February 28, 2015

Spring Dreams

SPRING.............HERE WE COME!!! Just awesome!!!

On Saturday, February 28, 2015, Marni Vos wrote:
The shelves are up, the lights are hung and the new baby seeds are in the seed starter soil and working their wayto the community garden.

What has been planted:

We’ll give the leeks one more year to prove themselves.

First year for starting onions in the house, we’ll see, I plan to put onion seeds in the ground sometime this month, keep an eye on which is most successful:

Red onions
White onions
Yellow onions
Shallots

Hello cucumbers:
Homemade pickle cucumbers
Marketmore cuc.’s
And first year for Japanese Climbing cucumbers…from seed savers exchange, “Japanese in origin; listed by Thorburn in 1892.
A distinct climbing sort with strong grasping tendrils, ideal for growing on a trellis or fence but can also be grown on the ground.
Tender, crisp, and slightly tart fruit up to 9” long.  Excellent for slicing and pickling.”

Bell Peppers
Red, from an organic pepper…just an experiment.
The rest from seed packs…yellow, red and green.

Hot peppers:
Jalapeño
Anaheim

Basil:
Lettuce Leaf
Italian Genovese

Lacinato Kale (For Mary) :o

Tomatoes:  I will keep them all labeled so we can be more selective of which ones are more productive,
or taste the best:

Tomato Bush Ace
Brandywine (Sudduth’s Strain)
Nebraska Wedding
San Marzano
German Pink

Lastly, I planted Aster; China Aster Blend…for the butterflies, and for us :) Again, we’ll see!

Christy does a great job of saving seeds…I plan to get better at that!  In the mean time, I have
gotten seed packets for:  The below are direct in the ground seeds:

Cilantro/ Coriander:
Sabor
Long Standing

Carrots

Lettuce:
Forellenschluss
(We’ll need to get spinach, more lettuce, like that…)

Okra: Star of David

Squash: Marina Di Chioggia

Pea: Tom Thumb

Purple Prairie Clover

February 11, 2015

Winter 2014 Books in the Garden

This is not a regular garden post; I am indulging my own interest in reading. Much of my fair weather reading takes place in our beautiful garden. And since every media outlet feels free to post best of year end lists of movies, books, songs, foods, electronic gizmos, I'm posting the list of best books I read in 2014, in no particular order. 

My Struggle Book Three by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Book three centers on K’s boyhood. While not as compelling to me as Book One, I am still enthralled by this six-book enterprise. Impatiently waiting for Don Bartlett to finish the translation of the remaining books. Book Four is due this spring.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson
The third volume in Robinson’s gorgeous examination of two families in Gilead, Iowa.

A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr
A perfect, fleeting English summer in the life of a World War I veteran, recalled many years later.

Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie
A terrific literary debut about the invention of printing by moveable type. Comparable to the kind of thing Hilary Mantel does for Cromwell.

I Hate to Leave this Beautiful Place by Howard Norman
Norman, always thoughtful, beautiful, and slyly humorous, memorializes five incidents in his life.

An Unnecesary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
Godless, fatherless, childless, and divorced, aging Aaliya lives a reclusive life in a Beirut apartment stockpiled with books. Each year she translates another book into Arabic.


Honorable Mention.

Before I Burn by Gaute Heivoll
Fictionalized account of Norway’s most dramatic arson case. Translated by the great Don Bartlett.

Adelle Waldman. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P
Weeks after reading this I looked at every young man with deep suspicion.

Garden Maintenance: Pruning the Fruit Trees

It was a good day for pruning the orchard trees: two peach, two pear, and one cherry. Thank you, Brad, Dick, and Marni. Photos by Christy.