growing

There are an awful lot of things growing around here.

Tomatoes: the romas I started a few months ago have graduated to larger pots and are almost ready to start hardening off. If only it would get a little warmer outside!

Basil: Charlie makes the best pesto in the universe. We eat a lot of basil. So much that we've never tried to grow it for fear we would have to seed an entire field. It also tends to grow a little pokey and slow with our cool weather. This year's experiment is to grow a bunch of pots indoors in the greenhouse permanently. These started as seeds and I just bumped them up to larger pots yesterday.

Vegetables in general: we signed up for a Full Circle CSA box and once a week we get a surprise on the front porch filled with tasty treats. It's like christmas, but with more strawberries!

Me: the wondertwins continue to squirm and grow in my belly, though I can't feel them yet. I seem to have left the hangover portion of this pregnancy and am now just dealing with the fact that I could easily sleep 14 hours in a day. It sure is nice to be able to eat again though!

Harry: well, he isn't exactly growing. In fact, he got shaved a few weeks ago and is at the lovely felt stage. But he sure does look big.

Chickens: the four babies are now officially teenagers, flapping around and looking mangy while their feathers come in. Grow faster, so you can move outside and stop making my kitchen smell like a barnyard!

springy

the early bird gets the beach to himself

Back from Maui, annual trip, where much fun was had. I slept approximately 50% of the time but it was glorious. Charlie romped in the pool and in the ocean and on the waterslides, I tried to find shade and worked on some knitting. We both retired early and read books and passed out earlier than usual, but woke every morning to birds and sunshine and palm trees at 6 am.

The enormous banyan tree in Lahaina, still excellent shade for eating shave ice.

Best discovery of the trip: breakfast at Kihei Cafe. That fried rice and egg was enough food for the whole day, and oh yes they had pog juice.

bye, Maui. Maybe we'll see you next year!

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Now home and trying to get back into the swing of things. The seeds started in the kitchen greenhouse before we left are now hearty little plants. I thinned out the tomatoes and peppers into bigger pots so that they have more room to expand. Now if it would just stop getting into the thirties every night I could put the pumpkin vines and all of those little herb sprouts out into the ground where they belong.

sprouts spread out so they can grow, except for those crazy pumpkin vines

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There are also chicks in the kitchen, but more on them later after they have names.

spring

cute....baby? Is that an eye I see?

Spring has been busy here. My nephew Fenric was born, and I went to Minneapolis for two weeks to help out and play with clay and read stories and make snowmen and eat sticky rice. It was cold and sunny and the entire Bodkin house was buzzing with energy.

Lady, it was cold outside so of course I was bundled up. I remain suspicious of you.

Ok, I think I like you now.

proving that you can fit three Bodkins in a kitchen sink!

Spring has also started to peek out around here, and we're growing all sorts of things. The kitchen is home to trays full of hot peppers, pumpkins, a panoply of herbs, and an entire tray devoted to san marzano tomato seeds from our Italy trip.

Hopefully of the 24 sets, I can get at least a few tomato plants to rally to full size for planting outdoors. In the garden already are radishes, arugula, a salad mix, and a few kinds of beets. Oh, and some overwintered parsnips that are very tasty.


Today's activity was pickling some exceptionally slim asparagus. I've still got one big jar left from last season, so that will have to tide me over until these are done blending on the shelf.

tomato-rama

So many tomatoes that the handle of the basket gave out. Henry supervises.

High summer

my new flag, bought at the Bellevue Arts Fair over the weekend

It's gloriously hot here, savanna hot, the plants trying to channel their veld cousins. The cats are lions in the shade napping the day away. I worked in the yard today and sweated out the last of the dreary winter and wet spring and drank liters of water to keep up with the transition.

harvesting columbine seeds to spread in the fall

blueberries just beginning to turn dusky

The hammock is hung and awaiting your pleasure

The chickens had a hot weather treat (they go bonkers for watermelon)

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My hot weather gardening secret: the Dear Liza bucket. Take a 5-gallon utility bucket and drill a very small hole in the bottom. Glue a little screen patch over the hole if you are feeling industrious, as this will keep the hole from getting blocked by bits of leaf. Place next to your favorite thirsty plant and fill. Over the next 30-45 minutes the bucket will decant slowly into the ground. Targeted watering at it's best!

a hydrangea, crumpling in the heat, is revived!

quince tree taking a drink

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 5
Eggs laid this year: 539

pre-function explosions

attaaaaaaaack of the enormous tomato plants

My neighbors are starting to warm up for this weekend. Every once in a while I hear a squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-BLAM from a random direction. Sometimes it's dusk, sometimes the middle of the afternoon. I think that people have their hot little hands on an awful lot of personal firepower and just can't wait until Saturday night to set them all off.

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Tonight's meal inspired by summer: gazpacho and grilled shrimp.

harry's post, the comfort of indoors with the appreciation of outdoors

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cats checking out my grilling activities and passing....

like furry ships in the night

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Wednesday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop Tuesday: 2
Eggs laid this year: 456

I will fight you for this last piece of pie.

The cherry pie filling: success. Wild, unadulterated success. We were invited to dinner at a friend's house on sunday and in addition to
1. eating her fabulous meatloaf
2. holding her cute baby we also got to
3. eat cherry pie.
It was the best. Yes, I wimped out and used a store-bought crust (sorry Elisa, I cannot seem to channel your crust-making mojo) but it was still without a doubt the Best Pie I Have Ever Made.

the garden today: enormous

There were rumblings during that dinner that some out of town visitors may be by this week to meet the chickens, and that was the catalyst for me removing The Lazy and doing a summer cleaning of the chicken coop today. The chickens don't get to free-range much (see: multitudinous predators and a zero rate of free-range chicken survival) but every once in a while I let them out to explore the great outdoors. So while I was cleaning out their palatial, enormous, entertaining, flight-sized (can you tell that I feel guilty that they are not free-range?) coop they got they run of the yard. And what did they do? They stayed around their flock leader to see what she was checking out.

She was scratching up bedding and scrubbing perches and sterilizing the waterer and the feeder. Yes, instead of exploring the great outdoors to their fullest, the chickens followed me around. I shooed them off regularly and they did have some fun dust bathing moments and ate a whole lot of greenery but they kept trying to see what fascinating things I was doing. I couldn't help but laugh. At the end of the day I shut them up in a lovely clean coop with fresh trimmings from the vegetable garden, and tucked them in for the night.

I will also fight you for this wine, which I tasted for the first time on Sunday and loved. AND Mark Ryan is giving me grapes in October to make jam, as long as I give him some of the final product. And he also gave me a scone from his favorite bakery. I am so awesome. Actually, I am shy but get really talkative when it's about jam, which served me well in this encounter.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Friday: 3
Eggs laid in the coop Thursday: 4
Eggs laid this year: 448

harvest

today's harvest

The garden is pretty much exploding back there. I went out today to thin out the greens and found that the broccoli had reached critical mass. The tomatoes are 6 feet tall and have many blossoms.

Then on the way to get eggs I noticed that the strawberries had gone mad. I picked a good five cups of them, four cups of which made it into the house.

Now I am hungry.

a view from afar

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I read the blog of a woman in California who is an artist as well as a film actress. Her boyfriend is a photographer and filmmaker. Her writing is usually sprinkled with photos by her, photos by him, and her paintings. It's a slice of life that is wonderfully different than mine and always interesting. A few weeks ago she included a picture that I just couldn't get out of my head. So I swallowed my shyness and wrote him an email asking if I could buy a print of the picture. To my surprise and delight he agreed and sent me an 11x14 photo. The frame finally came today and I got to put everything together. Now I need to figure out the perfect spot to hang it....

My prized Dave Naz photo, edited slightly for the under-age set reading my blog.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 5
Eggs laid in the coop Tuesday: 2
Eggs laid this year: 429

Legendary Fluff

The summer fluff season has begun around here, much to my delight and my horror. Delight is obvious: floating on the breeze are hundreds of tiny white tufts from the cottonwood trees. If you've ever seen the movie Legend you will look in my backyard and expect a unicorn to trot out of the shrubbery. It looks positively magical.



It's also the bane of my life because the fluff season corresponds with Charlie and I getting slammed with seasonal allergies. We're both constantly jittery and stoned from pills and you can tell when they've worn off because the fusillade of sneezing starts. But the fluff certainly is pretty.

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just a fragment of one of the piles

I spent most of the day in the basement hiding from nature and working on my scrappy project. So, so many pieces of fabric.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Tuesday: 3
Eggs laid in the coop this year: 383

inspirado

happy potatoes, outgrowing their containers

The warm weather has been doing wonders for the garden. I even had to break out my tomato-irrigation system early in the season. August is usually the dry time here, and you can go crazy trying to keep needy plants watered. When I was maintaining a p-patch at Marymoor park, I couldn't bike out to the garden every day and water. So I used a system of soda bottles. You poke just a few tiny holes in one end, fill it up, and let it drip. I bury the top few inches of the bottle in the ground and cut a larger hole at the exposed end, then fill it with a handful of rocks to help with stability. The nose of my watering can fits in the hole just right and the tomatoes get a low slow dose of water right where they need it.

drippy

I've tried to use soaker hoses before, but have found them to be a pain in the rear. Plus the garden is so far away from the house that I can't even stretch our super long hose all the way.

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Inspiration struck for a sewing project today. If all works out, it will be a little something for some girls I know who are heading into renaissance fair season with their musical mother....

I am a compulsive saver of scraps

that eventually will become something

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Eggs laid in the coop Monday: 2
Eggs laid in the coop this year: 376

garden delight

images of summer: driveway chalk mirrored on bare kid feet

All that sunshine has inspired my garden leap into the summer. I've been leaving the tomatoes and peppers uncovered at night, which is good because they are getting too bushy to properly cover without a degree of squashing. The slug invasion decimated the basil crop but the jerks contented themselves with that and trundled back off into the damp woods.

garden '09 bursts forth!

The squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers have grown their sets of true leaves. Perhaps this year I will finally get a crop of zucchini. Laugh all you want. I've never ever had a squash plant produce. With my last plants I even tried hand-pollination with a paintbrush. One gardener's curse is another gardener's longing, I suppose.

wee little broccoli-in-training

Pole beans are poking up around all of the stakes in the beds. I figured their growth would track well with various plant's needs for less direct sun. The greens will be especially grateful I am sure. Tomorrow I think I'll plant the next crop of greens and carrots, maybe mixed in among the shadier area underneath the tomatoes.

view from the deck

Today was my first proper harvest: mixed greens, dill, anise, cilantro, lemon verbena, and snips of thyme. I have an unbridled passion for green salads with vinaigrette, the more herbs the better. To celebrate today's bounty I bring you the best salad dressing ever. Charlie actually pouts when we run out and I am too lazy to make more right then. As with most recipes that have just a few ingredients, your final product will be a direct reflection of the quality of what you put into it. Trust me, you will not feel like you have wasted your exquisite balsamic and fancy olive oil.

greens that are just begging for...

Suzanne's Perfect Vinaigrette

1T honey
1T prepared mustard
1/3c balsamic vinegar
1/2c olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Combine honey, mustard, vinegar, and s&p in a bowl.
Briskly whisk in the olive oil. Drizzle over greens and enjoy. Pour the remainder in a jar, refrigerate, and administer as needed.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 3
Eggs laid in the coop Sunday: 3
Eggs laid in the coop Saturday: 3
Eggs laid in the coop Friday: 4
Eggs laid in the coop Thursday: 2
Eggs laid this year: 351

circle of tree life

rest in peace, tree.

During the Great Horrible Snowstorms of last winter, one of the casualties of the yard was a big camellia tree. Normally they come in bush form but this one was so gigantic it could only be called a tree. I didn't witness it's demise, but I am assuming that an accumulation of ice and snow on top of an insufficient root system made the whole thing tip over. It's languished in the yard until now. Today I went at it with a hand saw and threw the pieces into the gully on the side of the house to fend for themselves. There is one large lonely part of the trunk sticking up. It is pretty solid when rocked, so I figured I would leave it there and do something interesting. Perhaps attach a bird feeder? A dragon head? Who knows.

ideas for trunk usage? Anyone?

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It did feel strange not to rake today.
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no, I have not yet played the game

The future has arrived. Charlie may make computer games, but does he make games that are good enough to represent the tastiest cherry tomatoes in the universe? Seriously, these tomatoes are like crack cocaine. Normally I have issues with eating cherry tomatoes whole because the pop in my mouth is a little too much like an eyeball. But I get past that pretty quickly with these little beauties. Three of the tomato plants in the garden are cherry this year, and I can't wait.