"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation.  It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green."  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse

Nate, I totally get you. 

(I get a major kick out of the way water beads up on brassica leaves, don't you?)

And now, in February, there is rain.  Hopeful gopher holes puncture the soil next to my terraced garden beds, but it seems the wire on their bottoms holds firm.  A few notes on the garden's progress:

For reference, all this garden madness is taking place in northern San Diego County, USDA Zone 9a, Sunset Zone 19.

The top bed was planted with lettuce mix, spinach, and purple kale.  

The lettuce is Johnny's "Allstar" mix.  This stuff performed outstandingly in our Georgia garden and is doing the same here.  Lettuce is, without question, one of my favorite things to grow.  It's dead easy, and you're harvesting precious little baby salad greens in less than a month.  Cut right above the plant crowns, it'll grow back in a week when I'm ready to make a big salad for dinner again.  

For as many people as we have eating salad around here, I find that two strips, 1'x3', is more than enough lettuce for that big dinner salad, and side salads several times during the week.  Although the lettuce is still going strong, aphids are beginning to show up in great numbers, actually sucking a few of my lettuce plants dry and dead.  At first there were a few aphids that I washed away when I rinsed the leaves before dinner. Now I fill up the sink, dump in the lettuce, wait a few minutes for drowning to occur, then rake all the leaves to one side and drain out the bodies.  Several times.  I wonder if we'll eventually have so many aphids in our lettuce that we won't have to add chicken to to our salad to make it dinner.

The spinach is Johnny's "Emu".  It's growing shorter than other spinach varieties I've grown, but is that the season, the climate, or the variety?  I don't know.  Other than a couple of snails, and a few of the aforementioned aphids, the spinach is as happy as an absolute pig in slop.

I hadn't grown kale before.  It always seems like it needs to be planted just when I'm exhausted from growing a summer's worth of vegetables.  Last year, though, there was no summer garden.  Ergo, kale.  "It grows like a weed and tastes like one," my sister told me when I asked her advice about growing it.  So I planted three seeds, of Territorial's "Redbor" kale.  

I can't say it's grown like a weed, although maybe it's because I planted a red variety instead of the original green.  It has, in my opinion, a delicate cabbage flavor.  If weeds tasted like this I wouldn't have to be all cultivate-y about things.  Then again, she eats beets.  Bless her heart.

Brussels sprouts were a no-show, although I planted them twice.  Territorial's "Roodnerf".  A shame, really, since my daughter was hoping to be able to taste brussels sprouts.  She says that in every book she's ever read that mentions them, kids hate them, and she wanted to know what all the hype was about.  I'm not about to buy frozen brussels sprouts from the store to try to save their reputation.  The mystery will have to remain.  

Kohlrabi, though:

Anyone else thinking War of the Worlds here?  The kohlrabi in my garden bed is about to crawl out of there on those crazy legs and start shooting people dead.  Johnny's "Kossack".  These are relatively problem-free so far.  No harvest yet.

There's a cabbagey-looking thing in the end of that bed where I planted broccoli twice, but I'm pretty sure it's not slated to do anything noteworthy until later in the spring.  Territorial's "Purple Sprouting".

Cauliflower and parsnips, nada.  Cauliflower: Territorial's "Amazing".  Parsnips: Territorial's "Cobham Improved Marrow".

The rutabagas are making a brave showing, though:

Purple! Roots!  Just like a rutabaga should.  We've never grown (or eaten) rutabagas before, either.  All I can say so far is that at least the growing part seems to be a success.  There is this, though:

Yech.  I've never dealt with aphids like this before.  Just one of the blessings of our mild climate, I suppose.  The rutabagas are Territorial's "Marian". 

Oh, turnips, how we love you.  (And we are not the only ones.)  The turnips are taking the brunt of the aphid invasion.  These are Johnny's "Hakurei" turnips, an old standby since the first year we grew them in Georgia.  Never can we eat enough turnips.  Never can we keep them from being eaten by other hungry things.  In Georgia it was flea beetles.  Here, it looks like it'll be aphids.  The battle for the turnips rages on. 

French Breakfast radishes, "D'avignon", Johnny's:

Fast, crispy, with a hint of sharpness.  I am torn between these and "Easter Egg" which we've grown (also successfully) before.  We plant these in the same row as carrots, because they're grown and eaten by the time the carrots get their sleepy heads up out of the soil. 

See:

Aren't they such pretty, ferny plants?  One could almost use them as a houseplant.  They've forgotten, in their vanity over being so pretty, that they're actually supposed to be making food for the folk who planted and are watering them.  Beautiful tops, little thin roots (as yet).  This may have something to do with the fact that we put mushroom compost in there and the balance of nutrients tends toward leaves instead of roots this year, but if there's anything carrots want more than anything, it's time to do their thing.  So we'll see.  These are "Sugarsnax" from Johnny's.

That's everything, from our winter garden experiment.  Here's the whole set of four beds, as it looks today:

Eventually some of those caps had to come off, because the plants simply grew too large.  Maybe they can hold their own now against rabbits and squirrels.  

Before very long it'll be time to fill up the beds we're furiously working on on the other side of the garden.  Spring waits for no man.  Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny for a while.  

If you need me, you know where to find me, 

~MB~

a) Dr. Seuss and I have spent way too many hours together.
b) I promise not to quit my day job.

-------------------------------------------------------

"Your child has caught a cold, my dear?"
(Although the baby's nowhere near)
"Well, yes, however did you know?"
"Because you're covered, head to toe,
with spots of dried and patchy white.
I hope the little one's soon all right."
Thus it's the Mother-Of-Toddlers' lot,
to spend her lifetime covered in snot.

She put on clean, fresh-smelling clothes, 
Just a little while ago, 
Ready, now, to face anything, 
How nice it is, to be so clean!
But you know how this story goes, 
They met with that little runny nose. 
Clean clothes, how soon are you forgot!
Now our poor Mother is covered in snot.

Is it a badge of pride or shame, 
(the thought wanders aimlessly through her brain) 
to be painted with fluids from someone you love?
He was, after all, sent from above. 
A treasure indeed, that makes her heart weak, 
and covers her sweater and blue jeans with streaks. 
Nature has got her in a tight spot, 
So she cuddles him, cooing, and covered in snot.

Someday, she knows, down deep in her soul, 
Where this little one is now there'll be a small hole.
So she puts up with being a live handkerchief,
Because of some future, as-yet-unknown grief. 
"Come baby," she says, "and lay down your wet head, 
On my crusty, already-used shoulder or leg." 
Oh, Mother sees something that others do not. 
So she spends her days happily covered in snot. 

~MB~

I had a post planned today all about the lovely valentines we made for a party we attended last week.  They were appropriately hippie-esque, having been made by us out of recycled construction paper bits and wildflower seeds, but somehow my pictures of them have...ahem...disappeared.  And then something better happened anyway.  

As soon as the children were out of bed this morning, my 8-year-old daughter started handing out the valentines she'd made and been hiding.  There was a seriously elaborate one for me, with so much lace and so many stickers that the words had to be squeezed in the tiny spaces, and there were these:

And I think I shall never stop laughing this time.  

Translation:

(Blue Heart)  "Dear (4-y.o. brother), Happy Valintines Day! I think your great and terrible!  Your scary!  I shrink from you!"  

(Red Heart)  "Dear (6-y.o. brother), Happy Valintines Day!  I think your passable!  Knot!"

And this one, for her older brother:

"Happy Dooms Day! I think your a dork!  Knot!  And a weirdo!"

What I love about these is the thought that had to go into them.  She figured what each of them would like, then wrote them notes flattering each in his own way.  They loved them.  This is a girl who lives with boys, and man, does she know how to work them.  

I have to admit, though, that I'm proud of/worried about those language skills.  In a time when the language skills of adults only ever have to be "passable" she, at 8 years old, is approaching "great and terrible."  Will she even be intelligible by the time she leaves us?  I take comfort in the fact that she can still dash off a "dork" and a "weirdo" with aplomb.  

And this is "chubbalishas":

 Happy Valintines day, everyone.  Hope yours is passable!

~MB~

When I used to plant something with my dad, he'd do everything he could for the plant in the way of digging, pruning, watering, etc.  Then he'd step back and say, "It's all up to you now, plant.  I've done what I can for you.  If you want to make it now, you'll have to thrive."

We planted a whole lot of trees several months ago.  They looked very small and defenseless, each with their handful of pathetic leaves.  Most of them lost the pathetic leaves shortly after planting, which did nothing to inspire our confidence in them.  So all winter (I know, but "winter" is relative) we've watched these brown sticks without a bunch of hope for their rosy, fruit-covered future. 

But.  

(All-In-One Almond)

Oh! I absolutely die.  There is no chance this tree is dead. Or this one:

(Garden Prince Almond)

They're no taller than my hip, these two, and I want to take them aside and say, ladies, aren't you a bit young to be dressed like this?  Do you know what going around acting like this is going to get you?  Do you want to be the mothers of many almonds in your youth?  (I realize I have a chronic problem with anthropomorphization of the vegetable world.  But if they're talking to you it's rude not to talk back, you know.)

I had thought this brother had died for sure:

(Mission Fig)

The lush, hand-shaped leaves on this tree turned yellow and fell immediately after we planted it, and we knew for sure that it was dead.  Seems not to be so dead now. 

These are the first ones, the first little signs of life among our fledgeling orchard.  Watching the trees come back to life is like finding something you'd put away that you didn't expect to ever see again.  Or like ordering something fabulous online and then forgetting you'd ordered it, so that when the UPS man comes to the door it's a delicious surprise.  Hm.  Maybe I'm the only person who does that?  

So now I'm watching the other "dead" "sticks" with a little growing impatience.  Suddenly I'm greedy for the sight of blooms on bare branches.  Because each time I pressed the soil down around the roots when I was planting them, I thought of my dad, and I gave them a little mental push.  Thrive, I said to them.  

Thriving.  Check.  

~MB~ 

~MB~

Sometimes the drawing and labeling game gets turned around.  My 6-year-old draws and I try to figure out what he's drawn.  But his reading and writing skills have improved to the point where now the fun in the game is when he tries to trick me.  He'll draw what I label "snake", and he laughs and writes "NO.  King Kobra."  I am in uncharted territory now.  

But I thought I had this one figured out:

He drew the curly-limbed figure, then added the detail on the arms, pointed at it with his pencil eraser and gave me a forbidden clue.  "Bold arms," he said.  

I had this one in the bag.  I mean, I can tell just from the picture who that's got to be, and the clue was a dead giveaway.  Of course it was Daddy. 

His giggle when he knew he'd tricked me again was almost worth getting tricked for.  Turns out it was a GIANT! after all.  

Still.  Don't draw a picture of Daddy if you don't want me to recognize it.  I'd know those arms anywhere. 

~MB~

Some are old friends, some are experiments.  Left to right:

Sourdough starter (yes I did put it in clean jars for the photo, because those jars get grotty.)

Granola (only one jar left?!? Already??)

Kefir (which the child who cannot eat milk on his granola can eat)

Nixtamal, eventually to become corn tortillas

Yogurt (although the link tells how to make it in the bowl of a crockpot, I just make it in jars in the crockpot.  Then I don't have to wash the bowl.  Who is invention's mother, after all?)

Half-gallon jars are the new test tubes, didn't you know?  I wonder what else we can stash away over here to experiment on.  (And how long before some of this stuff evolves and walks off the counter.  Hey! A new experiment...)

~MB~

~MB~ 

Her older brother had gone to spend the day at a friend's house.  Her younger brothers were riding bicycles out on the road like madmen, and the baby was taking a long nap.  So it happened that this afternoon my older daughter and I found ourselves alone together, laughing, drawing pictures of dresses we're planning to make, and weaving a flower crown.  She was very impressed with my crown-making skills, and carefully laid out the flowers she'd picked as we chatted and threaded them together.  She drew a picture of a long-sleeved winter dress, complete with fur trim, "In case it ever does snow," she said.   

And in this lovely, laughter- and sunlight-filled afternoon, I ached for what I know parents have ached for as long as they've existed.  I wanted it all to slow down, to stop right here, in these moments before she's met an orthodontist, before she cares what other people think of her, when she's just...mine, with that gap-toothed grin and the verbenas in her messy, unbrushed hair.  

But all I can do is take a picture, write a few words, and hold a ghost of this time right here in what I hope is a safe spot.  So here it is, my graffiti--Erin was here--scrawled across the pages that can only capture a tiny little bit of what happens in our lives.  All I can do is try to freeze it for my future self, that woman who will have forgotten the individual days unless I catch them and hold them out for her to see.

Future self: remember today.  Today she wore flowers in her hair.  Today she was so, so beautiful.

~MB~

We were at a family reunion, at my parents' house, and apparently her brothers were feeling a little possessive.  The post-its say, "Do not tach her, OK", "do not tache", and it was explained to me that she was not the baby of all the people who kept picking her up, she was the baby of her 6- and 4-year-old brothers only. I think people kept picking her up anyway.  Sorry, guys. 

Sure would be a shame to lose that memory, would it not?

~MB~