So I finally decided to take some advice and move to a site that had more natural traffic and more widgets for me to play with. You can now find me online at http://twicecookedhalfbaked.wordpress.com/. I have really loved getting to know blogging and am thankful for Tumblr providing me the safe space to do that.
I nearly forgot that I spent this last week canning like mad! My mom and sister came up from Portland, OR and we spent 3 days canning. We made 3 kinds of pickles, spicy beans, balsalmic garlic, preserved lemons and lemon curd. It was exhausting work, but fun. I am thrilled to see my selves so stocked :)
Borage - the new strawberry! You may remember last spring when my son and I pulled out 200+ strawberry plants. This year, the garden is dominated by borage. Since I hate to pull anything living unless it is a true weed, I let this get out of control. The bees love it though!
So to start off this post, I will simply say, those tree socks are totally stupid! I have to go out and pick up apples covered with socks off the lawn every day. Normally I would just toss the apples onto the compost pile, but now I have to remove their support hose. What a huge waste of time! I can only hope that the other tree I did, the Asian pear, was worth it. It seems to be holding up. Let’s just hope the fruit underneath is as pristine as I had been promised. Seriously.
The rest of my garden is doing pretty well. My heat loving plants (pepper and tomatillos) are not making any progress. They are all still less than 4” tall. I have to say it would be unlikely that we would get any fruit from them. We dug up potatoes yesterday. I have them planted in 3 rotations, so that I didn’t literally have a million potatoes at the same time. After the slugs had their fill, I only have 6 carrots that are growing. A feast! I must say though, that no matter how much blood (plenty - I seem to have lots of blisters and scratches from the blackberries all the time), sweat (it is amazing how hot it gets standing in direct sunlight for even a short period of time) and tears (I don’t really cry, but I definitely pouted about the carrots), and I wouldn’t trade a day in the office for my time in garden. I love my urban farm!! I just can’t wait until next year when I hope to add chickens :)
I recently spent a full weekend putting these little tree socks (they are actually maggot barriers) on 3 of my fruit trees. I had to laugh at myself as I nearly lost my balance from the top of a ladder while trying to gently get these little buggers onto the fruit. It was a ridiculous exercise. I just hope it actually works. I had a neighbor come by just last week and ask me what kind of fungus my tree had - LOL!
So I have been toying with moving to a new blog. A fresh start. Something less banal than this one turned out to be. When I started, I was afraid to stick anything “out there”, including my neck. Since January, when I was unceremoniously SHOVED off the corporate ladder, my life has changed significantly - Thank God! I am not sure that I ever thought the things that came with my life at that time were truly important, but they somehow seemed inescapable. I worked so hard for things that I wasn’t even attached to. Why? I don’t fully know yet. However, I have found a kind of freedom and can’t be thankful enough.
I am now working on courage. I spend a great deal of time fantasizing about owning a farm and having chickens and dogs and seeing my kids riding off on their bikes into the dusty fields without worrying about them doing the right thing while they are out. I can see myself being OK with far less than I have today. Maybe even being relieved. There is a lot of stress to “owning” things in this world. Maybe it is a mid-life crisis or something akin to that, but I think I may have actually figured out who I really am and what makes me happiest.
Now I just have to have the faith and courage to do it. Stay tuned…
