Green Frieda

Pie Garden

2012-01-28T13:11:00.000-08:00

Last Spring, a friend of mine posted a photo on Facebook of her daughter picking and eating blueberries in her backyard. I immediately got really excited. It had never occurred to me that I could grow blueberries in Los Angeles, but my friend lives in Glendale, so, obviously, I can.

A couple of weeks ago, my husband, son and I headed off to the San Gabriel Nursery. San Gabriel Nursery is sprawling and has a huge selection of plants, including lots of fruit trees and bushes. I'd done a little research beforehand, and found that you need two blueberry bushes to get fruit. Happily, they had three different southern highbush varieties, which are the blueberries best suited to our area. I picked out one Misty Blueberry and one Jubilee Blueberry.

Here they are potted up in some "half-barrel" planters in the back yard. I planted them in soil specially made for potting azaleas, because blueberries like their soil highly acidic. You can get azalea potting soil at most nurseries. I've had them out for a few weeks now, and they seem pretty happy. One bush has even put out some new leaves.

After we found the blueberry bushes, I couldn't resist doing a little browsing. It's hard when there are so many plants to look at. I noticed some good-looking and inexpensive strawberry plants. I always like growing fresh strawberries, so I grabbed a couple of those.

And then, I noticed something kind of cool sitting next to the strawberries and artichokes in what must have been the perennial fruit and vegetable section: rhubarb. Dakota's parents grow rhubarb in their garden in Iowa, but it never occurred to me to grow it here in Los Angeles. I'm a pretty big fan of perennials you can eat, especially now that my gardening time is pretty limited. So, I decided to go for it.

After getting home and doing a little research online, I have found a mix of opinions about whether it's really possible to grow tasty rhubarb in Southern California. The plants like to get cold, although the variety I got--Cherry Red--is supposed to be the best for this part of the world. So, we'll see.

I planted the rhubarb next to the artichokes on the edge of the upper garden bed. That should keep it away from the hot midday sun once summer rolls around. Hopefully it will be happy there.

Once I planted everything, I realized that I have inadvertently created a pie garden. If all goes well, I could bake an awesome strawberry-blueberry-rhubarb pie from my own backyard. (To be honest, Dakota would bake that pie. He's the pie guy in our house.) Plus, I already have a peach tree and two apple trees. Imagine the pie possibilities! Because I am a huge gardening nerd, the idea of a pie garden is really exciting. I hope it works out.

Easy Cheese

2012-01-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Dakota got me this very cool book for Christmas called Home Made. It's got gorgeous pictures, and, most importantly, simple easy-to-follow recipes for making jams, biscuits, cheese and other basic but delicious fresh foods. In fact, the instructions for cheese-making seemed so simple that I decided to try making some for our New Year's Day party.

I made a soft, cow's milk cheese good for spreading called Labneh. The recipe is crazy easy, but I won't write it out here because I don't want to steal from the author of Home Made. I'm guessing you can find directions online pretty easily, although the book is worth purchasing. Basically, it involves yogurt, salt and garlic.

You put all that stuff in a clean dishcloth. And here's a tip: Use a dish cloth, not cheese cloth. Cheese cloth is too porous for this particular method. Then, you hang your bundle-o-yogurt over a big pot or bucket and walk away. I left mine hanging--which strains out the water--for about 24 hours.

Finally, you open up the dishcloth and put your cheese on a platter. Add fresh herbs and you're done.

I thought the cheese was very tasty, and I got many compliments from my party guests. In fact, they ate it all, so I know it must have been good. Home Made has a few other cheese recipes that I'm hoping to try, including a sweet breakfast cheese with vanilla bean. Yum.

So, it turns out soft cheese making is one of those awesome things that seems really fancy and time-consuming, but are actually easy-peasy. I love those things.

The Floor, The Floor

2012-01-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Dakota has been working on the bathroom floor for the last several weeks, and it's almost done. Pouring a cement floor is not an easy process, and there were some ups and downs, but I think it's going to end up looking great.

Here's the radiant floor heating that was laid down on top of the subfloor and covered with the first layer of cement. It has a thermostat with a timer attached, so, once it's all hooked up, we'll be able to set the timer for just before bath time or when we wake up in the morning, and then walk into an already-toasty room. This will be a nice change from our old, drafty, freezing one.

Dakota made the first cement layer fairly thick and added some pea gravel to make each bag of cement go a little farther (cement is expensive). Because he was mixing using a drill and a special mixing attachment, it was a bit difficult to get the consistency just right.

For a moment there, he thought he'd added too much water and that the first layer would never dry--especially since it was also cold and rainy outside. If cement doesn't set properly, the only solution is to break it up and start again. This was a scary thought considering we had a fairly expensive heating element hiding underneath that cement. Happily, it eventually dried.

Notice the toilet in the bathtub in the photo above. That was a little tricky since we only have one bathroom. Happily, we have some friends who live close by and, well, I don't mind peeing in the bushes in a pinch.

Next came two more thin layers. For the last layer, Dakota rented a better, stronger drill to mix the cement. This helped the consistency immensely, and I know if he did it again he'd have gotten the right mixing tools from the start.

Here's the last layer going down.

Now, the floor is dry and cured, and Dakota will do a little patching and add a seal and then it's done. There are already a few cracks and water spots on the floor, but we like it that way. It adds a nice patina to the surface. Perfect is boring.

This weekend, Dakota will hang the rest of the drywall and then start work on the cabinets. The floor was the most difficult part of the remodel--well, besides tile, which we're hiring professionals to do--so hopefully the rest of the work will go fairly quickly. I can't wait for the cabinets. Right now, all our bath products and cleaners are in boxes in the bedroom. It's a bit cramped.

Winter Greens, Slow Beets

2012-01-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

Well, things are moving along slowly in the winter garden this year. But I do seem to have one bed that could provide a decent harvest. This is the uppermost bed, which I planted first--but still late--in October. So far, the turnips and collards look the most promising. The chard is a little small, but it could rally. I always seem to do well with chard.

The beets, unfortunately, are taking their time.
These guys are barely out of the seedling stage, and it's almost January. I added some compost to try to encourage them. We'll see what happens. I remember having beet issues last year, as well, Perhaps they don't like my soil. Hmmmm...

The lower bed is looking pretty pitiful, although I might get some peas out of it when all is said and done. Next winter, I pledge to plant early and tend carefully. Hopefully I'll have the time to make that happen.

Adventure Playground

2011-12-31T08:30:00.000-08:00

The other day, I was talking with my mom and sister about adventure playgrounds. Specifically, the playgrounds full of scaffolding, piles of wood, old tires and rusty tools that were popular in England in the 1960s through 80s. (If you've ever seen the awesome documentary series 7 Up, they use the kids playing at an adventure playground as a framing device.) My mom, sister and I were laughing about how those playgrounds were weirdly dangerous but also extremely fun. I never really played at one, but apparently my sister really loved to use the saw at the adventure playground she went to when we briefly lived in London as children.

These days, most playgrounds are super-safe and rusty-tool-free, which is good, I guess. But I also think kids need to be able to scramble around and fall down and have "adventures" when they can. Happily, I think our backyard is turning out to be a private adventure playground for my son--and possibly his more rough-and-tumble friends.

As my son gets older, he's starting to really love backyard playtime. In fact, today he ran right to the back door as soon as I suggested it. And why wouldn't he love it? There are rocks and pebbles to collect, stairs to climb, sticks to swing, buckets of dirt to dig in, plants to smell and hills to scramble up (and occasionally fall down). And, of course, chickens!

Yesterday, my son made his way around the yard while I tried to clear our some weeds so I can plant the awesome wildflower seeds my sister gave me for Christmas. It was really fun to watch him explore, and when he's just a little bit older we'll be able to spend even more time out there digging, playing and learning. I can't wait.

Out with the Old Tree, In with the Sycamore

2011-12-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Back in October, we had to have another one of our big pine trees cut down. It was leaning down the hill in a pretty dangerous manner, and we decided we'd better remove it before it tumbled down the hill and caused a major traffic accident. (Thank goodness we did before that crazy windstorm at the end of November!) Here's the view before we took out the precariously leaning tree on the right.

And here's the view after. It's kind of nice to see more of the hillside across the way, but the yard feels pretty exposed now. We spend so much time back there, and I'd prefer a little more privacy--and shade.

To fill the hole, we decided to get a native California tree. This provided a perfect opportunity to visit the Theodore Payne Foundation. Do you know that I have never been there? I know, it's crazy. Theodore Payne is basically my dream nursery, and it's only 20 minutes or so away from my house. I have been meaning to visit for ages, but just never got around to it. So, I was pretty excited to go last month.

The nursery had a lot of great-looking native trees: oaks, pines, maples and sycamores. We went for a California Sycamore, because Dakota wanted a deciduous tree and we love the pretty white trunks and big, broad leaves. Our friends have a huge one in the back yard of their new house, and I am hopeful that this little guy will look that great someday.

While we were there, I couldn't resist purchasing a few native plants to plant in the backyard. I went for a variety of flowering bushes that are supposed to attract lots of butterflies and birds. I planted three along the side of the stairs. On the left side I put an Otay Mountain Lotus and a Red Fairy Duster.

And on the right, a Royal Penstemon. It likes well-drained, rocky soil and will produce showy purple flowers.

I planted this Rocky Point Pitcher Sage near the California Sycamore. It's supposed to produce large white flowers with a "lavender blush."

My hope is that the bushes and Sycamore will get established during the winter rainy season and really take off once Spring arrives. I can't wait to see all their flowers.

Bathroom Progress

2011-12-18T20:29:00.000-08:00

The bathroom remodel continues to progress, although I don't think it will be done by Christmas. I'm guessing the finish date will be sometime in late January. Still, much work has been done.

Dakota finished demolishing the floor and added several layers of subfloor, plus insulation. We have an open crawl space/basement below the bathroom, so quite a bit of cold air seeps in from below.

Then, he ripped down all the bathroom walls and added denim insulation in between the studs on the exterior wall. Unlike the last time we insulated the walls, I did not have to drive down to Los Alamitos to get a roll of eco-friendly UltraTouch denim insulation. These days, you can pick some up at your local Home Depot.

And, he removed the ugly metal window and installed the attractive wood one with a little transom at the top. Made by Dakota, of course.

As with everything, there are a lot of steps and small details that will make everything take more time than we'd like. Plus, all the work has to be done on weekends. But, overall, the remodel is progressing nicely. Next up, cement floor!

Spider and Her Babies

2011-11-14T09:00:00.000-08:00

I saw this spider with her egg sac in the backyard last weekend.
I hope they survived the rains.

All I Want for Christmas is a New Bathroom

2011-11-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

It's official. The bathroom remodel has begun!

For a little back story, let me just say that I really hate our current bathroom. It's a decent size, but there are many problems. My main issue is that it's got a separate shower and bathtub. Our house is very small (945 ft2), and we have barely any closet space, so to waste even a little space on a shower stall seems silly. Plus, the stall is badly vented so it gets mildewy and gross very easily. Then there's the cracked tile floor, shoddy cabinets and grubby, poorly caulked sink. Oh, and we haven't had knobs on the bathtub for about a year, which means we use vice grips instead. Classy! When you add it all up, it means that our bathroom never really looks clean, even after a good scrubbing.

We've been wanting to redo the whole thing for ages, and now that the deck is complete, Dakota is tackling the bathroom in earnest. Here's a "before"-ish picture. He's already removed the sink fixtures, drawers and cabinet doors, trim and part of the wall.

The wall has actually been out for months after Dakota pulled a chunk down to see what he was up against. Here's the accursed shower stall.

And the area around the toilet.

The plan is...

New cabinets and cement counter top/sink
Remove the shower and make it into a hall closet
Tile around tub and make into shower/tub combo
Add radiant floor heating
Put in cement floors
New light and quiet vent fan
New window
New dual-flush toilet

We're keeping the tub and using inexpensive white hexagonal tile from Home Depot, so it shouldn't be too expensive when all is said and done (I hope).

Dakota took out the cabinets and floor yesterday. I guess the masonry underneath the tile was pretty weak and crumbly, so he took it all the way down to the subfloor.

The hope is to have it all completed in a little over a month. Since we only have the one bathroom, we need to have access to at least the bathtub and toilet most of the time. Hopefully that remains possible. At least one of us is in diapers and can be bathed in the sink in a pinch.

I am really excited about the prospect of a clean, well-organized bathroom and a hall closet. If it's done by Christmas, I won't need to ask Santa for a single thing.

Late Planting

2011-11-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

My winter garden went in late this year. I got distracted by other projects and chores, but managed to get some seeds in over a couple of weekends in mid-October. I decided to use seeds left over from last season, and they seem to be sprouting well so far.
In the upper bed, I planted chard, mustard greens, beets and turnips. Here they are covered by chicken wire to protect them from mischievous hens and annoying squirrels and skunks. They've grown a bit bigger, now, and I thinned them out last weekend between rain storms.

The greens should grow fairly quickly, I hope, especially since I managed to work in quite a bit of compost from our bin. With the mix of kitchen scraps, chicken poop, leaves and straw, that compost should be full of nutrients.

I also planted pretty much the same mix of greens and root vegetables in the lower bed, plus peas, and some salad mixes in pots and planters.

Oh, and my artichokes came back up for the Fall.

Those logs are there to protect them from the previously-mentioned chickens. I really hope they work. I would so love to have some homegrown artichokes in a few months. Ramshackle Solid finally did it, so maybe I can, too.

The Deck is Done, Dudes

2011-11-07T09:00:00.001-08:00

It was a lot of hard work and heavy lifting (by Dakota), but our family now has a great-looking, comfortable deck. We've actually had it for a couple of months, but, as you may have noticed, I'm having a hard time juggling working motherhood and blogging these days. In my completely unbiased opinion, it's one of the nicest decks I've ever seen.

Here's the Ipe decking going down. It looks really great, and I'm excited that it doesn't need any stain or seal. Dakota used this installation system that means all the screws go in on the underside of the boards. So there are no nails or screws on the deck surface. As he says, it's like an interior floor.

Here's the fencing clamped and ready to be screwed in. We had custom galvanized panels made with 2x2 inch wire squares. They let light and cool breezes through, but keep little ones safe.

Dakota installed a corrugated metal roof over about 2/3 of the deck to provide shade and shelter from rain. I think it looks really great, and it's kept the deck dry through some recent storms.

We don't have a table out there yet, but we will soon. For the moment, we just have a couple of chairs and a lot of open space. It makes a great outdoor play area for our son.

Plants in a Baby's Room

2011-11-06T12:00:00.000-08:00

As you might imagine, we have plants all over our house. I like the way they look, and some think they help with indoor air quality. So, when we were putting together my son's room, plants were part of the plan. I even got some cute vintage hanging planters off eBay But, as my son got older, I realized that, even if the plants were up high and safe from little hands, their falling leaves were not.

Like most babies, mine likes to put everything in his mouth. So, I did a little research and switched out some of the house plants in his room with less dangerous alternatives. I was happy to read that both Christmas cactus and polka dot plants both appear to be non-toxic. Both are attractive and easy to find, so I picked them up at my local nursery. (Of course, all these lists are really confusing, but I managed to find both listed on a couple of "safe" plant lists.)

My other idea was to pot some herbs, since, obviously, those are okay to eat. I don't have a photo, but I got a nice little thyme plant that's working out nicely. Pictured below are the polka dot plant and a little succulent that grows in a compact way that means it won't drop leaves.

I'm glad I was able to figure out a way to have plants in my baby's room. Growing things is such a big part of my life, and hopefully my son will feel the same way when he's older. For now, they add interest to his room decorations and he has fun helping me water them. Of course, I plan to prevent him from eating any dropped leaves or flowers, but hopefully if one sneaks past me, it won't make him sick.

What Are You Growing This Winter?

2011-09-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

September kind of snuck up on me, and I really need to get my winter seeds planted soon. In the past, I've had better success in my winter garden than in the summer. Los Angeles summers are so dry that it's hard for veggies to thrive. But winter is wetter, and greens seem to love the cool-but-not-freezing nights. Some of my favorite winter crops include turnips, arugula and, the best of all, chard. Oh how I love tasty, hearty and easy-to-grow chard.

Here's what I'm definitely growing this season:

- Arugula

- Beets

- Chard

- Spinach

- Leaf lettuce

And I'm considering:

- Cabbage

- Kale

- Turnips

- Parsnips

- Snap Peas

What are you all planning to grow? Am I missing anything you particularly love in your winter garden?

I've tried broccoli and brussels sprouts in the past, but they are always viciously attacked by aphids before they really produce any flowers. If anyone has an awesome aphid prevention technique, maybe I can try them again. Fresh broccoli is pretty delicious.

The Hose Technique

2011-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

In the past, I have posted about my troubles rounding up chickens. If your hens don't want to go back in their coop after a session of free ranging, it can be pretty damn hard to convince them to do so. Chickens are fast and they can be surprisingly sneaky.
It's almost always a bad idea to chase an uncooperative hen, particularly for me, since my backyard is on a hillside. I'm more likely to fall on my butt than I am to actually nab one of my hens. But I don't want to have to keep the girls cooped up because they can't be trusted to return to the safety of their fenced-in run when I need to go to work. Luckily, I have come up with a new technique to herd them that I wanted to share.

All you need to execute my newly discovered Hose Technique (patent pending) is a good, long outdoor house and a spray nozzle. With these tools, you too can herd your hens right back into their run in a manner of minutes. Here's how it works:

Stand in a location that allows you to see your chickens and their run. Then, start spraying short bursts of water behind them. This will startle them a bit, but it won't hurt them, even if you accidentally hit them in the butt with a little water. Basically, the water will annoy them, so they'll run in the other direction. Using their desire to avoid getting wet, you can herd the hens with water the way a dog would herd sheep. It takes a little practice, but it works really well for me, because I can spray a stream of water much more quickly than I can run back and forth shooing my hens.

In fact, now that I've used Hose Technique a couple of times, my hens start to head back towards their run as soon as the first spray hits nearby. They know that as soon as they get in the run, that weird water will stop showing up.

I know some folks may not enjoy startling their pet chickens, and this technique is not for everyone. But for me, if it's a choice between very rarely letting my girls free range and using the Hose Technique, the hose wins.

Figs

2011-08-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

I have exactly seven figs growing on my little fig tree this year. They looking pretty good and my tree is having its happiest and healthiest year yet. So, I'm hoping to taste some fresh figs in another month or so.

I'm considering tying some shiny ribbon to the tree or using some other anti-bird technique to protect those seven fruits. But I don't think ribbon is going to keep squirrels away, and I suspect they're the biggest threat to my figgy dreams. Any suggestion?

Cloth Diaper Washing

2011-08-13T17:53:00.000-07:00

I've been cloth diapering my son for a little over a year now, so I thought this might be a good time to share my diaper-washing method, in case other prospective parents stumble across this blog. First, let me say that, despite what you might have heard, cloth diapering is not difficult or expensive. Whenever I tell people my son wears cloth, they say, "Wow." Honestly, they shouldn't be impressed. Now, if I was doing EC, then they should say, "Wow," because that takes some serious commitment. But cloth diapering is no big deal.

Anyway, enough proselytizing. As I mentioned in a previous post, my son wears cloth pre-folds with waterproof covers. It seems like everyone has their own washing method, but here's what's kept my son's diapers clean and sturdy for the past year:

Note: I have a front-loading, high-efficiency washer.

Regular wash
1) Put dirty diapers, flannel wipes, covers and diaper pail liner into washer and run a "rinse/spin" cycle on COLD, no detergent. This is basically just to rinse off the, ahem, debris and keep stains from setting.
2) Add roughly 2 Tbl Sp of Planet 2x Ultra Laundry Detergent* and 1/2 cup of vinegar to the fabric softener section. Run the "heavy duty" cycle on HOT.
3) OPTIONAL: If the diapers are particularly dirty or stinky, I sometimes run an additional "quick wash" cycle on HOT with just Borax
4) Remove from washer. Hang cloth pre-folds and wipes on the clothesline, preferably in the bright sun. Hang the covers and diaper pail liner on an indoor line or drying rack, because the sun can degrade the plastic.
5) OPTIONAL: After the pre-folds are dry, put them in the drier for 10 mins just to soften them up a bit.

Stink removal
- For stinky pre-folds, I usually fill up a big bucket with cold water and about 2 cups of Biokleen Bac-Out, and soak the pre-folds in this mixture overnight.
- For stinky covers, Thirsties recommends that you run a wash with a small amount of chlorine-free bleach powder, like OXO-Brite. This method has worked for me.

And that's it! Honestly, if you use pre-folds, you can purchase enough so you only have to wash diapers every 3 days or so. Dakota and I both have full-time jobs, and don't find diaper-washing to be a major time suck.

And now for a baby photo, just because. This is my son watching his dad build the deck.

* Planet is one of the recommended detergents on this cloth diaper detergent chart, and it's both cheap and wildly available.

Jerk Chickens

2011-06-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

I know I tend to be kind of a chicken proselytizer, always playing up the benefits of chicken-keeping and how easy it is to have hens as pets. Well, there is a darker side to backyard chickens, which I will share with you now... Chickens are jerks.

Okay, much of the time chickens are perfectly nice, and maybe even funny or interesting. But, sometimes, they can be real a**holes, like when they break through fencing boundaries and dig up a bunch of your garden even though they have the whole yard to run around and scratch in and all you're asking is that they stay out of this one space!

Yes, the dirty little secret about backyard chickens is that they can be very destructive to your plants and vegetables. Last week, my hens somehow managed to break into the only two fenced-in areas of the yard and destroy several carefully-tended squash plants. Considering how minimal my garden is this year and how late I started growing things, this was a crushing loss.

When it happened, I was pretty furious. I mean, honestly, they have a HUGE amount of space for three hens. They have weed patches, dirt patches and lots of bushes and trees to hide under. But that wasn't enough for those girls. Oh no! They had to break into my garden.

I guess the moral of this story is that chickens are very curious. When they see a nice green plant surrounded by straw, they really want to get at it. So, build your fences well and watch those chickens closely, or you may find yourself in your backyard one evening shouting swear words at three clueless hens. (This may or may not have happened to me.)

Here Comes the Deck

2011-06-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

Summer is here, and Dakota decided we were not going to go another month without our deck. Our house is small and we don't have central air conditioning, so it makes life so much better to have that extra outdoor space. The French doors in our kitchen/dining room open onto the deck, and when it was warm enough, we'd eat meals out there. I'm looking forward to doing that again, especially now that our son will be joining us.

Three weekends ago, Dakota got the structural part of the deck all built. Impressively, he did it all by himself, aided only by scaffolding and clamps. That dude is tough. The structure is made of treated lumber, but the actual deck itself will be built using Ipe.

Ipe is a tropical hardwood that is so hard and dense that it's both rot and bug resistant. It also won't need to be sealed or painted. So, that means less work to install and maintain. Of course, it's also more expensive that traditional deck woods like cedar, but since our deck is fairly small, we think it's worth it. This Ipe is FSC certified, so it's supposed to be sustainably harvested. There's some argument on the Internet as to whether this is really possible when you're talking about wood cut down in the Amazon basin. Like many products marketed as sustainable, it's difficult for the consumer to know what to believe.

Dakota got a lot of the Ipe decking down last weekend, and should finish up this weekend.

The wood starts out red, but will eventually fade to a grayish color, much like the unsealed cedar on the chicken coop.

After the deck is down, we're adding galvanized wire "fence" panels between the railing posts to keep all dogs and babies from falling. The hope is to eventually grow vines on panels for privacy and prettiness. There will also be a slanted roof over part of the deck, where we'll put a small dining table for the previously-mentioned outdoor dining.

I can't wait to enjoy cool summer evenings as a family.

Coffee Tree

2011-06-23T19:25:00.000-07:00

We're big coffee drinkers in our family, and, lately, Dakota has been interested in collecting various interesting coffee-making apparatus. So, for Fathers' Day, my son and I got Dakota the ultimate coffee connoisseur's gift: his very own coffee tree.

We picked up a nice-looking 1-gallon coffee tree at Mimosa Nursery in East LA. I read about this nursery several years ago on another Los Angeles gardening blog, and have always wanted to go there. Mimosa is the place to get interesting and exotic fruit trees in Los Angeles.

After a multi-freeway journey, my son and I arrived at Mimosa and were immediately helped by the very friendly owner. (I think he was the owner.) He even showed us over to a bigger coffee tree and gave us some of the red berries to take home and dry. We didn't stay long, but the large lot was covered with all kinds of interesting fruit trees--Jujube, Jack Fruit, Guava--and I definitely plan to go back soon and get something else soon.

The plan for this little coffee tree is to plant it into a larger pot for a while before putting it in the ground somewhere sunny. From what I can tell, a full grown coffee tree can produce a couple of pounds of beans a year. So, we'll be producing some very trendy small-batch, artisanal coffee here on our little urban farm. You can't get more gourmet than that!

Tater Tots

2011-06-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

Last month, I took some potatoes from our produce delivery service that sprouted in the pantry and planted them in my garden. I put very little effort into my potato patch, since it was more of a small experiment than a real effort to grow potatoes. Plus, I had a rather spectacular failure with potato growing a couple of years ago.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the stalks had died back on all the potato plants, so I decided to go ahead and dig them up. My expectations were low, so I was happy to find a small cluster of tiny yellow potatoes buried under the dirt. I guess I ended up with around 3/4 of a pound. A small crop, but I was happy to have been successful.

I roasted my little crop of tiny taters with olive oil, salt and pepper. They were very tasty! Was it the freshness or the sense of accomplishment? Who can say?

I think next year I might try to grow some more potatoes in a deeper hole. One thing I learned is, in Los Angeles, it's best to grow potatoes in the spring. I think last time the weather was too hot and dry when I started my crop, which made the stalks droopy, which caused me to over-water and rot my seed potatoes. That's my theory anyway.

Milk Cartons in the Blue Bin

2011-06-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

Good news! Los Angeles residents can now recycle milk and juice cartons in our blue bins. According to a post on Mayor Villaraigosa's website yesterday:

Starting now, you can recycle cartons such as milk, juice, cream and egg substitutes as well as juice boxes, soup, broth, soy milk, and wine cartons. We are now the largest city in the state with a carton recycling program, solidifying our position as the number one recycling city in the nation.

We consume a lot of juice and milk at our house, and I always feel bad throwing those waxy cartons in the trash. Now I don't have to.

Speaking of Los Angeles recycling... I was perusing the Los Angeles Times website the other morning, and came across this excellent feature in the home section. It's called "Can I Recycle?" So far, they've covered plastic wrappers, mesh citrus bags, bottle caps, Tyvek and a few more. Check it out if you live in LA County, as various cities in the area are covered.

Fresh Picked Strawberry

2011-06-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

I picked this beautiful, bright-red strawberry from one of my potted plants last week. It was delicious.

I think next spring I'm going to try to grow a whole patch. I suspect my son will really enjoy picking and eating them right from the garden.

City Mulch and Cardboard

2011-06-03T08:42:00.000-07:00

Now that the native and low-water-use plants in front of our house are well established, I almost never need to water or tend to them. A couple of times a year, I prune some of the bushier plants back, and when it gets really hot and dry in the summer, I might give them an occasional deep soak. But, that's pretty much it. Despite my neglect, the plants are healthy and hearty and flower on a regular basis. It's great. I highly recommend xeriscaping your yard.

The only unfortunate side effect of this lack of attention is that the paths get pretty messy and weedy. Last spring, the weed situation got particularly bad (perhaps because our new neighbors let their yard turn into giant patch of dandelions and foxtails). I really didn't want to spend hours pulling up all those weeds, so I decided to go an easier route with cardboard and mulch.

Last week, Dakota stopped by a lot downtown that offers free mulch, courtesy of the The Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation. They give away mulch and compost at several sites around the city. You can find a location near you here. Dakota filled up a few plastic bins worth, the perfect amount to cover our two small paths.

The mulch itself is very decomposed. It smells more like compost than pine trees, although the scent has faded now that it's been on the paths for a week. While the chunkier, bark-filled mulch might look and smell a bit better, this stuff worked out fine (and did I mention it was free?). I suspect the city lets it decompose more to kill all the weed seeds that are likely mixed in with the tree trimmings.

Before spreading the mulch, I lay down some pieces of cardboard to provide an additional weed barrier. I didn't cover everything perfectly, but, as you know, I'm in a lazy gardening phase. I honestly think the combination of random pieces of cardboard and a thick layer of city mulch should work pretty well for a while. I guess we'll find out this coming spring.

Kitchen Coverage

2011-05-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Long-time readers of this blog know that our kitchen remodeling project was an epic undertaking. Dakota took everything down to the bare bones and then slowly and carefully rebuilt the entire space. It took a looooooong time, mostly because Dakota was building the kitchen on nights and weekends, but the project was completed several months ago. If you're wondering, it functions beautifully and looks amazing.

In fact, there's recently been some really great coverage of our kitchen that I wanted to share.

A brand-new online design magazine called Collected did a feature on Dakota's business. They had a photo shoot at our house and got some really great-looking images of the kitchen. Then, the blog you have been here sometime did a small write up and shared some kitchen photos as well. Click the links for the articles and images. (The photos in this post are by me.)

You can also see some nice, professional shots of the kitchen--as well as lots of his other work--on Dakota's recently revamped website: todosomething.com

I'm happy that all Dakota's hard work (and the work of his business partner, Chad) is being recognized. Hopefully the attention will lead to more opportunities for him to make other people's kitchen dreams come true. Here at home, the next big project is a new deck. Yippie!

Click here, here and here for some "before" photos.

The Lazy Potato Grower

2011-05-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

For some reason, the potatoes we get in our produce delivery box sprout a lot more quickly than the ones we get at the store. I'm guessing it has to do with their freshness and variety. The ones above started growing little stalks after a few days--or at least that's how it seemed.

Rather than chuck them in the compost bin, I decided to plant these taters and see what happened. I had a rather spectacular failure trying to grow potatoes in bags, so this time I just dug a deepish hole in the upper garden bed and buried them, with room to add more dirt and compost as they grew.

To my delight, they shot right up! What's nice about potatoes is that the stalks grow extremely quickly. I planted the sprouted potatoes in late March, and by mid-April they were in need of some more serious mounding. So, I built a little wood barrier around the plants and buried them a bit more. If I had more time, I'd build it even higher. But I think one level will have to do for this year.

Since I haven't grown potatoes successfully before, I did a little check last weekend to see if the plants were actually producing new tubers. I dug up two stalks on the edge of this patch, and, happily, found some teeny tiny baby potatoes growing deep down in the soil. So, I may actually get some homegrown potatoes this year, if I can keep curious chickens and evil skunks away.

I think they key in Southern California is to plant potatoes in the late Spring. Once summer really begins, the plants have difficulty in our dry heat. At least that's my experience.

No Trespassing

2011-04-25T09:39:00.000-07:00

Last month, we finally got around to fencing in the lower garden bed. In the past, I'd used some more half-assed barriers, including draping garden netting over the beds. But I have wanted to create a more permanent fence for a while, and Dakota was kind enough to oblige.

The garden now has three sides covered in chicken wire and one side hung with a large piece of garden netting, so that I can drop that side down to plant and weed. I feel confident that this setup will be successful in keeping out skunks, squirrels and, most importantly, my naughty chickens.

Unfortunately, all the wire fencing in the world can't keep out insects. I seem to have some kind of cutworm or other pest that's gobbling up my squash sprouts as soon as they emerge. I'm not really sure what to do, but I guess I might need to get some beneficial nematodes. If anyone has cutworm control tips, let me know, especially if they aren't too time consuming. I don't have a lot of time to spend in the garden these days.

So, things are not off to the smoothest start this Spring. But once I get the pest situation under control, I am hoping the new fencing, combined with a soaker hose, compost and lots of straw mulch, will ensure an excellent crop of squash, tomatoes and beans this summer.

Happy Easter

2011-04-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Hope you enjoy a beautiful Spring day.

Ciao Peggy!

2011-04-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I apologize for all the gloomy chicken posts lately, but I'm afraid I have some distressing news: Peggy has passed on to that great chicken coop in the sky. We had some crazy times, me and the Peggster, and she will be missed.

I'm no chicken doctor, but I believe Peggy died of natural causes. Several weeks ago, I found her lying dead in a corner of the run when I went down to give the hens their morning scoop of food. There was no sign of foul play (ahem), and, honestly, it looked like she'd just keeled over while sitting on a perch. Hopefully, she died happy, clucking away with her sisters.

Peggy was one of my older chickens, at a little less than 3 years old. Tina, who is the same age, is still laying eggs and seems quite vigourous, but Peggy hadn't laid for a year or so, and seemed to have slowed down a little. She is my first chicken to die of old age. We gave her our traditional viking funeral.

Bees Needs

2011-04-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

My mom sent me a link to an interesting article a while ago, and it seems particularly relevant now that Spring is here and my garden is full of flowers and pollinators. It's actually a guide for "urban bee gardeners" from UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources, and it points out a funny contradiction that conscientious gardeners should be aware of: mulch is not good for wild bees.

It turns out, the majority of native California bees are actually ground-nesting. That means that, rather than building the classic hive hanging from a tree branch, they actually dig little holes in the soil and put their cells inside. So, if you mulch like crazy to suppress weeds and keep water from evaporating before it soaks into the soil, you might also be making it harder for bees to nest.

Since bees are also essential in a good organic garden--and, well, essential for life as we know it--I think it's important to know about their need for naked ground. That way, we can all leave a place in our yard that is both plant and mulch-free, so California bees can happily reproduce.

My backyard is still a bit of a wilderness in places, so I don't think the bees will have trouble finding bare ground to dig their little holes. But I'm glad I know about this, just in case I manage to tame the whole space someday.

In the meantime, the bees in my yard are busily buzzing around my lavender, native plants and, happily, my blooming fruit trees. Hopefully all that careful pollination will bring some tasty homegrown apples, peaches and oranges in the coming year.

Growing Winter Greens

2011-03-04T18:30:00.000-08:00

Since my gardening strategy this year has been to keep it simple, I decided to focus on greens for my winter crops. Lettuce, spinach and other greens grow quickly, love containers and provide several harvests from the same plant. They're perfect for the lazy gardener.

I also wanted to try out a cool new container, made from Dakota's discarded art project: an extra-long tool box. After he drilled drainage holes in the bottom of each compartment, I filled them up with dirt and compost and planted my salad mixes. This year, I went with some lettuce mixes from Renee's Garden. They've all grown really nicely and the mixes provided a good variety of color and flavor in the salad bowl.

I also planted some baby romaine in the center of a large pot and surrounded it with baby carrots. That combination has worked out really well, with the romaine growing tall and healthy and the carrots happily growing downward around the rim of the pot.

I've also got a couple one small pot of chard and another pot of collards growing, although that's not really enough for a meal. I should have planted more.

Overall, though, I'm happy with my winter crop. I expended very little effort, and have already enjoyed many delicious salads fresh from the back patio. Hopefully the warm weather won't cause my greens to bolt too soon, and I'll get a few more cuttings off the plants this Spring.

Calling Off the Search

2011-02-18T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been almost a week since Rita the hen disappeared, and I think it's time to admit she's not coming back. It's hard to believe a chicken can just vanish into thin air, but I am pretty sure that's exactly what happened. Hawk attack just seems like the most likely scenario.

It's sad to think of Rita meeting her end in such a sudden and scary way. I just hope the hawk killed her quickly, and that her life in my backyard was a happy one. I think it was.

There is some good chicken news this week, though. Perhaps to cheer me up--or perhaps because they don't want to "disappear" like Rita did--three of my hens have started laying!

Tina was the first to start up again. She's the oldest and has already molted twice, but she's still laying big, nicely-shaped pink eggs. It must be her hearty mutt genetics. If you're looking for a consistent layer, Black Sex-links are the breed to choose. Tina was soon followed by Janice, laying dark brown eggs, and Betty (I think) laying green ones. It's possible the green eggs are from my other Easter Egger, Peggy, but I doubt it. Peggy's also an older girl, and she hasn't laid in ages.

Production has been excellent for the last week. I've even had a few 3-egg mornings. Hopefully the hens will keep up the good work, and I'll be back to gifting eggs to friends and neighbors in no time.

The flowers pictured above were grown in our back yard. It's been a great year for the iris patch. They're blooming like crazy, despite--or maybe because of--this winter's weird weather.

Coop Cleaning Tools

2011-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've written a lot in the past about the fun of owning chickens: the fresh eggs, the entertainment factor, and the comfort of knowing your eggs come from well-cared-for hens. All these things are great, but there is some drudgery involved in owning chickens. Specifically, you've got to clean that coop.

I clean our chicken coop once a week. Now the we have five chickens, it could probably use a twice-weekly cleaning, but, well, we have full-time jobs and a baby, so... that's not going to happen. Every Sunday, I give the coop a thorough scrubbing, which involves removing and cleaning the slatted floors, changing the straw and washing and refilling the waterers.

The key to easy coop cleaning is to have a couple of simple tools to help you efficiently remove all the chicken poop and gather up the soiled bedding. Most of the tools I use to clean my coop come from the hardware store. They include:

Sprayer hose: You need a good, hard stream to spray the poop off any of your detachable coop parts (perches, removable floor, food and water containers)
Metal dust pan: This is great for scooping up dirty straw and shavings (and dumping them on your compost pile)
A cheap metal wall scraper: This tool is extremely handy for scraping off dried-on poop and gathering up shavings hidden in a corner
An old metal barbecue brush: If you really need to scrub a dirty perch or coop floor clean, these can work great. Just make sure you mark it so no one accidentally uses it on your grill.

Once I've removed the poop and dirt from the various coop parts, I set them to dry in the sun for extra stain and odor removal. Of course, I'm lucky to live in Southern California, where it's sunny and dry more often than not.

Depending on the type of run you have, you'll probably also need a shovel or heavy garden rake to turn the dirt floor. You might also want to clean your water containers with vinegar every once in a while to get rid of any gunk that might have built up.

But really, that's it. The whole coop-cleaning process takes me about 20 or 30 minutes of active time, with an interval while I wait for the removable floor to dry. And if it's rainy, I just skip the spray-off step and scrape as much poop as possible off using my wall scraper.

Chicken Vanished!

2011-02-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

I went down to the chicken coop this morning to feed and water the girls, and when I opened the door to let them free range a little, only four hens emerged. Rita, my Silver-Laced Wyandotte, is missing! (That's her on the right in the photo below.)

After confirming Rita wasn't inside the coop, I searched the whole yard, checking under every structure and bush and in the overgrown ivy where the chickens sometimes hide. Dakota and our son came down to look too, but there was no sign of her--and no sign of a struggle. No pile of feathers or blood trail. Nothing.

I looked over the neighbor's fences and into the no man's land below our back yard, and Rita wasn't there, either. To be honest, I highly doubt she jumped a fence or squeezed through a hole in the gate. The chickens have never shown any interest in leaving the yard or getting too far away from their coop, even when I've (stupidly) chased them.

The last time I saw Rita was last night just before sundown. She was with the other hens, scratching around in the dirt near my garden. My son and I even spent some quiet time watching the hens free range and shooing them away from the artichoke patch.

After dark, I went down to the coop and closed the door to the run. I didn't check to make sure everyone was inside, because the idea that one of the chickens would have stayed out after dark never occurred to me. Even now, I doubt that's what happened. There would be no reason for Rita to stay out when all her chicken sisters were already settling in for the night. Chickens do not have a taste for the nightlife.

My current theory is that Rita was carried off by a hawk sometime yesterday evening. This is hard to believe--Rita is a full-sized chicken--but I have seen hawks eyeing the girls before. Once, a hawk tried to swoop down and grab one while I was in the yard with them. That attempt was unsuccessful, but maybe this time the hawk got lucky. I hope not.

Has anyone lost a chicken to a hawk before? Would there really be no sign of a struggle? And wouldn't I have heard something? I was up in my son's room, which overlooks the back yard, at the time I suspect she disappeared. I feel like there would have been a screech or a loud cluck or something if a hawk suddenly grabbed Rita. Wouldn't the other girls have made a fuss--or been skittish this morning when I let them out? Still, a hawk attack seems like the most likely scenario.

The only other explanations I can think of are (1) escape and (2) theft. These both seem pretty unlikely. I keep hoping Rita will just suddenly show up, and I haven't ruled out posting a "Missing Chicken" sign or two. I guess she might have wandered off. Maybe? Poor Rita. She is/was so young.

What Happened with the Pumpkins

2011-02-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

In case you were still wondering, I thought I'd give the final update on my most recent pumpkin-growing effort. When last we discussed the pumpkin patch, I had one small pumpkin prospect still growing. In late November, I finally harvested the last of my summer garden, including that pumpkin. As you can see, it was still small and green. (Note the random beet I found growing in a hidden corner of the bed.)

With nothing to lose, I decided to put the pumpkin on the windowsill and see what happened. After several weeks, I was delighted to find the pumpkin turning a lovely bright orange. I kept it as a decorative accent in the kitchen for a while, but never made an attempt to cut into it or eat it.

So, I guess the 2010 pumpkin patch was not a complete failure. I am determined to to better this summer, though. I think I'll devote my currently-fallow lower bed completely to squash and use what I learned last year--use a soaker hose, fertilize often--to hopefully grow at least two, decent-sized pumpkins by Thanksgiving. Maybe my son will even get that homegrown jack-o-lantern this Halloween. You never know.

Summer Garden Debrief: Okra

2011-01-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

Close readers of this blog--and there are so many--may recall that I've long desired to grow my own okra, with little success. Last summer, I tried again. This time, I used Clemson Spineless Okra seeds ordered from Botanical Interests, and started them in small pots in late May. In July, I transferred one small plant into a 5 gallon container and planted two in the ground.

In a couple of weeks, the two in the ground were dead--brought down by a combination of wayward chickens and whatever it is that makes my garden bad for okra. But, the one in the container survived. I had the plant in a fairly sunny spot and watered it often, and it eventually grew big enough to produce some lovely blossoms. Like eggplant, okra has such pretty flowers you could almost grow it as an ornamental.

From this one blooming plant, I got a grand total of... four okra! Small victories, people. (That should be the official motto of my garden.) All four were a pretty good size--two to three inches--and very tasty. I love the flavor and crunch of fresh okra.

To be honest, the plant never really got very bushy and kind of struggled along. I think I might do better next year with more container plants and some careful tending. I am determined to get at least a double digit okra harvest this coming summer. I've been getting some great compost from my bin lately, so that should help.

Reuseable Lunch

2011-01-14T17:30:00.000-08:00

One of the many ways Dakota and I attempt to be both frugal and healthy is by packing our own lunches as often as possible. I think Dakota manages it more often than I, although my job involves going out to lunch several times a week, so I have an excuse. Several years ago, I came across some reusable sandwich bags and thought they were a great idea. I purchased some, and we've used them instead of disposable plastic sacks ever since.

The first variety I picked up, which we still have, are called Wrap-n-Mats. They're basically a flat rectangle with the corners cut off. One side is cloth and they other side is plastic. You place your sandwich in the center, fold the mat around it and fasten with a strip of Velcro. They work quite well, and, when you open them up, they make a nice little surface to eat off at your desk.

Recently, I picked up two other varieties of reusable sandwich bags from a website I like called reuseit .com. One was their own store brand of bag, and the other is made by LunchSkins. They're both pouch-style bags, which means they work for sandwiches, but you can also fill them with crackers or cookies or carrots.

I don't have a strong preference for any particular type of reusable sandwich bag, but I do recommend them as a great way to stop using disposables. They're not cheap, but if you use them several times a week for years, then I think they'll cost a lot less than disposable bags. Or, if you're crafty, make them yourself with some oilcloth or other water-resistant material. I've seen some really cute snack bags on various craft sites that I'll probably make for my son when he starts taking his lunch to school. All you need is a little bit of cloth and some Velcro.

Another thing I'd like to do is start taking my own containers to take-out places. We don't get take-out food that often, but when we do I always feel bad about how much plastic and--horrors!--Styrofoam is involved in packaging the food.

In case anyone is wondering, I am not getting paid for talking about these products or the website. I sometimes get those offers, but haven't taken anyone up on them so far. If I ever do get a free product, I will be sure to mention that fact in the text of the post.

Volunteer Vegetables

2011-01-13T17:40:00.000-08:00

Due to the recent addition to our family--and all the time and attention he requires--I have let some parts of my garden languish. The larger lower raised bed, where I usually plant most of my vegetables, lay fallow last summer and continues to sit untended this winter. My neglect, combined with an unusually rainy November and December, has led to some interesting developments. Specifically, quite a few volunteer plants.

Pictured above are several volunteer fava beans, sprouted from seeds that fell from unpicked pods, and a couple of fennel plants that are growing new bulbs from the roots left behind after last year's hasty harvest. There are also a few peas growing in another part of the bed.

As you may have guessed from looking at the photos, I haven't watered, weeded or planted in this garden since last April. I have thrown in some dirty straw from the chicken coop from time to time, but that's the extent of my attention to this particular garden. Despite that, I think I may actually get a few peas this year, and it seems likely some favas will be harvested as well.

I've decided to keep neglecting this bed until this Spring, just to see what happens. Perhaps I have stumbled on a new kind of low-impact gardening for myself. Plant every two years and then ignore. Although, I have a feeling that if it weren't for this year's unusual rainstorms, many of these volunteers would not have appeared.

Green Eggs Again

2010-11-28T16:06:00.000-08:00

As you may remember, my new hens--Rita, Janice and Betty--have been somewhat disappointing in the egg-laying department. For a long time, none of them were laying. Then, Janice stepped up and spent a couple of months regularly laying lovely, dark brown eggs.

Unfortunately, after two months of good production, Janice suddenly stopped laying. Perhaps she was put off by the shortening of the days, although that never bothered any of my other chickens. My older Black sex-link hen, Tina, kept laying for a while, but then she started molting. This is Tina's second molt, so I think her egg-laying days may be over.

With Tina out of commission, that meant we had five chickens in the coop and zero (ZERO!) layers. Sigh. This situation went on for about a month, with no eggs from the younger girls, despite both treats of squash guts and chard stems and threats about chicken soup. Then, happily, Betty, the all-white Easter Egger, stepped up.

Dakota found a large, light green egg in the nesting box about three weeks ago, and Betty has been a good little layer ever since.

We're getting about five eggs a week from Betty, which is nice, although I really wish at least one more hen would lay. Now that the weather has turned cold, it's baking season, and I've had to buy eggs at the store so we have enough to use in homemade brownies, cookies and cakes.

Tag Blankets for Babies

2010-11-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

At the moment, my son really likes grabbing, pulling and licking fabric, and he has a commercially-made Taggies blanket that he plays with frequently. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to make some cute and simple baby tag blankets myself. I had some leftover fleece from my son's Halloween costume (he went as a cactus) and the sewing machine was already out, so it seemed like a perfect time.

The blankets are very simple to make. You cut out a square of fleece and a square of colorful fabric, choose some cute ribbon from your stash--I always save the cloth ribbon from gifts so I have lots of little pieces in different colors and patterns--and fold them over into tabs. Place the right sides of the fabic and fleece together, slip the tabs of ribbon (loop in) in between the fleece and fabric, and pin them in place. Then stitch around the edge using a simple stitch and leaving a small hole on one edge. Snip off the corners of the fabric and turn it right side out through the hole. Finally, I top-stitched the whole thing with a contrasting zig-zag stitch for extra strength and cuteness. And, done! Even a not-very-talented sewer like me can whip a bunch of these up in an afternoon.

For one of the blankets, I got fancy and added some crinkle. All you have to do is sew a layer of crinkly plastic into the interior of your blanket. Since it was Halloween, I used a candy bag. But you could also use a potato chip bag or an empty baby wipes bag. Really any thick cellophane would work. It's a bit trickier to sew, but since it's hidden inside your blanket, you don't have to get that pretty with it.

These tag blankets were really fun to sew, and the combination of colorful fabric and ribbon makes them really cute. All my blankets were handed out to new babies I know or mailed off to far-away baby friends. Hopefully they'll all enjoy them as much as my son likes his.

The Pumpkin Saga Continues

2010-11-14T13:20:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm afraid I did not achieve my dream of a homegrown pumpkin patch for my son's first Halloween. Despite much babying, soil amending and mulching, I was unable to grow a nice orange pumpkin by October 31.

But all is not lost! I have two small, green pumpkins still holding on in my garden. Now, if I can only get them to grow just a bit bigger and ripen to a festive bright orange in time for Thanksgiving.

In the late summer, several young pumpkins were taken out by sudden heat waves. Now, I worry these two pumpkins will be done in by some unusual Fall rain. While one might think rain would be a great thing for a garden, the damp weather unfortunately allowed the powdery mildew to spread all over my pumpkin vines. At this point, there is barely an untouched leaf. Normally, I'd just pull out and throw away all the infected vines, but this year I really want to get some pumpkins, damn it!

Later today, I may try a water and milk solution I heard about online, so I can at least keep the fruit itself from getting infected. To be honest, though, I am worried that my pumpkins may not get enough nutrients to grow any bigger. Their vines have very few leaves. I guess I'll try heavy fertilizing and see what happens. (Let me know if you have any tips for saving these guys.)

On the bright side, I finally broke down and purchased a soaker hose for my upper garden plot back in September, and it's made everything much heartier and happier. My 2-year-old eggplants are big and leafy and making fruit, and, as I mentioned before, the artichokes are back in business.

Happy Halloween

2010-10-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! I know I haven't been posting much lately, but don't give up on me just yet. I have a lot of post ideas stored up, and I'm hoping to find some time to write about them very soon. In the meantime, I hope you're having a fun Halloween.

Don't forget to give your pumpkin guts and seeds to the chickens, even if they are no-good, slacker chickens who still refuse to lay any eggs.*

*And keep those pumpkin seeds out of the compost bin, unless you want your garden over-run with vines next summer.

Cloth Prefolds: So Many Choices!

2010-10-09T15:00:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned before, I've been cloth diapering my son since he came home from the hospital. My last post about cloth diapers was two months ago, and I'm happy to say that I still find the process pretty easy, and my son is still comfortable and diaper-rash free.

When I was researching cloth diaper options, I decided on prefolds pretty quicky. But then, I discovered there are many, many different types of prefolds! Some common choices are Chinese prefolds, Indian prefolds, organic cotton, hemp, bleached and unbleached. Then, there are different thicknesses. Typical diaper thicknesses are 4x6x4 or 4x8x4, meaning that each side of the prefold is has four layers and the strip in the middle has six or eight layers, respectively. After discovering all these different types of prefolds, I was a bit overwhelmed. So, I basically just registered for a few different kinds in the "infant" size so I could see which ones I liked best.

Let me just say, to any soon-to-be parent reading this, all of the prefold diapers work--even the much-maligned regular old Gerber diapers. But, I definitely found some diapers I liked better than others, so I though I'd share my thoughts.

Different brands and types of diapers have slightly different shapes, particularly after washing. Pictured below with the purple edge are Diaper Rite Prefolds, size small, and Bummis Organic Prefolds, also size small. As you can see, the Diaper Rite diapers are significantly wider than the Bummis, which are slightly longer. Both look kind of bumpy, which is what they should look like after washing. Diapers come unwashed and will shrink and become more absorbent after a thorough pre-washing in hot water.

Next up is a BabyKicks Hemp Prefold in size small. This one has been washed several times, and you can kind of see how tight the knit is. This diaper is about as wide as the Bummis diaper, but much thinner. That's the big plus of hemp: it's very absorbent but thinner, and therefore less bulky when folded. The downside, in my opinion, is that my hemp diapers got quite rough after a couple of wash/dry cycles. Now, I'm reluctant to put these rough diapers directly against my son's tender nether region--although I do still use them when I'm layering two diapers at night.

Not pictured are the Kushies Prefold Diapers, which I also own. These diapers are thinner, 2x4x2, and longer than the other cotton diapers we use. To be honest, they're a bit too long for my needs, but I do use them when I'm layering diapers for nighttime, as mentioned above. I guess I might use them more when my son gets older.

Also shown in the photo above are the two types of reusable flannel wipes we've been using. They both work well and are just thin pieces of unbleached cotton flannel that have been hemmed with a serger or zig-zag stitch. If you have the patience and sewing skills, you could make them yourself. Otherwise, go for the cheapest ones--although I guess the ones done with a serger will likely last a little longer than the zig-zag ones, a few of which have started to lose some hem stitches.

Thus far, my favorite diapers are the Diaper Rites, which can be found online at Diaper Junction. I like the extra width, because, at the moment, my son is chubby for his age, but of average height. If you want to Snappi your diapers before you cover them, then the Diaper Rites are a good choice because you can get them all the way around fat baby thighs. If you plan to just close up the diapers inside your diaper covers, then either one will work for you--as will the even cheaper and just as effective Chinese Prefolds. So, if you don't plan to Snappi and are on a budget, go with Chinese Prefolds. At less than $2 a diaper, they're pretty cost-effective. Diaper Rites are slightly more expensive, but quite high-quality, so if you're planning to use diapers for more than one kid, they might be a good bet.

This is by no means a complete review of cloth prefolds, but I wanted to share my experience with the hope that it will help another mother or father out there trying to sift through all the options. Feel free to leave your own thoughts on cloth diapering in the comments.

Coming soon... cloth diaper washing! (Thrilling, I know.)

Artichoke Revival

2010-09-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

Although I'm bummed about my pumpkin failure, there has been some good news in the garden recently: my artichokes have come back from the dead!

A couple of months ago, both artichoke plants withered up and disappeared. Neither one had ever gotten particularly big, but I was surprised to lose them both, especially since I had been dutifully watering them throughout the summer. I've never grown artichokes before, but I know they are perennials, so I assumed there would always be some leaves showing while the plant was alive.

Perhaps I was wrong, because, a couple of weeks ago, new leaves sprouted up from the ground where one of my two artichokes had been. Then, last week, leaves appeared at the other location. Both plants have suddenly revived themselves and started growing again.

I'm not sure if this is part of the typical growing cycle of an artichoke, or if I just got lucky and the plants decided to give me a second chance. Either way, I'm hopeful they'll keep growing this time and that we'll be eating homegrown artichokes this Spring.

Eggs' Natural Defenses

2010-09-09T17:55:00.000-07:00

Last week, I heard an interesting story on NPR's Morning Edition about the natural defenses that keep eggs bacteria-free. Apparently, eggs have three lines of defense: the shell, the membrane inside the shell and the white, which contains microbe-fighting proteins. These three layers are very successful at keeping almost all nasty germs out of the egg. I kind of already knew this, but it's nice to hear again since certain chickens (Tina) have a bad habit of pooping in the nesting boxx.
According to the story, contaminated eggs are usually made that way by contaminated chickens. As a backyard-chicken keeper, this makes me feel pretty smart. As long as I keep my girls healthy and happy, I know the fresh eggs they lay for me are salmonella-free. And because my flock has enough space and clean food and water, they're less likely to get sick than chickens crammed into cages in a musty warehouse. In fact, the microbiologist quoted for the NPR story has a backyard flock of his own.

Food security: another great reason to have backyard chickens.

For the full article, click here.

Dang!

2010-09-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

Remember that baby pumpkin I was hoping would grow into a nice jack-o-lantern for my son? Well...

My little pumpkin started rotting a few days after that blog post. I'm not sure what went wrong. Maybe blossom-end rot, although I have been keeping the soil pretty evenly damp, mulching heavily and there are tons of broken eggshells in my compost providing calcium. My other guess is that I didn't pollinate the flower well enough. Who knows, though. I also think the 3-day heatwaves we've been having every other week might have done the pumpkin in. I don't think squash like that dry heat.

I'm not giving up on my pumpkin patch dream just yet. The vines keep growing and making female flowers. Hopefully if the weather stays below the mid-90s from now on, and I can keep the plants well-watered and fed, I'll get a few more chances to grow my son's Halloween pumpkin. I also read somewhere that coffee grounds are a good source of fruit-making potassium. So, I've been dumping out the French press onto my squash hills the last few mornings. Whatever works!

As for the one that didn't make it, I managed to find a use for it: chicken treat.

Still Waiting...

2010-09-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

It seems I have a couple of late bloomers on my hands. While one of my new chickens has been laying since mid-August, the other two have not yet started producing eggs.

At first, I thought the layer was Rita because the first few eggs were light brown and on the small side. The shells of the new eggs have darkened, though, and I'm now thinking Janice, my Cuckoo Marans, might be the layer. She's got her full comb and wattles and seems calmer than the other two new girls, which could also indicate she's the one making the eggs.

The only weird thing is that the eggs seem too small to come from such a big chicken. Janice is basically the same size as Tina, my Black Sex-Link, but the eggs are about 3/4 the size of Tina's eggs. The mystery will be solved as soon as the other two girls start laying. Hopefully, they'll get off their feathered butts and make some eggs soon.

Pumpkin Possibility

2010-08-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

I'm getting pretty attached to the idea of growing my son his very own private pumpkin patch. Considering my past problems with squash, I'm probably setting myself up for some heartbreak. But, I am hopeful. I have one pumpkin growing so far, and a few more female flowers spread across my five vines. This pumpkin patch thing could happen... maybe.

I am nervous. My baby pumpkin already has a slightly discolored yellow area on one side. In addition, several female flowers have started to grow and then turned yellow and died before blooming. So, I'm soliciting any and all pumpkin-growing advice you all can give me. I'm especially interested in those of you who have successfully grown pumpkins, or other winter squash, in Southern California.

Here's what I'm doing in an attempt to give my pumpkin patch the best possible chance:

Watering deeply every 2-3 days. It's very dry and hot here this time of year, so things tend to get dried out and scorched very quickly.
Side-dressing with compost and organic fertilizer high in both nitrogen and phosphorous.
Hand pollinating any female flowers that bloom.
Obsessively looking for female flowers on every vine and then carefully tracking their progress.

Okay, so that last one probably isn't actually helping.

I have read on gardening message boards that trimming off some of the male flowers before they bloom can help promote female flower production. Have any of you found that to be true? Any other tips for tricking my vines into making more female blossoms?

Also, for you Southern California gardeners, am I just being impatient? It seems possible that my vines won't really start fruiting until mid-September. The one pumpkin I do have is growing fairly quickly, and I think it might mature in 3 or 4 weeks. So, could it actually be a good thing if my pumpkins don't start growing until late September? (The variety I'm growing is a Sugar Pie Pumpkin, which is on the small side, 6 to 7 inches in diameter.)

Help me, gardening friends. Many adorable baby-in-pumpkin-patch photo opportunities are at stake!

Your Big Harvest Can Help the Hungry

2010-08-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

We're getting to the part of the summer when some lucky gardeners find themselves overloaded with homegrown squash, tomatoes and beans. An excessive zucchini crop such a classic late-summer problem that jokes about leaving a basket of squash on a neighbor's doorstep in the middle of the night are common. Well, one of the loyal readers of this blog (my dad) recently alerted me to an organization that can solve your squash problem while helping out those who need it most.

Ample Harvest is a website that connects backyard and community gardeners with local food pantries that would love to take extra homegrown fruit and vegetables off their hands. All you have to do is go to the site and type in your zip code, and a list of food pantries that accept garden donations pops right up.

I love this kind of organization. The founder of Ample Harvest noticed a problem--homegrown vegetables going to waste--and took direct action to solve it. On the website, he points out that it's often difficult to find a nearby food pantry in a phone book or with a Google search. By creating this site, which allows interested pantries to register, he removed the barrier between those who want to donate food and the people who need it. Simple, direct, awesome.

Having worked sorting food at various places around Los Angeles, I know that most of the donated food comes in cans or boxes. Fresh fruit and vegetables are a rare treat. I can imagine that the donation of just-picked, delicious homegrown vegetables must be a wonderful gift for food pantries and their clients.

So, if you find yourself with a bumper crop this year, check out AmpleHarvest.org. Hopefully once my fruit trees mature I'll have a chance to donate some peaches, oranges or apples to one of the many food pantries in my area that have registered with the site.

And the Winner Is... Rita

2010-08-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Finally! One of the new chickens started laying yesterday. I've been hoping for an egg from at least one of them for several weeks, because my chicken friend Noah's hens, who are the same age, have been laying for almost a month. My girls are maturing somewhat slowly, perhaps because I never gave them grower feed--just plain poultry mash. But they get lots of fruit and veggie treats, and time to free range for grass and bugs, so I'd say it's about time they grew up and started laying me some tasty eggs.

I believe this egg came from Rita, the Silver Laced Wyandotte. It's light brown and on the smallish side. Janice will probably lay large, dark brown eggs and Betty should lay blue or green eggs. Hopefully now that Rita is laying, the other two younger chickens will step up their game. As soon as they do, we should have plenty of fresh eggs for eating and sharing.

UPDATE: I eventually decided these eggs were from Janice, the Cuckoo Marans.

One Delicious Apple

2010-08-09T11:44:00.000-07:00

Check out this lovely apple. I picked it last weekend from the Anna Apple tree I received from a Tree People fruit tree giveaway and planted last winter. Dakota and I shared it, and it was pretty tasty. I think I left it one the tree a bit too long, though, because it wasn't as crisp as I hoped it would be. Still, this is my first homegrown apple.

I guess the Anna Apple was a great choice for my yard. At the fruit tree giveaway last winter, I specifically asked for a variety with a low number of chill hours. Chill hours are the number of hours below 45 degrees Fahrenheit that a tree must experience in order to bear fruit. The Anna has a low chill hour requirement and is supposed to be very well suited for the dry Southern California climate. That proved to be true, since it bore fruit the very first year. Next year, I think there's a good chance we'll get several apples, not just one.

I also have a Pink Lady Apple, which hasn't been at all successful. It's been in the yard for a couple of years and never even made a baby apple. I have no idea why. I water it frequently, fertilize occasionally and try to keep it nicely pruned. The area where it's planted will now get a lot more sun, though, because we recently got new neighbors and they trimmed the jungle of a backyard next door. I'm hoping the extra sunshine will help the Pink Lady produce fruit next year.

Cloth Diapering: Prefolds & Covers

2010-08-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Although there's a fair amount of debate about whether cloth diapers are better for the environment than disposable, I didn't really spend much time worrying over what to use with my son. In my (admittedly brief) search, I was unable to find a clear, definitive study about which method is really "greener." Most arguments seemed to be tinged with a fair amount of bias toward one type, and many against cloth had a lot to do with how the diapers were being cleaned. (More on that later.)

In truth, part of my decision to cloth diaper my son was emotional. I just couldn't stomach the idea of throwing away bags and bags worth of plastic diapers every week for years. Imagining all those diapers piling up in a landfill made me uncomfortable. So, I sought out a smart, inexpensive and user-friendly cloth diapering alternative. Happily, I think I found one.

After looking into cloth with disposable inserts, all in ones, and pocket diapers, I decided to keep it simple and go with cloth prefolds. Cloth prefolds are basically just rectangles of cotton (or other absorbent fibers) divided into thirds with seams. The middle third is thicker than the two on the sides, and thus more absorbent.

You can use prefold diapers several ways, but I am keeping it simple by folding them into thirds and then fanning out the back and wrapping the "wings" around my baby. The whole thing is fastened in the front using a Snappi. If you use prefolds, I highly recommend that you get a few Snappis. My mom, who cloth diapered me when I was a baby in the late 70s, thought they were a massive improvement over the diaper pins she had to use.

After the diaper is on, I cover the whole thing with a waterproof cover to keep my son's clothes from getting wet when the diaper does. I'm primarily using Thirsties diaper covers. The one pictured below is called a Thirsties Duo Wrap. The snaps on the front make it adjustable so that you can use it on your newborn and then undo the snaps when he gets bigger. So far, the covers have successfully kept the wetness (and poop) on the inside, and they are easy to use and wash.

Speaking of washing... Most arguments against cloth mention the large amount of water and electricity required to clean diapers, but I think I'm doing pretty well on that front. We have a front-loading, energy and water-efficient washer, and I recently got an awesome umbrella-style clothesline. So, in my case, I think cloth diapers will actually end up being better for the environment--and cheaper--than even unbleached disposables.

That's pretty much the basics of my cloth diapering experience so far. I haven't found the process to be particularly time-consuming or difficult (another argument often used against cloth), and my son seems quite happy in his prefolds. In fact, he's yet to get diaper rash, which seems like a good sign.

I have much more to say about cloth diapering. Like most things involving babies, there are many accessories you can buy and even more opinions about how to use, wash and clean cloth diapers. I'll post more about those topics soon.

Smaller Summer Garden

2010-07-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Due to recent baby-having events, this summer's garden is smaller and more focused than I've had in years past. I didn't plant the larger, lower bed at all this year. It's just too much work to prepare the soil and plant that big space. Instead, I'm focusing on the uppermost, medium-sized bed, as well as my usual container crops.

Rather than experimenting with new things, this year's garden is (mostly) focused on crops I've grown successfully in previous years. I have the summer staples of tomatoes, peppers, green beans and squash all growing vigorously from seeds I purchased online from Botanical Interests.

The pole beans have taken off nicely, as beans usually do, and have already reached the top of the tripods I made for them. Dakota brought me some long poles from his shop, so perhaps the beans will climb even higher. The pumpkin plants are spreading into the space between the beans, in classic summer garden style. Although I haven't done well with winter squash in the past, I decided to try pumpkins this year because I think it would be really cool for my son to be able to pick his Halloween pumpkin from his very own backyard patch.

I am also trying okra again, despite past failures. Okra really should grow nicely in my bright, sunny garden, so we'll see. I've started the okra in small pots, and so far I have three seedlings, which I hope to plant in a couple of weeks. I'd love to eat fresh-picked okra in August, so I've got my fingers crossed that this year I'll finally get my wish.

Of the three tomato plants currently growing in containers, I have one pear tomato, one cherry variety and one that I'm not sure of. I noticed a volunteer tomato plant growing in my strawberry pot, and, considering that time is short this year, I decided to scoop it out and see what it might produce. It's just starting to make baby tomatoes, so I should know in a few weeks.

Alongside these new crops, I have three eggplants and four pepper plants from last year that survived the winter and are making fruit for a second year. I have to watch them closely for pests and disease, but so far they seem to be doing well. In my garden, I've found peppers prefer a bit of shade for part of the day, and then they'll make me lots of colorful fruit.

So, that's it for this summer. I have given up on growing corn. I just don't think I have enough space or rich enough soil to be truly successful. I'm also taking a year off from zucchini, after last summer's embarrassing failure. Besides, I can get zucchini for $1.99/pound at the grocery store or farmers' market, so it hardly seems worth it to grow my own.

Crazy Prehistoric Pest

2010-07-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I discovered these weird insects on one of my pepper plants. I have never come across these guys in my garden before, and there were quite a few of them camped out on various parts of my large Lemon Drop Pepper plant. Does anyone have any idea what they are?

The spiny, black and brown, almost prehistoric-looking insects were located at the crooks of the pepper plant where thinner stems branched off from a main stem. As pictured, there were two larger insects, and then numerous smaller bugs surrounding them. I'm not sure if the smaller insects were babies, worker drones or complimentary insects. I am guessing babies.

The area of stem where the bugs were located had some brown scarring on it, so I made the educated guess that these insects were not friendly to the plant. Happily, my insecticidal soap was very effective in wiping both the big and little spiny insects out.

So... Anyone seen these insects before? I'm really curious about them.They're so weird-looking.

Bad Grass

2010-07-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

Back in April, Ilsa Setziol of Rambling LA had a really great series on the Los Angeles Times Home blog about nonnative invasive plants. If you're at all interested in gardening or the preservation of natural habitats, I encourage you to check it out. Ilsa runs down a list of the plants commonly found in garden centers that can do serious damage when they get out of the garden and into the wild.

One of the posts discusses fountain grasses, which have spread through Southern California open space and parkland and pushed out the native chaparral. I'm sad to admit that, after reading the article, I realized that I have some in my front yard. I planted two clumps of purple fountain grass several years ago. I think it's probably sterile, because I haven't noticed it spreading, but I am considering removing it after reading Ilsa's article.

I also realized that my front yard had been invaded by another variety of invasive grass: Mexican feathergrass. It showed up among my native plants last year, and grew into two or three smallish clumps. Informed by the invasive plant series, I removed the grass last month and threw it in the garbage, rather than the green bin, so hopefully it won't spread. Since then, I've noticed the feathergrass in other peoples' yards and in public landscaping. Hopefully those gardeners will hear about the danger of nonnative fountain grasses and take their invasive species out as well.

Last Christmas, I was up in the Russian River Valley in Northern California, and I noticed large clumps of pampas grass growing among the redwoods. It looked really weird on the otherwise woody hillsides, and I know this aggressively-spreading grass is a pretty serious problem up and down the California coast. It was kind of a bummer to see the obviously out-of-place pampas grass among the gorgeous redwoods. If we're lucky, the park service will beat it back before it chokes out the native vegetation.

Hopefully, the more people are aware of problems with invasive nonnatives, the more they will turn to the just-as-attractive native plants. The California Native Plant Society has a good list of nurseries here. Many of the plants in my front yard, including native grasses, are from Matilija Nursery in Moorpark.

Summer Peaches from the Backyard

2010-06-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

Finally, some fruit tree success! I picked these lovelies from the Desert Gold peach tree in the backyard a couple of weeks ago. Since then, I've picked and eaten three more peaches, which were all the tree produced this year. That's actually a pretty good crop from my sad little backyard orchard, so I'm happy about it.

Unfortunately, the first two peaches were not very tasty. They had a watery, mushy consistancy that I didn't really enjoy. I think it may have been because I was watering the tree too much as the fruit was ripening. I picked the rest of the peaches after taking a break from watering and they were delicious. So, another lesson learned.

I should probably get a book on fruit trees so I stop making these rookie errors. I've had a book called The Home Orchard on my wish list for a little while. Do any of you have that book or another that you'd recommend? I don't have a lot of reading time these days, so I need more of a reference I can turn to for tips rather than a book I'd need to read cover-to-cover.

Anyway, I am happy about the small peach crop, and I hope next year brings even more fruit on that tree. There's really nothing like a freshly-picked summer peach.

Next up: the fig tree. I spotted some baby fruit this weekend. I don't expect a bumper crop, but I'm hoping to get a handful of figs before the bugs and squirrels get to them. Wish me luck!

Hawk Attack!

2010-06-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking that my next chicken update would be kind of boring because there haven't been any interesting developments with the girls lately. Then the chickens were attacked by a hawk!

Let me put your mind at ease because I know you're worried: everyone is fine. Last night, I was out at dusk watering my garden, and all five girls were free ranging, snacking on the embarrassingly thick weeds in the back yard. I wasn't really paying attention to the chickens when all of the sudden I heard furious clucking and flapping wings. I turned around just in time to see a hawk swooping over the yard. All the girls ran for cover, hiding under bushes, and the hawk flew up and away. I ran over to check on the chickens and they all looked okay. No one was bleeding, and they didn't even seem to have ant rumpled feathers. After they confirmed the coast was clear, all five girls rushed back into the safety of their run.

The whole hawk incident lasted about 60 seconds, but it was pretty exciting. I was really impressed by the chickens' awareness of their surroundings. It seemed like one of them must have made a warning cry so the others knew to hide. The hawk wasn't very big, so I'm not sure it would have been able to carry off the bigger hens like Tina or Janice, but it could have possibly grabbed Rita or Betty. I'm not sure how much weight a hawk can carry.

Speaking of the new girls, here they are hanging out in their run a couple of weeks ago. They have settled in nicely, although there are definitely two chicken cliques--Tina and Peggy, the older girls, versus Betty, Rita and Janice.

The new girls' personalities have started to emerge. Janice seems sweet, but maybe not so smart. Rita is a bit shy. Betty has a similar attitude to Peggy, which makes sense since they're both Easter Eggers. Both girls are fast and a little feisty. Betty has been taking flying leaps off the top of stairs and wood piles, testing out her wings.

None of the new chickens have started laying, and we may have a while to wait because they don't even have combs or wattles yet. I hope they don't take too long because Peggy has pretty much quit laying. Tina's doing her best to provide for us, but there's only so much one hen can do.

Where I've Been

2010-06-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may been wondering why I haven't been posting much lately. Well, I have a really good excuse: I had a baby!

He's a boy and he's pretty great so far. But, unsurprisingly, he's been using up some of my gardening, chicken keeping, cooking, crafting and blogging time. I did still manage to plant a partial summer garden, which I'll write about soon, along with a chicken and kitchen update. And there are many, many baby-related blog posts in the works.

As you may have guessed, we are trying to be frugal, resource-efficient and sustainable parents. That started before the boy even arrived, with solicitations to friends for their hand-me-downs and purchases of gently-used items off of craigslist. (No one should ever buy a new co-sleeper. There are so many practically new ones for sale online.) And it continues now that he's here, with cloth diapers, handmade toys and green cleaning products.

For now, though, I'll leave you with this photo of his tiny baby toes. Because, let's be honest, all I really want to talk about is how cute he is.

Wildflower Roundup

2010-05-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

This year, I was really happy to have some success with the wildflower seeds I planted in the winter months. (And by "planted" I mean scattered around the yard mixed with some organic fertilizer and a little compost.) I ordered most of them from my favorite place I've never been, the Theodore Payne Foundation. Not all the seeds I planted came up, but the ones that did were really pretty.

We were treated to a nice variety of blooms appearing at different times throughout the spring and summer. Here they are, roughly in order of bloom. First to bloom were the Baby Blue-Eyes and Tidy Tips, which I posted about back in March.

Next came the Chinese houses (Collinsia heterophylla), which grew quickly produced tall stalks covered in blooms. Some were white and some were a nice shade of bright purple.

These Salvia columbariae, also from Theodore Payne, grew here and there in the backyard. They were hard to spot, but really cool once I found them. Tiny complex blue flowers bloom off their spiny-looking heads.

The sunrise cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) are from seeds I planted last year. They're annuals and self-seeding, so maybe I'll get lucky and they'll spread further across the backyard.

The lacy phacelia (Phacelia tanacetifolia) also have fluffy, spiky heads covered with small purple flowers.

The elegant clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) came up here and there in the backyard, mixed in with the weeds. There's also a thick patch of them in the small bed on the side of our house, which is a little shadier and has better soil. I really love their bright, complicated blooms. They must have some specialized pollination purpose, although I haven't noticed any particular bees or other pollinators hovering around.

There are still a few stragglers growing that haven't bloomed. We'll see what happens to them now that the weather is getting hot and dry. And, of course, some of my seeds didn't come up at all. I can't seem to grow lupines, which is frustrating since I hail from the Bluebonnet state. At least the hillside below me is covered in lupines every spring. I just hope it's never developed.

First Spring Strawberries

2010-04-24T19:58:00.000-07:00

On Monday I picked the first two homegrown strawberries of the year. The one on the right is from a plant I picked up last year from the Silverlake Farmers' Market, and the one on the left is from a plant I got last weekend at OSH.

I always have a hard time deciding exactly when to pick my strawberries. I want them to get as dark red and ripe as possible, but if I wait too long they get mushy or--worse--eaten by birds. Happily, I chose a good time to pick these two because they were both firm, sweet and delicious.

With my two new OSH-purchased plants, I now have four strawberry plants growing in pots in the backyard. I'm not sure I'll ever get a substantial harvest of fruit, but they should keep providing us little treats for the next few months. Before last year, I never would have thought strawberry plants were so easy to grow.

Turns out, they're pretty simple and low-maintenance. Plus, since strawberries are perennials, the same plants provide fruit year after year. If you've never grown them before, you really should. Just plant them in a wide pot with soil and compost, put the plants in a sunny (but not too sunny) spot and water frequently. Wait a few weeks and enjoy some sweet berries straight from the plant.

New Girls!

2010-04-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we welcomed three new additions to our chicken family: Betty, Rita and Janice. These pretty girls were ordered from My Pet Chicken back in February and delivered to my chicken-pal Noah sometime in March. He and his wife generously took care of the chicks for me until I was able to pick them up and bring them to their new home. Here are the girls moments after I took them out of the cardboard box and put them into the chicken tractor in the back yard.

Betty, the white one, is an Easter Egger. She'll lay light blue or green eggs, like Peggy. I'm not sure if the fact that she's all white and Peggy is gold and brown will mean their eggs will be different colors or not. We'll see. Rita, with the white feathers on her head and mostly-black body is a Silver Laced Wyandotte. This is one of my favorite breeds, looks-wise, and I have always wanted one. Wyandottes are supposed to be good layers. Some friends of ours in Portland have a couple, and I know they've always got tons of eggs. Janice, who is the largest of the three girls, is a Cuckoo Marans. She'll have that speckled black and white look even when she's an adult hen, and her eggs will be a pretty dark brown color. Once these three start laying in a few months, I expect my egg basket to overflow with a beautiful variety of colored eggs.

After a couple of weeks of spending their days outside in the chicken tractor and their nights inside in a brooder box, I decided it was time to try moving the new girls into the big coop. Honestly, I was getting sick of moving them in and out every day, and I felt like Betty, Janice and Rita were almost big enough to defend themselves--or at least run away quickly. Still, one never knows how a chicken integration is going to go, so I was a bit nervous.

In the weeks that Rita, Betty and Janice were out in the tractor, Peggy and Tina barely even noticed them. The big girls were much more focused on eating weeds, getting into my garden and following me around until I gave them their morning feed. Still, I was concerned Peggy and Tina would beat up on the little ones once they weren't separated by wire mesh. Last Saturday, I tried my usual tactic of having everyone free range together. Again, the big hens paid almost no attention the pullets. So, I figured I'd just go for it. I put Betty, Rita and Janice into the big coop with Peggy and Tina, stepped inside with them and closed the door to the run. And...

Nothing really happened. The little girls cowered a bit and ran away when Peggy or Tina approached, but that's about all. No drama. No pecking. No frightened or angry clucks from anyone. I was kind of stunned. After watching them a bit more, I decided that everyone was fine and left them alone for a while. I came back as the sun was going down, and no one was bleeding. So, I decided to have the little girls sleep in the coop with Peggy and Tina.

Being new to coop and run living, the pullets weren't exactly sure how it worked. So, I ended up putting them into the chicken tunnel and then shoving them inside the coop. Once they were inside, I couldn't really see how everyone was behaving, and I was a bit nervous. I stood outside the coop listening for clucks of pain. Luckily, I didn't hear any. So, I went back inside to cook dinner. About an hour later, I came back down to check on everyone, opened up the nesting box and found this...

Yes, that is all five chickens crammed together into one nesting box (where, by the way, they are not supposed to sleep). They were cuddling together for warmth, I guess. After finding them this way, I was confident there would not be any bloodshed. Easiest flock integration ever! I guess Tina and Peggy are friendlier than I thought they were. I'm sorry I misjudged them.

It's now been almost a week and the chickens are living together pretty happily. The only real issue involves the little girls getting enough to eat. Tina and Peggy tend to be hogs, and they'll try to eat both from their feeder (which is too high for the pullets) and the little girls' feeder. It also took a few days for Betty, Rita and Janice to figure out how to go to bed on their own. Two nights in a row I went down to find them huddled in a corner of the run, and one night they were huddled in a corner of the chicken tunnel--just outside the door to the coop. They figured it out eventually, and now they're just one happy chicken family. Hopefully it'll stay that way.

Fresh Favas From the Garden

2010-04-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

I whipped up this tasty, colorful salad last week from my first bunch of homegrown fava beans. It's a variation on a recipe I found here. I used fresh goat cheese, because that's what was in the fridge, and added a bit of lemon thyme from the herb garden along with the fresh parsley. The salad was a nice, simple way to eat favas, which is key since fava beans themselves take a while to prepare.

Speaking of taking a while, until recently, I was afraid my fava plants were never going to make pods. The stalks grew like crazy and made lots of flowers, but the bean pods didn't appear until mid-March. Happily, when they did finally appear, the pods quickly grew big and thick.

I think I'll get one more decent harvest from the favas. I had hoped to get more, but I think the weird Spring weather--warm, cold, warm, cold--may be confusing the plants a little bit. I might also space them a bit farther apart if I plant favas next year. I suspect the plants might make more pods if they have more room and aren't competing with each other for nutrients.

Still, it was a successful and satisfying first fava crop. I'll definitely grow fava beans again, especially since they can be hard to find fresh at the store.

Rain, Runoff and City Government

2010-04-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

After a night of heavy rain, I was listening to the radio this morning, and a brief story on APM's Marketplace caught my attention. They mentioned that the Los Angeles Public Works department is considering an ordinance to require developers to eliminate storm water runoff when building new homes and developments. Basically, they'd have to capture all the runoff on-site, rather than letting rain run into storm drains and out into the ocean.

As most Angelenos probably know, storm water runoff is a major source of pollution along our coast. Many beaches must close for days or weeks after a storm because the water is so full of nasty, oily toxins. The idea that the city is working to reduce stormwater runoff through building codes sounds great to me.

I did a little more digging, and came across the website for the Low Impact Development plan. Apparently, this initiative has been around since last summer, but I was completely unaware. Here's a somewhat-recent LA Times article about the proposed ordinance, which, if it's passed by the City Council and the mayor, could go into effect sometime in the next few months. I plan to do a bit more research, and if it still sounds like a good idea, I'll send a letter to my city council member supporting the LID ordinance. If you live in Los Angeles, maybe you'll consider doing the same.

Of course, there are immediate ways we can all reduce storm water pollution, including picking up our dog's poop, not dropping trash (especially evil cigarette butts) in the street and planning our own landscaping so that it traps rainwater rather than letting it run out to the curb. Eric over at Ramshackle Solid has been digging trenches to move the water around his yard. I hope to someday to redirect our runoff as expertly as he has. In the meantime, we're doing our best to grow native plants, build berms around fruit trees and send rainwater down a little trench on the side of our stairs that ends at an orange tree.

Next up, we plan to get a rain barrel. Apparently the city had a pilot rain barrel program last summer, which, unsurprisingly, was extremely popular. No word on whether they're going to expand it. If not, I guess we'll have to make our own.

Colorful Caterpillar

2010-04-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I was out in the garden picking fava beans when I noticed a bunch of these little dudes hanging out on my fennel. At first I mistook them for ladybug larvae and got all excited. But when I looked at one more closely, I realized it was actually a caterpillar.

Specifically, this is a Black swallowtail caterpillar. Apparently, they love fennel and other members of the parsley family. These small black, white and red caterpillars will eventually grow into big, green, black and yellow caterpillars--and then, of course, turn into butterflies. I've never seen them around my garden before, but this is the first year I've grown fennel, so maybe that's why.

They don't appear to be hurting the plants too much, but I plan to keep an eye on them. I also found a few cabbage worms in the garden yesterday. Those guys can do some damage, so I picked them off and fed them to the chickens.

Tina's Big Comeback

2010-04-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Perhaps in anticipation of Easter, Tina finally decided to start laying eggs again. She'd been taking a break since January, when both my hens started molting. The girls took their sweet time getting back into egg production mode, probably because of the dark, gloomy winter weather.

Peggy started laying again a few weeks ago, but Tina still hadn't produced an egg until last week. As you can see by the photo below, she decided to get back to laying in a big way.

That is Tina's HUGE egg on the right. On the left, for comparison, is a store-bought grade A normal-sized chicken egg. Tina's is essentially twice the size of the store egg. Clearly, she had been saving up all her egg-making powers so she could wow me on her return to production. It worked.

Now, Tina is back to a roughly 4-egg-a-week schedule, as is Peggy. That suits us fairly well, although it doesn't provide enough eggs to do any serious baking. I have plans in the works to solve this little dilemma, but more on that later...

This Spring in the Backyard Orchard

2010-03-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Last year around this time, I wrote about my future orchard. I'm happy to report that, after a year, I've made some small progress towards my dream of picking fresh fruit from the back yard. Some of my older trees have made some progress towards fruitfulness, and I've added a couple of new trees to the mix. Best of all, all my fruit trees survived the summer. I think my fruit tree murdering streak is finally over.

The Panamint Nectarine I planted last February still looks like a stick most of the year, but it recently produced some gorgeous light pink flowers. I have my doubts that it will make any fruit this season, but I'm hopeful it'll branch out a bit and perhaps produce some nectarines in 2011. Fruit trees are all about patience, I've learned.

My old-timer navel orange produced quite a few little green babies last month. But now is the critical time when the fruit will either set and grow or harden and fall off. I am trying my best to tend to this tree so the fruit can mature, but citrus can be fickle. I also feel like the naval orange got confused by some warm winter days and fruited at a weird time of year. So, I'm not sure if I'll really get any oranges from this guy or not. Time will tell.

On the bright side, the year-old Desert Gold Peach is covered in baby fruit! I am so excited by the prospect of harvesting tree-ripened peaches that I can hardly wait for summer. So far, the fruit have continued to grow bigger and I really really hope they hang in there and make it to maturity. Unlike the nectarine, which was bare root, this guy was a potted tree. Maybe that's why it's fruiting after only a year in the ground.

My Pink Lady Apple is currently in bloom, but still shows no sign of fruit. I gave it a good pruning in early January, hoping that would help, but it hasn't made much of a difference. There are still buds forming, though, so perhaps it'll make some baby apples in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what schedule apple trees should be on. The weather has been so variable lately that none of my trees seem to be following a normal schedule.

I picked up another apple in late January at a Tree People giveaway in my neighborhood. The variety, Anna Apple, is supposed to do well in warmer climates with fewer chill hours. I planted this bare root tree just before we got all the big rains, and it's thriving already.

In fact, I was stunned to discover a baby apple on it this weekend. This tree has only been in the ground for two months and it's already fruiting! We'll see if this guy makes it to maturity, but either way I think the fact that it's fruiting at all bodes well for future crops. (Perhaps my Anna tree should have a little chat with the Pink Lady and show her how it's done.)

In other orchard news, I planted a bare-root peach tree, courtesy of Tree People, at the same time as the Anna Apple. It's still a stick. The fig tree is looking good, though, as is the lemon tree down by the chicken coop.

I'm hopeful that, after a summer of careful watering, plus a good stretch of winter rains, this will be the year when my backyard orchard dreams start to come true. If nothing else, I really hope I get to pick a couple of sweet, juicy peaches in a couple of months. Wish me luck!

Random Chicken Wisdom, Part 1

2010-03-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

Every once-in-a-while, someone contacts me through this blog looking for advice about chickens. Since I am always happy to lure more people into the life of backyard chicken-keeping, I usually set up a little meeting with my new blog friends (if they're local), and proceed to lay all my chicken knowledge on them. Hopefully, they find it helpful.

A couple of months ago, while preparing to meet with my new chicken-friend Noah, I started thinking about my top chicken tips. What have a learned in my two years of chicken ownership that would be worth sharing with others? After mulling it over for a while, I came up with the following random assortment of tips, all pulled from personal experience. I hope any of you who are contemplating chicken ownership find this advice useful.

Be careful where you purchase your chicks or chickens.

Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that it really matters where you get your chickens. My first two hens, Jackie and Lisa, died of Marek's disease, which I suspect they caught due to the less-than-sanitary conditions at the feed store where I bought them. I lost another pullet, Becky, to respiratory disease because of similarly shady sanitation at a different feed store. These losses were very sad, but you can avoid my mistakes by making sure you get your chickens from a clean feed store or directly from a hatchery.

At the feed store, make sure the day-old chicks are kept separate from other animals in a clean, well-ventilated brooder. Examine the chicks or hens carefully before you buy them. Look for signs of disease--listlessness, funny smell--and overall cleanliness. Ideally, get your chicks from a place that only sells chicks. Just-hatched chicks are usually disease-free; they catch diseases from the older fowl around them.

Start with at least 3 hens.

Hens need friends, so you should definitely get at least two chickens, but three is safer. That way, if you lose a chicken to disease or predators, you won't end up with one lonely hen. You can always get a replacement chicken, but hens that are raised together from the beginning tend to get along better. Plus, three hens are really no more trouble that two. In fact, odds are you'll be lusting for more chickens by the time your first batch gets to laying age--if not sooner.

Plan for predators.

When it comes to predators, chickens are, um, sitting ducks. They don't really have any way of protecting themselves, so it's your job to keep them safe. The best way to do this is to build a very secure coop and run, considering all the possible predators that might come after your girls or their eggs. In most urban/suburban environments, these include: raccoons, skunks, rats, dogs and snakes. We also have foxes and coyotes in our neighborhood, although I've never seen them in the yard. Still, I'd rather be safe than wake up to a bloody chicken crime scene.

Here are some coop-building tips that have kept our chickens safe from predators for several years:

Elevate your coop to keep predators and pests from burrowing underneath and/or making their homes below your chickens
Bury wire or metal at least 6" deep around the edge of your run to keep predators from digging under the walls
Put a protective barrier--metal, wood or hardware cloth--up to chicken-height around the base of your run. This will keep raccoons from reaching in and grabbing your hens (it happens)
Lock your doors and windows. Some animals are crafty enough to open coop doors that are simply closed and not latched
Chicken wire is too wimpy. Use a heavy-gauge wire fencing that can stand up to clawing, jumping or biting

If you follow these rules and build a secure coop and run, you'll save yourself a lot of worry. Our run is such a fortress that we don't even have to close the coop door at night, or wake up early to open it in the morning. We can even leave our chickens for the weekend without hiring a sitter.

Never chase a chicken!

As I learned during the Great Chicken Escape of 2008, chasing a chicken is usually a bad call. They may be small, but most hens are both quick and wily. If you try to chase a chicken down, you will likely end up out of breath, frustrated and yelling swear words your hen. So, if you need to get your hen to go back into her run, I highly recommend using trickery or bribes.

One of my best tricks involves pretending to find something extremely exciting in the dirt or straw. Basically, I scratch around in the soil with my hands and act all excited. Chickens are pretty curious--and greedy--so they'll probably come running to see what you've found. The scratching in the dirt trick works pretty well on my hens, and as you get to know your girls, you can discover what peaks their interest and use it against them later.

To bribe your chickens, food is the obvious choice. This can range from a handful of weeds to a special treat like meal worms or their favorite fruit. It really depends on your chickens' taste and how much they want to stay outside. Sometimes, you can even trick your hens with a fake bribe by shaking their feeder or bringing out the scoop you use to refill their feed. Chickens aren't as dumb as you might think, though, so don't use the fake out too often or they'll stop trusting you.

Well, I think that's all the chicken wisdom I can dispense for today. I have a few more thoughts that I'll share in a second post soon. For now, I hope you find this information useful and that perhaps it starts you on the road to getting some hens of your own. It is baby chick season after all!

Hillside in Bloom

2010-03-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how a scrubby vacant lot can transform into a thing of beauty thanks to the random scattering of seeds and some good winter rains. The hillside below our house has exploded with blue lupines in the last couple of weeks. As I drive by this lot full of wildflowers every morning, I'm reminded of how great Springtime can be in Los Angeles.

I also really hope the developer who bought these lots a couple of years ago never manages to get the money and permits to build his planned six identical stucco boxes of hideousness on the hillside. If the current recession has had one upside, it's been to stop guys like that from ruining views like this.

Rains Bring Big Harvests

2010-03-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Due to some unexpected craziness in my life, I was away from my garden for almost the entire month of February. In that time, several storm systems blew through Southern California and deposited several inches of rain in our yard. The timing was excellent, because my vegetable plots were all in the middle of their growing cycles, and it meant I didn't have to ask anyone to water the garden in my absence. In fact, the rains were so substantial that I returned to my garden at the beginning of March and found it like this.

That crazy mess of green is what happens when you leave a vegetable garden untended but well watered. At first I was kind of overwhelmed by the disorder, but when I looked closer I realized that ignoring my garden for a month meant I could now enjoy the satisfaction of some pretty hefty harvests.

My first harvest is pictured below: three baseball-sized turnips and their green tops, a handful of peas and two eggs. (Yes, Peggy finally started laying again at the end of February, perhaps to welcome me home.) We cooked up the turnips with some carrots from our produce delivery box using a delicious recipe for braised root vegetables from How To Cook Everything. The peas were delicious raw, pods and all. Fresh-picked peas are so much sweeter and crisper than the ones you buy at the store. There's really no comparison.

Subsequent trips to the garden provided us with a delicious salad mix of oak leaf lettuce, arugula and cilantro--which Dakota and my mom both raved about--and this lovely bunch of chard. The chard went into one of my favorite simple winter recipes, Bacon and Swiss Chard Pasta. Yum.

A few days later, I filled up my basket again with more peas, a big pile of peppers and some spinach, all of which were consumed with some grilled bratwurst.

All this harvesting has been extremely satisfying. I think I'm having my best vegetable garden season ever. There are so many more crops yet to pick--beets, fennel, fava beans--and the greens and peas have shown no sign of slowing down. Dakota and I can count on at least another month's worth of home-grown vegetables in our meals.

Who knew that the best thing I could do for my winter garden was abandon it?

Winter Wildflowers

2010-03-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

I'm so glad I planted my wildflower seeds early this year so they could take full advantage of the big rains we had in January and February. Thanks to those winter storms, I now have several patches of well-established California native wildflowers growing in both the front and back yards. Some have even started to bloom.

So far, the early bloomers include this Baby Blue-Eyes (Nemophila maculata), which is happily flowering in several spots in the front yard.

And this lovely yellow flower, a Tidy Tips (Layia platyglossa), has just started to bloom as well.

A few other varieties appear to be on the verge of flowering, although I'm not sure which ones. I got so many different seeds from the Theodore Payne Foundation, and my planting method involved mixing them all together and then scattering them on any available bare ground. Wildflowers are much easier to identify once they've bloomed.

I've also been enjoying the big patch of lupines--or Blue Bonnets as we called them in Texas--that's growing on the grassy slope below our house. I'm not sure how the seed originally got there, but every Spring there seem to be more plants with their beautiful blue flowers covering the hillside. Every time I drive by, it makes me happy to see them growing there, especially since I have a hard time growing lupines in my own yard.

Luckily, I've got lots of other wildflower blossoms to look forward to over the next couple of months. The good rains this year have made sure of that.

The Chickens are Molting

2010-01-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, my hens started acting a little strange. Mainly, they were more skittish than usual. One morning before work, I spent about 45 minutes trying to coax them into their run. Normally, this is an easy process: pour feed in feeder and the chickens coming running. Instead, Peggy and Tina were acting really skittish and even a handful of carrot peels couldn't entice them inside. I was feeling really frustrated and couldn't understand this sudden change in behavior, until I looked inside the coop and run the next day and saw a giant pile of feathers. Peggy and Tina are molting.

According to Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens, chickens molt about once a year. Usually, chickens begin the process in the late summer or early fall, when the days start to shorten. Peggy and Tina are a bit off schedule, but I'm not surprised considering that we don't have typical seasons here in Southern California. I just hope they're not too cold now that the weather has changed from 70-degree to 50 to 60-degree days.

I find molting a bit gross, for some reason, but it's not too bad. The major downside is that hens don't lay eggs when they're molting. So, we haven't had any backyard eggs for the past several weeks. And we may have to wait quite a while longer, because Storey's Guide says they can molt for between 14 and 16 weeks! It kind of depends on the breed, though. So maybe my girls--an Easter Egger and Black Sex-Link--will be on the faster side.

I just hope they calm down a bit so I don't have to worry about letting them out of the coop in the morning before work. I like our routine, where they scratch around and sample some weeds in the yard while I tend to my garden. But if they won't go back in the run when I need them to, they may have to just stay inside during the week until the molt is over.

Walls & Windows

2010-01-10T18:35:00.000-08:00

We've made some more progress on the kitchen lately, and I really mean "we" this time, since I was able to help paint the walls.

Dakota, who knows way more about paint than I do, thought we should use Benjamin Moore Natura Paint. It's a zero VOC paint, so it basically has no scent, and is presumably better for your indoor air quality. Benjamin Moore has a lot of great color choices, and we finally decided on "Seedling," which is a light green. The idea was to paint the walls a lighter, but very similar, color green to the cabinets. Dakota got this idea from an architect he really admires who did a gray-on-gray kitchen. While the idea of an all-gray kitchen didn't sound so good to me, the green on green looks really nice.

The Natura Paint went on very smoothly, and I was able to get two coats on the walls before Christmas. Dakota then added a simple, white trim around the French doors and along the base of the walls. The overall effect is really nice and bright, and having the walls painted makes the kitchen seem so much closer to completion.

Another exciting kitchen improvement was the removal of the ugly, aluminum windows over the sink and the installation of new wood windows. For this endeavor, Dakota built a scaffolding on the back corner of the house.

There was a lot of discussion over what type of windows we should install, and whether we should buy them or Dakota should make them. As you may know, windows are extremely expensive. So, we ended up going with the significantly cheaper Dakota-made variety. Let me assure you, though, they do not look cheap. Dakota decided on a simple casement style, which I think was a great idea because the single pane allows us to fully admire the view. The view from the sink, which looks Northeast towards the San Rafael and San Gabriel Mountains, may actually be the best view in our house.

We also spent some time discussing whether we should use regular glass or double-glazed with a layer of argon/krypton gas in between. This second variety, also known as insulated windows, are more expensive but also more energy-efficient because they prevent heat gain in the summer and heat loss in the winter. Initially, we thought the insulated windows would be a good idea for our "green" remodel, but after thinking it over, we realized that the benefits in our kitchen would be pretty minimal. We don't have central heat or air, and since we already insulated the kitchen walls and the attic, we're in pretty good shape when it comes to heat gain and loss. So, we went with plain old glass.

To help with energy efficiency, Dakota added a small awning over one of the windows, which will shade it during the summer and also keep rain off the sill. It's invisible from inside, but did a good job keeping the window relatively dry in our most recent rain storm.

There is still work to be done on the kitchen, although, at this point, it's mostly details. Dakota is adding more trim, touching up some paint, refurbishing a small window and finishing up the new door. Then we just have to get the tile installed, and we'll be done! Hopefully all that work can take place in the next couple of months.

Winter Planting for Spring Wildflowers

2009-12-31T09:30:00.000-08:00

It drizzled a little yesterday, and that moisture, combined with a good couple of days of rain earlier this month, has really helped with my plan to cover the yard in wildflowers this Spring. I've tried planting wildflowers in the past, but I didn't get the seeds scattered early enough and they failed to grow. This year, I was determined to get the seeds spread during LA's (very brief) rainy season, so they'd actually have a chance to germinate in favorable growing conditions. So far, it seems to be working.

The little green plants poking up through the leaves in the photo above are California native wildflowers, although I can't tell you exactly which varieties. I purchased a whole bunch of seeds from the Theodore Payne Foundation website a couple of months ago. After browsing through their giant catalog of seeds--both annual and perennial--and using Google image search to figure out what the flowers would look like, I ended up ordering 14 different types. I know, I went kind of overboard. I tend to do that with seed catalogs. Luckily, seeds are fairly inexpensive.

A few packets of Theodore Payne wildflower seeds went into my seed bombs, and the rest were scattered all over the front and back yards. The front yard wildflowers probably have a better shot, since they don't have to contend with curious chickens and their scratching claws. But, I think I spread my backyard planting locations around enough that I should get a pretty bunch of blooms all over both yards this Spring. I hope so, anyway.

The wildflowers will bring in native bees, butterflies, hummingbirds and other pollinators, which will help my fruit trees and garden plants. And, of course, they'll provide a fun Springtime burst of color. Once they've finished blooming, most of the wildflowers should reseed themselves, so I wont have to go on another seed spree next Fall.

If you're interested, it's not too late for you to plant your own wildflowers. The real rain should hit Southern California in January and February, so if you scatter some seeds soon, they will still get a good start. If you don't want to order online, most garden stores sell California Poppy and lupine seeds, both of which are natives that grow well in Los Angeles.

Happy Holidays

2009-12-25T06:50:00.000-08:00

I made this year's holiday card with my Print Gocco, a Japanese mini-screenprinting machine I got as a gift a couple of years ago. It's so fun and easy to use, and I would really like to make cards and other prints more often. They don't sell them in the U.S. anymore, but you can get one pretty easily on eBay, and Paper Source sells supplies through their website.

I hope you're all having a good time with family and friends this holiday season. Around here, we're getting some much-needed rest. It's been a busy year, and there are even more home-improvement projects, garden plans and other exciting developments coming in the New Year.

Hopes for Artichokes

2009-12-24T06:50:00.000-08:00

Just before the rains earlier this month, I planted two artichoke seedlings. I grew them from seed purchased from Botanical Interests, and they were looking hearty enough to go into the garden bed. Plus, I figured the rains would help them get established.

Taking a tip from Eric at Ramshackle Solid, I dug a deeper hole than I usually would and then filled it up with compost. Eric mentioned that artichokes can have a 4 foot long tap root, so they need as much room to grow down as they do to grow up. I don't think I dug nearly deep enough, but hopefully the artichokes will dig the rest of the way on their own.

I also put up a ridiculous barricade around the artichoke seedlings to protect them from the evil claws of our local skunks and the curious beaks of certain chickens. So far, the barricades--made from tomato cages--have held and the seedlings are growing.

I will be so happy if we get to harvest fresh artichokes this Spring. I remember the smell of artichoke fields along the Northern California coast when I was in college, and it was amazing. Perhaps we'll have a bit of that scent in our yard next year.

Seed Bombs

2009-12-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I finally got around to a project I've wanted to try for years: making seed bombs. I think I first heard about seed bombs in reference to the Guerrilla Gardening movement. The basic idea behind a seed bomb is that it allows you to easily spread native seeds--usually wildflowers--into places where you wouldn't normally have access, like vacant lots or the land beside highway offramps.

I walk or drive past countless vacant lots, empty hillsides and partially-completed construction projects (ugh) every day, and ever since I heard about seed bombs I've been itching to decorate these areas with a splash of Spring color. This year, I finally remembered to make them at the right time (late Fall) so that I can throw them throughout Southern California's all-too-brief rainy season.

The first step was to get the supplies together. The seed bomb recipe calls for compost, dry red clay powder and seeds. The compost was easy, but the clay was harder to track down. After calling around a bit, I found that the only place to get it locally seems to be Echo Ceramics in West Los Angeles. I was loathe to drive all the way over there, but, happily, Dakota had a job in that part of town so was able to drop by and pick up some clay powder for me.

Since I wanted to make sure I was spreading native California wildflowers, I purchased my seeds from the Theodore Payne Foundation. You can visit their facility in Sun Valley or just order online. For this project, I ordered some of their wildflower mixes. If you don't want to go to Theodore Payne, you could also go to the garden center and buy some California Poppy and lupine seeds, which both tend to be pretty ubiquitous.

Now, here's where I went a little off the standard instructions. Many recipes I found online recommended a ratio of 5-3-1 or 5-5-1 of clay-compost-seed. But then, I found a couple of posts on a website called Broken City Lab where they tested various seed bomb mixes to see which bombs had the most successful germination rate. They found that less clay was better (although they weren't using red clay), and recommend the following recipe: 1 part seeds, 1 part clay, 1 part coffee grounds, 8 parts soil and 1 part water.

After this research, I decided to go light on the clay at first and see how well the mixture bound together. I also added some granulated organic fertilizer to give the seeds a little boost. Here's my mixing bowl with the compost, red clay and canola meal fertilizer.

I slowly added water until I got a thick, sticky mixture. By the way, I recommend wearing gloves when you do this. It's messy work.

Once I got the clay, compost and seed mixture to a good consistency, I started rolling it into balls. I made mine about the size of a golf ball, for easy throwing. Each wet seed bomb was placed on an old nursery tray. I think I got about 40 seed bombs out of my first batch.

Then, the tray of wet seed bombs went into the basement (a cool, dry place) to dry for three days.

Here are the completed seed bombs.

They seem to have dried nicely and stayed together well, with no major cracks. So, I think I using less clay worked out. I didn't measure precisely, but I'd say it was about a 3 to 1 ratio of compost to clay.

Now comes the fun part: throwing the seed bombs. It's actually raining today, so maybe I'll chuck some on my way to and from work. Then, I'll have to keep tabs on those spots this Spring, to find out if I managed to grow some pretty native flowers in some otherwise boring vacant lots.

Christmas Crafting

2009-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I started working on various Christmas gift projects. As usual, I'm starting too late, but hopefully I'll still manage to crank out some good stuff before it's too late. My goal is to not purchase anything and give only handmade gifts. We'll see how that goes.

One thing that may help me this year is that I learned how to sew. Previously, I was pretty much relying on knitting (and a little wood burning) for all my homemade gifts. While I'm not exactly a fast (or particularly competent) sewer, I can usually finish a project in a few hours, versus several days--or weeks--for a knitted item.

NOTE: If you are related to me and would like to be surprised by your Christmas gift, I urge you to not click on any of the links in this post. I will be vague in the text, but I am including links in case other people are looking for good handmade gift ideas. Anyway, you've been warned.

Last weekend, I sewed a couple of these. I highly recommend this project for beginner sewers looking for something cute and practical to make for their loved ones. I managed to make two in an afternoon, and I think they turned out pretty nicely. Who doesn't like a cozy plaid flannel, after all?

I also made some good progress on these. So far, I've found the pattern pretty easy for an intermediate knitter like me. And they're knitting up fairly quickly, so I think I'll actually be able to finish them soon if I can get up the energy to knit on weeknights. That would be good, because I've got a few other projects I'd like to knit for various family members.

That's what I've got going on so far. I'm also hoping to make something like this for a few friends. And I've got some nice fabric that would make excellent dishcloths, so if I can just manage to sew in a straight line, I think I could make some snazzy dishcloth sets for a few other people.

In addition to the knitting and sewing, I also hope to can something to give away this holiday season. I checked out a few recipes, and hopefully I can find some time in the next few weekends to fire up the water bath. Now that I've learned how to pickle things, I feel like I should use my skills to make some tasty, tangy gifts. Nothing says Christmas like homemade pickles, right?

It's actually possible that my all-homemade holiday goal will happen. I'll let you know if I make it, although I might end up caving and buying some things at a craft fair. That's almost as good as making it myself, I think.

In Bloom

2009-12-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

The paperwhite narcissus I blogged about the other day have bloomed. Well, the ones in the bathroom have. The rest will burst open any day now. Narcissus are such a easy, satisfying flower. They're pretty, grow quickly and they smell great. Go get your blubs now. You won't regret it.

Winter Garden Progress

2009-11-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

So far, things are going pretty well with my winter vegetable garden. I have seedlings popping up everywhere, including some nice-looking beets in the big raised bed, plus some chard, turnips, collards and lots and lots of radishes.

Another happy crop is the fava beans, which are growing like crazy. I keep waiting for them to begin flowering, though. Thus far, they're all stalk and no bloom. It's possible I planted the favas a bit too densely, but they seem hearty at the moment, so I'm not going to worry about it. Fava beans don't really seem to climb naturally, but I'm having good luck weaving them around the supports of my bean poles, and I tied up some stray stalks this weekend to keep them from wandering into neighboring plots.

I'm also having excellent luck with the oak leaf lettuce. Any day now, I'll enjoy a salad of these pretty green leaves. I'm considering waiting until there are one or two radishes ready to harvest, though, so I can have a little garden salad. The radishes are growing quickly, so it shouldn't be too long.

My garden netting has kept most digging predators away, so my main issue this winter is bugs. Something is really going after my bok choy. I've got it planted in two different squares in the big raised bed, and in both locations the leaves are under attack. I haven't seen any slugs or snails around, so I'm not sure what creature is doing this. Could ants be the culprits?

There are certainly plenty of ants wandering all over the garden. I'm worried that'll mean big aphid trouble very soon. I have sprinkled some diatomaceous earth around the beds, but the ants don't seem particularly concerned by it. Is boric acid a better bet? I've never used it. I don't mind ants, but I absolutely hate the aphids ants bring. They are so ridiculously hard to get rid of once they take hold.

Oddly enough, the mystery bug appears to be sticking mostly to bok choy, with only the occasional dalliance with the chard or fennel. The bok choy seems hearty, though, so maybe it'll make it past the seedling stage without being completely destroyed. I have it planted in my upper bed as well, so it might have more luck there.

The only other concern has been the too-warm weather. I don't want my greens to bolt before they're even big enough to eat. Temperatures have cooled down a little, and I really hope that once December gets here we'll have mostly cool days for the rest of the winter. Those high-70s days might be nice for working outside, but they're no good for growing winter greens.

Vintage Sink Bargain

2009-11-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

Now that we're almost done with the kitchen remodel (a year later), Dakota and I have started planning the next step in our DIY effort to make our home nicer, and, more importantly, more space-efficient. Phase 2 involves remodeling the bathroom.

Our bathroom is in decent shape at the moment, if you ignore the cracked tile floor, mildewed grout, lack of knobs for the bathtub and damp, unventilated shower. We do ignore these things, but we don't particularly like them. Plus, it seems crazy to have a separate bathtub and shower stall in a 945 ft2 house.

The current plan is to take out the shower and turn it into a closet that will open onto the hall. This will provide a much-needed place to store the vacuum, mop, ironing board and other bulky items that are currently propped in various corners. We're also going to replace the floor, make new cabinets, install a new countertop and convert the tub to a tub/shower combo. AND, we're getting a new sink. Well, new to us.

In fact, we already got the sink. Our design plan is to go with the vintage/modern look that worked so well in the kitchen. So, we have been on the lookout for a nice vintage sink to go with the tub we've already got. For the last few months, we've been poking around architectural salvage stores, including Pasadena Architectural Salvage and even Hippo Hardware in Portland. Both places had nice old sinks, priced between $125 and $175. That's an okay price, but not great.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to stop by the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store in Pasadena, just to see what they had available. When we pulled up, I was delighted to find a huge selection of vintage sinks stacked in the parking lot. They had about 20 or 30 different models of various ages and conditions. After poking around for a while, we picked our favorite: a white, porcelain sink that kind of matches our tub. The price tag for this lovely vintage sink? $15!

Not only do we get the environmental benefit of buying a salvaged product instead of new, but the sink was a crazy bargain. And, the money we did pay goes to Habitat for Humanity, a great organization. It's a win-win-win. I am thrilled.

Hopefully, our luck will hold out, and we'll find some other bargains for the rest of the bathroom project. Right now, we're thinking of using cork for the floor and Dakota's going to make concrete countertops. We're still contemplating the material for the tub/shower walls, although we might go with Corian, because Dakota is becoming a certified fabricator. Plus, no tile means no scrubbing grout.

The bathroom remodel won't begin until the kitchen is completely done, which will probably be another month or so. But, hopefully, it'll go relatively quickly. It's a smaller room and the plan is less ambitious than a floor to ceiling kitchen remodel. I'll let you know when the work begins.

Delicious Vegetarian Enchiladas

2009-11-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

I have never cooked enchiladas before, but the other night, inspired by this recipe on Homesick Texan, I decided to try it. As a native of San Antonio, I have always been a fan of Mexican food, but I rarely cook it at home. (Well, we eat a lot of quesadillas, but that doesn't count.) Something about Homesick Texan's recipe reminded me of one of my favorite dishes, Enchiladas Suizas, and I wanted to see if I could recreate the tangy/creamy flavor in my own kitchen.

Also, I have been looking for a good way to use Trader Joe's Chicken-less Strips, and this recipe seemed perfect. It has plenty of sauce and spice to mask any possible weird fake meat flavor.

As my first step I pan-fried the Chicken-less Strips in a little bit of vegetable oil, just to brown them and warm them up a bit. When it's in the pan, you can barely tell it's not real chicken.

After that, I followed Homesick Texan's recipe relatively closely, although I halved it because I don't think we could eat 12 enchiladas in one sitting, even with Dakota's large appetite. Instead of canned tomatillos, I used canned salsa verde, because that's what was in the pantry. And I used vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, to keep the whole dish vegetarian.

Below you can see the enchiladas just before they went in the oven. I used Homesick Texan's tip about briefly heating the tortillas in a lightly oiled frying pan, and it really helped. Store-bought corn tortillas can be really brittle, but the few minutes in the pan made them easy to roll up.

And here are the enchiladas ready to eat. I found them exceptionally tasty. The combination of sour cream, salsa verde and jack cheese was just right; the flavor took me back to some of my favorite Tex Mex meals. And, honestly, I thought the Chicken-less Strips did their job nicely. They provided some extra protein in the meal and kept the enchiladas from being too mushy and cheesy.(Dakota felt the texture was a bit off, but he still gobbled up his enchiladas, so it must not have bothered him too much.)

Overall, I found enchiladas to be a pretty easy dish to cook. They might be better for a weekend dinner because of the time it takes to prepare the sauce, but I can imagine making them on a weeknight, especially if you make the sauce in advance (and get home from work before 7:30). I'm not sure why I was so intimidated by enchiladas in the past, but I definitely plan on making this recipe again soon--perhaps for some vegetarian friends when we finally start having people over for dinner again.

Terror in the Coop

2009-11-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

Last week, I discovered the one thing that terrifies my chickens more than any other. The one thing that sends them frantically flapping and squawking in fear. The thing that, more than any other, causes my chickens to take refuge in their coop and refuse to come out. And that thing is...

A dried sunflower head.

You heard me. Now, let me just point out that Peggy and Tina are not fraidy-hens. In fact, there are several things that they should rightfully be afraid of that don't phase them at all. This list includes Nigel, our dog, who, while small, could certainly take a bite out of their legs or neck if he felt like it, and Scampers, the cat who lives in our backyard, whose pretty feisty and good with her claws. The chickens are so unconcerned with Nigel and Scampers that they will walk right between them, causing a convergence of pets that I am not entirely comfortable with. (Happily, everyone practices the survival technique of completely ignoring all the other animals and focusing on me, the provider of food.) So, despite their lack of fear response to actual (unlikely, but possible) predators, when it comes to a dried sunflower head, my chickens exercise extreme caution.

I discovered this fact last week, after my friend Chris very kindly provided me with a big bag of dried sunflower heads from his own garden. I had mentioned to him once that my chickens liked sunflower seeds, so he saved these seed-filled heads especially for them. On Tuesday morning, I strolled down to the coop with what I thought was a wonderful treat for the girls. I figured I'd hang the sunflower on the run fencing, and then the girls could have fun pecking out and eating the seeds over the next few days. That is not what happened.

When I entered the chicken run with the sunflower, Peggy immediately flipped out. She started squawking and flapping and jumping back and forth across the coop. Tina joined in, but with less gusto, as if she wasn't entirely sure what was happening, but trusted Peggy that it was serious. Eventually, both hens scrambled their way into the coop to hide. I was a bit confused about what the problem was, and, honestly, I was late for work. So, I figured I'd just put the sunflower head up as planned and the chickens would eventually calm down and come outside to have their treat. I had also scattered some carrot peels, which they love, in the run, so I figured they would venture out for those for sure.

The following morning, when I went down to let the chickens out for their morning free range, it was clear Peggy and Tina had not left the coop since I last saw them. The carrot peels were untouched, their feeder still had food in it and there they were, huddled together inside the coop. Now, my chickens are extremely food motivated and there is no food inside the coop (just water). They spent a whole day inside, not eating their feed, which they love, or the carrot peels, which they really love, because they didn't want to risk walking past the dreaded sunflower head. That is how afraid they are of this inanimate object.

After shaking my head at the ridiculousness of chicken behavior once again, I removed the sunflower head from the run and lifted the chickens out of the coop and into the yard. They wouldn't go out on their own, just in case the sunflower head was just hiding somewhere out of sight, ready to pounce. Once they realized the sunflower was really gone, they managed to relax a little and are now back to their normal selves.

Happily, the chickens still love sunflower seeds, and Chris' gift won't go to waste. While they weren't looking, I shook a bunch of seeds out of the head and spread them all over the run. Peggy and Tina gobbled them right up, unaware that those tasty treats had come from the very object that had so terrified them the day before. Duh duh dummmmm!

Bulb Forcing Fun

2009-11-19T11:45:00.000-08:00

Now that the holidays are almost here, I'm getting in the mood to make the house a bit more decorative and festive. Since I'm cheap and don't like spending money on cut flowers or store-bought decorations, I find other ways to spruce things up. One of those things is forcing bulbs indoors.

This year, I've got several pots of paperwhite narcissus scattered around the house. I'm also trying some freesia bulbs for the first time, for some added color. Both paperwhite narcissus and freesia have pretty, fragrant flowers and smallish bulbs that can be packed into a houseplant pot, or any other appropriate container that might be lying around. I picked up the bulbs for both plants at my local Orchard Supply Hardware, but they're basically everywhere this time of year.

To start, I planted the bulbs in a mixture of potting soil and vermiculite. Vermiculite is a granular mineral used in gardening that helps keep soil loose and moist. It's good for planting bulbs because their roots need good drainage and consistent moisture. I also put a layer of gravel in the bottoms of my pots to keep the soil well drained so the bulbs don't rot. There are lots of sites that provide bulb forcing instructions online if you need them, including this one. But, honestly, it's really easy and hard to screw up.

For the first two weeks, I kept my planted bulbs in the basement, where it's cold and dark. This helps them establish good roots before they start sprouting up. During that time, I kept the soil mixture moist with frequent watering.

Once the roots were established, I took my pots upstairs and spread them around the house near sunny windows. They're looking good so far, and I can see some flower stems coming up on a couple of them. When they bloom, the narcissus and freesia will release a light, fresh scent that'll make the house smell great. Plus, they'll be pretty. If I can find some more planting containers, I may plant another group this weekend so that I can have flowering bulbs in the house for the whole holiday season.

After my narcissus and freesia have finished blooming, I'll cut them back and plant them in the yard. They may not come up out there unless we have a good rainy season this year, but I think it's worth the attempt. I planted some last year, and actually noticed a few green shoots coming up the other day. Technically, outdoor bulbs are supposed to bloom in the Spring, but in Southern California none of those rules seem to apply.

Peppers Prefer Fall

2009-11-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that peppers are usually considered a summer crop, I've noticed that, in my garden, the peppers are much happier in the Fall. I got some decent harvests from a few of my plants this summer. But, now that the days are shorter and the nights cooler, most of my pepper plants are blooming like crazy and covered in baby fruit.

It's nice to have something to harvest from the garden this time of year, since the winter crops are still young and several weeks--or months--from harvest. The plant above is an heirloom variety called Lemon Drop. The seeds are actually from 2008, but I decided to try them again this year since I got zero peppers of this variety last year. Happily, my one Lemon Drop plant has grown exceptionally hearty over the last month and is now producing like crazy. I can't wait to taste the fruit when they're ripe.

I've also got several Wenk's Yellow Hot and Maule's Red Hot plants thriving in various pots. If the Fall and Winter continue to be mild, I should be able to get at least one big harvest out of all my pepper plants before Christmas.

Homemade Granola

2009-11-13T11:00:00.000-08:00

Recently I tried making my own granola. It ended up being quite simple, and I recommend trying it yourself. Dakota and I both find most store-bought granolas way too sweet and full of "extra" flavors. So, my goal was to make granola that was simple, healthy and tasty.

My batch was made using this recipe from Curious Bird blog, with some minor changes. I also doubled the recipe, because we tend to go through cereal pretty quickly. I am storing some of the granola in a mason jar in the freezer where it will keep longer, and the rest has been steadily disappearing from the pantry.

Basically, you just stir together a bunch of oats, nuts and coconut flakes, add a little sugar, spices and oil and bake the whole thing in the oven until its toasty. Then you add raisins or other dried fruit and you're done. Simple as that.

I may experiment a bit more on my next batch, but probably not too much. The point is to have a simple, hearty breakfast cereal for less than it would cost in stores. So, getting too fancy would be beside the point.

Farm Fresh Delivery

2009-11-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

We started using an organic produce delivery service last month, and so far I really like it. The company is called Farm Fresh to You, and I originally learned about them at the Los Angeles County Fair.

I've been interested in joining a CSA or produce delivery service for a while, but I hesitated because many of them require you to sign up for a whole season. What's nice about Farm Fresh to You is that you can join or cancel whenever you want. You can also easily change your delivery frequency, box size and produce type on their website. And you can let them know if there are certain fruits or vegetables you're not interested in getting, so you don't get a delivery of something you won't eat. The user-friendliness is really great, and the produce is fresh and flavorful.

The photo above shows our second delivery. That's the "regular mixed" box, which we're currently getting every-other week. It had a good mix of seasonal fruit, including oranges, apples and grapes, and Fall vegetables and greens. I like how this kind of service helps me plan meals around seasonal produce. It gives me a starting point, and then I search for recipes that use what I've got and sound tasty. I've never cooked with pumpkin before, and I'm not sure I would have if one hadn't shown up in our box.

Another thing I like about Farm Fresh to You is that they tell you exactly where each item in your box is grown. Most of the produce comes from California, with a couple of items from further up the West Coast (apples, pears). The company's first farm was in the Capay Valley, near San Francisco, but they now have farms closer it Los Angeles in Riverside County and near San Diego. That means the produce is all relatively local--perhaps not as close as farmers market veggies, but much closer than most supermarket produce.

The combination of convenience and variety is really working for us so far. I'm looking forward to receiving our next box this Wednesday.

House Plant Sitter

2009-10-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

After spending most of the year at home, we finally took a vacation earlier this month. Dakota, Nigel and I loaded up the car and drove up to Portland to see family and friends. We were gone for over a week.

Since Nigel came along, we only needed someone to come over every other day to check on the chickens and grab the mail. A chicken-sitter was surprisingly easy to find. I guess the fresh eggs are totally worth it.

To keep my indoor plants alive without creating additional work for the chicken-sitter, I decided to try something I saw on the Craft Magazine blog a while ago. It's a simple house plant wicking system involving a bowl of water and some strips of cotton. (Full instructions at the link.) The whole thing took about 10 minutes to set up.

Here are my plants the day we left on our trip.

And here they are 9 days later, when we arrived home.

The houseplants look just as green and healthy, if not more so, than they did when we left. The strips of cotton--in this case cut from an old undershirt--wicked the water out of the bowl and kept the plants' soil evenly moist.

The large bowl seems to have just lasted the 9 days in a relatively cool house. I am guessing that in the summer the water might go a little more quickly. Still, I recommend this method for the next time you go on vacation. It's much nicer than coming home to dead or dried-out plants.

Sewing Stash Score

2009-10-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I was visiting my family in Texas a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sort through trunks and bins filled with fabric and sewing notions that belonged to my grandmother. She died in 2000, but her stash was so massive--and awesome--that we're still finding new treasures 9 years later.

My grandmother was a wonderful seamstress and needleworker. I have a wall hanging of embroidered sandpipers she made sitting over the fireplace in our living room and a personalized quilt with squares hand-embroidered by my grandmother and her mother tucked safely in my linen closet. Not only was she skilled, but my grandmother had good taste, in a 1960s & 70s way. Jonthan Adler would salivate over her needlepoint pillows. I just wish I had learned more from her when I had the chance. Instead, I am frequently inspired by her craftmanship. I still have baby bags she made for me 32 years ago, with not a single loose stitch!

Always the bargain-hunter, my grandmother collected a massive stash of fabric, embroidered linens, thread and sewing notions over her lifetime. My mother, my sister and I have been giving it away, selling it and using it ourselves for the last 9 years, and we've still got so much left. This time, I brought home rolls and rolls of decorative ribbons, elastic and seam binding. Plus, my sister helped me find some pre-embroidered panels, some made by my grandmother and some she purchased at antique and vintage stores, ready to be made into pillows or bags. My sister also threw in some vintage fabric she found at various thrift stores.

I arrived back in LA with a bag stuffed full of cool fabrics and inspiring supplies. Now I just have to figure out how to use it all.

Fall Planting

2009-10-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, after spending the previous day canning, I decided to keep with the homesteading theme of the weekend and plant some seeds for my winter garden.

For the first time, I staked out sections in the larger raised bed and planted my crops in little chunks. I guess this is sort of square foot gardening, although I have never read that book. I mainly did it to stay better organized and to see how different crops like different spots in the garden. I also hope it will help manage bugs, but I'll let you know how that goes.

In this section, I planted fennel, lettuce, radishes, turnips, beets, chard, bok choy and fava beans. I have seeds for spinach, artichokes and collards as well, but I wanted to plant in stages. Plus, spinach, chard and collards work well in pots, so I may end up growing most of my greens in my container garden.

After planting, I mulched with a light dusting of straw and then covered the whole section with garden netting. Netting is essential, as I have lost countless seedlings to curious squirrels and skunks. Last Fall, skunks tilled my upper bed so many times that only two beets made it to maturity. So far, the netting seems to be holding them off.

I'll plant another section in a week or two. If all goes well, I'll be able to continuously harvest throughout the winter. That's a big "if," but I choose to be optimistic.

First Time Pickling: Peaches, Peppers & Beets

2009-10-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I finally got a chance to do something I've wanted to try for ages: home canning. Canning seems like the perfect marriage of all my favorite hobbies: gardening, cooking and making gifts for people. Dakota got me a bunch of canning supplies for my 31st birthday, and, a year later, I finally got a chance to try them out.

The first step was shopping for supplies, which was more difficult that I expected. I picked up some cases of Ball canning jars at Orchard Supply Hardware. They had several sizes in stock, although not the pint jars called for in most of my recipies. I just decided to make do with the three sizes available. OSH also sells cheese cloth, which you'll need to make a spice bag. The spices I needed were more difficult to track down. I went to three different stores, including Whole Foods, looking for pre-mixed pickling spice--or the all the spices that go into pickling spice mix--and finally found it at a Jon's market in Glendale. (LA Cooking Tip: If you're looking for an unusual ingredient, try a grocery store that in or near an Armenian neighborhood. This Jon's had three different spice sections: typical American, Middle Eastern and Latino. And the Super King in Glassell Park has all kinds of interesting fruit syrups to use as marinades.) For the fruits and veggies, I woke up early and hit the Pasadena Farmer's Market. That place is great, although they didn't have any "dill heads," so I had to go with baby dill.

Once all the supplies were assembled, my friend Merete and I began the pickling process. This is when I learned that prep work is the most time consuming and labor intensive part of canning. We chose three things to pickle: beets, peaches and peppers. All the recipies--and canning guidelines--came from my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. The beets needed to be pre-cooked and skins removed, the peppers needed to be chopped, and the peaches needed to be peeled, sliced and soaked in a solution of water and lemon juice to preserve their color.

Luckily, I had a friend to help me. Canning is definitely more fun--and less exhausting--with two people. I don't think I would have been able to pickle beets, peppers and peaches in the same day without Merete's help.

By the way, I recommend keeping that lemon water you soak your fruit in. It lives a second life as a refreshing and delicious beverage. This was Merete's idea. Not only is she an excellent kitchen companion, but she comes up with brilliant new beverage concepts like peach water.

Once the prep work was complete, we started canning. First up were the pickled beats, and we learned a valuable lesson after we ran out of pickling juice half-way through filling the jars. We followed the recipie to the letter, so at first we were confused. Then we realized that we hadn't cut our beets small enough. If we'd sliced them smaller, they would have taken up more space in the jar and needed less pickling juice. Oh well, we still got four jars out of it. And for our very first canning project, I think that was a fairly minor error.

Next came the Dilly Peach Pickles. I cannot wait to try these when they're ready. Some people may turn up their noses at pickled fruit, but I think it sounds amazing. Plus, the peaches and dill look so pretty in their big jars. Merete and I sliced the peaches into sixths to avoid the pickling juice issue we had with the beets.

I'm skipping over the details of actual canning, because I think that's best explained by an expert, or the authors of Ball Home Preserving. I found the directions in that book very clear and helpful, and the recipies were interesting without being overly complicated.

I can comment on the tools I think are most necessary, though. They include: a jar grabber, a lid lifter (a plastic stick with a magnet on the end so you don't touch the sterilized lid), a funnel, a good ladel, a slotted metal spoon, a metal rack to set your jars on while they boil and a giant canning pot. These all appear to be essential to the canning process, in my admittedly limited experience.

After following all the canning and boiling water processing directions, we ended up with seven jars of pickled peppers, three jars of pickled peaches and four jars of pickled beats. It took us all day to can everything, but this was our first time. Happily, after the required 24-hour cooling off period, I checked the the lids and each and every one seems to have sealed properly. I really like the way they look in my new pantry.

Overall, I found home canning to be interesting, fun and satisfying. It's kind of like doing a science project that you can eat. Having a friend with me definitely made it more enjoyable. Hopefully I can have more friends over for canning parties in the future. For my birthday this year, I received The Joy of Pickling!

Weird White Bug Things

2009-10-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

These odd white insect pods are attached to the vine that grows on my chicken run. I noticed them a couple of weeks ago, but haven't had any luck identifying them with Internet searches. Yesterday, I decided to take a picture with the hope that someone reading this blog might know what they are.

The long, bumpy blobs are quite small, maybe 5mm, and they're brittle to touch. Most of them are clustered around one stem, but there is one sitting alone on a leaf. The pods do not seem to have harmed the plant in any way--at least not yet. The plant they are attached to is a vanilla trumpet vine.

So, any insect experts out there who can identify these weird little white things? I am so curious to know what insect emerges from this particular incubation chamber, if that is indeed what these are.

Potato Failure, Worm Surprise

2009-10-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

Back in June, I tried growing potatoes in specially-made grow bags. Unfortunately, after a promising start, the stalks started flopping over. Eventually, all my potato plants died. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong.

I suspect I may have over-watered. It was very difficult to tell how wet the soil was deep inside the bags. On closer examination, I think they hold water really well and don't need to be watered that often. I also think I should have planted the seed potatoes sooner. Next time, I will buy seed potatoes from a Southern California source. I have a feeling they'll be available earlier around here than they are from Seed Savers in Iowa. (Does anyone know where I can buy seed potatoes in Los Angeles, preferably somewhere east of Vermont?)

So, this year was a complete potato-growing failure. On the bright side, when I dug into two of the bags I found this:

The bag was chock full of healthy, wiggly worms--and their highly-prized poop! While failing to grow a single potato, I managed to create a surprise worm farm. There were a few in the compost I added to the potato bags in June, and in the warm, wet, composty environment of the bag, those worms multiplied.

I took this rich mix of soil, worms and their poop and spread it on one of my garden beds. Hopefully the worms will be happy there, and continue to poop and procreate for years to come.

LA County Fair: Chickens, Churros and Cool Stuff

2009-09-29T17:00:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure of checking out the Los Angeles County Fair with some friends. (The nice people at the fair actually offered me some complimentary tickets because I am such an big-time blogger. Since I was planning on going already, I happily accepted.) I had never been to the Los Angeles County Fair before, but I had some pretty high expectations--particularly regarding their chicken attractions. It did not disappoint.

When we arrived at the fair, we went straight to the farm exhibits (somewhat weirdly sponsored by McDonald's) and almost immediately encountered some chickens. They had several open pens with a variety of chicken breeds on display. Pictured below is a nice-sized enclosure of young chickens, including some Barred Rocks resting on a log. I love those stripes. I definitely plan to get a Barred Rock when it's time for new chicks. They were in with a few fluffy silkies and some fancy Polish.

In the barn across the way, I noticed this handsome hen peeking through the bars. I really like the mottled black and gold of her feathers. Silkies sure are cute. I hear they're not the greatest layers, though, and tend to go broody. So I don't think I want one for my small flock.

Near the silkie were these big girls. Does anyone know what breed they might be? The chicken breeds weren't posted on their pens, unfortunately. My guess is Buff Orphington. I don't think I've ever seen an Orphington in real life, and I had no idea they were such big girls. They're definitely on the list of breeds I'd like to own, but I feel like we might have to make the coop door bigger if we ever got one.

Despite the somewhat disappointing lack of breed signage, there were some informative plaques about chickens scattered around. This one was very pro-backyard chicken, which I appreciated.

After all the chicken admiring was complete, we turned our attention to the wide variety of goats and sheep at the fair. This caused Dakota and I to briefly indulge our goat-ownership fantasy. How cool would it be to drink milk fresh from our own backyard? (Answer: very cool.) But, even excluding the legal and neighbor obstacles, I don't think we can squeeze a goat on our property. I doubt we have enough space for the goat, much less a nice-sized enclosure and room for all its feed. That said... Look at the cute angora goats! They're so fluffy, and I could knit with their wool.

And while I'm going on about the cuteness of barnyard animals, check out this little pig. I could not get enough of him as he marched around his pen and indulged in several vigorous scratching sessions. I have a friend at work who owned a pig, and I think he found it to be a wonderful pet. Hmmm...

Another great thing about pigs: they race! Our group was very excited about the pig races, and after rushing across the fairgrounds for the 1:30 show, we got our chance to see some. There's kind of a cuteness theme happening in this post, and I apologize for going on, but, seriously, pig races are so cute. If you go to the fair, definitely check them out. I had no idea pigs could run so fast. I think the milk and cookies they got at the finish line were highly motivating.

Just so you don't think we spent all our time in the farm animal section of the fair (although I certainly could have), we did roam the grounds and take in the sites. Predictably, there are lots of carnival rides, silly photo booths and places to buy knick-knacks. Some of the better attractions included a sky ride over the fair, several giant, inflatable slides and an event called "Splash Dogs," where you could watch extremely excited dogs try to jump as far as they could into an above-ground swimming pool. Highly recommend for any dog lovers.

And, of course, there was weird fair food. This years hot item appears to be chocolate-covered bacon. I was more intrigued by the sign below. What, exactly, is "Meat Lover's Ice Cream"? There was no additional information posted, and no one was willing to order some.

Towards the end of our visit, we made it over to the Going Green exhibition--basically a mini-trade show of green vendors. We said hello to the Solatube guy, who informed us that we could write off a percentage of the cost of a Solatube on our taxes. We're considering getting the kind with a light and a fan for our bathroom. There was also a display for a portable graywater system called Enviro Water Boy, which seems like a convenient way to reuse your bath water to water your plants. It would definitely be faster than scooping it up with an empty milk jug, which is what my mom does.

Below is a picture of another Going Green display, which I am calling The Fanciest Rainwater Collection System Ever. I didn't catch the name of this particular product, but essentially it collects rainwater, filters it, stores it in an underground cistern and then pumps it into a very attractive waterfall. There's also a little spigot so you can use the collected rainwater to water your plants. I didn't get a brochure for this since it's obviously hugely out of our price range. But, it looked really cool.

One company at the Going Green exhibition did catch my eye: an organic fruit and vegetable delivery service called Farm Fresh to You. They had a promotion for $10 off a sample box, so Dakota and I are going to try it. I'll post more about the produce and the company once we have a chance to eat the fruit and do a bit of research.

All-in-all, I had a fun day at the Los Angeles County Fair. There was a good balance of animal and plant exhibits alongside bizarro fair culture. The fair runs though next weekend if you want to check it out.

Summer Garden Summation

2009-09-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

As usual, I had mixed success with my summer garden this year. I'm not sure why I tend to have more trouble with my summer crops, maybe it's my sun exposure, soil composition or poor watering technique. Whatever my problem is, it makes for a summer garden that provides equal amounts of excitement and disappointment.

In an attempt to ensure tomato success this season, I planted only small fruiting varieties. Happily, all three types I chose produced attractive, tasty fruit. The most prolific and hardy were the Mexico Midget and Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry heirloom varieties, which I purchased from Seed Savers. I particularly recommend the Hartman's Gooseberry. They're a lovely, gold color and have a tart, fresh taste that even I, a professed tomato-hater, kind of enjoy.

The Austin Red Pear tomatoes were the most temperamental variety. They were annoyingly prone to blossom end rot, despite diligent mulching and plenty of crushed eggshells in the soil. This surprised me, because I've grown other pear tomatoes in the past with great success. The plant that did best was the one planted in the front yard. The Austin Pears in containers lost about half their fruit to the evil rot.

Notice that one yellow pear on the far left? For some reason, one of my red pear tomato plants ended up making yellow pears. I don't know if it was a plant mutation or if some of the wrong seed made it into my packet, but I don't mind.

Peppers were another successful summer crop. As usual, they began producing fruit much later than the tomatoes, but now that they're fruiting, things are going fairly well. The earliest harvest came from the Wenk's Yellow Hot. It's a thick-skinned, fat pepper that starts light yellow-green and then turns red. Next came my Maule's Red Hots, which look and taste similar to cayenne peppers. Both those varieties have been producing fairly steadily since late July.

Unfortunately, despite the presence several leafy, healthy plants in my garden, I am still waiting on to try the Fish Peppers. I hope the plants bloom soon, because the fruit looks so pretty in the seed catalog pictures. I'm having similar issues with my Listada de Gandia eggplants. There are least five good-looking plants in containers and the ground, but not a single one has made an eggplant. I think I'm running out of time with those, because eggplants need hot weather to flower.

Earlier in the summer, I had some modest success with my green beans. I have a few plants left, but I think they're probably done producing for the year. I'll cut them off at the soil surface soon and leave their nice nitrogen-fixing roots in the ground to decompose.

My corn, sadly, has been a complete failure. This is my second year trying corn, and I think it may be my last. Corn takes up a lot of space and needs significant amounts of water. So, I think I give up on corn farming. It hardly seems worth it considering how cheap and plentiful corn is in summer farmers markets.

I have already documented my frustrating relationship with squash. So far, I've harvested only two yellow zucchini squash despite carefully tending to 10 plants. Sigh. I don't think I'm ready to give up on all squash just yet, but I will probably plant fewer hills next year to make room for some more reliable vegetables. And I am going to quit winter squash for a while. All sectors of my Los Angeles garden seem unable to produce a single winter variety. (I know it's possible, since Ilsa at Rambling LA grows gorgeous pumpkins in her yard.)

To end my summer garden assessment on a brighter note, my first foray into strawberry growing has been fun and tasty. My two plants continue to spread in their pots and produce new fruit. I hope to keep them alive through the winter so I can have more delicious, homegrown strawberries from these plants next year.

Very soon, it'll be time to begin my winter garden. I've started a few seeds in pots, and will start working the soil this weekend to get it ready for planting. Hopefully, the weather will cool down by mid-October so my seedlings don't get scorched.

Cabbage Revival

2009-09-17T18:57:00.000-07:00

So this is interesting. A couple of months ago, I gave up on some cabbage in my middle, shaded vegetable bed. Rather than pulling the plants out by the roots, I decided to cut them off near the surface. This was inspired by a post about permaculture on a blog I enjoy, although, unfortunately, I don't remember which blog it was.

The gist was that, if you leave the roots in the ground, you will preserve the beneficial organisms living in the soil around those roots. So, I decided to try it. I chopped off most of the cabbage stem, and then planted some pepper seedlings nearby.

I was expecting the cabbage stem and roots to rot away, adding their nutrients back into the soil. Instead, several baby cabbages decided to grow off the abandoned stalk. What's interesting is that they appear to be individual purple cabbage plants, rather than new leaves growing on the existing stalk. The cabbages look really healthy and cute right now, so I'm thinking about letting them grow. I figure that, once they get bigger, I'll just pick the strongest-looking cabbage and cut off the others.

The original cabbage grew from seed, and I didn't even realize that cabbage could reproduce like that. Has anyone grown cabbage (or broccoli or other brassicas) this way before?

Hot Wings Minus the Wings

2009-09-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

Apparently, there are a lot of exciting sporting events happening these days. I am not much of a sports fan, and I don't think I've ever deliberately turned on ESPN. But, from what I hear, there are quite a few football, baseball and even basketball games on television on any given weekend in the Fall. Don't ask me what teams are playing, because I simply do not care. One thing I do care about, though, is snacks. I am a huge snacks fan.

The few times I've decided to sit down and watch a professional football game with my friends, it's primarily been because I was promised hot wings. I love the combination of crispy, chewy fried protein and spicy vinegar sauce. But, a couple of years ago, I gave up eating chicken. How could I hang out with my favorite hens, Peggy and Tina, and then go inside and chow down on the fried wings of their unlucky factory chicken relatives?

Several weeks ago, I came up with a nice solution to this little conundrum, and I thought I should share it with other devoted snack (and sports) fans. It provides the crispy/chewy consistency of hot wings, plus the delicious spiciness, without the actual wings. I don't really have a name for this dish, so let's go with, um, Crispy Spicy Tofu Bricks. If anyone can think of a better name, let me know.

CRISPY SPICY TOFU BRICKS

For bricks:
1 pkg firm or extra-firm tofu
1 bottle Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or more, to taste)
2 cups canola oil
4 stalks celery
salt
pepper

For dip*:
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup finely chopped scallions
2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese (2 ounces)
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 teaspoon milk

Cut tofu block in half lengthwise and press out the water by squishing it between two cutting boards. Put paper towels on the top and bottom to soak up the water. After the tofu is pressed, cut it into rectangular strips about the size of your thumb. Place it in a container and add about 1 cup of hot sauce, coating the tofu. Put in the fridge to marinate at least an hour.

Make the dip.
Cut the celery into manageable pieces.

Combine the flour, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper on a plate. Heat the oil in a deep saute pan over medium heat. When the oil is hot, start dredging the tofu in the flour mixture, covering all sides. (It should be wet enough that you don't need to dip it in egg or milk.) Place the flour-covered tofu in the hot oil, laying it on one of the long sides, and fry it until it turns golden brown. Flip tofu onto the next side, and fry until that side is golden brown. Repeat until all four long sides are golden brown. Remove from the pan and drain on a paper towel.

Put the tofu on a plate and dress with more hot sauce to taste. Serve with dip and celery.

Pretend to watch sporting event while consuming as many Crispy Spicy Tofu Bricks as possible.

*Taken from this recipe on epicurious.com

Walnut Cabinets & Details

2009-09-10T08:35:00.000-07:00

There have been some nice additions to the kitchen lately, including two walnut and glass cabinets. Dakota brought them home a couple of weeks ago, and they're now installed on either side of the sink. I think they look beautiful. One of the cabinets will hold our Heath plates and bowls, and the other will hold prettier glassware, including a cool vintage set my sister found for me at a thrift store.

I like how these cabinets are both decorative and functional. They sit near the sink and dishwasher, so it will be easy to put clean dishes away. And the glass fronts allow guests to find a glass or plate without having to open every cabinet door.

Walnut is used as an accent throughout the kitchen. There's a walnut shelf above the stove, and a few little walnut drawer faces around the kitchen. The one below is on the pantry drawer which separates the upper and lower shelved areas. It holds tea. I think the rich, dark color of the walnut looks great with our green cabinets. Like most things in the kitchen, the accents were Dakota's idea. He's a pretty great designer in my unbiased opinion.

On another note, I am so happy to finally have a pantry. Considering that we used to keep all our pasta and canned goods on a open, messy shelf below a tabletop, it's a relief to have everything organized and safe from bugs.

More kitchen improvements will happen soon. I think we'll be getting paint this weekend, since we've decided not to use Milk Paint on the walls. (More on that in another post.)

Late Strawberry Harvest

2009-09-01T11:08:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I purchased a few strawberry plants at the Silverlake Farmer's Market in April. For some reason, these particular strawberries were very slow to set fruit. But, after several months of patient tending, I finally harvested my first ripe strawberries last week--well past the traditional strawberry season.

I actually had a couple of strawberries almost ready to eat several weeks ago, but, to my horror, birds got to them before I could. I found two mangled, red berries lying on the ground next to the strawberry container with some jagged, beak-shaped gashes in them. It was quite a disappointment, although one I am used to considering the lively population of birds and squirrels in our yard. I have now taken precautions and placed some garden netting over my plants. That seems to be doing the trick.

I expect to get many more strawberries before the summer is over. My two plants are both flowering and fruiting quite vigorously. I water them every day in this hot, dry weather and feed them with a bit of liquid fish fertilizer every couple of weeks. That routine is keeping them healthy and happy.

After they're done fruiting, I plan to mulch my strawberry plants heavily and see if they can successfully ride out the winter. They are perennials, so I hope to eat fruit from these plants for several years to come.

Chick Cam

2009-08-31T17:51:00.001-07:00

Chick Cam - Chick Running Through Barnyard
Originally uploaded by Museum of Animal Perspectives (MAP)

As if I needed another excuse to daydream about baby chicks, a friend of mine just sent me the link to this really cute and funny video. The video is of a fuzzy, yellow chick running through a barnyard--from the chick's perspective! I don't know how this was done, but it's so fun to watch. Be sure to turn up your sound so you can hear all the peeping.

Enjoy, my chicken-loving friends.

UPDATE: The video seems to have been taken down. It's too bad, because the chick cam was really great. For more cool nature videos can go directly to the Museum of Animal Perspectives site.

Homemade Baby Gifts

2009-08-30T16:35:00.001-07:00

This year, I officially transitioned out of the phase of life that involves constantly going to weddings and into the phase that means going to a lot of baby showers. In 2009 alone, I think I've gone to five baby showers, and there are many more on the horizon. Not that I mind. I like babies, and I think making one is definitely worth celebrating. But, I am kind of sick of buying people stuff off of registries. Luckily, I am an avid crafter.

Dakota bought me a sewing machine several years ago, and I finally broke it out of the box this year. I took a beginner class at machine project and then started testing my skills at making soft toys. After a few bunnies I made from patterns found online, I decided to design my own plush. I ended up making these bears.

I really like how they came out. The body is a simple U-shaped piece, and the ears and arms are separate pieces that I attached as I sewed the body together. I made the pattern on regular white drawing paper, and just free-cut the face, which is made of felt.

I glued the eyes and nose onto the face piece with a small dot of fabric glue and then sewed around the edges with embroidery thread. Overall, these bears are fairly simple to make. They just take time. I gave one to my friend Nanci at her shower last weekend, and she loved it, which made me really happy. I can't wait to give away some more.

As our friends' babies get older, Dakota and I have devised another fun handmade gift to give: wooden baby blocks. We made the first set for one cute little girl last year. Dakota took some scrap hardwood from his shop and cut it into small wooden blocks, which he sanded smooth. Then, I used my wood burning pen to spell her name on one side.

And on the other side, I drew and burned in animals that match the letters of her name.

I am happy with how that gift turned out as well, although I'd like to improve my wood-burning skills a little. Also, I like that Dakota and I made these blocks together, so they're truly a gift from the both of us. I plan to make more of these when all the babies we know turn one.

With all my handmade gifts, I hope to create something that the child will really like, and maybe even keep for a while. And I really enjoy giving babies (and their parents) something that's especially for them, that can't be found in any store. Giving gifts is great, but giving a gift you made is even better.

Squash Victory!

2009-08-21T17:45:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! I have finally (finally) managed to harvest a summer squash from my garden. It's hard to believe that it's late August and I am just getting my first mature yellow zucchini. Most gardeners are in the "giving it away to everyone they know" phase of squash production by now.

I harvested my precious yellow zucchini this morning, and I plan to have it for dinner tonight or tomorrow night. I'm not sure how I'll cook it. I want to keep the preparation simple, so I can savor the vegetable's natural flavor. This may be my only homegrown squash of the year, after all.