A Restless Mind

I'm behind.  I've been behind for a while.  I was only a little behind until jury duty week.  Now, I'm way behind and can't seem to catch up.  This weekend I picked and bagged blueberries until my fingers were blue.  That meant that the green beans didn't get picked.  I also found this in the garden.

Surprise success!  It has been 6 years since my last good crop of corn.  And I found this.

11 pounds.  I think it may be the only one I get but still, it's still pretty cool to get it at all.  Alas, I picked it way before ripeness (I thought hollow sounding = ripe).  Taking care of the corn meant there was no time to process the tomatoes or turn the plums into jelly.

Luckily though, at some point one of my troublesome projects disappeared (oh, darn).  But on the plus side, I freed up some time to finish one side of my sweater.

1.  Craft on diaper bag.  I don't know how a beginner project can give someone such fits.  I mean I'm a reasonably intelligent individual, and I'm using internet and book resources to make sure I'm interpreting these directions correctly.  It isn't a matter of errata.  It's a matter of semantics.  When you use the phrase turning chain, I assume that means the work should be turned even if you don't spell that out.  Yet my stitch markers keep moving rather than staying in the corners which would imply I'm crocheting on a slant.  If the baby hadn't come early, I might feel more kindly about the amount of experimentation that is having to take place here.

2.  Catch up on house chores after working through last weekend.  I was behind, but now have the laundry done, house cleaned, and pantry stocked.

3. Make more bread.  Honey Wheat, my new favorite. 

4. Garden.  Pick and process green beans for 5 pints.  Pick zucchini weighing 3 lbs.  (It was hiding).  Discovered that my zucchini plants have beetle borers and will likely be dead within the week.  This happens to me every year and only to zucchini and squash plants.  Try eco-spray anyway.  Dig up garlic.  Got 14 inchelium reds and 25 chilian silvers.  I will not use the chilian silvers again.  The growing circumstances were ideal and those "bulbs" are barely the size of nickels.  The flavor is good but they just aren't big enough.

5.  Finish second panel on the sweater.  Until my needles come in from WEBS, I'm in a holding pattern on this one.Thankfully, I seem to be able to manage a beginner sweater pattern.  Apparently, stockinette I can do.

Saturday dawned cool (thankfully) and humid (can't have everything I guess).  I commenced hoeing and picking and planting.  I picked a small mess of peas, eating about every third pod.  Fresh peas are so, so good.  It appears that rabbits are going to be a problem this year.  Several small plants showed decided signs of nibbling and the broccoli was gone (I don't think it was meant to be).  Then it was on to the new garden plot.  I planted my 6 back up tomato plants from Home Depot as well as my 10 tomato twigs I started from seed.  Also sunk into the ground were 8 pepper plants of various varieties.  In went a couple of short corn rows and the mounds for cantaloupe, watermelon, squash and zucchini.  Then the real experiment was planted.  25 sweet potato plants were sunk into luxury dirt mounds.  I say luxury because to create big enough mounds I had to supplement with some super fortified garden soil from Home Depot.  Then Sunday, there was a nice rain to settle everything in.   I expect a harvest by next Saturday. ; )

Getting going on the garden this year has been tough.  We seem to be uncommonly busy.  Last week, I finally got the green and lima beans planted along with my from seed onions (seedlings went in 6 weeks ago).  This week I broke ground on a new plot that will have my corn, tomatoes, peppers, broccoli (what's left of the 16 seedlings anyway), sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, watermelon, squash and zucchini.  The plan was to break ground and plant, but I had forgotten how brutal breaking ground with a tiller is.  After battling for a couple of hours, my muscles were vibrated and strained in mush, and I had flip-flop sun burn on my feet.  Sunday was house cleaning and two mothers' day meals.  So I still don't have everything in the ground.  At this rate, I'll still be gardening in October!  On the plus side, it is blackberry winter and mine are putting out a few blossoms.  The strawberries have started ripening.  There are pea pods on the pea plants.  And I guess at some point, the garlic will be ready (though this is a different variety planted at a different time of year, so it is anybody's guess).  It's a good start.

1. FRIDAY-Decide to try out the Cranberry Orange Spelt muffins for breakfast this weekend since the whole sourdough thing failed miserably.  This necessitated a trip to the hippie grocery store (b/c in this area of the country you don't find spelt flour in those suburban supermarkets).  Anyway, after being in the green hippie mart, I had enough self-righteous smug to power my eco-unfriendly SUV all the way home. (Don't get me wrong.  I like the self righteous smug.  I think they pipe it in to help you get over paying $5.99/lb for the same grass fed beef I can get at the farmers' market for $3.50/lb.)  Once home, the spelt flour went into the cranberry orange muffin batter and the whole thing rested overnight.  

SATURDAY-Bake the muffin batter with the streusel topping.  They looked really good.  And let me tell you, they tasted amazing.  I had mine with butter and apple butter and they were swoon worthy.  Recipe coming in a different post.  

2.  SATURDAY-Make up for being a total slacker in the garden and spend 1.5 hours resurrecting the peas, garlic, and onions from the weeds.  Make up for being a total slacker in the flower beds over the last YEAR and spend 3 hours muttering obscenities at bermuda grass and wild hedge while promising self we'd be a grown-up this year and exercise way more discipline in the weekly weeding.  SUNDAY-Spend copious amounts of time whining about muscle soreness and back pain but admit it is proper punishment for having let the weed situation get out of hand.

3.  SUNDAY - Remix a sourdough starter using non-chlorinated water and unbleached all purpose flour.  I want my sourdough pancakes and I will get my sourdough pancakes.  So really, it should just give up trying to thwart me and cooperate.

1.  Last fall Cracker Barrel brought forth a heavenly creation of apple cinnamon bread turned into French toast.  It was amazing.  The day we went and it was gone from the menu, Shawn shed a tear.  Since then, I've had a mind to try and recreate it.  But first I was going to have to make apple bread and I hadn't gotten around to it.  But Thursday, a colleague mentioned she was going to pick up bread and pastries for Easter at a local bakery and that they had the best apple cinnamon bread.  My ears perked right up.  I got some and Saturday made a pretty close approximation to Cracker Barrel.

2.  Amazingly, the garden gave up some broccoli on Saturday-about enough for 4 servings, which is way more than I was expecting so I'm psyched.

3.  Shawn and I are thinking about doing P90x.  Of course, no one ends up so sore they can't move from thinking, so who knows if we'll go through with it.

Goal: Exercise Daily.

Status:  Done!  I’m doing pretty good with this one, but busy season is wearing me down and the next few weeks is usually the point at which I quit.  To make it stick this time, I’ll have to really be vigilant about those sneaky voices in my head that try to convince me to stay in bed. 

Goal: Read 1 book.

Status:  Done, barely.  I was about halfway done with In Defense of Food this weekend, so I buckled down and finished it.

Goal: Plant onions, peas, broccoli, and strawberries.

Status:  Onions, peas and broccoli are in the ground.  The strawberries haven’t shipped yet so this one carries over to April. 

Goal:  Weed flower beds.

Status: 1/4 done.  I have worked sporadically in the flower beds this month.  We’ve had a lot of rainy weekends and on the good weekends, well, there is only so much energy to go around.  Garden stuff won.

Goal:  Put down fresh mulch.

Status:  Not done.  Since the weeding has to come first, this isn’t a shocker.

Goal: Start melons, pumpkins, and watermelon.

Status:  Not done.  I decided to move this one forward a couple of weeks b/c my usual weekend to put the garden in has been taken over by another responsibility.  

Goal:  Work on the diaper bag.

Status:  I’ve only gotten as far as figuring out the math to alter the pattern so as to have a bag that will be big enough and the 1st row of stitching.  But I’m counting this goal as met.

And we're getting one pretty day--tomorrow.  So I've got the garden tractor and regardless of the fact it's a bit wet, the garden plot for the broccoli is going to be plowed.  By golly, I'm getting in the ground before neglect kills them (b/c out of sight on the side porch makes it difficult to remember to care for them), and I didn't baby those seedlings this long just to kill them.  None of my peas have come up.  I figure the seed has probably rotted by now.  Oh well, there is always a fall attempt.  Broccoli is supposed to be a tender annual, so I'm surprise my fall planting survived temps well below freezing for weeks.  Not only that, but it is starting to produce broccoli heads!  I have done nothing to bring this about but I feel brilliant, nonetheless.  I have to enjoy the moment since feeling brilliant in gardening is very, very rare. 

1.  Plowed the garden and planted 4 rows of peas and 40 onion plants.  What I'm going to do with 40 onions, I have not a clue.   I'm pretty sure some will die and that none will grow to the promised 4 inches in diameter. 

2.  I had planned to do a series of raised beds in the back yard, but apparently Shawn and I were on something last fall when we calculated the price.  From $100 to $700.  I think we may have missed a decimal--or 10.  So instead it will be just another garden plot in the backyard.  I'd skip it all together but have already ordered plants. 

3.  Repotted the remaining seedlings.  Moved the broccoli outside to begin hardening off.  Hopefully, I won't forget about it and let it die from lack of water.

4. Decided that this weekend would be a great weekend to throw in another weight workout.  Combined with my yard work weekend warrioring, I can hardly move.

5.  Some minute progress has been made on the Arabian, but not enough to dignify it with a picture.  Progress will soon halt all together since I have to switch focus and work on the baby gift.  During busy season, there is no such thing as craft multi-tasking.