Varieties for Northern Nevada Gardens

I got my indoor seeds planted today. I've found eight to ten weeks is long enough to get everything up and growing and hardened off, ready to plant. Since I won't plant any of them outside until after Memorial Day, today was a fine time to get them started. They won't be as big as the plants you can buy in the garden shops in May. But I think my smaller plants undergo less transplant shock, and do catch up quickly once the warm weather gets here. More about the process here.

Those of you following along at home, start saving your eggshells, too. I just keep mine in an open jar under the kitchen counter. They dry out, so don't smell or attract ants. When the jar gets full, I use a potato masher to crush them down. When it's time to set my tomatoes, peppers, chiles, and eggplants out in the garden, I add some eggshell (calcium) and Epsom salts (magnesium) to the planting hole to prevent blossom end rot. It's a good idea to pick up some Wall-o-Waters if you see them in the store, too. I reuse the same ones year after year. I put them around my plants when I set them out, and leave them on until July. They both keep the plants warmer at night and provide protection from our notorious Washoe Zephyr.

Most years, we can count on around a 100-day growing season for our tender crops. Pass up those Brandywine tomatoes, and go for the Early Girls if like eating home-grown ripe tomatoes. Here's what I started today - varieties I've found that usually will produce a pretty good harvest in our high-desert climate. Many of these can be found in the seed racks at Wal-Mart or any of the grocery stores. This is enough for the two of us to eat fresh, put by for the winter, and still have some extras to give away:

1 Early Girl tomato - the most reliable, fresh-eatin' tomato
1 Sweet 100 tomato - for snacking on, right there next to the plant
6 CC (for Carson City) Paste tomatoes; to can, slices to dry, plus they'll also store until after New Year's - I started with an Amish Paste tomato 25 years ago. I kept saving seeds from the biggest, earliest couple of tomatoes each year, and now have my own "heirloom" that reliably produces big, early, bunches of tomatoes. I don't bother with the fermenting-seeds-in-water bit everyone tells you to do - I just cut the fruit open, squoosh the seedy gel out with my finger, and wipe it onto a piece of paper. When dry, I fold up the paper and store it in an envelope in my seed box. When it's time to plant, I just scratch the seeds off the paper and stick 'em in the dirt.

6 CC Chile peppers - same story - I started with an Anaheim/California green chile years ago, and saved the seeds from the biggest, earliest couple of fruits each year
6 California Wonder bell peppers - still working on getting a good, early bell pepper. This is an heirloom so has some good possibilities
6 Jalapeno peppers - up from my usual two plants. The jalapeno jelly I made last year is soooo good, I want to make sure I have enough plants to make a batch or even two this year. If I end up with a bumper crop, it's easy to put together a smoker to make chipotles - maybe I'll try canning a batch in adobo.
6 Ancho chile peppers - the additional chile for this year. Every year, I grow and dry or can enough of one different chile - cayenne, paprika, relleno, pimiento, etc. - to last for the next 3-4 years. I just broke open one of last Ancho I grew, strung up in a ristra hanging in my kitchen, and planted those seeds. They should still be viable.
1 Habanero pepper - I usually end up buying a plant at the store. If I want to grow my own, I should probably start it in January instead of waiting until now. One plant will usually produce enough to make a batch of my favorite hot sauce each year.

2 Clemson Spineless okra - yes, you can grow okra here. And why deal with spines if you don't have to? It's an heirloom variety, but I've never managed to save viable seeds so I buy a packet every few years.
3 Black Beauty eggplant - I like them better than the Japanese type, plus they'll last in storage 'til the first of the year. Same as the okra, it's an heirloom variety, but I've never managed to save viable seeds.
2 basil - enough to eat fresh, dry some, plus freeze a few batches of pesto, too
2 green tomatillos - last year, I just picked out the biggest fresh tomatillo I could find in the grocery store, and did the same squoosh-the-seeds-onto-paper that I do for tomatoes. I got a nice harvest of good-sized tomatillos, and saved the seeds from the biggest, earliest ones to plant this year.

I also started six-packs of early Golden Acre cabbage, late Dutch Ballhead cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, raddichio, Joi Choi, Tuscan kale, and both orange and yellow calendulas, plus a couple chard, red kale, and blue kale plants. But those are all cold-hardy veggies, so just about any variety of those plants will do ok here. All of those will get set out the end of May too, to grow through the summer for a fall harvest.

Garden Remodel, Still in Progress

The plan for today was to get my seeds started inside. But when Aries' planned outing got canceled, I changed my plans in order to take advantage of the nice weather, superior muscles and horsepower now available. I got him to help me finish the garden reconfiguration.

I've been working on this project for a year - starting with moving the chicken coop, so we could move the garden fence, and re-working the lower two squarish beds into three long ones. I'd moved the raspberry patch last week, so had only to dig up the little patch of baby leeks, bunching, and walking onions. While I did that, Aries got the big rototiller fueled up and running, and brought it down to the garden. Luckily, a friend stopped by to visit him just then, so it gave me some time (ah, the dynamics of two fire signs working together - there can be sparks, but we do get things done) to get some stakes and string laid out to show him what should be garden bed and what should be path.

Our entire property drops down towards the east. He had to really work to keep that big tiller moving across the slope when it wanted to swing downhill, but he did pretty good keeping it lined up reasonably straight. Once tilled, he started hauling wheelbarrow loads of compost down from the bin up by the garage (he thinks it's easier to move the spent plants and chicken manure up, and the compost down, than moving the chipper-shredder very far from the garage). I spread the compost evenly over each bed, and then he ran through each one again. I'm still going to have to do some hand-digging along the edges of each bed, and a lot of raking to get them all into level terraces. But it's looking good.

Seed Starter Mix

It's time to start tender seedlings inside, to be set out in the garden after Memorial Day. But I was out of my seed starter mix, so today I made up a batch. Regular potting soil is too coarse, and doesn't hold enough water to get seedlings off to a good start. Curious, I looked at the tiny bags of seed starter mix in my local home improvement store. Not only would buying enough for my needs be prohibitively expensive, but I really don't think using something that, in reading the small print on the back, cautions that it's important to wear gloves while using this product, keep it away from children, and write to them to find out more about the metals (metal??) it contains. That just sounds chemical-laden to me. I'll continue to mix up my own, thank you.


Seed Starter Mix
3 parts compost
3 parts sphagnum peat moss (or coir fiber)
1 part vermiculite (or perlite)
a dusting of fertilizer booster blend (equal parts bonemeal, bloodmeal, & greensand)

I bought a bale of compressed peat moss at Wal-Mart, and big bag of vermiculite at Home Depot. Both are enough to last me for another 5-6 years of planting seasons. The compost and fertilizer blend I already had.

My compost is completely cooked, but still pretty coarse, so I had Aries run me a bin-ful through the chipper/shredder. Better, but still too coarse for little broccoli seeds. But once I sifted everything though a riddle, I had a wonderfully fluffy, fine-textured mix. It was easy to mix everything together with a trowel.

It's important to get the mix evenly damp before planting. The moss holds water well, but once it dries out, it's hard to get the moss re-hydrated again without disturbing the seeds. Wheeling it over to the faucet, I ran enough water into the wheelbarrow to make a soupy mess, and left it for a few minutes. When I came back, the moss had soaked up everything but there were still dry spots underneath. I kept adding water, stirring with a short-handled shovel, and waiting a bit, until everything was evenly damp.

Using compost, I probably won't have any pathogens or molds in this mix, but just to be on the safe side I solar-sterilized it. An old salvaged storm window was the perfect size to fit over the wheelbarrow. Weighting the glass down snug, with an old rug and a wadded-up feed bag tucked into the spaces top and bottom, I left the whole thing sitting in the sun all afternoon. Despite the somewhat cool temperatures today, the glass started steaming up almost immediately. This evening, I'll fill up my seed starter bin and bring it into the house so it doesn't freeze overnight. And tomorrow, I can plant my seeds!

Planting Day for Cold-Tolerant Seeds

The earliest daffodils are blooming, and now today, the Shiro plum tree. A couple of blooms have opened on the apricot. Buds are swelling on the rest of the plums, and leaves just starting to show on the lilacs and the maple tree. It's starting to look like Spring!

Yesterday evening, I finished digging and shaping two of my garden beds, and laid out the soaker hoses. So today was early season planting day. The onion plants were still dormant, down in the cool cellar. It's a bit damp down there, and a few of the tops had a bit of fluffy, grey mold on the tips. So, using my kitchen shears, I clipped about half an inch from the top of each bunch. Once outside in the wind and the sun, they should be fine.

With six garden beds to play with now, I've had to do some figuring and planning of how I want to divide up my plantings, and how my rotation will work. One long bed will now be the Allium bed, with a couple of little bits for the earliest greens harvests interspersed. It gets a dual soaker hose setup. My softneck garlic, from bulbs harvested last July then planted last fall, is already up about four inches, and green tips of the shallots are just starting to poke up out of the ground. I had scattered some spinach and arugula seeds in a block between those two last fall. They germinated in January but then shriveled in the dry eight weeks that followed. Ah well, sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't. So today I seeded some more arugula (my seeds, harvested last summer) in half of that area and some Champion and Salad Red radishes in the other half.

On the other end of the bed, I set out one bunch of Copra onion plants, plus a mixed bunch of Red Zeppelin, Ringmaster, and Walla Walla plants. I dug a couple of bunches of baby leeks from my allium nursery bed, and set each one into a hole the depth of my trowel (taking the time to hand-dig the entire bed this past week makes it so easy to plant everything today). In the last little patch of that bed, I scattered some Bloomsdale Long-Standing spinach seeds, harvested from last year's plants.

The second long bed will be a Peas and Greens bed - also with dual soaker hoses. I made three pea trellises, pieces of wire fencing attached with twist ties to t-posts pounded into the center of the bed. Despite what they say on the seed packets, I don't think you can plant peas too thickly. I dig a 3" wide trench on either side of the trellis and then scatter in the seeds about half an inch apart. I planted Sugar Snap peas around one trellis, Lincoln English peas around another and, for the Chinese pea pods, Melting Sugar on one side and Oregon Sugar on the other. All the peas are heirloom open-pollinated varieties, so I can save seeds for future plantings.

I've found that planting lettuces on the outside edges of the pea plantings works well. As the weather gets warmer, the growing peas provide shade for the lettuces, and the shade from the lettuces keeps the pea roots cooler, prolonging the harvests of both crops. I planted Romaine, Four Seasons, Buttercrunch, and a Gourmet mix of lettuces (also all open-pollinated) on either side of the Snap and Chinese pea plantings. I'm going to start some Tuscan kale plants inside to set out alongside the English peas.

I seeded some Swiss Chard and the last of my Joi Choi seeds in one patch between two trellises. I need to order some more Joi Choi seeds. It's a hybrid but it's the only bok choi I've found that can take the heat of our high-desert summer without bolting, so worth searching out (I get it from Jung Seeds). The rest of that bed I left open for cauliflower, cabbage, and broccoli transplants.

Hand-Digging New Garden Beds

I started a garden realignment last year, switching two "S" shaped garden beds over to three long straight ones. Aries ran the rototiller down the new beds last year in time to get them planted. But I don't like the job the rototiller does. It's good for breaking up new ground, but doesn't really go as deep as I like or sort out the rocks. So the past week, I've been out there diligently hand-digging.

Each bed is 50' long, so I can use standard soaker hoses, and 3' wide. I did one-third of one bed last fall, for the garlic and shallots. Each bed gets four wheelbarrow-fuls of compost, spread out to cover the entire surface with about an inch. I use an equal-parts mix of bonemeal, bloodmeal, and greensand as an organic booster fertilizer, so sprinkle a light dusting of that over the compost, and then start digging. It takes four passes down the length of the bed with a shovel to turn and mix everything in, making sure the edges of the beds go down as deep as the centers. Some of the beds were where the old garden beds had been, so it was easy to sink the shovel in past the depth of the blade. But other parts used to be the paths, untouched since the whole area was a horse corral. When I hit one of those parts, I have to stand on the shovel and rock it back and forth and side to side, until I slowly work it down into the hard-packed dirt. Every once in a while, I can tell I've hit a rock, so work and worry it about until I can get it to the surface to toss it to the side.

Once everything is mixed and fluffed up, I then go to work with the rake. When I'm finished, I have a level, wide, raised garden bed making a terrace across the slight slope of our property. The three beds that will have smaller, closely-spaced plants get two soaker hoses; the other three for the bigger plants will get only one down the center. I'm about ready to get Aries out there with the rototiller to re-shape the remaining two "s" beds (on the right) into three more long ones, so will have plenty of digging yet to do. Once the beds are formed, they never again get walked on, so garden preparation in subsequent years will be a lot easier.

Uh Oh, Who's Missing?

There were feathers wafting about in front of the house today - not a good sign. I did a chicken roll call and Flopsy, one of our Buff Orpingtons, was missing. Further investigation turned up a half-eaten chicken carcass over in the neighbor's yard. From the evidence, the most likely suspect is the bobcat that's been seen here and there around the neighborhood lately. Darn! From the looks of our egg take today, it appears she was the one laying the really big round egg (bottom left, below) each day, too.

We usually let the chickens have the run of the whole yard during the winter. They're my organic, integrated pest control patrol. They're pretty good about staying within the fence, for the most part, but I had noticed a couple them were venturing outside the fence more and more often lately. It looks like it's time to confine them to their pen. It was about time to do so anyway - once the growing season sets in, their incessant scratching and dust bathing gets too destructive. They never like it, but now, it's for their own protection too.

I think I might have to start keeping my camera close by, especially the couple of hours just after sunrise and just before sunset. I'd love to get a photo of that cat. I just hope he stays outside the fence.

The Zen of Snow Shoveling

The couple inches of snow we woke up to yesterday had pretty much melted by noon. A quick afternoon flurry while I was at work dropped a couple more inches of wet, sloppy snow, but it was gone by evening. And then, at nightfall, the real storm moved in. We woke up this morning to another six inches of snow, sunshine, and freezing temperatures.

Aries had time to clear a path across the deck before his work carpool showed up. I figured quite a bit of it would melt again, but I really don't mind shoveling snow. Plus, snow reflects the sunlight back, but anything cleared down to dark dirt absorbs the heat. This snow might be here a couple of days, but cleared paths dry out quickly, making going about on chores later a lot easier, with less chance of slipping, and helps keep the house cleaner too.

So, with my Ipod in my back pocket (gotta have music), I headed out later in the morning to clear a few paths. By then, the snow had packed itself down by half, but was also twice as heavy. It's a good arm and core workout - keeps me in shape for the garden digging I hope to be doing soon. First path, down to the chicken coop, with a short side path to the front of the feed shed. Aries opens up the coop in the mornings. A couple of the hens had crossed the snow, and were hanging out inside the shed. One had even laid an egg on the floor. But most of the girls, and the guineas, don't really like getting their feet wet. They were all still holed up in the coop. As soon as I had the area around the feeder and their door cleared though, they were all ready to come out into the sunshine.

Aries had given them fresh water earlier, but it had frozen into slush since then. I tossed that, and fetched a fresh bucket of water from the house. I then continued my shoveling. I like to make a path back up to the back door of the house, with a side spur into the dog run. It gives the chickens more room to walk about, and they like hanging out inside the south-facing doghouse there.

From the back door, I shoveled past the garage to the woodpile. The woodbox inside had plenty for today, but having a clean, dry path will make it easier for Aries to refill it for me when he gets home from work. One more path, connecting back door to kitchen door, and I'm finished out back (in mid-winter, when the snow is deeper and won't be melting anytime soon, I also do one more over to the cellar and shovel the door).

Out front, I do one from front door out to the mailbox - even though I wasn't expecting any visitors today, I think it's just good manners to provide non-slippery access from the street to the house. I had afternoon errands planned, and would need my car, so did a quick swoop 'round it, and then got the broom to clean it off. Another swoop 'round, to clean all the snow I'd just slid from car to ground, so I can get into it later without soaking my shoes. And then one last little bit more: though there wasn't enough snow to need to shovel the driveway, I do have to clear the berm the snowplow left, at least wide enough to back my car through. That's the hardest part, too. Plow berms are always heavy, frozen chunks. Ahh - an hour's work, a couple hundred feet of paths - I'd say it's time for a cup of cocoa.

It's Spring?

The only spot of color outside my windows are the finches sheltering underneath the snow on the bare branches of the lilac. But I have faith that Spring weather will come eventually. So it's time to start thinking about the garden.

My onion order arrived last week, but I haven't even been able to get out to the garden yet. Depending on which day it is in our current weather cycle of the past three weeks, it's either too wet or the ground is frozen or it's buried beneath a couple inches of snow once again. But the info sheet said the onion plants will stay dormant for at least 3 more weeks if kept cool and dry, so I've put them down in the cellar for now.

There are lots of gardening things to get started on now, even when I can't get outside. For my fellow northern Nevada gardeners, I'll try to get back on a regular posting schedule so you can all follow along. Plus, I've been taking photos all along, so might do some back posts so I can look back to see what was happening when. Look on the bright side - the longer it keeps snowing, the better the chance the fruit trees will hold off blooming long enough to get some fruit later this summer.

Perennial Herbs

I finished the herb garden cleanup today. The barometer falling, a chill wind had come up overnight, harbinger of the storm headed our way. But with the combination of hard work, weak sun, and protective house walls on the north and west I soon worked up a sweat.

That area was once filled with massive spreading juniper bushes. I'd never really liked them there. The living room picture window looks out over that area, so I wanted something prettier. Plus, junipers can go up just like gasoline in a wildfire situation. Not a good landscaping choice right next to the house in our arid, fire-prone location. When we remodeled the deck and walkway on that side of the house, I talked Aries into pulling out the junipers too.

The only plant I left in that bed was a roof-high lilac bush. In hindsight, it's the wrong plant in the wrong place. For one, it was planted too close to the house - I have to get behind it and clip off any branches that are growing into the eaves. And two, it's the type better used in a hedge, not as a specimen plant. But I love the shade and privacy it provides the bathroom window behind it, especially on hot summer nights. So, I diligently prune the suckers early each spring, when I can work around it before the rest of the plants come back underneath.

Herb Garden Cleanup

Snow is in the forecast for later this week, but today was clear, warm, and still. I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning in the herb garden outside my kitchen door.

I gathered the necessary hand tools, fetched the wheelbarrow, set the solar-powered radio in the sun, and got to work. Spent stalks of last fall's flowers, left for the bees' last foraging, were clipped and tossed. A couple of the hens have been hopping the little picket fence. Their scratching (ewww, it smells like the cat's been in here too) had turned the once-level ground into little pits and mounds. They'd also scattered the rocks filling the drainage trench beneath the eaves across half the bed. Working with a leaf rake, I got most of the rocks and dirt mounds back in place, debris destined for the compost pile into the wheelbarrow.

There were some pleasant surprises - a green-shelled egg (one of our Amerucana/Brown Leghorn cross-breed hens has been here - it sank and laid down when submerged in water, so I know it was fresh, but had a crack in one side - probably froze overnight - so I tossed it), sprouting tips of the earliest daffodils starting to emerge, and beneath the lilac, a bright yellow bud of the first crocus.

The hours passed with the simple joy of getting my hands back in the dirt. The shadows lengthened. I moved the radio a couple of times, chasing the patches of sunlight, until I finally had to go find the power cord and set it up on a bucket near the electrical outlet. I'd finished with the herb garden, and started cutting suckers out of the lilac by the time Aries came home from work. Time to put my tools away and empty the wheelbarrow so he could use it to bring in firewood. In the last bit of light, I made a couple of trips down below the vegetable garden, fetching up big pieces of wire fencing to lay down over everything. After all that work, I had to make sure the hens (or cat) couldn't scratch it all up again.

My Onion Order

Onions end up in just about everything I cook for dinner, quite often in breakfasts too, and many of my canning recipes. Despite numerous attempts, I've never been able to grow decent onions from seed. They'll sprout but just never have done very well for me, if they survive until the setting-out stage at all. So then I'd end up buying a couple of the little bags of onion sets, the miniature bulbs you plant in the early spring to get bigger bulbs later in the season. Those work good if you mainly want scallions or small onions to use fresh - they usually aren't the storage type. My goal in growing onions is to have enough for all my end-of-season canning, plus more to cure and store until I can start harvesting the next summer's crop. Buying onion plants works best for me.

I lost quite a few of last summer's storage onion plants midsummer, to Bambi, so this year I had to start buying my cooking onions in January. I am digging wintered-over leeks now, and still have plenty of shallots though. And soon, I should be able to harvest some spring onions. My walking onions are starting to sprout anew, and the bunching onions should start coming back before too much longer too. I have some onion seeds that are only a year old, so might try starting my own once more, but taking my past attempts into consideration I'm not counting on them.

Today, I ordered a couple bunches of onion plants for this year's main onion crop. I've tried buying onion plants here in town, but the ones the local greenhouse has each spring don't last in storage. A couple of times in the past, I've asked if they could stock some different, better-storing, varieties. But they've repeatedly refused, saying most people want only fresh-eating onions. I can understand their not wanting to stock something they don't think will sell - I realize I probably live differently than most around here. So I've found myself an onion grower that ships what I want to grow - Dixondale Farms. I'm very pleased with both the varieties available and the condition of the plants I've received from them in the past. They're a bit pricey if you're only going to get one bunch, but the price goes down with each additional bunch and shipping is free. If you only have a small space for onions, maybe see if any of your gardening friends want to go in with you on an order.

According to their planting maps, my home in northern Nevada is on the boundary between the intermediate- and long-day onion types. Long-day onions do best north of here, where the summer daylight hours are longest, but will also do well here if planted early enough. I prepared my "early" garden bed last fall, setting out garlic and shallots then, scattering a few spinach and arugula seeds then too. The rest of that bed is just waiting for my earliest sowing of peas, lettuces, and the onions. My onion plants are scheduled to arrive in mid-March. That sounds good to me - folklore says to plant your peas on St Patrick's Day, so I'm hoping the weather will cooperate enough to let me get that whole bed planted then.

They package about 60 onion plants in a bunch; I ordered two bunches. I like yellow Copra onions. I know they grow well here, and easily hold in storage until the following July. So I ordered one bunch of them. Then, since I love experimenting too, I'm trying something new. They have a Long-Day Sampler bunch, a combination of yellow Walla Walla, for eating fresh in the summer plus some fall canning, white Ringmaster for canning and early winter cooking, and Red Zeppelin, a red variety that is supposed to store 6-8 months. If all do well, that should be enough.

Raising Functioning Adults

I don't have children. I married rather late in my childbearing years, to someone who knew he didn't want children. I was ambivalent about the whole thing (I'm the oldest of five, so already knew quite a bit about the non-romantic aspects of caring for babies). So when it came right down to making the decision I was ok with agreeing to no children (truth be told, I'm probably too selfish anyway).

But I like being an auntie. Some of my older nieces and nephews through marriage I'm not very close to. I probably entered their lives too late to form much of a relationship or, being a "second wife," maybe was never thought of as their real aunt. I don't know - water under the bridge. Some of the interpersonal relationships in my inlaws' family are a bit bewildering to me anyway.

But I treasure the relationship I have with the children of my own siblings. I'm especially close to my California sister (let's call her Annodear), and have been a part of her two boys' lives on a regular basis since they were born. They're seniors in high school now (yes, twins), starting to think about college and leaving the nest.

Our mom always said her goal was to raise self-sufficient adults. She succeeded, too. All of us have had our fits and starts, ups and downs, but we are all, indeed, leading successful lives. Annodear has the same aspiration, and she and her husband are doing an admirable job. Besides overseeing their schoolwork, the quest for a driver's license, assigning their share of the household chores, Annodear has also included some life skills lessons.

When I first went away to college myself, as a teen, it was interesting to see how many freshmen boys were suddenly wearing pink t-shirts and socks - one red shirt in with the whites will do that, and they obviously had never had to deal with doing their own laundry. Annodear's boys have learned about laundry.

Sewing is another one of those life lessons. At the very least, the boys now know how to thread a needle, sew on a button, patch holes in their pants, and hand-sew a seam. Money management, too, is an on-going lesson.

The ability to feed one's self, without resorting to a diet of fast food and vending machine fare, is their latest endeavor. Annodear has a blog, writing even more sporadically than I. But she did just recently write about how a household with two working adults and two teenage boys deal with mealtime chores. I think it's a great plan - read more about it on her blog, here (the above photo is in my kitchen, after Thanksgiving dinner - the first time the boys, raised in a house with an automatic dishwasher, had been faced with a sinkful of dirty dishes. I gave them a quick lesson in washing dishes by hand, and left them to it).

Thrift Shop Linen

Whenever I find myself in a thrift shop, I gravitate to the linens section. I have a real weakness for hand-embroidered cotton - pillowcases, tea towels, tablecloths. I'll patiently go through stacks of polyester in hopes of finding something interesting. Sometimes, I get lucky.

This thrift shop find - a strange little x-shaped piece of cotton lawn, beautifully embroidered, its scalloped edges finished with buttonhole stitch - was my key to finding the best way to store fresh greens. It's my turn to post for the Co-op, so I just finished writing more about storing greens over at the Simple Green Frugal blog. For more tips and recipes, here's a cool website about cutting food waste and making the most of the food you buy.

First New Life in the Garden

A couple of warm days, after weeks of snow and way-below freezing temps, and the snow has melted. Of course, seasonal temperatures are forecast to return later today, but in the meantime I got the chance to check on the garden.

No sign of the fall-planted garlic or shallots yet. But, looking closely, I find the spinach and arugula have germinated. Broadcast last fall, watered in by the melting snow, there won't be much growth to be seen just yet. But they can take the freezing weather yet to come, and their roots will start reaching down deep. Then, as the days get longer and warmer, they'll have a good foundation to start putting on top growth. I've found sowing in fall the best way to get a good harvest from these two quick-to-bolt greens. And that harvest comes when I really start craving something green and fresh; when I'm getting tired of stored cabbages and roots.

The leeks too, are perking up and starting to fill out. Young plants divided and set out last summer sent up seed stalks. I broke the seed stalks off, and left the plants in place in the fall. Now, with the snow melt, they've started growing again. I'll leave them to bulk up for the next couple of months, harvesting them for fresh use usually in March and earliest April. Dormant season gardening is soooo easy.

I like experimenting with storing food too. Right now we're snacking on fresh chocolate zucchini bread. I made a three-loaf batch yesterday from a monster zucchini stored in the cellar. The skin was a bit tough, so I skimmed that off with the veggie peeler, and scooped out most of the seeds with a spoon. One-third of the zuke we had as a dinner vegetable, sauteed in olive oil with onions and garlic; the rest shredded for the bread recipe. And there's still one more left in the cellar, looking good.

Just A Bit Cross-Eyed

During three seasons of the year, I spend most of my evenings outside. There's always something to be done in the garden or the rest of the yard. But in the dead of winter, when it's cold and the dark comes early, I end up in the living room, keeping warm close to the wood stove.

Aries watches tv, and I like to read. But sometimes I'll be kinda listening and/or watching whatever he has on, and then I like having something in my hands to work on. Many years ago, when I was young and could see better :-P I started working on a little counted cross-stitch set of the 12 days of Christmas - early-American versions, as opposed to the more-common English stuff. I'd done two and started on the third (a crazy-inducing black and white Barred Plymouth Rock hen, instead of a French one, whatever that is), when the days started getting longer. So I stashed them away in the closet. And there they sat.

Around Thanksgiving this year, needing something to work on, I dug them back out and have been diligently plugging away on them again. They're a nice little handwork size - fitting within a 5" hoop. I figure I'd better get them finished while I can still focus on that 18-count material - that's 18 teeny x's to the inch (what was I thinking!).

I now realize I can't wear my contact lenses to work on them either. I usually wear mono-vision contacts - using my right eye for reading, my left eye for distance. It's worked great for me for years - my brain just automatically knows which eye to use when. But it means I have no close-up depth perception. I can't thread the needle! Nor easily focus on getting the needle into those teeny tiny holes, especially when I'm filling in a new color in-between areas I've already worked. So I'm wearing my glasses instead. With the lamp shade tilted to get more light. This gettin' older ain't for sissies!

And then, I started on that damn swan-a-swimming, working with white and cream threads on ivory material! It was almost like working in braille. I could feel the raised threads of the x's better than I could see them. That one I finally finished up in the mornings, sitting in front of the east window so I could see what I was doing.

Working on teeny cross-stitches kinda starts messing with my mind after a while, too. I stop seeing parts of x's, and start focusing on the empty diamond spaces in between instead - sort of a negative space kind of thing. Or half an x looks like a natural extension of the one diagonally above it. It takes some concentration to readjust back to seeing where I need to start the opposite-side slashes, in the middle of that diagonal.

Stitching the x's, too, is a bit like working in watercolors, or with a soft-focus filter on a camera. The colors kinda run and blend together. But then, when the x's are all finished, I love how it suddenly all comes into sharp, pulled-together focus with the addition of the outline stitches. And once again, I'm amazed at how just trusting the process, I end up with something looking pretty good.

Shopping the Cellar

I was out of carrots in the house, and wanted some for the black-eyed peas this afternoon. Time for a trip down to the cellar. We got about 4" of snow this morning, but I'd shoveled my paths and cleared off the cellar door earlier. So I grabbed my basket and headed outside for my weekly "cellar shopping trip".

Let's see - I'm out of apples too, so pile in a few of them. Aries will like it if I bring up some beer - pilsner or dark? The pilsner is older, it's had more time to mellow, so I guess I'll take a couple bottles of that. Might as well take up one of the zucchinis - they usually only last through January, so it's time to be using them up. And a few tomatoes too - they don't have much taste, but will add a bit of color to sandwiches.

The celery is a new experiment this year - one I think I'll continue. Garden plants dug and potted up last fall, they're continuing to grow slowly in the dark cellar. I think I need some celery for the beans too. Hmmm - don't need any potatoes or beets. They can wait for another time.

But I do need a pickle! The pickle crock is another new experiment - and another success. Every ten days or so, a viscous layer of scum has formed on top of the liquid in the crock, but it's thick and firm enough that I just pinch it and pick it up in one piece to toss. De-scummed, I lift up the plate holding the pickles down and fish out one to take too.

Heading back up, it's almost dark - the chickens have probably gone to roost. So before heading back to the house, I go down to close up the coop for the night. A quick check of the nest boxes reveals two eggs - what a nice surprise! Everyone has pretty much feathered back out after last fall's molt, and a couple are starting to lay again already. What good girls!

Hostess Gift? Ok, Check the Pantry

Heavy snow last Friday caused a friend to cancel a planned holiday get-together. Then, a break in the weather allowed her a last-minute rescheduling for last night. I worked yesterday, plus am trying to get a bit of daily exercise out walking with the dog each day (the little stars on my calendar signify at least 30 minutes activity - I'm really trying to make it a daily habit). This left me but a little time to put together a hostess gift, but I was sure I could figure out something.

I like giving people something I've made when I can manage it. Let's see - what do I have in the pantry? I label my canned goods with the date, and while jelly from a couple of years ago is just fine for us, I think gifts should be the freshest and best. This year wasn't the best harvest for a wide variety of goodies. Hmmm - besides, a jar of tomato sauce or a couple of sour pickles just isn't going to cut it. I really think a holiday hostess gift should be a bit more festive than utilitarian, and still be something she'd like, too. Something she could either add to her party table, or set aside for personal use later. Aha! how about a dried fruit platter?

I have some great dried fruits - harvested at the peak of ripeness from my own trees. Growing fruit in the high desert is feast or famine - late Spring frosts often mean no harvest at all. So in the years when we do manage to get fruit to set, it often ends up being a bumper crop. And our hot, dry summers are perfect for drying fruit; while quite heating up the kitchen with a big pot of boiling canning water, not so attractive. Another plus: when properly stored, dried fruites hold onto that great taste for years.

The big tins in my pantry hold bags of wonderful dried fruit. Pulling them out, I quickly put together a tasty mixture of sizes, textures, and colors - pie cherries, plums, apricots, raisins, peaches, and pumpkin pie leather - little labels for each (the apples and pears, other leathers, are great too - but I ran out of room on the plate). When I gave it to her at the door, she graciously added it to her table. Bits of dried fruit look deceptively small - each bite is packed with flavor and fiber; too rich to eat by the handfuls. There was enough for everyone's snacking throughout the party, plus plenty left for her to enjoy later too.

Drizzly Day

A steady drizzle of rain, starting last night and on into today, and the six inches of snow from two days ago is melting. Instead of shoveling, I'm out checking that my little drainage trenches keep the water flowing around the house instead of through my front door (we live at the mouth of a small canyon, on the downhill side of the street). So far, so good.

Outside, there are no birds to be seen around the feeders. However, a lone little sparrow hawk perches in a nearby tree, patiently waiting for his chance to get something to eat. For now, it's a standoff - they hide, he waits.

Dinner last night: a winter squash (the big one, that got a little too close to the wood stove while curing this fall - a patch on top sunk in and turned white, but the inside looked fine when I cut into it) from the bin in the bedroom, cut in half and into the oven for an hour. I had some raviolis ready to cook, a pint of tomato sauce ready to heat up, but wanted a little something more.

How about some eggplant? home-grown eggplant? in December, with snow outside on the ground? Ah, yes, with a bit of advance planning, entirely possible. Eggplants store quite well for a couple of months, if snugly wrapped in plastic, on a shelf in my kitchen pantry (the zucchini stored in the cellar are still in fine shape too - I love experimenting with my wintertime fresh food options). I unwrapped a couple of small eggplants harvested last October, just before the first killing freeze. Sliced, dipped in egg and crumbs, they joined the squash in the oven for the last 30 minutes baking time.

An Email to Mom

It seems like the only time I've sat down to write about what I've been doing is when I send a newsy email to my Mom. Here's what I said today:

My schedule has been crazy-busy since last week. I started working Tuesdays and Thursdays for a CPA in Minden; went to Christmas luncheons Wednesday and Saturday; a Board meeting Monday; volunteered for 4 hours at the Food Drive (mostly playing traffic director) Friday; and my birthday was in there too. Aries took me out to dinner Sunday to an Italian restaurant in the Fandango casino (ran my $10 up to $20 afterwards, playing quarter video poker), and then we walked around the Methodist church's living Nativity display (took up a whole block, vignettes from Herod's decree to the baby in the manger; admission was a can of food). Monday, we hiked up Prison Hill, to the north end, with the dog. Last night, we went out with friends to Chili's - their thank you for watching their house while they were gone.

I'm a Christmas angel to a couple of boys in foster care; one eight, the other 10. Each gets a bag with blue jeans, socks, and underwear, and then we can spend up to $25 more. So today, I went shopping. I got each a long-sleeved shirt, a Goosebumps book, art supplies and a pad of paper, and a hand-held electronic toy they'd each asked for. Friday I take the stuff over to the DCFS (Nevada Department of Child and Family Services) offices, and they'll do the wrapping and delivery.

I haven't gotten Aries anything yet. He put a cutout picture of a socket set on the refrigerator. Guess I'll have to go see if I can find one :-) And maybe make some goodies - cookies and fudge - to trade off with some of the neighbors and both of us to take to work. I decided not to bother setting up my tree this year, but have Christmas decorations and linens in the kitchen and living room, and a poinsettia on my dining room table. It looks nicely festive. Wal-Mart had some little paperwhite bulb-forcing kits, so I started a couple of those - one pot's just starting to bud, and the other one just now starting to poke above the dirt.

The Day Before Thanksgiving