One Lovely Blog

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Well shucks, thanks Meliovore!  I recently got a sweet appreciation of a little award nomination.  One Lovely Blog Award is a blogger nominated award that seems to be a way of sharing blogs we love with one another. This here blog of mine is less than a year old, but I am always delighted to hear how many people are reading and enjoying it.  Thanks to all you who are reading along and thanks to Meliovore, my mother nominator for thinking of me.

Meliovore is “a blog for people who want to join in the effort to know more about the food we eat, the food products we buy, and in doing a generally better job of coexisting with other species of living things on the planet. ”  In her own witty words:  A Meliovore (n. a pseudo-Latin term, mea culpa) is a better eater. Not better than thou, just better than before; someone who is trying to do a better job of eating more sensibly and sustainably/ less wastefully and thoughtlessly.

YEAH!!!

I tell you, this blog world is a new place to me, but it is really rich with independent thinkers, writers, artists, parents, yogis, cooks, activists, gardeners and simply amazing people who are sharing slices of real heartful lives.  It has given me a great space to share of myself; my beliefs, creations and cultivations & quandaries.  So many thanks for your support!

So part of this award is for people to learn more about you so I must share 7 facts about myself HUMMM…well let’s see…I am never very good at this kind of thing….

I have been to 12 countries and filled a whole passport before I was 30 and feel totally lucky and blessed to boast such a fact

I have three tattoos, two of which I got at the same time on my 18th birthday

I love the morning, but am NOT a morning person

I love gardening but am NOT gifted with house plants

When I grow up (more) I want to have a flower farm

I pray every night for abundant clean water for all and a return to our deeper knowing that will guide humanity out of these destructive and violent ways that seem to dominate our mass actions

I believe living sincerely, consciously, gently and kindly truly can affect wellness in the world we so desperately need

Now I get to nominate 9 of my favorite blogs for this award, a perfect opportunity to introduce the work of my talented friends

Old Recipe for a New World

An Artful Way

Temple Love

Abby Jaramillo Postpartum Doula

Wild 4 Nature

Lots of Life in One Place

And a few I just think are lovely, earthy and delightful

Tend

Bell & Star

A Sonoma Garden
And thanks again to One Lovely Blog

Taming the Wild

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After three weeks away, I returned to the wonderous and wild place we call home.

After Vermont I must admit, everything seemed a bit dry and dusty, but thanks to the drip irrigation and caring eye of our house sitter (thanks Dad), the garden has grown and thrived in my absence; becoming a wild place almost beyond my reach.  I have spent the week pruning back those tomatoes, quite contented at the fruit set… My great experiment in tomatoes growing will be if I can grow and can all my family’s tomato needs for the year.  Last year I bought & canned 80lbs of second(mushy) tomatoes from a farmer friend and my hope is this year I will have the 80lbs myself (Yes, that is A LOT of tomatoes!!) but right now I am down to 2 pints of red sauce and 6 half pints of Ketchup from lasts years preserves, so it looks like 80lbs was NOT too much for this family!!

I am also cleaning the garlic I harvested and put to cure before we left..

11lbs of hard neck and 2lbs soft neck, sorting our seed for next year (the biggest and bestest) then the ones to use right away (any damaged, opened, or mushy) then of course the rest for use throughout the year… I will be curious to see, how much garlic this household needs for one year? Will 13lbs be enough (we eat a lot of garlic!)? Then of course peeling and processing that garlic to make Pesto with the 1lb of basil I picked–(which made almost 1 dozen half pints of Frozen Pesto) and that is just the beginning– (PS I will trade Basil for ANYTHING!!)

There is also choke cherries to pick, the plums & apricots to process, herbs to dry, and oh yeah the fall garden to plant.  Maybe I am not Taming the wild at all!! Should be an exciting month as I watch the Cucumbers plump up for pickles and the potatoes swell underground, I am sure glad to be home and unscheduled to reap these bountiful harvests and pray for rain!

Farms, Gardens, & Greenhouses Oh My!!

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Mountains top poppies

If you have ever read this blog, or know me at all you know of my love of for the wild and cultivated world of nature.  Growing things is not just a hobby but a necessity for me…and it seems most of Vermont as well.  Gardens are present in almost every backyard I have glimpsed, farm stands abound brimming over with maple syrup, berries, cheeses, produce and flowers and even the garden centers are places I would spread a picnic blanket under a tree spend the afternoon.

Rolling green lawns of Rocky Dale Gardens

Yes, I must admit, gardening here is”Easier” here in than in the high desert, things do just grow, seemingly overnight, on their own, with little help from the gardeners. But when I get pining for greener pastures I just remind myself that the weeds & pests also abound here and tackling those critters large and small are the work of the gardeners, often making it controlling opposed to coaxing.

Peeking over a backyard garden gate

Never the less the gardens are a sight to behold and as the perpetual garden tourist, I have spent a large portion of this vacation visiting as many plots as I can, and it hasn’t been hard.  The beauty of garden tourism is that is it mostly free and full of appreciation for people’s kind action and kinship with their land, and if you do end up spending money it is usually to feed your family and goes straight to the farmers hard working hands.  So far we have gotten at least a daily fix of garden tourism and here are the highlights.

Peas taller than Joel!!!

First day I noticed a flyer for the Localvores Garden Tour, which happened to be at a friend’s house, so we drove on over the see these awesome raised beds full of abundant produce loving gardened by the careful hands of an English couple.

Robin and Jenny Share their garden secrets

What a welcome, these crops were just glowing with life and love, we could have stayed for hours just chatting about garden secrets and techniques.

The rain sprinkled down and made everything all the more alive.

Garlic -I asked if they remove the scaps or not, as it has been on my mind this season.  Jenny answered quick as a whip, “Well of course, it may not affect the size of the bulb, but it gives you twice the yield, one harvest above and one below, so the question really is, why not!!

Next we made a special trip up to another county to see Rosemary Gladstar’s Sage Mountain Herb School and gardens. 

She has written many books on herbalism, so much of her herbal wisdom and wonderful recipes helped me through my pregnancy and continue to every day.  We made it a little homage to the medicines that so generously heal us and it was a delight to see them all growing together, emanating their healing songs on the sunny summer day.

Jaengus meets Arnica (growing above violets), friends and allies from day one

This place was amazingly alive and vibrant, I was so glad to be able to share it with my family

Herbal Interns working the hillsides of Sage Mountain

Next the greenhouses…

Von Trapp Greenhouses is just a walk away from us, is an amazingly beautiful hilltop farm with ornamental greenhouses with incredible gardens looking over the valley.

Millions of flowers in bloom and an incredible view of the Mad River Valley

The other greenhouse/ demo garden was Rocky Dale Gardens, nestled on a mountainside offered another beautiful spot to hang and smell the flowers

Borage with Calendula and Poppies

Oh and the farm stands…..

Gaylord Farm

There is Kingsburys which is a farm/ food bank collaboration, there is the Gaylord Farm, a farming family for generations, there is Hartsorns full of flowers and fruit, and there is Knoll Farm where we picked 7 quarts of organic blueberries and bought lambs wool from Icelandic sheep

Bucket of Blue

…I could go on, but I think the Vermont Tourism Dept should start paying me, though we know they don’t need my help, Summer in Vermont speaks for itself!!

A Deeper Shade of Green

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Well, we have found ourselves in a land greener than green. Yes summer is the season of green, especially here in New England, but this little valley seems to be beyond green to this desert mama.  Green building, Green Food Systems, Green Mountains, just down right green dreams up here!!

Green Dreams

My Husband is teaching a class at Yestermorrow

A Design Build School in the Green Mountains

And because of series of events, we have found ourselves on an incredibly long & lovely green family vacation.  We have hung out at the Yestermorrow campus,

whimsical treehouse at Yestermorrow

Walking in the woods and finding wonderful woodland places to play

Crawling up and down the wheel chair accessible tree house ramp, oh what joy!

And of course crossing the road for a summer dip in cool crystalline waters.

The Punch Bowl

We have wondered into the town forest and up to mountain look outs, and that my friends was only in the first day!!

As we share this dreamy green together I am brought back to a time, before green was a thing in my mind, but more a feeling, an experience, an awakening.  Being a New England girl, gone desert dweller, these deep green shades remind me of the nostalgia of youthful summers, waking up the ecological memory deep in my bones, it was these very shades of green that got into me and really ingrained in me just how important green, on every level, is to me.

Shades of Green

You see,  just when I was becoming aware of the world around me, at that impressionable and acutely alert age of 10-13, I was sent away from the sweltering heat of Philadelphia (where I grew up) and shipped up north to fresher air.  I spent four summers at an amazing summer camp, not far from here called Farm and Wilderness.  We hiked these very mountains and we swam in equally clear waters, we wrapped ourselves in wet wool on the rainy days and stripped to nothing on the humid hot ones.  It was in this landscape that I was away from my home and family for the first time, and with all that space around me, I started to come into myself in a way I never had before.  I started to see the world in new forms; wild and raw, through the tops of mountains and the heart of thunderstorms, rather than the mall or cafeteria.  At camp we slept outside and ate what we grew, we played and worked and wandered away from the world of man and into the world of nature.  I had never experienced anything so big, so powerful and so uninterested in me.  Not only was I humbled, but I was soothed.  To be a preteen is such a self an exhaustively self-absorbing task, it may caused resistance at first, but it is truly reassuring to be show that it is NOT in fact all about you, that there are places in the world where no one is watching, judging, or even thinking about you at all.  I was shown that the mountains are wise and steady in ways that nothing in the motion and noise of the city & middle school was to be.  The strength of the wild earth gave me comfort, but also assess to me own inner strength.

Those summers became the highlight of my year, I longed for them with angst I didn’t even know I had and only grew.  My life after that was changed forever; it became dichotomous, once I had experienced something different from that which I had always known, I had two lives, the winter me and the summer me, the home and the away me, the wild me and the tamed me.  Having something other gave me something to long for, to aspire to and to compare my whole life to.  I now could see the vastness of the world, or at least the edge of such an understanding.  I was waking up to the idea that there was more to life than suburbia and after that there was no turning back….As the years passed and things started to shift; home, school and that angst grew & grew,  and it became apparent that the wild me, was the more real me than the tame me, or at least that was the me I wanted to become, the me I wanted to follow down the wooded path rather than the paved highway.  The story continues…..but for now let’s just say….Life went on and big choices were made by a changed, but still little girl, that lead me down many more turns and many more roads…….but now here I sit in the very place that woke me to myself in the world, that shaped my eyes, my heart my hands…and more than anything slipped a treasure into my pocket;  a compass, an invisible, intuitive compass always in the palm of my hand, or deep in my belly, there to guide me.   A compass that knows what awakens me, what enlivens me, what sings to me and what is good for me, it knows me better than I know myself, the me of mountain tops and the bottom of lakes.  The free me, the brave me, the honest me.

It helps me hold things up to the light, see them for what they are and how they stand up to my deepest beliefs.  This internal compass was crafted by this place, these mountains and rivers, these lakes and peaks and the people who showed me how to listen to them.  The seemingly endless summers I spent exploring this inner and outer wilderness, are what gave new my cardinal directions.  Formed by this place I was now loyal to it, or at least faithful to my verdant teachers of nature.  I was a now a lover of the forests, a protector of the green, a fresh righteous young environmentalist and where ever I tread since then I carry with my the lessons I learned here.  I am not just an advocate for the land, but I am kindred to it.  Once we are touched by the earth we are changed forever, we become a deeper shade of green.

Growing up

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Tomato harvest a few years back, this year hoping for even more!!

We are going for it this year in the garden.  We made a big investment in compost, drip tape and mulch, as well as time, effort & love.  In exchange I am really hoping to yield some serious garden bounty.  We now have 85 tomato plants out back, over a dozen varieties, in our newly dug garden.  We have planted, mulched and now it is time to stake so we can actually get at that fruit.  We planted pretty intensively, as the garden is freshly dug and filled with lots of compost, we well as tons of leaves and Straw.  Technically we could just let the tomatoes ramble all over the ground, which some people swear by,  for easier harvesting and better use of space we will trellis.  Trellising also keeps those precious fruits away from pests and robbers.  There are lots of ways to do so and gardeners love to debate about it; Towers, Cages, Remesh, Twine, but guess what I picked….Yep you got it, Willow.

Lots of fresh-cut willow

Remember my willow fence, well the willow patch by the river just keeps giving and actually the more I prune it back, the better the yield.  I harvested, yes, 85 tall thick straight willows, (it is a lot but the patch is huge and it barely makes a dent, I am always careful to wild craft gently and respectfully) I will use one for each tomato plant.  The inspiration, you see was Italy……

The Cinque Terre, Italy

We were there a few years back attending Terra Madre,

Proud Bean Farmer at Terra Madre

an international gathering of Slow Foodies, which is totally amazing and really worth learning more about… but more than a food tourist, I am a farm tourist.  I love nothing more than seeing the gardens of a place, touching the soil, smelling the blooms.  In fact I plan on reporting back here in my own personal column about my garden tourism, but that will have to wait for a rainy day….Back to tomatoes…..Here are some trellis’  we saw while traipsing the Italian countryside.

Tomatoes in a hoop house in Tuscany, Italy

Tomato trellis in Tuscany, Italy

Seems to me the basic idea is just one vertical stake per plant with one strong cord across the top holding them all in place. So with 85 willow, some Cedar Posts, and tie wire, this is our Whimsical version of Italian style tomato staking.

Willow leaning in on one tie wire line pulled tight between cedar stakes

Now when you grow intensively like this you generally prune tomatoes as well.  I will be training each plant up one stake and will be pruning to one main stem.  Here is a video I found that explains this well from Fine Gardening, another twist on this is from Johnny’s Seeds which includes twine weaving for trellising.  Tomatoes don’t NEED to be pruned, but if you are growing intensively it is good idea, just to avoid too much vegetative mass rubbing against each other creating opportunity for disease to spread as well as encouraging the plants to put their energy into fruit rather than shoot.

Each plant is tied to it’s stake with reused bailing twine, don’t throw that stuff out, it is good & strong, and lasts for years and years!

So there you have it, Let’s hope they grow up well!

June Gardening=Mulch!!

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AHHH, Yes you may take a deep breath, everything is in the ground, water system set up, things are growing, sun is shining and so now what?  We pray for rain & wait of course for the bounty of our hard work to come rolling in….

Planted up and ready to grow

but wait one more thing.

MULCH!!!

It feels to me like this may actually be the single most important thing about southwest gardening.

All that precious water simply evaporates away if you don’t mulch, all those little weeds grow up too quickly if you don’t mulch….

and that soil, well it just bakes to hard clumps if you don’t mulch,

and what about all those critters who need to be kept moist and cool, they are lost without mulch cover!!…

So my friends mulch if you can, and generously!! Here is an article that will tell you all you need to know and more about mulching from Organic Gardening and here is another about a straw mulch extremist who I adore, Ruth Stout.

Ruth Stout in a bed of straw

But if you would rather not click away just yet, here is the short of it:

I use old cottonwood leaves, because they fall on my garden and my neighbor rakes all that fall on his yard, bags them up, and passes them over the fence to me so it is a no effort system, so if you have such a no effort system, do that!!

But I also use straw.  I prefer old straw, half rotten and wormy if possible.  I try to buy a few bales every year and rot them down a bit, but if you used some for a chicken house, compost bin or garden bench you want to retire this season, perfect!!  If you must buy new, well do what you have to do, but they seem to be going up in cost every minute!!

Now a word about straw…Straw is a wonderful mulch for Southwest gardening.  If you live in a wetter area like I know some of you do, straw, when wet a rotting can harbor mold, slugs and all kinds of stuff you may not like in your garden if you live in wet place so read the article above to find what the best mulch is for your area….

…Here in the southwest straw is great but only one problem…..it blows away!!  Most likely you have wind in your garden, and once dry, straw blows away very quickly, so here are a few tips on making straw mulch stay put.

Sheets of mulch in the cattle tank, so none is lost in the mulching process!

1- Sheet Mulch-Straw bales come apart in layers, or sheets.  Leave them be!! Don’t shred the straw into a million strands, though kids love to do that, leave the sheets and just lay it down flat, like tucking in those little veggies under a blanket (kids learn to love that too).  The bales will naturally come apart in sheets about 2 inches think, and that is fine, wonderful & thick and good.  If you work around what is planted and make a huge blanket over your garden, only what you leave holes for will grow.  This method is great because the straw is matted together and doesn’t blow away as easily.

Straw bales break apart naturally into sheets

2- Pre-soak your straw– even if it is older, straw can always benefit from pre-soaking.  I like to use our cattle tank, but a wheel burrow works just fine too, or a baby pool, whatever you have.  Break the hay into sheets, lay in one layer in the bottom of your pool, and cover with water.  Let steep over night and the next day take the sopping wet straw and tuck those plants in.  Also a great job for kids, (who don’t mind getting wet and dirty)It is ok if it fall apart a little bit, it is inevitable.  If you can’t pre-soak, post soak.  Mulch well and just water the heck out of it with a hose.  If your garden is on drip irrigation you may need to do this anyway once in a while to just keep it down.

Old straw soaking in rain water

3- Weigh it down– Traditionally mulching was done with rocks in many fields out here in the high desert.  Rocks keep in moisture, create thermal mass, and suppress weeds…so why not mulch with them now?  Many people still do rock mulching, but I find a combination works well when straw mulching.  Flagstone is great because it covers a lot of surface without being to hard to carry and you can step on them, river rock is good too…I actually had a pile of old tiles I use for my jewelry markets lying around (resting this season), so I layed them on my mulch to keep it from blowing away and so far so good, though my garden looks a bit like a kitchen floor which I am not so sure about, hmmmm…..

Sheets of soaked straw mulch covered in stray kitchen titles to weigh them down, catch rain water, provide thermal mass, and suppress weeds.

But I tell you, since I did this mulching a few days ago my garden seems to be beaming with delight, I truly think the plants love mulch.

Tomatoes delighted by mulch

So mulch, well and mulch often and happy waiting for that garden bounty, I know I am!!

Family Gathering

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Oh summer is here, and the gathering has begun!  I feel so lucky to be a part of a family that loves gathering as much as I do (at least my husband does, baby is happy to be carried along wherever we are, especially if we are outside, such a great little guy!!)

Along for the ride

As the garden comes into it’s own and we wait patiently for it’s gifts, we look out into the wild for summer fare.

This little excursion was in search of Cota, a wild herb used traditionally in these parts forever for stomach ails and kidney support….a couple of years ago we found an amazing spot and harvested on the summer solstice.

Cota Harvest 2008

This year everything appears to be a little early, so we went in search…unfortunately the meadow got bulldozed and a horse was happily reigning over the spot…with not one Cota plant under foot….Luckily we still have some from that year!!

Summer gathering (pre station wagon)

This time we did come across an amazing Alfalfa stand

Alfalfa patch

And got to take a dunk in the old Rio Grande.

Sitting by the river

Just down the road we found Mulberries falling from the trees!!Mmmm.

Joel always prepared to pick!

Oh how beautiful

Mulberries in various stages of ripeness

And right across the street these ancient gifts..

Secret map to more mulberries?

And on the way home, we found the wild cherry stands, once I pick all ours, I will be back!! Grandpa is now our neighbor and makes a mean pie!!  Looking forward to that family gathering as well!!

Flower day

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It seems everyday is a flower day these days, but none quite like today. The moon was in Libra……..So thus a flower day in the biodynamic calender, so I planted out Snapdragons, Verbascum, Thonia, and Calendula, cleaning out the greenhouse so the tomatoes, cucumbers and basil can now go full force.

…But as I planted and watered and doted on my beloved flowers I got an amazing show from the Oriental Poppy off in the corner of the garden, minding her own and only business of blooming.

At 7am she looked like this…

Pushing off her little hat, showing her blooming face to the world for the first time

And then by 11am she was open for pollination…

Full of powdery pollen

By 2pm she was all a glow in her glory….

Unfurling to the sun

Then when the light hit just right in the afternoon…

All a glow

By evening they had started to tighten back up…

Curling back in for the night

And I was reminded of one of my favorite Quotes by

Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

Though for only a few days, she shall remain open

I hope you too are enjoying these glorious flower days!!

Picnic Ready

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Oh how I have been dreaming of an outdoor kitchen.  I don’t know about you, but I have grown tired of the kitchen…not only is it hot in there, but it is in there… aka not outside where we want to spend all of our time lately.

I prefer to grow food rather than cook it anyway, but mostly because I just love being outside.  So an outdoor kitchen….would be the answer to my prayers….but in the meantime I have been figuring how to eat well outside, while spending as little time as possible inside…. yes the picnic…So I thought I would share a few recipes I have been delighted with lately and if you have any tips, recipes or secrets of summer food….please share.

Crossing my fingers for another abundant year in the garden

The idea behind all this of course, is you spend a day in the kitchen and then freeze your picnic ready snacks so you can grab them, throw them in the picnic basket and by the time everyone is hungry, food is thawed and perfect for munching.  These recipes are for Killer Hummus, Pita from scratch, and Whole Wheat Sourdough Pita, as I am a big sourdough fan.

Freeze hummus in little jelly jars so there is enough for one picnic at a time. Pita of course can be cut up and frozen as well.

All are easy and seriously good, and of course freeze really well so they are ready when you are to go outside.

Ode to Flowers

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My flower garden is in full glory right now, humble compared to most, but so inspiring to me.  I am not the first human to be inspired by flowers, I believe almost all of us our.  How could one resist such splendor, color, scent, symmetry… Some paint flowers, others weave words about them….I spent most of Monday trying to mirror the soft peaches and light greens of the roses in my jewelry making, attempting in my own way to mimic them, to be guided by them, to honor them in their perfect beauty…..

The sweetest smelling soft country roses outside my front door

This is what I came up with

These danglys

And this to match

Pink and green!! Love this combo

And this

Rose buds on a chain

On our walk I feel in love with the wild sweet peas, fushia, light green and white…….I guess that is the essence of my creative process, not something I write about often, or even know how to put into words.  It is much more an experience of beauty that guides my hands and imagination….Hmmmmm what will I make today?

Light through the sweet peas