He Sowed She Sewed

We have taken a bit of a break from house jobs to enjoy the beautiful weather and start our garden.

Jared took the grass out of the planter and placed it onto the ground next to raise the level of the ground.  That area was in a bit low and we didn’t want any flooding or soggy plants.

We inherited the above rhubarb.  Isn’t it incredible?

We would have loved to plant in the ground but it is almost solid clay.  Since that little planter box is not going to hold all we want to plant we needed some dirt for additional planters we are going to build.  Our generous friend had a dump truck deliver a huge mound of black dirt to our house!  The girls thought it was about the coolest thing ever.  A close second to being able to play on the big dirty mountain

These girls desperately needed a bath afterwards =) it was well worth it.

Still working on shoveling the dirt, building the planters, building a fence and planting some seeds.  Lots of work but we are glad we only have to do this much work our first year.  All the springs after this one we will simply add some compost to the soil and plant our seeds.

We still have a bit of a mountain if you want to come over for a climb =) the kids won’t hesitate to join.

I am in the process of reading “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

It is one of those books where you know how it goes so I have never read it before.  I saw the movie when I was a little girl and left it at that.

 I was browsing kindle books and found that this little gem was free.  What the heck, right?  Might as well give it a whirl.  I never would have gone out to buy this book or probably checked it out at the library.  But I am SO glad that I am reading it right now.

It would be hard to read in the middle of winter but it extremely fun to read in the spring.  Mary is so passionate about gardening and is beside herself when the seemingly dead earth begins to come to life.  I am about half way through the book and can feel myself getting the itch to garden and make things beautiful.  Here are some of my favorite passages thus far,

I love this first one because she feels herself being awakened-

“Living as it were, all by herself in a house with a hundred mysteriously closed rooms and having nothing whatever to do to amuse herself, had set her inactive brain to working and was actually awakening her imagination. There is no doubt that the fresh, strong, pure air from the moor had a great deal to do with it.  Just as it had given her an appetite, and fighting with the wind had stirred her mind.  In India she had always been too hot and languid and weak to care much about anything, but in this place she was beginning to care and to want to do new things.  Already she felt less ‘contrary,’ though she did not know why.”

This next one makes smile and want to garden:

“I’m getting stronger.  I used to always be tired.  When I dig I’m not tired at all.  I like to smell the earth when it’s turned up.”

And lastly,

“Might I, quavered Mary, might I have a bit of earth?  In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say.  mr Craven looked quite startled.  ’Earth!’ he repeated, ‘What do you mean?’  To plant seeds in–to make things grow–to see them come alive,’ Mary faltered.”

How rewarding it is so make things grow.  To make tiny little seeds blossom into giant sunflowers or into delicious vegetables.  Out of the earth.  What a wonderful and miraculous event that happens every spring.  It will never cease to amaze me.

When I first started composting from our home’s kitchen waste I did some reading and discovered that worms are essential to the composting process.  I had heard that there were places I could actually go to buy worms for my compost, but the notion of spending money on soft-bodied invertebrates only to throw them in my organic trash didn’t seem quite right, so I decided to go without worms to see of I could manage without them.

Much to my pleasure, a few weeks into my composting adventure I went to turn the pile and sure enough, when I pulled the pitchfork from the middle of the heap there was a whole mess of dark, luscious worms making themselves at home in my soil factory.  I never thought I would be so excited to see those slimy things.

I’ve also previously written about a time when I visited the garden at night during a rainstorm and found myself among thousands of giant night-crawlers slurping around in the mud, wildly retreating into their canals when my flashlight glanced across them.  It was a cool thing.

If you’ve been gardening for a while, I’m sure you’ve come to know and love your worms, and if you’re fairly new at the process you’ll soon find that worms happen…and its wonderful.

tiny Swiss Chard seedling

 The first few times we harvested lettuce from our garden we simply rinsed it under running water and then let it dry for a short while before eating.  We had a great time enjoying our early summer salads, but no matter how well we rinsed the lettuce, we still got tiny bits of sand and silt in our teeth as we ate.

tiny purple lettuce seedling

This wasn’t a big deal, but I knew there had to be a way to get the lettuce free of dirt.  After speaking with some friends, they suggested we soak the lettuce in a bowl of ice water for about a half-hour or more, periodically swirling the lettuce to allow the dirt to fall off the leaves to the bottom of the bowl.  Not only does the ice bath loosen the dirt from the leaves, it makes the freshly picked lettuce become cool and crisp as it soaks.  Then it’s just another quick rinse under the faucet, shake to dry (or spin if you’ve got a salad spinner), and you’re ready for a yummy dish of freshly picked lettuce, chard, arugula, spinach, and whatever other leafy greens your garden might be pumping out.  

I passed the ice bath trick on to my mom when we visited her in Colorado and enjoyed the delicious lettuce and Kale (pictured in the center row) growing in her garden.  It was fantastic!

Had to take a break from the packing madness to partake in our garden strawberries.

I took Aleah and her best friend Ian out to pick some with me.  It was a bit of a rainy day but they were up for the challenge.

it doesn't get more delicious than that

they are completely hidden

no strawberries

lots of strawberries

Ian feeding Aleah strawberries

oops

look at her little ponytail!

Come on over to say good bye to us and pick/eat some of the wonderful strawberries that we can’t pick fast enough!

Since I am in Colorado right now with no sewing machine and no garden to call my own I have had to be creative about the recent posts.  Be creative or completely ignore the original sowing and sewing that this blog was intended for.  Forgiveness please.

But, I have a bit of a real gardening post for you!  Pretty exciting if you ask me =)

Anyways, Jared’s parents live in northern Colorado right by the mountains.  I can’t stop looking at them and will miss them when we leave.  Jared’s mom has a little garden out back that has kale, tomatoes, hot peppers, onions and lettuce.  It is not very big but it has been spitting out food for us all week.  Delicious.

On the other side of their backyard they have a bird feeder that attracts mostly red-winged blackbirds but also house finches and other birds that I have no idea what they are because I am not from Colorado.

This afternoon she was picking some weeds around her yard and came across some sunflower seedlings that were sprouting underneath the bird feeder from the stray seeds.

I thought back to a few years ago when one of our family friends had sprouted the black seeds that come in a huge bag.

The couple has grown flats and flats of them in their greenhouse so they could eat them on salads and on sandwiches throughout the year.  So I picked a few from her yard and after washing them, we ate them.  They were so delicious!

Here is a link that explains the proper way to grow your own sunflower sprouts:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1979-11-01/Sunflower-Sprouts.aspx

So have fun and enjoy one of the most delicious snacks on the face of the planet.  And the best news is, it only takes ten days.  (Almost) instant gratification!

A friendly message from Aleah, “The plants are thirsty!”

She kept running back and forth carrying a cup full of water from her kiddy pool to her Nana’s garden (Jared’s mom).  We are in Colorado right now and Jared and his pops are off on their Canadian fishing trip.  Miss my Jared.