Knitting Iris

sweet, sweet home

We won't be seeing much of this place over the weekend what with all the festivities, the gorgeous hot weather, and with me working both days. 
Have a great weekend all.

Playing with food.

 
Even picking them fresh from the garden didn't convince the boys that radishes were something they wanted to eat.  "Too spicy!" they claimed.   Inspired by this picture, this morning I pulled a bunch (or tw0) from the garden, sat down with a knife, and started carving.  Soon they showed interest and sat down to join me.
 
"French Breakfast" at left.  Yum.   "Reggae" at right.  Couldn't help but pick up a packet of these, based on the name alone.  They're pretty good, too, but not as good as the others.
 
 

E can sometimes be tough to engage in activities but even he mentioned, "This is really fun!" and stuck with this, carving faces, ghosts, pizza slices, potatoes, and onions out of his pile of radishes.
 
 

Boys and knives...   Too bad they can't seem to keep track of their own pocket knives, but I suppose that's pretty typical, too.
 
It's a little like carving pumpkins, only smaller!

I just couldn't help but serve up the mushrooms on this dish with an image from Elsa Beskow's Children of the Forest.

Guess what?  Now they eat radishes, and have even planted some in their own garden beds.

Proof that it IS good to play with your food!

tu-tu tulle in the garden

 

To deter cabbage white butterflies from laying eggs on the cole crops, the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower are covered with a length of 72 inch wide tulle from JoAnn's fabrics, purchased at 50% off, for about 60 cents a yard.

I'm  trying this out as a low-budget alternative to Reemay-type row cover fabric.   It offers no frost protection, but sunshine and water easily passes through.  We'll see how it holds up.  So far this one width of "fabric" is enough to cover a 4 foot wide bed, the edges "adhering" to the rough cedar boards the garden beds are framed in, but the plants are growing now and so another length of the tulle might be necessary, either overlapped or stitched together down its length.

I can't personally take credit for the idea of using this stuff as I got the idea from a non-internet-savvy friend of mine who is trying this out too this year after finding that the spun floating row covers don't hold up over time as well as she would have liked.

Of course,  here is a whole discussion already on the matter that I just came across a couple of minutes ago, and they're using the phrase "prom garden" to describe their tulle covered gardens.

And, when this stuff starts to tear and fall to pieces, there will be an endless supply of  material on hand for dish scrubbies.

garden look-back, june 2009

 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 

details about individual pictures over on Flickr.

go bananas!

 
have a great weekend!  : )

their garden

 
 

We were just SO caught up in the magnitude of pulling together this great, big, huge project of a garden this spring that we nearly forgot to properly include the boys....that is, until I saw this post, and went "Duh!" with a great big thunk of the palm of the hand to the forehead.
 Suddenly, they no longer saw this as just something C and I were always working on, but something they could be a part of as well.

so....

 
 
 
...this is having a greenhouse.  I'm sold.

Although I can't take 100% credit for those first tomatoes as it wasn't one of the plants I started from seed myself. the woman I worked for at the nursery did so I'm going to have to remember to ask her how early she started them.  They're "Basket Boy" a smaller determinate variety I planted in a pot that sits in the walkway of the greenhouse floor.  Green tomatoes are starting to take shape on the ones I did start from seed myself and are planted in the beds in here.  There are also a couple of late planted makeshift topsy turnsy tomatoes (as E fondly calls them)  in buckets hanging from the ceiling, like these, as well.

So far so good this year, but next year I'll start more from seed myself to go in here, including trading out all the marigolds in here for more zinnias so that they can't be hit by a late frost out in the garden as happened a couple of weeks ago.

Who ever would have known taking one's morning tea in a greenhouse could just suck so much? 

;)

Did I mention that, on a hot day, with all that cedar wood in there it smells like a mix of sauna and basil and green tomato plants with a dash of sunshine, good brown dirt, and chicken house all mixed together?

june snow

 
the clouds lifted to reveal this view Tuesday morning!

Ha!  And I'd just been thinking how inappropriate our summer bedtime reading is right now but that's just the way it worked out, that R and I were just turning to Winter Holiday in the Swallows and Amazons series and E and I had just gotten to The Long Winter in the "Laura & Mary Books" as they're known around here.  I think that's how it was when I was reading the Little House series a few years back to R, too, as I remember getting chills just reading it despite the warm summer evenings.

Well, at least down here in the valley the garden had a good dose of rain.

field trip :: CSA farm

 
 
 

This spring, even though we're haven't bought a seasonal share, we've been trying to get our greens from the local CSA farm, at least until ours have grown enough to start harvesting.  E and I stopped by there this weekend again and it was amazing to see what they have growing there, how far along everything is, and how much!  This is only their second year, and we've only gotten to know them recently.

Sure, I know we got a late start this year with preparing the garden space, but our greens' second set of leaves are just forming and they're ripping out plants that are going to seed and replanting already, even though they live just a few roads over in a pretty similar microclimate to ours.  Their first round of bok choy, kale, chard, spinach, and lettuces nearly come and gone and cabbages almost headed out.

They have a SERIOUS amount of food growing out there, it's amazing, inspiring.

Funny thing is, E picks the weeds while we're there, munching on lamb's quarters and chickweed.

Anyways, they sent us home with a whole bunch of spinach that was near bolting and I bought a big mixed bag of lettuce and mustard greens packed with so much flavor it doesn't even need dressing.   There was even some overgrown plants destined for the compost heap that went to our chickens, and theirs, too.

Last night's dinner was a pureed spinach soup with slices of jarlsberg cheese.  Tonight, pesto made from spinach, basil pinchings from our own greenhouse, garlic, cashews, cracked flax seed, all blended up and mixed with somen noodles because that's what we had on hand, this time with white cheddar grated over the top.   With plenty leftover to freeze for later.

With still more spinach and other greens, what will tomorrow night's dinner be?  Spinach lasagne?  Fresh homemade spinach noodles?  hmm.....

father's day camping trip

 
 
 
what a weekend.  tried to have a nice father's day weekend camping, canoeing, and fishing along the reservoir.  ended up with a broken down truck stuck in a really iffy spot where it was  hard enough for cars to get up and out of there at all, let alone get a broken truck towed out  (AAA wouldn't go there and pulling it simultaneously with a 4 wheel drive truck and land rover was unsuccessful)

Fortunately....

...while the adults were fretting about how we were going to get ourselves out of there, at least the boys were having a blast with their cousins and friend, swimming and exploring the beach, canoeing, fishing, and spending a lot of time in secret hide outs and atop lookout rocks.

...those low-growing plants covering the beach turned out to include a lot of smartweed, a dyeplant that yielded a nice golden shade upon returning home and being thrown in the dyepot.

...the rainclouds held off until just as we were leaving, and a mechanic went out last night and was able to get the truck started well enough to get it back to the repair shop.

...when I arrived there after work to join the others (missing the sign posted on a tree warning me not to drive all the way down onto the beach) someone was walking up the road and told me how gnarly the road was, that I might not want to drive down there.

A father's day adventure to remember....