garden harvest: kale

It's been rainy for a few days here and we are all going a little bit stir crazy. We did get our first harvest of kale from the garden, though, and that was very exciting. It's incredibly tender and mild, nothing like the kale at the store. It made me think a lot today about how strange it is that we all buy the same varieties of kale, carrots, potatoes, whatever, at every grocery store across the country. It's a small excitement -- an easter egg radish, a royal chantenay carrot, a chioggia beet -- but a happy excitement (and variety!) to add to dinner hour anyway. A good a reason as any to grow a garden.

Last night we put the girls to bed early and I headed out to the garden, "just to hill to potatoes," I told R. He wandered out an hour later, laughing, to find me having torn up another 18 square feet of sod, planting cabbage and cauliflower starts that were just too pretty to leave at the farmer's market, and laying down extra bricks on the garden path. And hilling the potatoes. I had half a rack of baby back ribs at TGI Friday's for dinner, by the way. That may or may not have had something to do with it.