get them before they go to seed FAIL! thistle edition.

07 Oct 2011 Leave a comment

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


Doesn't it look pretty, glowing in the late afternoon sun? Yeah. It's a thistle.

I went to a part of the yard that I hadn’t been to check out for  while (no, the yard isn’t that big, but I’ve been busy with school, and taking people to soccer and play practice, and the Girl just started Tae Kwan Do classes, and it was really hot until a few days ago…)

Anyway, the thistles have bloomed. Crud.

Some seed have scattered, some are still attached, so my mode now is to carefully cut off the seed heads and put them in a bag, then put the bag in the trash. My compost doesn’t get hot enough to kill weed seeds, so I avoid putting them in the compost bin.

Philosophically, are my weeds providing me a service? They are holding on to soil, bringing up nutrients from the subsoil, harvesting rainwater, turning atmospheric carbon into fodder for the compost pile?

Yeah.

They do all those things. And more.

But, I don’t want many more of them. Especially the prickly ones. Oh well.

A year’s worth of garlic, part 2

29 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in environmentalism, food, gardening, herbs, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , ,


I saved the largest bulb of my “harvest” to plant, and ordered some from eBay.  The kind I saved from what I planted last year is soft-neck, which is ordinary grocery store garlic, and in fact, this came from an ordinary grocery store. The kind I got on eBay is a hardneck variety, which is supposed to have a different flavor (there’s a question- how different can it be, and still be garlic?) and also it forms flower stocks and blossoms, which are called scapes.

We got some scapes in our CSA veggie box a few years ago and I had never seen them before- they’re really interesting. You could wear them as bracelets to ward off vampires- long green spirals. I sliced them for stir fry, and they had a bright, super-garlicky taste. Growing hard-neck garlic  means you get an earlier harvest, something to pick before the garlic is actually ready to dig. This helps with the year’s worth deal. Once the bulbs in the basket have either been eaten or started to sprout, there is something to pick that tastes like garlic.

Yes, I know I could just go to the grocery store.

Why bother growing my own? Honestly, carbon. How much diesel fuel is used to plow, plant and harvest garlic in California, or China?      http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11613477  how much energy to ship it here?

I am okay buying olive oil, because I can’t grow that here in zone 5, but I swear, garlic grows itself.

Before the fall equinox, I loosened some soil, broke the garlic heads into individual cloves and planted them. I put them in an area where the compost pile was, so there’s plenty of humus. I’ll cover with mulch, and wait until spring. I won’t water at all until next summer, and then it will still take less water than most people use on their lawns.

Grow garlic!!!!! Seriously!

No photo on this one- better artists than I can take beautiful pictures of bare soil.

Vanilla Vine Update

26 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in containers, gardening in containers, herbs, Uncategorized Tags: , ,


So, I built this whole elaborate trellis, and posted a tutorial, for a vanilla orchid vine that is supposed to get to 20 feet tall.

I do think having the sheetmoss-filled tower was helpful in raising the humidity around the plant.

It turns out, I could have waited a while.
The humidity tower/trellis is two feet tall. The vanilla orchid is 6 inches tall. Assuming I can keep it alive over the winter, I am going to hope it grows faster next summer. If you got here through Google, researching the care and feeding of homegrown vanilla, rest assured that you don’t need a huge trellis for your vanilla cutting right away.
If you are just a friend or relation, well, I guess you already knew I was an optimist.
We had a frost warning at around sunset last week, causing me to whine and moan and get out the dolly so I could move big flowerpots around, and whine and moan some more. That is when I brought in the vanilla, and took a quick picture, under the lovely fluorescent lighting of the kitchen.
I had picked all the ripe tomatoes I could see, and put a giant duvet cover over the trellis, so I wasn’t too worried about that.
The stress is bringing in the houseplants- tropicals that love the summer weather but can’t take the cold. I usually spray them off so fewer hitchhikers come inside with them- the occasional spider is fine, but no aphids or scale, thank you very much. I couldn’t face doing that last night. This week has been busy for DH and me, and I was hoping I could wait and move flowerpots on Sunday…
It turns out the frost alert was a false alarm, and predictions are for temps in the 70’s and 80’s. Next week,  I will have the strength to wheel flowerpots with citrus trees inside, heave them up to the sink, spray them off, mop the floor….Just thinking about it makes me tired.

I do think having the sheetmoss-filled tower was helpful in raising the humidity around the plant.

Process Sucks, Sometimes

17 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts Tags: ,


I am obsessed with this shade of blue, aren't I?

I have posted here about cute knits and quilts, and things that came out just the way I wanted, and some things that came out surprisingly better than expected. Not today.
Back in May, I started a shawl, using a pattern from “Knitting in the Sun” The idea is, you knit one lacy end, then knit toward the middle, then knit another lacy end, knit to the middle, then graft them together.
The pattern was a stretch for me, the lace pattern was pretty complicated, but there was a nice boring part in the middle that I could do while watching TV. I figured I could get it done by the middle of June or so, since I had a fancy wedding to go to, where a bright lacy shawl would be a great accessory.
Yeah. So, process.
The first lace end was sloppy, I had to rip back a few times. I found I could not talk or even listen to conversations when I worked on it- I could only work on it during the times when the kids were out of the house and the TV was off. This slowed down my production. The second lace end was better, but not by much. There are sloppy parts, but not bad enough to rip back, so the sloppiness is forever enshrined in yarn.
So the middle, which was supposed to be a slow cruise turned into a slog. June came and went, and I found a different accessory for the wedding (Pashmina to the rescue!)
I want to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with the pattern itself-just my knitting skills. I don’t do lace very well, and a pattern where I have to memorize a different set of numbers for each row just doesn’t work for me.

I would do few rows, then put it away again in its ziplock bag.With no deadline, there was no push to finish. Somewhere along the way I lost count of stitches, then discovered the error and got back on track, so the rows of eyelets are crooked, like a goat path.

Or how I imagine a goat path might be, if it were knitted into a shawl, in Cyan colored wool and silk.
In getting back on track, I added stitches, so one side is 6 stitches wider than the other, where they are supposed to meet in the middle. I found this out, not by counting, that would be too easy.

You can see where the graft, which is supposed to be invisible, is, well, visible, and where I am half a dozen stitches off.

I found this out by actually grafting them together, a process so fraught with stress, that when I do it on the toes of socks, I insist on absolute silence from my children. It took me about half n hour, and when I got to the end, and realized I had extra stitches and no way I could think of to fix them, I nearly cried. I balled the shawl up and shoved it in the ziplock bag.
I used to work at a daycare center, and one of our mantras was “Process, not product.” meaning we shouldn’t push the kids to fingerpaint masterpieces, but that we should trust that the process of scribbling, or cutting and pasting, was more valuable than the artwork they made. The trouble with this shawl is that it was 100% product oriented from the beginning- I wanted a bright blue shawl, rather than I wanted to make bright blue shawl…
I still haven’t decided what to do- I have a little yarn left, so I could go backwards, even out the stitches, rejoin. If I wear it as a scarf, under the collar of my black coat, the sloppy join wouldn’t show a whole lot.

Here is the challenge of a blog- and maybe life. Not everything I do is perfect. I get frozen by perfectionism from time to time, not wanting to take a risk because everyone will find out what a fraud I am (fraud, not frog.)But if I never take a risk, I’ll never get better. But do I always have to be getting better? What’s wrong with a little stagnation going into fall?

So anyway, I’m not sure how to fix this disaster, or if I even want to at this point. I really love the color, and the feel of the yarn, but I can’t face working on it right now. Time for another sock, maybe. What are your thoughts?

This Lid

14 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

by katsmama in favorite things Tags: , ,


Battered enamel, a little rust, but a lot of life left.

DH’s grandma is selling her house, and letting go of things she has had for years. I am amazed by how graceful she is at this- in the past few years,  she has given up living on her own, so she selected things to take with her to her daughter’s (my wonderful MIL’s) house. She has let go of her car, and has now made the decision to sell her house. I think we were all surprised at how fast it sold- 24 hours after it went on the market, they had an offer, and they will close in the middle of September. We went over  last week to help clean and box things, and hear stories. In the grand scheme, there isn’t that much stuff.

“Clean Sweep” is  a guilty pleasure TV show- I watch it, and think, “Well, I’m not as bad as those people!” One of my favorite people on it is Peter, the Australian guy. People on the show will be reluctant to get rid of something and they’ll say, my mother gave me that, and he’ll say, “this is not your mutha” in his Australian accent. He’s adorable.

At GGM’s house, I was talking about my guilty pleasure, and  I  picked up an enameled metal lid and said, “This is not your mutha” hoping to make people laugh, and GGM took it from me. She  said,  “One time I was cooking dinner, and my mother was there, and I had just put a pie pan on top of the pan, to cover it, and she said, “don’t you have a lid?” and I said no, and the next time she came to visit, she brought this one.”

I thought it was a cute story, and figured it was when she was first married, and just getting her house set up.

Um, no.

Great-Grandma had been in her 70’s, which meant that Great-Great- Grandma had been in her 90’s.  Moms. We never give up.

Of course, I asked if I could have the lid- it is now  on the cast iron skillet that lives on my stove top. I will use it every day, and tell the story to whomever will listen. There is a lot of stuff in my house that is clutter, but this lid is meaningful, and deserves to have a place of honor on the stove.

She’s a sad tomato

10 Sep 2011 Leave a comment

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


One lonely ripe tomato was all I had as of August 29.

Up until this past weekend, I had only picked one ripe tomato off the Mexican Jungle that my veggie garden has become this year.  Because of the Mexican Jungle effect, I can’t tell you the name of the variety, because the little tag got swallowed up by greenery. Let’s just say  I planted things too close together, again.

On Friday, before we left for the mountains, I picked some beautiful chocolate cherry tomatoes, and a couple of Romas, and some more of these, whose name I don’t know. There are a ton more green ones, threatening to knock over the trellises. As long as we don’t get an early freeze (average first frost date here is September 15, but last year it didn’t happen until early October) the green ones will get a chance to ripen and become salsa, and salads and tomato sauce, and maybe dried tomatoes. Nom nom nom.

The grape tomatoes ripen a deep purple, and taste great on their own, but with these, I sliced them in half and threw them in with some pasta and vinaigrette. Now I have lunch this week.

According to my journal, these are "Chocolate Cherry", started from seed by a friend. They go dark, almost army green before they go purple. They are rich and sweet and filled with jelly.

Handmade Athletic Socks

06 Sep 2011 4 Comments

by katsmama in arts and crafts Tags: ,


They are clean now, but you know that these socks will spend half their lives in a wad on the floor anyway.

I mentioned a while ago that the Boy had asked for white hand-knit socks. I couldn’t resist asking him if he minded adding some stripes. My brothers used to wear these striped athletic socks when we were kids. My mom usually tried to color code, one brother got red stripes and the other got blue. The Boy requested red and blue stripes, so he can channel 2 uncles.
If you are interested in learning to make socks, I have to recommend ” Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles” by Cat Bhordi.http://www.amazon.com/Socks-Soar-Two-Circular-Needles/dp/0970886950/ref=pd_sim_b_3 It is a super helpful explanation of how to construct socks. It isn’t a beginning knitting book, but if you know how to make scarves and hats, and are ready for the next step, this is a great place to start. I consider her basic ribbed sock to be the perfect sock- the ribbing helps it fit perfectly around the instep and stay up on the ankle. It is also easy to memorize, so you don’t need to bring an instruction book with you everywhere you go.
That sounds weird- I consider socks to be the ultimate portable project, and I knit riding in the car, waiting for food in a restaurant, or in the waiting room at the eye doctor. Maybe I’m a little obsessed.

Many athletic socks are just tubes, but I chose to put a turned heel on these, because they are more comfortable that way. The ribbing makes them very elastic, so they are a good fit now, as he grows they will stretch around.  I made the toe a different color so I can take it off and knit a longer foot at some point in the future. Boys grow. Girls do, too, you know. I haven’t adjusted a sock yet, but it is much easier to knit an inch of length onto a sock than to make a whole new one.  Time invested in these things is an important consideration.

My day job has started back up again, and I’ve been running around back and forth to my school functions, and kid school functions, and the blogging has gone to the back burner.  It isn’t for lack of ideas, just time. And camera batteries… Look for tomato posts, and jam posts, and posts about the theory and practice of getting rid of foundation plantings, coming to a device near you!

Craptastic garden design

26 Aug 2011 1 Comment

by katsmama in arts and crafts, design, gardening Tags: , , ,


“Have you walked up the road to see the house on the corner yet?” my sister in law asked. We were at a family reunion in small town Idaho.

“Why,do they have, like, garden gnomes or something?”

“Well, no, I didn’t see any gnomes, but you have to go up and see it…”

“But why?”

“You just have to go see it.”

Well, we took a walk at sunset.

The shed was actually white, but glowed in the setting sun.

Wow. It was a high desert garden filled with junk- no gnomes, just farm implements turned into birds, bedframes hung with mugs and vases, a bottle tree. multiple bowling balls, a shelf of trophies. Craptastic!  Both of my brothers- in-law looked at it with dread, worried that they were going to wind up with a yard full of crap too.  DH didn’t say anything, but obligingly took a photo of the bottle tree in the setting sun.

One of the best structures was a fence around what I think is a goldfish pond- I stayed in the alley, so I couldn’t get close enough to be sure. The fence was alternating panels of sheet metal and either glass or plexi, and I bet it was designed as winter patio- not quite a greenhouse, but you would get a greenhouse effect- you could go out in the sunshine in the winter and be protected from the North wind, but still get sunshine, and since the structure was only around 6 feet tall, you wouldn’t have to get a building permit.

The family reunion was 4th of July weekend, and since then I have been evaluating the things I add to my garden- how much crap does one need? A little crap may look insecure, whereas a ton of crap inspires people from out of town to stand in your alley and peer over the fence.  I am thinking I might want a bottle tree, though…

DIY yoga mat spray

19 Aug 2011 2 Comments

by katsmama in herbs, Uncategorized Tags: , ,


I’ve been doing yoga a lot lately, and one of the facts of yoga life is that the mat starts to smell funky. Research on the interwebs reveals that people spray with Febreze, or with store-bought yoga mat spray. Further research tells me that these sprays are pretty much alcohol, which kills most of the bacteria,and fragrance, which covers up the smell of the alcohol.

I hate the smell of Febreze, too strong, too fake. ( I had a student a few years ago whose mom put Febreze in his Christmas stocking. What was she trying to say, do you think?)
This is another of those non-recipe recipes. I hate to say this even is  a recipe, or a project, because it’s so simple.

Step 1: Buy cheap vodka.  You might already have some, I don’t know.

Step 2: Get a spray bottle (thank you, dollar store)

Step 3: Half fill spray bottle with cheap vodka, add tap water, add “some” drops of essential oil. How many drops will depend on how strong you want it.
Step 4: spray onto stuff that’s stinky.

I have a bunch of different varieties of essential oil; the last batch I made I used geranium and lavender- refreshing and “green”. Tea tree oil is also supposed to be anti-bacterial, but I’m not in love with the smell. I guess I’m picky. Peppermint would be refreshing, rosemary smells kind of like cheap men’s cologne.
Here’s the thing- if you don’t already have cheap vodka and some essential oils, you might be better off just buying some official yoga mat spray and just be done with it. Amazon has different varieties for around 10 bucks, but it strikes me that you can buy a lot of cheap vodka for that, and some essential oils, which you can use for other things.
For example, I use the oil for homemade handcream, and just adding drops to my bathwater. I use the cheap vodka for…cheap vodka. Nah, I’ve made homemade cherry liqueur, and limoncello.  You know, not just screwdrivers and jello shots.

Bloom Day- Let’s shop for stuff that blooms in August…

16 Aug 2011 3 Comments

by katsmama in gardening Tags: , , ,


It has been hot and dry here lately. Typically we get late afternoon thunderstorms that cool things off and moisten things up, but not so much this year.The lack of water has made things peter out sooner than usual, and looking around, I am realizing, I don’t have that much that blooms late summer. I need to get to work on that.

The asteraceae family does well in the dry heat- purple coneflowers and daisies and black-eyed susans have been blooming their heads off, and attracting pollinators for a few weeks now.

I don't deadhead the Echinacea (purple coneflower) because the birds like the seeds. What the birds don't eat will self seed and grow next year.

The herbs are the pollen workhorses- bees are all over the lavender, anise hyssop, oregano, thyme and mints.Not much to look at, but the bugs sure love them.

I have one tiger lily blooming right this minute, and I want to order about a gross of late summer lilies. I had some other oriental lilies that have already finished blooming. Never liked lilies before, but they fill an important role in late summer.  Orange is never my first color choice, but they just fit this weather and this time of year.

Love this tiger lily.

Wait, a gross of lilies, that’s a gross of holes to dig. May have to rethink that plan.

 

edited to add- I noticed some sweet peas still blooming- which I have always thought of as cool weather flowers- but no, it’s crazy hot and dry, but those little old fashioned sweet peas are still blooming. Hooray.

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