Now Norma Knits

The Weatherman Was Wrong Again, But This Time The Doctor Seems To Have Been Right

It wasn't supposed to rain yesterday. Well, I guess you could technically say that was correct, since it POURED BUCKETS. But at least it waited till the late afternoon, and I was able to put in a good six hours in the garden before it hit.

You see, I was doing it under doctor's orders. The mysterious ankle- or foot- or who-knows-what injury was not resolving, and so on Friday I ended up back at my primary care doc. I won't get into the whole thing, but in the end she and I decided that I should stop being inactive. It probably wasn't helping anything, and I have also wondered if just being active might help push those fluids out of their sluggishness. So she told me to walk a lot this weekend. I did intend to go and do some true "exercise" walking, and maybe even a teeny bit of running -- perhaps starting from square one of the Couch to 5K program again, because I am very eager to get back to that if at all possible.

I never made it to do that, but I did spend almost a full day in the garden, wearing my hiking boots and my SmartWool socks, and doing a LOT of climbing up and down our steep backyard hill, as well as carrying things. I came out of it with certainly no deleterious effects, and probably considerable positive effects. It was a deliciously sweaty day and a beautiful day. At the end of the day as I'm writing this, I definitely feel miles better physically and psychologically.

The water, though. OMG, the rain, it just won't stop. I put my seedlings in the wheelbarrow while I turned my back for a couple of hours to go to an appointment, and came back to them sitting in 4 inches of water.

I am very lucky that I live on a hill. My gardens are not soggy like the cornfields and hayfields and athletic fields and parks and basements (not ours, thank the goddess) around here. Everything I've planted is doing well. I stuck a few of the plants I bought recently into the ground without a whole lot of fanfare yesterday. If we don't get some sunshine, and it keeps pouring like this, many things won't amount to much anyway. Siiiiigh. 

Here is my best accidental discovery (is that redundant?) of this year:

Onions do incredibly well when mulched with shredded leaves. So now I'm doing it on purpose, and wow! I've never grown such lovely onions before!

My first planting of radishes is getting close to harvest-ready:

Those are baby Romaine lettuces in the foreground, and they are thriving.

I love baby bok choi, and so do the slugs. The bok choi are planted in a rather large bed of various types of lettuce and plants from the cruciferous family. They are the clear favorite of the slugs, which makes them sort of the sacrificial lambs of my garden at the moment. I did manage to get a few unchomped-on leaves to put in my salad yesterday. 

And the state of the compost bins is pretty sad:

Soggy and anaerobic. There are four of them that need to be emptied, aerated and relayered. 

I have no work scheduled for the next week, so now that it seems that I have a usable foot again, I will be able to peck away at some things that really need to get done around here, which will give my muscles a pretty good workout, too...

...in between torrential rainstorms, lightning storms and tornado watches. 

CFLs are a Big Lie

CFLs are propaganda at its best. I'm not sure who they are supposed to be helping, but the way they are being shoved down our throats, it must be big business or something. I'm fed up with them, and I'm not gonna take it any more.

I try to live green. I really do. I do everything I can, but these freaking light bulbs are such a ripoff. And to top it off, I broke one the other day, and I got all freaked out about the mercury. In my house. On my hands. Probably up my nose and down my lungs.

How can that be green or healthy, in any way whatsoever?

I have tried to feel so good about buying them and replacing all my light bulbs, but the feeble light they give off is just getting me down. The package says, "To replace a 60-watt bulb! Only uses 14 watts [or whatever it is -- I have not fact-checked this for complete accuracy, as you can probably guess.] of electricity!"

Then you get it home and it's like a tiny candle's worth of gray, cold light, but without the warmth and charm of a candle, that only struggles unconvincingly to turn on. It's only GIVING you 14 watts worth of light, NOT 60. It's all a big lie. You can't read with them. They're unreliable even about turning on. They burn out often and early, even though the boxes say they last practically indefinitely. It's all a bunch of BIG LIES. I've HAD it with these stupid bulbs. Had it! 

No amount of Vitamin D capsules is gonna help this.

There. I said it and I'm GLAD. 

Another Step in the Direction of Less Plastic

I stopped in at Grand Isle Artworks again yesterday, because I saw it announced in Facebook that Thursdays are Sylvie's days to be there. I recently met Sylvie at a farmer's market where she was selling her wares and bought several bars of soap. Sylvie is a delightful woman with a French accent -- she is originally from Montreal, she told me yesterday -- who makes beautiful soaps and lotions and body washes.

One exciting thing about her soaps is that she uses sunflower seed oil from the Roger and Claire Rainville farm in Alburgh that I mentioned a while back. There is a little post about their farm here. Talk about local! Her business is mere yards (only a very slight exaggeration) from the farm that produces the sunflower oil, and a half hour from me.

The reason I wanted to go in yesterday is because I wanted to try something I had seen on her website, her goat's milk face cream. In recent years I have gotten off track on my former adherence to as-natural-as-possible, with-as-few-ingredients-as-possible cosmetics. After having read Clean recently, I was reminded that the skin is the biggest organ of the body. My resolve to try to put nothing on my skin that I wouldn't eat [within reason, within REASON!] has returned. I've still been quite happily using Philosophy products, but they are way expensive, and my last two jars of Hope In A Jar turned rancid or something when they were only half gone, and sadly these products do contain parabens, which have been found in high concentrations in breast cancer tumors, so I'd really rather not put those things on my body, thankyouverymuch.

When I got to the shop, I told Sylvie that this was my quest (to put nothing on my skin that I wouldn't eat). She proceeded to explain to me in detail the ingredients in the face cream, their derivation, their function, and why each one was desirable and necessary to make a nice face cream that isn't too greasy, that soaks in, that contains humectants. She spoke with convincing knowledge and authority, and said that yes, I could eat this (though I probably wouldn't want to). The price of the face cream is really reasonable, and so I bought some -- after I tried it first, of course. 

One thing I loved about her explanation is that she was so honest and forthright: She told me that yes, there are some preservatives in there, but they are weak ones. This is a new batch, and there is an expiration date of one year hence, but that this product will be best used up within about six months or so -- and not to let it sit in a cupboard somewhere for a long time before I use it, or it will go "off".

But before I left, somehow we got on the topic of another product she makes that, as it turns out, I am even more excited about:

Solid shampoo. It comes in a bar or cake like soap, it is covered in biodegradable plastic shrink wrap (realizing that is an oxymoron, but this is a little bit gentler to the earth and landfills, I suppose) -- no other wrapping, and best of all, no plastic bottle or cap. Most shampoos, she explained, come in plastic bottles that are mostly filled with water. There is very little real product in the shampoo bottle -- the first ingredient is water. This makes it heavy to ship, and you have one more plastic bottle to throw away.

(You know I don't really buy the whole "we are recycling it" thing, right? I've talked at length about this before, that I really doubt that most of the plastic stuff that we, with all best intentions, hope and think that we are recycling, actually gets recycled.) 

Once again, Sylvie explained each and every ingredient in the shampoo (which can also be used as a regular body bar) and why it's there. 

This is great for traveling, and it's also better for the environment and for the less-plastic lifestyle. I'm excited to try it and I'm really looking forward to my shower tomorrow morning!

And that's not all. There is also the solid conditioner:

While I was there, I bought some raffle tickets for Grand Isle Art Works' grand opening and fundraiser for additional lighting and other things that the new gallery needs, such as chairs for knit night (hint-hint) that is taking place this Saturday. You can buy raffle tickets, too, here.

THE REVIEW IS IN:  (added at 9:43 a.m. ET)  I just finished my first shower with the solid shampoo and conditioner. I'm very happy. A nice feel, easy to use (I was a bit concerned about that), and though the lather is not as "moussey" as a shampoo from a bottle -- or maybe it could be if you used more, but I was on minimalist mode this morning -- it is wonderful! I used the shampoo bar as a body bar, too, because I loved the smell so much. It's just the smell of milk and almonds, practically nonexistent, but just a hint. Lovely and purifying-feeling.  And the conditioner is brilliant! As Sylvie told me, you can feel it going on, and you can control how much you put on by how silky your hair starts to feel.  I'm a happy showerer, and I'm sold on all three products.  I used the face cream last night (it is really a night cream), and used it after my shower today on my arms.  Nice.  

WTFriday: All The Bad News That's Fit To Print

1. I made my first batch of mozzarella cheese yesterday. I'm very disappointed and whiny about the whole thing. I wasted a whole gallon of really good organic raw milk that I drove a good distance to acquire. The people who say cheesemaking is much easier than yogurt-making are wrong and they should have to write that on the chalkboard 110 times, RIGHT NOW. And the directions in the little booklet that came with the cheesemaking kit I sent for are terribly ambiguous. Worse, they are gleefully described on the package to be SO EASY A 7-YEAR-OLD can do it, exclaims one testimonial. 

Well, I suppose that's me and Sarah Palin: Not smarter than your average 7-year-old. I can never figure out what so-called universal symbols are supposed to mean, and I can't make mozzarella like any old 7-year-old should be able to do. Let me see if I can remember how to tie my shoes... hm. I'll have to get back to you on that.

(Take out a colander, it says, but then doesn't have an instruction in which you use a colander, for example.) (Add the dissolved rennet, stirring in an up-and-down motion. WTF does THAT mean?) (Drain the floating whey off the top. But if you try that, the curds go down the drain with it.) (Ladle the curds into a bowl. They had not said to take out a ladle, but a slotted spoon -- and chasing the little curds with the slotted spoon in all that whey is like trying to get guppies out of a 100-gallon murky fish tank using a salmon net.) I finally said $%#&* *^&%##% (come on; are you surprised?), and poured it into the colander that the instructions had TOLD me to take out, but without telling me what to do with it, to drain the whey off the curds. And when it comes to the addition of salt, the quantity specified (1 T.) MUST be wrong, because that cheese is so salty I can hardly eat it. VERDICT: Mozzarella-making is fiddly, MUCH more complicated than making yogurt, and though I will probably try it again someday, I will not jump to make it again tomorrow. I'll use my good milk for yogurt or ice cream and just buy my freakin' mozzarella. 

2. Yesterday was July 1, and Mr. Jefferies had had a haircut the day before. Poor l'il dude was shivering so much yesterday afternoon (high temp in the mid-60s F) that I had to put his alpaca sweater on him. That's just not RIGHT.

3.  It seems to me that it's been raining and grey pretty much nonstop, and yet yesterday afternoon when I went to check my garden, almost everything was BONE DRY. I had to water. I could die.

4. The strawberries I planted seem to have been asleep, sitting dormant, not doing anything, looking like they are not thriving, but just (barely) BEING. I felt it was probably a pH problem, and since my soil is often on the acid side (though this soil is the bagged MooDoo potting soil, so I really don't understand why it would have a pH imbalance, but there you go) last week I gave most of them a little feeding of lime.  They seem to have perked up a bit since then -- some of them, anyway. But they are still not bursting out with a joyful rendition of "I Feel Pretty!" as they should be.

Ditto for the peppers. JUST.SITTING.THERE. I thought I gave all of the peppers some lime and bone meal last week, but as of yesterday three have sort of taken off and three are still JUST.SITTING.THERE looking anemic and pathetic, like they are out on the frigid corner of a building in January for a smoke break, rather than sitting in the beautiful peninsula garden of expensive soil and sun I made JUST.FOR.THEM. Ungrateful snots. I guess I need to get out there and give them some lime, too. And perhaps some fertilizer. Maybe all the rain has leached out the nutrients from the soil; I don't know.

5. I've spotted my first Japanese beetles. Gardengeddon.

6. I have planted bush beans four times. It is not a good story.

If they deign to germinate, they either seem to rot at the base (or something is eating their roots) or get eaten by something when they are in the cotyledon stage. These are the few that are hanging on so far, but they don't look well.

I'm having my usual unimpressive results with pole beans. Sort of like the people who yelled that cheesemaking was EASY compared to yogurt (Yes, I'm bitter; why do you ask?), the people who shout out that pole beans are superior to bush beans because they produce all season are just plain WHACKED.

They just SIT there and SIT there. Slow growth, and I do mean S-L-O-W. This is always the case with me and pole beans. They just don't LIKE ME. I'm starting to get a complex. The gardening books say these things start producing right away and produce all season as they grow up the pole, and Jack will be climbing the beanstalk and bring me back the golden ticket from the chocolate factory. Wait. I think I'm mixing up my stories a little bit. But those people and their pole bean fairytales are JUST.SO.WRONG. Pfffffft.

7. I fear that I can see the telltale early signs of the squash vine borers, and I'm sick about it. Freaking moths. I'm hoping it's just my imagination and I'm holding my breath. What a shame if we managed to keep away the beetles and the bugs, and yet our squash still got ruined by the borers. Gahhhhhhhhhh.

8. My sinuses are taking a wee bit of umbrage with the level of dairy eating I've been doing. They are my own little "off" switch to stop me from overeating the ice cream, so I can't just sit and down those incredibly complex and delicious and adventurous flavors all day. 

But there is some good news!

1. Not one cucumber beetle has been seen, nor squash bug, except the one cucumber beetle I killed. The nasturtiums have worked WONDERS in that regard. 

2. Is there anything cuter than a baby cucumber in bloom?

These are those lonnnnng English cucumbers, and this is what they look like before they are pollinated. Can you believe that thing is going to be a foot long or longer when it's mature? 

3. We're eating delicious broccoli!

And beets and radishes and asparagus and lettuces and onions and black raspberries and Swiss chard. It's really more than two people can possibly eat. I've been giving some to my mom and the neighbors. Soon the many cabbages I planted are about to take center stage. I don't have any idea how we're going to eat them all. Please do not suggest kimchi or sauerkraut. I do.not.like either of those, even though I would love to love them. I love the idea of them, and I could totally see myself wasting days and weeks and months (or however long it takes to make that smelly crap) making it, only to throw it away because I can't tolerate it. So it'll be fresh or braised or cooked with root veggies and corned beef or something, and SHARED. A lot of it will be shared. 

4. See #8 above. The sinuses are keeping me from overindulging in all the most amazing flavors of ice cream I've been making. OK, it's only been two. I made two batches of orgasmic rose petal ice cream and one batch of orgasmic strawberry-basil. You want my honest assessment? ORGASMIC. But beyond that, the basil ice cream base BEFORE I put in the pureed strawberries, was OR-GASSSSSS-MIIIIIIIICCCCCCC. Next time, I'm going to forget about the strawberries and just make basil. I know it sounds strange, but you have to believe me: O. I'm not even kidding. 

But, thank goodness for my screaming sinuses. Otherwise I'd gain back all the weight I lost over the winter, and PLUS have to work out 13 hours a day. 

So see? It's all good, even the bad.   

Terrier Tuesday -- We've Got BEETS!

Dear Readers:

A.Alpha says that a lot of people have been writing her to say, "Halp! I hate beets! How do I learn to stop gagging when I try to eat them?!"

Whatchu say?!

How could anybody hate beets? What they ever done to hurt you, eh? They're so sweet and delicious and versatile and pretty on the plate, like gemstones, and they are packed with nutrients. We have to do something about this maligning and misunderstanding of the poor beet. We hafta! 

Alpha's (you know her!) first reaction was, "Oh, GROW UP!" But I told her she had to calm down and be rational. She knows how she feels when everybody oohs and ahhs and goes on endlessly and orgasmically about sushi, and how she sort of gags it down in social settings and questions everyone else's sanity about that whole raw fish thing. 

So we will all try to be adults here, right? And we will TRY to:

Save the beet! Love the beet you're with. And all that good stuff. Watch Alpha's blog: Recipes and ideas and beet-eating anecdotes, contests and challenges to come! 

Love,

Mr. Jefferies 

Can You Smell Me From There?

The garlic scapes (many of them, anyway) were ready to be cut yesterday.

This is a seasonal delicacy that will be gone far too quickly, so I wasted no time in making some garlic scape pesto <------ that is a link to an article about garlic scapes with a recipe for pesto which bears only distant-cousin resemblance to the paste I made. 

I didn't have any olive oil on hand because I keep forgetting to buy some. So I used grapeseed oil. I didn't have any parmesan cheese on hand because I used the last of my parmesan in a multi-veg/multi-cheese frittata I threw together the other night. So I didn't use any cheese at all, but used my homemade Greek yogurt for tang and creaminess, with a squeeze of lemon juice and some salt and walnuts. It was delicious and so potent that I doubt there will be any evil spirits around here for the rest of this decade. 

I slathered the pesto thickly onto a large bone-in chicken breast (Does a chicken have two breasts or one? Two, I guess. This was a double -- both boobs -- an entire chest, in other words.) that I bought from that Hog Island Organics place the other day, and I put it in a covered casserole on lowish heat and slow-roasted it. 

Oh, dear. The smell of garlic was fierce! And it was oh-so-delicious and oh-so-tender. After it finished cooking, I was not surprised, but still sad, to see that the lovely green color was all a rather ugly brownish-tannish mess. Not really something I'd like to serve to company, because it wasn't so pretty after it was cooked, but it tasted damn good, that garlic-smeared chicken chest.

And then, to add insult to the potent-smell injury, I made a red cabbage and fresh green onion slaw as a side dish. 

Now, even though there are more scapes to be used, and there is still a bowl of the pesto left, I think we will need to give it a bit of a break for a few days. That, or offend everyone around us with the smell. And this being campaign season, perhaps we should just eat nothing but parsley, mint tea, and brown rice for a few days till it clears out of our system. 

A Locavore Meal and An Excellent & Entertaining Video: Dan Barber, Chef and Scholar

 

A place called Hog Island Organics, which I'd been eyeing for a long time but was always closed when I drove past, was finally open when we went by the other day. I am thrilled with their little place -- the freezer was full of a great selection of locally raised meats and poultry -- beef, pork, emu, chicken -- and that's just what I took note of. There might have been even more things. The prices were great for the meats and poultry, and the eggs were a downright bargain -- two dozen for $4. It's not that far from me, it's convenient on the way to and from the Islands, and I'll be going out there often, though I will have to try to stock up my freezer for winter, because it is only open seasonally. And they don't (yet) take credit cards. The proprietor said she doesn't have a phone line because, being just a seasonal business, the hookup and unhooking charges are exorbitant. She is looking into other options, but in the meantime if you go, bring cash or the checkbook.  

So Sunday evening we had this meal composed of a roasted loin of local pork, together with a salad of mesclun greens and roasted asparagus and sliced radishes from our garden. Mmmm, perfection! 

Recently a friend asked if I save money by growing my own vegetables. At the time I said no, but seriously, this meal was CHEAP. The organic roast cost $16, and we have enough left from it for another meal. The veggies, for all intents and purposes -- well, maybe I'm stretching the truth here slightly, but really only slightly -- after having so many meals of asparagus and mesclun greens this spring, I'm inclined to say that the veggies were just about free. And you just can't GET any fresher or more delicious. 

Another bonus: When I was at Hog Island, I asked about raw milk for my yogurt and cheesemaking. There is a law on the books in Vermont permitting people to buy and sell raw milk, but only in very limited quantities and only direct from the farm and by word of mouth (in other words, no advertising), and honestly, as one of "those people" -- you know the ones I mean -- one of those annoying crunchy-granola-eat-local-go-organic wingnuts -- and being a farm girl who grew up in Vermont and who lives in the Dairy Capital of the state and not much more than a half mile from the St. Albans Co-Operative Creamery, I find it infuriatingly difficult to find such a seemingly simple and natural thing as raw milk. Good grief! I should be tripping over it! I should be having to wipe it off my shoes every time I go for a walk! I should be complaining about the smell keeping me awake at night! 

But no. It's like it does not exist. "No, ma'am, it's like they tell the kids in kindergarten in New York City -- Milk comes from plastic cartons in the supermarket, and Jamie Oliver is all wrong -- milk is not white, but it is pink or brown, is homogenized and pasteurized to within an inch of its life, and has about 24 tablespoons of high-fructose corn syrup per serving in the kiddie size. Beyond that, I don't know what to tell you. Cows? We don't got no cows around here."

Grr...

Even this list is not up to date or complete, but the nice young man behind the counter gave me directions to his uncle's farm, and I think it was his mom who was the proprietor, and she gave me the phone number. So we're golden. When the tomatoes are ripe and the basil is plentiful later this summer, you can bet your sweet patooties I'll be making some homemade mozzarella to go with. Because not long ago I attended a fabulous Italy-themed party at the beautiful home of Mike and Rebecca, and one of their guests served homemade mozzarella that she had made that afternoon. 

I only have two words about it:

LIFE. CHANGING. 

Of course we hit it off like two peas in a pod, and she said if I make my own yogurt, mozzarella is even easier. So oh yeah, baby. She told me where to get the starter kit, and I've already got it. BONUS: The cheesemaker's/buttermaker's grade of cheesecloth that was in the package makes the Greek yogurt all in one strainer batch! It makes it so much better and so much more easily, that alone is worth the cost of the kit.

And this is so timely -- I had just finished writing this post, and my friend and fellow clean-sustainable-local-good-food aficionado Kristen sent me a link to this fabulous talk. 

This guy had me laughing and cheering. I sure hope Dan Barber is one of the next speakers at UVM, what with their new focus on clean, sustainable food production which makes me more in love with the university than I already was. 

Love this! It's 20 minutes long, but I hope you can find the time to watch it:

Good Bedfellows

Every year I have to review and refresh my memory about companion plantings, and sometimes I stumble upon something new to me. The compendium of garden knowledge out there is astounding, and just when I think I know it all (ha! WILL NEVER HAPPEN!), something new comes along. And then, too, one never knows if the advice one finds in any particular gardening publication (Witness the American Horticultural Society Gardening Encyclopedia which told me 25 years ago to put my asparagus in and don't do anything to it except to weed it. Bogus. It wasn't until I started fertilizing it with compost and blood meal and bone meal and rock phosphate about 15 years on that I ever got more than two or three spears at a time.) or online is worth a whit or if it's just a useless old wive's tale or what. 

Or, as I maintain, as with stereotypes that have developed with good cause or good reason -- i.e., because they are true! -- some old wive's tales are good advice in their own right. Just because they haven't been proven in a scientific double-blind study is not good enough to convince me that they are, by that fact alone, untrue. That is just pure silliness (she says, thumbing her nose at her scientist friends).

That is not to say that I fell off the turnip truck yesterday and believe every single thing I read or hear, either. I'm highly selective in my gullibility.

So lately there has been a lot in this blog about marigolds, and lots of people have asked the question, How do they work to keep bugs at bay? So much information has been written about this and can easily be found by Googling it, so I won't try to recreate it here (I doubt I have the expertise anyway. I love this article on the subject, though, for starters.), but if ever a thing was tried and true over probably centuries of gardening (it was something I learned as a child), it is about the marigolds keeping the bugs away. 

Of course it doesn't keep 100 percent of them away, and someone cautioned that marigolds attract slugs (that has not been my experience) but it helps to create a healthy balance, and makes it unnecessary -- or at the very least, less necessary -- to use pesticides, even in the form of less harmful ones such as pepper water or soapy water. Still, you have to use quite a few of them; one here or there just will not do. 

But of course, as with so many things, humans have managed to fuck it up. How? By creating marigolds with a less offensive smell, of course. Because some people don't like the smell of marigolds (HEY, GUESS WHAT!? Neither do the bugs! -- or perhaps the smell of them confuses the bugs, or perhaps the bugs like them so much they act as decoys and stay away from the other plants; we don't really know the full answer, or at least I don't.), brilliant humans that we are, we have created a NONSMELLY MARIGOLD. We're SO SMARRRRRRRRRRRT.  

Not.

Because of course, if you get the new, non-smelly marigolds, they don't work. So there you go. Yet another wonderful human innovation that sucks rotten lemons. 

But anyway, based on charts like the one in the article I linked above, I have found some amazingly wonderful bedfellows this year. We shall see if they remain companionable and happily supporting and satisfying each other throughout the season, but so far my success with these is so exciting that I want to tell you all about it. 

1. Nasturtiums and cucurbits (squash and cucumbers). I'll be honest: I never knew what to do with nasturtiums before. I grew them once or twice, and I knew that some chichi chefs are now adding the flowers to salads, as they are edible, but after you snap the photo for the blog or whatever, honestly I didn't see their appeal. Pretty, yes, but I didn't get much of a flavor out of them, and how many flowers do you want in your salads, anyway? But now, man, I TOTALLY GET IT, and I practically bought out one of the local nurseries of their entire supply of nasturtiums. They are reputed to keep some of my most troublesome pests away: squash bugs and cucumber beetles. They, and squash vine borers, are the scourge of my cucumber and zucchini and summer squash crop every single year. I'm hoping that the marigolds will keep away the borers, and the nasturtiums are, so far, definitely doing the trick with the other bugs. 

So I planted nasturtiums behind and around my cukes, and all around my zucchini and summer squash plants.

I can hardly stand my excitement. I realize it is early in the season, but my cucumbers by this stage are usually chewed down to NUBS. So far they are thriving and there is nary a bite mark in them. I hope the zukes and summer squash fare as well:

So far, they are lookin' goooooood! 

2. Rosemary, sage and mint, and brassicas (cabbage and broccoli). After reading this in one of those charts online, I went out and got more of each of rosemary, sage & a peppermint plant (I have spearmint and apple mint in my garden already, but the chart specifically says peppermint.). So I planted them near as many of those plants as I could, but it is not really possible to put them around every single one -- it would be cost prohibitive, I think. But the other day, I decided to cut off sprigs of each and put them in the centers of my brassica plants where the moths and butterflies lay their eggs which become the worms that eat the cabbage and make Noonie and others run from the room, screaming, and refuse to eat organic veggies.  

And so here's the thing: As dumb luck would have it, I didn't give two of the plants the rosemary and sage treatment. I really wasn't sure if it would work, and I was running out of time or interest or something, and I never expected such a dramatic result to my experiment. But I went away for a couple of days, and when I returned, this is what I found:  The treated plants are the ones in the photos above, AFTER my days off from the garden. They are all perfectly perfect. Not one worm on any of them, and no holes being chewed in them.The plants below are the UNtreated ones. (Noonie, avert your eyes.)

I kid you NOT. This is for real. It is THAT dramatic. 

RIP, this poor caterpillar, and his brethren that you might also be able to see in other parts of the photo, all of which were probably going to become beautiful butterflies (I am a bit sorry about that), have now all met untimely deaths at my hand, and the affected broccoli plants have been given their rosemary-and-sage-and-mint "salads" in their centers. 

Baby! Green! Tomatoes!

The Glacier tomato variety that I planted from seed in the house and that were stuck right out into the cold frame during that most awful unsettled weather back around May 1st have already set fruit. They are thriving, as are all my other tomatoes that got the same treatment, except for the one casualty -- the Cherokee Purple -- which I replaced with one from a nursery. 

I've never grown this heirloom tomato variety before, but I believed High Mowing Seeds when I read on their seed packet that Glacier belongs in every short-season gardener's plot. The variety gets high marks for flavor, despite being extra early (I've found you often give up something in the flavor department in exchange for getting those early ripeners.), and I can't wait to try this one.  

This plant is in the middle of a black raised bed surrounded by Romaine lettuce:

And THIS one....

...is planted right in an inside-out Moo Doo potting soil bag. I ran out of pots and room and ideas where to put this last straggler, and just threw it in the bag (with sizable drainage holes cut in the bottom -- tomatoes do not like wet feet) the other day. 

This year, due to my impressionable nature (ha!) and peer pressure from Judy and Julie, who said they heard this tip from some master gardener or other, I have planted many of my tomatoes in black pots, and spread out all over the garden, in hopes to prevent any disease from attacking -- or if it attacks, to make it harder for it to spread. Because of this, I have not used my all-time favorite item, the red plastic tomato mulch, which has always made my tomatoes just incredibly super performers. 

I sure hope I don't regret this decision. I'm second-guessing myself on this so much that I might actually be out there soon, draping all the pots in red plastic mulch. If you see me doing so, it's quite all right -- no need to send the men in white coats. It's not all that esthetically pleasing, (and that's an understatement) but it works so well it's worth it. I might just fancy myself the Christo of St. Albans, and drape my whole yard in red plastic. Artfully, of course.

And is anyone wondering how the potatoes are doing in the bags? Here's your answer:

Fabulous.
 

For The Birds

Is there no end to bad punny blog titles? I believe the answer to that is yes. But I hope you paid close attention to the question, as it was quite tricky. 

Anyhoo, yes. Birds. Very important part of the garden. And life. And beauty. And entertainment. And to irritate Mr. Jefferies. He loves to come out the back door and peremptorily bark and chase even the phantom birds that might be on the pin oak enjoying their suet and fruit and meat. And when the huge crows fly by, he anxiously looks up in the sky out of the corner of his eye. Something in his DNA says, "Um. WTF?" As I said, entertainment. But if one of them even TRIES to swoop down and take him for breakfast, I'm getting a shotgun. I'm not kidding.

I love the birds. I especially loved the little brown sparrows that used to come along and melt my heart by picking up Vincent's (my dear departed Bichon Frise) hair off the grass when I cut it. And I especially love hummingbirds. And I especially love the little black birds with yellow beaks (I don't really know what they are) that come along in droves and walk like little British regiments in formation, Hoovering all along my lawn, quickly eating (I assume) hundreds and thousands of insects. 

When the economy was better, all my neighbors covered their lawns with chemicals, but we've always used either no lawn fertilizer, or organic, and those armies of black birdies would come to our lawn and nobody else's. I rest my case about organic. Now the economy is tight, and nobody around here is spending the money to buy their Scott's (or whatever) poison fertilizer, so the birds are branching out a little to their yards, too. But they are still here, and they are really adorable and fascinating when they do their thing like that. Wish I could get a picture -- or better yet, a video -- of them when they are in action. It's really quite something to see.

Hummers eat loads of bugs, and so do the other birds, so they help the garden. I want to have them here. I have lots of natural food for them -- I have pine trees from which they eat pine nuts; I have lots of seedy-headed flowers such as black-eyed Susans and Echinacea and sunflowers later in the season, I have nectar-giving flowers for the hummingbirds. I feed suet cakes now year-round. The birds love it. I used to feed seed, but had problems with it attracting rodents, so I gave that up. I find that the suet cakes attract a much wider variety of birds than my seed feeders ever did, too. In the suet baskets, I also put meat trimmings and stale bread and fruit. It's fun. And I need another hobby. There is always room for one more hobby.

Suet cake.

I'm hoping to attract Orioles back to my yard. I haven't seen one in a few years, but used to have them. They like oranges and other fruits.

 This one had steak trimmings in it, but not for long. It was very popular with the meat-eaters.

And water -- birds need water. The little birds love the water shallow. The robins and other large birds like it to be a bit deeper. So I have fashioned little water stations all around my yard, and it's wonderful to watch the chickadees and goldfinches stop for drinks up near my vegetable garden as soon as I refill their little puddles, and it's almost even better to watch the mama robins take their daily elaborate baths in the deep birdbath in the front of the house.

This one is flat and shallow and holds only 2 cups of water. The wee birds drink from it.

This is a deeper one. The robins have bathed in this for about five years now. 

Just an old saute pan I found in the basement, with a rock in the middle for little guys to step on for taking a drink or having a bath.

An aluminum lid turned upside-down. This is everybody's favorite, including Mr. Jefferies' for a drink when A. Alpha is spending too long outside without taking a break to go inside where his regular water bowl is. I keep this one impeccably clean, because he does like to drink from it.