Hopeful

I think planting a garden is a very hopeful endeavor.  One puts seeds in the ground, covers them up, and hopes something will grow.  How amazing that they do!  This past week I couldn't stand it any longer.  I planted part of the vegetable garden.  Even though the sage gardeners will say I should wait a little longer, I couldn't.  I put in a hills of pumpkins, summer squash, and lemon cucumber.  I planted three rows of bush green beans.  There is a new row of parsley next to the old row that wintered over. 

Under this cardboard are two rows each of carrots and parsnips.  A friend of mine told me how to get carrots and parsnips started in this climate.  She was told by an old gentleman farmer and that has to be a great source.  After planting the seeds, I water them down well and then cover them with the cardboard (or grain sacks or something like that.)  I have to put the pieces of wood on top to keep the cardboard from blowing away.  It keeps the soil moist so the seeds will germinate.  Apparently carrots need that moisture in order to make happy little sprouts.  Once the sprouts have come up, the cardboard goes away and yummy carrots and parsnips grow.  I love stuff like this!

I planted greens a few weeks ago and some lettuces, spinach, and arugula are poking up their little leaves already.  Sadly, the little slimy slugs ate off the snap peas that were coming up.  I have taken measures to assure that doesn't happen again.  I actually bought snap pea plants to replace them but I haven't put them out yet.  We are supposed to get a rather hard freeze tonight so I'm waiting.  


I really enjoy getting out and planting the garden every year.  It gives me great satisfaction to know that those little seeds I'm putting in the soil are going to produce lots of luscious food for us this summer and fall.  And it makes me smile.

The Pile

I've been busy.  This huge pile of bark mulch has demanded most of my attention of late.  
This is ten cubic yards of bark mulch, not a small amount.   I'm not sure how many wheelbarrows full it takes to make a cubic yard but I'm guessing around 4-5.  That means that I filled, moved and spread out about 50 wheelbarrows of bark mulch.  No wonder I'm tired! Thankfully, Paul helped toward the end when my energy and enthusiasm were flagging.

All this mulch went everywhere around the place.  

In the beds around the house, out the back, down the side and in between the garden beds...oh, and on the flower garden, too.  It was a lot of work but worth it in the end.

See how great everything looks?  All clean and nice.  It had better last for a while because I'm not planning on doing this again for a long time!

Com-post

Well, I don't write anything for a month and here I am, the third time in a week!  I'm nothing if not inconsistent!  

Today was a beautiful spring day.  The temperature got up to around 60º, the warmest day so far this year.  It was a perfect day to work on the compost.  We're big composters here.  Paul built three compost bins about nineteen years ago from old cedar siding taken off this house.  We keep all three of them busy during the year.  
 
During the winter they are all cooking compost.  In the spring, we dig down to find the good compost and spread it out on the garden beds.  

 


Actually, first, we have to rake all the leaves off the beds so they can be added to the compost bins.  It's a process of moving and transferring compost materials a couple of times, but it is totally worth the trouble. 

In the spring and summer, one bin is dedicated to growing Palouse Pomodoro, a tomato Paul sort of developed.  It all started nearly fifteen years ago when Paul noticed tomato plants coming up in his compost bin.  He realized that the tomato seeds left over from saucing tomatoes the fall before sprouted in the compost.  So he let them grow.  Every year, he picks the tomatoes and makes sauce from them, saving the seeds for the next year.  

He planted this year's crop in that lowest bin.   

The other two bins still contain compost.  One is usually filled up (the tall one) and left to make more luscious compost.  The other is the one we add to until fall.  Then the shifting and moving happens again as the fall leaves get raked up and put into the bins and onto the garden beds.  It's a circular process, just like the seasons and the gardening.  Each in it's own just-right time.

When Life Gives You Lemons

I have written before about our Meyer lemon tree.  It is doing well in it's sunny spot even though it only produced two lemons this year.  However, those two lemons are huge!  Meyer lemons aren't usually too big but these are large. One is still green but the other turned a lovely ripe yellow and I picked it last night.  


Besides tasting wonderful, Meyer lemons smell delicious.  They have their own distinct smell...lemony but sweet at the same time.  The smell is different that a regular lemon somehow.  Zesting this lemon was a delicious olfactory experience.  Paul could smell it 10 feet away sitting at the table.

The lemon was zested, juiced, and used to make Meyer lemon scones, a new recipe to me.  They were quite tasty.  I added a little glaze for sweetness and that was a perfect addition.  We decided that lemon scones are now in the top 3 Meyer lemon experiences.  

The lemon tree is now covered with blossoms and I'm hopeful that we'll have more than two lemons next season.  There are just too many yummy lemon treats to make!

March Madness

I have felt so lazy lately.  I haven't written anything.  March has been a bit insane.  It started out like a lion with stormy, windy weather.  Somewhere in the middle, we got a few days of relatively warm sun.  I did get to mud in some sweet pea and snap pea seeds and do a little messing about in the garden.  Not enough, though, before the wild weather came back.  

We did have a wonderful St. Paddy's in Palouse on the 17th.  Paul started St. Paddy's in Palouse about 9 years ago because he couldn't find a good place to play Irish music on St. Patrick's Day.  The Palouse Arts Council gals made wonderful food...corned beef, colcannon, and Irish soda bread.  I, personally, made all ten loaves of soda bread for the event!  We served dinner to about 100 people.  Paul's Irish music band, Potatohead, played great music and we had Irish dancers as well.  It was a wonderful time in our small town and a highlight of this otherwise dreary month. 

Yesterday was the first day of spring and we awoke to snow!  Today it snowed ALL day...big, fat, wet flakes of the stuff came down and came down.  Luckily it was warm enough to not accumulate much although I think we had about 4" at one point today.  Sigh...now the snow has turned to rain.  I can hear it pelting the window next to me.  More snow is supposed to fall tomorrow.  I may cry. 


March came in like a lion and it seems to be going out like one, too.  I hope Spring kicks Old Man Winter out pretty soon.  He's overstayed his welcome!

Bickies

The oven is finally fixed!  It's been thirty-seven days since I've been able to bake anything!  The whole family has been grumpy and going through withdrawal for bread and scones and, most of all, biscuits.

We love our buttermilk biscuits around here.  They are probably everyone's favorite breakfast treat.  We all have our favorite way to eat them, too.  

Peter likes his with a different kind of jam on each piece and then stuck together like a sandwich.  I like to put either jam or honey on mine but I like them separate, not sandwiched. 

Paul likes to eat his sopped in an over easy fried egg.  Any way you eat them, they are delicious. 

Here is the recipe:  

Buttermilk Biscuits

Preheat the oven to 450º.  

Combine 1 3/4 cups of flour, 2 t. baking powder, 1 t. sugar, 1/2 t. baking soda, and 1/2 t. salt in a bowl and stir until blended.

Cut in 1/4 cup butter until the mixture resembles very coarse cornmeal.   A pastry blender works best for this.

Add in a generous 3/4 cup buttermilk and mix with a fork until the ingredients just come together.

Pat out the dough to a 1" thickness on a lightly floured board.  Cut biscuits with a 2" cutter (I use a 2 1/2" size).  Push the dough together and keep cutting out biscuits until you've used  all the dough.  Try not to handle the dough too much or the biscuits can get tough.  It will make 8-10 biscuits depending on the size of cutter you use.  Transfer the biscuits to a baking sheet and brush the tops with cream or some more buttermilk (This is what I do).   Bake until puffed and golden, about 10 minutes.

At our house, biscuits for breakfast is one of life's lovely pleasures and we went without them for way too long.  Thankfully, they're back.

Blah, Blah, Blah

Not much has been going on around here lately.  I think I have the blahs.  My oven is STILL not fixed.  It's been over a month now although the repair person is coming on Wednesday.  We're all keeping our fingers crossed that this time it's the right part.  We miss our baked goods!  Especially the biscuits.  We love buttermilk biscuits for breakfast around here.  I'll do a post about them as soon as I can make them again.  Sigh...

And it is still winter.  As someone I know posted on Facebook, "stupid groundhog."  Just last week I saw snowdrops poking up and pussywillows emerging and heard the redwing blackbirds chirping.  Now the robins are shivering in the cherry tree, puffed up to keep warm and snow is coming down as I type.  

I've been doing some long overdue reading.  I love to read but have found that I don't do as much as I used to.  I think it's because when I read, I get lost in the book, whatever it is, and hate to be interrupted.  But this household is full of interruptions, that's just life.  I've been reading a book of short stories; The Red Convertible by Louise Erdrich.  I really like her writing.  The nice thing about it is I can stop easily because they are short stories.  

I'm still stitching, too. I'm just finishing a beautiful piece.  It will be a pillow soon.  The next two will be gifts. 

Anyway, I do have a bit of the blahs, feeling like I'm not really accomplishing much and wishing for spring.  Luckily, I know that it is on it's way, just taking its own sweet time.