How Does Your Garden Grow?

The Herb Bed planted with basil, oregano, chives, parsley, cutting celery, sage, lavender, coneflower, thyme in the pot, rhubarb & chocolate mint.

Shelling peas around the edges (I'm trying free form branches for fencing for them this year), nasturiums & garlic.

3 rows Roma canning tomatoes and 1 row of pink beauty heirloom slicers, plus a sungold cherry thrown in for good measure.

Scallions, Yellow Onions, Fennel & 1 row of Red Poatoes.

Pole beans, cucumbers under individual row cover, cayenne peppers with stones around them.  Very shaded sprouting carrots in the back to the left and Savoy Cabbage & Broccoli under the hooped row cover.  The row cover is to help prevent pests from eating everyone up before they're full grown!

CHard & Kale bed!

Arugula, Lettuce Mix and Strawberries all interplanted.

Popping Corn in a bed with no walls.

As you can see it's a fully planted and established place this garden of mine.  However it is growing s.l.o.w.l.y.  I'm hoping a week of mostly sun might warm up the soils and things might start shooting out of the ground.  I have high hopes for the garden this year, but am also hoping to be relatively maintenance free, as my time is slight these days.  We'll check in in a few weeks, fingers crossed for tremendous growth...

These Two:

He learns how to move his body with a roll,

and has an incessant, contagious smile.

She becomes torn between caring for him,

and aggressive play.

Siblings in the making.

Pieces Of Her

"oh that's great bean," I can hear her saying to me as I tell her about the mac and cheese I made in her le creuset yesterday.  She'd love to hear about Cecilia eating serving after serving of the meal.  She'd chuckle and tell me about what she was planning on making that day on her stove.  We'd compare recipes, techniques.  We'd talk about the weather.  I'd know when it stopped raining in Brunswick.  I'd know what was in at the farmer's market.  A glance of my weather patterns to expect as they blew up the coast.  She'd ask after every moment of Gaber's development, listen to every smile, every grab of the hand.  I'd listen to stories of who she ran into as she rode her bicycle about town.  There are so many moments left unshared, so many rings of the telephone unrung and yet I see her everyday in the things she left behind.  In the glimpses of her I hold in my home, in my heart.  Even the look in Ce's face as I see more and more of her Mimi in her.

Propogating Forsythia.

I discovered something marvelous about lazily not cleaning up the dirt piles that got dumped around the forsythia.  The way in which the dirt lay atop of a few branches has allowed sections of roots to grow from the stems.  When cut we are given more forsythia plants....

Now it's a matter of finding home for my new beautiful plants.  Because that lovely pop pop pop of yellow at the beginning of every spring is what heralds us to know that winter truly is over and there is a full growing season ahead. 

"It's Wonderful Work We Are Doing."

Spinning In Their Underpants On A Sunday Morning

And really what could be finer than a family dance in Papa's arms?  Amidst clean-up, tidying, "out with the old" we like to throw in a little twirling to lift the spirits of our workers bees.  And with a child firmly tucked into each forearm (or sliding out of, in Gaber's case) there truly is fun to be had in your smallness, in your portability, and in your being in your underpantsness.

A quiet weekend was had by all of us here in Hopkinsland.  A little socializing, a whole lots of banging around like sardines in a tin can as the rains fell.  But oh how my gardens adore that rain, and oh how I adore being inside bouncing around with this particular lot.  If only we'd remembered to bake bread while it was still raining...

Strawberry Rhubarb Juice

A tasty, tasty treat to add water, seltzer or gin to, over ice, with a sprig of mint for garnish.  It is a taste that's filled with Spring, with Summer, with warmth and you just have time to make it before your rhubarb bolts!

Simmer the following for 20 minutes:
3 cups Rhubarb in 1-2" pieces
1 1/2 cups Strawberries (I use frozen ones from last year)
2 used up old vanilla beans from making vanilla extract with
2 cups water
the mint leaves from 4 stems
1/2 of a juiced lemon
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup sugar

Then strain solids, which should yield about 4 cups.  Save your solids and eat them on toast, in yogurt, or by the spoonful.  The liquid you can have a party with or can in a 10 minute hot water bath.