in the garden

It's explosion time! We wait and wait and wait for the weather to get good, and boy howdy, when it's good, it's good. Everything is finally waking up...blossoming...setting fruit and flower...it's such a pretty thing.

I'm trying out straw as mulch on the potatoes this year. High hopes for a simplified harvest. I just noticed today that the peas are coming in. Glory be! The herb bed is my favorite spot by far. I have dreams of a someday-garden with giant swaths of chamomile and lemon balm and all the zillions of different kinds of basils. The carrots are coming in nicely, right along with the weeds (hagulp). The three plants behind the carrots are ground cherries, which I have read about but never tasted. Here's hoping. I got the broccoli and cabbage seedlings mixed up, so I haven't known which was which until now -- little heads starting to form on each, finally revealing their true factions (ha! I just finished reading Divergent). I'm a first-time corn grower this year. Looking forward to some stalk-to-pot sprints later in the summer. Maren's marigolds are getting ready to blossom. We grew them from seed -- her special choice from the seed catalog this year -- and she is going to hit the moon when it happens. The zucchini are getting ready to flower, too. I know I'll shake my head at their abundance before long. 

And flowers. Never enough flowers.

trail walk in april

We are knee-deep into this homeschooling thing. Wading in with so much hope, so much excitement about the future. 

The possibilities!

All my worries, all my excuses, all my what-ifs... God is pitching them out the window, wholesale.

So, to all the many (many) friends of mine who have ever told me some form of you would just love homeschooling! or someday you'll see or you really ought to read this article...

You were right as right could be.

So right.

autumn leaves

Autumn leaves are so magical. Last night I went to a church ladies' activity where the main point was to bring a pumpkin treat and then eat them all. Can I get an amen! I was all set to make some pumpkin-spice mashmallows, but then I walked away from the stove at a critical moment and burned the sugar syrup. Good one.

We are staying inside today, mostly, nursing some sniffles and resting up with hopes of a nice weekend for garden-mulching. In between rocking babies and watching Wonder Pets, I'm catching up on some old National Geographics and making progress in Turn Right at Machu Picchu and Rough Stone Rolling (they're both really good) and ignoring the housework. Here's wishing you a crunchy-sidewalked, cozy-cidered, warm-footed sort of day.

garden :: grow

We spent last week in Indiana, visiting family. It was a beautiful visit + I have lots of pictures to show off, but first, I'm gonna show off this garden of ours. I can't believe how much it grew while we were gone! Upstate New York is incredible for gardening, a veritable Eden, and all these plants are thriving in spite of me, not because of me. Some decisions: someday I will have a gigantic herb garden. It will be planted in a circle. With a brick path around it. And a fountain in the middle. Also, oriental poppies are my new favorite flower. Sigh.

summer food: strawberry-rhubarb crisp

I hope your Memorial Day weekend has been fantastic. We've been loving good weather, good friends & neighbors, good fun, good work, and some doggone good desserts. It is high rhubarb season here in the North Country, and the $6 worth of gorgeous red stalks I bought at the roadside stand could probably feed our entire neighborhood ad infinitum.

And so, I give you my neighbor Helen's uh-mazing recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp. Crisp topping, I'm finding, is an intensely personal preference -- some like it thinly spread and crunchy, like granola; some like it soft and fluffy, like a biscuit -- and a thousand variations in between. This crisp topping is a thick layer of rich and buttery goodness, slightly crisp when you first bite into it, then soft and crumbly as you keep chewing, a little like a huge, supersoft butter-oatmeal cookie. And the ratio of crisp to fruit is, in my opinion anyway, perfect -- nearly 1 to 1.

It's a lot of butter. To quote Rapunzel, Don't freak out! Totally worth it.

Helen's Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

For the topping:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1 c butter, melted

For the fruit:
4 c diced strawberries
4 c diced rhubarb
1 c sugar

3 T flour

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine dry ingredients for topping. Stir in melted butter. Stick it in the fridge while you prepare the fruit. Combine all the fruit ingredients, adjusting fruit ratios and sugar to taste. Pour fruit into a 9x12 (or similarly-sized -- I used an 8x10 and it was perfect) casserole dish. Crumble the topping over the fruit. Bake for 45 minutes, until richly golden brown and bubbly. Cool for a few hours before devouring.

Postscript: like this dessert wasn't enough... we made s'mores, too.

nature journaling

Last Child in the Woods is being thoroughly enjoyed over here -- by mama because it's so inspiring and interesting -- and by the chickies because we're all getting outside and exploring a whole lot more. One idea in the book is to help the children start nature journals. The girls are thrilled with theirs, and I can't help being a little bit proud, even if Maren wants to erase everything she's just drawn/written, just because she just learned how to erase.

Oh, Spring. We're so glad you're here.

bare feet at last

We had a zillion things to do yesterday, but get everything in the ground before the rain comes was priority no. 1. Technically it's still a little early, but the forecast is favorable, it's been a warm year, and I just can't wait any longer. In went the tomatoes, marigolds, basil, chives, parsley, cilantro, cucumbers, and about a thousand flowers. The girls helped a lot, then got hot and hung out in the clothesline shade. I still need to dig up some sod to make room for the melons and squash, then a bunch of medicinal herbs I'm itching to try out. This new-to-me blog is a treasure trove of natural healing information. I've got this book on order at the library and am so excited about it. So now it's pouring cats + dogs and the plants are all bathing happily. Today's looking like a cleaning, coloring, movie-watching, popcorn-eating, puddle-stomping, baby pants-sewing kind of day.