One good reason for a backyard garden: bunny food.
Bunny likes parsley!
Another good reason for a backyard garden: spinach. Add to salads, omelets, and just about anything.
Spinach! Iron-rich leafy green!
I didn’t have a lot of spinach this season. Who knows – maybe the cold stretch ahead of us will trick the spinach into growing a second crop. I’m hoping the lettuce will do that, too. Salads at the O.K. Chorale! What could be more delicious?
Today’s Haul
Left to Right: red potatoes, sweet corn (from Georgia), lettuces, spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, blueberries (Michigan), sweet Bing cherries, peas, strawberries, carrots. I plan to spend my day shelling peas and prepping strawberries. Hulling strawberries? Why don’t I know that? No, don’t answer that second question.
Today’s Market Goodies
From left to right: lettuce, peas, asparagus, strawberries, more asparagus, blueberries. My tasks today: cut up and freeze asparagus, remove peas from pod (there’s a snappier way to say that, I’m sure), freeze peas, hull strawberries, clean lettuce – oh, you get the drift. The brightly colored menu under the green bowl is the new menu for the smoothie place downtown. It’s going into my schoolbag so I can order from my desk in a cubicle just a few blocks away.
Meanwhile, I’ll sip on today’s smoothie (Groovy Grape) and start chopping asparagus spears.
Life is good.
Another reason to grow herbs, among other pretty plants: soup stock. Chuck had beef bones left after grilling supper. He knows to save them for me. I dropped them in a pan of water and added, fresh from the backyard:
Beef Broth in Progress
Beef Bones, sage, green onion, and garlic scapes. Did I forget to add basil? Dang it. The basil is growing like wildfire. Must make a pesto or something similar soon.
The rhubarb patch was getting overgrown – again – and I was stuck at home due to car repairs. What’s the connection, you might ask, and my family and close friends and regular readers would say, “Doh!”
I might add that the weather was wet, wet, and more wet, so I wasn’t likely to spend any time in the garden temporarily known as the Okay By Me Swamp. That brought me back to the kitchen and (full circle) the rhubarb.
I baked cookies. We now have rhubarb cookies, delicious and sweet, and a little more room in the rhubarb patch. A little, I said. I only harvested what I needed for one cup. There’s plenty left in the patch. For your enjoyment, here’s the recipe, slightly modified from the one I found on All Recipes dot com.
Rhubarb Drop cookies
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 cup rhubarb, chopped thin
1/2 cup raisins
3 Tablespoons flax seeds
1. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside. Mix the raisins into this mixture until well coated to keep the raisins from clumping.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and egg until smooth. Beat egg into batter. Stir in the rhubarb. Mix flour mixture into the wet ingredients just until combined. Sprinkle with flax seeds; stir one more time.
3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough onto ungreased baking sheets. Optional: use a fork coated with sugar to flatten cookies slightly. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes. Cool on the pan for a few minutes before moving to wire rack.
Serve with coffee, of course.
And then, after you sample the fresh cookies, take the rhubarb leaves out to the compost along with the eggshell and coffee grounds. After all, compost is what happens, and what happens is all natural and good.
Officially, I was out of school on Friday, June 6, as soon as I had my progress reports handed in and my cubicle cleaned. It didn’t feel that way, though.
I turned in my progress reports, cleaned my cubicle, and then took off to pick up Amigo at his sister’s apartment in Lake Geneva. We were on the road home when Amigo realized he’d forgotten his wallet. La Petite met us midway, and we were on track again.
Saturday was a busy day and a napping day. Amigo left for camp Sunday, so he spent Saturday doing his laundry and I helped – a little.
Sunday we took him to camp.
Monday could have been my first day of Summer Break, but I signed up for a training session that lasted four days. as Thursday ended, I gave a deep sigh of relief.
Then, Friday, we drove to camp to pick him up and bring him home. Still busy, not feeling the break yet.
Saturday and Sunday I did relax a little, but I did it with La Petite. She needed a little moral support for a few days, and I was available.
Well, folks, now it’s Monday, and it’s not going to be a manic Monday. I’m done traveling (for now), and I plan to stay at home, do my own laundry, and weed parts of the garden. I might even sleep in and/or take a nap. If you’re expecting a lot out of me, you’ll have to wait.
Directly above my planting table, my storage spot for pots and soil and tools, a few newcomers are moving in.
They’re gone now. Don’t ask for details. It was a dark night in a backyard that likes to keep its secrets. Guy Noir himself could have staged a Raid and I wouldn’t reveal the details. No one was injured in the sting — well, no humans were stung. That’s the buzz, anyway.
And when my attempt at humor gets that bad, it’s time to stop blogging, wash the dirt out from under my nails, and put down the laptop.
Bunnies coming out after winter
That’s more like it.
Mine looks nothing like this.
I don’t have carrots yet. Just seeds.
Beans! This, I have!
Weeding is productive and therapeutic and even enjoyable. I searched through old posts and found out that I’ve discussed the positives of weeding in the past. I mentioned this yesterday, too, in the context of the hay masquerading as straw.
I enjoy weeding because I can see progress. My garden is divided into small sections, set apart by my stepping “stones” made from old deck and fence pieces. I set a goal of weeding one section at a time. When that’s done, I can quit weeding or choose to finish another section. This is a managable goal; I feel productive when I can see the results in one part of the plot. It spares me the frustration of not “finishing” the whole thing, which is of course an impossible goal. Today I chose one triangular section of the garden and weeded out the many mini maples that flew in from the lot behind ours. If I ever abandon this small plot of ground behind my garage, I predict the mini maples will take over, leaving room for a blanket of clover underneath. But for now, look out maples! I have garden gloves and I know how to use them.
Here’s an even older post from July, 2006.
Weeding feels good because:
- Digging in the dirt is fun.