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Cover cropping
Yesterday I planted the backyard beds and half of the front yard with crimson clover and/or fava beans, with innoculant. It all got rained in nicely overnight and this morning. The manure I top-dressed with is sprouting grass and weeds like crazy. I can't keep up! -
Fall planting
Yesterday I sowed kale (Russian red, Russian while, and lacinato), and Good King Henry, a perennial green.Thinned out some of the earlier seedlings and potted them up for my friend Ellen. The really exciting thing, though, was potting up the treed collards I got from Bountiful Gardens 2 days ago, though. It's a perennial collard that grows up to 9 ( Read more... ) -
New Starts
We've been in our new place since April. It's been at turns idyllic and terrifying, and almost always hectic. These day I'm settling in somewhere between constant low-level anxiety punctuated with moments of unexpected delight. (I'll admit to a bit of crankiness as well.) The first several months involved catch-up on the finish work throughout the ( Read more... ) -
The Drawing Board
I'm back from three weeks of learning at the Bullock's Homestead on Orcas Island. I ate my breakfast on the porch, observing my landscape and seeing layers upon layers of elements that were invisible to me before: my city block is a deep, almost vast expanse of untapped potential ( Read more... ) -
August harvest. Sowing for fall.
Harvesting the red cabbage this week. (Those are thumbprints where I squeezed the head to make sure it was firm enough to pick.)
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(Untitled)
The small mason bee house that sits on a south-facing ledge now harbors a couple dozen of mason bee larvae, which have been exploding with growth for the past couple of weeks. I hope I'll have time to post pictures later; they are amazing. It seems to me that these guys, one of our earliest pollinators, were late this year. I saw Momma Mason laying ( Read more... ) -
Beans, Glorious Beans!
It took all of 10 minutes to plant them, so what took me so long? In the last two weeks I've put down a few yards of mulch and planted about 20 white azaleas and 4 new spireas, pulled many bushels-full of weeds from the garden, reseeded the lawn (yes I know; we're trying to sell the house so I need a lawn...) pruned (at last) the cherry trees and ( Read more... ) -
The darling buds of May
Dinner today is keftedes, lima beans, and spanikopita; I just picked the parsley that I will serve with the lima beans:
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Early April
Yesterday morning we woke to a blanket of snow. Today, however, it is spring.
The overwintered veggies are about to start their final burst of growth; salad days are here!
We've been eating the broccoli already; it seems just as delicious whether we get to it before some of the flowers open or not. Is that your experience, too?
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