Category: gardening

Victory Garden

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, recipes

One of the pillars of the Global Domination Agenda is to control the food supply.

Why not control your own food supply by planting a garden? Planting a garden of any size (including a potted tomato on the patio) is an act of defiance against that plan. You can plant seedlings instead of seeds to give yourself a little head start, in case you live in a state with a short growing season, like I do.

In the background of this photo are the squash plants we put in this week.

The asparagus bed took a few years to get going but now it’s thriving. This was the second bunch that I cut this week!
I find it’s best to cook it the same day, if possible, because otherwise time gets away from me.

Below is my favorite way to cook asparagus: roasted in the oven.

Here’s my Roasted Asparagus recipe:

Ingredients:
Bunch of asparagus spears, bottom ends snapped off

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Method: Heat oven to 400-420 degrees. Arrange asparagus spears on a sheet pain (I line it with parchment first but this step is not necessary). Drizzle with EVOO. Roast for about 20-25 minutes, until they reach the degree of done-ness you like. I like a lot of color on them, so this was about 25 minutes. Sometimes I take the pan out and shuffle them around halfway through, but this time I didn’t think to do it and they came out fine. Sprinkle with sea salt to taste.

*Note: If it’s very hot out and you don’t want to put your oven on, you can do this by pan roasting the asparagus on the stove.

What’s your favorite way to cook asparagus?

Garden 2020

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, connection, gardening

I’ve seen different versions of this quote that is usually attributed to Henry Kissinger:

“If you control the food supply, you control the people”.

To me, this suggests that it may be more important than ever to make an effort to grow some of your own food.

Planting a garden is nothing new for us. We have planted vegetables, herbs, flowers, and more, for years. Most of the credit for this goes to my husband. He is the gardener–but I am the eager apprentice. 🙂 I am notorious for over-planting, putting in way more plants than I have time to take care of. I especially can’t be trusted with purchasing tomato plants without supervision. This year I was allowed eight plants. I bought seven, because there is always one that I wish I had room for once the planting is done.

Every year’s planting is a little different.  Here’s what we put in this year:

Zucchini

Yellow Squash

Cucumbers 🥒

Japanese eggplant 🍆

7 kinds of tomatoes 🍅 (Sungolds, Early Girl, celebrity, Brandywine, Lemon Boy, sweet 100, and Roma)

Annual herbs: Basil, Cilantro, Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, Rosemary

Lettuces

Spinach

Already established:

Asparagus

Strawberries

Blueberries

Cherry Tree

Apple Trees

Pear Trees

Herb garden

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

So, what do YOU think?

Is it time to plant something?

What will YOU plant?

Organization (or lack thereof)

by Karen, posted in books, gardening, italian, knitting, no fear, writing, yoga

office clutterOrganization? Thy name is not Karen.

I have stuff.

A lot of stuff.

I have decided that I am ready to let stuff go.

Keep it simple.

Stupid.

I have so many recipes and such that I have cut out, ripped out, torn out of magazines and newspapers and NEVER MADE. I should just throw them out, right? You’re right. You’re right. I KNOW you’re right.

And I have so many writing projects! How to organize them all? OMG. need a computer and desk dedicated just to that. Just to writing and the associated paraphernalia.

Then there’s the yoga stuff, the knitting stuff, the spiritual stuff, the Reiki stuff, the scrapbooking stuff…oh, and the Italian stuff! Folders for learning the language, cooking the food, traveling to the country.

The household stuff, bill paying stuff, the warranty stuff…oh! And all of the holiday stuff! Not just Christmas, but Christmas stuff does take up the most space. Wrapping paper, cards, decorations. Stacks and stacks (and stacks and stacks) of books. Plus the books on the actual (much too small) book case. (Note to self: my books are underserved.)

Nursing stuff! Stethoscopes, scrubs, clamps, bandage scissors, paper tape measures for measuring wounds…even though I am no longer a bedside nurse, I have learned the hard way to never say never and thus I am loath to release any of these things even though it’s been about two years since I’ve needed any of it.

Then there’s the Go and Do files. Some are filled with stuff we already Went and Did. Should I keep those or toss them? What about my idea file? I just read an article on FB (sorry, author of said article, I do not remember your name) that it’s good to write down ten ideas every day. I LOVE THAT! If I keep this file, then I’ve already got a head start!

Many things are in their own folders already, and it seems sort of organizational…but there are multiple folders for writing and yoga and knitting….and did I mention there is no place to put these files?

I think I need professional help.

Anyone? Anyone?

Cicely’s Japanese Maple Tree

by Karen, posted in family, friends, gardening

We have a Japanese Maple Tree in our backyard. We brought it here when we moved from another house, and we had brought it to that house when we moved from another house. Even that wasn’t its original location though. In all, moving it to this home was its third transplantation.

Cicely japanese maple

From whence did it come? When our son was little, my husband or I used to walk him to and from the bus stop when he started kindergarten. While waiting for the bus, Bill struck up a conversation with the woman who owned the house on the corner of the street where the bus stopped.

Cicely had a beautiful garden, and my husband had created one too at our house, so they immediately had something in common. Cicely was from Trinidad and lived a lone in her little house on the corner. She loved her garden and took great care of it.

She had a gigantic Japanese Maple Tree that anchored her garden. One day, she gave Bill a seedling from this tree; it had about two leaves on it. He loved the tree and took it home and gave it a nice spot in our yard. This was about 17 years ago. Since then, it stayed alive but never really thrived, despite the great care and attention that Bill gave to it.

Cicely died shortly thereafter. The people who bought her house did not maintain her garden and all the plants are gone now. Except that tree. It still lives in her garden…and it still lives in ours.

It never really thrived until this year. I don’t know what is different, but Cicely’s Japanese Maple Tree has finally come into its own.

Thanks, Cicely.

May planting

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening

We planted the last bed on the last day of May. Tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squashes, peppers, spaghetti squash, various eggplants. I’m bummed out that I couldn’t find a purple and white striped eggplant variety this year, or a purple bell pepper, but what can you do? We did find and plant some blue potatoes, and that is our novelty for 2012.

We try to plant something new that we’ve never grown before every year.

I’m going to try one more time for the purple seedlings at the Portland Farmers Market next week, then give up and go with what I got. After we put the plants in, it rained for days. . . and days. . . and days. Not sure if that will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing. I’ll keep you posted.

The strawberries in our garden still aren’t red. There are dozens of them, all white. I’m keeping an eye on those too, because if the chipmunks beat me to them, I may not get over it.

The asparagus is just about done, but we got several helpings before it went by, so I’m happy for that. Here’s hoping that we all have a long and prolific growing season!

We also snuck in a few straggler plants: watermelon, pumpkins…things that never do well for us. Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll surprise us this year.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Lilac poaching

by Karen, posted in gardening, local fun, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

Lilacs are my favorite flower. They always have been, as far back as I can remember. My grandmother had a large white lilac bush in her back yard and it was one of my favorite things in the world when I was a little girl.

Over the years, we have had houses with varying numbers of lilac bushes on the property. At one point, my husband went all out and planted a lilac garden that included every color of lilac we’d ever seen or heard of. We had plenty of places to put them that got full sun and that were hospitable to lilacs and they thrived.  

That was the pinnacle.

Since then, our success with lilacs has been less exciting. My husband always tries to plant as many as possible, and then they either do well or they don’t.  In our present house, he made a huge effort and planted two pink lilac bushes on either side of the front door as a Mothers Day/Birthday Present for me one year. That was amazing and I love them.

And yet.

This time of year, I am overcome with a longing for many, many lilacs in many, many col0rs and want them in vases in every room in my house.

Currently, I have none.

Now I find myself trolling the streets of southern Maine, looking for lilacs in abandonned lots to poach. I have been known to go out at dawn to travel the back streets to cut lilacs from bushes that are in areas that could be construed as ‘public property’.

My husband has told me he will not bail me out when I get caught.

Garden Update

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening

The garden is looking about as well as expected for early November. I still have carrots in the ground that I haven’t had time to pull. I have snapped off some of the greens from them to feed to the chickens who LOVE them, but otherwise, that’s it. The carrot portion is still laying on the ground next to the bed from which it was pulled by me and then abandoned, left forgotten as I ran off to work/yoga/food shop/(fill in the blank). Shame on me.

What I figured out this year is that as much as I love having a garden, and as much as I love choosing what we’ll plant and where, and as much as I love going to Agway to load up on the seedlings in late May with my husband…it was just too much for me this year.

I had the proverbial “Eyes are bigger than my stomach” attack–I have so much garden and so little time…

So, my husband and I talked and for next year, I am going to really, really keep it small(er). I’ve decided to continue with (and expand) the asparagus and the potato beds. Lettuce. Spinach. Sugar Snap Peas. String Beans. Red bell peppers. Eggplant. Tomatoes: only Romas and a couple of cherry tomato varieties and one heirloom variety. Oh, and strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, and blueberries…

Wow. My stripped down list still looks very large, doesn’t it?

ADDENDUM: OH! And my sister-in-law Andrea just reminded me about Zucchini! And of course, Yellow Squash. Thank you! 🙂

How to grow a watermelon

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, local fun
intact watermelon

How do you grow a watermelon? Darned if I know. Here in Southern Maine in spring and summertime,  the growing (of anything, really) doesn’t (usually) come easy.

Someone must know how, because I see them all the time at my local farm store, Spillers. I see them at the Farmers Markets. I see them at the supermarket. My favorite gardening book, The Garden Primer by Barbara Damrosch, devotes pages 457-465 to the topic, therefore one must conclude that she must also believe that it’s possible to grow them here.

When my husband decided he wanted to grow watermelons, we picked up some seed packets. We hedged our bets by also planting some seedlings that we found already started at Agway. We tried for three years to grow watermelon to no avail…until this year.

This summer, I even saw them (briefly) in my back yard, on the vine that grew from the seeds that we lovingly sowed in very early spring.  .  . we had such high hopes! This would be the year! And a miracle happened…this was the year!  We had a few fruits on some of the vines. We even glimpsed one good-sized watermelon growing on one of said vines. We were so happy!

We were so naive!

We were happy for about three minutes, which must have been about how long it took before whichever critter from the wild also noticed it and took matters into its own hands–er, mouth. Our next trip out to the garden to lovingly gaze on our produce prodigy ended in tragedy as we noticed the large bite that was taken out of the side of it.

😦

One of the smaller ones remained, so despite its size, we brought it into the house. We weren’t willing to risk losing the last intact melon. With bated breath, I cut it open.

There was enough for my husband and I each to have a teaspoon of watermelon.

The fruits of three years labor. Reminds me of the $64 Tomato.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

P.S. Buy the books at your local bookstore, such as Longfellows or Kennebooks (in Maine), or Literary Bookpost (in North Carolina).

Menaces in the garden

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, local fun, no fear, raising chickens, relationships

The garden is doing great. I might have even said amazingly great, if my husband didn’t find the disgusting green tomato destroyers munching on the vines this week. May I just take one moment to say ‘Ew’?  They are very hard to see (think Where’s Waldo); hanging on to the stems their gross little legs almost look like little leaves. If you find one, keep looking…there will be others. These yucky little encroachers travel in packs. Check the tomatoes themselves as well; we found teeny tiny little green devils on the underside of some of the cherry tomatoes. The green devil on the green tomato and tomato branches are nearly invisible. They also do not know enough to stick to their own territory. We actually plucked one of them off the eggplants! Talk about adding insult to injury!

Do you have chickens? Well, they need protein. Maybe that will motivate you to put your disgust aside for just one moment to pluck the suckers off of your plants and into your chickens mouths…hey, circle of life, babe. Or, make your husband do it. Do something nice to–I mean, for him later to make it up to him.

🙂

While you’re trolling for protein for your farm animals, don’t forget those equally gross shiny (but not happy)  Japanese Beetles. Check the leaves on your berry plants. These guys are brazen. No hiding and blending for them. If they had noses, they’d be thumbing them at you (you know, if they also had thumbs). Show no mercy. The bug traps might catch a few of them, but most likely you will be picking them off and disposing of them to save your plants.

The garden is thriving despite them. At the moment. Here’s hopin’ we can keep ahead of them.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Garden update: end of May

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, gardening, local fun

Everything plantedThe veggies are in! Found some interesting tomato varieties and practiced supreme self control by not buying all of them. New tomatoes (so far) for me this year are Taxi, Chiquita, Mr Stripey. Old standbys that are returning: Sweet 100’s, Lemon Boy, Brandywine, Black Cherry, a couple of Romas. I am told by the Master Gardner in residence (my husband) that I have room for only one more tomato plant.

Things could get ugly…

Eggplant: Japanese, Italian, and new for me this year is Rosa Bianca.

Peppers: Sweet Italian. Giant Marconi, Corno di Toro Red.

Zucchini: Spineless, Raven. Yellow Squash: Sunray…the usual suspects.

I’m giving onions a try for the first time (both red–thanks, Susan!–and yellow), as well as beets (both red and gold). These and the string beans and the sugar snap peas are being grown (hopefully) from seed. We’re going to try cukes again, even though we never have any luck with them. We’re also giving watermelon another try: some from seeds and 1 or 2 are starting out as seedlings that we purchased.

Here’s hopin’.

The blueberries and the strawberries are running rampant and aren’t pictured in this slide show but will certainly show up in future ones. The raspberries are kicking butt.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

What are you planting in your gardens this year?