Weather has been gloomy and rainy and wet here for quite awhile. I know lots of people who have been complaining a bit, either good-naturedly or not-so-good-naturedly. To which I have been replying, "I don't know what everyone is complaining about. It's a lovely March day."

This morning while I was out for groceries, I stopped by the Home Depot to buy tomato plants for Frame 1. Also got a pair of big shears so we can trim bushes more easily. One tomato is a "Sweet 100's Tomato," so named because it's about 100 days from planting the seed to maturity. The other is an "Early Girl." I'm figuring it will bear sooner, and this way I will have staggered tomatoes. In theory.


This afternoon the sun has decided to come out, and it's fairly glorious. Both girls are napping at the same time. Truly, the end times are nigh. 

More garden stuff!

The rhubarb, sadly, appears dead. Nikki says that hers died during that freak April snowstorm. I bet mine did, too, and I just didn't notice for a few weeks. Such is my devotion to the tiny plant-based life forms in my care. *blush of shame*

The raspberry canes are flourishing, as are the sugar snap peas. Over the Memorial Day weekend I built the peas a rickety trellis out of chicken wire and leftover metal bars from the basement kitchen remodel, so now they will have someplace to twine.

The new sugar pumpkins have come up, over in Frame 2. There are at least 5 of them. Their little leaves are already dark green from all the sun, as opposed to the pale-green sickly white ones I had in my windowsill a month ago. That entire frame is going to be just completely filled with pumpkin plants. :-)

In Frame 1, in addition to the peas, we also have carrots, a whole bunch of radishes, and -- amazingly -- some spinach! And one lettuce plant!

Half of that frame remains unplanted. I think I'm going to fill it with a couple of cherry tomato bushes once the weather warms up.

The herbs in my windowsill are all doing well, and I'm trying to figure out which ones to plant in larger pots on the deck and which ones to plant in the ground outside, and where those patches of ground should be. Tonight I need to look them up in the Western Garden Book and find out whether my cilantro, et al., are hardy in this particular zone.

Maybe I can devote tonight to gardening and and poetry stuff, instead of just endlessly wasting my time reading articles on the internet. :-/

Thank goodness I got out into the yard yesterday morning with the hypermuffin.

It was right during the "Prairie Home Companion" broadcast with the results of their sonnet contest -- Jen, who has a secret LJ she just told us about but in which she never posts, juniperjournal -- actually called me to alert me that there were Sonnets Being Read On The Air. But I decided to garden instead, and it's a good thing I did!

The rhubarb rhizome, about which I was (and still am!) so super-excited, had been completely overshadowed by some fast-growing, tall weeds! I cleared them away and watered it, and hope that it will be fine. I'm sure it will be. Rhubarb is sturdy.

Realized that right now, I have zero (0) afternoons at home WITH Andrew here as well -- during his "weekends," I'm at work in my office, and during my weekends, he's at work in his. Making it impossible to do any afternoon gardening, because I can't watch the toddler AND the baby AND garden at the same time, especially if it requires a trip to the store to buy dirt.

So I took today off work to "get stuff Done." Also influencing my decision: (1) big protest march in downtown Seattle today, probably snarling up my commute home if I had gone in, and (2) feeling yecchy.

Because of the feeling yecchy, I didn't really want to garden, but I girded my loins and did it anyway. I bought 9 bags of dirt at reasonable prices, weeded the second frame, dumped in 6 bags of said dirt, planted the two pumpkin seedlings that have been festooning my windowsill for the past month, and mulched the heck out of them.

Witness:

State of the Garden!

I planted a few rows of lettuce, spinach, and bok choy on Tuesday. We'll see if they germinate properly. I have some more of those seeds to save for a later staggered planting, if these ones germinate well.

Yesterday Nikki brought a packet of pumpkin seeds for Vivian. It'll be fun to start a pumpkin plant and have Vivian help water it and watch the pumpkins grow. A very child-friendly plant.

Nikki also bought me a rhubarb starter! *squee* 



I have a hawthorn tree, too, but while Wikipedia informs me that its young leaves can be eaten in salads and the haws themselves can be used to make wine, jelly, and tinctures, I'm a bit hesitant to try to turn it into food or food-like substances without a guide who knows what she's doing. I ate candied haws in China, but I'm not sure about whether those were from the same species of hawthorn as the one in my yard. Nor am I sure how to candy a haw.

(EDIT) I remembered that I also have lavender -- which isn't really a foodstuff, but can be used for tea and possibly other tincture-related purposes -- and, of course, the potted lemon tree inside, which bears one cute little lemon a year, perfect for tossing into the juicer with some other stuff. Anyway.

Happy Holy Saturday / Low Saturday / Black Saturday (Sábado de Gloria) / White Saturday / Silent Saturday (Stille Zaterdag)!

Remember the other week when I posted about Charlemagne's edict on medieval gardening? I Googled around looking for the list of herbs he'd instructed his subjects to plant, but apart from a few references to the list and maybe a few items cherry-picked (heh) out of it, I couldn't find the actual list anywhere. Maybe in German, but I'm not going to learn German just for this. Sorry, Germans.

In the back of my mind I thought I'd written a paper once that quoted this. So just now while both girls were napping I dredged up my "Random Research" folder and flipped through old papers until I found "Medieval Herbal Medicine," which I wrote in 1997 for my "Seminar on Monasticism" class at St. Olaf.

And what do I find but a big beautiful paragraph-long quotation, from young-me to older-me. Well, actually from Charlemagne, circa 795 CE. Quotation:

"After the fall of Rome, gardens and vegetables are not mentioned at all in the West until 795, when Charlemagne issued his Capitulare de villis vel curtis imperii, instructions for the administration of towns under his sway. Charlemagne's edict tells his subjects what he expects of them:

We desire that they have in the garden all the herbs namely, the lily, roses, fenugreek, costmary, sage, rue, southernwood, cucumbers, pole beans, cumin, rosemary, caraway, chick pea, squill, iris, arum, anise, coloquinth, chicory, animi, laserwort, lettuce, black cumin, garden rocket, nasturtium, burdock, pennyroyal, alexander, parsley, celery, lovage, sabine tree, dill, fennel, endive, dittany, black mustard, savory, curly mint, water mint, horse mint, tansy, catnip, feverfew, poppy, beet sugar, marshmallows, high mallows, carrots, parsnips, oraches, amaranths, kohlrabis, cabbages, onions, chives, leeks, radishes, shallots, garlics, madder, artichokes or fulling thistles, big beans, field peas, coriander, chervil, capper spurge, clary. (Citation: Helen Morganthau Fox, Gardening with Herbs for Flavor and Fragrance (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1933, reprinted Dover Publications, Inc., 1970), p. 45.)"

Whew! Now I know what to plant this weekend, thanks to Helen Morganthau Fox... and Charlemagne! 

So, I completely missed him because I was off at an appointment, but lesserseattle came by today to finish off those raised beds.

3countylaugh also showed up most unexpectedly, delightfully, and quite usefully, spending all sorts of time digging through my crazy rocks and helping redirect the toddler from getting in our way. You can come over and help me with home and garden projects any time you like! :-)

Here is before:



After is:

Today, two 6x6 raised beds for gardening magically appeared in my yard, thanks to our generous, handy, and dashing friend John B. (lesserseattle) . :-)  OK, there was some usage of power tools and some assembly required, but the process appeared pretty magical to me.

First, Nikki came over to help dig and prepare the ground, as well as helping with child care. She had to leave in the early afternoon, before the hypermuffin woke up from her nap, but she helped a lot with the wren, and generously loaned me her cast iron pitchfork to use in our insanely rocky yard.

There was a rough-ish period during which I helped John and also ran around after the toddler while the infant napped upstairs. Things were getting hairy, but then just as all seemed lost, I was so relieved to see aawhitewood, 3countylaugh, and Aarron (do you have an LJ username? You must!) brighids_own appear at the perfect juncture to help with both child care and with bed assembly. Hooray for people! Thank you!

Tomorrow John hopes to rig up spots on the frames for flexible plastic tubes to make a "cage" over the top to be tented with clear plastic for low-cost greenhouses. Then I will sink them into their spots, and then sigh as I realize How Much Dirt we will have to buy to fill 'em up. :-)

Here's an update on the state of the Warrens.

Andrew's been sick for days. I am working from home this morning instead of going to downtown so I can take care of the baby and let him get some much-needed sleep. Poor guy.

It was a rough weekend, what with him being unable to help with child care for large chunks of time. I am so happy that today is a "daycare day" for the hypermuffin. So. Happy. All kinds of rainbow-colored, Hallelujah-Chorus-singing happy. I love her to pieces, but I wish she had an "off" switch somewhere, you know?



Anyway. It surprises me how happy this gardening project is making me (esp. considering I haven't actually done a lick of work yet, only reading about work and planning to do work).

Time to get on the muddy boots and go out and start digging up the ground. That'll bring me back to reality pretty quickly. ;-)

(EDIT) Check out the work I did on my "lunch break."

Do you think this soil is too rocky to use? I'm thinking once I pull out all these pretty tumbled river rocks, I won't have to buy gravel to edge the beds. ;-)

I've been pretty busy since 2004 with the pregnant / baby / pregnant / baby thing.

Well, now the wren is almost 9 months old, and I have some hope that after much travail, eventually the hypermuffin will become a productive member of society. I feel as though I finally have time to -- gasp -- start gardening.

I need more edible things in my yard. What if the recession turns into stagflation and our life savings is only enough to buy a loaf of bread? Unlikely, but how awesome would it be to have a garden under those conditions. We'd have to sleep next to it with a rifle to prevent theft, though. Luckily we can transform tatterdamelion's apartment into barracks for our makeshift militia...

Wresting my mind back from post-apocalyptic visions, I ponder What To Plant this spring, after installing (or paying someone to install) a raised planting bed just inside the front gate, in the sunny area.

Tomatoes, undoubtedly. YUM, yummy yummy tomatoes. Hot chile peppers, maybe? Lettuce? (Weird lettuce varieties? Endive? Arugula? Radicchio?)

Herbs? I have some parsley in the bed outside tatterdamelion's front window. Basil, rosemary, chives? Mint? Ohhhhhhh, how I love fresh mint. Hey, maybe I should look through Silk Road Cooking and see if there are any "strange" herbs I could grow myself rather than buying.

I remember my Medieval Studies major from lo these many years ago, and the big list of recommended plants and herbs from Charlemagne's "Capitulare des Villes." I wonder if I still have that list around in my files. It was a very, very impressive list... perfect for a large-scale medieval abbey that needed medicines and foodstuffs for hundreds of people. Less useful for a household of two adults and two under-3s.

Then again, once the barracks downstairs are completed, we'll have to feed and tend to the wounds of our rag-tag, makeshift army. Comfrey, burdock, and quince may be in my future after all..... 

It's been a strange day for Things Being Where They Are Not Supposed To Be. Or possibly, for Things Escaping From Their Normal Constraints.

Example the First: Ivy.

It's almost 1:00 on Saturday. So far this weekend I have:

• Made bacon & eggs for Andrew, the hypermuffin, and me
• Introduced the wren to our Jumperoo -- she likes it!
• Planned the week's menu
• Taken hypermuffin to the grocery store to acquire groceries for said menu
• Run around outside with the hypermuffin
• Grabbed pruning shears and gone to town on the holly and the ivy. 'Cuz they are both full-grown. And of all the plants that are in my  yard, it's those two that really cheese me off. </music>
• Surveyed the massive pile of severed foliage (also including juniper and hawthorn branches plus some weeds) and left it for later and/or Andrew. Lame, I know, but I really need gloves if I'm going to deal with the holly again, because ow.
• Made insanely healthy lunch: Orange Tofu, Soba Noodles w/ Sesame Oil and Chives, and the Watermelon / Basil / Feta salad posted about by splagxna a little while ago. (I left out the kalamata olives, much as I love them, because they are like $12 a pound.) MMMMMM!
• Cleaned up kitchen from my exertions.
  

I have definitely  earned myself a nap. :-)

First, there was MEAT

After putting Vivian down for her afternoon nap today, polytrypos and I finally saw "300," a movie which everyone we know saw in the theaters (except other parents of small children). Since it came out I had heard so much about it and seen so many spoofs, notably the "United 300" spoof I posted awhile ago, that the original was almost anticlimactic.

I'm afraid I spent pretty much the whole movie picking apart the historical inaccuracies, or else saying "That's an actual line from Herodotus" whenever they got something right.

It did, however, have all the "man candy" one could possibly hope for. Much meat was showcased in service of a glorious death in the name of freedom. Or something like that.

And then, there was MORE MEAT

Our friends John (lesserseattle) and Lupa threw a barbecue this afternoon -- a "Meat and Margaritas" party, complete with a bratwurst taste test.

(Verdict, by a 7 - 2 margin with three abstentions: The brats boiled in El Cheap-o Budweiser were better than the brats boiled in the fancier microbrew.)

The girls and I came home , leaving polytrypos there to enjoy tatterdamelion's regular every-other-Saturday-night game. We used to host this game, and I have to admit that it's sooooo nice to just come home and relax (as much as I can relax while looking after these two) instead of hosting. Lazy in my old age, I guess.

John and Lupa have really done an amazing job of landscaping, all pretty much with their own four hands. The back yard is for relaxing while the side yard holds all kinds of vegetables, fruits, and herbs -- zucchini, Swiss chard, beds for lettuce, Brussels sprouts, chives, basil, two kinds of oregano, strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers -- and there was probably more, but I was so amazed my eyes were full. :-)

I told John that I'll need his advice when it comes time to start gardening. This year has been taken up with the Baby Project, but maybe next summer I can at least plant lettuce...

I finally repotted our little lemon tree a few weeks ago. Although it has some healthy-looking, glossy leaves, and green stems, I have to admit that I have been a very bad plant-momma -- it has a grand total of THREE healthy-looking, glossy leaves.

Repotted it in a much larger pot, with nice fresh nutritious soil, and watered regularly, and stood back to see whether its life force would reassert itself.

And in a springtime miracle, sure enough, tiny green buds are just now appearing, ready to unfurl into new leaves.

Well, Rachel's big party last night ended up going well despite a slow start and too few people to really play the game she had devised. Eventually a couple more people showed up and the evening ended with everyone laughing and making witty comments to each other, so I call that a win.

If things go well, the kitchen cabinets will be installed today, and that will be the end of Ari and Rachel's kitchen storage problems. Then they will be able to move their things downstairs again, and I will be able to start locking the door up to our space again. All this time, it's just made me so uncomfortable to know that when I'm gone my space is unlocked... even if only from the basement. I guess I'm just paranoid, or private.

Another beautiful morning! I'm typing and looking out through our dining room window, and I can see the Olympic mountains lit up in the dawn's light, and the little strip of Puget Sound that is "ours." We didn't look for a house with a view, but since we have one, I'm continually surprised by how much it comforts and pleases me to have one.

I guess as a good crabby Cancerian, I need to see water somewhere around. Now, the mountains? It's anyone's guess why I love those so much.

Now that my little potted lemon tree has laboriously fruited, it seems to be losing leaves -- it's lost three in the past week. I'm not doing anything different, so perhaps this is part of its natural cycle? I notice that tiny new leaf buds are forming on the tips of the stems, so I don't think it's dying. (I hope. Since we got it as a wedding present, that would be a not-so-good omen!)