Crawling out of my hole

When a thing is born, what does it first do?

Write a novel? Wash the dishes?

Nah. It cries. And sleeps, and learns to crawl.

Are rules the same for the re-born? And is too grandiose to suggest that in a way, this is happening to me?

It's not about the new year - it's about the final days of a deal that I reluctantly made with myself last spring, when I thought my company was going down and me with it (yay, newspapers). I decided to launch myself into the industrious, ambitious, obsessed business world to see if I could "make it" outside of the only job I've ever known.

In doing so, I made this deal and traded in my entire life. No more pottery, no more twice-daily yoga, or long hikes, or friends, or painting, or GARDENING, or blogging (which you are surely to not notice, as no one reads this anymore, therefore, there's no you there).

However, I did not lose my job. I just gained another full-time job, and for the past 9 months, been doing them both - and nothing else.

Boring.

That, though, is ending. I can't say for sure how, but I desperately want my life back, the connection to the earth and things that grow and have nothing to do with this man-made world of concrete and invisible economies.

This was a pre-meditated rebirth - meaning that I've been planning for it for months. Stage One was full of crying and being totally unimpressive, like most infants.

Stage Two came this weekend. I dusted off my seed catalogues, recruited the ever-supportive Erik and set about to make Plans for this year's Garden. Or, ahem, gardenS. We're expanding the operation.

On tap this growing season:

kale (dwarf blue curled scotch and lacinato)

potatoes (French Fingerling and All Blue)

tomatoes (Sidduth's strain Brandywine and Black from Tula)

Chinese cabbage (Joi Choi)

beets (early blood turnip)

carrots (Paris market and Danvers)

zucchini (green tiger)

summer squash (summer crookneck)

winter squash (table queen acorn-type)

dill

cucumbers (sweet success hybrid)

chard (Fordhook giant)

corn (Reed's yellow dent)

sunflowers

garlic (German extra hardy)

eggplant (listada de Gandia)

purple pole beans

ground cherries (Aunt Molly's)

lima beans (Big Mama)

spinach (America)

bell peppers (purple beauty)

hot peppers (mustard habanero)

asparagus (Jersey giant)

arugula

basil (sweet Genovese)

cilantro

strawberries (3 types)

lettuce (8 types)

And Erik has finally agreed that this is the year of the Chicken! So eggs are hot compost are coming to a blogger near you.

It is January 2 and about 12 degrees outside. Most would agree that it's winter. But for me, it's springtime. And parts of me that have been crusted over by ice and buried in a snowbank are beginning to thaw. Beginning to believe that my life can be drawn back into it's old, more earthy orbit, and that soon my eyes will be filled with visions of green and growth and tiny, fluffy, helpless chicks wobbling about, squawking, just barely born.

And I will totally understand.

My garlic is so Money!

Remember these?

The other day, curiosity overcame my patience. I had to meet my underground friends that have lived in the front garden since, well, November!

So I dug and dug,

And pulled a little and . . .

It smelled so wonderful!

Hooray!

I dug up the rest (all 11) and now they're drying/curing in the kitchen. 

As a triumphant aside, I went to the Davis Square Farmers Market yesterday and had an experience that thrilled me to my toes. Usually, I walk the aisles of the market and feel a wee bit inadequate because my city-girl produce doesn't often match the pros' goods. Well, that has all changed with this garlic harvest! We blew them away. It would have taken 3 of their bulbs to match even one of ours! Finally, something came out of our ground that I can be really proud of. 

I mention this because on the same day I dug the garlic, I also pulled the a carrot and the beets.

Yah, don't get too excited. They're pretty tiny.

So I sliced them up, sauteed them in some EVOO tossed in the beet greens and served it over proscuitto brown rice and wild salmon garnished with fresh green snap peas.

And look who else came for dinner?

The In Betweensies

It's an interesting time in the garden right now. Mid-August, that is, and I should qualify this by saying that I'm only speaking for my garden. Perhaps it's because I'm new at this, and that I didn't read the directions, so to speak, or consult the experts, but it's a sort of tired time, a struggling time out there, in the plants.

Members of the cucurbit family are really unhappy about the non-stop rain we New Englanders have endured since mid-July. I am not a squash, however, and am thrilled at the rain. For me, water falling freely from the sky is a wonder of nature I just can't get over. Then again, I don't have powdery mildew eating away at my limbs.

Last I wrote on the subject, I painted a triumphant picture of sturdy, organically managed plants overcoming a fungal invasion. That was true -- two weeks ago. However, since then, the picture has turned grim. I go out each morning and cull the worst affected leaves and vines. I try to keep the leprous foliage from the yet-undiseased parts.  But I know that my hands and scissors could very well be doing more harm than good by spreading mildew spores. I've even stopped spraying for the past few days. I just can't stand the idea of contributing still more moisture to the already burdened plants.

Lessons learned:

1. Seek out powdery mildew resistant strains of plants next season.

2. Only plant vining plants on trellises, raised far enough above the ground to allow for good ventilation.

The awkward in-betweensies I mentioned earlier has to do with the "now what?" stage.

I've harvested all of the early and most of the mid-season crops. And now my square-foot garden looks more like a jack-o-lantern than a lush grid of greenery. It's only now mid-August, so I figure there's at least 50-60 days before any serious risk of frost (thank you, global warming), and since I refuse to read the directions, I just don't know what to do with all that dirt real estate. 

I do know that beets are yummy, so this evening, I planted another 3 squares of Chioggia beets (4x4x3=48). And when my seeds arrive from Seed Savers Exchange, I'l plant Purple Top white globe turnips, Five Color Silverbeet Swiss chard,  Bull's Blood beets, St. Valery's carrots, and Plum Purple radishes. And in late-October, I'm giving it a go with 2 seed bulbs of German extra-hardy garlic.

The best laid plans, right?

I think I'm writing this because I feel a little like a failure right now - a little fraudulent. This is ridiculous, I know rationally, but I feel like I've let my plants down, in a way. Disease and bad weather shouldn't have happened to my first, perfect garden, and if it did, I should have protected it.

In June, we experienced an awe-inspiring thunderstorm late one evening -- the kind only summertime can produce, that are more than a little scary, and manage to remind you who's boss. I returned home from a day at the office, and was about to run inside to get out of the downpour when the wind started to whip around crazily. Immediately, my mind went to the spindly adolescent plants making their way in the garden. They lacked the girth of mature plants, and were still very vulnerable. So I ran to them and watched as the winds battered them about, and was impressed at their flexibility and strength.

But then it started to hail, and I began to panic. I stretched out my arms and fingers over the pepper plant's leaves to try to deflect the ice pellets, but they tore dozens of holes in the broad leaves. Still, I ran in circles making sounds of alarm, like a Killdeer diverting a predator from her nest. Eventually, though, I had to laugh. The temperature had dropped a good 20 degrees, and I was soaked through, my blouse plastered to my sides, and my hair tangled up in my eyelashes.

There's only so much I can do, I concluded, and went inside to dry off.

This time, though, it's different. Instead of a sudden storm, the threat is an ugly disease that is at once bigger and smaller than my weapons. Maybe all the knowledge in the world couldn't save my squashes, but the fact that I am so ignorant, such a newbie, makes me feel plain foolish right now. 

Is this how parenting will be?

Citrus Beet & Greens Salad - good!!

The experiment worked! Our good friends and their daughters were our test pilots (thank you guys for that) and got to share in another garden meal!

I started with the beets I pulled up today. After chopping off (and saving) the greens, this was my collection, seen in the above photo in a dutch oven.

Then I coated them in a little canola oil and stuck them to roast, covered, in the oven at 410 degrees for about an hour (?) until they were done.

I trimmed and washed the beet greens, and blanched them in boiling water for about a minute and a half.

After the beets were done roasting and had cooled a bit, I peeled off the tougher parts of the skin by hand and cut them up into pieces. In this picture, you can see the cool banding in some of the beets. They're heirloom strains, courtesy of my mother. And as we found out, they're incredibly sweet and flavorful (especially if you roast them).

As for the dressing, I winged it and based it very loosely on an epicurious.com recipe. I took a bunch of fresh garlic and wanted to take the edge off (knowing young children would eat this meal), but I didn't have the time/patience to roast it. So I tried something random and stuck it in the microwave for 1 minute. Worked like a charm.

Then I blended that up in a mini food processor with inexact amounts of:

garden herbs (basil, cilantro, chives)

basalmic vinegar (maybe 1/4 cup)

olive oil (maybe 1/4 cup)

1/2 of orange juice (maybe more)

zest and juice of 1 lemon

generous tablespoon honey

salt to taste

I added that to a bowl of thinly sliced onions and let that sit for a while to mellow. When the greens were blanched and drained, I added them to the onions and dressing as well. Then I cut the peels off 3 oranges and sliced them across into pieces - threw them in as well. I didn't add the beets, though, because I wanted to sprinkle them on top of the salad, but I don't think that's important.

To serve, dish the greens onto a plate, top with the beets and serve with a chunk of nice, room temperature goat cheese. Serve with crusty bread and lots of wine!

Nothing gets you over a psychopathic-murder-suspect-kidnapper-fugitive like drying chives and pulling beets.

Ya, well, chasing those types all over the place (like, to say, Baltimore for the past 4 days) is all in a days work as a bonafide member of the Media Circus. I can't officially connect my life here (that is, my personal live off the clock) with my professional life, but suffice it to say I just returned from an inglorious parade of non-stop concrete jungle stomping in pursuit of a curious lowlife.

I'm home now, thank goodness, to my husband, kitty and garden, which went through puberty and applied to college in my absence.

The tomatoes look like spent muppets whose strings have gone slack, and it's long past time, lordy lord, to harvest the chives. Other fabulous developents are the first ripe orange tomato (eaten and gone now), and the continued story of triumph and survival as the dear squash battle powdery mildew (with a little help from our "beautiful soup" spray).

Chives, chives, chives.

You don't need them until you need them, and then you have to spend 5 freakin' dollars on

a bunch of grass you could have grown yourself. So I harvested a bunch, and now what?

This post on iVillage Garden Web looked good:

• Posted by granite z6 NC (My Page) on Sat, Feb 25, 06 at 16:05

Next time instead of drying your chives and basil, wash them thoroughly and then spin dry in a salad spinner. Pack tightly into a freezer zip lock bag, squish the air out and freeze. Tastes close to fresh and its a lot less work than drying. Having said that, I like a few bundles of dried herbs hanging in my kitchen for decoration. I just don't consider them as cooking value due to dust, etc.

So, that's the plan right now. Will report back how well this works. If I forget, please remind me. (All you 12 readers out there. Hi, Grandma!)

And now, for the beets!

Dinner tonight will be wilted beet greens with a roasted beet and goat cheese salad with walnuts and a citrus vinaigrette! Don't ask me how to make it 'cause I'm going to make it up as I go. Will report, though.

And soon, dear solitary, imaginary reader, I will share with you the holy grail of bread recipes...