The storm that wasn't

I'm absolutely not complaining. Let me get that out of the way right off the bat.

The weather forecast yesterday morning was dire, indeed. Big storms headed our way from the west, with high winds and lots of thunder, lightning and rain.

Boy, do we need the rain.

We did get a little, half an inch fairly early in the day. And then we waited and prepped and watched the skies. They got lighter. And clearer. The sun popped out. And the mountains to our west literally diverted those storms around us. Some went south, while others went north. We remained in the clear, despite my vessels of water and extra thermos of coffee and five loads of laundry DONE.

I'm really grateful we didn't get hit.

But we could have used a little more rain.

I experimented with dinner a bit, and I'm paying for it. A meal of ground beef with vegetables and rice has my right hip aching again, a pain I haven't had in a very long time. I can attribute it to nothing else but food.

Lesson learned.

My big physical activity yesterday (hah!) was finally pulling out the rest of the volunteer dill plants littering the front flower beds. Even with all the weeds crowding in there, it looks a zillion times better than it did when five-foot tall stalks of dill were obstructing the view.

I don't even like dill. I planted a little bit four years ago so I could add a lovely head of dill to each beautiful jar of pickles I canned that year. That's all I ever use it for. But dill self-seeds like crazy, and you never know where it's going to pop up. Or when. I haven't planted any new dill in four years.

And this is half of this year's harvest. I pulled the other half a couple weeks ago.

Today I will be walking and vacuuming and mopping, I hope. Seems like lately when I take a long walk I'm not much good for anything else, and when I do anything else strenuous or time-consuming I don't walk. But it's going to be a delightful day outside, one I don't want to waste. I guess I'll suck it up and ENJOY!

June 13 - Simply

Simply lovely – dill heads popping up all over the place!

June 6 - Adventure

Adventures in gardening! Dill is popping up all over the place, and I didn't plant it.

Dedicated to Anna and Mark

When I had the falling out with my face-to-face gardening mentors last year, I turned to Farmer Google for much of the food production knowledge I needed. Two of the best resources I found were Anna and Mark. Mark is actually the nephew of a good friend, so I knew about the blog long ago and occasionally looked at it. But within the last year I've begun reading it regularly and have learned so much from them.

They live even more in the middle of nowhere than I do, and have thus learned to be extremely resourceful. I thought of Mark yesterday when I was on the ground trying to fix my lawnmower. Because I don't have a workbench and am not much of a fixer, I had to scrounge around in every closet in the house before I found ONE wire coat hanger. Like duct tape, coat hangers (or any other kind of heavy-duty wire) are indispensable in the toolbox. I was able to elevate and tie up the rod which had come loose and finish mowing the front yard, making only left turns (the rod is bent and scrapes the right front tire if I turn right). The neighborhood lawnmower fixer will take a look at it – again – when he gets a chance, but for now I can at least cut the grass (and add the clippings to the compost pile).

The dill has self-seeded and is popping up everywhere. I sprinkled the center of the herb bed with saved seed, none of which germinated, but there are plenty of baby plants in two flower beds that I will be moving to the herb garden. This is something I think Anna would delight in as much as I do – free food! I planted dill from transplants two years ago, and it has been growing itself every since.

The onions are ready to walk. These Egyptian onion sets actually came from Anna and Mark's farm. I knew NOTHING about Egyptian onions when I planted them. Now that they're growing new sets on the upper leaves of the plants, I realize I probably should have been eating every other plant, rather than waiting to see what happens. But since they're maturing, I will wait until the sets are ready to share with other gardeners I know. There's something magical (to a gardener, anyway) about food that reproduces without human intervention. (See dill in the previous paragraph … heh.)

The big bonanza this weekend, and one I'm sure Anna, especially, will appreciate, was straw, the secret ingredient to a good garden. Straw enriches the soil, improves the tilth and cuts weeding chores to a bare minimum.

I bought 10 bales of straw from a local farmer last weekend, and he said I could rake up all the loose straw on the floor of the barn and bag it up – free – if I wanted it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I enlisted the help of the husband for this job. We spent a good two or three hours moving pallets and raking the perfectly good straw beneath them into THIRTY-ONE garbage bags. I'm guessing each bag holds about a bale and a quarter. All we had to provide was gas for the truck, the bags and our own labor for a yield of about 40 bales of straw (plus the 10 I'd already bought). 

I feel RICH.

Two and a half bags went on the asparagus bed, which got a good kill mulch two summers ago and is just now sprouting a few weeds. I'm tempted to only plant tomatoes in the big garden this year (I put a kill mulch on a third of the garden last fall, in preparation for the tomatoes) and use this straw to improve the remaining unplanted parts. Except I really, REALLY want fresh edamame. And squash. And maybe a few green beans. Heh.

At any rate, it's too wet (still) to do any planting today, so I have time to think about Garden Plan B. I'd hate for all this straw to rot in the bags. It would do so much more good if it rotted in the garden!

Anyway. Thank you, Anna and Mark, for mentoring this old lady farmer from your middle of nowhere to mine. I'm grateful beyond measure. And if you, too, want to be mentored, be sure to add their blog to your RSS feed and pre-order Anna's book, which will be shipping later this year. (And/or download – for a buck each – any of her monthly titles or other e-books.)

The transformative powers of canning

But first, KWAW was inspired by my rant yesterday to post one of his own, and I think it deserves to be read by everyone in Congress, as well as the two principals in the dangerous game being played in our nation's capitol. Do go take a look, I'll wait.

Okay, did that inspire you to call your Congressional representatives? Mine are all Democrats, so I would again be preaching to the choir. I called John Boehner's office yesterday and, as might be expected, I was on "ignore" for quite a long time, listening to snippets of patriotic marches. Yes, really, that was his "hold" music. I finally quit waiting, called back and left a message. (Interestingly, the only way you can send him an e-mail is if you live in his district in Ohio. I'm of the opinion, misguided though it may be, that the Speaker of the House ought to be available to all citizens and, I guess, he is, if you want to write a letter.)

West Virginia has only three Congressmen: one Democrat and two Republicans, but one of the Republicans is a member of the Tea Party caucus, so I think he'll get voted out of office after one term. I don't see the Tea Party surviving this debacle. Am I being naive? Go ahead, I can take it.

November of 2012 can't come quickly enough. I honestly don't know how Congress gets anything done when they have to go through an election every two years. The Tea Party is holding everyone hostage, guaranteeing nothing gets done.

Okay, back to what passes for normal around here.

For Leslie, who has never seen edamame growing:

Each pod has two or three beans in it, The leaves of the plant
are efficient at hiding the tangle of bean pods below.

I'm assuming y'all know what tomatoes and peppers look like, so I didn't photograph them during the salsa party I had yesterday. Basically, I roughly chopped six pounds of tomatoes, three yellow and red peppers, eight jalapenos, two onions, a few cloves of garlic (all from the garden) and a handful of cilantro (from Tiny Kroger), and threw it all in a large pan with a can of tomato paste, some cumin, salt and vinegar.

This is what I have now.

I don't use salsa in the traditional chips-and-salsa way, because my husband and I don't eat chips. Or, rather, if they were in the house, we'd eat them, all in one sitting and then we'd groan about it for hours afterward.

So if I don't buy or make chips, why do I make salsa? I think it's an outstanding addition to a big pot of meaty chili with red beans, and we eat a lotta chili during the fall and winter.

C'mon, cold weather. I'm ready for you.

Thanks for all your comments, and keep 'em coming! And don't forget, if you'd like some dill seed so that you, too, can have your own lifetime supply of dill, let me know and I'll put some in the mail. Contact me at shrinkingknitter AT gmail DOT com, or send a message through Facebook if you're in my Friends list.

And if you're not, why aren't you? Heh.

Giveaway #3: Reaping

This week's giveaway is for you gardeners out there. My dad and I each gave me this book, and I'm happy to share one of them with you rather than donate it to the library, which is what I'd planned to do until I got this harebrained idea to make July Giveaway Month here at Knit. Run. Reap. Eat.

This is a tips-and-tricks book, filled with practical solutions to gardening problems using items and ingredients you either have on hand or can easily get in any supermarket. Well, almost any – my tiny Kroger isn't as well-stocked as a giant Publix or even gianter Meijer's.

Anyway. You should know the drill by now. You have until Sunday at 7 p.m. EDT to leave a comment. Each comment you leave enters you in the contest to win one copy of Supermarket Super Gardens. The winner will be determined using a random number sequencer and will be announced Monday. This drawing is open to U.S. residents only.

Last year when I put a few dill plants in my herb bed I did not know that I would have a lifetime supply of dill. I didn't plant any dill this year, but I estimate that about 30 plants grew from seed. This must be why it's called dillweed, eh?

I've frozen some of the dill heads, waiting for the pickling cucumbers to ripen. I'll dry the lacy little fronds. The bounty of dill, though, is the seed. You can use it for seasoning and you can plant it.

I harvested the seed from just four dill heads yesterday after dinner and got 1.5 ounces – a very generous quarter cup. There are easily 50 more heads in the garden which haven't gone to seed yet.

My husband loves dill bread, which we've been buying from the Amish market down the road. Since they're closed from Christmas to Easter, I guess I'll have at least a few months to make him some.

I shoulda been a farmer. Bonus points if you know what movie that line is from!

This week, everyone's a winner: If you'd like some dill seed, e-mail me at:

shrinkingknitter AT gmail DOT com

with your contact information. I'll send some to you, which you can plant next spring and then you can give dill away on your blogs next year. What comes around goes around. Dill karma!