New Beds for Spring

One of my favorite things to do in the garden is pull out shrubs, stumps, weeds, whatever. It's so satisfying! I think it's my repressed archaeologist coming out... A couple years ago we had a small tree split down the middle so we cut it down to about 12 inches and just let the stump sit. I was sick of looking at it and also thinking I would like to have a small border for an herb garden, so I got my spade out and got to work. Sorry I don't have a before picture, but here's the start of the little herb garden:

Please note that I had Richard in the picture to not only give perspective, but also to reassure everyone that he is alive and well and not in what looks like a shallow grave! I do believe the neighbors often wonder what I'm doing out there... Here's the little herb garden with it's blanket of chopped leaves.

On to my next project... In the Spring I want to plant a few blueberry plants and have been looking for the perfect spot. Since blueberries love full sun and acidic soil, I decided that we had a perfect spot between the two hollies and two pine trees. Here's the spot before:

So I got to work with my trusty spade and flipped the sod.

After a coating of wet newspaper (hey, I found a good use of all of those extra Buchtellites) the patch got a layer of chopped leaves and pine needles. By the way, wet newspaper works WAY better than dry! Last year I used dry paper when I created the asparagus patch. This worked so much better and kindof reminded me of paper mache.

I'm hoping we'll have some blueberries for pancakes next summer!

Early morning visitors

Yes, we live on Deerfield Lane. This morning we were greeted by this lovely threesome as we were leaving for work...



Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS7J5Ij_8qg

The background noise is the sound of Richard's Civic idling as he watched from the safety of his car. Did he think the deer would attack? (He claims he didn't want to scare them away). Yes, I talk to the animals, and yes, the neighbors think I'm strange...

At least the neighbors won't need to do that much weeding this weekend...

Two super-easy vegan recipes

Mom cut out a recipe from a magazine and passed it along to me since she knew Richard loves pumpkin soup. Even better, the recipe is from Edensoy, so it is also vegan. The recipe for Quick Curried Pumpkin Soup is available at the Eden website.

I would hold off garnishing with the spicy pumpkin seeds until you're spooning into your mouth, otherwise they get soft and chewy. The Eden pumpkin seeds are really tasty... love them! Next time I make this I'm going to add a tablespoon of garam masala because, well, I love garam masala. (I pretty much put it in everything...)

I also wanted to do something with cauliflower and didn't want to steam it since my big pot was in use with the soup. So, a couple minutes with Google and I came across a roasted cauliflower recipe on the Simply Recipes site.

Instead of Parmesan cheese is use Galaxy's Parmesan Vegan topping. I love the lemon flavor in this recipe. This was a big hit with Richard as well.

Aside from being vegan, the best thing about these recipes is that they were so easy and the pumpkin soup was very fast.

It's funny... I have a huge collection of cookbooks but I'm finding that some of my favorite recipes are off of the Internet or clipped from a magazine. Someone needs to remind me the next time I'm in Border's that I don't need to buy any more cookbooks!

Putting the Garden to Bed

Well, the huge oak tree has made it through to the Fall and we're hoping it makes it through to Spring when we'll have saved enough money to cut it down. So this will be the last Fall that Richard will have the MASSIVE amount of leaves to deal with. With all of the leaves off the tree we can see the nests better. Looks like we'll have one big family of squirrels needing to find a new home in the Spring...
So, we had a nice layer of chopped oak leaves to cover the garden for the winter.

We're experimenting with a compost heap as well. We cleared out a small area in the brush and Richard made a big pile of grass and chopped leaves, and I've been adding kitchen scraps. Today when he turned the pile he thought it was getting a little moldy, so we'll have to figure out how to fix that...
I'm also experimenting with burying kitchen compost into holes in the garden bed. Hmmm... We'll let you all know how that works out!

One of the biggest surprises in the garden this year has been the asparagus patch. The ferns are starting to turn yellow, so I'll probably be cutting them back in a few weeks. When I went up the hill to take a look I found that they had these pretty little berries on them.

Aren't they pretty? I think they look very festive. Hopefully that means we'll have a bumper crop in the Spring!

The next item on our "To Do" list will be to create another new little garden patch so we can plant blueberries in the Spring. Hopefully the warmer weather will hold out so I can get out there with some wet newspaper...