Consciousness and Vegetable Death

The tomato vines have fallen on their faces, sprawling out of the beds and making their gangling way onto the cement patio, as if they were reaching for the back door of our home. Frost will not come here so watching the hot weather crops time themselves out is a totally new process for me. Its a gruesome spectator sport. There's no sudden icy morning to put them out of their misery so instead things go on blossoming at one end and turning slowly brown at the other, growing more and more thin and leggy, finally flopping in exhausted, ridiculous length like the cosmos that just fell over after growing taller than our garage, the neck of each new bloom absurdly lengthened like some overdone body shaping competition. The squash continued fruiting manically while also deteriorating into the most impressive mass of powdery mildew I have ever seen. Its a strange new way to switch growing modes. The swiss chard produced so heavily that I honestly lost sight of ever keeping up with eating it. Everyone received bouquets of big crinkled leaves and sunrise colored stalks but it kept coming and coming....finally I all but abandoned it ("Swiss chard boys?" *crickets*) and such a horde of aphids descended that it looked like black mold, growing all over each stalk and eventually creeping up and covering the leaves. I ended up sawing them all off at the ground to be humane. Its so different to grow here.

 I have grown plants my whole life and yet, BAM.....new biome and I feel totally new, floundering and astonished. A asks me all the time "What's that tree? What do you think that flower is?" and mostly my answers are just a lot of, "I have no idea." Its intimidating if I allow it to suck the air out of the room for a second...but if I just reach for my curiosity and desire to never be jaded and love of learning and excitement then suddenly its means something good. I keep trying to figure out the next thing, be grateful for the questions and stumped moments that keep me scratching my head and practice letting go of my anxiety, my need to be right, my choking expertism and my soul killing perfectionism.

One of the things that's so helpful about newness is that it forces actual conscious experience. So much of what we "know" isn't even actually absorbed or seen or focused on....let alone mulled over and considered. All the things are amazing and shocking and weird if seen from the right angle, newness is a great way to make it happen. It reminds of the phenomenon of seeing a word that you have known all your life and for some reason suddenly being unsure if it "looks right" because you just really see it for some unknown reason and it looks so odd, so whimsical, so bizarre...."Is that really how it goes?" Even though you've seen it your whole life and written and read it countless times, there it is, looking so conscious and oddly impressive. Its how people learning English feel when they see the word for the first time too, and you just got a freak glimpse of it like some odd wrinkle in time. That's me, in California. Although....I guess, its less a freak glimpse and more "learning English." Learn on!

Caulk, Baby and A Garden Boom

I have a new addiction. Caulking. This morning I was doing a little more work on the bathroom trim and I discovered a tube of white bathroom sealing caulk I'd stocked under the sink. It was all downhill from there! Love squeezing it out like glossy frosting and the tactile precision of smoothing it with my rubber gloved finger. I caulked everything in the room and am now on the prowl for more places in my life that need caulking! Caulk! Its fun!

The baby, Pom is growing wildly. He's trying busily to roll over although I expect he won't be successful for quite a while yet. He is completely intolerant of dirty diapers and will fuss until changed and then bloom in smiles. He loves to be held at my shoulder, surveying the world behind me and watching whatever brother is bobbing behind saying, "Hi Baby! Hi!" Pom also has the most incredibly blue eyes. I think he got my Papa's peepers. I've admired his eyes for as long as I can remember so I'm beyond thrilled to have this tiny sapphire eyed creature mirroring him. So fun! A has given up insisting that they're going to fade to brown every time I mention them. I think we may have three brown eyed boys and blue eyed caboose.

The garden is churning out so many vegetables that I am hard pressed to keep up: zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, kale, swiss chard..etc. etc. With all the new garden space we have this year I might finally be able to let go of having a CSA in the future. We really have so much available using both that its a bit manic. I need to remember the freezer and stock things away for winter. I have been freezing herbs in ziplocs which I also remembered to do last year and love, love, loved. Small victories! All our sweet corn is in now and sitting in a bag on the counter waiting to be shucked so that ought to be my first big project.

I am feeling excited about working on the house and a bit disenchanted with the outdoors (bugs, heat..etc.) and am starting to think fondly of our autumn hikes we start taking on Sunday afternoons once it is cool enough to deter ticks. Other things on the mind: curriculum arranging for this fall (1st grade approaches!!!), plans for roasting haunches of meat in the oven on cool evenings, prepping for Christmas (I will not be blindsided!) and our newly annual Thanksgiving dinner with friends. Summer is still with us right now though as the endless tomato salads do testify. Am hoping to have a dip in the community pool before we're through and this weekend we're headed to the county fair!

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Radish Babies

We have teeny, tiny radish babies...the first of our homegrown veggies to step toes out of the soil.

Or maybe just wee green faces...not so much big pink toes yet.

Is there anything better than that first zippy shot of new-seedling-chartreuse?

 Here we are on the 21st day of March and we have all kinds of veggies in our beds: bok choi, kale, lettuces, peas, carrots and our dear radish seedlings. Some of them are six pack veggies that I couldn't resist at the nursery and some are hidden seeds, waiting under the soil for enough rain or warm to sploing up. The radishes win the race!

Kitchen Towels Aplenty

All my kitchen towels are starting to wear out. Little holes are widening on the margins and frayed edges appearing on the hems and I admit there are even a few with burned bits from near musses with kitchen burners. Time to dust off my collection and upgrade by hanging a few brand spanking new linens. I have been thinking about buying some plain linen toweling and making my own or buying a bale them at Target (maybe these ones?), and then I read this post on the fabulous blog A Number Of Things. Gah! Am now drooling over many different options at Spoonflower's little shop. So many beautiful linen options. I am rather in deep like with the following designs:

Can't quite see the whole thing in this shot but I love all the graphic representation and bright styling on this one. The colors are great. And "Eat Well" has to be one of the best captions for a produce item beauty pagent ever. Yes, please...more veggies!

The illustrations on this one are cool, and even better...a way to support a young entrepreneur. The 14 year old daughter, Anna of the blogging mama from A Number of Things drew these as part of a little study course on herbology she and her mom dove into. I think these are beautifully done and some of them are very unique choices for "useful" herb representatives. I wanna go look up what honeysuckle is good for. I know now, since this last summer that plantain (common weed in lawns, hooray!) helps bee-stings not to inflate and to heal much more quickly. Simply take the fresh leaves, mash to a pulp (or chew in moments of desperation) and apply the gooey paste to the sting, cover with a bandaid to keep it on the spot for at least a half an hour. I left mine on all day. Major difference in the amount of swelling and reaction.

Love these bright butterflies too and the fact that I already have some framed butterflies hanging above the kitchen counter makes the theme a little more attractive.

Something about the swirlyness of these illustrations really appeals to me. Love those twirling cucumber vine bits and the little bloopy, real life shapes of the tomatoes. And how can I resist a vegetable lineup that begins with asparagus, my ultimate favorite. :)

Now I just have to narrow it down and decide which ones get to come live here.

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New CSA

We're a good bit of the way through the harvesting season with our new CSA and I have to say that I like it. It is just as handy as I imagined to have our pick-up location down the street, instead of 45 minutes away, and kind of fun to meet neighbors there who also happen to have a share. I didn't count on the community interaction bit, kind of a fun bonus.

I do miss going up to an actual farm. It was a great built-in break that we had going and I feel like we've removed ourselves a little bit from the food-land connection. There was one scheduled members day when our new CSA invited everyone to come up for a picnic and help pull garlic and then go for a dip in the creek. Have to make sure to plan on going next year. I am an organization klutz and through a lot of fumbling we managed to miss it this time around. Am still kicking myself  although this morning I found out there is a special autumn farm festival scheduled for September when we can maybe make up the difference! Hooray!

Since there's such a small actual farm connection to speak of via our CSA this year, I find that I'm seeking out chances to go to drive out to the country for other things: caterpillar hunting, listening to the frogs sing, rural estate sales, buying farm milk, picking up local meat...etc. Kind of fun to mix it up anyhow.

So, the time savings is great, the produce is great, the community connection is fun and over-all I think we made a fine trade. You never quite know when you make this kind of a gamble and switch everything up, but this time it worked out.

Garden Fever

Am having a major garden day. Time to make spring happen by sheer force of will. I just ordered my raised beds for our vegetable garden. It will be my very biggest veggie section yet and I'm extremely excited. I bought cedar beds from this company. There will be four beds: 3 feet by 5 feet and then a big pole bean teepee in the center of it all. I am imagining an idyllic little hideout for the kids in the middle of the vegetable garden + the perfect vertical support for Kentucky Wonders.  Here's a little sketch of how it will all fall out. 

I am so excited about growing pole beans this year. I usually grow bush beans (nothing wrong with them) but I just found out that pole beans produce supply and demand, for as long as you continue picking the fruit, whereas bush beans put out one big round of beans and call it good. I have a really pretty looking packet of triple color pole beans....gold, green and purple, all mixed in one seed packet. Can't wait to have that first summer dinner of tender pods with a dollop of melting butter.

I also started seeds for the garden this morning. We've got 11 kinds of tomatoes going (I'm not insane, I promise), eggplant, sweet peppers, lettuces, cucumbers, melons and even a couple artichokes just for kicks.

The only big things I'm waiting on are the arrival of the beds, and the removal of five diseased trees along the back border of our property. We've finally decided on a tree service and bargained for the best price we can so now we just need to get a date booked. Once the trees come down I'll be out marking out the paths, assembling beds and filling them up and maybe, maybe we'll finally be getting some nice warm weather. We sure are having a slow, cool spring. Last year at this time we had dandelions in the grass, and the cherries trees were in full bloom. This year we're just starting forsythia season and I haven't even laid down my crabgrass pre-emergent.

In the meantime, I have been watering my flat of seeds, sorting out the ones I'll direct seed instead, collecting cardboard for the bottom of my beds and buying what supplies I need to make it a gangbuster growing season. I've also taken to making long phone calls to my fellow gardener sister, Foxy and talking through my edible garden issues with her.

So far I have discovered the following brilliant ideas:

• You should hand pollinate your corn for better ear development in the small home garden. (Hah! I know the secret to avoiding those puny, underdeveloped ears!)
• Carrots crave steady moisture so you must water faithfully during the three freaking weeks they take to germinate and it helps to put a board over the seeds to keep moisture in the soil...just lift the board daily to peek for signs of green and when the sprouts show, take it off. (I think I tend to dry mine out so, I can't wait to try this) They also want soft soil to make long straight roots instead of gnarled stunted versions and apparently straight manure in the soil will make their roots split.They also love wood ashes so I know which plots will be getting our fireplace leavings! They are a cool weather crop so you can plant them before the frost free date, which I didn't know.
• Potatoes need cool weather too and it's a good idea to start them indoors if your summer goes above 90 degrees F so that they will have enough time to complete their growth cycle before it gets hot. (and yes, that would be our summers) I'm total ran out of the room to go start the organic Yukon Golds that were sprouting in my pantry when I found that out.
• Making crisp homemade pickles means picking cukes when young, soaking them in an ice bath, canning them within 24hrs off the vine and raw packing them in the jars and pouring in boiling brine to cover. (Aha! I hope to conquer the dill pickle and banish the mush this year. )
• Asian eggplants are more tender and thin skinned and contain fewer fibrous seeds than the Italian variety. Eggplants are my most recent discovery...I love how they melt in the mouth when cooked well.
• You can grow scallions in your garden using the chopped off roots from your grocery store purchase. Is that cool, or what?
• Watermelons will set fruit more readily when multiple plants are present. A single hill can support three plants at a time...they'll twine all over each other. The secret is that they are not self-fertile and you'll have much better pollination odds with several plants. So great to know! I also need to make sure I get some black plastic down around those guys as they love all the heat you can muster. A watermelon is ripe when the two small tendrils closest to the melon turn brown and the underside of the melon is a creamy color.
• There are a lot of options out there for supporting tomatoes that will work work better than the traditional and ever-insufficient tomato cage. See the following: Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C. Gonna have to figure something cool out.
• Beets are slow growers, just like carrots. Each beet seed in a packet is actually a cluster of seeds so you need fewer than you think you will when sowing. Beets like to be thinned...they need room to develop that big root.

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Dear Farm, Goodbye....

Our dear little farm where we go to pick veggies and fruit is suddenly far away. There are downsides to moving. Its far away and unfortunately in the wrong direction. This year it is has honestly been painful and then more painful trying to get up there to collect our share. I think this may be our last round in the roster.

We need a new CSA! We're in a new place and honestly, the options are suddenly way more diverse and numerous than they were two years ago when I was trying to find our first share. You can't lose with more options. I love the fact that our farm requires us to go up the farm to collect our share and has no delivery, but frankly, as a mother of three with one car its a little insane to have to run up there every week. And although its meant to be enforced time in nature it often becomes harried, manic, "Run run run!!!!" time on a farm where the kids don't get out of the car and I madly throw vegetables into our sack and then dash back behind the wheel and peel out of the drive on my way to go collect A while everyone wails in unison. It could be better.

I love this little magnet on the cooler at the farm. Gotta figure out where to get one.

Local drop off doesn't sound so terrible. It would mean I'd drive .4 miles down the street and pick up a pre-sorted, ready loaded box of goods fresh from our farm. That could be handy. Plus, then I'd have the time to swing by the farmer's market if I wanted and we could always drive up to pick up milk or eggs if we felt rambly and wanted to go for a drive. Right? Maybe there are even good places to drive to over this direction that won't be directly opposite wherever I need to be next. (Do I sound like I'm trying to talk myself into this?)

Sungold cherries...one of my favorite tomatoes in the world.

G, suddenly distressed and immobilized by the fact that he was in tall grass.

So, yes....Farm, its been sweet. Very sweet. We've mosied all over your velvet fields and wandered zig-zags across your dirt lanes, but our time may be over. Time to let our slot go to a another family who will love it well the way we did. Everything, even farms themselves, have their season. I know that's the right thing to do, but somehow I'm still very sad. I loved last summer at the farm and I'm so sad to let it go and step into the new thing, but I know that good surprises are only found by opening your hands and letting go of the old and who knows what great new experiences are waiting for us at a new CSA.Yesterday I put us on the waiting list at this sweet little venture. And now we wait and see....

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.