Thursday, April 8, 2010

Anything Not Pertaining to Elephants is Irrelephant

I should really be cleaning the kitchen...or the bathrooms...or the living room...or folding the laundry...

Last weekend I attended a double baby shower. One of the women was having a boy and the other a girl. Since last week I also had to finish up easter projects I needed something quick to make for a gift. After searching and searching on google for a stuffed animal tutorial I came up with these myself. Pretty cut and dry, two elephant shaped pieces, sewn, stuffed, embroidered. The best part is they cost next to nothing to make! The gray fleece was found in a Joann's remnant bin forever ago and both pink fabrics are from thrift store sheets. I'd like to make more to put up in my etsy shop (it would be great to finally get SOMETHING in there) but have yet to find the time, the garden is quite demanding this time of year. There are 9 pregnant women in my church congregation all due by october, so there are quite a few baby showers coming up, I better get crackin' on the baby gifts. My bff Nikol and I are the only young, unpregnant women left in the ward. I swear if one more person tells me it's my "turn" to get pregnant I will punch them in the face. Seriously, right in the face. But I digress. Here are more elephant pictures.





As I said in an earlier post, there are potatoes cropping up EVERYWHERE. I've been pulling them out all week and on tuesday I got a pleasant surprise. These!
Potatoes under a potato plant, who would have thought? We had them in a chickenless chicken soup...since we're all sick at our house. I'll admit it's a pretty measly harvest, but let me remind you that none of these potato plants were planted intentionally. They all came from the compost. Next year I'll purposefully plant them in the compost and anticipate a heathy harvest, since I know they love growing there.

Here's a rambling story about garden promises I've made myself...and broken. Remember the chard that never stops giving that has actually stopped giving to go to seed? I'm sure you do, I never shut up about it. It was actually a sad, runty little chard to begin with. I was actually going to pull it out to make room for more zucchini last year but decided to leave it alone, mostly because after spreading a truckload of mulch I lacked the motivation to bend down and pull it out. And look what came of it! See, sometimes laziness really pays off! But that is not the point of this story. After seeing the chard take off I vowed to never pull out a productive food plant, no matter how small, if it's still producing leave it be. The same goes for volunteer plants, oh how I love them, they always produce more food than puposefully planted ones. Well obviously I've broken my promise to myself in pulling out all of the potatoes, and yes I regret it. Who knows the bounty I could have harvested if I had left them alone. I've learned my lesson...again...and this time the hard, potato-less way. Don't make the same mistakes I do. Anyone else have fun volunteer or victorious underdog plant stories?

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Goings On

Well the Spring garden seems to be wrapping things up slowly but surely.

Here's what we reaped from half a square foot of carrots. The other half of the square foot was just as bountiful and the other square feet lived up to the standard.

We didn't freeze any carrots because Jonas promptly ate them. The day we harvested them Jonas ate 8 big carrots and a string cheese for lunch. Lunch of champions.

Why has the chard grown so tall? And stopped making leaves lower down?


Here's why, because it's going to seed. Dun Dun DUN! I'm very sad about this. In mourning even. This trusty little plant (big plant) has fed us almost every day this past year. You just can't beat that.

But fear not, the little chards are coming right along and will be keeping us well stocked in no time.

Potatoes are springing up EVERYWHERE this spring and it is quite inconvenient. This was supposed to be a grow heap for squashes and melons, but squashes and melons are not good companion plants for potatoes and I can't get the dang things to go away, no matter how many times I hack them to the ground. So it will be a grow heap for potatoes and tomatoes instead.

Here are the fava beans. I'm not quite sure what they are doing. They've been making blossoms for about a month, but not a bean in sight. What is that about? They're lucky they're a nitrogen fixer or I'd have pulled them out long ago to make space for a tomato or two.