It took a while, but spring has finally arrived in my garden! Look! Green grass, sunshine, and actual vegetables growing in my garden! Here’s a better shot of the vegetables: It was a long weekend of puttering. I planted about a million pepper plants: cayenne, aci sivri, topepo rosso, cieliga, cieliga hot, corno di toro, and I think at least one other variety that I’m forgetting. I also planted some brussels sprouts, fennel, round eggplants, and long eggplants. I still have the tarragon, sage, lavender, and columbines in the cold frame because it got hot, and I lost my transplant…
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Here’s today’s lunch. There was a break in the rain and I ventured out into the garden to see if there was enough for lunch. A yummy salad of arugula, wild arugula, spinach, green onion, radishes, parsley, pickled mushrooms, and some delicious feta cheese that my Milk Lady brought me with today’s delivery. I toasted up a piece of flatbread that I made earlier in the week — I’m on a flatbread kick and tonight I”m going to try this recipe from the LA Times. And a glass of real milk from my milk lady — what can I say.…
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So, here we are, the last primary in the nation. Although I’ve been an Obama supporter for months, I’ve been lying to the campaign. They (quite rightly) have been encouraging people to vote early, especially since here in Montana you can register any time, including on election day, and you can vote right when you register. The Bozeman Chronicle had a photo on the front page this morning of a line of early voters snaking out the door of the courthouse over there yesterday. But I’ve written on this blog before about how I love to go to the polls…
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It was a busy weekend here in the backyard. The Mighty Hunter came over and banged together two new raised beds for me along the new privacy fence. Here’s a picture with the tomatoes in the new beds before I put the Walls o’Water up: This year I planted the following varieties: Principe Borghese, Milano Plum, Jaunne Flamme, Marglobe, Black Cherry, Sasha’s Altai and Galina. I planted one of each, in that order, in each bed … so we’ll see how they do. I’m a tiny bit anxious about the contents of the beds — the dirt was pretty good…
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I’ve written before about the egg-scallion-tortilla thing I love for breakfast — all winter I have to make do with store scallions. They’re fine. Sometimes I add my own frozen blanched greens. But it’s hard — one of the things I hate most about winter. But now it’s spring! And although it’s been a long time coming, there are finally things coming up in the garden. This morning, my breakfast omelette/tortilla contained a green onion (from the garden), a handful of wild arugula, a big sprig of lovage, some parsley and a handful of chives. This is the thing about…
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So, ever since my ancient calico cat, Patsy, went off to the great beyond I’ve been plagued by neighborhood cats who think my nicely turned and raked raised beds are big litter boxes. Ugh. Last year I tried cayenne sprinkled on the beds, and finally resorted to draping them all in tree netting. Which was fine, but as the plants grew up through it, it became a pain in the neck. So this year, I went for more drastic measures. I ordered this fabulous sprinkler scarecrow from Amazon. You hook it up to the hose, and set the sensitivity level,…
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My Milk Lady has returned! The cows calved and had a nice rest, and once again I’m getting my recycled gallon jar of milk every week. She had to raise her prices because the price of hay and fuel have gone up so much, and although I assured her it was fine, I understood, I still found a surprise present of a dozen duck eggs in my box last week. I don’t know if all the health claims for raw milk are true, but I do know that it’s worth what I pay for a real food product, produced and…
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A big weekend of gardening — I dug the crabgrass and feral mint (I love my mint, but it was taking over everything) from the perennial beds. It was hard. There was digging, and pulling, and tugging, and sprays of dirt. I have an entire trash receptacle full of roots out there on the parkway waiting for the first yard waste pickup of the year. My perennial beds have moments of gorgeousness, followed by long periods of bedragglement, caused in part by the weeds. My lawn too, is plagued by weeds — not dandelions so much, I don’t mind dandelions,…
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Finally! A day of real progress in the garden. I was very surly yesterday morning — it was cold. Too cold and icy to get any garden work done. I was taking it personally — storming around doing my errands, grumping about the damp wind. Then, finally, about one, it warmed up and I managed to get my compost corner cleaned up. My composting system has been a frustration for a couple of years. I had three different backyard composters — one square one that came apart in layers that the waste district in California sold me for cheap years…
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I have a lot of gardening books — I’m one of those people who learns how to do things from books, so the first couple of years I had this garden, I bought a lot of different things (especially if they were in the bargain bin at Borders). But there’s a very short list of books I go back to again and again: Second Nature by Michael Pollan and This Organic Life by Joan Dye Grussow. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstal’s River Cottage Cookbook is also probably in this category (except that every time I look at it I have such livestock-envy that…