Felt!

Okay, so sometime last year my cousin sent me a link to this site with one of those "ha ha, this looks like some hippie s**t you would do" emails. Little did she know, we were in the midst of a crisis in which N was totally ready to chuck his favorite Patagucci cashmere sweater because it had a hole in the elbow. So, I said "ah hah!", ignored my cousin's tone, and went to buy a felting needle. Only my local yarn shop doesn't carry felting supplies (though they told me there's a shop like an hour away that does) and the people at Michael's across the street from my house looked at me like I was crazy. So, the sweater went in a box, and life got busy. BUT, apparently since then felting has gone viral (as has fixing sweaters - google it, I dare you) and so the last time I was wandering around our disheveled Michael's I discovered a whole new felting section. So this weekend I tried it. I didn't take a before picture, but here's shortly in to the process:


And then slightly further along:


And this is the finished product:



Not quite amazing, but kinda fun. I turned the sleeve inside to outside a few times, and I could work more on it, but this represents like 20+ minutes of pretty concentrated felting-needle poking. I'm guessing if he ever wears this he will get a lot of "Hey, there's something... wait, what's going on on you elbow?"

Garden update: Slowly clearing out, the cabbages are having babies, slugs and/or birds have a striking preference for butternut squash seedlings (over acorn and fairytale pumpkin), the watermelons are sprawling, and if the cucumbers ever start growing they may get slapped in the face by several birdhouse gourd vines. Fun!

SF Flower Mart

One of the most fun and unique experiences of planning the wedding (and doing all the flowers with just help from family and friends) was taking a trip to the San Francisco Flower Mart. As a recent inductee into the world of flowers, it's pretty incredible. You can literally buy almost any kind of flower you can imagine. For better or worse, many of the flowers are not locally grown - I asked one seller where his roses were from and he proudly told me they were from Ecuador. While they were beautiful, I looked for and eventually found equally beautiful roses from California (organic? no...)

We really didn't buy that much for the wedding - I had already picked up several bunches of mini callas from the farmer's market (from the same grower who recently sold me some awesome dahlias), and we had some stuff from the garden. We did buy some yellow and white roses, several bunches of white hydrangeas, 2 delicious bunches of peonies (the same kind that are currently NOT flowering in my garden), some flowering kale, some other crazy kale, and some curly willow branches. A few of the willow branches even sprouted, and I'm keeping one in water with plans to pot it at some point (that should work, right?)

Anyhow, the flowermart opens at like 3 a.m. but they don't allow us non-pros in until 10 a.m. so I can only imagine how incredible it must be in the wee hours of the morning. Now in my next life I want to be a homesteader, fabric crafter, and locally grown florist.

Variety

One of the things that still shocks me about gardening is the incredible assortment of different varieties available of things that, to most people, are just one thing. And not just of lettuce and potatoes, either. Territorial Seed Co. lists 35 different types of garlic. Thirty five! Do they all taste different? Look different? It seems that way, yet if I walked into a fancy grocery store and asked for "Ontario purple trillium garlic" I'm guessing I would get some funny looks. And then there's red onions. Did you know there are different kinds of red onions? (as well as multiple types of white and yellow and scallions?)

There are also the things we know have varieties, but it turns out that those varieties are just categories, too. "Heirloom tomato" actually refers to an almost infinite number of varieties. Here are a few of my favorite names (today):
- Yellow perfection
- Green zebra
- Delicious (duh?)
- Kellogg's breakfast (in our garden now)
- Pink accordion
- Tiger-like
- Cosmonaut Volkov
- Striped cavern...

It goes on. If you have some procrastinating to do, check out Baker Creek's tomato options and just imagine the possibilities.

Carpenter bees and other thoughts

On June 18th N and I were married, largely explaining why I haven't written a blog post in nearly a year. Much of my time was devoted to crafting, reading other people's blogs about wedding craftiness, and attempting to grow all of the flowers for the wedding. The last didn't exactly work (I would estimate I grew about 30% of the flowers used in the actual wedding decorations), but it means my garden is much different this year than last.

Here's an abbreviated list of what I grew: various sunflowers (bloomed perfectly on time, unexpectedly), calla lilies (epic failure), peonies (fail, duh), zinneas (fail for the wedding but now blooming beautifully), marigolds (mostly starts, great in the wedding), double-click cosmos (only a few blooms for the wedding, now great), bells of Ireland (meh), some kind of poppy that is about to bloom, dusty miller (from starts, good for wedding filler), ranunculus (too early), alliums (almost all too early), columbine (fail), German chamomile (fail, though finally growing), hydrangeas (now have tiny, unexpectedly pink-ish blooms), yarrow (big win, unintentional addition), and a huge, insane, amazing smelling mountain of sweetpeas ('April in Paris' and 'Royal Wedding' from Renee's Garden). There are a few photos on flickr of the bouquets, etc, with hopefully more to come. In addition to the wedding flowers I've had some good luck with echinacea, violas, and nasturtiums, so it's a pretty colorful place.

What this all means is that the garden this year has been a much more lively place for birds and bees. One big surprise was that the birds' favorite snack seemed to be sunflower leaves. This left the leaves looking lacy, but the flowers intact, but that was fine by me. The bees have been everywhere, of course, but the most exciting was when I got buzzed by a GIANT bee headed to a dime-sized hole in a rotten log I was using to hold down some black plastic (attempting to grow watermelons on the California coast...). It's probably silly for me to be so excited about a relatively common native insect, but I just feel so honored that this guy (I think) has deemed my often scruffy yard to be good habitat for not just foraging but living.

Here's a photo:



I claim no entomological expertise, but I am fairly certain that this is a carpenter bee (Xylocopa spp.) of some species. Go nature!

Garden Update

We have a zucchini problem. I'm not embarrassed about it. I mean, sometimes, in life, you wake up nearly every morning to find new, surprisingly large zucchini lurking where you thought there were only flowers. I did better when N was out of town and I could convince myself that a plate of sliced raw zucchini constituted dinner. And lunch.

But now that he's home and we cook, we've cut back to maybe 1/2, maybe 3/4 of a zucchini per day, and that's just not enough to keep up. Tonight (N is out) I did make Barbara Kingsolver (and family)'s Disappearing Zucchini Orzo. I have to say that while it did make the zucch disappear, this is definitely a dish for a family with kids. I helped it out with some sun-dried tomatoes, but it could probably use more zest. (though I just went back for seconds)

And yesterday we made Sunset's arugula, fennel, and preserved lemon salad. Here's a question for you: are salt-preserved lemons just supposed to taste like salt? Did we miss something? Maybe you should rinse them? It was intense. Nothing like having to hydrate after your salad...

Forgetting...

I think I had forgotten about summer. Not having interns to supervise makes it feel less real. That and being away for its first month. But now it's too hot from noon to 6 pm, too cold right after that, and right now I can hear fireworks (R is, as usual, surprisingly indifferent). Though this strange school schedule means that independence day feels more like the start of summer, not the middle. It's strange how little is going on campus, compared to during the year.

Folks were over earlier and I tried to hide some zucchini in a salad that included potatoes (also from the garden!), grated zucch, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella, thyme, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and, of course, salt & pepper. Not great but not too bad. Everyone was impressed by the gigantic-ness of my zucchini plants... but no one knows the cause - more morning sun? afternoon shade? fertilizer anomaly? oh, plants, why are you so fickle?

Home...

... from Santa Fe and road tripping. See pictures of the Grand Canyon and whatnot. Not quite done processing the experience, but came home to an excessive amount of zucchini. Learned an interesting lesson tonight about hunger beating out kitchen creativity. And the house is still not self-cleaning. Sigh.

What am I forgetting?

Tomorrow I embark on the first serious solo road trip I've taken in a while. I'll be in Santa Fe, NM, for the next three weeks, learning something about "complex systems." On the way I have plans to spend a night in the Mojave, a night with friends in Flagstaff, and then two nights at the Grand Canyon on the way home (which I have never before seen! gasp!)

At the end of a pretty ridiculous search, I finally found my old-ish iPod, which will make all of this much more fun. I've gone through more than one hard drive in the past few years, and, of course, I'm not so good about backing up music, so this little device contains some music that I don't have other access to (yes, I know I could deal with this... but that takes effort and some shadiness). It will be interesting. Just me, Rowdy (the car), Sylvie (the road bike), and a bunch of random stuff (my cycling shoes are already packed).

I've already said goodbye to N and R, so now it's just parting with the garden, which will hopefully survive without me. The real news is that the center hop reached the ROOF of the garage the other day. Observe:



Awesome. The corn may be a lost cause, but I have hope for everyone else.

Here goes something!

Who knew?

Friends, I have surprising news: my brain has been hijacked by a crazy wedding planning person. This isn't actually all that surprising. I love parties, planning complicated things, and DIY stuff, so, really, a wedding is like a great culmination of fun things for me to obsess about. But it is a bit terrifying. Like, yesterday my cousin sent me links to EIGHT DIFFERENT WEBSITES that sell bicycle-themed wedding toppers that are not tandems. I hate to say it, but if for men the internet is for porn, for women it might be for wedding planning.

So, I either need to not talk about it here, or disconnect this blog from my "professional webpage" lest people realize that I spent several hours yesterday (1) looking for shrug knitting patterns, (2) shopping for yarn, and (3) knitting.

But, in other news, parts of the garden are going great. The weird one, though, is that my corn is tasseling at about 3 feet tall. Not good. According to the internet, corn flowering is linked to how many leaves it's put out, but its height is driven by sunlight & temperature. Hence, I plant corn too early, we have freakishly cold spring, I get diminutive corn. But supposedly it won't decrease yields. I'll let you know.

One more wedding / party planning comment: it's funny how some environmentally friendly things can make a party more expensive than normal (organic food, recycled paper invitations, providing shuttles), while others make it cheaper (not using flowers flown in from Peru, recycling, hand making stuff). Hmmm.

The News!

Phew, well, yet again a couple of weeks have slipped by. But below is the epic tale of our engagement! Enjoy!

On Saturday, we drove up to Chico, CA, with the intent of pedaling in the 100-mile Chico Wildflower Century. At about 6 a.m. on Sunday I realized that I had forgotten my cycling shoes (a fairly essential part of a 100-mile ride). After a quick search for friendly cyclists with extra shoes, I conceded to try on N's size 10 (men's) shoes. With a pair of arm warmers stuffed in the toes, they weren't so bad, and so I conceded to *try* them on the ride. That left N with no shoes, but he valiantly pulled on a pair of socks, donned his flip-flops, and then duct-taped them to his feet.

At the 51-mile mark we reached the top of the last major climb, and while was I celebrating surviving, N, very unexpectedly, quieted the crowd at the rest stop, got down on one knee, and pulled out a ring! Of course I said yes, and then (since we were behind schedule due to the shoe epic) we got back on our bikes and finished the 100 miles.

Wahoo!

Once again...

... Sunset Magazine comes through, even though I was skeptical at first. Brown sugar-banana coffee cake muffins, I thought you were going to get ugly, but you turned out awesome. Hopefully my committee agrees. Actually, hopefully the muffins aren't the most important part of the meeting, but baking success is an added bonus.

There is other big news but it's not quite blog-ready yet. But we did successfully complete the Chico Wildflower Century on Sunday, despite several surprising, monumental occurrences.

In the news

Our favorite local German beer garden is totally famous.

The Salsa Trials of 2010

Whoa. This has been a pretty epic house/garden weekend. I started off with a solid to-do list, only to discover yesterday that each thing on the list was really a >1 hr type of activity (i.e. "harvest" = pick winner plants/leaves, reject losers, pull up whole plants, compost, wash, wash, wash). Last year I had what I think was salmonella from unwashed farmers market lettuce, so I am no longer casual about leaf-washing. But the salad spinner is my new favorite invention.

The real purpose of this post is to record a salsa recipe. In anticipation of tomato season I'm hoping to perfect a mix. I'm usually a pico de gallo kind of gal, but for long-term storage, I think boiling will have to do. So today I made two 12 oz jars of this (an amalgam of internet recipes)

Salsa Trial No. 1

9 med. tomatoes (from TJ's) chopped (seeds & middle stay in... I'm lazy)
1.5 chipotle jalapenos (from B & A) minced
1 T brown sugar
1 "garleek" (going to be hard to replicate) chopped
2 t salt
2 t white vinegar
0.5 c cilantro stemmed & washed
juice of 2 limes
zest of 1 lime
0.5 c onions (mini-scallions from the garden) minced
2 t black pepper
2 T cornstarch
0.25 c water

Combine all but last 2 ingredients in a big pot, hand blend till smooth, bring to a boil then simmer for 45 min to cook down. Mix cornstarch & water separately then add to pot. Pour into jars, let cool for a bit on the counter then into the fridge.

Upon first tasting this recipe is okay. Next time definitely needs more onions and a squidge more garlic (N permitting...) and maybe another spice, but I'll have to ask the expert for advice on that.

In other news, I out-planted the corn yesterday. I know it's too early, but it was too huge for the wee peat pots. I think normally it would be okay, but we're supposed to have epic weather this week. So I haven't planted the pumpkins and beans, in case we have to start over. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to live somewhere with simultaneous warmth and rain, eh?

I had a leek there, but I got bored.

Epic garden day - mowed the over-grown lawn, planted the corn (with embarrassing soaker hose), and harvested almost everything from the raised beds. Sure, stuff wasn't ready, but after some thought I decided to turn it all into soup. I'm calling the garlic "garleeks", the leeks sad onions, and the onions... scallions. And the kale and chard... epic. But about 17 rounds with the salad spinner later, I think I've made soup. Now if I can just get it all into cans without any serious burns, I'll be good to go. Pictures will be posted manana. R is not entertained.

Bed Prep

Yesterday I painstakingly cut all the cover crop in the 10x10 plot (wheat, vetch, fava beans, and who knows what else) and then dug it up. Then today I began what could be a long experiment. First I added some soil and manure to amend and level it out.


Then I covered the whole thing with newspaper, wetting it to keep it all from blowing away. This step will hopefully keep down the weeds. Looks classy, eh?


Finally, the whole thing got covered with a nice layer of soil. When I plant into it I'll dig through the newspaper, but hopefully this will cut down on the weeds and re-sprouting cover crop.

more Spring!

We pedaled up OLH after work today, which was surprisingly not as hard as I expected (though I still wouldn't want to do it every day...) But the best part was that it is as close as I've ever been to hiking while on a road bike. Not only did we ride through redwoods, but there were Trilliums and milkmaids in bloom all along the road. And a lot of very fancy houses with PVs and water tanks, which I guess you have to do up there, but it was impressive.

Spring! (well, almost)

Whoa, where did February go? Meh, it was rainy and cold and full of work. But now there's sunshine (springing forward this weekend, though that won't help my early mornings) and the garden is starting to perk up. I've been posting stuff on flickr, but here's the big winner:


The daffodils ('Tahiti' and another double) are finally starting to bloom! We also planted three 'Magnum' hops rhizomes (alpha 12-14%!), so the asparagus and hops bed is mostly done (still need to do some rigging for the hops). The seedlings I started indoors are growing a bit faster than I expected (mostly the corn), so we're changing our planting plans a bit, but all should be fine.

Otherwise all is well in our little homestead. My two new favorite books are the Sunset Western Garden Book of Edibles and Home Grown. Just as long as it doesn't hail again...

I am thinking of things that are brown.

Earlier today R and I went for a hike at Pulgas Ridge, where there was a serious fetid adder's tongue (Scoliopus bigelovii) party on the northwest side. Check this out:


So I don't forget, this is what I baked today, adapted from Dreena Burton's Vegan Recipes. Though, honestly, the whole wheat-for-spelt substitution was simply because I couldn't fathom a trip to Whole Paycheck just for spelt flour. These cookies are an attempt to solve two challenges: (1) being vegan for 1 or 2 months and (2) not being super hungry on days that I run. Immediately out of the oven they taste pretty good!

Super-Charge Me! Cookies

Ingredients
1 cup oats / whole grain mix
2/3 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 tsp (rounded) sea salt
1/4 - 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/4 - 1/3 cup dried berries
3-4 tbsp walnut pcs
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup flax meal
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
3 tbsp almond butter
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 tbsp canola oil

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). In a bowl, combine oats, flour, salt, cinnamon, coconut, dried fruit, and nuts, sift in baking powder, and stir until well combined. In a separate bowl, combine flax meal, syrup, almond butter, and vanilla and stir until well combined. Stir in oil. Add wet mixture to dry, and stir until just well combined (do not overmix). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spoon batter onto baking sheet evenly space apart, and lightly flatten. Bake for 13 minutes (no longer, or they will dry out). Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for 1 minute (no longer), then transfer to a cooling rack.

Number of Servings: 12

In other news, I sowed seeds today (indoors, of course)! Cherry & Roma tomatoes, baby bell peppers, Ancho, Jalapeno, and New Mexican chiles, marigolds, and Echinacea. Get psyched for spring!

Salinger & Zinn

I have to say, right now, that I have a closer affinity for Zinn, and more sentiment, than I do for Salinger. I think this is probably telling, but here's the thing: Salinger, at least in my brief, distant experience with him, wrote books for boys. It's interesting, actually. Adam Gopnick's tribute claims that "In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Great Gatsby,' and 'The Catcher in the Rye.'" Funny thing - these are all books about men/boys. In contrast, A People's History of the United States reminds us that there is more to U.S. history, and life, than white men and their adventures. This also all sweetly reminds me of my high school APUS history teacher, Mr. Strand, who had us reading Zinn, Takaki, and Stephen Steinberg when we were supposed to be memorizing textbooks. In hindsight, those books (and Mr. Strand?) played huge roles in my adult view of the world.

AND, I am reminded that I should own (or at least preview from the library) Voices of a People's History of the U.S. - Zinn's selection of primary sources. Just as soon as the stack of books on the bedside table shrinks a bit.

Anthropomorphication

This almost made me cry. Poor Rover...