Bird and Little Bird

The Week That Was.

Last week I finally decided that it was time to buy a new wheelbarrow.  When faced with the various color and design choices available to me, I chose simple, shiny and of course, red.  Being a fan of William Carlos Williams, how could I resist?

 

The Red Wheelbarrow 

By William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

 

Apple Time!

It's taken us until very nearly the end of apple season, but we finally made it out to do some picking this afternoon.  I, of course, did not remember to take my camera along.  This was actually too bad for once because I think that we can all agree that children running along through an orchard, picking apples and climbing trees is very good stuff.  Among the more photogenic of events, actually. 

I was cautious about picking too very many apples in light of how busy things have been around here.  I didn't want to end up with more than I could manage over the next few days.  Still, I have about thirteen pounds awaiting their destiny, so here is where you can help.  Apple crisp, apple sauce, apple pie.  Those are obvious and certainly noble uses for a bag of apples.  But, I'd also like to try some new recipes as well.  You all came through with some stellar recipes at apple time last year, so I pose the question again this fall: any new favorites?

Catch and Release.

Long mornings and evenings spent prowling the backyard have resulted in some quite unexpected encounters with our animal neighbors.  I'm more than a bit proud of how brave Mariam is (finally!) becoming when it comes to interaction with these animal friends.  However, I will also be the first to admit that Annie 2.0 was the only one among us actually brave enough to pick up the snake. 

Parenting Lessons from a Watermelon Plant.

From day one of this year's open season on gardening, Mariam wanted to plant one thing and one thing only: watermelon.  We gave all the various cautionary bits of advice we felt necessary; summer isn't all that long here, it usually isn't all that hot, watermelons can be tricky to grow etc.  As usual, she was uninterested in our attempts to curb any future disappointments and made up her mind to go forward just the same.  Well, this post is dedicated to the optimistic and always resilient spirit of my girl, because we've officially got watermelons.  Lots of them.  They may be tiny, but if they are anything like the farmer that is tending them, they'll be taking over the backyard in no time. 

Teeny, Tiny Tomatillos.

While out in the yard this morning, I was getting all happy about all the many, many bright yellow flowers my tomatillo plant has going.  My friend Sarah agreed that yes, this was exciting, but had I noticed that the plant was also covered in tiny little tomatillos?  I had not.  Well!  Now I'm really excited about my mid-summer tomatillo salsa prospects.  Past tomatillo-growing efforts have yielded unremarkable results, so I'm crossing my fingers this time around.  This is definitely the biggest, loveliest, greenest and happiest looking tomatillo plant I've every seen, so I'm going to preemptively place this one in the success column.  Optimism is a good thing, folks.

Summer, Sunshine and Strawberries.

Okay, so I made up the part about sunshine.  It has actually been raining here (more like pouring) for days and days.  But, I kind of can't turn down the opportunity to use an alliterative phrase.  I think we all know this by now.

My mom is in town for the next two weeks and we decided to kick off her visit in proper style by going strawberry picking at a farm up the road from here.  It was threatening to rain all morning long, but we timed things just right and didn't end up getting all that wet, which was kind of nice actually.  I still haven't quite figured out how to manage the bit about wearing a raincoat in really warm weather. 

Most of the berries were kind of on the smaller side when compared to the whoppers that we're used to out in California, but I think I prefer the smaller berries, actually.  They are a sweeter and less watery. 
Between Annie 2.0, Mariam, my mom and myself, we picked a little over twenty pounds of berries.  It sounds like a lot, I know, but we made good use of every last one.
We picked out the very best ones for making strawberry shortcake after dinner (dinner made almost entirely from the garden- yay!).  Then we got to work getting the rest ready for preserving.

Having many hands was a good thing not just for picking, but for processing too.  I washed, trimmed and prepared berries for freezing.  Annie 2.0, Mariam and my mom hulled and chopped berries for making jam. 

To freeze the berries, I rinsed them, allowed them to sit on a towel on the counter to air dry for about thirty minutes and then cut off the tops and hulled them.  Then I arranged them top down on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper and put them in the freezer for about three hours.  After they were frozen hard, I removed them from the sheet and put them into freezer bags.  This way they don't stick together when you freeze them and they are a lot easier to use in future months when the entire world is white and there is no chance of finding fresh fruit. 

We ended up with twenty half-pint jars of strawberry jam.  We used the recipe from this book, and I think that the flavor is excellent.  I'm thinking that this book will probably be my go-to guide for summer canning projects; it is really a stellar resource.  And pretty cheap for a reference type book as well.  I definitely recommend it.  The author, Ashley English, also writes a blog that I think it well worth bookmarking. 

We didn't use any pectin, so the jam is perhaps not as firm as it might be if it was store bought.  However, it definitely firms up in the fridge and since you would need to stick it in there for storage once opened anyway, this seems just fine for my purposes.  I'm thinking it will be super good on toast but also really yummy on oatmeal with a bit of cream or spread onto a warm scone. 

Next up?

Blueberry season is merely days away. 

The First Harvests.

Over the last week or so, we have begun harvesting from our community garden plot in earnest.  We've planted an absolutely tremendous amount of edibles there: peas, lettuce, kale, tomatoes, squash, brussels sprouts and more.  There is a bit of everything and so far, all of the plants are looking happy, bright and poised to be very productive.  

I am more than aware of how this whole gardening business is supposed to work.  I absolutely understand that people have been growing plants for food for centuries with good success.  And yet, I am always in awe of the whole process, especially when it goes well.  Over the last month or so, we have spent many an afternoon and evening planting seeds and starts into the soft dirt and checking the weather forecast for rain.  Other than adding a bit of mulch, we've otherwise left things pretty much alone.  

    And despite our less than stringent approach to the rules of proper gardening, here are thriving sweet potato plants. 

Handfuls of crunchy, sweet lettuce. 

And just-picked spring onions, ready to be thrown into a batch of risotto.  Somehow, it just seems like magic. 

 

Perennial.

Today I planted a small asparagus bush.  Do we call it a bush?  I'm not sure.  But this isn't the point.  The point is that I did something that I haven't done in a good, long while.  I planted a perennial.  

That is, for the first time in many years, I feel that my life and my geographical place in it are settled enough that I can plant something that I expect to tend to not only in the immediate future, but next year as well.  I didn't realize how much this mattered to me, or how important it felt until just the other day.  I was at the nursery to pick up some sweet potato slips for planting and I saw a row full of raspberry bushes and sweet little asparagus starts.  I thought for a moment about how very much I wished I could plant some.  And then it occurred to me; why not?  

A year ago at this time we had just found out that we were moving to Vermont and had only a handful of weeks to plan and execute a cross-country move.  Throughout the fall and winter, I was still immersed in the newness of living in this place, and I'm not sure that it really occurred to me that this was actually home now.  But it is.  As spring has moved along and we've been living our days with windows open and hands in the dirt, digging and planting during the day, sleeping to the sound of the rain at night, I've realized that this place is indeed home.  And even if it isn't a permanent home, even if residency looms a few years in the future with it's promise of another possible move, it is a perfect home for our little family right now.  And it feels really good.  

Even on a rainy, rainy day like today.  I had hoped to share a photo from the garden this afternoon. Something like a shot of my hands separating the roots of a new asparagus plant, ready to go into the ground and root itself.  But the planting itself was a rushed affair.  It was absolutely pouring rain and I ended up throwing on my rain boots, running outside to plant and then hurrying back inside.  The whole process took only a few minutes and I still ended up soaked.  So, you get a picture of my rain boots instead.  Which actually does seem fitting.  They are a very big part of my life right now.  

Back Issues.

Perhaps some of you have gathered that our little family has moved a good number of times in the last few years.  In fact, I think that since Dan and I got married (eight years ago this week!) we've lived in six different houses.  Our semi-nomadic existence has not lent itself to keeping too much of what we don't regularly use.  When we moved cross-country last summer, a lot of perfectly well-liked possessions were left behind.  However, one thing that I have saved and carried along from place to place throughout the years is my treasured stack of back issues of Kitchen Gardener magazine.  As far as I can tell, Kitchen Gardener was published from about 1996 to 2001 and was probably the best magazine of all time. 

The pictures are beautiful, the writing just technical enough to make you feel as though gardening is really and truly a vocation and not just a dalliance (as if I needed convincing), and the articles cover topics often ignored by other mainstream gardening publications.  From shallots to summer squash, this little stack of magazines has been my go-to reference source for gardening adventures of all variety for the last ten years.  I might have cried a little when I got the letter saying that they were no longer going to publish it. 

The good news?  You can still get a limited number of back issues from the publisher's website.  I just recently found this out and am planning order any issues that I don't have that are still available.  One more thing to add to my weekend list of approximately one million things I'd like to get done!