Garden work

ready for more dirt, just as soon as I have the energy

After the very fun dirt party last October, I learned that though I live in the woods there just isn't very much available dirt. The enormous cedar trees that are so beautiful send out an almost impenetrable web of roots. Good because it anchors those monsters through our frequent wind gusts, not so good if you want to pilfer the dirt an add it to a raised garden bed.

it looks like such a small pile!

So I girded my loins and spent money ordering dirt from a local nursery. They delivered early Saturday morning and it is lovely stuff. Two yards of rich dirt for the beds, and three yards of bark mulch to prettify the front yard. When someone is coming to your house with a dump truck, you might as well fill it up. I managed to get a dozen or so loads down to the beds on Saturday, alternating between new dirt and the contents of my compost heaps that have been cooking next to the shed for a year or so. It looks like a pitiful amount of dirt in those beds but it is getting there.

snacking on weeds

Today as I was working out I noticed movement off the deck. It was a group of adolescent deer checking out the new additions to the yard. They helpfully nibbled some of the weeds growing around the beds. It also reminded me that while the beds were made with hardware mesh on the bottom to deter moles, I had best make sure the tops are covered too or else I will be sharing the majority of my crops with four legged neighbors. Rain, hold off just a little today so I can get more wheelbarrows down there!

but lady, when will the buffet be opening?

early starts in the kitchen: squash and seed potatoes
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Egg laid in the coop Sunday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop this year: 243

Hibiscus moment

Beautiful refreshment:


Step 1: Hibiscus Syrup
1c water
1/2c sugar
1/2c dried hibiscus flowers
-combine, simmer 10 minutes, strain into a jar. Keep in fridge for a few weeks. To enjoy, add about 2t syrup per cup of water or to taste. It is not as sweet as you think, and completely refreshing.

Where to find hibiscus flowers? I usually get mine in bulk at a tiny mexican market (almost like a mini-mart, but with mostly imported ingredients). They are ridiculously cheap. I've also seen them at a store that sold fancy loose teas. Those were more expensive. My favorite spice store Penzeys doesn't carry them, but a quick search found them here.

Step 2: Make It Beautiful
Use the heavy crystal pitcher that was a wedding present from your great-great-grandfather to your great-grandmother, sent to you lovingly in the mail by your own mother who understands the importance of items that have a story.

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This week I have: finished a baby sweater for friends who are finalizing their adoption, taught a friend how to knit so she can make a baby sweater for the boy who is currently kicking her from the inside, exhausted myself at hot yoga, exhausted myself working out at home, gone in the hot tub with charlie after jujitsu, ordered dirt and mulch for the yard, made hibiscus tea, made slow-developing sourdough bread, done a million loads of laundry, thought briefly about packing for Cabo and buying sunscreen, teamed up with Charlie to sho0t countless infected zombies in Resident Evil 5, visited a friend and gone plant-shopping, been to a foot doctor for yet another opinion on my wonky foot, worn green, done physical therapy exercises, watched rain and hail and sunshine in the same day, played Chopin in the rain, and performed a wedding ceremony for good friends who held their cats as they took their vows.

My life, it is full and varied.

warm inside

bread begins

Charlie took the Yeti to work on Monday, so I was trapped in the house for the duration. To console myself I made a batch of sourdough bread. After a month my starter is still alive, which is amazing considering it's the fourth or fifth starter I've tried to sustain in the past few years. There's something about the yeast here. It is the most limp-wristed milquetoast fermenting wild yeast I have ever encountered. A good sourdough has all of the yeast ganging up on you in a wild horde rush. Imagine blue painted picts running over the countryside waving their spears in the air and giving your mouth a real jolt of interest.

bread rises, starter prepares to return to the fridge, my favorite enormous bowl

The local yeast is more Waldorf style. You slice a piece of bread and it tastes like a circle of pale children listlessly sliding rainbow silk scarves over their heads and muttering salutations in french. It's good bread, but pretty dull.

proper use of waldorf scarf

(not that I have anything against Waldorf or the scarves...I've read a lot of early childhood development and alternate education methods and find something interesting in all of them. And Calliope's Christmas present from me was a set of silk scarves that she uses in fantastic ways)

must. cool. before. slicing.

This time I raided the pantry and decided to experiment. Into a skillet went a cup of pounded hazlenuts. They were toasted, cooled, and then whizzed in the food processor into a fine meal. I added that to the usual bread ingredients. Verdict: it made for a lovely toast. The bread itself has only the barest hint of nuttiness if you eat it out of hand, but if you toast it then the nuts are activated and it is delicious. If I had nutella on it I would probably pass out in bliss.

crumby

Random result of making lots of bread: the end bits often don't get eaten and end up as dried curls on the breadboard. They make excellent breadcrumbs!

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 3
Eggs laid this year: 215

And there's a legal limit to the snow here.....

Snow, I am finished with you.

Please go away. I know we don't live in Camelot, but there have got to be some rules around here.

Bed Rumple-er

Charlie has this issue with snoring. It's not his fault really....he inherited his father's narrow windpipe and rather mellow soft palate. The first night we spent together in the same bed, I remember being awake, watching him sleep in the moonlight and it was so lovely and then he wasn't breathing. For almost a minute. Then gasp! snort! he started again. After some sleep studies his apnea was cataloged as "for an hour of sleep you are probably breathing for maybe half of that at best." I've seen him stop for several minutes at a time. Once he was introduced to a cpap machine he started sleeping through the night and actually resting. But when his nose is stuffy then the cpap doesn't work so well and he sleeps in another bedroom.

So he snores. If Paul Bunyan traded in his trusty axe for a nice chainsaw, it would be a good representation.

rumpled bed in need of making....or is it?

At any rate, he sleeps in another room. Some nights he'll get up and leave after I've fallen asleep and I barely notice until I'm making beds the next morning. Last year it seemed to be getting out of hand. I mean, yes we have three equipped bedrooms upstairs. One is a proper guest room, the other is someday expected to convert to a kid's room. There were days when both extra beds were mussed. I thought, ok, you fall asleep in one bed and it's uncomfortable perhaps? Maybe the other bed sounded better? I can't recall how many made beds it took to push me to ask, but I finally did. And he looked at me innocently. He really hadn't been sleeping in both of the beds.

The culprit: Harry.

Harry, busted this afternoon by me (he heard me taking pictures)

One day I saw the covers mussed and tried to straighten them and met resistance. At night Harry will join us in the bed and often come under the covers to lay between us. It's one of his more endearing qualities, what with all the warm fur and purring and all. But I had no idea that he was burrowing on his own time. Then another day I actually caught him doing a comic nudge-shove-nose-shove-push routine that eventually corkscrewed him a foot or so under the blankets. If you put your hand in to pet him it is about 200 degrees in there. I have no idea how he manages to breathe. But he loves it. And I just keep making the beds and laughing.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 5
Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop Friday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop Thursday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop Wednesday: 1
Eggs laid in the coop Tuesday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop this year: 189