particular mushroom is most often called Chicken-of-the-Woods but when I was growing up I was taught to call them Sulphur Mushrooms because of the particular shade of yellow on the underside of the caps.

And our farmer's market opened....well it opened last week but I was just days from delivering and not quite up to attending so, we went for the first time this week and caught the strawberries debuting. Mmm....am so happy to be back at the market. It was very fun to have some of the farmer's recognize us and be excited about the baby....one of my favorite vendors gave me two peonies to take home as a baby gift! People are so nice. (And you all know how I feel about peonies!)

We had a two week check-up with the babe and he's even bigger....up to 9 lbs and 12 oz. now from his birth weight of 8lbs 14oz. I feel like a very good mommy. 

And then...our incredible neighbor came over and brought a picnic lunch for children, a grown-up mommy lunch just for me and dinner and then took my boys out to the yard for playing with a giant kick-ball, bubble blowing with huge wands, fed them and her own daughter with the picnic she brought and then read them all a storybook as a wind down so I could take them right in and tuck them in for naps. Why am I not friends with this neighbor? I must get to know her. Seriously folks, people are so nice sometimes that it hurts.

*grin* My giant iris bloomed for the first time! Isn't it pretty? I've always wanted to grow one of these and this is my first blossom. Am very proud.

This is what happens when your mommy is a blogger. Your splash sessions in the bath with your kid brother get all paparazzi'd. Heh.

And here was the crowning bit of lovely. This afternoon Ru comes up to me....

"Mommy. I have an idea. Lets write a book. We are such good helpers to you that we should make a book about it and call it "We Help Mommy" and then we can send it to all our friends and aunts and uncles and we can be in it and we can make words inside."

Awesome. We're authors! Just like that.

"What do you say Mommy?"

I think we may have a book project in our future. Heh. Stay tuned. I am envisioning a really fun rainy day project.

Stopping in Santa Barbara to Catch Our Breath....

One of our three guide books we thumb through daily on this trip says something to the effect of: "Santa Barbara--- A town blessed with astonishingly perfect weather, a gorgeous setting and the most beautiful local government building in the country!"

And then we got here and it was blowing, and grey and extremely chill...(maybe 40's or low 50's?)...with the whipping itself into a bitter froth. We hiked from our hotel through the downtown and found the courthouse closed (albeit very pretty on the outside) and did a little high wind browsing of the central shopping area and promenades. But, who cared that we hit our first chilly weather on the trip here in SB and who really had their happiness hung on the interior of the local courthouse anyhow? We were there to eat and see my cousin, the fabulous and incredibly wonderful chef at The Hungry Cat. Wow. We just asked him to throw us his favorites off of the menu and we were seriously blown out of the water. I know that my sentimental clannish feelings color things a tiny bit but, truly people, this will go down as one of the legendary meals of my life in my memories. He sent us wheeling through fresh oysters, chilled prawns, battered artichoke hearts, some of the sweetest crab I've ever tasted, elegant and tender halibut, oyster mushrooms, asparagus and among many others a cheese plate of ultra-stunning quality and a luscious bread pudding/creme brulee. So delicious. And people, truly, words fail me...I am so extremely proud of my clever, knife wielding cousin that I could just burst. He is the American Dream. Reaching for, succeeding, and soaring higher on the wings of his own raw ambition. I aspire, people, I aspire.

Besides our stellar dinner tonight, we've also driven past acres of farm country, carpets of strawberry plants as far as the eye could see and artichokes, lettuce, broccoli to boot. Produce, as far as you can squint. That was Salinas and a few other scattered, dirt black river valleys that we soared through. Lovely places to drive and drive. So green and lush and full of production in the the botanical sense. We toured the Steinbeck museum in Salinas (recommended!) and we both remembered how much we loved his books and how much more there still is to read that he wrote! More tomes for our couple reading list. Steinbeck is wonderful roadtrip reading. Somehow cozy to stand there amongst his personal effects and quotes and think fondly of the man. Note to self: Must make sure A reads Grapes of Wrath. I do like Ma Joad.

We've also been through Big Sur now, that inner artist contemplating, hippy magnet zone of lush redwoods, dripping forest and winding snaky highway, ribboning along the coast. (Not what I was expecting, I thought it'd be much drier and more rolling plains kind of stuff) I did like Big Sur.

We also wandered through our first mission in a lovely little burst of sunshine and warm weather. My idea of what a mission is will probly always reference my experience at Carmel-By-The-Sea. Mmm...wonderful. Missions (or at least this one) are these glorious little cloistered, holy places, with fig trees, rose vines, tumbling nasturtiums, quiet gravel paths and stunning gold leafed silent chapels where candles flicker and you can smell incense from the not so distant past. A and I both wish we could re-create a piece of that in our backyard if/when we get that tudor we're still mulling over.

So, that's the latest...California is still beautiful, still surprising us and our idea of the state is broadening by the moment. Tomorrow we will be hugging my cousins in person and starting our good times with much shoulder rubbing and progeny introducing fun. Am really looking forward to that! Now, I'm off to wake up A and figure out if there's a way to turn on the heat in this hotel room so I can quit sneezing and start snoozing. Sweet dreams all!!!