bee creative

The front window of my local salvage store....

I want the bath tub.

The path I'm walking right now

Will it ever stop raining....

Little short on time this week.  Just thought I'd share Lola's wish.

Of course, my thought is will we be happy with what we get when it does stop raining?

Walking home I often stop here...

How many food crops can you find?

It's a jungle out there!  In about  a week the bronze fennel will be towering over everything else and all the sage will be in full bloom.  The roses (mostly rugosas and heirloom varieties) are just starting to blossom.  The peas are blooming.  Might have some to eat in a couple weeks.  Not much growth on the tomatoes, but they look good.  A few cabbages have been chewed on by the slugs, but mostly they are surviving.  I'm guessing in about a month I'll have enough raspberries to eat all I want, preserve all I want and still share.  Raspberries have pretty much entered weed status in the garden.  It's, well, a jungle. 

And then there is the container collection.  The potatoes in the garbage can got ahead of me.  The can is about 3/4 full of compost.  These are by far my healthiest looking potatoes.  It will be very interesting to see how many potatoes it produces. 

My cut-and-come-again lettuce is ready to cut in two places.  Salads will be featured prominently on the menu this week.  The wash tub also has some carrots and strawberries.  After the lettuce is cut a second time,  something different will be planted in this space that will give the carrots room to mature. 

The other hanging basket has cucumbers in it (these are organic starts that I bought).  My goal here is to remember to water them frequently and to keep pests out of the cucumbers.  Last year something (a mouse?) hollowed out a couple of the cucumbers completely.  The cucumbers will get plenty of sun this way too. 

One thing I want to keep track of with the cucumbers is cost effectiveness.  I'm figuring $3.50 for the start of this project (1.50 for the starts and 2.00 for the organic potting soil).  The basket is being reused from last year so I'm not going to figure that in.  I'm going to water the cucumber with water saved from waiting for the water to heat up for dishes or collected rain water, so water won't be included in expenses either.  What I want to do is compare how much my basket produces against how much it would cost to buy the equivalent amount from the farmer's market or the grocery store. 

As for the jungle, there are six crops that are visible (apples, rhubarb, potatoes, fennel, garlic, plums) plus 6 more that aren't (strawberries, beans, tomatoes, a tomatillio, raspberries and roses), and two spaces cleared in the back for where a patch of corn and a couple sunflowers are going to go and a space for the hull-less pumpkins.   

Inspire Me Thursday - Orange and Purple

I wanted to do more with this before I posted my response for Inspire Me Thursday this week, but I'm just not getting there.  So for now....

From the pantry: dried apples.

One of the most important things I think I've learned about eating local over the last year, is the importance of having food stored for the time of the year when there are less local foods to choose from. 

As the season of having so many more food choices approaches, I'm thinking a lot about what I want to preserve, how much to save and how to preserve it.  It's also shaped what food crops are being grown in the garden. 

The apple muffins are a great example of something done right.  For these muffins I used apples from my tree that I had dried last summer.   To use them for baking I soaked the apples in boiling water, diced them and then added them (and some local walnuts) to my favorite muffin recipe.  Very yummy.  The spread is locally made goat cheese.  I was told by the cheese maker that it freezes very well!   

The apples have also been very tasty in oatmeal.  I've been dicing them and then adding the apples at the beginning of the cooking time for the oats.

Drying more apples is definitely on the "To-do" list.    

As I walk to work....

Sweet Potatoes in the garden

Sweet potatoes were my plant of choice for The Growing Challenge hosted by Elements in Time.   And here they are!

I'm growing Georgia Jets that were ordered from Irish Eyes.  Not my first choice, but what was available.  Probably for the best as they are the variety with the shortest days to maturity.  They arrived as a bundle of slips and with a sheet of instructions.  The weather was still really cold at night when they came, so I decided  to soak them in a little water overnight and then planted them in 4 inch containers so that they could be easily brought in and out (like the tomatoes).    When the night time temperatures started hitting a low of at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit ( please let it stay there, please), they were planted up to 5 gallon black plastic containers.  They are going to live on the back porch- the hottest, sunniest spot in the garden.  Now I have to hope for about 90 days of warm weather.

Inspire Me Thursday - Whimsy

Inspire Me Thursday

I've been sitting out on my porch watching the wind catch the dandelion seeds and blow them into the air today.

I thought about wishes and enjoyed the way the individual seeds glistened as they floated up, up and away.  I tried not to think about future weeds to pull or about how lazy I was being.

Made me think of one of my favorite books, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.  I thought I'd save some of that magic for another day when I might need to be reminded:

“Dandelion Wine.  The words were summer on the tongue.   The wine was summer caught and stoppered.   And now that Douglas knew, he really knew he was alive….”

Ray Bradbury