Plants I didn't really need

Yesterday, between work and a doctor's appoint, I had an hour to fill. I took the free time as a rare opportunity to visit Campbell's greenhouse, a long standing Charlotte nursery with a great reputation for selection and variety (and a quick google shows perhaps a less than great reputation for kindness and manners). Their plant reputation, and the fact that it's frequented by Myer's Park homeowners, kept me away for fear the plants were too pricey, the environment too hoity, and that I'd walk away disappointed or far poorer than I could rationalize.

vernal witch hazel by flickr user lobstah1977 purple basil by flickr user proteinbiochemist Pelargonium* by flickr use louisa_catlover

What did I take home? Some sort of purple basil -- perhaps it will end up in several of these ideas on Farmgirl Fare.  I haven't been too experimental with some of my veggies the past couple years, opting for tried and true varieties to keep us happy over the winter but the purple was way too pretty to ignore. I also bought a vernal witch hazel, I've been asking around about witch hazel, but haven't found the east coast native variety (Hamamelis virginiana). This variety is native to the states slightly west of here and has the same useful properties as H. virginiana, so I figured what-the-hey and added it to my pile.  I've been looking for a rose pelargonium because the fragrance is a natural tick repellent, but haven't found one yet. They had apple and mint scented geraniums, so I brought home an apple variety.  I spent less than $30, not too shabby considering a few weeks ago the witch hazel alone would've easily set me back that much. Since they're out of season for flowering, though, I think I got a pretty good deal on it. 


*To be honest, the picture of the scented geranium wasn't labeled, but mine looks very much like this one.

The mess

When Ez talked about showing a little realness on blogs I immediately wondered if it would come across as self-indulgent and waylaying faults (Hello, my name is Renee and I'm a serial pessimist.) When I see imperfection in the mainstream perfect world I automatically think it's supposed to be a wink, like Martha Stewart saying, "Hey, look at me, I'm just like you." Except she has a giant sheet ironing contraption. I barely get the sheets washed, much less ironed, no matter how much she winks I'm not a part of that inside joke, I just feel even more inept.

But, in the spirit of openness and honesty, a few things I don't talk about because, well, they're a little messier than  where I usually take my blog posts:

• I have better intentions than follow through. I also have no attention span. Small goals and completed tasks amaze me. {In fact, this post was supposed to happen several weeks ago.}
• I am messy to the extreme and constantly battle the mess. I am also obsessive about recycling, and working with printing on paper makes it even harder to battle the mess. Charlie, is pretty much the same, sans recycling obsession. Poor, poor Mabel.
• Despite the fact that this blog shows otherwise, Mabel does not play outside all the time with natural toys in utter wonder. Sometimes she climbs all over me while watching Blues Clues as I nap on the couch because I didn't sleep well because we still co-sleep and she does acrobatics in her sleep. I can't take and post pictures of these moments because 1) I'm asleep, and 2) I'd have to learn to Photoshop the pool of drool collecting on the pillow at the corner of my mouth.
• I fibbed, I know how to use Photoshop and I'm not afraid to erase some crumbs from a picture of our dinner. Ironically, our kitchen is simultaneously the cleanest and messiest rooms in the house. I don't know how that happens, but it does.
• I'm 34 and still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That simple fact is enough to induce panic. 
• Though I never really had a firm picture of who or what I wanted to become, when I was in college I thought I'd be someone else somewhere else at this stage in my life.  More cosmopolitan (too much Mary Tyler Moore in my formative years?) maybe a little more Door Sixteen or Little Paper Planes or something. 
• I have panic attacks and anxiety. They are one reason I rarely slam the pharmaceutical industry: medicine got me through some of the toughest times of my life. I also have a history of lock-myself-in-a-dark-room-and-cry depression. 

That's the short list of faults, mind you, not the deepest secrets I hold, by far, but an introductory mess. I think it's important to present a little bit of real, a little bit of well-edited. All of these things aside, I'm happier than I've ever been.  Half completed projects and all, it's exciting to be part of a relatively new internetosphere landscape. It's amazing to see the world anew through the eyes of a toddler, marriage in suburbia is...normal, and normal is far less scary than I'd pictured it when I was a teenager.

In fact, it's a rather lovely place to be!

Greens to Grub

The greens are coming in while the hot-lovin' summer veggies are starting to bloom. What to do with all those greens? Uber-lemony sorrel, bitter endive, lamb's quarters by the boat load...You planted it, now you gotta eat it {or the chickens are going gourmet for the next several weeks}.

I've found 2 specific recipes will take care of any overload you may have: Sorrel and Potato Soup from Easy Growing and Goosefoot Pancakes from Wild Flavors*.  They both freeze and thaw well for future fast dinners.

I had 2 large heads of frisee, a type of escarole. A bit of bitter greens in a salad is good, but 2 heads was far too much to keep long enough to use up with salad. I wanted to tweak the recipe to bring out the subtle flavors that make escarole unusual; a quick internet search and I learned that people often pair lemon zest and anchovy paste with escarole.  I subbed the escarole for the goosefoot in Didi Emmons' recipe, and added a bit of both lemon zest and anchovy paste. The combination was sublime. 

*Chelsea Green sent me Wild Flavors to review. I haven't done that here yet, because I've been savoring it, reading a bit at a time. The fact that I want to finish it, but I don't want it to end, I want to soak up every single morsel of information, study and prepare every recipe,  and plant or forage every single plant may be review enough.

Where I grow

Every once in a while I've mentioned a community garden here, but I don't think I've explained it yet. See, I like to volunteer my time as much as I can, and in the past I've volunteered with the Matthews Farmers Market. I love the market, the people and all that it stands for, but this year I've switched over to giving my time to the Little Sugar Creek Community Garden. It allows me to combine my love of gardening, creativity, giving to others, while giving me a little social time that has otherwise been pretty hard to find with a toddler. The real gem of a reason for working in this garden? Through it I can give quality food to those in need, all the while fulfilling some of my own needs. From the ACGA site:

This garden is an active Friendship Gardens network member, donating over 10% of its produce to Friendship Trays, the areas meals-on-wheels program. Because of this dedication to the public, LSCG is regularly recognized as "The People's Garden" by the USDA and Keep America Beautiful, Inc.

 

I'm considered a "garden coordinator", which I think just means I've opened my mouth one too many times. I actually just stand back and ask more questions while Nadine (the county liason in charge of compost education) and Katherine do the real coordinating.

There's a sign nearby makes me a little squeamish, but I'm more at ease knowing we don't use that crap to make things flourish; LSC lives off county compost and organic amendments.  Even with the history of working with corporate polluters, this garden feels far more radical than the typical community garden. It's not about growing for oneself, it's about growing for others and, in return, cultivating oneself.

That's one place where I really have room to grow. 

This year things are off to a slow start since we regularly have about 3 pairs of hands to weed, plant, and prettify. If you're in the Charlotte, NC area maybe you'd be interested in bringing a few friends out to help get things done?

Preservation Proclamation

Friday evening I made a big pot of sorrel and potato soup from MizTrail's Easy Growing. It was excellent! Part of the issue with growing non-traditional honky foods is that I have to figure out a way to cook them and use them. Especially when they start coming in by the truck load. Note to self: having 3 sorrel plants for a family of 3 is more than plenty. Thanks in part to the potatoes, the soup was filling enough that it provided dinner for 2 (Mabel wasn't feeling experimental that night), Saturday's lunch for me, and a big enough batch for the freezer that we'll have dinner another night.

I spent a couple hours in the community garden on Saturday morning, first teaching a class (of 2!), then attacking the weeds* that had taken over. Currently the garden consists of 20 mounded rows, each 8' wide and 25' long. We've consistently had 3 people there working on Saturdays and 2 stalwarts who make it out a couple times during the week. Suffice to say, the uprooting of weeds has been much slower than the growth of new ones.


I brought some clear plastic to the garden to begin solarizing a couple of the beds. In return, I came home with a plastic grocery bag full of lamb's quarters, a giant cilantro plant that went to seed, and a bin of red wrigglers. Later in the afternoon I gave my own herb garden some TLC by giving one of the rosemary bushes a trim, uprooting and drying catnip (for our own use as tea), and dividing a few of my plants-gone -wild in preparation of unloading (errr...) giving them away.

This is actually a different batch of pesto than the cilantro pesto I made,

but what can I say, it's Monday and I'm lazy.

To recap: we're now well stocked on rosemary infused oil, rosemary balsamic vinegar, cilantro oil, cilantro pesto, and coriander. I'm still deciding what to do with the lamb's quarters, we have a ton of lettuce to go through before I get to them.

All of this jabber is to get to the point of what my Mother's Day consisted of: preserving. Whether keeping herbs in oil, vinegar, or finding a way to freeze them, I've already got a nice stockpile and the summer growing season hasn't really started!

*Most of these weeds are edible, but we want more mainstream crops producing food for Friendship Trays.