spring is springing

The trees are budding, the bulbs are blooming, and spring is coming to the garden. Which is great except....I pulled out a garden journal I kept with Emily in 2009-2010 and this is what our garden looked like those years around April 10th. Hopefully this all just means a very early spring and not a fake trick spring followed by a freeze that kills it all.

Just to be safe, we're taking it easy, not planting any seeds yet, just cleaning and preparing things and enjoying what's going on. And one thing I'm doing is sorting out the seeds, records and so on that we have. Last week I stumbled across a mention of MyFolia, a garden tracking site (that's totally free and prettily designed). I set up an account and I'm slowly adding in whatever info I can find on our existing plants -- I think it's going to be a big help in the long run! Even if all you do is plant a handful of containers, it's worth checking out.

Here's to happy planting!

berries!

Emily was thrilled beyond belief to pick (and then eat) her first ripe strawberry. I think this morning she'll have a whole handful! It's amazing to see just how fast they ripen:



The cherry tomato plant is still producing like gangbusters although nothing is ripe -- her other tomato hasn't yet flowered. And soon we'll see what happened to the radishes -- I'm thinking no radishes, just greens. But we'll see.

Now if it would just cool off enough for me to get back to some sewing!

in the garden

Things have been doing well in the garden, considering our very late start and sudden adjustment to lots of sun! We've taken advantage of the sun and put in some vegetables (and fruit!) wherever we could squeeze them in. Above, some very quickly-producing cherry tomatoes; below some strawberries beginning to form. We also have larger tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, carrots, radishes and pumpkins; and a butterfly garden taking shape. So far, so fun!

fly, little bird!

We came home a few days ago and Emily and I came in through the garden - she said there was a baby bird, and sure enough, a sparrow fledgling was hiding behind a planter! We retreated and waited to see if parents were around - sure enough, the parents were there, and they fed it constantly over the next several hours as they encouraged it to hop and fly up the terraces. Hopefully they got it home safe!

behind my house, an alien landscape

This year we are really trying to pull it together and finish up some work on our house that needs to get done. I've managed quite a bit of it myself, but some things you (I) just can't do. One of them was to attend to our trees out back - when we first moved in there were six trees behind our house. And that was in a terraced garden (no yard, no lawn, a 3-level brick and concrete space with some planting beds left) that is maybe 17 feet by 30.

Two went the first year, another went about 5 years ago, but the 3 that were left were way overgrown and tangling into each other. One seemed to have some dead limbs hanging right over where Emily hangs out, another was scraping the roof. Both things I wanted fixed. I also thought both trees could probably stand to be thinned a bit where they were running into each other. So, I called a tree service (I picked one that had a certified arborist, in case you are wondering) and had someone come out and take a look.

He noted that one tree was very off-balance and leaned over the house (a storm had taken part of it down years ago) and suggested "balancing it out" by cutting it back and taking out 2 branches. Another had some dead limbs and needed an old collar removed. And the third was so sickly he suggested removing it entirely. This all made sense to me, so I said yes, and they came back two days later. After about 45 minutes of activity and a crew of 10 men swarming behind my house, I was called to sign and pay....and to my shock, I suddenly had NO TREES. The "balancing" worked out to the tree being cut back to nothing (I found out later this is called "hat-racking" and is actually illegal in some places), and the few dead limbs ended up being 90% of the 2nd tree. (At least that tree has a small section that was left). We went from a woodland-like shaded garden to nearly full sun in less than an hour. And it is still freaking me out. And it's killed most of the (deep shade) plants that we had started. Certified arborists indeed.

On the upside, honeysuckle I planted when we first moved in bloomed for the first time in years, and the sun is helping a lot of the plants. A year for the bricks and stones to dry out probably can't hurt either. Plus, Emily can grow veggies this year (although the weather is making that weird....). We're thinking of starting some fast pumpkins soon, and I'm told that our trees will probably be back by the end of the year, albeit a bit smaller than when they were last seen!

But still....when I look out our kitchen windows I just think "whose yard is that?!" I don't know if I'll ever be able to have my trees "pruned" again!

eye spy...something green

The ferns (or, "gingerbread" as Emily has always called them) looking incredibly green under one of Emily's garden rainbows.

This week's eye spy theme brought to you by Trashalou of Trashcan!

the mushroom invasion: I defeat them!

As I mentioned, after slaying the encroaching alien mushroom creatures I covered them with a tea towel and stashed them in the fridge. The next day for lunch I picked over them (a few were a little too dry), sliced what was left and then sauteed them in butter with a teeny bit of salt. And they were SO TASTY.



Seriously, the freshness of the mushrooms was noticeable. I can tell I am going to be so picky about mushrooms from now on! Not to mention, become addicted to growing them!

Emily wouldn't eat them (her loss) and Evan was a bit freaked out but enjoyed them. (He had some crazy theory about how "average americans" think food they grow themselves is not real. Of course, he considers himself an "average" american even though he has never lived outside the five boroughs of New York City! reeee-diculous.) I thought they were delicious and only wished I had more.

At the moment I'm following the instructions to dry (for a week) and then soak the log, rewrap it in plastic and attempt to grow them again. (Supposedly you can get even a 3rd flush of mushrooms!) This time I'm going to cut several slits in the plastic instead of 2 X's, so that the plastic can stay on the rest of the log even if it is bursting out all over. And we'll see what happens!

the mushroom invasion: they try to take over!

So, Saturday night, I took a quick photo of the mushrooms:



Notice that the big one has grown barely 1/2 an inch past the edge of the bowl. Sunday, we all went back to the NY Comic Con, came back very tired, ate, looked at stuff we'd brought home, and just before scooting Emily upstairs I looked over at the mushrooms:



AAAAAAAHHHHH!!! So, we decided they had to be stopped for our own protection that minute, and I sliced off the mushrooms. Once they were all on a plate, they seemed so much more friendly. Food-like. And even pretty.



But still -- that thing was huge. See? Almost the size of a very tired 4-year-old's face.



I checked my big food book for storage tips, and covered them with a tea towel and stashed them in the fridge for the next day. Tomorrow, the results!!

In the meantime, a few more notes -- I will in the future probably buy my kits here. I didn't this time because their kits are bigger and I didn't know where I could park a big one. They also have a "kid's" kit that grows enoki mushrooms and can apparently be pretty neglected and stil produce, so for a winter blahs project for little ones it might be a good bet. If you are even slightly interested, go and request their catalog, it's amazing -- if I'd had their catalog in hand before I ordered my kit, I'd have gone with one of theirs, too big or not. And now that I have looked through it a bit, I personally want to inoculate outdoor logs and have my own mushroom forest someday!! (Maybe a few more indoor kits would be a good idea first, though!)

gardening in winter; or, the mushroom invasion!

Emily has been super-excited about gardening this year, but we can't even start our seeds (indoors) yet, so I decided to get a little mushroom growing kit so we could grow something in the meantime. I looked at a ton of places online, but most of the kits were really big and/or pricey for something that was just a little experiment. I ended up going with a little oyster mushroom kit from this place, we got it about a week ago and started it the very next day. The directions said it would take up to 21 days to start growing, so we were prepared to wait...imagine our surprise to see little buttons popping out just 2 days later!



According to the directions, they were just supposed to pop out at the X's we'd cut -- but they were everywhere! I followed the directions and tried to cut more X's over each place they were growing....and ended up removing almost all of the plastic bag. We were worried this would kill them all off. But, the very next day:



And they keep growing...and growing...and growing....the in-between photos didn't come out, but here they are as of this morning, less than 5 days after that first photo was taken:





See that second photo? That mushroom is almost twice as big now. 6 hours later. I am so not joking.

Unfortunately, a lot of the original caps seem to have died back, maybe because the monstrous ones are sucking the life out of them! We're supposed to wait a week before harvesting, but the biggest one is now lunging out of the large dish the little mushroom log is in, so they may not last that long. Supposedly we can get another batch or two but I don't know if we can take the chance!

So far what we have learned: 1. fungi really grow like crazy. I wish I'd set up a tripod to time-lapse that thing! 2. next time, I will look for better instructions. I think this set of guidelines would have worked a lot better. 3. next time, I will also grow a mushroom I am more familiar with so I don't have to keep looking online to see if it looks like it's supposed to! Emily would be happy with plain old button mushrooms, so maybe we'll do that. 4. growing mushrooms really is pretty fun.

For now, the experiment continues -- and hopefully they won't climb out of that bowl and get us Matango-style!!

a very satisfying day

Yesterday was like a totally charmed day. Days like that don't come along too often, so pardon me while I savor it a bit longer.

First, I got all my seedlings started (a little late, I know, but I forgot a couple things I was out of and had to wait to get them back in). It's so nice to look over in my office and see two big covered flats, condensation forming on the domes and all. This year I'm not getting too experimental. I've got one flat full of varieties of impatiens (a double, a mixed single, and my favorite, balsam). The other has a mix of a few things I'm trying out this year, but most of it is full of no-brainers like mint.

Then, a huge baby-shower-in-a-box I'd sent my just-about-to-burst friend Antonia arrived in the literal nick of time. It should have been there Wednesday, but finally got there a few days late, with what we're thinking is about 30 hours left. I made up a mixture of vintage baby items, a few fun things (like the awesome Twink book and CD set), and a bunch of stuff I made which I can now finally write up and start the projects section with.

Next, my regular checking of the More4Less Bargain Blog paid off when I was able to use one of their super-tricky deals to get a Rio MP3/CD-R player for $29 including shipping. (Not to mention a free Harry Potter PC game I can find a home for as part of the deal.) No more CD wallet on those 2-3 hour trips! And, no more burning vintage radio shows to audio format to listen to them in the car.

At that point, Evan got up and suggested we go out for a few hours since the weather was so nice (rainy, but warm). We headed out to Jersey and hit up the Edgewater Target where I was able to get these big metal tubs I want to use as planters. I have these junky big plastic things that the previous owners of our house left behind, and I've wanted to replace them since the day we moved in, but everything I've found was either too small, too ugly, or too expensive. I saw these big enamelled "beverage tubs" for $10 at a Target a week or two ago and thought they might be great to use in the garden. Found them at this Target and went for it, picked up two green and one yellow, for basically the price of one boring oversized planter from the local Home Depot. I can't find anything like them online or I'd show them to you. (My one moment of disappointment yesterday—I wanted the David Kirk Miss Spider watering can to water my seed trays in my office, but it was sold out.)

And finally, we ended our day up at Mitsuwa where we surprisingly didn't find any stuff we wanted to buy (in the toy/magazine/book/hello kitty/dishes/etc side), but had a nice meal (predictably, I had tonkatsu) and then stocked up on foodstuffs. Food highlight (I'll spare you the boring stuff): the instant Hello Kitty cakes I love in chocolate now come in banana and melon, tried the melon last night and it was great. We got some other cool new snacks but they're downstairs and I'm too lazy to go and check on what they are. One is called "chocolate pie", by Lotte, sort of a puff-pastry cookie with chocolate inside (didn't see that coming, did ya?); the other are these little chocolate and macadamia nut mushroom caps on cookie stems. Very cute. Evan also surprised me with a special Wagashi from the Minamoto Kitchoan. The one he got me isn't listed on their site, and I don't remember what it's called, but it's a plum wine jelly with a whole plum and gold leaf flecks in it. Mmmm.

And today's a bit of a loss, we have a family function to go to that'll kill our worktime today, but we should at least get a really good meal out of it!

ladies' gardening gloves

This week we ripped off all of the ivy that was covering the garage and menacing the house, triffid-style. It was a ton of work, but very satisfying. Best of all, I got to try out my brand new Foxglove gardening gloves. I found them looking for something that would protect my wrists and lower arms better while working outside—everything I found was big, leather and spendy, until I came across these. They're like 50s dress gloves and come in tons of colors so you can look all glamorous; they're machine washable (although I'll need spares so I can toss them in the laundry and still have a set available); and very flexible so you can feel what you're doing (not waterproof though, if you hate getting your hands wet). Surprisingly, they do not feel as flimsy as they look—I was handling some rough bits and never felt a thing. Seriously, I can't recommend these enough. A tip though—look on their site for a local shop carrying them. My local price was much better than the best internet price I found!