Garden productivity… :) Makes me pleased. And a few other things.

Wee little garden update:

This morning, I harvested $6.58 worth of fresh, organic produce.  Here’s how I figured it:

• One head of lettuce (Simpson Black Seeded — one of the BEST choices I made for my garden this spring).  Seven oz, after being torn and washed.  Five ounce containers of organic lettuce are typically $3.99.  At that rate, my lettuce is worth $4.49.
• Two ounces broccoli — actually my largest head of broccoli so far, only about 5″ across… Turns out that broccoli typically doesn’t produce well at first try…  Still, I’m not giving up.  I may try a different variety next time, though.  And plant it later, as the best of my broccoli has been harvested this month, when it’s warmer.  Anyway.  I can typically get organic broccoli at the store for $1.49/lb, so my two ounces equals $0.19 worth.
• Turnips — 3.5 oz.  Actually, they’re not turnips.  They’re the roots of Tyfon greens, which is a cross between a turnip and a kind of Chinese cabbage.  Tyfon was a good choice when they were young and it was cooler, and we ate a ton of it, usually garlic braised and mixed with red chard.  But as the weather has warmed, the Tyfon has been an absolute aphid MAGNET.  Gross.  So, I pulled the remainder of them out this morning, and a few of them had biggish, turnip-looking roots.  Thus, 3.5 oz of “turnips”, at $2.99/lb = $0.65 worth.
• Six ounces carrots.  We have a spot at the end of the garden where my daughter Fiala dumped an entire packet of carrot seeds.  Even with regular thinning, it has turned into a carrot forest.  I did a little research, because these carrot tops were developing powdery mildew.  It turns out that powdery mildew — which is fairly harmless on carrots, though it can spread to other plants and stunt growth — flourishes in dry days, in shady conditions, and in crowded plants which inhibits circulation.  The “carrot forest” is, unfortunately, largely shaded by a tree.  It’s dry here.  And, they’re crowded.  Thus, I’ve had to pull out lots of baby carrots, which really aren’t akin to grocery store “baby carrots”.  When they’re not full-grown, they’re rather bitter.  But, they’re still edible.  So, 6 oz carrots at $0.99/lb = $0.38 worth.
• I also harvested eight cherry tomatoes — 4 yellow and 4 red.  Organic tomatoes are really expensive — typically $3.99/lb.  So, my 3.5 oz of cherry tomatoes is worth at least $0.87.

If my math is right, that is $6.58.  And that’s just from today!  I’m daily harvesting produce.  AND, there’s still a bunch of red chard I need to harvest before it bolts, which I will do later today.  Organic red chard is typically $1.99/bunch this time of year, and I have enough for a good 4, 5, 6 store-sized bunches.  Maybe more.  And there are some lovely green onions that can be harvested.  Even though my garden is small — about 7′ x 20′ — it has been extremely productive, once I got it going…  Definitely more productive this spring than last;  I’ve learned a lot in quite a short period of time.

 

Lovely nasturtium, with lettuce and not-yet-red bell pepper growing in the background. And, for those in the desert, Palo Verde "leaves" make the perfect straw for mulch.

Audrey, who turned six this month, in an outfit she picked out on her own. Darling girl.

Fiala, in one of her newest favorite activities. She is about 75% healed of her Candida Albicans system-wide yeast infection, BLESS GOD!!

The many faces of FiFi. She saw a bug, her one phobia.

About two minutes post-bug. She's laughing at me grossing out over her picking her nose. She's quite pleased with mom being disgusted.

Precious girl on the tree-trapeze. There is such a tender spot in my heart for her. We have had *SUCH* a difficult three years+, and it gives me indescribable joy and relief that we may be coming out of it. Truly, all glory and thanks to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who redeems and heals.

Garden! Health! Books! Road trip! Working!

I really don’t have writer’s block.  I’ve written countless posts in my head!  They’re just not happening in real life.

So…  small updates:

• 

  They're even prettier in real life. I have some that are downright purple on the outside, but the interior is bright orange. Lovely!

  Garden:  It’s beautiful and flourishing, and it feels fabulous to eat my own hand-raised, organic veggies.  It is truly decreasing my need to buy vegetables from the store.  It has taken a while — more than a year — to really get GOING and productive.  And, I still have lots and lots and lots to learn… it’s one of those areas of learning where you can never know ALL there is to know.  Ever.  Interestingly, though, I don’t mind that.  Normally, I get a little cowed by problems with unending possible solutions;  I like things that I can wrap my head around.  However, I find that gardening is enjoyable even when I will never know everything there is to know.  My most recent discovery:  When the planting schedule says that you shouldn’t plant your green beans until March 15, February 20-something really IS too early, and your seeds really WILL rot in the ground when planted too soon.  Bummer.  A triumph, though:  My hubby is taking my gardening seriously.  I tend to get interested in things, and hit them hard for a few weeks or a few months, spend too much money on them, then my interest and devotion fizzles, which amounts to a lot of time and money wasted.  So, he wasn’t robustly supportive of my garden plans, initially.  Now, he TOTALLY is, probably because I’ve been faithful, instead of just excited.    And he can see the benefit.  Last garden note:  You MUST grow these carrots.  I scrub them and we eat them unpeeled.  They are gorgeous and tasty.

• Fiala’s health:  I wish I could say that she is 100% better, but I can’t.  She does continue to improve, and it is absolutely clear that her major struggle IS with a candida infection.  However, it is taking longer to clear than I had hoped.  And, she is not self-regulating.  She is happy to “steal” a banana or a jar of honey, or even pull a carrot from the garden, whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Then, the yeast in her system feeds on that sugar, and we have a setback that takes a week or two from which to recover.  So, it’s kind of like three steps forward, two-and-a-half steps back.  She still has head-to-toe “eczema” — which really isn’t eczema — and it’s worse in some places than in others.  But, she has no open, oozy wounds, and over all, her skin, disposition, and general health has improved by, oh, about 40%.  She is on oral and topical Nystatin, plus probiotics, colloidal silver, and grapefruit seed extract (in capsules).  Plus a no-sugar diet, minus the 1/3 cup or so daily of blueberries — her lone joy in food.  Actually, it’s funny, because now that we’re aware that SUGAR in food is her main problem, I’ve been letting her sample various sugar- and starch-free foods, and she just doesn’t like most of them.  So, her diet is still very, very simple, very limited.
• My own health:  I have improved SO GREATLY on a low-carb, sugar-free diet.  Not only have I lost about 15 lbs, but instead of getting neck-to-thighs hives every single night, that lasts for HOURS and to be relieved only by a double-dose of Benedryl, I’ll get a patch here, a patch there, about twice a week, and it lasts for 20-30 minutes or so.  So, I’m not 100% healed, either, but I’m getting close.
• Books:  I should really do a whole post on “Books I’m Trying to Read.”  I normally only read one book at a time, but I’m partway through about six books right now, none of which I want to put down, and for none of which I actually have TIME to read right now.  The only one I’ve actually finished has been The Confession by Charles Todd (see next bullet point).  And that took me nearly two weeks of whittling away…  The others have taken — are taking, actually — much longer.
• Road trip!  Two friends and I drove to Prescott a couple of weeks ago.  It was a treasure of an afternoon — such a pleasant drive of wonderful conversation, lunch together, then a really awesome two-hour meet-the-author presentation by Charles Todd, which is actually a mother-and-son team.  They were both present, and were such engaging speakers.  It was interesting from all angles:  as a writer, as someone interested in WWI (the setting for all their books), as a semi-Anglophile, as a fan…  I’ve read all of their books, save one.  My friends and I had lunch was at The Raven Cafe.  I had researched which places had a gluten-free menu, and when we got to Prescott, my friend Kathy said, “After lunch, I hope we have time for the best cup of coffee in Prescott.  It’s at The Raven.”  The Raven was already on my short list of g.f. lunch spots!!  It has such wonderful ambiance, and it stocks GLUTEN FREE BREAD.  With my low-carbiness, I haven’t had bread in a couple of months.  But, I broke with that for an amazing turkey melt sandwich with avocado, muenster cheese, and other good things, with a side of amazing sweet potato fries with garlic aioli.  I was in heaven.  The whole afternoon, I was in heaven.  It was perfect.  Kathy kept saying, “Is this really real?  Is this really happening?  Am I really in Prescott with two of my dear friends???”  Now, I think I need to come up with more reasons to take little drives and spend a good chunk of a day with my friends.  The whole experience is still glowing in my heart, two weeks later.
• Jobby-things:  I know a while back I said I wasn’t going to make any writing-related work, but I had already told my author-friend Marietta I’d give her most recent book my once-over.  So, I’ve been working on that.  I also co-taught a small workshop on prophetic singing, which was a complete and total joy.  I was absolutely shocked when I was handed a check for payment.  It was a little disturbing, actually.  I had to ask my pastor what he thought I should do with the money, and he said, “Keep it.  You’ve invested hours of your time and commitment learning about this, making the teaching notes, investing in the prophetic and singing.  Keep it and enjoy the fruits of your labor.”  So, I am.  Haven’t cashed it yet, though.

Things I’ve learned about composting

1. This morning, as I turned over the contents of my compost bins, I thought, “Composting really isn’t for the faint of heart.”  You really have to be the sort who gets all warm and fuzzy over:  Internal heat (which means that the contents are decomposing), mold (ditto), and bugs — but the right kind of bugs.  Fruit flies and roaches are troublesome.  Armadillidiidae aren’t.  Seriously, it makes me grin when I diiiiiiiiiigggg my pitchfork in, and with the application of some shoulder muscles, and some hope that the tines won’t un-attach — again — I turn over some compost, and that good, earthy, rich dirt smell wafts up, and I see a healthy mixture of moist, dark brown almost-soil, with last week’s avocado peels, a hundred crushed egg shells, and last week’s now-moulding grass clippings mixed in.
2. 

   Plus, this one is made in England, which is much farmier than the Arizona desert. An English pitchfork. Dreamy.

   It’s a true garden nerd who dreams of a better pitchfork.  I need one like the one on the right, where the tines are attached through the shaft of the pitchfork.  Mine is forever coming apart;  it just wasn’t made all that well, which is a shame.  But, the reason I have mine, and not the beauty on the right is because that tool is $93 + shipping.  I think mine cost less than $30 at Home Depot.  My hubby just gave me $100 from a bonus he received…  I’m thinking I might just buy a better pitchfork.  Maybe this one.

3. One needs at least two composting bins.  I’m thinking about getting a third, actually.  Once a bin is full, you have to keep tending to it — turning the contents over, watering as necessary — until it’s ready, without adding new material.  So, what do you do with all your yard trimmings and carrot tops and onion skins??  Add them to the second bin.  And what do you do if your second bin is near-full?  That’s why I’m considering a third bin.
4. I mentioned this before, but the $5 compost bins, which are really repurposed City of Phoenix trash bins have got to be the steal of the century.  I walked by the $99 compost tumbler at Costco a couple of nights ago and internally gloated.
5. Composting instructions, no matter the source, always instruct the newbie composter about the importance of the proper level of moisture.  However, it has taken me the last year+ to really figure out the balance.  Too dry:  Things just sit, and don’t rot.  Too wet:  Things just sit, and don’t rot.  Also, one needs to turn the compost over to mix in new material and to (I think) introduce oxygen.  However, if you turn the compost over too soon, it interrupts the heat-generating composting process, and slows everything down.  I’ve found that I need to water and turn about every five days in the hot months, and about every eight-ten days in the winter.  And… you need a balance of “brown” to “green” compost materials.  Too much “green” (like kitchen veggie trimmings) and the compost attracts flies and starts to stink.  Too much “brown” (like shredded newspaper or dried leaves) and there’s not enough fuel for the composting process.
6. Like all other lessons learned in the garden, lessons from composting are slow.  I mean, when you see the error of your ways, it’s an error that’s been several weeks in the making, then the correction takes several weeks to have its effect.  Then, the next time, you’re a little faster on the uptake.  Hopefully. 
7. My fruit fly trap is now even more low-tech.  (I made it when my ill-managed compost bins attracted too many fruit flies, which were finding their way into the house.)  I have taken out the funnel, and am now left with a jelly jar about 1/3 full of apple cider vinegar with a small squirt of dish soap in it.  It turns out that fruit flies don’t need the funnel.  The trap makes my kitchen smell faintly of ACV, but I’m OK with that, especially when fruit flies are now non-existent in my home, except for dead ones.  The idea of it is a little gross:  On my countertop is a jar of swill and dead flies.  If I were crafty and inventive, I’d come up with an attractive cover for it.  Maybe I’ll just put my five-year-old on it.  Hmm…
8. The fruit fly trap was so successful, I thought, “I wonder if I could catch the flies outside, before they decide to visit my kitchen??”  So, I got a quart jar, filled it about 1/4 full of water, another 1/4 full of apple cider vinegar, added a squirt of dish soap, and placed it atop a five-gallon bucket, between the compost bins, outside.  Within an hour, about 30 fruit flies were dumb enough to drown in the trap.  A week or so later…  there are a good couple hundred flies in the trap, and almost none in the bins.
9. When composting instructions specify that woody trimmings shouldn’t be larger than 1/4″ in diameter, believe it.  Too-big twigs have been the bane of my compost, and it’s no fun picking them out.  I need to learn that lesson, instead of saying, “I’m sure they’ll break down, this time!”

Thanksgiving family, friends & food; drooling over a seed catalog; a good/bad movie

• So, Thanksgiving was awesome.  At one point, we had 21 people here –  some watching football, some snoozing, some chatting over coffee and pie, kids running around and playing,  spilling out into our courtyard, friends and family.  Perfect.
• I made this recipe — Roasted Squash with Almonds and Cranberries — and it turned out so good.  I’m definitely making it again, and I probably won’t wait until Thanksgiving;  I LOVE root veggies.  I used parsnips, carrots, and butternut squash.  I baked it a little longer than recommended, and at 325°F because that’s just how it worked out with the other stuff that was in the oven at the time.  I made it about 1/3 bigger than suggested, and wished I had MORE.  Double recipe next time.  I also chose not to add the lemon zest at the end.  I guess I can’t make a recipe without messing with it.
• On Thanksgiving, my mom gave me a seed catalog that she said would be right up my alley.  She was right.  Pinetree Garden Seeds is located in Maine, so many of their selections are for much cooler, wetter, more northerly climates than here in the sunny desert.  But, I can’t resist.  I’m making a list and hoping for the best.  They have all sorts of heirloom veggies, plus herbs for medicinal use and even plants for dying cloth.  Lots of other stuff, too…  I’ve been savoring the catalog, reading each description.  The seeds are really inexpensive, too.  So far, I have eight packets on my list, and the total is $10.30.  And their shipping is reasonable, too:  $3.95 for up to $19.99 in charges.  I have this book on companion planting, too:  Carrots Love Tomatoes.  ~sigh~  Makes me want to plant stuff.
• 

  The ones at Home Depot are the identical brand, but MUCH cheaper -- about half the price.

  I’ve been making my own cheapie windowsill seed starters for months:  You need a paper egg carton and a foam one.  Cut out the paper “egg cups” one at a time and place them in the tray of the foam one.  Fill each paper egg cup with seed starting soil, and place in your windowsill.  Absolutely free (except for the eggs!), but it’s easy to over-water (and thereby have water all over your windowsill), and they dry out really fast — no lid and all, and only 1-2 Tbsp of soil in each cup.  So… at Home Depot, I bit the bullet and purchased a ready-made flimsy, plastic, effective 24-plant windowsill “greenhouse” seed starter, complete with peat pellets that expand like crazy.  I now have lettuce, broccoli, and cauliflower sprouts happily growing on my windowsill.  Bugs and birds seem to like lettuce and broccoli;  I haven’t had great success directly sowing them into the garden.  I haven’t tried cauli yet, but I figured if the birds like broccoli sprouts, they probably like cauli, as they’re in the same family…

• Only (maybe) tangentially related to the above — just because we had wine at Thanksgiving — I wanted to mention that if anyone saw my little post on Facebook that said I was going to watch the documentary Blood into Wine and were interested, you may want to reconsider.  On one hand, the movie was REALLY interesting:  lots of wry humor, the fascinating process of growing and making wine in Arizona, and the relationship between the major characters (Tool’s Maynard James Keenan and Arizona winemaker and ecologist Eric Glomski).  I’m always interested in the… intersection of relationships.  Meaning, the events that conspire to bring two people of really diverse paths together.  I LOVE THAT.  I think of it all the time, and if you meet me in real life, one of the first things I will likely ask you is what brought you, here.  However, the movie was also full of f-bombs, sexual references, and way more all-out earth-worshiping religion than my husband was comfortable with.  I could have hung with the movie, compelled by the good parts and filtering out the other… but after an hour, my hubby asked that we turn it off.  And we did.

More garden stuff, including a little seed giveaway… (plus, any takers for an online/e-mail natural birthing class??)

I promise that there is more of note going on in my life than just my garden, but since I have such a nice pic, I thought I’d post another garden update.

One other thing I wanted to mention, though (buried, here in the garden post) is that I’m thinking about making my birthing class notes available as an online/correspondence/something-like-that birth class.  Anyone interested?  I can e-mail you the PDF of the first class (of six, total) as a preview.  I would send copies of each week’s class, one at a time.  I highly suggest that you take two weeks to go through each class’s material and homework, because there is a LOT of info!  And, for full disclosure, the classes are really geared to married Christian couples, but I’m thinking about editing them to be more appropriate for other… uh… demographics.  The basic idea of them is to show the wonder and amazing, kind plan of our Creator God in the process of birth — so that the mom would birth, filled with that wonder, and eager to participate fully in His transformational intentions for her… and that there would be NO FEAR in birth.  If anyone is interested, I will take on three student couples for $40 each, and you can help me work out any communication kinks that may need fixing.  Beta test, if you will.    ANYONE can have a free copy of the first class’s notes, though.  karenjoy@onlysometimesclever.com

OK.  Back to this day’s regularly scheduled garden post:

This was yesterday’s harvest:  Red chard, green beans (I found more hiding under the red chard after the picture), two dinky tomatoes, and two Dragon carrots.

The carrots would have benefited from another week or two in the ground.  The packet says that they should mature in 70-90 days, and they’ve been in the ground more than 120 days!!  Things grow more slowly in the winter growing season here… less sunlight.  But, sheesh!  Mature already!!  They’re lovely carrots, though.

My tomatoes are thriving.  I’ve harvested a dozen or so in the last couple weeks, though it doesn’t look like any will be red and ready for Thanksgiving.    There are probably 200+ tomatoes growing on my plants, but the bad news is that they’re all about one ounce “big”.  Teeny tiny.  Bigger than cherry tomatoes, but not by much!  I bought my seeds from Native Seeds/SEARCH, which is a fabulous, to-be-esteemed organization for growing, promoting, and selling native and heirloom seeds that do well in the Arizona desert.  However, the Native Seeds’ description of my Punta Banda tomatoes neglected the mention the size, and I neglected to notice the lack of description.  Here, on another site, they’re listed as cherry tomatoes.

My basil plants just won’t die.  Not that I really want them to, but when I add basil to any dish I’m making, I must confess that I use my basil-and-olive-oil “ice cubes” from the freezer.

Fiala, my three-year-old, ran off with a packet of carrot seeds and a packet of onion seeds a few weeks ago.  It is now clear where she planted them, as there are about one hundred carrot sprouts in about a one square foot area of my garden, onions sprouting in the gravel (leading me to think about the parable of the sower), and a sprinkling of onions and carrots in other less-than-ideal spots.    Precious, rascally girl.

I hope my garlic has lovely, round, purple blooms like this!!

I have one Mexican grey squash plant that is hanging on…  Broccoli that is sprouting (not too vigorously, though, and I think the birds like the sprouts), green onions that are slowly but beautifully growing, mystery volunteer tomato plants that are starting to flower and bear new, tiny fruit…  I planted some garlic cloves, too, and they’re coming up beautifully.  I love garlic and we eat a TON, but I’m kind of planting them for their flowers.  My green beans (Yoeme Purple String Beans, to be exact) are still hanging on, though I’m only harvesting about 1/4 – 1/2 pound every week from four largeish bamboo teepees.  I have set aside 33 seeds that would be good for planting, and will give them to the first taker who mails me a self-addressed, stamped envelope, if you wanna give them a shot!  Again, e-mail if interested.

My tomatillos are fairly pointless.  I have 1/2 gallon of teeny tiny tomatillos in my fridge, waiting to see if I will make salsa out of them for Thanksgiving.  I guess I should take them out of the refrigerator and let the husks dry all the way…  I’m fairly disgusted with how much space those giant plants took up, compared to the tiny fruit.    I started pruning the bushes WAY back, in hopes that the roots and stalks would super-charge the remaining tomatillos and make them grow big, but no such luck.  After Thanksgiving, I do believe I will just pull them out, amend the soil, and plant more broccoli, and maybe some cauli and rutabagas.

Now that I have a fruitful garden, I can’t imagine even NOT having one.  I pray I will continue to learn, and that my little plot of ground will continue to produce.

And, that’s it!  For today.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers, if I get overwhelmed by cleaning and baking and cooking and don’t make it back to the blog before then. 

Garden journal…

I’m so happy with my garden right now. What a difference a few months and 20 degrees make! The searing, endless 110+ days are over, which both I and my garden barely survived. Right now, in the Phoenix area, it is sadly, frustratingly, energy-sappingly hotter than it should be — by a good 15 – 20 degrees. Highs have been in the high 90s. But, I think it’s good for the garden, and at least it’s not 115.

I’m still composting in my two giant bins. I would have a batch ready to till into the soil, but my well-meaning husband dumped a bunch of yard trimmings into both bins (I had one bin “stewing” and was almost ready and the other bin for new material), so now, neither bin is ready. I’ll have to buy some composted manure to add to the garden when it’s time to pull out the crops which are just about done for the season.

• Tomatillos (“Mt. Pima” variety): I have four giant bushes, a good 4+ feet tall each, supported by tomato cages. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tomatillos on them, and they’re slowly ripening. However… those dumb things are marble-sized. I bought the seeds from Native Seeds/SEARCH, which is a fabulous organization, and I support them wholeheartedly. However, I need to ask better questions before I purchase seeds from them in the future. I wasn’t aware that I was getting the world’s smallest tomatillos; the seed/product description really didn’t mention their teeny-tiny size. I’m still looking forward to making some tomatillo salsa; it’ll just be like making jam, where you have to harvest and clean hundreds of berries for one small jar. The tomatillos are also so large that they’re shading the garden in a greatly unwelcome way. The days are getting shorter, and all the veggies need as much sunshine as they can get; the tomatillos are hogging the sun. I’m getting a bit impatient with the plants, and am considering yanking them out, just to give everything else more sun….
• Tomatoes (“Punta Banda” variety): I have finally controlled the winged aphids that were sapping the life out of my tomato plants. I finely grate about 2 tsp Fels-Naptha soap, dissolve the shreds in water inside a 64 oz sprayer, and spray the tomato plants every 2-4 days. In the interim, I just pinch those nearly microscopic suckers. I now have a good 100+ tomatoes growing on my 11 main plants. Again, these were from Native Seeds/SEARCH, and the tomatoes are only about golfball sized. Still. I’m happy to have an abundance of tomatoes, even if they’re smaller than I prefer. None are ripe yet, but many of them will be in another week or two. I also have about eight other smaller plants, that have come up volunteer, very likely from not being fully composted. The largest of the volunteer tomatoes are just now starting to blossom; I’m excited to find out what kind they are!!
• Green beans (“Yoeme Purple String” variety): These, too, are from Native Seeds/SEARCH. After not bearing any fruit and me barely able to keep them alive in the searing summer heat, they’re now growing wonderfully; I harvest about half a pound every three days from the four bamboo stake teepees I constructed. I think next time, I will choose a different variety; these become too fibrous too quickly… But, still, the beans are good for stewing in soups and Crockpot stuff, and eaten fresh & raw when very young. I’m happy with them.
• Zucchini-ish whatever-it-is. I purchased some seeds touted as Mexican Grey Squash, which is by far my favorite summer squash — think 7-8″ chubby, light green-grey colored zucchini, firm and sweet with tender skin and NONE of zucchini’s bitterness. The plants were dying on the vine in the midst of summer; perhaps it was too hot for them, too. They’re now producing nicely in fairly compact plants. However, they’re NOT Mexican Grey Squash. I contacted the small seed supplier, and suggested that the seeds had been cross-pollinated before they were harvested, as the squash and the plants themselves are quite confused: darker green than MGS, with skinny necks like a crookneck squash.  The supplier got really, really, really defensive, bordering on nasty.  So, I’m not linking to them.  In spite of their questionable background, the squash is tasty. I can’t decide if I will plant these again or not. Unfortuntately, I burned the growth end (or whatever it’s called) of one of the plants with some natural, homemade (and completely ineffective) bug-killer, so only one of my plants are producing.
• Hopi Pumpkin. This GIGANTIC, HUGE vine spread out a good 10′ x 10′ and produced a grand total of three squash. Only one of them are even full-sized. We’ve eaten one. Another, I accidentally harvested when trimming back the vine, and the third and largest remains on the vine. The vine is just about dead and I’m going to need to harvest it, too. I’m waiting as long as I can, because I have winter squash coming out my ears from the CSA I participated in. I’m definitely going to grow winter squash again, but not that variety. Butternut, most likely.
• Chile Negro. These slow-growing plants are finally producing, too. I have about 15 chiles growing on my five plants, none ripe enough to harvest yet. I’m planning on picking these green, too. I think. After I sample them, I’ll decide if I’m going to grow them again.
• Newer crops: I also have Red Chard growing, which is beautiful and tasty. It kind of got off to a slow and bug-eaten start, but they’re doing nicely now. We’re going to eat some tomorrow night. The first harvest of carrots (“Dragon” variety) should be in mid-November. Green onion, bulb onions, and broccoli are also sprouting, but nowhere near ready yet.

Overall, I feel like I’m finally past the frustrating first stages of “I HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN AND NOTHING IS GROWING RIGHT!!” and am now able to put to use what I’ve discovered about organic desert gardening, and I look forward to an ever more-fruitful garden.

Karen the Farm Lady tantalizes you…

I have been Farm Lady the last few days, barefoot in the kitchen, and I really love it. I’ve decided that I would gladly do a swap with someone: They can come daily and clean my home, and I will do all their healthy grocery shopping and cooking and baking, accommodating all their dietary needs or restrictions. I’m sort of joking, because I think in order for it to REALLY work, that person would have to live very close to me. Still. One can dream, right?? If interested, apply below in the comments.

It tastes as good as it looks!

I’m finally 100% happy with my bread.  Yes, it’s gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, rice-free, potato-free, vegan, made with this homemade flour blend.  Now, I just need to post the recipe.  But that takes a while.  Saturday, maybe??  Monday??  Stay tuned.  My friend Kim (of Gluten Free Real Food) sampled the bread yesterday, and she said it was really good. 

Yesterday, I turned all this basil (about ¼ of what I could have harvested from my garden) into little ice cubes, made by chopping washed leaves with a bit of olive oil in a food processor (a delightful, free hand-me-down from the afore-mentioned Kim), putting 1 Tbsp of the mixture into ice cube trays, and topping it with filtered water.  It made 40 “ice” cubes, which I will happily add to soups, stews, sauces, etc., in the dead of winter, and think happy thoughts about my garden.  I’m going to make some more this afternoon.

I look like an aging goober with really yellow teeth. Oh, well. At least I can grow some good basil.

I worked this morning in my garden, staking my tomatoes, weeding, and making a general assessment of overall garden health…  I was going to plant more carrots, but Fiala, my almost-three-year-old “planted” the seeds in the family room carpet yesterday.  I have determined that all — or at least most — of my garden problems were simply from the intense heat.  The days are still hot — usually hitting 105° daily — but the nights are relatively cooler — in the 70s or at least the low 80s.  Now,

• my Mexican Grey Squash are growing very nicely.  I still haven’t harvested any mature fruit, but there are about six squash growing healthy and strong…  At least 2-3 of them should be ready to eat in another week or so.
• My pole green beans have recovered from serious heat stress and are growing fresh green leaves and blossoms.
• There are a total six green tomatoes on my eleven plants — don’t laugh!  Up until now, I have harvested ONE tomato, and it was really small.  So, I’m really delighted about my tomato plants — growing more robustly in the last few weeks than they have all summer.
• I also have 7-8 volunteer tomato plants sprouting up… I’m not sure if I’m going to have room for all those tomatoes!  We’ll see.
• My green chile plant is blooming nicely.
• My Hopi Pumpkin plant is absolutely taking over the world — it’s about 10′ x 10′, and now it is finally producing some green pumpkins which are NOT dying, but actually growing bigger.  I hope I get to reap some before I grow terribly annoyed by the prolific/invasive grower and root it out.
• I have carrots that are growing nicely.
• Red chard growing nicely, too, though it seems like the bugs REALLY like it, so I’m going to have to spray it with some organic pesticide…  (I bought Raid Earth Options chrysanthemum-pyrethrin-based pesticide because I had a buy-on-get-one-free coupon.  For the record, it discourages bugs for about three days, and you can’t let any overspray hit bees, or it’ll kill them.  And, a garden needs its bees!!)

I’ve put up ten quarts of pickles in the last week or so, using cucumbers from the CSA/farm share to which I belong.  Four in the first batch, six in the second batch, which I canned this morning.  The first batch was WAY TOO SALTY, because of some vague wording in the recipe I was following coupled with me not being sharp enough to figure out the error.  The best part of the too-salty pickles is the cloves of fresh garlic I threw in.  YUM.  I’m going to have to pickle me some garlic!!  In the new batch, in each jar, I used ½ tsp dill weed, ¼ tsp each brown mustard seed, coriander seed, and black peppercorns.  No garlic this time — not enough to spare!  I look forward to eating my not-too-salty farm pickles.

This last bit isn’t really farm-y or even food-y.  BUT, I’m pleased with myself, because it is a cheap way to make my home more pleasant.    My sister, who teases me unmercifully on topics ranging from my horse teeth to my hairy toes to my crunchiness and everything in between (I love her dearly and she keeps me humble), bewailed my sadly scentless laundry.  I explained that we couldn’t do scented detergents or fabric softener because of Fiala’s skin issues.  When she mourned for me, it really got me thinking about ways I could make my laundry smell pleasant and fresh without hurting Fiala.  A few weeks ago, I was at Trader Joe’s and noticed their filter-paper enclosed lavender dryer sachets.  Voila!  Perfect.  The $3.99 price tag made me grumble, but four packets which each last 6-10 loads… I figured the package would last me a month.  Well, my local natural foods market (Sprouts, which is taking over the West — you may see one near you soon!  It’s a good thing.) is running a 25% off their bulk products this week.  They have a lovely wall of half-gallon jars full of spices and herbs, and I thought, “I wonder if they have dried lavender flowers?  I could make my own dryer sachets!”  Turns out, they DO carry lavender!  Even on sale, it was $13-something per pound, so I tentatively filled up my little plastic ziploc baggie with what I figured was more than enough to make four sachets to do a little price comparison.  The total cost???  FIFTY TWO CENTS.  That’s it.  And when buying lavender as an herb, it was taxed at the grocery rate (1.8%) instead of the general merchandise rate (≈9.8%, depending on the municipality).  And, I already have a little cotton drawstring bag that I’m planning on using.  So, I’ll have my gently lavender-scented laundry now, at 1/8 the cost.  Ha!  I feel pretty good about that one.  Because I get excited about weird stuff like that.

And now, this post is so long, I guess I could have used the time it took creating it to have done the bread recipe.  :\

Stuff that is interesting to me. :D And hopefully to you.

• For those of you curious — or even better, praying — my mom was moved yesterday to a rehabilitation hospital.  While there, she will receive 3+ daily hours of various kinds of therapy — occupational therapy, physical therapy, in addition to respiratory therapy and whatever else is deemed helpful.  So, her stay in the “normal” hospital was just under two weeks, which is better than pretty much everyone anticipated.  For those of you who are praying, please continue to do so, especially for my mother’s mind.  Her memory is shoddy, her processing very childlike, and while she knows she isn’t as sharp as she once was — and she once was VERY sharp! — it is quite an adjustment for both herself and those who love her.  We’re hoping that the general befuddlement is primarily caused by the abundance of meds she is taking, and not anything more permanent.
• This past spring, I checked out several books from the library on homeschooling high schoolers.  I read none of them.  I don’t even think I really flipped through any, not with anything resembling thoroughness.  I did get a printout from my local school district about graduation requirements, and have roughly — very roughly — mapped out a Plan of Action in my head.  And, I’m coming up with a more structured grading system for Ethan, my freshman.  None of this has been any kind of difficult.  It dawned on my yesterday, though, why homeschooling for high school can be so daunting:  There aren’t any do-overs.  I take a very spiraling approach:  We cover various topics repeatedly, with increasing complexity.  If my third grader doesn’t “get it”, who cares?  We have fourth, fifth, sixth… for him to learn.  Now that my oldest son is in 9th grade, though, I am really getting a sense of, “The buck stops here.”  We can’t pass on anything.  We can’t just say, “We’ll try again next semester.  Next year.  A couple-three years down the road.”  There are certain things he’s expected — and beyond that, things he needs — to learn for each year of high school, and if we run out of time at the end of the day, when do we make it up?  I still haven’t figured that out entirely.
• Motivated Moms.  I’ve been doing this scheduling system for a bit more than a month.  And while I have yet to actually accomplish in a week all that my schedule is telling me I’m to accomplish, I’m still getting way more done around the house than I had previously.  Not only has it produced a better organized and cleaner home, but having my daily list of things to do has nearly done away with that really debilitating feeling of, “I am barely keeping my nose above water!”  That alone makes it worth it.
• My garden is still producing really big plants that bear no fruit.  Or very little fruit.  Still…  I’m persisting, and hopefully, learning more, week by week.  I keep losing seedlings, though.  Here in the Phoenix area, September has been unseasonably, miserably hot (minus the last two days, which haven’t hit 100°, bless God); daily highs have been in the 105°-110° range.  This means that any seed that is directly sown into the garden needs to be moistened 4-5 times DAILY so that the sprout doesn’t die.  And, forget one time, or be away from home too long, and you lose your 15 linear feet of carrots.    So, I think I’ll hold off from seeding anything additional for another couple weeks.
• Taboo Crunchy Subjects.  Thank you, Mama Birth, for blogging my thoughts.  I don’t agree 100% with her assessments, but like her, I have noticed an increasing level of both fear and inflexible vociferousness in the supposedly touchy-feely natural-living/crunchy community.  It’s a bit disheartening, I must admit.  Personally, it is my goal to be a leader, to have some hills on which I’m willing to die, to have some moral absolutes, to learn from others’ mistakes and my own, to continually go “further up and further in“, YET NOT BE A JERK.  Even better than that, to be actually loving.  AND, to not be motivated by fear. (Which is a whole ‘nother topic in itself, and one on which I keep meaning to blog, but the whole subject would be such a huge one for me to tackle, I don’t know if I have the time or the emotional fortitude to do it justice.)  I don’t know if I’m achieving that balance, but it’s my goal.

Garden! Honey laundering! Motivated Moms! Obsessed with bread! New glasses! Hiking!

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  Rhubarb Chard from Seeds of Change

  I have carrots, green onions, broccoli, and red chard seeds planted in my garden.  I’ll be planting more of everything, plus lettuce and bulb onions, as space allows.  Still growing:  Mexican grey squash (I’ve eaten lots of them, raw, when they’re about 3″ long, right before they turn yellow and die); Yoeme purple string beans (tall and mostly green, but appears to be heat-stressed… some blooms… I’m waiting to see if the plants will do better as the weather cools);  basil (the only thing that’s really thriving;  we eat basil in stuff 4-5x/week now);  tomatoes (loads of blooms, but not really vigorous, strong plants… again, waiting until it cools to reassess);  hot red chile plants (healthy-looking, but small and no blooms).  I’m trying to decide what to do about my ginormous Hopi pumpkin plant.  It is literally spilling out of my raised bed… the squash plant is about 10′ x 4′, and it is taking up so much room that could be used for something else.  The plant appears to be thriving, with huge, green leaves and dozens of blossoms, and it would be a shame to rip out something so vigorous.  But, the pumpkins grow about 2-3″ big and then die, much like my Mexican grey squash.  My husband thinks it’s due to the heat and that I should give it some time.  I’m trying not to think about all the other, possibly more fruitful veggies I could plant in the space that dumb pumpkin is hogging.

• PLEASE READ this article on honey.  Please.  Who knew that honey was such a controversial topic??  It is imperative to your safety that you buy honey that is a product of the USA, or at least the western hemisphere.  Honey from China — tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals — is saturating the American market, because honey from China is banned in Europe.  “Some of the largest and most long-established U.S. honey packers are knowingly buying mislabeled, transshipped or possibly altered honey so they can sell it cheaper than those companies who demand safety, quality and rigorously inspected honey. … Almost 60 percent of what was imported – 123 million pounds – came from Asian countries – traditional laundering points for Chinese honey. This included 45 million pounds from India alone.”  HONEY SMUGGLING.  Who knew?
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  "Like" OSC on Facebook for new post updates, quick responses to any questions and comments, plus additional tidbits.

  Perhaps it’s too early to make a true judgement, but Motivated Moms seems to be working great.  It’s oddly helpful to be accountable to a sheet of paper which is waiting for me to tick the boxes.  The system is a real change for me, because instead of cleaning the bathroom in one fell swoop, it has you clean the toilet one day, the mirrors another day, the sink the following day, etc.  However, breaking each task into 2-to-20 minute segments makes each of them more do-able for me.  Plus, I find it difficult to disappear into my bedroom for an hour and a half to clean the master bath from lighting fixtures to tile;  I just don’t have that large chunk of time often enough, and I just can’t leave my kids unsupervised for that long.  But, pretty much everyone can function on their own if mom is only “gone” for 20 minute segments.  It’s just now noon, and I’ve already accomplished more than I would in an entire typical day.  Plus, I’ve gone on Facebook, done some gardening, made a loaf of bread, and busted a few heads.  Not really “busted”.  I’ve applied some mothering. 

• Speaking of bread, I’m an obsessed baker again.  I’m really motivated to find a recipe that WORKS, simply.  I have been making my Best Ever Gluten-Free Flour Mix for the last couple of months, consistently having it on hand to whip up some cupcakes or muffins or pancakes, and that has been wonderful and helpful.  Though it is a really versatile mix, I haven’t been able to successfully make sandwich bread with it, and I’m determined to come up with a bread recipe that will work using that flour mix.  Simple = sustainable.  I want to be able to daily (or nearly so) bake bread, and I know I won’t do it if I have to get out twenty billion ingredients, or remember a complicated process.  So far, the results are tasty, but too dense.  I’m tinkering with everything tinker-able — amount and kind of liquid, oven vs. breadmaker, amount of sugar and yeast, amount of rising time, etc.
• 

  They make me look hipper than I actually am.

  I got new glasses. 

• I went out hiking, early Saturday morning, with two friends, Cristi and Wendy.  It was the first time I hiked in about six weeks.  The hike wasn’t particularly strenuous, but it was good to just get out and get moving again.  What with the heat, a summer Bible study, my garden, our vacation, and simply getting out of the habit, my hiking went by the wayside.  I’m re-motivated now. 

Knock, knock…. KNOCK, KNOCK!!!

I struggle with being discouraged too easily and reading the wrong thing into roadblocks.  It came as a complete revelation to me that just because the initial answer appears to be “no” that doesn’t mean God wants me to stop trying.  Perhaps He wants me to try a different way, use a different approach, or wait…  You know, persist.  Persevere.  Ask and keep on asking.  Knock and keep on knocking.*  Seek Him out.  Pray a bit more.  Fast, even.

That’s hard for me.  I was raised in a “No means no” world, and I tend to be like that myself.

I found myself in adulthood with the mistaken impression that if something went wrong with my plans, then it wasn’t meant to be.  And, the inverse:  If God wanted me to do something, He’d make it easy for me.  <facepalm>  I can’t believe now that that was my understanding of blessing.  I thought if something was His plan for me, that if I was following His path, that surely He’d make the way smooth.  Proverbs 3:5-6 does say that He will direct our path if we’re trusting in Him, but it took me years — YEARS — to understand that sometimes, He directs our path through some pretty rocky terrain.

I remember my first months of marriage, and me being really shocked with how difficult it was.  I cried every day for the first three months.  Part of that was from difficulty adjusting, and part of it was, “HOLY CRAP.  What have I gotten myself into???”  I was really panic-stricken, because I thought that my husband Martin was God’s plan for me, but if he was, then why were things so *@&#)(*&!! hard???  So, I thought that maybe I had heard wrong from God, and now here I was, stuck in a marriage that was not of Him, stuck because I didn’t believe in divorce, and if I had made the wrong decision, I was going to have to suck it up and live — until death do us part — with my poor decision.

I didn’t understand that many, many, many times, God uses difficulty to refine us, to teach us, to draw us to Him, to bring us to maturity…

Ease ≠ God.

At least, not necessarily.

I think I had fabricated a holy-ish interpretation of the obviously fleshly maxim, “If it feels good, do it.”  I had turned it into, “If everything goes smoothly, God is in it, so it must be right.”  Turns out, that’s not in scripture.  That’s just not His way.  Lying on your back in a green field, looking up at the puffy clouds as they float by is pleasant, and there truly are some beautifully pleasant times with God;  He is a God of peace.  But, He is also a God of discipline.  I mean discipline in the best sense — the ordered, structured process by which we reap something fruitful from our well-directed labor.

I’m thinking of my garden right now.  It has been an unending metaphor for my life.  “If I pick the right seeds — heirloom, native, organic — and plant at the right time, and tend it properly, I will have LOADS and LOADS of abundant produce, and I will share it with everyone, and I will can the overflow, and we will save on groceries, and I will be productive, and my husband will appreciate my efforts on behalf of our family!!!”  Well, it hasn’t turned out like that.  I did a whole lot more learning in the last six months or so than reaping.  These past couple weeks, I have been preparing the soil for a better harvest…  About 3″ more of (organic, homemade) compost, about a 1/2″ layer of sand, a handful of Ironite, a sprinkling of gypsum, turn over the soil as deep I can, mix it in, mix it again, turn it again, get down on my hands and knees with a little trowel and little cultivator and try to work every cubic inch of soil, down at least 12″.  THAT IS HARD WORK.  I have worked up a sweat.  I have gotten sunburnt.  I have gotten COVERED in dirt.  And it takes all day to do about 20 square feet.  All day.  Sore muscles, quarts of water consumed, swatting away the flies…  Ugh.  It hasn’t been pretty, that’s for sure.

But, I have hope, you know?

I’m not as idealistic (which is a whole ‘nother topic — harmful idealism) as I once was about the garden, and I find myself saying, “Well, maybe the winter crop still won’t be fruitful.  But I’m going to keep on trying, keep on learning, and I’m not giving up.”

I know, I know… I’ve already blogged about this.

This post, by the way, is NOTHING like what I set out to write.  I was going to write about how a young woman wanted me to be her unofficial doula last year, and I invested HOURS of time on her, and when it came to labor, she totally chucked all the natural stuff out the window and had a pitocin-and-epidural birth and was disappointed by the results, and how she didn’t feel euphoric when the baby was born (drugs’ll do that, because they’re endocrine disruptors).  Then, she got pregnant again, and didn’t invite me to the birth, which I was OK with, because the first one was a hard disappointment…  But her first words to our mutual friend after her second son was born was, “I wish Karen had been here.”  Which made me happy and sad.  I should have at least asked if she wanted me there, instead of saying to myself, “Hmph.  I’m not even going to offer, because if she really wants to do it naturally, she’ll ask.”  Gah.  I feel like a slug for having thought that.  AND, it’s one more instance of me giving up too easily, letting my disappointment beset me, and that keeping me from doing something I really should have done.

I remember one night in a small group Bible study, about fifteen years ago, and a guy named Doug said something about seeking God out, and that sometimes, it’s like God plays hide-and-seek.  I was offended.  That went against EVERYTHING I believed.  God doesn’t HIDE from us!  If God wants us to know something, or do it, He will let Himself be known.  We don’t have to LOOK for Him!  Doug said that God hides in such a way like we might with a small child — with a big toe sticking out underneath the curtain which we’re hiding behind, or we might cough a bit.  I cannot begin to describe my shock.  Then Doug had the audacity to Scripturally back up what he was postulating, using verses in the Song of Solomon.  The whole thing really… well, I don’t know if it changed my paradigm right then, but it at least started the process.

And, I think Doug was onto something there.

He’s now a pastor at my church, too.    Turns out he does know a thing or two.

So.

The moral of the story is, instead of expecting God to just appear with an orchestral crescendo and sprinkle magic pixie dust on my life and make it easy, I’m learning to look for His big toe, the hint of His presence, and not be so easily discouraged when He doesn’t show up with blessing like I thought He was supposed to, in the way I want Him to.

He DOES bless, but He doesn’t bless by making things EASY.  Martin IS the right man;  it’s just that marriage is hard work, and honoring my husband and laying down my life — in some ways literally, in some figuratively — for him is hard.  The garden isn’t flawed just because it needs some hard work, not the garden in my back yard, nor the garden of my life.

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*“ask” in Matthew 7:7 — αιτειτε  verb – present active imperative.  In other words, you DO it and you keep doing it.