Week 20: Fasting & Food

Days 130-136:

The day I fell down the stairs...again.
(This is where it happened; notice the lack of handrail.)

Just hangin' out, drinkin' some juice.

Photo Challenge Week 19: Grass & Garden

Jaymz, Daniel, and I have been sick again this week, which is why I'm so late posting these photos. I hope you'll wish us all good health soon!

Days 123-129:

Drawing on the floor of the courthouse
while Jaymz and I do paperwork for our name change.

I spent the afternoon cutting down tall grass
in the back yard...and I got a little messy.

Ear protection for everyone!
(We tilled the back yard this morning.)

Sunday Surf: Weeds and Poetry

Here I am yesterday, all covered in grass.
Many thanks to my brother for taking this photo.

I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon cutting down tall grass and weeds in our back yard with a large weed eater we rented from a local shop. I kept unearthing new and interesting things in the yard: a section of a 2x4", a shingle, pieces of brick, a 4' metal post anchored in the ground and bent sideways.

Working on the yard has been meditative for me in a way I truly didn't expect. I feel like we're slowly reclaiming this property after years of misuse and abuse, dedicating it to a new phase of its history. It feels so good that I'm planning on doing it again all day today!

Another thing I did yesterday was to publish this giveaway of two copies of my friend Lauren's poetry book, Poetry of a Hobo Mama. As national poetry month comes to a close and as Mothers' Day draws near, it's a perfect time to add Lauren's book to your library. Poetry of a Hobo Mama would make a lovely addition to your poetry collection or a wonderful gift for a special mother in your life.

I hope you'll take time to read how much Lauren's writing has touched my life, then enter to win one of her books!

Here are a few of the great things I've read lately:

Viva Portlandia

Welcome to the Earth Day Blog Carnival! 

This post is part of the 2012 Earth Day Blog Carnival hosted by Child of the Nature Isle and Monkey Butt Junction. Each participant has shared their practices and insights of earth friendly, environmentally conscious, eco-living. This carnival is our way to share positive information and inspiration that can create healing for our planet. Please read to the end of this post to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.  

Happy Earth Day!

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We went for a family bike ride last evening. Jaymz was in front, Daniel and I were on my bike in the middle, and my brother Matthew brought up the rear. We bought new bikes for Jaymz and Matthew last week from a local shop that repairs and re-purposes old bicycle parts into "new" bikes for sale. Matthew got a fixed-gear bike, and Jaymz was lucky enough to find a frame tall enough for him, which the shop owner then built into a custom bike for him. How cool is that?!

In light of Earth Day, I got to thinking about all the ways this beautiful City of Roses makes it very easy (and appealing) for our family to be environmentally conscious.  

Here are a few of my favorite eco-friendly things about Portland:

Starting Seedlings on the Cheap

I love gardening! I'm excitedly making plans for the garden spaces at our new house, though I suspect we won't get much going in time for this year to be a very fruitful one. In any case, I'm excited to host today's guest post from Lauren at Hobo Mama, full of helpful tips and frugal ways to get your home garden going. Please read to the bottom to learn more about today's guest writer.

It's the perfect time to start some seedlings for your summer garden (if you live in the northern hemisphere, at any rate). And you can do it successfully with little fuss and expense and not much in the way of special equipment and supplies.

Why start seedlings inside?

Starting seeds indoors is great for warmth-loving plants that wouldn't enjoy an early dip in the cool soils and that need time to grow before it's consistently sunny enough for them to make the transfer outdoors. Many summer vegetables fit this description — tomatoes, peppers, and melons being among the prime examples — as do some annual and perennial flowers. If you live in a low-sun climate (such as my home region of the Pacific Northwest), even more veggies benefit from starting indoors. Check the seed packet in question or a planting calendar for your region for guidance on whether and when to start indoors, and when to transplant outside.¹

Now, couldn't you just buy ready-grown seedlings from the nursery or home improvement store (or, heck, Walmart or Costco)? Yup. And sometimes I do. But here are some reasons to go the seedling route:

1. There's such pleasure in starting plants from their tiny beginnings.
2. It's a fun activity to do with children — a little science experiment in your home.
3. You have access to a much wider variety of plants from seed than what's commonly available ready-to-plant. You can experiment with heirloom and organic varieties and support small local growers.
4. Since the emphasis here is on frugality, starting plants from seeds is cheap, particularly the more years you've been doing it.

 

What if you don't yet have a garden?

If you don't have a traditional garden space available for transplanting, don't worry — there are other options for those of us who are yardless or have green space but not the time to prepare it. Container gardening, for instance, is perfect for small spaces like patios and balconies, as long as the plants get enough sunlight. Some edibles can even be happy staying indoors all year round.

Feel free to experiment — all gardening is experimentation, so don't feel bad if some plants don't make it; it's just a learning experience for next year.

With that can-do positivity in mind, here is how to start seedlings and save some green.

Score some seeds.

Most seeds don't cost very much, honestly. You generally get a whole packet for a couple bucks at the most. But there are ways to be even thriftier.

(Somewhat) Wordless Wednesday: Second Harvest

We have:

Zucchini (from a plant I got on Freecycle), spaghetti
squash, tomatoes (which have finally stopped rotting
from the blossom end), and hot peppers!

Speaking of tomatoes, my hanging cherry tomato decided it wanted to live after all, and it now has lots of these:

I coo at these babies whenever I walk by...they're so cute!

Container Gardening, The Third Year

Each year, the contents of my vegetable containers spill more into the ground, and this year it feels like I really have established a garden! The first year, we had no ground at all by our apartment that we could use, but I grew potatoes (and one onion) in pots. Last year, I used mostly containers and put a few things in the ground, but I had very little overall yield (except for potatoes and onions).

Lavender, which was only about 1" tall last year

This year I've taken over more of the landscaped area in the front, and (as Jaymz pointed out) I've succeeded in bringing a lot more color to the look of the place! I have to admit, seeing flowers instead of ornamental grass (for example) when I walk outside does make the place feel more like home.

More than enjoying it simply for looks (which I do, very much!), I love how gardening makes me feel. I find myself going outside to look at and tend to my vegetables more when I'm having a stressful day. I enjoy seeing how much they grow and change from day to day, and witnessing the effects of my care for them. I can't help but see many parallels between gardening and parenting: the plants grow and change (so fast!) and you never quite know how they're going to turn out, but the process is really the fun part. The thing I find the most fulfilling about gardening is the sense of balance it cultivates in me. I enjoy the give and take, the cyclical patterns, and even the uncertainty of it.

Being able to eat vegetables I've grown in my own garden is also incredibly rewarding. I can't help but feel like I'm making a (very small) difference on the environment by cutting out the middle man for a few of our foods. And undeniably, helping green things grow (at the very least) helps to use up excess carbon dioxide in exchange for fresh oxygen. I also really enjoy learning new things, and it seems that there's never a shortage of things I don't know yet about gardening! It's fun to build my knowledge base through this process.

My garden is still small, but as I look back on how much it's grown in just a few years, I know it won't be long before I have a larger, more productive garden. But for now, I'm pleased with what I have.

Now I'm going to take you on a little tour of the bit of earth I tend (from the front door outward, because that's how I generally experience it):

Welcome.

Greeting you just outside the door is a large pot of very lively carrots. Several of them sprouted flowers recently, and I pulled them up just after I took this photo:

Did you know that Queen Anne's Lace is a type of wild carrot?

Yum! Smallish, but delicious.

Next to the carrots is one of my pots of potatoes. This one had white flowers a while back (and the other potato plant had purple ones).

See? The carrots are on the right. They're mixed colors
(white, orange, purple)...someday I'll know which ones grew the largest!

Then, to the other side of the entrance, most of the other container plants:

From top to bottom: Daphne, oregano, Walla Walla onions,
lettuce, rosemary, hot pepper, red onion (one of these),
more potatoes (with a few empty pots, too)

Some close-ups of a couple of those:

I grew this rosemary from seed this year, and they've grown very fast.
(I gave the third one away; I wonder how it's doing now!)

The pepper plant that defies all logic:

The stalk of this plant snapped almost clean in half at the base (by the rocks)
a month or so ago, yet it continues to grow...and thrive, even!

It has lots of these tiny, perfect flowers.

A little farther away from the house, the front bed (landscaped with lots of obnoxious plants by the rental company) which I'm slowly taking over:

Lavender, of course, as well as beets (bottom right, very small),
spinach (bottom left corner), strawberries (just above that),
watermelon (tiny, top right), and daisies (top left)

I'm not quite sure why the beets aren't doing as well this year, when last year we had many edible-sized ones by this point in the season. Oh well! The watermelon plants, too, are still quite small, but I remain hopeful, since they've grown fast over the past week or so:

Farther out, next to the road, I've planted several varieties of squash. We've opted to allow the native flora to take over the parking strip (generally, weeding out nettles and dandelions, mostly). You can see in last year's photos that after one Spring of neglecting the mulch cover, other grasses were dominant, but this year the clover is winning. I attribute the success of the squash this year as opposed to last year to the clover, since it's attracting lots of bees. I learned last week, when researching my Farm Fresh post on the zucchini, that all types of squash need plenty of bees to be able to pollinate most effectively.

Zucchini (in the foreground), spaghetti squash (middle),
acorn squash (top, quite small, right in front of the tree trunk)

The spaghetti squash is the most fruitful so far of all the squash plants, with many blossoms and accompanying fruit beginning to swell up:

Turning back toward the house, there are some more very tall daisies growing up under our South-facing windows. I enjoy looking out the kitchen window and seeing their sunny faces looking up at me:

And opposite those, is a giant tomato plant. It's really quite impressive, if I do say so myself. (I have a less-impressive one, too (a cherry tomato), growing in one of those inverted planters hanging above the pepper plant. It's not dying, but it doesn't seem happy, either. Perhaps the upside-down life is not the cherry tomato's cup of tea.)

In any case, there is a very happy tomato plant in my garden, growing in a large bucket with no drainage. The largest tomato on it is about the size of a small plum, and they're all still quite green and very fuzzy:

I love how, every time I touch this plant (even for just a moment),
my hand smells strongly of tomatoes after.

Mmmm, so lovely!

Gardening teaches me balance in so many ways. Besides the practicalities of providing the right ratios of water to drainage and sunlight to shade, gardening most definitely provides respite and perspective in my life. It reminds me that some things happen so slowly that they seem to go by fast. It renews my sense of wonder and fascination with nature and science. Gardening reminds me to be flexible and adaptable, and most of all, to appreciate the journey.

Thanks for visiting my garden! I hope you'll come again soon.

How do you use nature to help you find balance? Do you enjoy watching your vegetables bear fruit (and which ones are you most excited about right now)? How does your garden grow?

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"Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some."
Robert Fulghum

This post is part of my series on balance, inspired in part by the October 2010 Carnival of Natural Parenting. Without balance, we feel burned out, we lose perspective...we fall down. How do you find balance in your life? What does it mean to you to be in balance? Does it come easily to you or do you have to be more intentional about it?

I'd love to host your guest post for my series on balance! Contact me at anktangle@gmail.com if you're interested in participating.

Wordless Wednesday: I Missed My Garden

We just got back from our vacation yesterday evening. As we walked up to the house at the end of our journey, I was surprised to feel excited to see my garden. I was excited, in particular, to see how much everything had changed in a (relatively) short time.

Before:

All my broccoli plants got attacked by aphids & ants.
This was the prettiest one, with a tiny floret in the middle.

I thinned the carrots one last time right before we left. They were so cute, I had to take photos:

And yes, we did eat them (after a thorough washing, of course).

After:

The broccoli finally died, and a couple of things bolted
while we were away, but everything else has just grown a lot!
(See how big those carrots—on the left—have gotten now?)

One of my tomatoes is getting huge!

My lavender finally has flowers!
(These are the same lavender plants that were so tiny last year.)

Daniel did not seem to notice the changes in the garden much, but he did recognize his buddy, Eddie. As soon as we walked in the door and Daniel saw Eddie, he started laughing out loud, saying "Eddie," and reaching out to get down and pet him. It was so sweet!

Here they are cuddling again this morning, in bed.

Tons of thanks to my friend Kelly for taking such good care of our cats and plants while we were gone!

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Linked up at Wordless Wednesday at Hobo Mama.

Wordless Wednesday: Summer Vacation

The Journey:

Playing on the plane

Getting some activity in between flights

Decisions, decisions.

The Destination:

Birthday celebrations for two

Babywearing Grandpa

Pictured left to right: Iced tea, a crochet project, bare feet, chickens.

Traffic stops for jaywalking goslings

D is getting a healthy dose of dirt...

...and plenty of carrots.

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Linked up at Wordless Wednesday at Hobo Mama and Natural Parents Network.

Outside, With You.

Welcome to the May Carnival of Natural Parenting: Growing in the Outdoors

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared how they encourage their children to connect with nature and dig in the dirt. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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Dear Daniel,

The cherry tree is shedding a delicate, fluttery blanket of snow.
And I watch, in awe, as the brown ground turns white.
The daphne has had a drink, and the pansies begin to peek their sweet faces out, ready to greet the sun.

I look at my newly sprouted plants: onions, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, carrots, hot pepper, strawberries, raspberries, beets, tomatoes, rosemary, and basil.
They all look so happy, so ready to grow and thrive, and someday soon, to be nourishing food for us at our table.

And then there you are, too: giggling and chasing the petals floating to the ground around you. You look up at me and grin your big (but still very little) smile, as the sun shines on your downy cheeks. The warm wind blows and you are overcome with excitement.

I look at you crawling around on the ground.
I think about how you grew (just like a plant, but from much smaller seeds) in my body, and then later (and still) from my body's milk. Soon, some of these plants you're exploring with your tiny fingers will be a part of you, too.
You may not realize it yet, but you're an important part of this cycle, of this life, and of this world.

Next year, you will be able to help me with the garden. Next year, maybe you'll count and name the plants with me. Maybe you'll even help me dig the holes and plant and water the seeds, waiting with anticipation for the first tiny sprouts to shoot up.
I look forward to getting to experiencing all those firsts again through your eyes.

But for now, you're still my baby, though less and less a baby with each passing day.

The wind turns chilly, and I pick you up to go inside. You cry out, letting me know you weren't finished having fun yet.

Ok, ok. A few more minutes.
And a few more after that.

As many more minutes as you want, actually, because I love being out here, too.
With you.

Love,
Momma

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Visit Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

• Get Out! — Momma Jorje gives reasons she doesn't think she gets outside enough and asks for your suggestions on making time for the outdoors.
• How Does Your Garden Grow? — The ArtsyMama shares her love of nature photography.
• We Go Outside — Amy at Peace 4 Parents describes her family's simple, experiential approach to encouraging appreciation of nature.
• My Not-So-Green Thumb — Wolfmother confesses to her lack of gardening skills but expresses hope in learning alongside her son at Fabulous Mama Chronicles.
• Enjoying Outdoors — Isil at Smiling like Sunshine describes how her children enjoy the nature.
• Five Ideas to Encourage the Reluctant Junior Gardener — For the rare little ones who don't like to get their hands dirty, Dionna at Code Name: Mama offers tips for encouraging an early love of dirt (despite the mess).
• Connecting to Nature — Mamapoekie shares how growing your own vegetable patch connects your child to nature and urges them to not take anything for granted.
• The Farmer's Market Classroom — Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction shares how the Farmer's Market has become her son's classroom.
• Seeds — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment's hubby Ken shares his perspective on why gardening with their kiddos is so important . . . and enjoyable!
• Toddlers in the Garden — Laura at A Pug in the Kitchen shares her excitement as she continues to introduce her toddler and new baby to the joys of fresh veggies, straight from the garden.
• Nature's Weave — MJ at Wander Wonder Discover explains how nature weaves its way into our lives naturally, magnetically, experientially, and spiritually.
• Becoming Green — Kristina at Hey Red celebrates and nurtures her daughter's blossoming love of the outdoors.
• Little Gardener — Rosemary at Rosmarinus Officinalis looks forward to introducing her baby girl to gardening and exploring home grown foods for the first time.
• Cultivating Abundance — You can never be poor if you have a garden! Lucy at Dreaming Aloud reflects on what she cultivates in her garden . . . and finds it's a lot more than seeds!
• Growing in the Outdoors: Plants and People — Luschka at Diary of a First Child reflects on how she is growing while teaching her daughter to appreciate nature, the origins of food, and the many benefits of eating home-grown.
• How Not to Grow — Anna at Wild Parenting discusses why growing vegetables fills her with fear.
• Growing in the Outdoors — Lily at Witch Mom Blog talks about how connecting to the natural world is a matter of theology for her family and the ways that they do it.
• A Garden Made of Straw — Kelly at Becoming Crunchy shares tips on making a straw bale garden.
• The Tradition of Gardening — Carrie at Love Notes Mama reflects on the gifts that come with the tradition of gardening.
• Gardening Smells Like Home — Bethy at Bounce Me to the Moon hopes that her son will associate home grown food and lovely flowers with home.
• The New Normal — Patti at Jazzy Mama writes about how she hopes that growing vegetables in a big city will become totally normal for her children's generation.
• Outside, With You — Amy at Anktangle writes a letter to her son, a snapshot of a moment in the garden together.
• Farmer Boy — Abbie at Farmer's Daughter shares how her son Joshua helps to grow and raise their family's food.
• Growing Kids in the Garden — Lisa at Granola Catholic shares easy ways to get your kids involved in the garden.
• Growing Food Without a Garden — Don't have a garden? "You can still grow food!" says Mrs Green of Little Green Blog. Whatever the size of your plot, she shows you how.
• Growing Things — Liz at Garden Variety Mama shares her reasons for gardening with her kids, even though she has no idea what she's doing.
• Moments — UK Mummy Blogger explains how the great outdoors provides a backdrop for her family to reconnect.
• Condo Kid Turns Composter and Plastic Police — Jessica from Cloth Diapering Mama has discovered that her young son is a true earth lover despite living in a condo with no land to call their own.
• Gardening with Baby — Sheila at A Gift Universe shows us how her garden and her son are growing.
• Why to Choose Your Local Farmer's Market — Naturally Nena shares why she believes it's important to teach our children the value of local farmers.
• Unfolding into Nature — At Crunchy-Chewy Mama, Jessica Claire shares her desire to cultivate a reverence for nature through gardening, buying local food, and just looking out the window.
• Urban Gardening With Kids — Lauren at Hobo Mama shares her strategies for city gardening with little helpers — without a yard but with a whole lot of enthusiasm.
• Mama Doesn't Garden — Laura at Our Messy Messy Life is glad her husband is there to instill the joys of gardening in their children, while all she has to do is sit back and eat homegrown tomato sandwiches.
• Why We Make this Organic Garden Grow — Brenna at Almost All The Truth shares her reasons for gardening with her three small children.
• 5 Ways to Help Your Baby Develop a Love of the Natural World — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama believes it's never too early to foster a love of the natural world in your little one.
• April Showers Bring May PRODUCE — Erika at NaMammaSte discusses her plans for raising a little gardener.
• Growing Outside — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante discovers how to get her kids outside after weeks of spring rain.
• Eating Healthier — Chante at My Natural Motherhood Journey talks about how she learns to eat healthier and encourages her children to do the same.
• The Beauty of Earth and Heavens — Inspired by Charlotte Mason, Erica at ChildOrganics discovers nature in her own front yard.
• Seeing the Garden Through the Weeds — Amanda at Let's Take the Metro talks about the challenges of gardening with two small children.
• Creating a Living Playhouse: Our Bean Teepee! — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings shares how her family creates a living playhouse "bean teepee" and includes tips of how to involve kids in gardening projects.
• Grooming a Tree-Hugger: Introducing the Outdoors — Ana at Pandamoly shares some of her planned strategies for making this spring and summer memorable and productive for her pre-toddler in the Outdoors.
• Sowing Seeds of Life and Love — Suzannah at ShoutLaughLove celebrates the simple joys of baby chicks, community gardening, and a semi-charmed country life.
• Experiencing Nature and Growing Plants Outdoors Without a Garden — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now shares some of her favorite ways her family discovered to fully experience nature wherever they lived.
• Garden Day — Melissa at The New Mommy Files is thankful to be part of community of families, some of whom can even garden!
• Teaching Garden Ettiquette to the Locusts — Tashmica from Mother Flippin' (guest posting at Natural Parents Network) allows her children to ravage her garden every year in the hopes of teaching them a greater lesson about how to treat the world.
• Why I Play with Worms. — Megan of Megadoula, Megamom and Megatired shares why growing a garden and raising her children go hand in hand.

Growing Sprouted Onions

I'm quite perplexed.

I was talking to a friend the other day about growing onions. For a few years now (I think this is the third year), I've grown onions in my container garden from already sprouted onions. You know...the ones you buy and then forget about until one day there's something green growing in your pantry? On more than one occasion I've actually eaten the sprouted onion, preserving the growing parts (sprout and roots) and then planted it and grown it again, essentially eating the same onion twice. So, I was telling my friend how to grow sprouted onions because I've found it quite easy (and also fairly simple) to do, when I thought, Hey, I should write a tutorial!

I took a bunch of photographs of the process, and then out of curiosity, I did an internet search for growing sprouted onions, to see if I could learn anything else about how other people do this. Here's where the perplexing part comes in: almost all (I'd say approximately 95%) of the question and answer pages I found said that: 1. You cannot eat onions that have sprouted; they are rotten, and 2. If you plant a sprouted onion, it will produce flowers (which you can then harvest for seeds to plant next year) but it will not produce an onion bulb that you can eat.

I took a photo of last year's onion plants, and I even have a photograph of one of them post-harvest in my beef stew recipe. What I'm sayin' is, I know it works, and I'm very curious to know why it's working for me and not for so many other people. (I'm not that great with plants, so that can't be it.) Maybe it's about the climate? Or the type of onion I used?

Well, I've never tried this process with red onions before, so this will be quite the experiment (now that I know this has been working for me against great odds).

Here's what I do, in case you want to try your hand at it, too:

• Buy some onions and let them sprout in your pantry or a drawer...wherever, really. I actually bought these on sale, pre-sprouted from the farmer's market.
• Peel the outer papery layers, like you would if you were going to chop the onion, taking care to preserve any roots that might be growing between layers:
  
• Cut into the onion, nearly to the center, trying to avoid the sprouting center portion:
  
• Remove the rest of that half of the onion, exposing the center:
  
• Carefully cut around the base, removing the rest of the second half of the bulb, until you just have the center left:
  
• You can eat the portion that you removed, as long as it hasn't gotten mushy. (My husband ate some of this one raw and said it was delicious and sweet.) You might want to discard any parts that have started to get kind of "leafy" (like the dark purple tops of the center of this onion).
• Take your sprouted onion center(s) and plant them in soil, with the white roots down and the green part sticking up. (I'm not saying this to be a jerk—I think bulbs are confusing.)
  
• Water them, give them sun, and watch them grow! I usually pull mine up when the green parts have dried out at the end of the season, but you can pull them up any time after you see the onion bulb starting to stick up above the soil.
• You can also eat the green shoots (these are called Spring onions or scallions) though I have never done that with mine.

I've also done it without preserving the sprouted (green) portion and just planting the root part which has started to grow. Just cut off the bulb and plant the roots (sticking down) and water it.

I'm very curious to know, have you ever grown onions from sprouted ones? Did you have the same results that I have had, or did your onion grow flowers? Do you have any gardening insights as to why I've gotten so lucky with onions in the past? I can't wait to hear!