garden

New Garden

/ Shane / 6 Comments

I’m not sure how much of the garden saga was been here on the blog. Long story short, the University owned the land that the garden was on. Eventually, it was time to pay the piper and the University decided to pull the plug on the garden to use the land as a “construction staging area” for a building they were going to build next door.

Obviously this was hard on everybody. As much as we loved the garden, there were people who had been there for years and years. However, their pleas fell on deaf ears, and the University insisted that the garden had always been a temporary arrangement, and the time was up.

Every time we pass the site of the old garden, Evie offers some commentary. “I don’t want them to tear down the garden!” or “Why are they going to tear down our garden, I love that garden!”

We went to a community meeting on the subject, and things got a little heated. After seeing how adamant the University was on the topic, my personal opinion was, let’s move on. It became obvious that continuing the argument about keeping the garden was beating your head against the wall. The University owned the land, and they were exercising that right. Although, I did agree that it was frustrating that the University was going to be using the land for something so temporary as construction staging, and that it was somewhat ironic that the garden was going to be destroyed to build a certified “green” building.

Some people, however, were not content to complain about the past, but instead took the Alderman up on his offer of space for new gardens, throughout the neighborhood. In a stroke that can only be described as fate, one of the locations selected for a new garden is the trash-filled abandoned lot almost directly across the street from our condo.

This is a win-win for us. Not only have we already secured a spot in the new garden which is literally across the street, we also get to get rid of an ugly eye sore. How much better is the neighborhood with a lush garden than an abandoned lot? Evie was pretty excited about it too:

Shane: “They are going to make a new garden here.”
Evie: “Thank you world!”
Evie: “I was saying thank you world because the world made a new garden. I still miss the old garden though.”

Halloween – everything we hoped and more

/ Shane / 2 Comments

It was a good weekend. Evie really got into the Halloween experience. I wasn’t sure if she was going to be a little too young to understand or appreciate things, but I don’t think she was. She was a little shy with saying “Trick-or-treat!” and she often forgot to say, “Thank you!” or she would mumble it to Sara or I after she had already turned away. But she caught on really quick to holding her bucket up and getting a piece of candy.

We went to a certain street in our neighborhood that is known to be a little crazy about Halloween, drawing people from all over the city. Every story I heard about the place was totally true, and we were done by 5:30. I can only imagine how crazy it would be by 6:30 or 7. My mom kept saying, “This is like a movie!” It was pretty crazy, but it was a lot of fun to be around so many people who were really into the spirit of things. There were lots of displays in yards, people dressed up, and spooky decorations, but these people really took it to the next level. One of my favorite things was a giant spider rigged 20 feet overhead with a pulley system, so it could drop down on unsuspecting people. I also remember a giant plastic knife that was rigged out on a rope, so it could go flying across the street through the air as if possessed.

There were some houses that Evie thought were too scary to go to. There was a giant spider suspended over a door that Evie refused to walk under, even though she confided to Sara, “It’s not real.” Another person in a mask took her by surprise and she just froze in place, refusing to move until the person dangled some M&M’s for her. Sara and I agreed that M&Ms were probably the only thing that could have gotten her to go any closer.

But overall, Evie had a blast. My mom remarked that Evie would probably be playing “trick-or-treat” for quite some time to come. I think we didn’t do too bad either, considering we convinced her to stop in the middle and eat a banana. I doubt any of the other parents had such luck.

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet weekend. We dealt with the time change (though I never found a suitable hour to re-live) and we did some getting ready for the impeding winter, including packing our grill off to storage and removing the tomato cages from the garden. Yesterday was officially the last day for the garden, and I expect it will either be demolished immediately, or sit tantalizingly empty forever, just out of reach. It is possible that we could get another plot in some other garden elsewhere, but I am sort of drained about the whole garden thing, so we might just sit it out. We’ll see.

Finally, we found the time to hit up our favorite breakfast spot, Yolk. Everything was delicious, as usual. But the interesting thing was that my mom ordered the “South Beach” and it was something to see. People were literally turning their heads as it was carried through the restaurant. That might have been because it looked like perhaps my mom was the Don Corleone of the fruit mafia, and she had just ordered someone to bring her the head of the Chiquita Banana lady.

The South Beach consists of half of an entire pineapple, on its side, piled high with granola, strawberries, orange slices, and other fruit. This stuff is literally overflowing off the top and piling up on the surrounding plate. After my mom ate all she could, we cut off the top and bottom and still couldn’t fit it in the largest to-go box they had. It was worth ordering, just to see the thing.

Unfortunately, the picture I took on my camera phone doesn’t really do it justice, so you’ll just have to imagine it.

Garden Update

/ Shane / 1 Comment

It has been a long time since I really gave an update on the garden (aside from the pickle canning of course). I guess the second year isn’t quite as exciting as the first year. In fact, the first time around we were snapping pictures of every new fruit or vegetable that poked it’s head out, but this year we don’t even bat an eye at massive, award winning, 20 pound zucchini. Actually though, the garden this year is head and shoulders above our garden from last year. There are a couple of big differences.

First off, we are doing a lot less weeding. I don’t know if it is because we got the garden sooner and thus were able to nip more weeds in the bud, if we were just smarter about our weeding, or if our garden is just laid out so well and so full, that the weeds are just crowded out. Or it could be that we just don’t care about having a weedy garden as much. Whatever the reason, this is saving us a lot of time and effort.

Second, our garden is planned out much better, in some cases because of the knowledge we gained last year. We are even rotating things out, for example, we had a huge crop of lettuce before it eventually made way for other things, since it is over quickly. We planted squash that is timed out such that the zucchini will be finished and ripped out in time to make room for the squash. We’re also working on our second crop of carrots.

The lettuce was out of control, we couldn’t give it away fast enough. Currently, we have more zucchini than we know what to do with. We’ve gotten tons of beans, most of which we’ve frozen. Now we are starting to enter tomato season.  So far only our cherry tomatoes have been taking off, but we have some types of tomatoes which are all ready at the same time, like Roma, so we will be expecting a tomato avalanche shortly. We also have at least 8 good sized green peppers waiting for us and we’ve even gotten a few hot peppers.

So, even though I haven’t been posting as much as last year about the garden, rest assured it is going (and growing!) strong.

Pickles!

/ Shane / 9 Comments

My grandma makes homemade pickles and they are to die for. I’ve always wanted to try to make the pickles myself so that I could rely on my own supply, instead waiting until she could sneak me a jar or two. I’m not saying she did sneak me jars and I’m not saying she didn’t, but I am saying that if she did sneak me jars and word got out (like on the Internet, for example), then I’d probably be in big trouble with the rest of my family.

So I planted some cucumbers this year on the porch figuring I’d get enough for a jar or two and we could give it a trial run. However, we had an opportunity to raid my grandma’s garden for cucumbers when she was on vacation, and we netted quite a few (and some dill).

our contribution

We had never tried canning before, and we were a little nervous about it. We purchased a nice set in anticipation of doing some more canning this year, especially once the tomatoes start rolling in from the garden. Previously we had just frozen everything and that worked pretty well, but, with the uncertainty of the garden next year, we might need to lay more of a supply by this year.

in progress

So, we managed to can 7 quarts of pickles and even had some spare cukes left over. One of the jars didn’t seal the first time around, but we re-processed it and it sealed the second time. Now it is just a matter of waiting for 6 weeks until these beauts are ready to go!

finished product

She has the concepts down, the rest is details

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Evie has been using numbers and concepts lately that are sort of surprising. She doesn’t use them correctly, but she uses them and that’s something:

“And what did you buy at the rummage sale?”
“Uncle Nathan!”
“Oh yeah, how much did he cost?”
“Fifty dollars.”

“Did you have a good night’s sleep last night?”
“Yes, thirty hours.”

“How old are you?”
“Two months of five. And E starts with Evie.”

“What’s the opposite of up?”
“Down!”
“What’s the opposite of left?”
“Right!”
“What’s the opposite of sleeping?”
“…”
“If you’re not asleep, you’re a…”
“An Owl!”

She also said probably the most heartbreaking thing ever:

“Mommy loves me and Nala loves me.”
“And Daddy loves you.”
“No, Mommy is the only one. Daddy works.”

Just to show how things change as you get used to parenting, I forgot to mention on the blog that Evie fell down the stairs at my grandma’s last weekend! When she was little and she fell over, it was a big, big deal. Now she falls down like 10 stairs and I don’t even remember about it! She was fine, she just had some marks from where her sun glasses smashed into her face. But we knew she was okay because when Sara took off Evie’s glasses to see if she was alright, Evie was more upset about not wearing her glasses than she was about the fall. So I had forgotten all about this until Evie reminded me that it was “scary” to fall down the stairs. I asked her what else she was afraid of and she said, “Crocodiles.”

In totally other news, we got some beautiful lettuce from the garden, and it was delicious!