Today's Harvest

This morning, the sky looked like it was seriously going to burst and we mere mortals would need to roll our pants up because of the flood waters... Ok, maybe not that bad. But it didn't look good. As the thunder got closer I got myself outside and did a little garden gathering before everything got wet. Here's what I got...

I harvested a big bowl full of lettuce and spinach. Do you see those strawberries? Yep, they're ours. We're conducting a "strawberry experiment" this year. I'll tell you more about that later...but it seems to be working. Finally, the eggs are from our girls. I hard boiled them, so one of them looks white...but it's not...it's brown... but white on the inside... You get the picture.

Here's what I did will all of it.

Strawberry spinach salad. I'd share it with you, but it's all gone.

What's Growing...

Some people grow roses... I buy mine (actually, Roger buys them).
Some people grow cucumbers and zucchini...I just wait until my firends (thanks Rebecca and Karan) have more than they can possibly eat and are giving it away. We just don't eat those veggies very much...so I don't want to expend the energy or space for them.

Here's what I DO grow...

Lovely cantaloupe! I've harvest 2 so far and they are fabulous. I have about 14 on the vines right now.


Tomatoes...


Tomatoes...


and tomatoes... I've harvested about 75 lbs so I can make tons of spaghetti sauce.

I planted the green beans because we had the extra space. I've been getting about a handful each day and have harvested about 2 gallons. I think we'll plant more of those next year! They're yummy!

Beautiful Compost

After I posted about my endeavor to garden, I got a couple of requests for pictures of my compost barrel. My Handy Man cut a door into the side and attached it with a hinge. Since we don't really need a lot of compost, we figured this barrel would produce about the right amount for us.

This is what it looks like when it's composting... Just a barrel, minding its own business...producing good enzymes to help the stuff inside become yummy compost, quickly. Notice that my boxes have their trellis poles up. These will be used to hold up the tomatoes and cantaloupes. I know what you're thinking... "Aren't cantaloupes too heavy to be on a trellis?" My friend, Mel Bartholomew, assures me that they can be trellised. And, when they get heavy, he says to use pantyhose to make a nice little cradle for them to use until they're ready to be picked. Walmart has their Hanes pantyhose (queen sized in brown) on sale for $1.00 this week, and I had 6 coupons for $1.00 off any Hanes product! Free cantaloupe cradles!! Awesome!

Handy Man bought the stuff and made the trellises last week. He enjoyed showing our boys how to weld the corners.

Here's a picture of the top. Handy Man used chicken wire to allow air inside to circulate. Isn't he smart!

In this picture, you can see the bottom. I'm not sure how Handy Man made the holes, but I'm sure he used one of his super-duper tools in his shop. The knob on the door just screws into a piece of wood that he attached to the inside of the door. I don't think we need to worry about anyone stealing our compost, so there's no lock :-)

I couldn't resist showing a pic of my beautiful little onions. Aren't they cute! It will be a shame to eat them...OK, maybe not.

Becoming a Gardener

It's the Friday evening of Good Friday and I've got a little time to waste. Two of my chickadees are spending the night somewhere else, and it makes a huge difference. I've been tossing around all kinds of bloggy ideas and thought I'd go ahead and write about one of them.

Anyone that knows me knows that I am no gardener... I even posted about it last year. However, my desire for homegrown stuff has exceeded my aversion to dirt. So, I'm doing a Square Foot Garden. If you want to know about SFG, you need to check out the book and read up on it. The author, Mel Bartholomew, makes all kinds of promises about weed-free, quick growing, easy to maintain gardening. Lord knows I wouldn't even attempt this if he didn't promise that it would be easy. I looked up SFG online and found lots of other people blogging about their garden, and singing Mel's praises. So, I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

My Handy Man built me 2 boxes, each of them 4' x 8'. Then, we went and bought the stuff to make "Mel's Mix", which is what he says will make the gardening so easy. The mix is made of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 vermiculite. They are close to the house because I know myself well enough to know that I won't take care of them if I have to trek across our 5 acres to get to them... I know...I'm so lazy!

Here you can see the boxes... Technically, I have 4 4'x4' boxes, they just happen to be connected. Mel assures me that it's fine. We put that plastic stuff on the bottom before we added the dirt.

My plan was to have a Spaghetti Sauce garden... only tomatoes, onions, peppers, oregano, and basil. Well, once the boxes were complete and the mix was in, the kids got interested. My first instinct was to tell them no way was I going to let them plant stuff... I just want to keep it simple and I don't want to be responsible for their stuff. But, being the good home school mom that I am, I put away those selfish thoughts and told the kids they could plant some squares. My littlest is going to plant a square of Catnip. Isn't that nice of him? Now we can use our precious soil to help the cat become even more of a spaz... Awesome. Sam loves corn, so we're going to let him plant several squares of corn while Katie is going to plant marigolds because we've heard they are natural pest repellents. Then, Handy Man thought that it would be silly to waste any soil and have empty squares, so he bought a bunch of bush bean seeds... Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Keep it simple. Keep it simple."

So, I went ahead and planted 3 squares of onions because Mel says I can plant them up to 6 weeks before the last frost. Guess what!! They're growing!! I'm growing onions!! And, to prove that I'm really serious about doing this, I actually started seeds for tomatoes, peppers, and cantaloupe inside. Did I mention the cantaloupe? Keep it simple...keep it simple.... Anyway, I started them and they're growing. Hopefully they'll do well when I transplant them outside in another week or two. And, I know you won't believe this, but I've even started composting. Handy Man took a plastic barrel and sliced off the ends. Then, he put screen over the top and bottom, and made a door on the side. Now, I take our compost stuff outside, open the little door and dump it all in. Then, I close the door and roll the barrel so it all gets mixed up. Truthfully, composting has always intimidated me. The thought of having to use a shovel to turn everything over and move it from one pile to the other has always been overwhelming to me. But, we don't really need a whole lot of compost and I can at least roll a barrel.

I'm pretty excited to see if I can do this. Is this a small measure of what "real" gardeners feel?

Spring Fever

I feel a little tickle here and there...and I groan inside. I try to fight it, but I feel it getting stronger and stronger. No, it isn't the latest flu bug that everyone has been experiencing. It's spring fever! It goes like this...

As I walk into our bedroom to put away laundry, I think to myself, "I should really move the furniture in this room! And, I really need to clean up the little nook that leads to our balcony. Oh! And wouldn't it be nice to put a little 2 cup coffee maker with a little basket of hot chocolate right next to the chaise on the balcony! Oh! Oh! And, wouldn't it be great to put a basket with all my favorite magazines that I don't get a chance to read, and of course I could have my Bible there too!!"

No! Resist! It's not time yet! So...I head back downstairs and I pass the dining room. As I look at my dining room, I think to myself, "I really need to recover those dining room chairs. Oh! Wouldn't it be cute to SEW some chair covers? Oh! Oh! I could sew a different set for EACH SEASON!! Then, I could change them out 4 times a year!!"

Then I come to my senses. I DON'T SEW!! What am I thinking? I can only sew patterns that require no curves!

So, I go back to the laundry room, and I think to myself, "These cabinets really need shelf paper. Why don't I just pull out all the stuff in all these cabinets and give them a really good cleaning?" Of course, we're still trying to get schoolwork done, and I have people coming over for dinner. I resist and move on. Yes, in my excitement to finally be in our new home, I was too impatient to go get more shelf paper when I ran out. I thought I'd just get it the next time I was at WM and would install it the next week. That was 5 years ago! Oh well...who cares?

Then, I'm putting some of the kids' books away and I happen to look down at the carpet in front of the fireplace. We have a huge rug in front of the fireplace and I begin to think... "I wonder what the carpet looks like under this rug.
OH. MY. GOSH! The carpet under the rug is a nice cream with grey flecks. The carpet in the rest of the room is grey. UGH!!! Time to clean the carpets. I must resist! I just don't have time! So, I put the rug back down. The outline of the rug is so stark, it looks like the last piece of a puzzle.

And what about the garden! It's taken me 30-some years to finally come to the conclusion...I HATE TO GARDEN!! I like being IN a garden, LOOKING at a garden, eating food FROM a garden, getting flowers FROM a garden...but I don't like weeding, sweating, bending over, getting my nails dirty... well, you get the idea. But, every year I get the urge to plant and I have grand ideas for a beautiful, lush oasis of flowers, shrubbery, butterflies, and birds. Well, this year is no different. I was actually looking at a seed catalog the other night!

What's wrong with me? I don't usually get so itchy for spring. Everything is so gray...I just want some color. I was reading my friend Wendy's blog and she was talking about creativity and our need for beauty. I agree with her. I think God put in us ladies a desire for peaceful loveliness. My hubby couldn't care less about the cute, little towels in the powder room, or the pretty pillows on the bed, or the romantic lampshade that gives such a nice glow on a cold evening. I really like the little touches. Well, I feel like things are in a rut. I want to change things up...everything feels cramped, and dingy, and stuffy. I want to make things feel new and...springy! So, I'm trying to resist. I just don't have the time right now, and I know my feelings are caused as much by the weather as anything. I try not to leave unfinished projects all around because they make me feel guilty. So, I started a "Peaceful Loveliness" list. Maybe I can do something during spring break and then save the rest for summer. People often ask me if we school year-round. Are you kidding? I need the break. We do fun stuff, and we always are reading, but nothing structured. I love to make my list, check it twice, then have the adrenaline high of crossing off stuff. I love that! So, I'm trying to keep from getting too distracted. Come quickly spring!!