2009

A dream come true...

remember?

~four months later~

It's very hard to convince a 3 year old to wait until the carrots are fully grown!

In the Month of September

Some things I'm enjoying this season...

~Lots of fresh blackberries, every day. Our cultivated crops may have been a bust this year, but the blackberries that grow wild around our property have been as prolific as I've ever seen them.

~Knitting still more pilot caps! This time in wool. I think this red one is my very favorite.

~Making more herbal oils...I have calendula and rose petals steeping now and it's going to be absolutely divine! Next week I think I'll do lots of healing herbs in olive oil and see if I can't finally get around to that batch of salve I've been meaning to make.


~All of the late summer wildflowers. It's hard to believe that it's the time of goldenrod already. The purple asters, that are my especial favorite, are all starting to bloom at the bottom of the driveway. Time to stop pinching back the mums and let autumn really be on it's way...


~Knitting, knitting and more knitting. Oh so much knitting! Someone in the comments recently asked me how long it takes me to complete a project. I'm afraid that I can't really accurately answer that question. It totally depends on the project and my mood. Also, I may knit a rather large something over the course of a few days and then, as experience tells us, take 6 months or more to work in the ends or sew on a few buttons. It also depends a lot on how much I'm sleeping, which can vary greatly.


Right now I'm in knitting while walking mode. As in the baby is on my back and I'm pacing the floor with a ball of yarn tucked up under my arm, knitting as I go.

I go through phases like this every once in a while. This one I think is being fueled by an uncertain future and a strong innate desire to just keep my children warm this winter. I knit in the car while Steve drives, I knit while I wait for the water to boil so that I can wash dishes, I knit while I wait for pages to load. I try to sneak in a stitch or two around a nursing babe. I knit a row in-between helping the boys with their lessons. I knit a round while they set the table.

I met someone at a party a couple of weeks ago.
With a slight smirk he said to me, "Yeah, I think I saw you at the lake recently. You were standing in the water, knitting, with one baby on your back and the other splashing your legs. I thought it was a pretty impressive display of multitasking." (read as: I thought that you were totally insane.)

Yup, that sounds about right.

When life gives you green tomatoes...

make green tomato chutney!

I just couldn't bear to see all of the green tomatoes on the blight infected plants that we pulled go to waste. Roughly 28 plants with nothing to show for it was just too disappointing, so we gathered up what usable fruit we did have and made a big double + batch of chutney (those are just some of the jars on the window sill, there were more behind me on the table. Oh how fondly I remember those days of having kitchen counters...).

I'm not putting up nearly so much this season. Between the poor harvest and the time consuming aspects of trying to find a place to live, I'm just not up for a year like last year. But I'm still putting things by here and there....some strawberries, blueberries and peas, blackberries, greens and herbs. I'm hoping to get up a big batch of pesto next week. I'll admit that I was just as surprised as anyone to see fresh jars appearing on my bookshelf (I do miss kitchen cabinets too) and a jam packed freezer, in this year when I'm thinking about anything and everything but. It's just such a normal thing to me now. I don't even think about it, it's just what one does. Little bits of summer here and there, all saved up for the winter to come.

Calendula

Despite everything that's been going on, I'm trying to find little ways to continue to appreciate and mark the season with and for my children. Our harvest this year has been a sad one and I'm working on the assumption that will be plowing under the tomatoes (our last significant crop) any day now. Late Blight has already destroyed the entire potato and tomato crop at our CSA and it's rapidly spreading through our town. As those of you in New England probably already know, local, organic tomatoes are going to be a great rarity this year. But as I said in my last gardening post at least there are still flowers!

And I do love to grow my sweet and cheery calendula! One night last week, while dinner was in the oven, Galen and I went out and harvested a bunch of flower tops from both his garden and mine. They are steeping in almond oil on my window sill now (with a bit of lavender added in for good measure), soaking up a bit more sunshine, the oil growing more and more golden all the time.

This summer (if you can call it that) has been shockingly low on vitamin D and I'm thinking that a little bottled sunshine might come in handy this winter, for massages and boo-boos and just breathing in the sweet smell of summer during the dark days of winter.

Around the Garden ~July~

I think it's possible that this gardening season may be the most disappointing of my life. The season started off quite promising. We put in a profound effort in the beginning of the year expanding and adding in new beds and revitalizing old ones.

We got everything set up and planted at just the right time and it was looking like our harvest was going to far exceed that of any previous year.Then came not one, but two late frosts. The first killed the blossoms on the plum trees, the second the peach. There will be no stone fruit this year. The cherry trees managed to produce all of two cherries, which is a miracle in and of itself when you consider the magnitude of their black aphid infestation. As it turns out, our new raspberry patch was planted just wee bit too close to the vent for the dryer at the old house. That went not well. Live and learn. We did get some nice strawberries, but otherwise the home-grown fruit harvest is looking pretty sad.Then there was the rain. Oh the rain! All of June it rained. It was much cooler then usual and the sun failed to show it's pretty face for weeks at a time. The tomatoes, peppers and basil all began to look sickly and stunted.Still our gardens at home are looking better then our crops at the community garden. Last year we heard lots of complaints from our fellow gardeners about plants being eaten. Our twin plots (some of the furthest from the woods) remained happily unscathed. All of a sudden this year, fences started springing up everywhere. And it seems that our "out of the way" garden suddenly became a lot more appealing. All of the squash starts that we so painstakingly nurtured on windowsills through the late winter and early spring, gone. All of the beans, corn, sunflowers, and kale, gone. All of our brussel sprouts and all of the brussel sprouts that we replaced those with gone. An entire 15' x 20' plot leveled and a good portion of the adjoining plot as well. We still have some eggplant and a couple of rows of tomatoes (all looking as pallid and puny as their home bound brethren), harvesting a bit from them is the most we can hope for.Oh, there will be a fence next year. There will.At least we still have flowers.

In the Garden...

::reading::

::resting::

::airing out hand-me-downs for the future::

::planting::

::listening to the water::


::picking flowers::


::studying the world around us::

::sun bleaching tablecloths::

::blowing dandelion wishes::

That's where we'll be.


just as soon as this rain lets up!

Violets

It's that time of year again...

I've been fooling around with my violet syrup recipe this year (oh and last years did end up being a syrup, but as it turns out, we liked it that way). I'm looking for something a little different. I actually really liked what I did with it last year. It was tangy and lemony and quite good. And I'm hoping that there will be a second bloom, as happens some years, so that I can do a batch of that sort as well.


But I also find it sad that the flavor of the violets themselves is mostly lost. I want my syrup to taste like violets. Like those tins of french candies that we used to get at that little independent film theater. Remember that? Becky? Molli??

This was my first experimental try:
2 quarts packed violets, soaked in three cups a warm water for about an hour, pureed with 1 cup Agave Nectar and frozen in jam jars.

While it tastes just like intermission at 'Hamlet', there is still some tweaking to be done. For starters I would use pectin in the future; Pomona's being the pectin of choice in the household. For some reason I thought that the violet to liquid ratio would leave me with a much thicker concoction then it actually did. My other issue was with the foam. You are supposed to skim the foam off the top. But this particular recipe produces so much foam that it feels wasteful. I don't think this is an issue when you strain out the violets instead of blending them in, though I don't know for certain, having never tried it that way. I've always been of the opinion that I wanted all the nutrients and flavor I could get from them. I'm wondering if blending the water and violets, skimming the foam and then stirring in the agave wouldn't be a better option. At least that way it wouldn't be a waste of the agave. Something to bear in mind for next year.

Strained violet infusion results in a bright blue liquid, add in lemon and you get a rosey red, while pureed and citrus free syrup takes on a dark blue-ish green. Not the prettiest option, but the flavor is delightfully delicate and sweet.

Not wanting the wee girl to be left out of all the floral fun, she got some violets of her own, in the form of a new sun bonnet...

Made using this pattern and a scrap of fabric leftover from my mother's apron.

snapshot

The Hand-pump

Widely regarded as the highlight of a visit to the community gardens.

Stone Steppers

A little Mother's Day present for the Grandmothers, some "stone-steppers" as Galen would say.

When Iain and Elijah were little we made each of our mother's a stepping stone for their gardens. They were decorated by Iain, complete with little hand prints from both boys. Steve's mother has her's propped up against a flowerpot, claiming that it's too pretty for stepping on.

We thought it was about time for the latest version, this time decorated by Galen.

(and again I say "ha!" to a certain husband of mine who got all smarmy asking how on earth I was going to manage the accent)

I have reason to suspect....

that there may be flower fairies in our midst...

because the very day after this sighting, our very first tulip bloomed.

And now look!

Tulips everywhere. Also, the late daffodils, creeping phlox, bleeding hearts; I'm very pleased with how the garden is starting to fill in.

These are the tulips that I splurged on last fall. They are not at all what I thought they would be, but they're starting to grow on me.

No flowers here yet of course. But I just love the way that Lady's Mantle catches the morning dew.

The plum blossoms (pictured above) have started to lose their glory now, but we are starting to see a few peach blossoms and and the occasional blooming strawberry.

And just this week the buds on the lilacs have started to swell and blosson, a very welcome sight (and scent!) for me.