Dead of Winter

The Colts lost to the Chargers. Again. Deja vu! When the Colts are out of the playoffs, the dead of Winter begins in Indianapolis. That's when I start building my plans for Spring. I've already received a lot of seed catalogs in the mail. They're like wish books for me!

I was pleasantly surprised to find racks of fresh Burpee seeds next to the Christmas clearance items at KMart. So I bought packs of green onion, spinach, Swiss chard, snow peas and bibb lettuce. Those are the early crops. They can stand cold nights, even a light frost. So I like to have my bedding plants ready to go outside the minute the weather cooperates. I'll probably start these seeds in my makeshift basement greenhouse in February. According to the old time gardeners, potatoes should be planted on Good Friday, April 10 this year. I might try one of the gold varieties this year, so I'll be checking my seed catalogs.

I finally found the garden book I wanted to loan to a friend last spring. Now I want to read it again myself. It's called Small Space, Big Harvest by Duane Newcomb. Newcomb says you can grow over 200 pounds of produce in a 5' x 5' plot - naturally. I've utilized his space-saving techniques for years. Maybe this year I'll try a bona fide test garden and weigh all the produce.

(Note: Melissa - this would be a great book for you! Cheap used copies are available on Amazon! He has a chapter on trash can composting.)

I've been moving pretty slowly this past week. I cleaned the basement and stirred up dust. My particular dust allergy results in one very puffy, painful eyeball and a need for lots of extra sleep. I have bad reactions to prescription and OTC antihistamines, so I've just been sleeping and whining a lot. My practitioner recommended a homeopathic liquid and it seems to be working. I am pleasantly surprised!

I'll need some energy today! I'm going to drop my oldest computer off for recycling. Then I'm hitting the Winter Farmers Market. Tonight I'm volunteering at the Naptown Roller Girls first roller derby bout of the season. I'll be manning the merchandise table and selling those calendars with the GREAT photos. I'll get to sit in the stands with the loud crowd for the second half.

Back to garden stuff, I set a new record! About ten years ago, I managed to keep my garden tomatoes fresh long enough to eat my last red one on January 1. Well, it's January 10, and I'm still eating my own garden tomatoes! We had a luxuriously warm fall and a late first frost. The Romas have been the best keepers. The red onion is also from my garden.

I remember someone asking for a salad dressing recipe. Here's my default vinaigrette.

Kay's Vinaigrette

I use a clean salad dressing bottle. Fill it half full with apple cider vinegar. Add about 2 T honey, the juice of half a lime, and 1 1/2 t salt. Put the lid on and shake until the salt dissolves. Then fill the bottle with canola oil and shake some more. Grind some fresh black pepper over your salad after it's tossed.

I made a huge vat of chicken stock on Thursday. I let it simmer for hours while I was napping on the couch (and whining.) I froze some and made a small pan of chicken vegetable soup to comfort me and my puffy eyeball. I was, indeed, comforted.


Daddy Cat says, "Love dat chicken soup!"

Rain, rain, go away

I've been working between the raindrops to get my gardens planted. Not much actual planting, so far. I'm creating new beds. So mostly I've been moving plants and digging up weeds in anticipation of tilling. It's slow work. It's hard work. Gardening is the reason I don't belong to a gym. I'm not looking for recreational exercise. I get a lot of exercise just keeping my yard in shape. When I get a break, I'm looking for recreational recreation.

Speaking of recreation, I gave Daddy Cat one leaf of fresh catnip. I grow it in hanging pots, so the cats don't "over-imbibe." But some seed from last year's nip fell to the ground below. It's growing like crazy!

Mmmmmmm, nip!

No, I wasn't drooling!

I'm several years behind on my weeding. I have half an acre of gardens, and the woods tries to take them over every year. Undiagnosed celiac left me puffy and bent and sickly for the last five summers. I was a little better last summer, and started my "catch up" plan.

My body was puffed up, about 25 lbs heavier than it had ever been. My joints ached. I was told my backache was sciatica, and my foot pain was plantar's fasciitis. And my joint pain was arthritis. I marveled at my Santa-like belly. It felt so foreign, it might as well have been a third foot sticking out of my stomach. I couldn't lose weight, no matter how little I ate. My eyes were constantly puffy, and my vision was frequently blurred. My hair fell out in patches. Doctors gave me first prednisone pills, then steroid injections to make it grow back. The hair that fell out was curly brown hair. The hair that grew back was straight, stark while. I'd already discovered that I was allergic to permanent hair colors. So I was dismayed at my strange appearance. I felt like I had the flu, every day. It was a struggle to make it to work, let alone work in my yard.

So that's why I got behind on weeding . Five years behind.

In March, 2007, I had two encouraging breakthroughs where my health is concerned. A doctor decided to (finally!) test me for food allergies. Wheat allergies did not show up, but broccoli, cabbage, bananas and pineapple did. I'd been eating a lot of these foods, for my health. (Ha!)

So I eliminated these foods and began to see some improvement in my general health. Not recovery, but improvement.

Then a friend of mine gave me a bottle of Mona Vie acai juice to try. I'd tried a lot of snake oil over my five years of mysterious illness. So I was skeptical. I was pleasantly surprised to find it did me some good! I wasn't quite so puffy, and some weight just fell off me. After drinking 2 ounces a day for about two weeks, my hair started growing back! It had never grown back without those awful steroids! So I knew all those antioxidants were helping.

I had more energy than I'd in four years. I could, occasionally, put in a full day of yard work. I made a plan to "save" my gardens, and got a good start on it.

I still drink Mona Vie every day. It offers the highest concentration of acai juice available. Acai is a magic berry from the rainforest. It naturally reduces inflamation. I had a lot of inflamation! Everywhere! And reducing it a little let me see how different foods impacted my symptoms. A year later, I figured out wheat was the biggest culprit. I'll settle for my self diagnosis of celiac disease. The doctors have been wrong so many times that I've taken charge of my own health. It just took me a long time to get to the starting point. And all those misdiagnoses cost me a bundle. I could have a new car with all the money I've paid doctors to be wrong.

I finally feel like I'm in the "rebuilding" stage of my life, instead of the "circling the drain" stage.

So, back to the gardens! Spring is starting slowly here in the midwest. That's okay. I've needed the extra prep time.

Last summer, I decided to consolidate some of my flower beds. I inherited 128 varieties of day lilies when I bought this house. I love them all and wanted to keep one of each. So I moved some of the plants from the back gardens to up around the pond. I installed weedcloth and mulch between the plants. I even went to southern Indiana and collected a lot of limestone. Now the plants are closely spaced, with mulch and limestone pathways in between. And I get to mow the back gardens instead of fretting about all the weeds.

This week I've spent three long days moving plants out of the garden by the front door. I disposed of five trash bags of weeds, roots and all. That bed is well-drained and gets hot afternoon sun. So I'm turning it into the okra and onion bed. They like those particular conditions. And okra is a really pretty plant. Its blooms look like hibiscus blooms, and bugs don't eat my okra leaves. I've found a compact variety of okra called "Baby Bubba." I hope it's as pretty as the taller varieties I've tried in the past.

I've worked in the dirt for ten to twelve hours for three days in a row. That's my little miracle!

For encouragement, I walk around the yard and see how my early vegetables are doing. And I visit my tiny peaches. They're smaller than my cherries this time of year. They are so cute and fuzzy!

Here's what's growing at Kay's Leaning Tree Farm:

Snow peas

Asparagus. It grows in the myrtle.
The myrtle is high enough to block the sun, so some of the spears are white.

Lettuce. This is the mixed row.

My sage is ready to bloom.

Rhubarb!

I did all my cooking for the week last Sunday. I made a pizza, baked bread, baked a chicken, and tried two new recipes. Melanie over at The Gluti Girls fixed a great potato salad for Mother's Day. It uses a vinaigrette dressing and it's quite tasty! I added some baby spinach. Carrie at Ginger Lemon Girl entered an oatmeal recipe in a contest on Gluten Free Goodness. It's in the comments section. I baked some of her fantastic apple oatmeal bars. I added a little rhubarb.

So that's why I haven't posted any new recipes of my own. I was living off other people's great ideas last week. I hope to spend lots of time in the garden again this week, and keep kitchen time to a minimum. I plan to make time to enter my oatmeal recipe in the contest. I need to convert an old favorite to gluten free. I'll get around to that when it rains, or after dark.

Look who's here! It's my first asparagus spear!

I inherited my asparagus garden from my home's previous owner. Patrice never ate any of the asparagus. The spears grow into tall ferns if you don't pick them. Patrice liked the ferns. When mature, the ferns add structure to the myrtle beds below them. The myrtle camouflages the spears, so some of them get a little too tall before I see them, and eat them. I eat most of the asparagus spears, and just leave the very thin ones to go to fern. They are so fresh and tender that I always eat a couple of them raw, as I walk back to the house.

I've lived in this house and worked these gardens for eight years now. I know where to look for the first asparagus spears. On a hot day, I can almost watch them grow. They can pop up quickly in the heat.

Patrice created beautiful big flower gardens, that wind around the perimeter of my big yard in the woods. I live in a secret neighborhood. It takes me 12 minutes to get to the center of Indianapolis from my driveway. But my street is secluded. We all get our water from wells. We have corn and soybean fields, lots of shade trees, woods, raccoons, groundhogs (grrrr!) a couple of deer and one coyote. The coyote is living in the woods about a half mile from my house. I can tell when he's living nearer. My rabbit population drops dramatically. I have lots of rabbits just now.

I prefer he live away just now. I have two geriatric cats. Milo is 16 years old, deaf and arthritic. Daddy Cat is at least ten, probably older, and has very few teeth. So I want my boys to be safe in the yard. We like it best when we are all outside together.

I like flowers, but I also like to grow my own food. So I have added a lot of edibles to the landscape. And I have three beds just for vegetables. I've planted black currants, gooseberries and jostaberries. I've let the wild black raspberries invade one edge of flower garden. I have my first blooms ever on the little peach tree. I have an old cherry tree that was broken down to a nub by a tornado that flattened my neighborhood five years ago. It has recovered nicely, and it is full of buds. The birds usually let me pick "my half" of the cherries. As long as there are mulberries available in the woods, I get good berry crops. One year there were no mulberries. The birds ate all my fruit. Most years there is enough for all of us.

Entertaining

I used to entertain frequently. I had lots of dinner parties. Big ones. Big, fun food. Lots of guests. Food issues brought that to an aburpt end. But I miss everyone, and I'm tired of eating alone. So I had my first dinner guests of 2008 last Sunday. Just two guests, for starters. I made a meal that I could eat and I thought they would enjoy. It was a hit! The gravy was a little iffy, but it was my first ever gluten free gravy.

My menu was baked chicken, garlic mashed potatoes with arrowroot gravy, sauteed zucchini and onions with garlic, and apple crisp for dessert with Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream.

I got to use garlic chives from my garden, marking my first meal of the year with fresh homegrown ingredients. I love eating foods I grow, and growing foods I eat!