I like to leave my flower beds alone until the ground starts warming up at some point in April – that way the bugs can enjoy the shelter of last year’s detritus while also letting this year’s early blooming weeds feed the pollinators in early spring. But I may have taken it a little too far.
We’ve been plotting this year’s garden expansion since last year. I say ‘we’ in the royal way of course. This year’s spring garden expansion is entirely my husband. From the newly built raised beds to the new strawberry barrel and the garden markers – he’s been a very busy fellow.
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I woke up several nights in a row recently with inspiration to write something brilliant and swore I didn’t need to write it down, but come the next morning, all I could remember was the theme of “hot feet” and a vague gist of the direction that theme needed to go. The more I fleshed it out, the more I realized it was just shaping up to be similar to this time last year’s middle aged woman’s rant about becoming invisible and was quite obviously related to what had actually woken me up – a case of hot feet. Clearly, February is a lot in a good year – My Aunt Loretta used to throw a “Fabulous February Festival” because she firmly believed February needs a good party to get through it. And if there was ever a year that needed a huge blowout party to get us through the slog of February, it’s this year, the year in which we cannot have parties. Certainly not indoor parties, in February.
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I aspire to Becky made gifts for most everyone on my Christmas list annually, but this year felt like the first in a while that I actually succeeded in doing that, beyond handing out jars of pepper jelly and pickles and jam. Although this year, I outsourced most of the jam to my friend Daniel the jam god. Between the great canning jar shortage of 2020 and the dire straights of most small businesses this year, it was a no brainer way to support one of my favorite local purveyors while also handing out handmade gifts. Not only is he able to source things like Damson plums, he may be one of the only people I know who is at least as picky about where his food comes from than I am. I know, right? I honestly don’t know why I haven’t outsourced to him before, but I’m totally doing it from here on out.
Continue readingI have this thing about being productive – at the end of the day, every day, I like having something to show for myself. I’m not sure if this is related to how I have a hard time sitting still, although I’m sure people that have known me for a long time who have complained for years about my need to be productive/inability to sit still /certain level of constant energy would probably say these things are in fact, entwined.
I currently have a glut of cabbage in my fridge, thanks to our CSA this year with Whisper Hill Farm. In looking about for different ways to serve it, I remembered a recipe I hadn’t made in a while that I swore I had posted here once upon a time. Having recently sat down and organized my recipes page, I was shocked it didn’t appear when I pulled it up on my phone – isn’t that what you do? Keep your blog recipe link page bookmarked on your phone for easy reference at all times? Well, you should if you don’t. Because when you can’t remember which one of your kitchen binders or notebooks a recipe is scribbled in, it’s helpful. Wait, you probably don’t have three of those either, do you? Oh.
There have been some new additions to the cookbook collection recently, some of which I’m ridiculously excited to share because they have sent me down a number of internet rabbit holes while also inspiring me to reconsider exactly how I organize the collection.
Continue readingOne would think that someone with a cookbook collection like mine – particularly one with a solid Southern bent that includes a number of church, Junior League and similar collections as well as some Southern classics – would have a solid tomato pie recipe or three among them. And yet, after recently combing through the ENTIRE collection, I realized the TWO I come up with in no way resemble the pies I’ve had in the past that I know had some sort of tomato, mayo, cheese mix.
When I last reported on the garden, we had just gotten a truckload of wood chips and it had been too cool to plant summer veggies.
There have been a few changes since then.
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Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 