Happy Fourth!

Dill flower fireworks!

While I Was Away . . .

A few things happened.

Quince Blossom Print Giveaway and Ciao!

"Stretch Out and Wait"

Leave a comment - win this 8" X 8" print! And leave your email address!

I will draw a random number on July 7th.

Willa and I are getting ready to take a train ride to see grandparents this morning. LOTS of packing that I still need to do . . . so cheers and more gardening talk when I return . . . !

The Slower Side of Summer

Drying lavender.

Eating calendula biscuits - with Foster's Seven Pepper Jelly (not pictured, but you get the idea).

Sand and sun at Mint Springs. Picnics with friends.

A Sunday supper with Uncle Chris out on our back deck.

Making the most of our CSA and our gardens. Willa has taken a liking to snap peas. Lucky her! Weeks 2 and 3 of the CSA involved many, many salads; bok choy with toasted sesame oil, red pepper flakes and garlic (Thanks, Sarah!); spinach pesto; and Red Russian kale wilted in our favorite Jacques Pepin sausage-potato-onion packet from Fast Food My Way.

I'm trying out this recipe tonight - to use more lettuce and spring onions.

Remembering that some of the best moments are the ones that lack focus. And that summer is best experienced in as many girly skirts as possible.

(This one is from anthropologie a few years back.)

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All of my spring work in the front (newish) garden is paying off and getting ready to burst. Butterfly bushes, rose-y coreopsis, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, daylilies and echinacea.
I need to find some vintage garden chairs so I can watch the show.

We Have A Winner!

Weeeee!

Leis of Gardening In Heels has won the photo giveaway. My print will be making the long journey to . . . Australia!

This was so much fun, I plan on doing another at the end of the week. Thanks a bunch to each of you that showed interest in my little old picture. BIG smiles all-around.

Savoring The Lull

Good lord, did I need a break.

You know that thing that happens when you have been going a million miles an hour for a while, and then you rest and then you get sick because your body will finally let you?

Yeah, that. This time, I fully welcomed it. And it got me re-thinking the garden. About going lo-fi in the garden to keep things simpler and simpler.

Down in our raised beds, the bed that is the happiest and makes me happiest has perennial flowers and herbs in it. The bed that frustrates me the most is the high maintenance vegetable bed. Because it is far away from the house - it gets away from me constantly.

So, I'm hoping for one smallish vegetable bed much closer to the house (or just incorporating more veggies into our front yard landscape) and putting more lavender, perennials and berries down in the raised beds. So I can weed easily, mulch heavily and let it all be.

This lull has me stepping away from the computer and the camera (just for a spell!) and reading this, listening to this, watching a bit of this, eating piles of homemade potato salad (with bacon and homegrown dill) and swimming here (Mint Springs!) with Willa.

Ready :: Set :: Weekend!

Here's hoping some salvia and nepeta make in into the Sugar Hollow landscape this weekend.

A busy month of fundraisers (I do graphic design and public relations for freelance weekend work), garden coaching, swim 'lessons' with Willa, testing out the Crozet Farmers' Market and refining my Etsy shop . . . is coming to close.

This weekend is deliciously free and simple. Just a grown-up night out on Saturday to see Steve Earle and celebrate his new album of Townes Van Zandt covers.

The timing of our rains lately have saved the vegetable and perennial gardens from severe neglect. Insane sprouting and growth spurts ensued. With me nary lifting a finger.

I have two more raised beds that I would like to uncover and plant up. One with perennials that also make great cutting flowers - Coreopsis, Black-Eyed Susans, Yarrow and Echinacea. The other, with a dwarf weeping mulberry.

I hope to get out and harvest some herbs for drying. Oregano, chamomile, lavender, sage.

The okra needs to be sown and the collards will follow after that.

This planting combination (photo above) has me thinking I can break our landscaping budget just a bit. Because I need (and can never have enough) blues and purples.

Don't forget about the Vintage-Viewfinder print give away! Drawing on June 15th!! Scroll down a bit . . .

Happy, soppy Friday!

The CSA and Our Garden :: Week One

Chives from our garden were nice additions to CSA salad greens.

Last week, we picked up our first CSA package. My only worry about joining a CSA was that there would be wasteful behavior involved. I have taken a silent oath these days to use up everything we already have in the house (garden supplies, crafting supplies, pantry stock, etc.) in the constant pursuit of zero-dollar days and I wanted to carry that thrifty behavior through to our CSA. I also wanted to make sure I was pulling goodies from our garden and using them up, as well.

What we received from the CSA:

Salad mix
Red Russian Kale
Spinach
One dozen eggs

How it was put to use (with additions from our plot):

Salad Mix - Lots of dinner salads with toasted sunflower seeds, cranberries, dried blueberries, shredded carrots. One night, we had enough strawberries from our garden to put on top of a salad (Due props to Gradually Greener for the idea). I also took a salad for lunch with leftover salmon. Chopped up chives from our herb garden were also a nice addition to the salads.

Red Russian Kale - This was used immediately. My new favorite type of kale. I made the Hot and Sour Greens mentioned here.

Spinach and seven eggs became a spinach fritatta. Recipe out of the Sundays at Moosewood Cookbook.

Three more eggs were used in a Sweet Almond Cake from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I topped it with stewed rhubarb (from our garden). It is the closest thing to homemade marzipan that I have yet to experience.

This is both a good and a bad thing. I found I had to say out loud, "Step away from the Sweet Almond Cake" more than once this past weekend. Half the time I did, the other half, not so much.

Now if I could just summon that attitude with our insane bounty of salad greens.

Best Explanation of Sheet Mulching. Ever.

And it is no surprise, as it was written by local permaculture dynamo Christine Gyovai for the Piedmont Garden Swap. Learn more about area permaculture events and opportunities at the Blue Ridge Permaculture Network site.

The part about the multitude of happy worms is what really got me. Read on.

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Hi all,

I've built several beds with sheet mulching - layering newspaper and cardboard (and compost, etc.) - with varying degrees of success.

My most recent beds have worked out wonderfully - we have about 450 sq. ft. of sheet mulched beds.

I removed all glossy colored sections from the newspapers, and removed all tape from cardboard. I think the Cville Weekly uses soy-based ink; would want to double check with them for sure.

I put the cardboard down first, overlapping the edges by 6 in, watered the layers well, put an inch of compost down, put down newspaper (about 6 sheets thick) again overlapping, watered well, and covered the whole bed with thick straw mulch. It takes a few seasons to break down, and you want to keep it as wet as a wrung out sponge. The worms go crazy (I've never seen so many worms). They come up and eat the sugars and starches in the newspaper and cardboard and aerate the soil, and you get their castings. Really remarkable. I've planted seeds and starts directly into the beds.

Here's a link to a project I worked on in Charlottesville for a class I co-taught. You can see pictures of building sheet mulch beds, as well as read a document Kathleen Maier wrote about the process:

The book Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway gives a great description of sheet mulching as well.

Hope that helps,

Christine

LISH Door Prize :: Viewfinder Fern Photo Giveaway!

In honor of a recent Charlottesville visit from Elvis Perkins - I am giving away an 8" X 8" print that I named after one of his songs "I'll Be Arriving."

In case you haven't listened to him, you can't go wrong with either Ash Wednesday or Elvis Perkins in Dearland. Both are the soundtrack to our spring. Seeing him live with That Girl officially made him the bee's knees, in my book.

Please just leave a comment (and your email address) - I'll swirl the random number generator on June 15th!

G'luck!