Chives- you can grow that!

05 Apr 2012 11 Comments

by katsmama in containers, food, gardening, gardening in containers, herbs, lawn Tags: , , ,


One of the first perennial edibles to pop up in spring, good old reliable chives.

Do you have a tiny amount of space, and want some herbs? Or, do you have a lot of space to fill and are looking for something cheap that will spread? One of the most reliable edibles that come up this time of year is chives.
They belong to the onion family, but the greens taste much milder than green onions- not as sharp. To start from seed, dump a whole packet on the soil of a small pot, water regularly. Very fine grass like leaves will start to come up, with a sharp bend in the end, and the seed coat still attached to the shoot. Leave it alone, it will fall off on it’s own. If you are starting the seeds inside, harden them off by leaving them outside for an hour or two per day- if you transplant them straight to the outside they’ll burn and die. Moment of silence…
Okay- if you buy a pot at a nursery, they will most likely be hardened off already, and you can plop them into the ground or into a container. They have such a shallow root system they can go into a container with other things.
Snip off individual shoots and flowers- the flowers are edible, and have a funky texture- funky in a good way. Eat them with potatoes, obviously, or deviled eggs. That reminds me, we need to get eggs and mess up the kitchen…there is still dye on the tablecloth from last year.
If you wind up not eating the flowers, let them go to seed, that way your patch will spread. As I said, chives don’t need very deep soil- in fact, when I build my dream shed, I plan to plant chives on the green roof. We just have to tear down that playhouse, mwah ha ha ha!!!

I have also considered the possibility of a chive lawn- it looks so grassy, and doesn’t take much water…and just think of the fragrance when you mow…yeah, maybe not.

 

Edited to add- I keep forgetting to mention that “You can grow that” is a meme created by C.L. Fornari, genius garden writer. If you came here via her site, welcome.  To find more blogs with growing tips, go to C.L.’s site! http://wholelifegardening.com

A Year’s Worth of Garlic, part deux

29 Mar 2012 7 Comments

by katsmama in environmentalism, gardening Tags: , , , , , ,


Last summer, I harvested some lovely garlic from my garden, and we have been eating it pretty much all winter. We have not had to buy it at all, and we still have several heads- it may not get us all the way to July, but it will be darn close.
We also planted more- I saved out the best cloves to plant, and also bought some hardneck garlic to try. I would link to that post, but can’t figure out how...can someone please teach me how to use link within in WordPress?   ooh, somebody did- thank you!

Hardneck garlic has a bonus- it sends up a flowering stem called a scape, and they can be thrown into soup, or sliced for stir fries. Or smoothies…nah, maybe not smoothies. The scapes will fill a gap with garlic flavor after all the heads of garlic from last year will have sprouted and gotten mushy.
I planted it last fall when the soil was still warm, and lo and behold, it has come up. It has been pretty much the only part of the garden I have watered this spring. It has been super dry, and I probably should be watering my young trees right now…

Checked off to do list: back window

22 Mar 2012 3 Comments

by katsmama in home improvement, home projects Tags: , ,


Once you cut a groove into it, the acrylic becomes pretty easy to snap. The directions say use your thumbs, but it was easier on my hands to bite off chunks with my Vise-grips.

Armed with my new dollar store tape measure, I decided to tackle a project that had been marinating for a long time. A few years ago during a wind storm, the door that leads from the garage to the back yard slammed shut and the glass broke.  I cleaned up the broken glass pretty much immediately- I had little kids crawling around, after all (ooh, the fact that I say they were crawling around makes it seem like this window has been broken for more than a “few” years…) So, cleaned up the glass, scraped out the putty, bought a sheet of acrylic to replace the glass, and a handy dandy little tool for cutting the acrylic and then…waited. Procrastinated. Can’t explain why- once the glass was cleaned up it didn’t seem urgent anymore, and I thought it would take a long time.

Well, it didn’t. Not really.

We had a beautiful sunny afternoon when I didn’t really have anything else to do, so I got out the tape measure and measured. Once.

You can probably see where this is going.

I laid out the acrylic, measured out my lines, and clamped a metal straight-edge down. The special acrylic cutting tool calls for cutting along the line until the groove is 1/16th on an inch deep. The sound drove the neighbor’s dog crazy- this high pitched squeal that had to be repeated many many times. There might be an easier way to cut plastic- I honestly didn’t do much research about it.

Once I got it scored and snapped, I took it over the the window opening, and discovered it was 1/2 inch too big.

It was a nice sunny day, though. DH and the kids were on a bike ride, and I had no where to be, really, other than enjoying the sunshine in my backyard, so, I measured again, marked it clamped it and cut it.  This time it was just right. I popped it into the frame, popped it out, put in some caulk and nailed the trim back on.

Look, now the shiny window reflects the mess in the yard... I'll get right on that.

One project down…

Bloom Day- Welcome Back Topside, Persephone!

16 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by katsmama in containers, favorite things Tags: , ,


I love these flowers! Even if they weren't the first thing blooming, only thing blooming, right now, I would still love them.

Technically, as both my children are fond of pointing out, it isn’t spring until the equinox, but it sure feels like Spring. Like Hades has lost his grip on his lovely wife, and she has moved back in with Mom.

Only two things blooming in my zone 5 yard right now, Iris Reticulata, also known as dwarf iris, and crocus. I looked for squill, which I have mixed in the with lawn, but didn’t find any, so either it didn’t survive, or it will bloom later.

I wonder why the yellow crocus seem to bloom earlier than the purple?

Inside, we have blooms on the lemon tree, or it might be lime…I lost the tags, and I know I have one of each the same age, but can’t remember which is which. I’ll pollinate it with a watercolor brush, and hopefully when it bears fruit, I’ll remember to put a label on it.

Lemon or lime?

The Lost Tape Measure

15 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by katsmama in favorite things, home improvement, home projects, learning Tags: , , , ,


In my quest to become handy, I have made a list of projects, many that have been simmering for a while, and I have thought about first steps.For several, the first step would be: “measure the opening.”
Yeah. About that.
I do have a battery operated, automatically retractable measuring tape. Which I have misplaced. I think it is in the garage?
I have another 25′ one, my favorite, which I have accused the Boy of losing.
The Boy likes to measure stuff- when he was littler, we would read animal encyclopedias together, and it was worlds different from reading with the Girl. With her, we would snuggle with a story, and predict what might happen, and find the rhyming words, and talk about the characters. With the Boy, we would read a little fact box next to a picture of say, a Siberian tiger. Then he would hop off my lap, hand me one end of the measuring tape and walk backward until he got to however many feet. The Siberian tiger sticks in my memory, because it was too big for the living room. This isn’t a technique they taught me in teacher school, the kid just came up with it on his own.

Obviously too big for the living room. Photo from Tiger-pictures.net

That year at Christmas, he asked for a 100′ measuring tape. I asked him what he would measure with it, and he answered, “mostly blue whales.”
Oh. I see.
We didn’t get him one, and I wish we had, because then maybe mine wouldn’t be in a snowbank, or in the bottom of a toybox, or who knows where. We looked in all the usual places.
So, the last time I was at the dollar store, I went ahead and bought a new measuring tape, so that I can measure stuff so that I can work on the projects on my list.
And then wouldn’t you know it, when I opened up the junk drawer in the kitchen, there was my favorite measuring tape. Put away. It’s not really where it goes, but it was put away…

The Bathroom Remodel?

09 Mar 2012 8 Comments

by katsmama in home improvement, home projects Tags: , , ,


I vividly  remember reading this book when I was a kid about a man who buys new shoe strings, then sees how shabby his shoes look in comparison. So, he gets new shoes. Then his suit looks terrible. So he buys new clothes, and gets into his shabby car to drive home, and winds up buying a new car, and a new house. Maybe a new wife- I don’t remember the ending. Anyway, he changes his whole life because of one tiny thing.

That is what I am afraid of with our basement bathroom.

It is terrible.

I took the curtains down to wash, and realized the window frames are corroding there in the wall. In scrubbing the mold off the walls, I have scrubbed the paint off, but repainting means making a decision about the pink tiles that are popping off the walls, and the floor tile that is peeling up. And the shower stall. And the basin- actually, the basin isn’t so bad.

Last week, the drain got clogged, and water started leaking out of We started showering upstairs, where the pressure is terrible.

 

 

The curtains were the “new shoe strings” in this little parable, but beyond new shoe strings, the bathroom really does need work… a lot of work.

People with bathroom remodel experience- what’s next? How much can I do myself? What resources should I go to? Does anyone else remember that book, or what it is called?

You can grow this- microgreens

04 Mar 2012 12 Comments

by katsmama in containers, food, gardening, gardening in containers Tags: , , , ,


mmmm...microgreens

Yuppie chow. Rabbit Food. Microgreens. All the same thing- bags of tiny salad mix work out to 20 bucks a pound, but really, you can grow this, right now, on your kitchen counter.
I got a packet of seeds at the store- Botanical Interests is a local company. Their “mild mix” has beet, red cabbage, kohlrabi, pak choi and swiss chard in it. The sprouts are supposed to emerge in 5-10 days, and the leaves are ready to pick in around 25 days, once they get 1-2 inches tall.
You can cut them, toss into a salad or onto a sandwich, and the plants keep growing there in the pot. A few days later, there is enough for another salad- theoretically.
I put them into a 6″pot on the kitchen counter- they don’t need much light until they sprout, and once they sprout, I’ll move them to where they’ll get more light. There is enough in the package for a whole flat, but I don’t want to give up that much space for it. It suits me better to get a pot going now, then start another in a few weeks, that way as the first pot is petering out, the new one is coming into production.  As the weather gets warmer, I can grow this same mix outside as well. So can you- you can grow this.

I scattered the seeds thinly on moist soil, and I gently spray it twice a day with the kitchen sink sprayer.

Becoming Handy

02 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by katsmama in home improvement, learning Tags: , , ,


I’ve been crafty, now I want to become handy- I have a list, and some goals… I’m working on it.

There are a lot of little things on the list, like the drain plug lifter handle on both basins in the main bathroom. Then there are big things, like the gutters that still drip and the squirrels in the attic. Maybe we should outsource the squirrels. They frighten me.

My first step when learning new things is always getting books about it. I am not a person who can jump in and try something without endless research first.

I hit the library for some home improvement books, and found a strange mixture-a  memoir about moving a cottage to be an addition to a house on Cape Cod, a collection of tips and tricks culled from the pages of Fine Homebuilding magazine, and a book about home repair for cheaters. They are now overdue at the library, and I still haven’t fixed anything. Sigh. Being handy is harder than I thought.

This is the toilet that still runs. Sigh...

Roasting Tomatoes

23 Feb 2012 2 Comments

by katsmama in food Tags: , ,


Tomatoes with tags. Sigh.

There are no more homegrown tomatoes in my freezer. A moment of silence please. Thank you.

I have been making this weird gruel to pack in my lunches- brown rice and lentils cooked in homemade chicken stock, with cherry tomatoes added after cooking. So yummy, and pretty good for me, but no one at home will try it. Maybe if I stop calling it “this weird gruel?” Who knows.

Last week when I saw that I had used up the last of my tomatoes, I bought some canned stewed tomatoes and added it to the weird gruel. Ack. Bleah. Disappointing. I still ate it, but I didn’t love it.

This just isn’t a good time of year for tomatoes, as I probably don’t need to tell you. I probably could  and should be eating some kind of winter vegetable instead, like squash or rutabaga or something. Sigh. Next summer, I’ll make sure I don’t run out of tomatoes in February…

I found some “hothouse tomatoes” from Mexico for 88 cents a pound, and figured I would roast them. Roasting vegetables concentrates the flavor by evaporating the water and caramelizing the sugar. These were monsters- a little under a pound each, and pale. I sliced them into wedges, put them on a sheet pan and drizzled them with olive oil and basalmic vinegar, then a sprinkle of pepper and salt.

Photo credit: The Girl

I roasted them at 225 for about 2 hours. Then I forgot to take a picture.

This is another one of those non-recipe recipes- it is more about technique than ingredients. You can roast pretty much anything this way- peppers, squash, probably even rutabagas.

Yes, my legs are warm. Why do you ask?

18 Feb 2012 Leave a comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, knitting Tags: , , , , ,


The item of clothing that I get the most compliments on (and this is everything I own, not just stuff I’ve knit) is a Clapotis scarf made with Noro Silk Garden yarn. It is safe to say, that if you have seen me between the months of October and April in the last 7 years, you have seen this scarf. I predict it will be the item my children fight over when I die (figure out how to insert link here)
I love it, and while I think the pattern is pretty, I know the yarn is what makes it. Silk garden is wool and silk and mohair, so it has warmth, and a sheen, and a halo. It is produced by a Japanese genius who blends colors into one another.
During Christmas break, I had an idea for a striped baby sweater, using Noro interspersed with black. Actually, I can’t say I had the idea, because I am pretty sure it came from Pinterest, which I can’t really say, because no ideas come from Pinterest. They all have different sources and just go to Pinterest to rub against each other. It’s like a high school dance.
So, I ordered some Silk Garden Sock, which adds nylon to the original formula, for durability, and is thinner, so it is a bit cheaper. When it came, I couldn’t see it being another sweater- it wanted to be leg warmers.
When I was in middle school, leg warmers became a mainstream fashion trend, rather than just a…hmmm…who does wear leg warmers, usually?…Anyway, my luckiest friends convinced their moms to buy them leg warmers in purple, and metallic, and rainbow. Mine were cream colored and cable knit, which ironically, is a style that I like now…My mom understood something, then.
However, when I saw my 100 gram skein of Noro, I knew that it’s destiny was to become leg warmers for me. Modern Leg Warmers! So I can wear them to yoga, and camping. Yes, camping!

Back when leg warmers were stylish, my brothers used to ask me, "are your legs warm? are your legs warm?"

This was an extremely generous ball of yarn, also- when I weighed it when I was mostly done with leg warmer #1, there were still 67 grams left, and even after the second one was finished, there was enough for a small cowl. I used black sock yarn, I think from Knitpicks,  left from another project to make ribbing at the top and bottom as a frame. It is thinner, and has a different gauge, so I used different needles. I also got a little bored, so I added a cable to make things interesting. The color gradations in Noro are hard to predict- if it is important you to have identical twins instead of fraternal, Noro might not be the yarn for you.

I mostly wear flip flops in the summer, so I can slip these on when we're camping, and not have to pack more shoes.

Bored Cable Leg Warmer Pattern

On size 3 needles, cast on 52 stitches in a solid contrast yarn.Knit in 2×2 rib for 3 inches- this becomes a cuff you can roll up so you can put your flipflops on, or roll down to cover your toes.

Swtch to Noro and size 5 needles. Knit stockinette until bored. Or 6 inches, whichever comes first.

On needle 1. knit 4, perl 2 knit 4 perl 2 knit 18 til end of the needle. every 6 rows, cable front.

Continue until it is a good fit for your leg, then switch back to the contrast color, do a 2×2 rib for 2 or 3 inches and bind off with super stretchy bind off.

A confession, if you have even read this far- here’s why I should write knitting patterns- people who are really looking for patterns don’t really want to see “knit in stockinette until bored” those are terrible directions. If you are looking for a serious pattern, I am sorry. But I am also lazy- it is hard to write serious patterns.

Previous Older Entries Next Newer Entries