All around the community garden there have been signs of life. Some of it the remnants of previous seasons some the fresh new sprouts of the hardier spring plants that people have planted over the past month. I've seen garlic, onions, chives, asparagus, kale, chard, strawberries gone wild and myriad flowers throughout. In our own garden we have lettuce, radishes and beets a plenty, but no sign of our carrots or peas yet, and the asparagus went in only a week ago and I'm not expecting to see much activity from that for at least a few weeks.
We also have a few unknowns rising up from the soil. I'm not sure if they're weeds, flowers or vegetable but they're obviously remnants of the previous owners garden that we failed to dig out or kill off with our turning of the soil and removal of the raised beds.
Annie and I saw the arrival of our garden's bees this weekend. I wish Meg had been there to photograph the process as it was fascinating to watch. Alas she was a bit under the weather this weekend and barely rallied for a photo shoot she had scheduled. She did get some post installation shots and presumably they'll be here for your viewing.
The fun is somewhat on hold for a few weeks while we wait for the warmer weather so we can add the other veggies and plants we intend to maintain. I'm antsy. I want to go to the garden every day and have something more to do than watering. I was digging up the roots and grass outside our garden this weekend. I spent about two hours alone on my knees clearing the area to make it ready for some bee attracting flowers, and I experienced the most amazing calm and peace, but was disappointed when I was done. Now there's nothing left to do but water and wait. Maybe I'll go weed somebody else's garden just for the pleasure of alone time on my knees in the soil.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Ratatouille Perfection
Have you seen the movie Ratatouille? Do you know the part where the critic tastes the ratatouille? He takes that first bite and is immediately transformed to his childhood when his mother served him the ratatouille that would define for him what ratatouille should taste like. I never had ratatouille as a child, or at least not that I can recall, but I want to make ratatouille that tastes like that.
I know it's silly taking inspiration from a Disney movie about a rat that can cook, but something about that dish and the critic's reaction to it just makes me want to be capable of doing the same thing. This isn't impossible. Take pizza making for example.
I started making pizza, ...well actually back in high school or just after. It wasn't great it was just pizza. I began the process of perfecting pizza making in the early 90's and by the time the double aughts rolled around I had in fact perfected my pizza skills and to this day I make a pizza that people have been known to request in advance of visiting me, or I them.
So ratatouille can be perfected and I will perfect it. I will be that little rat and I will make a ratatouille that transforms you through time to your child hood and recalls you're first ratatouille.. or at least brings tears of ratatouille joy to your eyes.
Last night I made ratatouille and it was... disappointing. Not horrible. But not the kind of meal you would ask me to make again. Unfortunately for my wife and daughter they will have to experience ratatouille again and again as I evolve the way I make it so as to reach my goal.
Hopefully the ingredients for my ratatouille will eventually come from my own garden. Imagine vegetables from the soil I've tilled... prepared and cooked in a recipe of pure ratatouille perfection. What more could I possibly ask of life?
I know it's silly taking inspiration from a Disney movie about a rat that can cook, but something about that dish and the critic's reaction to it just makes me want to be capable of doing the same thing. This isn't impossible. Take pizza making for example.
I started making pizza, ...well actually back in high school or just after. It wasn't great it was just pizza. I began the process of perfecting pizza making in the early 90's and by the time the double aughts rolled around I had in fact perfected my pizza skills and to this day I make a pizza that people have been known to request in advance of visiting me, or I them.
So ratatouille can be perfected and I will perfect it. I will be that little rat and I will make a ratatouille that transforms you through time to your child hood and recalls you're first ratatouille.. or at least brings tears of ratatouille joy to your eyes.
Last night I made ratatouille and it was... disappointing. Not horrible. But not the kind of meal you would ask me to make again. Unfortunately for my wife and daughter they will have to experience ratatouille again and again as I evolve the way I make it so as to reach my goal.
Hopefully the ingredients for my ratatouille will eventually come from my own garden. Imagine vegetables from the soil I've tilled... prepared and cooked in a recipe of pure ratatouille perfection. What more could I possibly ask of life?
pin this.
i went to school for interior design but realize my house will never look like it. we live in what i call a shoe box, throw in a 6 year old girl and it's a recipe for stuff. lots and lots of stuff. so i feed my inner design goddess through the intrawebs. there are so many blogs along my stop that it's amazing i'm still not sitting at my desk come dinner time. pinterest has been a wealth of information and visual eye candy for me. i try very hard to limit my time on the web. (yeah right.) starting our garden has been so much fun for me, now i not only reach for design magazines but now i have started reaching for garden mags and have been enjoying the latest issue of organic gardening magazine. who knew i had it in me!
but going back to pinterest - i found the ultimate inspiration for our little garden. the center jewel in our vegetable crown will be our herb garden. when we first inherited this 150 square foot plot, it had four (4) raised beds. we decided that 4 beds took up far too much precious real estate. i had remembered seeing a very cool painted bed on pinterest and suggested we just keep one of the boxes for our herb garden and paint it, wait for it..................turquoise! i love turquoise. so last weekend the painting began and i am so pleased with the results. i know our space is small but it's turning into such a sweet garden. pinterest gave us the inspiration to paint with chalkboard paint the wooden paint stirring sticks you get at the paint store. do they have a name? mixing sticks? regardless, annie and i painted them and after they dried annie labeled each one. isn't her handwriting awesome for a 6 year old?!! she even painted some found bricks with chalkboard paint and decorated them with annie hieroglyphics. i'm pretty sure the eye + heart + little girl = i love annie!
you can check out my pinterest boards here - i'm always pinning. xo
but going back to pinterest - i found the ultimate inspiration for our little garden. the center jewel in our vegetable crown will be our herb garden. when we first inherited this 150 square foot plot, it had four (4) raised beds. we decided that 4 beds took up far too much precious real estate. i had remembered seeing a very cool painted bed on pinterest and suggested we just keep one of the boxes for our herb garden and paint it, wait for it..................turquoise! i love turquoise. so last weekend the painting began and i am so pleased with the results. i know our space is small but it's turning into such a sweet garden. pinterest gave us the inspiration to paint with chalkboard paint the wooden paint stirring sticks you get at the paint store. do they have a name? mixing sticks? regardless, annie and i painted them and after they dried annie labeled each one. isn't her handwriting awesome for a 6 year old?!! she even painted some found bricks with chalkboard paint and decorated them with annie hieroglyphics. i'm pretty sure the eye + heart + little girl = i love annie!
you can check out my pinterest boards here - i'm always pinning. xo
Monday, April 23, 2012
Not just another pretty face.
Meg likes to tease me whenever I do something smart. "You're not just another pretty face" she'll say. On our first weekend in the garden it became a sort of running joke every time she made a suggestion and discovered I had already done exactly whatever that suggestion was.
Composting is a hobby I'd like to start, especially as it would directly enhance our overall gardening experience. For years I've thrown away the tops of strawberries, the skins of potatoes and carrots, the rinds of melon, egg shells, coffee grinds and the outer leaves of cabbages and heads of lettuce. All of these products would be perfect for compost. I have no idea how to officially compost my foods but I'm sure that I can Yahoo it and find the answers.
What I've done so far is to simply turn a 5 gallon plastic bucket into my composter and added some soil from our garden that I sifted to remove the rocks and twigs. Then I added some leaves that have been sitting in a pile in our driveway for the last few years after our neighbor raked the driveway and then simply left them there to rot, which is essentially a compost pile all of its own, but I'm not sure what else ended up in that pile so I'm mostly leaving it where it is and just stole some crusty brown leaves off the top. I added a few worms to help the process and for the past few days I've been throwing in the parts of the fruits and vegetables that we haven't eaten (or cooked) along with some egg shells and coffee grinds.
In the last year of the Tea house we had purchased a single auger style juicer. We had the intention of adding some freshly squeezed juices to our menu, but the one we bought takes about 10 minutes to make 8oz of juice. So our juicer ended up at the house instead of the shop. Now, I would love to tell you that I am the kind of guy that makes his own juice every day but the reality is that this thing sits under the counter way back in the corner where no one ever can reach it and you'd have to pull everything else out from under the counter first just to get at it. And half the parts have been sitting under the sink with the cleaning chemicals and bug sprays.
Today the juicer has become part of my composting effort. Instead of simply adding the unused parts of the fruit and veggies we eat to the bucket, I'm now running them through the juicer first, which rips them apart into tiny shreds and simultaneously removes the juices so I'm not adding too much wet substance into my bucket.
It's true... I'm not just another pretty face.
-----------
Composting is a hobby I'd like to start, especially as it would directly enhance our overall gardening experience. For years I've thrown away the tops of strawberries, the skins of potatoes and carrots, the rinds of melon, egg shells, coffee grinds and the outer leaves of cabbages and heads of lettuce. All of these products would be perfect for compost. I have no idea how to officially compost my foods but I'm sure that I can Yahoo it and find the answers.
What I've done so far is to simply turn a 5 gallon plastic bucket into my composter and added some soil from our garden that I sifted to remove the rocks and twigs. Then I added some leaves that have been sitting in a pile in our driveway for the last few years after our neighbor raked the driveway and then simply left them there to rot, which is essentially a compost pile all of its own, but I'm not sure what else ended up in that pile so I'm mostly leaving it where it is and just stole some crusty brown leaves off the top. I added a few worms to help the process and for the past few days I've been throwing in the parts of the fruits and vegetables that we haven't eaten (or cooked) along with some egg shells and coffee grinds.
In the last year of the Tea house we had purchased a single auger style juicer. We had the intention of adding some freshly squeezed juices to our menu, but the one we bought takes about 10 minutes to make 8oz of juice. So our juicer ended up at the house instead of the shop. Now, I would love to tell you that I am the kind of guy that makes his own juice every day but the reality is that this thing sits under the counter way back in the corner where no one ever can reach it and you'd have to pull everything else out from under the counter first just to get at it. And half the parts have been sitting under the sink with the cleaning chemicals and bug sprays.
Today the juicer has become part of my composting effort. Instead of simply adding the unused parts of the fruit and veggies we eat to the bucket, I'm now running them through the juicer first, which rips them apart into tiny shreds and simultaneously removes the juices so I'm not adding too much wet substance into my bucket.
It's true... I'm not just another pretty face.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
believe something wonderful is about to happen.
7am on a Saturday morning. I can hear my father gently call my name. Okay, so it wasn't so gentle. Get up and get out into the vegetable garden and start weeding!! Now!!! Seriously?!! It's not even 8 o'clock. And it's Saturday. I hate that vegetable garden. Why can't it be winter? If it was winter I'd still be sleeping. Maybe I'd even wake up to the smell of Dad's yummy pancakes and bacon. Stupid weeds. They mock me. I can hear them laughing as I begin to pull. Ha ha Meg, pull away we're not afraid of you, we'll be back. And back they were, I perfected the art of weeding, and most certainly with a frown on my face.
9am on a Saturday morning. Freezing cold, snow is coming down at a very fast pace outside my childhood bedroom window. I smell bacon cooking and the crash of pots being moved to make way for the pancake griddle. As I lay there listening to the sounds of the house of my youth waking up, I long for summer, I'd give anything to be in the vegetable garden. I love that vegetable garden.
And so it goes. This was my love/hate relationship with gardening. Ridgefield, Connecticut was a very special place to grow up and Powder Horn Drive was even more special. The kind of neighborhood where all the neighbors were friends. All the kids played with each other from sun up to sun down, riding bikes and playing tap tap, without a care in the world. And of course, hanging in the vegetable garden, following my father as he surveyed the bounty. I remember many an early summer evening Dad would come home from work, change his clothes and head out into the back yard. He'd be gone for a long time. His garden was side by side with our neighbor Larry Hoyt. Dad and Larry would enjoy a summer cocktail after work in their gardens. I guess it was their sanctuary away from the woes of the office, the screaming kids, the burdens of life. Who knows. But I do know it was a special place. Nothing like the first radish pulled from the dark earth sliced and sprinkled with salt, the sweet strawberries that made it more in my mouth than in the basket and the beautiful tomatoes, red and juicy and bursting with summer.
There came a time when that garden disappeared. All the joy and vegetables disappearing into the earth below. Nothing but grass and faded memories. The house and yard now belonging to another family. And my own family, scattered like seeds. I cherish the memories of my Dad's vegetable garden.
My husband Bil and I have taken on our own vegetable garden this year. We are part of The New Eden Garden at The First Parish Church in Newbury. It's wonderful. We can't even drive by it on a rainy day like today without stopping in to say hello to our own corner of the world. It's magical. Annie runs around on the grass while Bil and I dig in the dirt. It has brought our little family together and we can't wait to see the first seeds sprout through the dirt. Each of us has contributed, from the veggies we are growing to the row markers that Annie painted with chalkboard paint and labeled. Of course I will document our journey through my lens and share here on Tomato Sandwiches. Hopefully while eating a tomato sandwich from our own garden.
I know this garden has brought many memories back to Bil about his Grandfather and his spectacular vegetable garden. It too has brought many memories back to me about my Dad's vegetable garden and my childhood. So, in this spirit, I dedicate our garden to Robert William Wilson and William John Manion respectfully. Let's hope their green thumbs rub off on us!
And Dad, I can't wait to weed!! xoxo
9am on a Saturday morning. Freezing cold, snow is coming down at a very fast pace outside my childhood bedroom window. I smell bacon cooking and the crash of pots being moved to make way for the pancake griddle. As I lay there listening to the sounds of the house of my youth waking up, I long for summer, I'd give anything to be in the vegetable garden. I love that vegetable garden.
And so it goes. This was my love/hate relationship with gardening. Ridgefield, Connecticut was a very special place to grow up and Powder Horn Drive was even more special. The kind of neighborhood where all the neighbors were friends. All the kids played with each other from sun up to sun down, riding bikes and playing tap tap, without a care in the world. And of course, hanging in the vegetable garden, following my father as he surveyed the bounty. I remember many an early summer evening Dad would come home from work, change his clothes and head out into the back yard. He'd be gone for a long time. His garden was side by side with our neighbor Larry Hoyt. Dad and Larry would enjoy a summer cocktail after work in their gardens. I guess it was their sanctuary away from the woes of the office, the screaming kids, the burdens of life. Who knows. But I do know it was a special place. Nothing like the first radish pulled from the dark earth sliced and sprinkled with salt, the sweet strawberries that made it more in my mouth than in the basket and the beautiful tomatoes, red and juicy and bursting with summer.
There came a time when that garden disappeared. All the joy and vegetables disappearing into the earth below. Nothing but grass and faded memories. The house and yard now belonging to another family. And my own family, scattered like seeds. I cherish the memories of my Dad's vegetable garden.
My husband Bil and I have taken on our own vegetable garden this year. We are part of The New Eden Garden at The First Parish Church in Newbury. It's wonderful. We can't even drive by it on a rainy day like today without stopping in to say hello to our own corner of the world. It's magical. Annie runs around on the grass while Bil and I dig in the dirt. It has brought our little family together and we can't wait to see the first seeds sprout through the dirt. Each of us has contributed, from the veggies we are growing to the row markers that Annie painted with chalkboard paint and labeled. Of course I will document our journey through my lens and share here on Tomato Sandwiches. Hopefully while eating a tomato sandwich from our own garden.
I know this garden has brought many memories back to Bil about his Grandfather and his spectacular vegetable garden. It too has brought many memories back to me about my Dad's vegetable garden and my childhood. So, in this spirit, I dedicate our garden to Robert William Wilson and William John Manion respectfully. Let's hope their green thumbs rub off on us!
And Dad, I can't wait to weed!! xoxo
Tick Talk
I need to start this off by saying once again that I loathe the words blog, blogger and blogging. Another word I'm not fond of despite my love for Google Chrome & Gmail and any products the Google company puts out there, is the word google when it's used as a verb meaning to look something up on the internet. Why I don't like these words isn't really important, but just so you know I don't blog... I write journal entries and I never google, though I have yahooed quite a bit over the last 15 years.
Okay the real topic today is ticks, specifically as it relates to our garden. I spent some time in the garden yesterday and on two separate occasions, once before 11:00am and once after 4:00 pm I noticed several ticks hanging out on the water spigot and the pole its attached to. With-in an hour of the afternoon visit while I was enjoying an ice cream cone at the local ice cream shop with Meg & Annie, a tick was discovered crawling up my shirt. This doesn't come as that much of a surprise but confirms that in fact this is a particularly ticky (is that a word) season.
Also... while digging at the fence line of our garden I came across a cat's "flea & tick" collar buried about 4" below the ground. My first thought was that I was about to find someone's buried cat or the bones of said cat. There were none, but I began to wonder... have people ever buried "flea & tick" collars near their gardens as a preventative measure against ticks? It's always possible that this cat collar is nothing more than a coincidental fallen off collar that somehow got buried 4" in the earth, but it was a curious discovery.
This morning at home while doing my typical Sunday morning thing of drinking a cup of coffee and hanging out on my computer. I decided to look up organic preventative measures for reducing the likely hood of finding a tick on myself, Annie, Meg or in our garden at all. It turns out that there are a few things you can do. I found a particularly useful article on eHow.com.
To learn more about ticks you can simply yahoo it like I did and discover about the myriad types as well as the life cycle and various stages of engorgement.
Okay the real topic today is ticks, specifically as it relates to our garden. I spent some time in the garden yesterday and on two separate occasions, once before 11:00am and once after 4:00 pm I noticed several ticks hanging out on the water spigot and the pole its attached to. With-in an hour of the afternoon visit while I was enjoying an ice cream cone at the local ice cream shop with Meg & Annie, a tick was discovered crawling up my shirt. This doesn't come as that much of a surprise but confirms that in fact this is a particularly ticky (is that a word) season.
Also... while digging at the fence line of our garden I came across a cat's "flea & tick" collar buried about 4" below the ground. My first thought was that I was about to find someone's buried cat or the bones of said cat. There were none, but I began to wonder... have people ever buried "flea & tick" collars near their gardens as a preventative measure against ticks? It's always possible that this cat collar is nothing more than a coincidental fallen off collar that somehow got buried 4" in the earth, but it was a curious discovery.
This morning at home while doing my typical Sunday morning thing of drinking a cup of coffee and hanging out on my computer. I decided to look up organic preventative measures for reducing the likely hood of finding a tick on myself, Annie, Meg or in our garden at all. It turns out that there are a few things you can do. I found a particularly useful article on eHow.com.
To learn more about ticks you can simply yahoo it like I did and discover about the myriad types as well as the life cycle and various stages of engorgement.
Inheritance of Grampa's Green Thumb
My grandfather had a huge yard in Billerica near where I grew up. He had the most amazing garden and a green thumb that I can only envy, but I feel a little connection to him through my own gardening. I think of him often, especially when I catch a whiff of the herbs that are already growing throughout the community garden. I'm always a bit winded as I work around our little space and it reminds me of how winded he always was and how he kept a handkerchief handy because running around the garden always made his nose a little runny. I'm the same way, albeit with a pocket full of tissues.
I remember how my grandfather's sweat smelled so clean. How his basement smelled like basil. How he would tell me about his garden as I followed him around. I didn't understand a word about what he was saying. My grandfather was a bit of a teaser and when he used words like azaleas & hyacinth I didn't know if those were real words or if he was just being silly but it didn't matter, I just liked being around him and my own garden has awakened memories in me of those times.
He lived into his late 80's and I don't think he ever stopped gardening. Here's hoping I can be so lucky. Maybe Annie will pick up some gardening habits and take them with her into a garden of her own someday and perhaps a hundred years from now a blogger will recall their grandmother Annie's green thumb.
(NOTE: I've been waiting for meg to set up some pics for this and another entry I've written but have remained unposted. I've decided to post them without the pics, hoping Meg will feel bad and finally get the pics set up. Yes I'm an evil husband but sometimes this is the only way the husband can get moved up the to do list.)
I remember how my grandfather's sweat smelled so clean. How his basement smelled like basil. How he would tell me about his garden as I followed him around. I didn't understand a word about what he was saying. My grandfather was a bit of a teaser and when he used words like azaleas & hyacinth I didn't know if those were real words or if he was just being silly but it didn't matter, I just liked being around him and my own garden has awakened memories in me of those times.
He lived into his late 80's and I don't think he ever stopped gardening. Here's hoping I can be so lucky. Maybe Annie will pick up some gardening habits and take them with her into a garden of her own someday and perhaps a hundred years from now a blogger will recall their grandmother Annie's green thumb.
(NOTE: I've been waiting for meg to set up some pics for this and another entry I've written but have remained unposted. I've decided to post them without the pics, hoping Meg will feel bad and finally get the pics set up. Yes I'm an evil husband but sometimes this is the only way the husband can get moved up the to do list.)
Megification
In Massachusetts (and Maine) this past weekend was a long weekend with a Monday holiday. It's known as Patriots Day and it celebrates, for all intents and purposes, the shot heard round the world. This day is always on the third Monday in April and starts the spring school vacation week as well as being the day of the Boston Marathon. The weather in New England is always fickle, but this is especially noticeable in the transitional stages of the seasons and probably more in spring than any other time of year. Some years the third weekend in April will deliver us a lovely wintry blizzard. Most years will just linger in the 50's and 60's and we'll possibly see rain, sun, wind, cloudy skies or clear and any combination of the above. But every now and then we'll get a surprise visit from mid summer, and such was the case this year. On Monday in fact the temperatures reached well into the 80's making for some lovely weather to be out and about.
This was also the second weekend since we started our little garden adventure. I find its invading my mind. I'm always looking forward to time in the garden. We haven't even planted a seed yet and I just love being there. We spent 3-4 hours on Sunday and a couple of hours Monday doing more prep work and our space is starting to look a little Megified. [Meg.i.fy - (verb) To make any person, space or object appear as if it belongs in a photo from a magazine.]
(NOTE: I've been waiting for meg to set up some pics for this and another entry I've written but have remained unposted. I've decided to post them without the pics, hoping Meg will feel bad and finally get the pics set up. Yes I'm an evil husband but sometimes this is the only way the husband can get moved up the to do list.)
Sunday, April 8, 2012
.a boy laying in the sun
I can't recall the last time I just laid down in the grass and breathed the warm spring air. Well actually I can it was just this morning, but I can't recall the last time prior to that. I don't even have a lawn to lay down on and haven't had a lawn for over 10 years. Even when I had what might be called a lawn in the last twenty-five years it was always more of a place to park my car and/or for my dog Rudy to poop, and you just don't want to lay down in poop... not fun.
So What spawned this momentous occasion you ask? Well I was working in my garden... Oh right, you're probably wondering how I came by a space for a garden if I don't even have a lawn. Allow me to back up here a bit. A year or two ago Meg got this idea about acquiring space at the local community garden. We got onto a list and our number came up this past winter. So we are now leasing space in the community garden.
So this morning we all went down to the garden and started the process by cleaning out the 10'x14' space formerly owned by someone who enjoyed growing onions, chives and some purple flower things. We dug those all up along with some weeds and the four "raised beds", which were nothing more than 2x8 planks resting on the ground within the area defined as plot #32.
The thing is I haven't ever gardened before and I haven't worked out in.. well forever. So I damn near passed out... as in fainted... from over exerting myself while cleaning out good old plot #32. So I laid down... on the grass. I soaked in a few rays of vitamin D and just dreamed about the tomato sandwiches I'll hopefully be eating this summer.
The air was flush with the smell of oregano... which may have come from the "weeds" I pulled... oops was that oregano? The sky was blue with wispy clouds scattered about and the sun was warm against my pale, noticeably aging skin. But I was for a few moments a boy laying in the sun on the lawn outside my parents house.
And so begins the trials and tribulations of organic gardening at plot #32 in the New Eden Community Garden. {B. Silliker}
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