Spring's here!

This is my favorite time of year. Snow storms aren't bad any more because you know the snow will last a few hours, not a few days or weeks or months. The weather is unpredictable, and ever-changing. I can steal flowers and forsythia branches from the neighbors (just one or two per house! I'm not a total jerk- I never take enough to be noticeable).

 

 The field behind my house looks green and inviting, and I can pretend that it's not going to dry up in a couple months,and be full of puncture vine that will stab me and Whitney through the blankets as we read for as long as we can until we're sweating and the pale skin we got from our Western European ancestors is pink and dried up (we can usually make it like, twenty minutes).

In April, these jerks don't exist.

But my favorite thing about this time of year is planning a garden. I have a dozen of scraps of paper scribbled with the plants I will have, those I might have, and those I should consider, if my tiny garden can magically fit more than I thought it would. I draw out little maps of my garden and divide up the space with twigs and twine. I love planting seeds indoors and seeing things grow. I like testing the garden dirt to see if it's dry enough: balling up a wad of dirt in my hands and throwing it to the ground to see if it's more mud pie or workable.Getting callouses from shoveling. Finding wonder in the living. And I love- I love- that soon my house and tea and dinners will be filled with things that I grew.

  

mushaboom

I got my garden all tilled up and spread with compost this weekend, and not a minute too soon:

Looks like it's really going to start being winter around here, and besides needing shoes that'll keep out the wet and cold, I'm ready to face my least favorite season.

While working outside, I found that a group of mushrooms that I'd seen growing on an old elm stump this spring are back again. I'd been told by a couple people from Mushrooms Society of Utah that they were probably Flammulina velutipes, or flaming velvet foot/flaming shank. Now that they've returned, I was able to take a spore print and double check with field guides to be sure.

And they are! So now I've got some really lovely winter mushrooms growing thirty feet from my back door, and I'm ready to experiment with them. Luke is too nervous to eat them (and even doesn't want me to), but I did my research and am confident, so I'll probably cook some up in a stir fry for one.

Garden Party

May was a slow blog-posting month. Between graduation, a sister-in-law's out-of-town wedding, and spending most of most of my time studying for the Utah bar exam, I haven't been spending too much time on hobbies. But I'm back!

My birthday was at the end of May, and I planned a late-night garden party for myself. There was a three gallon recycled glass cooler (like this one) with limeade and all the mix-ins for cocktails (mint, basil, strawberries, tequila, vodka). Rather than a full meal, I served bread, flat bread, crackers and dips: hummus; sundried tomato and pineapple (I tried to replicate the one from Paradise Bakery, and think that besides being a smoother texture, it was a pretty good match. It seemed to be the favorite of the night); sweet onion (my favorite); Coriander-Chile Pinto Bean; and a tomato basil butter. Ash brought a delicious bruschetta.


For decoration, Drew and I put blankets on the grass surrounded by candles in mason jars. I used some of my vintage fabrics to make some fabric banners, one which hung between a tree and garage, and one that we draped around the table.

It was a little early for the garden to be far along, but I did have a couple pots filled with snap dragons, dahlias, and celosia. I also had jupiter's beard and daisies in a bud vase Whitney found at an antique store and gave me for my birthday.


So everything was beautiful, and just as I'd planned it.... And then it was too cold to enjoy. After ignoring everyone's shivers for an hour, we moved the party inside, where (despite not being as pretty), we warmed up and had a good time.

Excellent Flavor

I adore this painting/plant marker that I got from my friend Christopher. I saw some he'd made for himself and loved them so much I commissioned him to make some for me. This one came in the mail yesterday, and I couldn't be more pleased with it. I've always liked his style (more examples of his cool art here and here and here), and am glad to have some of it in my house. Thanks, dude!

Sweet Pea

I don't know, maybe it's dorky, but last night when I was reading Martha Stewart Living, I was delighted by this:
If I didn't know better, I'd think the tattoo artist was looking at this picture when he was tattooing me last October. Love it.

This week I went to my old house and dug up my perennials. This move has been hard for me, and maybe it's melodramatic, but it was therapeutic to undo a lot of what I did, making it feel less like "my" house/yard. One of the things I moved to my new little garden is a sweet pea. This will be its third year, and the roots are getting pretty substantial; I hope this is the year that it really takes off. I love this flower.

tomatoes.

I've been getting at least one of these zebra tomatoes a day:
They're heirlooms, so I'm going to save some seeds and plant them again next year (but I'll have to get those six foot tall tomato cages, because these plants are tall enough to fold over and touch the ground).

They're a smaller tomato, a nice size for lunch for one person. Mostly we've been slicing them up, heating them through, and eating them on toast. Luke also experimented with a recipe he made up called "green spaghetti," which had the zebra tomatoes, green peppers, parmesan, and interestingly enough, green apples. It was sour and very yummy, and I liked it just as it was. Luke says he needs to perfect it.

We're still waiting for the prettiest ones, the red ruffles to get ripe. They're still green and hard as rocks.

Time for a garden feast

Sunflowers

I guess I'm really bad about posting every day. We don't have the internet at our house (we got rid of it during the summer because I wasn't in classes and it seemed like a good way to save a little money), and going to school or the coffee shop hasn't sounded fun.

I've been really obsessed about sunflowers lately, because we have monster ones growing outside our front door. I like leaving the house every day, because it's so nice to be surrounded by fifteen feet of flowers. I like the traditional bright yellow ones a lot, but mostly I love the chianti variety. When they first bloom they're brown, and then in a couple days fade to a pretty red.


This week I made a sunflower brooch, and idea I got from tiny happy, one of my favorite blogs (a tutorial here). I like the way it turned out. Here's a close-up of my boob:

Failures

Haven't had the best results in the crafting world lately: a tank top I tried to sew, thinking bias tape wouldn't really be necessary (and of course it was); a summer dress that, no matter how much I tried to fix it, always looked like it was maternity; and skinny little zinnias I've been growing in my windowsill that just keep getting taller and taller, but never fill out or get adult leaves (my mom laughed when she saw them).

One of the more disappointing failures were the Maitake mushrooms I was trying to grow. From the start, they took much longer than they were supposed to, and even though they went through every expected phase, they took so long that they started getting moldy before ever totally maturing. We saved a handful of almost-mushrooms, and we'll see how they taste.

Some Maitake well on their way to being ready to harvest.

I've also failed to follow through on a lot of the embroidery I've started lately. One was a Ukranian-inspired flower embroidery for my mom for mother's day. The other, an anatomical heart for my dear friend Drew's birthday. Both have been sitting around my house, untouched for the past week and a half.


Not everything has failed lately. The garden is starting to do well, we made some pretty yummy salmon for mine and my brother's birthday dinner, and our house has been full of pretty bouquets of lunaria, iris, muscari, and penstemon. So I'm still optimistic that I can crank out some things that I actually like.

In time for May Day:

Columbine's up! So are scarlet runner beans, swiss chard, peas, zucchini, and chives. There were some yellow squash, too, but I was clumsy enough to knock the pot off the window sill and now have to start over.

I like growing plants from seeds so much more than from seedlings. One of the first things I do every morning is get a status update on my plants (and many mornings I have to text Luke so he knows what changes to look for when he comes home from work). It's so satisfying to be able to see the major daily changes and to watch things to go from a pile of dirt to something really beautiful. Plus, the success rate is lower, so it feels like the seeds that make it and grow are little champs. I imagine I'll feel similarly if I ever get pregnant. "(something like) Thirty-five percent of fertilized eggs don't become babies. I'm so proud of you!"

Here are some white Hyacinth beans that are going to be climbing up my neighbor's porch railing- she is too busy to garden and gave me permission to use up her half of the lot (we live in a duplex). All planted at the same time, it's cool to see the different stages of growth all in one pot:
One of the things I like about these plants is seeing the seed shell being sloughed off and big adult leaves fold out of the pod underneath. Plants are more interesting when they do so much of their initial growth above ground like that.

Spring Flowers

Spring is really here now. It's been raining a lot more than it usually does for Utah springs (it seems like there's not much of a transition between winter and summer here). I've started feeding birds every day, and I like hearing them outside my window every morning. My flower bed is starting to fill in, too. I've got grape hyacinth, tulips, and pink hyacinth in a color I'd never seen before- it's not the normal pastel pink, but almost magenta.

This week I planted irises and day lillies in a bed in the side of the yard. It took an hour and a half to clear all the old leaves and wandering grass from a 3 x 6 foot area, and I got a sunburn, but it looks really nice. Only twelve more feet to go...

Got a good compost pile started about a month ago, and it's already looking really good. I threw in the old sawdust log from the shiitake mushrooms, and I'm hoping that there's some leftover mycelium that will help everything decompose.

As for the rest of my gardening: a lot will be planted when it stops raining long enough for us to get outside and plant. We have swiss chard, peas, sweet peas, and lettuce (we're going to try from seeds because the starts we planted last weekend didn't seem to take the transplant well). I've also started a bunch indoors so they'll be ready to go outside at the end of may, when we're sure to have warm enough nights. We're looking forward to yellow squash, zucchini, eggplant, chives, thai and sweet basil, and a dozen or more kinds of flowers.

Hints of a pending spring

I like how even my indoor plants know that spring is coming. As soon as the days started getting longer, they started putting out new leaves and shoots. I like having new growth in the house that I can monitor daily.

Leaves unfolding:




This little baby is going to grow up to be a gerbera daisy:


My favorite, though, are the plants that put up their leaves, which slowly unroll for over the next week or so: