Oof

It is practically the One Straw Revolution around here.  I am so lazy.

Four chops with the hoe, and my uterus is as tight as a softball, pressed forward against the high waist yoga pants which are also gardening pants, out to dinner pants, sleeping pants... you get the idea.  And then, the bending over.  I groan my way down the row, a parody of pregnancy.  At eighteen weeks!

Anyway, it has taken a long time to get bed #1 weeded and chopped and fed and seeded.  Bed #2 is simply a garden cress seed ripening area.  For the first time in a few seasons, people come over at look at the general mess, and I feel, well, apologetic.  I say something about the fall garden, and then I start pulling weeds around the perimeter and quietly groaning.

Last night, while Z and Jeff were shivering at Grant Pool, I did, finally, take care of the first bed - and put in kale, collards, what I hope will be Solstice cabbage, a heavy dose of mustards, and some random edible chrysanthemum which I swear I did not order and surely have no idea how to grow.  The One Straw part was where I just walked along the bed, crumbling brassica seed through my fingers, covered it with a shake of complete organic fertilizer, and raked over the rest of the mulchy 'soil-building compost' that Nate left in our driveway.  It was a tutorial in how to garden standing up.

Lazy, I tell you.  Lay.  Zee.

But the bouncing ball I am growing seems, increasingly, anything but.

:)

Comfort Food

Over at NASA, they are trying to figure out how to package peanut butter cookies and garlic mashed potatoes for a trip to Mars.  Because the mission will need five years of food security, they are considering the possibilities of a hydroponic greenhouse, in addition to the freeze dried cookies and tofu stroganoff.  The NASA kitchen representative I heard on the radio said that they are very concerned with providing 'comfort foods' so as not to increase the 'alienation' of being on a long mission.  Get it: alienation?

I thought about that last night as I pulled together an easy, warm-evening dinner for Z and me.  Soft white beans, warmed with a big glug of olive oil, green beans cut into inch lengths and sauteed, a salad of cucumber, tomato, avocado.  We sat at the recently relocated picnic table (in the driveway) and dug in.

Zelda can be hard to feed at restaurants, food carts, even from the deli at the store.  It is partially because of what she can't eat - the cheese and butter that are in so many of the kid friendly food options.  But it is also partially because this is how she likes to eat: fresh food, minimally processed.  At our table, and at the homes of our friends, she eats as well as any kid, and much better than some adults.  Since her baby-hood, she has chosen the freshest food on the table as her preference - squash over noodles, cucumbers over crackers, watermelon over cake.  Even more, her preference is for the food itself - she would always rather a grilled zucchini - not too large, or bitter, or seedy, mind you, and not over-done or mushy - to a zucchini muffin or fritter.  At our house, the bowl of cherry tomatoes on the table is devoured like candy, before I have a chance to turn them into something else.  During pea season, we are really only supplementing a steady diet picked off the vine and shelled in the shadow of the row.

At dinner, she hummed her pleasure as she scooped beans and tomato.

Years ago, Jeff pointed out that I have a special hum I do while bent over a bowl of perfectly prepared veg.  'It's your vegetable hum,' he said, 'You don't do it for other foods, even when you really like them.'  And there is something to that - some whole other level of satisfaction that exists for me - when I can feel the life still in something as I chew it, when the color and texture of the food is part of the joy, and when every step of the process is dear to me.  Like eating sun - which I imagine is just what I would want to do, out there in space, surrounded by beacons of light.

Don't get me wrong, I like peanut butter cookies a lot, and so does my kid.  But for us - oh, and especially right now - comfort comes from the un-compromised joining of soil, sun, water, seed, and human attention: the living gift of our belonging in the cycle of things.

Radicchulous

So Patrick Barber says to Jeff Falen, do you think I could make saurkraut with radicchio?
And Jeff says, that would be radicchulous!
And Patrick says, so, then, you don't think it would work.

Har har.  That one got me.

I'd like to know how those guys at Perspephone get all those nice tight heads.  Of about ten in the bed, two headed up and colored to purple.  Did I plant them too soon, and they couldn't stand the lengthening days?  What's really gross is when they just start to head and then the phallic wand emerges from the gathering knot of leaves and makes its way heavenwards to seed.  Yuk.

But green olive, garlic, and radicchio salad with homemade croutons while camping?  Ha ha ha.  Not gross.

I'll plant some more in the center bed next week (after I yank all the bolted garden cress), and we shall see...

a cabbage

Made-up Chinese Chicken Salad:

Bittman's peanut chicken and cucumbers (chicken breasts bone-in, skin-on, grilled then shredded)
Cabbage, radishes, snap peas in a ginger/garlic asian dressing from Deborah Madison
Cilantro
Chow Mein Noodles
Grilled spring red Torpedo onions
Siracha and salt for the table

(Patrick's dining table aerial stolen with ease from followgram.com.  Please note green toes.)

Nom nom nom.

up next

The garden this year is a strange beast.  The spring garden in the Pacific Northwest can meet the fall garden at the halfway point, and just hand-off the baton.  What summer?

Sure, there is a sungold plant sprawling around in one of the North beds, begging to be lifted out of the dirt.  There is a box of nasturtiums, hardly necessary now that a single volunteer majus plant has overtaken the yard around the rock box.

There are a few buckets of small and hopeful squash starts, a cucumber or two, some climbing Romanos.  These things are just starting out now, and will blow my mind come August.  Probably not unlike the cabbage under my shirt.

But unlike last summer, there will be no big drama in the backyard.  No corn, no squash, no jungle.  Bed #3 I planted last week, with bush beans, lettuce, and neon calendula.  Bed #1 I'll plant this week, maybe tomorrow.  With kale and the first round of beets and savoy and broccoli.  And then after I pull the peas (next week?), it'll be time to double dig that bed in case I might actually be able to grow some carrots there.  And then frantic watering for the next two months.  And so fall begins in July.

xx

independence (garlic and peas)

Wouldn't it be amazing if this garden actually fed us?  Of course, I would miss our weekly farmer's market: the choices, the sights, the glory of just plain shopping (oh, three dollars for those sweet, hairless carrots that I couldn't grow for a hundred?  why, sure, here you go.) - but when I think of the word Independence, the current state of this country is not what comes to mind.

On the 4th, though, I did do a lot of harvesting.

Jeff estimated that there were 15# of shelling peas in that bag.  I picked and picked.  He shelled and shelled.  I could feel the difference between the snap peas and shelling peas with my hand: the plush edible pods versus the thin, leathery cases with their rattling contents.  I looked down under the sun, face pressed into the exuberantly bolting greens of spring.  Picking like milking, elbow deep, I smelled watercress, nasturtium, rocket.  Everyone says these things taste and smell 'peppery' but I think they smell only like their own selves, each its own color of green.

While I was at it, I pulled out these 17 (!) heads of garlic.  David hung them by a bungee in the garage. Now when I wheel in my bike, the smell in there takes me right back to the farm.

We ate this broccoli in ten minutes.  

But let's look at that garlic again, shall we?  It is giant.  Brag, brag, brag.

Hope it cures well.  Hope it tastes as good as it smells.