Gardening in June

My container garden, as well as the flower garden, have really filled out. We've had sooo much rain, (see Thora doing some well-loved puddle-stomping), I've done practically no watering. But apparently there's been enough sun (a surprise to me) for these plants to flourish, rather than being totally water-logged. Check out some of the highlights below.



The oregano (in the middle of the cluster, right in front of the staked tomato plant) is growing like a weed!!! Is there a recipe for oregano pesto?!? The tomatoes are full and seemingly robust. All the other herbs are plentiful!








The view of the other side of the container garden. Here we have a second tomato plant, basil, zucchini, eggplant, peppers and strawberries, along with two more pots of thyme.














Here are the peppers, which are a small pepper, best when ripened to a yellowy orange. We have four plants going strong, but one of the peppers was prematurely picked by the ever-curious Thora. I swear, the refrain I feel like I most say is, "No, NO, NO! Don't pick that!!!" This refers to flowers growing around our house, as well as those growing in other people's gardens and public green spaces. I love that she's interested, and that she's got a harvesting instinct that connects her to where flowers and food come from. However, I can't seem to convey the idea that once a plant or flower is picked, well... that's it.


In our flower garden, here are the echinacea blossoms that will bloom soon. I cannot wait for this. I just LOVE purple coneflower. I can't get enough of it. Perhaps it embodies the fertile country life that I secretly yearn for. Right now, the plants are vigorous and tall. They will be my favorite sight of summer plant-life, I think.

Gardening in May

I've got the bulk of my container garden in pots and growing. I hit the Gore Place plant sale (they grow heirloom vegetables and ornamentals in their greenhouse out in Waltham) and snagged the majority of our vegetables. I now have two kinds of tomatoes growing, a Brandywine and a Gooseberry (yellow, grape tomatoes), eggplant, zucchini, peppers, strawberries and herbs (a crazy-prolific oregano plant, along with two kinds of rosemary, a golden sage and a purple sage, thyme and two kinds of basil).

I'm going to keep my eye out for a couple used, scavenged, or free children's wagons so that I can move the plants around as needed. Also, I'll be looking for a way to more attractively group them, perhaps raising some up on blocks, etc. They're all lift-able, even when watered, since I didn't fill them all the way with soil, but rather added old milk jugs and upside-down plastic planters inside the pots before filling with soil and transplanting them. So I can indeed still lift them. But even in their semi-haphazard state, I love looking them at them when I get back home. I can't wait to see what produces!

Our flower garden, planned and planted with our upstairs neighbor, seems to be coming back strong for the most part. The front of the plot seems strangely vacant, so my fear is that those perennials didn't make it. But we'll see. Everything else (the purple coneflower, the phlox, and the ornamental grass look hardy and full). Can't wait for those blooms to appear! Here is a view of the flower garden last summer when we planted it. So you can see, something hasn't come back.

Gardening in April

The warm weather has hit Massachusetts and I've been reveling in it. In addition to getting to run in a ball cap instead of a sock cap and gloves, and the infinite relief of not having to fight the Epic Coat Battles with a two year-old, what this warm spell has done is jump start my gardening impulses.

This summer, I'm hoping to grow as much food for our table as I can with a container garden. So far, so good. I've got two pots of herbs (pictures to come).

I've got two major hurdles with the our space, both indoor and out. First, we've got mostly shade in the grassy part of our yard. This is the reason for the container gardening, since the sunniest spots are the sides of the house, which are covered in asphalt.

But the second problem that I'm seeing is that we don't have the appropriate indoor space to effectively start plants from seeds. (Actually, the window in our daughter's room would be great, except, well, that's just heartbreak waiting to happen.) So that means that I'm going to have to use mostly all transplants from the garden store. Which means that the garden will take a while to fill out. But I plan to post updates as the garden does just that.

As for now, here are my two helpers, Thora and Georgia, actually being very helpful, since they're where I can see them and neither of them are up to something, which in this brief moment, allowed me to weed and mulch the flower garden.

More pictures to come...

While Traveling: Note to Self

My husband, daughter, and I spent a week in Puerto Rico last week. (Here we are at one of the waterfalls in El Yunque, the rainforest outside of San Juan.) It was a lovely, warm week full of lots of swimming and sleeping. But the one thing that nagged at me the whole time was the absurd collection of plastic bags we were accumulating while there. It was nice to have a Walgreen's right across the street for those items that we deliberately didn't pack (we could buy diapers there; we didn't need to pack them") or didn't realize we'd need (the condo where we stayed had a kitchen, but no dishwashing soap). At first, these bags were a blessing, since one of the other things that the condo didn't have on hand were trash bags to line the garbage cans. So we were thankful to have a few extra bags to use for our daughter's dirty diapers, etc. But by day 5, it seemed ridiculous. So note to self: put cloth/reusable bags on the travel packing check list. I'm so conscious of reusing bags here at home; it was so wasteful to have forgotten that practice while traveling.

Natural Hair Dye--Naturtint

I've tried using different kinds of natural hair dye, the ones that don't contain ammonia and other harsh chemicals. Frankly I've been kind of underwhelmed by the amount of time it takes to process and the less that startling results. I'm usually going for something slightly darker than my natural brown hair and to cover the few grey hairs that have begun showing themselves. But what I usually get is something that doesn't look all that different from where I started 4-6 hours ago (!) and often the grey is still visible.

That is until I tried Naturtint. Now granted, I really went dark this time, given my previously less-than-striking results. And so it's possible that I could've had better results had I gone with a darker color in my earlier trials. However, even giving the other henna and natural treatments the benefit of the doubt, Naturtint has a wonderfully short processing time of around 30 minutes. So, if you've been looking for a safer alternative to home hair color and you've been less than thrilled with the results, try Naturtint.

Here are my before and after shots to give you an idea.


I used 3N, which was not the blackest color they had on the shelf at Cambridge Naturals (a natural health store in Porter Square), but perhaps the second darkest.



Like I said, I was tired of not getting a noticeable change. I CANNOT say that this time!

Thora Turns 2

Thora turned 2 last weekend. Here she is, looking lovingly at the Winnie the Pooh candle that topped her cake. It was a great weekend, starting with a small party with her daycare coop friends on Friday morning. We had candle-topped blueberry muffins, which were a huge hit. Then, Friday night, two of her grandparents arrived. Saturday was spent opening some presents, swinging up to a local elementary school for their annual book and toy sale, where we picked up even more new stuff for her (although this is still being parceled out one toy/book per day), and then riding around the nearby park on her new tricycle (with pushbar) in the afternoon. She had a great time, and we had so much fun watching her react to all the special treatment, presents, cake, etc., that goes along with being the birthday girl.

11 ways to...Green Your Life

Here is a link I came across with ways to green your life:

http://parkhowell.com/?p=1800

From his list, #6:

Opt-out of receiving phone directories: YellowPagesGoesGreen.org

Thora at 23 months

Trip to Eugene
We spent a week in Eugene, OR visiting Sean’s parents. We had a wonderful time. The weather was amazingly cooperative, giving us practically a week of sunshine and mild temperatures, something that’s pretty remarkable for February in the Pacific Northwest. And so Sean and I were able to do some of our favorite “Eugene” things, like running at the Amazon Creek bark-dust, 1-mile loop path and climbing Mt. Pisgah 3 times.
We enjoyed the company of Brian and Beverly, and grandparents and grandchild adored their time together. Beverly and Brian generously babysat at least some part of everyday so that we could go for a run or make a quick trip to the gym. Sean and I were even able to go out to dinner just the two of us and to see a movie, our second(!) cinematic experience since Thora was born.

Thora’s Numbers
It was during this week that Thora finally said the word “two” instead of her version up to this point: “kng.” And she’s begun down the path of the numbers between 11 and 20. She often now goes directly to 11 after 10 and then says 12. However, she hasn’t grasped 13, 14, or 15. She jumps straight to 16, but then gets 17 (“Fesen-teen”), 18, 19, and 20. She also regularly completes any counting to 20 (or sometimes to 10) with an impression of Count von Count from Sesame Street: “Ah Ah Ah!”

Thora Singing
And it was also during this week that she really started to sing along with us when we sing songs. Also recently, I’ve caught her, a few times now, singing a few lines on her own of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” or her absolute favorite, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” from Mary Poppins.
“Why these songs?” you ask. While we’re still holding off going whole-hog with tv/dvds for Thora, occasionally we will sit with her in front of the computer and play her short YouTube videos. In the past, I would catch myself singing a song from my childhood memories of Mary Poppins or some other movie. But usually I only remembered a couple lines and sang those over and over. Until, that is, I thought to check YouTube, where I found short clips from Mary Poppins, Peter Pan, ballerinas dancing the “Sugar Plum Fairy” solo in The Nutcracker, Ernie from Sesame Street singing, “Rubber Ducky,” Dorothy singing in The Wizard of Oz, etc. This has been great for Thora—she loves these videos and getting visualization of these songs I’d been butchering—and great for me, since it’s allowed me to re-learn all the words. The obvious drawbacks: she asks me to sing these songs CONSTANTLY and asks to watch these video only slightly less constantly.

Random things that I want to put down for posterity: Thora is fascinated with Sesame Street’s The Count and his “Ah, Ah, Ah!” She fixates on his bit roles in books like Molly Moves to Sesame Street and Oscar’s Grouchy Day. * * * I know a lot of kids do this, but she just started to tickle her ear with one hand while drinking, holding the sippy cup with the other hand. It’s really adorable. * * * Thora says, “Keys...Wallet...Phone.” When we’re all bundled up, ready to head out the door, before we even say something to this effect, she says it for us. * * * When Thora wants to be watched, when she’s doing something that she thinks merits someone’s attention, she’ll say, “Thora doing,” a shortened version of “What’s Thora doing?” This is another example of her saying the phrase that we say. * * * Some great books we discovered while in Eugene: Kitten’s First Full Moon by Kevin Henkes, Late Night Moon by Cynthia Rylant, and Time for Bed by Mem Fox, what will likely become our new final book before bedtime.

Fasteners Box Update

I've been working away, cutting and stitching and hot-glue-gunning, for the last few nights and I'm making some good progress. I feel a little pressure (self-imposed) in that my goal was to have this completed before we headed west on our trip to visit Thora's grandparents. I thought this might make for some good, in-flight entertainment.

The Fastener Box has taken a new direction, namely a Fasteners Book. This was something that I'd wanted to do in addition to the box, but decided to work in to the project at hand.


Here is the front cover, with a magnet snap fastener to bind the book closed.





On the book's first open page, I've given Thora two more buttons.







Then on the book's next page, I've given Thora her favorite fastener of all: a click!






Then on the next page, I've given Thora a buckle to do and undo.

There are a couple more pages left in the book and I've got ideas for them. Stay tuned for more updates and the finished product.

Cheese! (This time with skim milk!)

I tried my hand at cheese-making* again this morning, this time with accidentally-purchased skim milk.

(By accidentally, I mean I deliberately went for my "cheese-making brand," but then seemed to go completely blank of mind and forgot what I was getting it for, mindlessly reaching for the skim out of habit. But so you don't think I'm a danger to myself and others, by going "blank-of-mind" regularly, say behind the wheel or walking across busy intersections, I did have a loose-and-energetic Thora with me and so it's fair to say that I was particularly distracted and more prone to blank-of-mindness for all things besides keeping her from pulling breakables off the shelves and walking backwards into the annoyed man pushing his cart that we KEPT crossing paths with.)

I was using the Garelick brand again, (a large dairy company located in MA, so the milk doesn't have to travel as far, and therefore, doesn't need to be pasteurized above home-cheese-making temperatures), so I was mildly confident. However, I think up until this point, I had only a 50% success rate, so this confidence was tempered with memories of dumping a ridiculously large blob of cottage-cheese-looking goo down the drain (after thinning it out with water first). And to top it off, I'd never had success with anything but whole milk, so I was skeptical. But amidst the dissonance of my luke warm confidence and lurking doubts, I plunged ahead.

Things weren't looking good at first. I let the curds and whey separate for 8 minutes, and when I attempted to cut them, they kind of immediately went all brain-looking. They kind of seized up into a few balls the size of a softball, a baseball, and a racquetball. I forged ahead nonetheless.

Then comes the draining, which I did carefully, but more speedily than in the past, scooping the curds into a colander and then pouring all the whey out over the curds to get all the smaller curds as well.

Next comes the part I dread: the microwaving. Our microwave is exceptionally strong and I don't know if this is the problem. But even in the failed attempts, the cheese always looked pretty much how it's supposed to look, until, that is, it gets the microwave step, which results in cottage cheese-looking goo that quickly progresses into a cream of wheat-looking goo.

However, today, after 45 seconds in the microwave, I already had a shiny, stretchy ball of cheese. I was floored. Was it the skim milk? Was it the slightly more than a quarter of tablet of rennet that I used. Was it the shortened trips in the microwave. I stretched it and pulled it, rejoicing in this silly little success. I put it in the microwave one more time, this time for just 20 seconds, so that I could mix in the herbs and cheese salt blend (1/2 tsp of cheese salt, and 1/4 tsp of dried oregano, basil, and rosemary). I quickly got the seasoning incorporated throughout and then pressed it into a small glass bowl, so as to avoid the ridiculous-looking end product that I've had in the past. (The photo above is of the cheese setting up in the bowl which is sitting in a couple inches of very cold water.) The cheese sets up very quickly, I've found, and so to take too long means that the cheese is randomly seasoned and looks like a long snake of cheese that's been shaped into a ball, rather than looking like the shiny, smooth ball of mozzarella which is so pleasing to the eye.

I've tasted it, and it's good (I'm 3 for 5 now!), if a little too herbaceous. I might ease up a bit next time, perhaps still using all four flavors, but just a smaller combined total measurement. However, this was eating it straight, cut from the whole. I have high hopes for it when melted onto something like tomatoes under the broiler.

*I use the 30-minute mozzarella kit from the folks at the New England CheeseMaking Supply Company.