Friday Foto

Itty-Bitty Amphibian

Was walking through the yard after inspecting my veggie boxes and noticed that there was something (other than the wind) fluttering through the grass.

This little guy was LITTLE! I doubt that he was even and inch long from snout to butt. I tracked him a little before he made his way into the lawn and out of sight.

My Latest Obsession

shishito pepper

Seriously, I have been a little obsessed with this little thing call a Shishito pepper. I follow Gimme Some Oven and last year the author posted about these delectable little dudes by sharing THIS recipe. Since then I thought that if we made it out to Trader Joe's I should look for a package of Shishitos. However, we are almost never in the neighborhood of Trader Joe's which is across town, so it never happened. A few weeks ago I spotted them at Chuck's Produce FRESH! Once I laid eyes on them I decided to get some and finally try that recipe out. Which is great and all, but as soon as we got them home they got "lost" in the fridge and were promptly forgotten. A couple of weeks later I pulled the bag out and they were very sad and very inedible. I hadn't thought about them much since tossing the peppers into the compost.

This past weekend I decided to go and browse around Wilco and Chapman's Nursery. Which were fun and all, but the BEST thing happened after Tom and I went for coffee. I mentioned that I wanted to go and check out the veggie plants at Freddy's - knowing that I wanted to find Shishito pepper plants. I didn't see anything the first time through the peppers, but then BOOM...out of no where they were right in front of me!

I was so excited - so much that I declared that I wanted to buy all of the plants. There were maybe 7 or 8 total - Tom gave me a look. So I settled on three.

As a bonus I got some more peppers at Chuck's yesterday evening. They will not be going bad this time...

(photo credit Gimme Some Oven)

OH. SO. CLOSE.

starting to look like a green/hoop house

We spent most of the morning working on getting the bottom part of the walls done. SUCCESS! Now that the sides are finished I decided to drag some stuff in and organize what I have happening right now. I have allocated the other half of the bench to my garden sista Mary.  The ends need to be "sealed" up, but that should go quicker than the sides.

This afternoon I think I'll head out to visit some places that have garden type stuff and just browse. It's time to get away from the house for a little while.

My dream is getting a little more real...it's time to dream just a little bigger and see what happens!

Friday Foto!

It's finally coming together!

In the last week the Groophouse took a giant step backwards - like all of the panels were taken off. Tom decided that MOST of the hot house should be done with clear panels. Okay fair enough, but it was just so discouraging just looking out there to see the hoops and nothing else. So earlier this week more panels were purchased.

It was starting to become very apparent that a friend of ours would not be available to lend a hand so in an effort to be helpful I gave Tom 20 minutes of my morning time yesterday and we were able to get a couple of the upper panels attached so he could at least work on setting the screws to the rest of it. Then after we returned from a late day appointment in Battle Ground after work yesterday we got dinner going pretty quick and tried to get out before it started raining again. At the end of yesterday I think there was only one more panel attached. By that time my hands were freezing and the rain was more steady. It was time to stop.

Now this morning - 24 hours later and almost professional doing this panel attaching routine I had a few extra minutes to offer up before needing to get on with my day and we were able to get a total of 4 panels installed which made it more "water proof." what's left now would be the bottom of each side.

This project has been in progress since last August. I have crazy ideas a lot of the time and Tom tries his best to indulge the crazy. Well, a lot of the ideas are not toally crazy, but I do think that all of the more recent projects have been my idea which required a lot of work on Tom's part. There have been a few changes in the design, but nothing terribly major. It's nice to see that this might actually be done before we can say we have been working on it for a year!

I am lucky to have a husband who is handy and loves me enough to go with the crazy!

Arugula

Until a few years ago I had never had arugula before. It may have been part of a green salad that I ordered at a restaurant or eaten at a friend's house, but I never specifically went looking to add arugula to my diet.

One year I decided to sow some in one of the garden boxes and within a few weeks I had arugula coming out of my ears! I didn't realize how prolific it could be! It's a good thing that we took a liking to this leafy green because it would have gone to waste. Boo.

this was taken about 10 days ago

One of the first recipes that I came across that included this tasty green was a Prosciutto and Fig Spread Sandwich. Two words: OH. MY. It was so good! Yet, we haven't made it since then...we'll have to fix that mistake somehow.

Just looking at this makes me hungry!
(photo credit: MarthaStewart.com)

I subscribe to a food writer's blog and in today's post was an Arugula Salad recipe that is made up of simple ingredients that most people would have in their kitchen. Go HERE to see the recipe.

It helps to have nice photos of pretty food. I would make this!
(photo credit: Gimme Some Oven)

Doesn't it look good? Arugula, fresh lemon juice, parmesan cheese, olive oil and fresh cracked pepper. Super simple! This will have to make it onto one of our weekly menus...and more than once!

The arugula that I planted this year is a little different that what is shown in the recipe pic above, but we have tons of it! If we love this salad as much as the blog author does I'll have to grow more arugula this summer!!

Enjoy!!

Friday Foto

The peas are starting to send out their feelers! Pretty soon they will be heading up the trellis!!

Roots

Spent some time last night transplanting some seedlings. 

The roots of these little guys are completely fascinating to me. 

It is hard for me to fathom just how intricate these roots are.
How are these plants, while not big, supported by these strands?

Gardens, Seedlings and Tall Grass

There has been little activity at our home the past few days. We took a trip to see the Mariners play in Seattle and my interest in the garden yesterday was very low. So, once I leave this place (work) I'll be good to go and see what's happening in the garden and the growing trays.

On Saturday I transplanted the Cherry Tomatoes into peat pots as well as the four Cabbage starts. During our absence they seemed to all get happy and look like they may have grown a little. Once they are big enough they will be relocated to their new home in the garden in the next couple of weeks.

This was taken on Saturday. As of yesterday they were looking VERY happy.

Mary's hubby and son were working on getting the soil back into the boxes while Mary & I were out doing our "Girl's Breakfast Club" thing which we started up this year. Trying to be intentional and making connections with some of  our not so close friends.

Anyway...

A lot of work happened while we were away. AND a lot was accomplished after we returned. Her garden boxes really add a community gardening feel to our space.

We are ready grow stuff!

While we were in Seattle Mary got some plants and put them in. Upon our return there was a 4 legged mooch sniffin' around. So we got the netting out and at least put it around the boxes that had new stuff in them to at the very least frustrate the deer. A mouth full of netting is not appetizing. Move on deer...nothing more for you to see here.

Gotta protect these guys!

I haven't had much of a problem around my stuff recently, but I only have a few things started and I am thinking that maybe the deer don't like greens that much. They may change their minds once the beans go in. My beans suffered a little last year. This year they will go out in the garden that will allow for them to thrive. Well that's the theory anyway.

A couple of random shots...

The mesclun is really starting to come on!

I love it when the seedlings start looking like what they are supposed to. This is Spinach - YUM!!

Very soonly, the field will be mowed for the first time. The deer hide out in the field when it gets tall and since we aren't always home we can't always keep an eye on what is happening outside. this the visits into the boxes and other tilled up spaces. Another solution that we have come up with would be to extend the fence that we built a couple of summers ago to enclose our garden boxes. The fence isn't as tall as it needs to be to keep the deer out, but it will slow them down a little (I hope). Also, I'm sure that the deer will continue to visit what is planted on the other side of the fence, but I'm not going to fret about that - just as long as our kitchen gardens are mostly left alone.

I plant to start a special space that has some taste treats on a different part of the property to see if the deer can be lured away from our gardens. All I need are plants/seeds and a little time to get that space started.

Garden season is looking good so far! It's been just about a month and so much has happened in that time. 

SO EXCITED!

Friday Foto

I Might Have a Problem

I REALLY like seeds. Most of these are vegetable seeds too. It's so easy to just pick up a packet or two of a favorite veggie or one of somethin that is new. Some of these came from my friend Mary - but the majority of them are all me. I figured out that when I am really excited about something, I will look at whatever it is and add to the "collection"

Pretty soon I'll be looking for flower seeds. I'm thinking of doing a cutting garden along with growing veggies. It would be nice to offer up a nice bouquet of flowers to friends and/or neighbors. And also to put in to my make-shift vases (pint sized Twin Brook Creamery bottles).

Once I start moving toward the rototilled garden space I hope to use what is leftover here in the box in addition to the new flower seeds that I will be picking up soon.

Seeds are inexpensive and plants not so much. I will only buy special plants if there are no seeds, tubers, bulbs etc.

The only problem is that with my love of seed packets there is always leftover and if I don't store them in a place that I will remember...there WILL be duplicates. Oh well, it gives me a chance to see just how long seeds will last. I mean, do they go bad? I don't really know.

This bin might get too small after awhile.

It's Gonna Work!

Over the weekend we had a lot of outside time with having my friend Mary come over to finish up moving her garden boxes. While she was doing that I was making use of the Groop house even though it doesn't have walls yet. Right now I have some trays out and they have been pretty happy. I transplanted some of the bush beans into peat pots and they were happy happy! To me it looked like they grew in the afternoon. Love fresh beans!

This is from the upstair window - this makes my heart happy!

The panels will be purchased soonly and then the hot house will be ready to go! Well, after the panels are actually attached. That is another matter...

Right now everything is a learning opportunity and it has been fun! I am looking forward to experimenting with starting seeds in a protected space and growing things that like a lot of heat in this house. I think this year I will try out growing my salsa garden in there.

One of the possibilities is a community garden or something of that nature. So, Saturday afternoon my neighbor friend walked over to see what we were up to and had mentioned that one of the people that live in their subdivision noticed the activity at our house and asked if we were doing a community garden and she didn't say no...or yes...but she did think to herself, "Not for you" which I thought was pretty amusing.

So, our gardening has been noticed! Very interesting!! I'm gonna keep on dreaming and see what comes...