You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2008.
not the most inspiring photo, but i have at long last, planted a kiwi vine. i’ve put my plans for a kiwi orchard on hold until the upcoming reno is done.
because i don’t have a lot of room for more vines right now (what with the beans and the cucumbers and the squashes), i chose what i thought was a self-pollenizing hardy kiwi: the Michigan State Actinidia arguta. At least, the sign in the garden store said it was self-pollenizing. Once I actually got home and looked it up online, it appears this may not be so. Some sources say it requires a male plant. Some say the fruit will be reddish green and fuzzless, some say lime green. if you know more, please let me know!
on other fronts, harvest #6 (and yes, the spinach is bolting).
i find having children to be a great impediment to living lightly. they all seem to need so much stuff! what with the growing and the dirty and the inevitable breakage and the lessons and the activities and the equipment… i suppose you could make an argument for efficiencies of scale once you get past one or two offspring – hand-me-downs and shared knowledge. tapping into the network of mums out there helps too – clothes and toy-swapping.
i shamelessly piggyback on the efforts of those organized mums in my neighbourhood – the ones who gently remind me of school pro-d days (no school), or suggest free/educational/worthwhile activities based on their own experience.
in previous summers, we’ve thrown the kids in a variety of summer activities and camps but i think we’re going for a much more low-key and low-budget approach this summer. We don’t have much in the way of trips planned beyond a brief visit to family for my grandparents’ 65th anniversary (!) and some grandparents coming out to visit us (yay!). what to do with eight glorious weeks of summer?
i’m trying some different ideas on for size. over the last long weekend, we played outside alot. the kids ran through the sprinkler (an act of personal bravery, considering how chilly the water was), rode their bikes, flew some kites
did some bird-watching
ate some melon
and did some climbing.
my reward for all of this? A giant hug tight around my hips and a “That was the best day ever!” And I (of course), gardened (i think this goes without saying).
good times.
i love to wander around the garden in the morning with a cup of coffee and check to see how everything is growing. this morning, this lovely little bird serenaded me from the telephone wire overhead.
with the rain and then the sunny day yesterday, everything is exploding with hope and possibility. if everything that has sprouted bears fruit, i may be selling squash and melons from my front steps.
the strawberries have jumped up and the pear tree has a few tentative white blooms showing.
i have trouble restraining myself when i see empty soil, so i end up tucking random seedlings into beds here and there. the half-digested compost that i used as a bottom layer in building my square-foot beds must have had some potatoes in it, because i have renegade potatoes popping up in most of my beds. i have almost totally disregarded spacing recommendations in the hopes that the extra-rich soil in the raised beds will compensate.
the herb garden by the back door is working out great, although i think the lemon balm is trying to take over the world. i am going to look up tea recipes and cut some for drying.
gardening is full of these small triumphs and discoveries that i crow over to myself and point out to the munchkins (whether they are interested or not!) and any one that happens across my blog. first-time visitors to my house are pretty much forced to tour the garden and observe the growing, although i try to restrain myself in mixed company (gardener/non-gardener) because i have noticed a certain glazed look that sets in if i really let myself go.
kate wrote quite the loveliest post the other day about some gardening blogs, including gardenopolis, and it was just so nice to feel that someone else not only got what i was talking about but was trying to do the same thing . blotanical has also been great for finding a community of like-minded folks. we are occasionally ill-informed, but never afraid to get our fingers dirty. gardening is optimism – you plant in the hopes that it will all pan out – that sun and soil and water will come together to create wonderful things from a seed. neat, eh?
from top to bottom, yesterday was a Good Day. It kicked off with a lovely breakfast in bed (coffee, apple, bread wedges with jam and a slice of cold pineapple-and-black-olive pizza).
we trundled off to deep cove to watch the kayakers and play in the park and roll down the hill.
came home for a nap with the littlest guy and then puttered in the garden, planting zucchini (black beauty) and cucumber and dill (for pickles). Picked my first lettuce of the season, some more spinach and three stalks of rhubarb from a plant i put in late last year. Thanks to a generous donation of rhubarb from down the street, we had rhubarb crisp for dessert.
happy mother’s day mom, nana deedee and grammy!
i don’t know jack about growing dry beans, but i thought i’d give it a try this year. being of the vegetarian persuasion (at least most of the time), a certain number of beans are consumed around these parts. today i planted these beans.
The speckled brown beans are speckled bays (open pollinated) and the black beans are black turtle (organic). I planted them at the back of a deep bed along the fence and added some old trellis supports for them to grow up.
I figure that they can grow for the next three months and then i’ll just have to work my way back there once to pick them. The instructions on the package read “harvest the whole plants when 90% of the leaves have yellowed and hang up to dry, then shell the pods”.
sounds manageably low maintenance and will contribute to my fall/winter menus! genius.
i also baked another four loaves yesterday. my multigrain bread is getting better and better – a few more iterations and i should be ready to post it.
i’ve got stairs on the brain.
they are troublesome. they take up a lot of room.
i don’t know where to put our stairs to the basement. in the meantime, i’ve been browsing stair galleries (apparently other people obsess about stairs as well). i would really like to have a wall of built-in bookcases down one wall, and recessed lighting in the opposite wall.
another harvest! i know it’s silly to get so excited over some leaves and a few bulgy roots.
but dammit, they’re MY bulgy roots and leaves. the radishes are “easter egg”, which is why some are red and some are not.
here is a lovely black tulip i’d forgotten about planting.
and my strawberry bed is starting to bloom!
the lockheed lounge by marc newson (1986).
there were 10 made and madonna writhed around on one for a video. fancy a personal reenactment? the most recently available chair for sale was auctioned in 2007 by Christie’s for $1.5 million.
Your best bet for owning one is Vitra’s miniature edition – a cool $725 $1590. (updated February 2009 – wow – prices have changed a lot in nine months!)
spinach, getting all carried away and crying out, “eat me, before it’s too late!”
so we did.
and, mighty tasty too.
(does anyone else know free to be you and me pretty much word for word?)
on other fronts, i optimistically transplanted some pumpkin and squash seedlings into the garden yesterday, as well as planting some (sprouted) edamame seeds by the trellis. i have no idea how much to plant for a family of five. i’m going to fill all available spaces with edibles and whatever there is too much of will be redistributed to the neighbours or local foodbank. Is 20 tomato plants overkill? i guess we’ll see…
there were green things growing, but i didn’t garden a lick yesterday. we sat and played in the sand while the weary marathoners trudged past.
