Inattentive Gardening = Magic!

Oh, I'm a bad gardener. Very, very bad. Well, I'm at least very inattentive when it starts pouring down rain for weeks on end in the middle of May and I just don't want to go outside or do anything really.

Almost two weeks ago I planted some beans. Two days after I planted them it started raining. And hailing. And being windy. And raining some more. And a little more hail. And even some thunder. And being generally colder than normal. I just assumed that they didn't sprout and I had on my list of things to do to sow some more beans to replace the ones that must have died in this crappy weather.

I haven't really spent much time in the garden since then, except to harvest what I needed for meals and pull a stray weed here and there. So, I was getting ready to go out in a break in the weather today and opened up the bedroom window that looks out over the garden and was absolutely shocked when I saw two rows of beans that were sprouted and kinda big! They must have been sprouted for at least two or three days and I just didn't even see it.

Then I walked around to the side yard to take a peak at the peas and see how they were doing – and there were peas on them! They must have been growing for several days to get this big without me noticing. Color me embarrased. That's one more thing to add to Mike's garden to do list while I'm gone; harvest peas.

So, I will be missing the garden for a couple weeks, but it's going to be like magic. Just like it was when I ignored the garden for just a few days and suddenly there were new plants and new food. Now, being gone for two weeks I can't even imagine what the garden will look like when I return.

At least I got to see the first roses blooming. There are oodles more buds that will bloom while I'm gone.

Fighting back.

I woke up this morning with a sore throat. Nooooo! Of course this happens three days before I am about to go on vacation. So, I am in 100% fight back mode. I made some tangerine tea, scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast, along with half an orange. I remembered to take my vitamin. If I always remembered I probably wouldn't have a sore throat right now. And I am simmering a make-shift Jalapeno Soup. Ideally when I'm sick I would make a green chile soup, but I don't have any green chiles and I do have about five jalapenos that I don't know what to do with.

....

So, that was definitely a medicinal soup. It was SPICY! But, my head is cleared out and hopefully it will help my immune system a bit. Now for a lot of water.

Side note: Pouring down rain + sore throat = not doing anything on the garden to do list today...

To Do List

I love a good "to-do" list. I make them every day, for every thing. I am leaving town for two weeks this Saturday and I want to make sure my garden is up for minimal care. Mike will still be here and tending to it, but I don't want my list of things for him to be too much. I'm already going to try and make him transplant the cucumbers out while I'm gone. I hope he doesn't mind.

So, here is my garden to-do list before I leave:

[ ] Chop Knotweed

[ ] Roundup Knotweed

[ ] Thin onions

[ ] Sow lettuce

[ ] Sow radishes

[ ] Sow beans

[ ] Weed side of house

[ ] Weed around peas

[ ] Thin pears

[ ] Thin apples

[ ] Clean up plums on ground

Any bets on whether I get it all done? Weather forecast for Portland is constant rain for the next ten days, so there's not going to be some beautiful spring afternoon when I'm actually going to want to go outside and do any of this.

Too cold for tomatoes?

I've heard from several sources that you never put your tomatoes out in Portland until after Mother's Day. I had May 15th circled on my garden calendar to put my tomato starts out and the week leading up to it was gorgeous. Warm, sunny weather with cool evenings, like you would expect for mid-May around these parts. Then, May 15th came and the weather turned to crap. It's been unexpectedly cold and rainy....and hail-y. I didn't put my tomatoes out yet, because I checked the weather and wanted to wait for a less tumultuous weather pattern to put out little plants that were going to be shocked enough as it is going from a warm windowsill to the big, bad world of the yard. Well, I'm still waiting. I woke up this morning to the sound of hail pounding on my bedroom window and the high temperature tomorrow is only supposed to be 52. I want to wait to put the little guys out there, but I'm afraid I'm waiting too long. I suppose a couple days waiting is better than killing them all in cold weather and hail.

That's a lot of greens.

I'm making Spinach and Kale Saag tonight so I went out to the garden and pulled up maybe 3 or 4 plants of each. I looked at the haul and said to myself, "Holy crap-a-mole! That's a lot of greens!".

It was a bikey kinda weekend.

It was a busy weekend and a bikey weekend. On Saturday Mike rode in Reach the Beach, a 104-mile bike ride from Portland to Pacific City. He did it! I'm very proud of him and I am thinking about doing it next year myself. Here he is crossing the finish line.

This is only half the bike corral at the finish. I think there was somewhere around 3,500 people who did the ride on Saturday.

On the way out there I went on a hike with Lemon at Cape Lookout; it was stunning. Apparently you can often see whales from up here.

Mike said he saw one in this cove once. Lemon and I weren't so lucky. But it was a beautiful day for a hike whales or not.

On Sunday, Sunday Parkways was happening and went right past our house! It was great fun to sit in the yard and people watch as everyone rode past. The road was closed off just out our front door.

We met some of our neighbors too. One was selling plant starts from a wagon for a dollar a piece. I bought a tomato, cucumber and bell pepper. Another stopped off to check out our garden and mentioned how he didn't start any kale seeds in time. So, we dug up one of our kale plants, put it in a plastic pot and sent him on his way. It's amazing what getting out of your car and being in the same air with other people will do.

It was a constant stream of people. I think the event was a big success! I rode my bike on part of the route and had a hard time getting it through my head that I didn't have to worry about cars coming up behind me and that Mike and I could actually ride abreast of each other and talk as we rode instead of riding in a line and being in constant fear of bodily harm. It was a really wonderful change of pace. I wish it was like that all the time.

The windows are open.

It is 75 and sunny in Portland today. I was actually flushed and warm from going outside. It's so weird. I got a little gardening done and planted some more carrots, chard and broccoli and made a new addition - beans! I got Dragon Tongue and Empress. The Dragon Tongue are the purple striped ones, which should be fun and delicious. And Empress is a nice, regular green bean, and as my mother can attest, I have always loved green beans.

I snapped a couple photos this week. This is the third year of this strawberry pot and the return is getting better each year. I don't think I even got one strawberry the first year, last year I got maybe a half dozen and change, but this year there are already over a dozen flowers on it!

The peas are flowering now too.

And I grabbed a couple spinach as harvest for dinner tonight. Yum.

And Lemon chased her ball in the backyard. She's a gymnast, that one.

I had said before that we were going to miss Sunday Parkways because we would be at the beach, but we changed our plans. We are going to go ahead and drive back to Portland on Saturday night so we will be able to enjoy the festivities and people watch from our backyard after all. If you are in Portland and are doing the NE Parkways, stop by and say hi! We're on the route at 17th and Highland.

I realized I'm a poor hippie.

I joined a book club a few months ago and this time we are reading The Good Earth. I'm about halfway through right now, but basically it's about a Chinese peasant farmer in maybe the early 1900's and his life. He really loves the earth and growing things and he comes off today as quite the environmentalist, but really most of the things he does he does because he's poor and he has to. He saves paper that a street corner speaker hands him to sew into padding for his children's shoes. He cherishes every seed and every drop of rain because he knows that is what he needs to eat and care for his family.

And then it occurred to me, I'm not so much an environmentalist as I am poor. If money were not an issue I will still own a car. I would probably still bake, but just for fun every once in a while and I would buy bread at the store for daily use. I would probably buy canned beans instead of dry. I would have bought the specific shade of brown paint I wanted instead of buying a cheap gallon of recycled paint. I would buy paper towels instead of using cloth ones. I would have a smaller garden and would have grown things like artichokes that are fun, but not very practical. I would have bought paper plates for our party. But, money is an issue, especially now.

The next thing on my agenda is to learn to sew, at least a little, so I can put some buttons back on pants and repair a torn seam in one of Mike's favorite sweaters. And the truth is, I'm not doing it because I don't want to waste a sweater, I'm doing it because I can't afford a sweater. I'm baking bread because I can either spend $5 on 10 pounds of flour to make a dozen loafs of bread, or $5 on one loaf of artisan bread. I cook from dry beans because I can buy probably five times the amount of food for the same money if I cook it myself. I use real towels instead of paper so I don't have to buy towels every time I go to the store. I want to get rain barrels so my water bill won't be so high more than to conserve water. I have a garden to feed myself. I know that if money gets tight in a few months, at least I'll have food.

It's not to say that I don't enjoy making things from scratch and doing things with my hands, I really do enjoy it. But I think that living on a fixed income in a recession sure puts the pressure on to do it as much as you can. And I don't think that's a bad thing at all. That's what environmentalism is; it's not wasting things. It's using everything that you have and reusing what you can.

So, now when I harvest radishes from my garden I eat the tops. I definitely do not throw them away because I now see it as fuel for my body. Why would I throw away an edible part of a plant that I have cultivated and watched grow. It just seems crazy to me. All my life I have tossed my radish tops, but not anymore.

Picture Update - May!

The last time I did a big picture update was almost two months ago. I have a lot to catch up on! Here we go---

Now that the days are getting longer and the temperatures getting warmer (barely), the growth is taking off! Take a look!

I've thinned a bit of the kale so far and the remaining ones are really getting big. We have had a lot of heavy wind the last few weeks though, and a lot of them are slanted and now growing sideways. Whatever. They're still growing, right? They just aren't quite as pretty and uniform.

The spinach is awesome. I realize now that I did not allot enough space for spinach in the garden this year, and I will give it more room next year. I love spinach because you can use it in just about any style of food; Italian, Indian, Mexican, American, Greek, and on and on. Plus, it's great as a fresh salad, on a sandwich or wilted by itself or in a dish.

Spinach and onions, living happily together.

And, yes, this is ONE spinach plant.

The lettuces are coming in pretty well now. I impulse bought a third lettuce variety at the store the other day, which I'm going to squeeze in somewhere. It's a fast-maturing miniature butterhead. I'm pretty excited about that one.

I have also realized that I've been keeping to my garden calendar a little too closely. Every two weeks I have a note to do the next sowing of lettuce or chard or carrots, but I am trying to listen to the garden a little more than my calendar now, as I realize I'm going to have way too much lettuce all at one time and I should really space it out some more.

The chard is starting to get it's true leaves. Yeah!

The broccoli finally took and it is getting big! It's also been a victim of the wind, however, and they are all kind of growing sideways.

This must a sign that summer is fast approaching, as today was the day to transplant my zucchini starts. I put three in the ground and I may regret this. They tend to grow to gigantic proportions.

The pear tree is starting to grow pears!! Apparently we are going to have red pears instead of green. What a nice surprise!

As for my $3.99 roses; they are on the verge of blooming. You can see some of the rose inside this bud ready to burst forth.

And Lemon in the window.

We had our BBQ last weekend and it went really well. I made buns and veggie patties from scratch and they were good. Although, I'm going to have to work on this hamburger/sausage bun thing. They didn't rise nearly enough, so I had to improvise and pretend I meant to make sliders instead. But, they are pretty darn cute.

Going into the oven.

Done!

For my birthday Mike got me garden/rain boots! I've been wanting some, especially when I do my volunteer work at the Food Bank garden. It's a sloshy mess when it rains, which is most of the time, and my pants and meager hiking shoes get pretty covered by the time I'm done. Now I'm set!

Mike also really seems to like worms. This is why he is generally in charge of the worm compost bin. The other night he was outside and discovered the creepy-crawlies doing their thing in full-swing in the garden. He took some pictures. He brought a worm inside on his hand to show me. I screamed like a little girl and ran into the bedroom. Gross.

And, lastly, these pictures are mostly for my mom. I painted my living room! It's espresso brown, and I think it really ties things together. I (mistakenly) painted my kitchen some shade of chartreuse and the deep brown finally makes it look like I did it on purpose (pardon my mess).