Tag Archives: garden

Collecting Crocks

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That’s Limey the lime tree on the right. Limey has spent the winter indoors next to a very sunny window. We’ll move Limey outside for the summer as soon as we’re sure the temperatures will stay well above freezing. In addition, I believe Limey needs a bigger pot. I have a 6 gallon crock in the garage that will allow room for drainage (broken crockery, big sticks, whatever I have around the yard) and still give Limey room to grow.

The other 5 gallon crock has drainage in the base (broken dishes pulled from my rock garden) and potting soil. This crock will house cherry tomatoes or jalapeno peppers.

I have a third 5 gallon crock that I’ll prep later today – after the Brewers send Craig Counsell a clear message that hey, Milwaukee is still the best place for baseball. If you haven’t guessed, Brewers and Cubs are starting a three game weekend series in the Windy City.

Foot status: I can handle small amounts of yard work like filling the crocks, but I’m still not very strong. I’ll build up what strength I can between now and the next surgery, and I’ll get as much of the garden planted as possible, too. Coping, it’s all about coping.

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The Agony of the Feet

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To be clear, it’s the right foot again. In February, I had a somewhat routine fix – a bunion and preventive procedure for two tiny hammertoes. In March, I tripped. Big time. Stubbed the toes badly enough to need the surgery redone and the ligaments surrounding the big toe sewn up.

Now it’s April (Cue deep sigh of self pity here). Bone healed well; soft tissue did not. The ligaments are pulling the toe out of position (again) and causing pain. I dug through my closet and found exactly one pair of shoes that I can wear with minimal pain, and I’m wearing them for yard work. Again, minimal. The next surgery, a joint fusion, will happen in mid May.

Ugh. And double Ugh. I’m doing what I can while I can and getting the tomato and pepper seedlings ready to plant. The re-landscaping of the front yard may fall on Chuck. We’ve been planning since last fall, and we picked up containers (big ones!) for that project. I’ll help prep the containers and plant if we can do it before my surgery. I’m even setting up containers on our deck so I can maintain them without going up or down stairs. Getting my hands in the dirt is emotionally healing, so having plants around is a priority.

Unfortunately, this surgery will require absolutely no weight bearing for two weeks. I’ve reserved a knee scooter and I’ve been adding to my Kindle. Recommendations and books are welcome (I’m looking at you, Green Girl!). I’ve contacted a local candidate I support and offered to volunteer from my home (my couch) and I might help a local organization with their grant writing. All those factors should help keep me busy enough to prevent excessive self-pity.

Readers, this is a lousy situation, but it could be worse.

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Guerrilla Gardening, Chipmunk Style

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Rogue Sunflowers

I planted cherry tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and banana peppers in pots on the deck this gardening season. The chipmunks, however, had other ideas.

Indeed, that’s a sunflower – three sunflowers, actually, in with the cherry tomatoes. I didn’t pull them out because, well, sunflowers! I have no idea where the seeds came from. The closest sunflowers I know of are about half a block away. Those chippies sure get around.

Readers, did you get any interesting volunteer plants this year? Any rogue anything?

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Football Season Begins! Again!

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The NFL season begins as usual at the O.K. Chorale. We get together on Thursday nights to do our picks for the week. The menu for Eating the Opponent comes up for discussion, and we’re set for the weekend. Mostly.

With the routines in place, we gathered the ingredients to Eat Chicago with a home made deep dish pizza. Thick crust from my breadmaker, Italian sausage, peppers, onions, olives, pepperoni, home grown oregano, fresh tomato sauce from garden tomatoes – are you hungry yet? It was delicious and filling. We’ll have leftovers for lunch for a few days, too.

I’m drafting this post midday Sunday (That’s 3:35 in the NFL world), and Amigo is in the lead so far with picks. He has 7, I have 4, and Chuck and the visiting bunny are tied with 3 each. I keep repeating my script “it’s a good thing I don’t do this for money!”

Meanwhile, our Milwaukee Brewers are in the 11th inning of a cliffhanger with a score on 1-0 over the New York Yankees. Any minute now we’ll hear an update on whether they held the Bronx Bombers to a shutout and swept the series  – or not.

Now it’s time to put the computer down and enjoy the Packers competing with their arch-nemesis, Da Bears. Go! Pack! Go!

 

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Memorial Day and the backyard

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Ah, Memorial Day. Ceremonies, parades, and somber reminiscence.

And maple seeds. The helicopters have arrived! Chuck saw me picking up a handful and announced, “The Next Season of the Compostermom: Maple Seeds!” and well, he isn’t wrong.

I love the idea that there’s free food in the backyard. I cooked burdock roots a few weeks ago, just to say I did it. The smaller roots were more tender and tasty, so I’ll remember that in the future.

Now that the seeds are falling, I’ll pick up as much as my knees can handle, and I’ll roast them. These roasted seeds can go in anything that might call for sunflower kernels or pepitas or similar yummies. Trail mix, bread, cookies, you name it.

They don’t last forever. Maple seeds are seasonal, at best. I’ll roast as much as I can handle during the next few weeks, and we’ll be set for most of summer.

The Next Season of Compostermom? Probably weeding season. If I want tomatoes (and more!), I need to weed.

Say, readers, do you have a backyard in which to forage? What do you find there?

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Rhubarb galore!

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Rhubarb thrives in a cool spring. A snowstorm on the first of May qualifies as cool, if not cold, right? My rhubarb sure thinks so. It’s sending out shoots right and left and center, and going to seed, too. I keep pulling the stalks that are flowering, and the next day I ask myself, “Self, did I miss that one yesterday?” Truth is, the plant wants to reproduce, and it keeps trying.

Yesterday I spent much of the day picking, cleaning, and chopping  rhubarb. I filled the sink with stalks, topped the compost heap with those huge leaves, and ran two batches through the food processor. Eventually, I dumped all the chopped rhubarb into a big bowl and covered it up for the night.

Today I tried three new recipes: Rhubarb Slush, Rhubarb-Ginger Jam, and Rhubarb Pie Filling. The slush was pretty easy. It’s in the freezer now, and I take it out and stir it about once an hour to prevent it turning into a block of rhubarb-flavored ice.

The Jam and the Pie Filling should have been easy. After all, I’ve made jams and jellies for years, and pie filling is just like a chunky applesauce, right? Right – sort of. I managed to print both recipes with metric measurements. Our stubborn United States insists on using the old fashioned “customary” measurement system, so I had to work to interpret the amounts on these two British style recipes. Fortunately, I have a scale that can measure in grams, and my glass measuring cups have metric measures on the side opposite the customary.

The end results were excellent. I’ll definitely make these again. In fact, I may need to do it again in a few weeks if the weather continues and the rhubarb continues to grow like a bush. The metric recipes, in fact, were for small batches. I will probably double them – or more, if the rhubarb plants keep thriving.

Readers, I wouldn’t mind hearing your rhubarb stories. The plant (a vegetable, not a fruit, I’m told) can be legendary.

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The Garden Begins!

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My knees hurt.

Why do my knees hurt? We had a couple of really nice days – warm, dry, sunny days – and I knew there would be rain and cold on the weekend. I pushed myself to work outside as much as possible, and now I’m really achy and sore. It’s a good kind of achy, though. It’s the kind that makes me say to myself, “Hey, self, you’ve really accomplished a lot. You’ve earned a rest.” A rest, and a little ibuprofen, and coffee, and peanut m&ms. Right? Right.

During those two nice days I got outside and dumped compost on several sections of garden. I pulled up a lot of creeping ivy (Jenny or Charlie? Don’t know, don’t care), and spread the compost where the ivy had been.

The barrel near the garden edge is planted with spinach now. This barrel, scavenged from my old office before it could hit the dumpster, has grown kale, parsley, and more. This year it’s spinach. Lettuce is ready to grow in a long and thin planter that hangs off the deck railing. That’s an easy location; we can step outside and gather a little for a salad or sandwich any time we want it. Fresh lettuce: yum!

I have some larger pots ready to host peppers (jalapeno, mainly) and cherry tomatoes. The weather isn’t consistent enough to put them out yet, but when it warms up mid-May, I’ll be ready.

Meanwhile, I’ve left Earth Month recommendations behind, but I’m practicing what I preach by preparing to be a little more sustainable every day. Hey, readers, have you started playing in the dirt yet? What are you doing outside?

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Earth Month Continues – catching up

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From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

Spring Show weekend wore me out, and I didn’t even perform. Let’s catch up on Earth Month actions.

Day 15: Try cold water for laundry. I wash in warm and rinse in cold; I could make the switch for a weekend and see how it goes.

Day 16: Buy an item locally instead at a big box realtor. Sometimes a franchise is locally owned. Hardware stores are good examples. The Ace Hardware on the north side of our fair city is a small but fabulous source when we need to shop there. Their garden center is my favorite place to buy seedlings in May and June, and they always sell out. Nothing from that greenhouse goes to waste.

Day 17: Save or analyze all your garbage for the day. We take pride in the fact that our city garbage bin is the smallest size available. It saves us a few bucks and reminds us to divert whatever we can to recycling, reusing, and composting. I’ve noticed that our wastebaskets fill up mainly with tissues (it is spring allergy season), and the kitchen garbage is scraps that can’t be recycled or composted. If we switched to handkerchiefs or bandannas, we wouldn’t waste all that tissue. Think. Think. Think.

Day 18: Check the thermostat on your water heater. Like washing laundry in cold water, this saves energy.

Day 19: Consider the tea towel. This reminds me of the Swedish dish cloths mentioned earlier this month. I saw a feature on the Today Show with the specialty dish cloths, and I’m almost ready to try them. I could buy a pack for myself and one for La Petite and her fabulous green-freak husband – that is, if they’re not already using them.

Day 20: What to do with old CDs? I’ll be honest, we don’t have many anymore. Remember the olden days when the AOL CDs would arrive constantly in the mail to invite people to join? Not today. But if I find a few CDs past their usefulness in the house, I might attempt a scarecrow and hope it will deter the deer.

Stay tuned for more eco-friendly actions throughout April – or go to Treehugger yourself!

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And more Earth Month! Go, Green Freaks!

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From Earth Month Challenge: 30 Easy Actions:  

Day 14:  Read the Directions on Products

By reading the directions, you can avoid overuse. For example, you probably don’t need as much detergent in the laundry as you think you need.

But I’m not focused on reading packages (or manuals) right now. We are having a rare streak of warm, very warm days, and I’m getting outside every chance I get to do yard work and garden prep. So far today, I’ve loaded up a few large containers (five gallon ceramic crocks, for example) with yard waste and compost. This fills each one about half way. The rest will be potting soil, and I will transplant pepper plants and cherry tomatoes into these containers so they’re easily accessible for cooking and salad-making.

On that note, I wish I could find the manual for the worm farm set-up sitting in my garage. It’s a perfect example of good intentions being the way to you know where. In a handbasket, no doubt.

Stay tuned for more eco-friendly actions throughout April – or go to Treehugger yourself!

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Daisy is grumpy.

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It’s cold outside. Not just cold, but bitter cold. Below zero cold. Nasty wind chill cold. The kind of cold that attracted a hawk to take shelter next to our French doors and eat the sparrow that was its lunch. Well, this happened a few years ago, but it was that kind of cold.

I’m privileged enough to be able to stay home and wrap up in a blanket and wear fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm. The cold weather shouldn’t make me grumpy, but it does. If I wanted to go anywhere, I’d be miserable.

With grumpy comes impatient. Amigo and Chuck are pushing my buttons constantly. I am normally a patient person, but I’m running out of patience. Have some courtesy, guys! We’re stuck inside and can’t leave each other alone, so be nice, alright? Okay?

I’ve decided that a gin and tonic along with cheese and crackers might help. And I might go hide in a corner of the bedroom and look for old episodes of Homestead Rescue.

The other option is to go down the basement and start a few seedlings. No, that won’t work because it requires going out to the garage to get potting soil and small pots. It’s cold, very cold, outside.

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