Monday, March 30, 2009

recent happenings

Almost all of the tomatoes are planted! Hooray! There are fourteen total, which is two more than I originally planned for. I've had to get creative with placement. The self watering containers I've made are working better than I could ask for. The plants are bigger and look healthier than those in the ground.

I finally put the new strawberries in. I transplanted three aloes to the front bank and planted 8 strawberries in their place. I can see them from my kitchen window. I keep thinking how nice it will be when they fill in and create a cover of berries...provided they don't die of some disease. I have the worst luck with strawberries.

Greg had school tonight so it was Jonas and myself for dinner. I made orzo with frozen pesto from last year's garden and spinach and chard from this year's garden. Jonas was super cranky and tired (when I asked him if he wanted to go to bed he said yes and headed for his room, then threw the mother of all tantrums when I wouldn't let him go to bed. Poor kid.) so I made the mistake of just chopping all the greens and didn't bother to remove the chard stems. It was fibrous and gross. Strangely enough Jonas ate a very large portion.

On thursday I'm getting together with my gals, the mongeese, to make jam. I jam once a year, always in march or april. We eat quite a bit of jam. Greg eats a pb an j every day for breakfast at work. So the jamming is extensive. I probably won't get all of it done on thursday but it will be wonderful to get at least some of it done in the company of my favorite women.

I'm currently reading Made From Scratch and I love it! It has me all energized to start sewing and buying second hand. I don't know what I would do without a steady supply of motivating books from the library. They really inspire me to do more and to do it well.

Hope everyone is having a great day.

2 comments:

Siobhán said...

i need to come check out your garden. have you ever talked to debbie jenson about berries? if i recall correctly, they used to grow all sorts of berries. i think they might still have their trellises up, but that could be a total fabrication.

where do you get your orzo? i have THE most difficult time finding it here. when we do come across it, i stock up because i never know when it will again become hard to find.

"made from scratch" sounds like my kind of book! i'm on a sewing kick again (though i absolutely butchered the skirt i made for sioban on friday). we're fans of the three r's, so second-hand always works for us. i used to be really good about not buying anything new, but i've lost my touch lately. i need to set some goals about that.

Amanda said...

Cool cool! I'd love to read that book (Made From Scratch). We need to get together soon so I can return Animal, Vegetable, Miracle to you. I'm apologizing in advance...it's been pretty well loved and tattered...still readable, though!

Guess who's guerilla gardening up in LA? Hannah! She became really interested in it when I blogged about it and found a group! Cool, huh?

I'm having no luck with strawberries, either :) I planted a bunch of them and only a few healthy plants remain! I have no idea what went wrong...I'll need to research a bit more. I always thought they were easy!