Rhubarb galore!

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!

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

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!

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.

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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When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Grow Vegetables.

Not my original, I confess. I saw this on social media and said, “That’s me!” Life around me and around the world gets crazier and crazier, and what do I do? I buy seeds. I set up a spot in the basement for starting seedlings. I rearrange the living room furniture to maximize sun exposure and find the grow lights, too.

I can’t stop Russia from invading Ukraine. I can’t stop Kevin McCarthy from giving in to his party extremists. I can’t stop George Santos from cheating and lying – and voters from believing his statements. I can, however, feed my family.

Last year’s garden was meager. We had several setbacks. Foot surgery (twice!) put me in a bad spot. Chuck tried to take over the unplanted section with a three sisters plot, and then the neighborhood deer took over from him. No corn, only one squash, and we relied on the farmers’ market for beans.

I plan to plant marigolds instead of morning glories along the garage. Hopefully, the marigolds will be less appetizing to the deer. Chuck and I are working on plans for a higher fence, too. The challenge will be building the fence in such a way that it doesn’t block the sun. We’re brainstorming ideas.

I can’t stop the roller coaster that is gas prices. I can drive my hybrid car and use less fuel. I can’t stop the clueless conservatives in my state legislature from introducing misogynist bills, but I can vote for a governor who will exercise his veto power. I may not be able to change the world, but I can take action by sending postcards and by writing my (thankfully) progressive state assembly representative.

And when the going gets tough, I can grow vegetables.

 

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Drought?

You may have heard how to recognize a happy gardener: they’re the ones who see the rain barrels as half full instead of half empty.

Mine, all three of them, are empty. Empty. Chuck is in charge of watering everything right now, and he told me not to even ask until we have another storm. There is no more rain water left.

My little valley in the Midwest has been part of a trend for a few years now. The “severe” weather, major rain or snow, veers around us. We’ll look at the forecast and the radar and say, “Oh! Oh! We might get some of that!” and then Nope. All the precipitation will sweep to the north or the south, and we’ll be standing outside next to our empty rain barrels looking at the sky and pleading for a few drops.

I guess it really is drought weather.

Fortunately, we’re city dwellers, so we have city water. It’s treated and it’ll cost a few pennies, but we’re not limited in the amount we use. Here in the Great Lakes basin, water is plentiful and costs very little. Dry period or not, we’ll be okay.

Readers, let me know. How is your water situation? Are you flooded? Evacuating from wildfires? I hope everyone is safe and has enough to drink.

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My Garden Misses Me.

Chuck, dear sweet husband that he is, came in the other day and told me, “Your garden misses you.”

Back story: I’m recovering from surgery to straighten a big toe. Bunionectomy, it’s called. The stitches came out two days ago, and now I can focus on letting the bone heal. I’ll see the doctor again in a month. Until then, I’m stuck wearing the Incredible Protective Boot, a.k.a. Stupid Boot.

Back to the garden conversation. I only planted half of the garden last May because I knew I wouldn’t be able to work it very much. Chuck said, bravely, “I’ll plant the rest.” And he did.

He might not have realized at the time that he’d also be responsible for maintaining “my” sections as well. When he told me the garden missed me, he mentioned long branches on the tomato plants that I would certainly have tied up or guided into the spiral tomato supports. There are weeds, too. I put down barriers of corrugated cardboard and shredded paper, but a few brave stalks have found ways to sneak in. The clover, for example, stands almost as tall as the dill. A few dill plants are approaching sunflower height.

I cut him some slack in the watering task. He’s using a sprinkler to water the main patch, and using the rain barrel water to water container like the citronella and lemongrass.

I stood outside the chicken wire yesterday and threaded some tomatoes through the supports or through other branches for support. My garden misses me, and I miss it, too. Meanwhile, I’ll sit outside on the deck and watch it grow while my foot heals.

 

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Drumroll – Canning Begins!

It’s not a typical canning season – or a purely typical farmers’ market season – or even a typical garden season here at the O.K. Chorale. I’m in the middle of a Foot Surgery Summer, and that makes a difference everywhere.

I decided not to plant the whole garden plot, so Chuck decided he would put in a three sisters garden in the places I left open. Then he decided we usually have more than enough beans, so his part of the garden became two sisters: corn and squash.

I worry about being out of commission when the major tomato season arrives, so I actually started early. I made and canned barbecue sauce this week, and Chuck applied it to grilled chicken right away.

I also canned three bean salad. We still had yellow and green beans in the freezer, and fresh beans will show up at the market soon, so I pulled out my recipe file and made three bean salad, enough to last months. That’s the goal of summer canning, right? Make enough to feed the family for a length of time.

With Chuck’s help, I prepared some incredibly delicious strawberries for the freezer. That’s another task that may fall through the cracks as my foot puts me down: filling the freezer.

Then again, Chuck is stepping up to the plate, er, the counter and putting in time on the canning front. Footwork or not, we’ll feed the family. The pantry will be filled.

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Restless

I’m supposed to be sitting still, off my feet, elevating the left foot, and doing little or nothing. It’s not working. I’m restless. Very restless.

I should offer the back story. I’m approaching surgery on the big toe of my left foot. I had bunion repair done on this toe 22 years ago, with mixed but mostly good results. The toe eventually started leaning again, and I visited the podiatrist. Long story shortened: in order to redo the bunion repair, she first had to remove the hardware (one tiny screw!) placed in the bone 22 years ago.

The hardware removal took place last week. Since then, I’ve been limiting motion, elevating the foot, wearing a massive bandage and a post-surgical “boot”. I detest these boots, by the way. This is a small one, ankle height, so it’s a little less irritating than the bigger version I dubbed Stupid Boot a few years ago. I’ll take that as a positive.

Tomorrow I see the doctor for a post-op appointment. She’ll look over the incision, take out the stitches, and hopefully tell me all is well. Given 6-8 weeks for healing, I’ll head back into surgery to fix the toe. Hopefully, it will last at least another 22 years.

Meanwhile, Chuck has taken over the kitchen. He’s handled cooking, dishes, clean-up, and the works. If I try to help, he tells me to sit down.

Meanwhile, I can’t work in the garden. Doctor Feet is also a gardener, and she pointed out a few cautions for this year. No root crops, she said. While the toe heals, you won’t want to squat. I managed to get the tomatoes planted pre-surgery, and now I just need to keep them watered. Chuck has to help with that, too.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck on the couch much of the day. And I’m restless. I hope that’s a sign of healing. I want to get the garden watered and can some more broth, but it’s not likely in the next few days. I guess I’ll wait until I heal enough for shoes.

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