61. Harvest

*Just a handful of potatoes. Enough for a big potato salad, or for two dinner side dishes. Mystery why they didn't work. I'm just starting them over for the first time so I have years ahead of me to figure out. Plus, besides the work, they were free, so I'm not too upset.

*Carrots. Oh my goodness why didn't anyone tell me about homegrown carrots? Like tomatoes, they are amazingly better than store-bought (in comparison, basil is the same either way, just cheaper at home; cucumbers just taste like cucumbers but in more volume, etc). These carrots are little ones, purposefully, although I picked some of them early and they were teeny. But all of them are so so good. They are now the fridge snack for the week. And I'm planting more tomorrow.

*First of the sweet peppers. I've never been great at growing sweet peppers but I have two little ones in the harvest bowl in the fridge. Hmm.

*First of the beans. A handful, but I wanted them to keep producing. I may freeze them...or I'll throw them into tomorrow's deer stew. I don't know yet.

*Basil and parsley ongoing--just bits here and there in the cooking.

*Garlic. Heh. I've talked garlic before. My crops are self-propagating at this point. I have three main areas where they grow: inside the "tomato cage", right outside the cage, and along the back fence. I picked the cage bulbs tonight, and a few outside the cage. Their stems were dead and dry so it was time. The cage harvest was huge (cutting the scapes does do something after all). The ones I could tell were first year growth I scattered in the beds for next year but put the rest on the table on the back deck. I'm freezing it this year. I tried dehydrating chopped bulbs but they lost more flavor than I hoped. I know they'll stay good in the freezer. And if the cucumber harvest goes well, I'll have plenty of bulbs for garlic dills.

*Other growing things: the tomatoes have blossoms and I've picked all the suckers. The lettuce remnants are removed and the areas where they grew are ready for something else (more carrots and beans?). Cucumbers are growing and there are teeny blossoms. Jalapenos. And the 3 watermelon plants I took a chance on because Maeve begged? They're wandering around the west side of the yard. Blooming. I may hand-pollinate to be sure.

60. Daylilies

I fried daylilies last night. I picked a bunch of blossoms and a few unopened buds. I dipped them in a tempura batter:

1 c flour
1 c water
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

And I fried them. I didn't have enough canola, and so I had to resort to some olive oil, and therefore they weren't as crispy as I would have liked, but they were yummy. So weird.

The buds were the best. I may try them again in other ways. And I hear the tubers are potato-esque. The daylilies in my alleyway are weeds. I like to eat weeds.

59. Guest Room

My mother-in-law is coming tonight. She's staying, which she usually doesn't do, mostly (I think) due to our cats. But I need to leave the house at 7 tomorrow for canoe training and water rescue certification, so it makes sense for her to come tonight and just start the day in the morning. This meant I actually had to clean the guest room, which is my Dorian Gray Memorial Room, frankly. It falls apart so the rest of the house can appear clean. These days it has been covered in my dining room--all the stuff from the walls, the cabinet, and so on. Plus it is also my sewing/craft room and therefore creeps towards chaos at every moment.

To top that all, the cats love this room. They love sleeping on the bed and leaving giant mats of fur. The older two are fond of barfing on the rug. So I had to dig the place out, change the sheets and blankets, and vacuum the heck out of it.

But now it is done. Still cluttered and definitely my sewing area, but the bed is clean and made, the two dressers (Leo's and a blanket chest) are tidy, the table with my sewing is explainable instead of shameful.

Time for the rest of the house to promptly fall apart.

58. Last of the Radishes, First of the Potatoes

Two of my 12 potato plants up and died. I don't know if I hurt them as I hilled them up, or if they got too dry (a few others looked sickly yesterday and I saved them by watering the heck out of them--that wet spring spoiled me!). So I dumped out their containers and found enough potatoes to serve as a side dish for dinner. I love yukon golds. Especially new potatoes that are yukon golds. Especially new potatoes that are yukon golds that were planted for free and hilled up with grass clippings and compost and cost me nothing but time (and only recently that, frankly). The radishes got chopped into a salad, but the greens were cooked down in a bit of bacon grease and served as well. Radish greens are not Daisy's favorites. That's ok, though, because they happen almost never. More radishes in the fall, but for now they are done.

57. Radishes

We planted a ton of radishes in the garden this year just to get something going out there before I could plant the things I really like (cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers). They grew. I had never grown more than 3 or 4 before, in a window box, to show Sophia the miracle of plant life back when I was going to homeschool her. I'm just not a big enough fan of radishes to waste precious garden space on them. But this year I decided, through research and gambling, to plant in succession many things one after another. And so the radishes had a place again. We harvested several times, large bunches. There's still a few out there.

And this salad, until I added a few hothouse tomatoes from the CSA, was all from our garden.

56. Dishwasher

So I broke down.

I think it was the moldy water in the bottom of our current dishwasher. Realizing we had to get rid of it, and then deal with a big hole in the kitchen. A hole I could fill with...what?

With money, for the most part. The floor underneath is subfloor, so whatever I did I would have to cover that. Trash? A cabinet to hide trash? Just plain cabinets of some kind? None of them sounded right. Or cheap, frankly.

A dishwasher isn't cheap either, especially not the way we decided to go. But I envisioned 6 months from now still trying to find cabinets that matched or at least blended in with the ones we had (which I have painted, of course). Dealing with the cabinet under the sink and its dark spookiness. Handling it all.

I looked at my dining room and decided life was hard enough for the house, for me, for us. Plus...I will admit that while handwashing dishes feels both noble and satisfying, I am the only person doing it. Jake will load and unload a dishwasher. But he never, ever, ever, ever washes a dish by hand. Never. Neh-vah. No way, no how. He doesn't even see the dishes when they're waiting in the sink. So I could see into the future. I go back to work and...

So we bought a dishwasher. It gets delivered, and installed, and the old one hauled away, tomorrow. It is stainless steel on the inside and the outside and I think we will be very happy together.

55. Garden Update

My potatoes are taller than Maeve. I have hilled them up as best as I can. I will do more later this week. My plan to utilize old chickenwire as a barrier is not the best plan I've ever had. I'm debating how to handle this better. The Urban Homestead book recommends old tires. I don't have any old tires.

Garlic is going strong. Peas have figured out how to climb the strings I've dropped down for them. Lettuce is great. Radishes are all picked and consumed. There might be one or two stray ones out there. I let the girls sow them. I should plant more.

What next?

Tomatoes, of course. I picked up two plants at the farmers' market and later realized they were cheaper than equivalent plants at big box store #1. Wow. So I'll be doing that again this weekend. I have an Arkansas Traveler and a Black Krim. I've done Krims before but they were in one of my FAIL summers, so I'm hoping for better results this year.

Cucumbers, although I'm not wasting garden space on them this year. They'll go in the yard between other plants, grow up the fence in the back as best they can. I have learned the hard lesson of heirloom cucumbers. I cannot make them grow here. But last year I slapped in an older hybrid pickling cucumber and had a ridiculous harvest. This year is slicing cucumbers--we'll pickle what we can't eat.

Peppers, especially jalapenos. And maybe I'll try my hand at something new. Daisy is begging for watermelon. We live, of course, on a postage stamp. But maybe I could give them a try for her.

So far, I'm staying ahead of the weeding. Of course, it's been like living in Scotland the past month or so. Cloudy, misty, cool. It's May 17 and I'm going to wear a sweater when I go pick up the girls.

I'm back, by the way. I don't know if it was a thyroid dip or just recovering from stress due to Mike's travel (over now) or the flood worries or what but I'm getting stuff done again. Which is a good thing, of course, but especially in a house like mine.