DIY Garden Projects, Yummy Recipes, & Crafty Goodness
I’m so excited about receiving the new book from Timber Press called Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees
Said to be “A beautifully produced and photographed new book” by Martha Stewart Living, photographer Robert Llewellyn should be proud. To win your own copy of Seeing Trees, enter the contest on Timber Press’s website. Bonus: you can also win a signed print!
I was just not prepared for snow. Not in my garden, wardrobe, or attitude. It’s not typical to get snow in Vancouver, particularly in November, so it’s reasonable to be unprepared. The beet greens, parsnip tops, chard, kale, lettuce and all my winter vegetables got smooshed and frozen for a week. And the trees weren’t prepared. Leaves hadn’t fallen yet so the sticky white stuff brought down my 50-year old lilac and crushed a few other hardy growers. One day it’s fall, then next, winter. That’s just the way it is.
I got out a few days before the dump and covered my rosemary, sage and gai lan with greenhouse umbrellas which may help a bit. As you can see by the photos, it’s a bit like trying to drink a swimming pool.
My weekly home-grown vegetable adventures weren’t a total bust though. Just before the dump, I managed to get a few parsnips from the ground and make a lovely parsnip and white bean soup with crispy parsnips. It was delish.
Now that the ground has thawed a bit I’ll try to dig up the potatoes I left at the community plot (whoops) and I pulled some beets. Greens are wilty but the roots are plump and sweet. I hope to continue pulling the roots for as long as I can, but I think that the winter vegetable starts are a write off for the year so I’ve set up the automatic sprouter indoors and I’ll grow my greens there for now.
It’s been an interesting week or two we have been having here, so it’s great to have a look over at Daphne’s Dandelions to see what others are harvesting elsewhere.
I recently read this post by Kat about why she embraced failure as a gardener (trying + failing = learning + growth) and I was struck once again my the gravitational pull of guilt that lingers in my gardens. I fight it. I deny it. I give myself great pep talks about how the garden is there for me not me for it. That when I want to garden I will always have LOTS to do and when I want to do other things, well that’s life. I’m busy. I don’t always feel like dragging my tired ass out to the garden to weed yet another day. I keep strong and fight the guilt. If the plants die then they aren’t the right plants for me, I reason.
As Kat eloquently put it, “failure isn’t my favorite part of gardening, it’s PART of gardening. There is no escaping it. If one wants to grow in anything they do, one has to take risks.”
I believe all of this and love that she said it. We ALL fail sometimes and other times we just let things slide (die, shrivel, wilt). No one can do EVERYTHING with out going bonkers. Busy lives, busy days, family, friends, jobs, classes, etc, etc, etc. It’s a part of the process and a valuable one. So in celebration of all the half-ass projects that I have collecting in my house, that we all have collecting in our houses, I’m posting photos. Yes, graphic photos, of the less-than perfect moments in my garden:
Sometimes I forget about the bird feeders on a tree, in the garage, or in bird feed box. Then I get a creepy surprise like this crazy black fungus.
Or mold, sprouts AND crazy black fungus. Yikes, sorry birds.
Late blight can get away from me as much as I try to remove every branch, leaf, grain of soil that is contaminated. This Micro Tom tomato plant hid from me and my snippers on De-Blight Day and now I think those little tomatoes are rotting in my fridge.
This weedy overgrown mess is my back garden. I really need to divide the perennials, clean up the soil, and give it a good mulch for the winter. But hey, I’m just happy that I planted up the barrel with Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli).
A kind neighbour gave me some dahlia tubers which I promptly left in newspaper on my deck for 4 months until they sprouted. I still have no idea where to plant them.
And since the kicthen table is the holding ground for garden / food related projects, it is the wasteland for my collections like these eggshells I planned to use against the slugs that have been mowing down my lettuce seedlings…
…or basil clippings that have been there for months.
There is more out there: dead seedlings, seeds sprouting in packets, trees in need of pruning, and weeds, weeds, weeds. Ugh, and that box of fall bulbs I was due to plant last month is staring at me every day (plant me plant me plant me). But I say, “Damn you bulbs and weeds and guilt!” I have a beautiful garden that feeds me well and is completely and utterly imperfect. I shun the guilt, hold my head high, knowing I have a garden to work on whenever I want to enjoy a beautiful day outside, or get in a little garden therapy.
Update: the contest winner was Katherine from Kittens Lost Her Mittens. Congrats!
Do you make beautiful labels for your jams, jellies and pickles? If so you could win a $20 Gift Certificate to one of the 200 CSN stores online. CSN sells just about anything you can imagine, from dining room chairs to greenhouses so you’ll be sure to find something you can spend it on.
To enter, send me a photo or add one using the link tool below. The winner of the gift certificate will be chosen at random from all photo entries received on or before December 15th, 2010.
Want to make your own?
Check out the Homemade Jam Label Project or take a look at the entries from the contest and some fabulous labels I found out there, many with instructions or free templates:
Where has the time gone? October 25th?! I can’t believe how fast this month is flying by.
It started for me with some good, old-fashioned, back-breaking labour. I stuck my shovel in the dirt a record number of times to dig up and divide (and conquer!) the hundreds of perennials I grow in my front yard for Emerging Hope. I estimate that there were at 400-500 plants that we dug up that will be potted and sold to help the charity.
All that hard work deserved some reward so I hopped on a plane with a last minute ticket to join some girlfriends for a week long siesta in Cabso San Lucas. A beautiful place with some fascinating flora to look at (but don’t touch the cacti - youch!)
With brown skin and a pedicure, I arrived back home to trade in my flip flops and sundresses for boots and sweaters…and of course to see what’s been happening out in the garden.
There were a lot of yummy veggies that needed harvesting…
And some that the blight took (blech!)…
And many that got chopped up and thrown in a pot with a whole bunch of garlic and herbs…
The roasted flavours permeating the house and my belly was a delightful contrast to the daily fish tacos, guacamole and Coronitas of the previous week. Each was equally wonderful though, making this a truly fabulous month so far.
Today I went to Tomato Fest at the Trout Lake Farmer’s Market to buy my heirloom tomato ‘seeds’ for next year. The vendors sell tomatoes, not tomato seeds in packets, but really, a tomato is just a delicious and colourful packet filled with of lots and lots of seeds, right? And heirlooms have grown true seed to fruit year after year, so what better way to decide what tomatoes you want in your garden the next year: buy some heirlooms tomatoes, scoop out the seeds, and chow down. If it’s a good tomato – grow more! If it sucks, then just toss the seeds in the compost.
These are the ones I’ll be testing and saving over the next few days to see which will join my most favourite of all heirlooms (some of those favs snuck into the photo even though they came from my garden: Green Zebra, Sweetheart Grape and Siletz). All this for $8.50. Hell yeah!
It seems crazy to BUY more tomatoes when this is the giant bowl I am trying to cope with today from my home garden (this is a really, really big bowl):
Ah, well, I’m sure I’ll find SOMETHING to do with them all….om nom nom nom nom..
