Summer Love

A little something juicy from my garden this morning...

Spring

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.
~Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

A Little Bit of Green

Just a little touch of something green to remind us that spring is coming...and to point out a little proudly (which is ridiculous, I know)that I haven't killed them yet!

Outside and In

We have all been so excited about the coming spring lately. The deck has been cleared off so that we could walk outside in bare feet, we have gone for walks in our t-shirts and sandals, and we have generally decided that winter is behind us. Today, we wake up to this nastiness. I know it is not unusual to have snow this time of year, but still!!

So, early or not, we decided to plant some seeds today and just pretend that it is nice and warm and sunny outside.

Local Food Festival

All too often these days I hear studies, articles, speeches...talking about how removed we are as a society from our food. Family farms are a vanishing breed, and we have come to expect tomatoes in February and strawberries all year round (even if they are the size of plums and need to be cored before you eat them). Many kids cannot identify vegetables, let alone tell you how they grow or where they came from. Our family generally has a little bit of a better handle on things, I think, having many family and friends who still etch out a living on the farm. I love taking in the local farmers market, and try to pay attention to where our food comes from. Still, a reminder of how important buying locally is can't hurt, especially when it involves the word "Festival". The Local Food Festival today was a lot of fun: tractor and wagon rides, organic ice cream, swings, grinding oats, music, farm tours, crafts, and of course lots of fresh, delicious local foods.

Rhubarb Cake

I love rhubarb. I love that it is the first harvest from our garden every spring. I love watching the boys run around with 'elephant ears' made out of rhubarb leaves held up to their heads. I love how it grows so well without any help from me. I love that this plant was a gift from my mother-in-law Jean, and has been growing here since we bought our home 11 years ago. I love that it is from a plant that grew in her yard for many, many years before that.

And, I love rhubarb cake.

This recipe is nothing fancy, and the final product is not what you would call 'pretty'. But is it very moist, just the right combination of sweet-tart, and a wonderful way to enjoy the rhubarb bounty!!

Rhubarb Cake

1 1/2 cup thinly sliced rhubarb
1 c brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 - 2 tsp cinnamon
1 cup apple sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bakign soda
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour

Cream together butter and sugars. Beat in egg, salt, vanilla, soda, cinnamon, and applesauce, and flour. Stir in rhubarb. Spread into a greased 9 x 13 inch pan (batter will be thick) and sprinkle the top with cinnamon sugar. Bake at 375 for 30 - 35 minutes. Enjoy!

Flowers For Grammy

To celebrate my mothers birthday, William, Charlie and I went down to her home for a visit. We spent the day helping out with a few chores around the house, and then taking Grammy to a local nursery to pick out some spring flowers. Dinner out was a treat, then back to her place to plant the flowers and have chocolate cup cakes with candy icing! It was a lovely day for all of us, and a great way to celebrate a very special day.

Happy Birthday, Grammy!

I'm Sorry, So Sorry...

I have a rather complicated relationship with my house plants. I love them dearly...the peacefulness they bring to my home, the clean(er) air that they provide, the splashes of color. And yet, I kill them - ruthlessly, and regularly. With the possible exceptions of my Great Aunt's fern that is a family heirloom at almost 90 years old, and the huge potted tropical that I spent too much money on to stomach offing, the rest of my lowly house plants really live in horrible conditions. I water them when I think of it - which means too often for those living over the kitchen sink, and not often enough for the rest of them scattered throughout the house. I fertilize them rarely, and too intensely when I do, leaving them either starved or burnt. As for remembering which particular type of care any given plant needs as compared to its neighbour, well, we won't even go there.


So every 6 months or so, I try to put aside some time to plead forgiveness, and shower my little pots of green with some tender loving care. New soil, larger pots, dividing and trimming as needed, a good watering, and some words of kindness. I have also found that succulents and cactus go along way to turning my black thumb green.

Ahhhh... much better.

Apples, apples and more apples

When we bought our home about 10 years ago, one of the first things that I did was to plant two apple trees (one Cortland and one Gala) in the back yard. I love apples (and apple pie, apple crisp, apple sauce, apple butter) and I love the idea of having fruit trees on our property. They are still coming into their own, but this year the Cortland tree did us proud. I am struggling to figure out how to produce usable fruit without spraying them (I have yet to enjoy a single edible apple off of the Gala tree!) but this year there are plenty of delicious, if not all that beautiful, apples to pick. Today I started the harvest in earnest, and turned the first batch into sauce. William helped with the peeling, and the house smelled wonderful all day long.

Apple Picking

Today was a wonderful day for apple-picking. We beat the weekend rush, and went late enough in the afternoon so as to avoid any school trips. This is certainly not the first time that we have gone apple picking, but the boys really enjoyed it this year. They really do mature so much in one year!! On a sad note, we had a great if disturbing talk with the farmer who owns the orchard. He was telling us of a huge sub division that is being built just down the road from his farm, on what used to be another orchard. Acres and acres of beautiful, mature, fruit-bearing trees are geing sliced down so that a few hundred houses can be crammed onto the land, and the rest paved over. But it doesn't stop there. The farmers who work the land close by, such as where we picked, will feel the effects, too. The helicopters that they rely on to lift the frost from the trees end up being banned because of the noise. The increased traffic becomes a problem, and commuters do not want to be 'stuck' on a 2 lane road behind a tractor. More complaints. The fresh air and peace and quiet that makes for such a nice atmosphere while you are picking disappears when the farm is smack dab in the middle of suburbia. That in itself is a huge issue, since this farmer had to open up his orchard as a pick-your-own farm when Canadian grocery stores would no longer purchase his apples. There are higher profit margin for imported fruits, don't ya know. Although it certainly wasn't a 'nice' conversation, it was good to have the boys begin to learn about this sort of dynamic from someone whose livelihood it is effecting so directly. William has planned a field trip for us this week - to check out our local grocery store to see how much local produce we can find, what types of foods are imported, and where all of the food had been brought in from. We'll post the results after our investigation! For now, though, a few truly 'Autumn in Ontario' pics for you...

Yeah Me!!!!!

OK, so this may not look like much to you, but to me it is wondrous. What you are looking at, dear reader, are my very own seedlings, tucked into a beautifully weed-free raised bed (I won't even tell you how long it took me to get it weed-free...)mulched with straw from a friends farm (thanks Jenn and David!!!) and ready for the summer. If you have followed this blog for a while, you know a little bit about my challenges with gardening - mostly that I am not all that good at it. But for the first time ever, I have managed to keep my seedlings alive long enough to move them out into the great outdoors, and even hardened them off suitable that they have not died of dislocation. We planted 2 types of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, green and yellow beans, and even some marigolds. Add this to the cabbage, carrots, peas, spinach and lettuce that made it into the ground earlier in the spring, and we are in great shape!! If you have any helpful gardening tips, I would love to hear from you. Hopefully my gardening 'luck' will hold on until the harvest....

Something Pretty

In spite of their name (Bleeding Hearts) these little blooms sure are pretty! Hope they brighten up your day.

The Garden

Today we really got our hands dirty for the first time this season (I know - we are really late!!) We dug the first garden out of the weeds (sort of) and bought the first beautiful flowers (that we will need to remember when the next frost comes, which I am sure it will...) and got our cabbage, carrots, spinich and lettuce in the ground. The peas are happily soaking and will go in tomorow. My relationship with gardening is certainly complex, but I do love watching the kids play in the ground. I love that their eyes still get big when they hear what the tiny little seeds will grow into. I love that they giggle as the worms wriggle around in the palms of their hands. I love that they feel sorry for the grubs that eat the roots of all of my young plants. And I love that they are not critical if I don't manage to get all of the grass out of the vegetable garden before I run out of energy.

Green

Outside it is a grey, wet, and miserable day - the perfect day to stay inside, read a good book, play LEGO (of course!) and bask in the beautiful green of our seedlings that are waiting patiently for their chance to be planted out in the great big world outside. We are still a few weeks away from the May 24 weekend (our usually 'safe' weekend to plant outside) and our seedlings are coming along well, meaning that I have not killed them yet!! I think that this is the 5th or 6th spring that I have started seeds inside, and I have yet to get any of them successfully transplanted into an actual garden. I know, it is sad. I like the idea of calling myself a gardener, but really, that is a stretch. I am a 'throw it in the ground and see what happens' kind of gardener. You know that first beautiful Saturday that comes about toward the end of May? That is the day I get really excited, raid the garden store (because of course, all of my seedlings have suffered a slow and painful death by then), and get all of the lovely little plants tucked nicely into the ground. That is about it. By the end of the day I am tired, and have, apparently, had my fill of gardening for the season. I may on occasion motivate myself to try to dig out the weeds (especially if we are having people over who are in fact competent gardeners...) This all works well, of course for things like lettuce and carrots, but really, as an approach to cultivation it has its limits. But perhaps this is the year. William and Charlie are old enough to help out in the garden (and are the perfect height for pulling weeds) and the 'economic climate' certainly encourages growing our own food. So here's to a fresh start this year - to my own plants started from seed, to a healthy garden, to fresh produce sans chemicals, and to the whole thing recorded with pride on my blog. So please wish me luck, and if you don't find any more pictures of my garden in the future, please take a minute to remember this years' seedlings, sacrificed in the name of my dream of becoming a gardener.