Bring the rain...

It rained today.

Praise the Lord.

Rainy days are made for slowing down and remembering to breathe. For special together time, relieved of the pressing burdens of so many projects about the house by the spell of water that falls from the sky.

The old and tired sanctuary was frigid this morning, keeping us early birds awake (like we could sleep with Jon Talbert speaking... oh please...) We sang the gorgeous and magical Christmas carols that I've been missing this advent season (how can you NOT sing carols during advent? Sacrilege!!!)

We made our way home for our first married rainy afternoon, exhausted from four shows and a "acting-high" that finally wore off right after church. I watched my bird feeder slowly fill with water as ever-changing drops plodded down from the swirling blue-grey sky. The soil in my veggie patch became a landscape of mini craters from the larger droplets and small hail that decided to hurl itself downward in a brief flurry of angry water. Doused and dense, the garden shone in the perfect afternoon darkness that creates such magical color saturation.

Matisse and Matt curled up on the couch for a long nap while I baked cookies and prepared soup for dinner. The heater hummed most of the day, keeping the damp chill at bay. Sweats and fleeces were donned, with thick socks for the tootsies and mugs of spiced cider as hand warmers. We snuggled with a movie during supper and took turns dashing to the freezing garage to change laundry loads. (I bet laundry rooms are all inside the house in the Midwest...) I love a man who lets me warm my perma-cold feet on his warm legs...

Today, we did nothing... and in that nothing was everything. Ah, bliss... Thanks rain!

growing hope...

Welcome to my garden...

This past weekend, I made it up to the UCSC Farm & Garden plant sale for the first time ever. Ridiculous, right? While they had a smaller stash than I expected, it was of great variety (particularly for a lover of salvias.) I planted my new mexican sages - black and chartreuse - and a beautiful dicolor salvia.

I had just pulled out mountains of sweet peas and sunflowers at the end of their bloom, along with past-prime pole beans that had been planted quite early in the season (but fear not, dear legume lovers, as there are several more waves of beans staggered for full summer-to-winter enjoyment!)

I also planted spinach, a wonderful blend of lettuce and broccoli for late fall harvest. When our CSA expires for the spring/summer growing season, we will have quite the barren table... A dearth of local, affordable produce, as it were. Dang I love Live Earth Farms.

I find myself most peaceful - most able to concentrate and file away the craze and business of the week - when puttering in the garden. I think I could putter 24/7 if I found a way to make it pay the bills...

Going off on that tangent, I would love to have this potting bench to make that whole venture "easier on the back..." ;o) I know that Smith & Hawken is an expensive habit to have, but dang does it feel great to open the trunk and *surprise!!!* A new garden shovel! *Wooohoo!!!* A fantastic trowel! *SheBAM!* Seedling markers! If this potting bench were to arrive? Combine all above excitement, multiply to the nth degree and that would be my reaction were this to appear on our doorstep... (And it is on SALE! Dang the budget!)

Someday we will have enough space and sun to grow all of our own edible plant matter (and flowers, too, because really, why bother with a garden that doesn't smell like heaven and glisten in the noon sun with a full million-color-spectrum of blooms.) Until then, this is my garden.

Grow, garden, grow...

On Gardening...

Is there anything quite as satisfying as eating a meal full of food that you have grown yourself? Right now we have purple peacock bush beans, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, sugar snap peas, nantes carrots, ronde du nice zucchini, black simpson lettuce, zebra stripe and red roma tomatoes, nasturtiums, red bell peppers and a smattering of spinach rounding out the garden. I plan to get a few more starters in the next week or so to add to our future harvests.

These home-grown crops beautifully balance the CSA farm share that we get from Live Earth Farm every week. Most weeks we have so much food that an unfortunate portion ends up in the compost bin as an investment in super-rich amendments for future plantings... (or at least that's how I try to justify it...) I am working hard to research best storage techniques, new recipes that utilize our varied (and sometimes unheard of) weekly cornucopia of veggies and fruits. Apricots freeze surprisingly well, halved and pitted, and are DELISH in smoothies! Carrots do not appreciate being stored with their greens still on... (picky, picky!) Beets stain EVERYTHING. Purslane is fantastic in salads (ever eaten purslane? Even Matt has eaten purslane! Get on the bandwagon!) Strawberries are AMAZING in green salads! Fresh apricots? Not so much... Caterpillars are best when not eaten (I know, shocking, eh?) and slugs give me the heebee-geebees when lurking in radicchio (again, shocking, eh?)

There is something so grounding - so fulfilling - about knowing where my food comes from. Seeing it go from seed to seedling to shoot to vine or bush or even tree... amazing. Matt doesn't have much experience with gardening - to see his face when inspecting the growth progress of our Autumn Harvest sunflowers is wondrous in and of itself. He's like a curious child, amazed that the now-six-foot-tall flower stem started only a few months ago as a tiny seed smaller than his pinky fingernail. I find his curiosity contagious, and catch myself running late for work because I decided to set my bag down and stare at newly opened Black Magic bachelor buttons (a-m-a-z-i-n-g.) Our cat spends 90% of her day perched in her basket-bed, overlooking the richly varied palate of colors and, particularly, the happy birds that are flocking to our birdbath and multiple feeders. I find myself plopping down beside her every lunch, watching nature be "as natural" as is possible in a controlled in-town environment.

But in all this beauty, there is a longing that is stirred in me. A desire to run away from the paved streets and city lights - to the quiet and beauty of woods, fields, oceanscapes, bluffs, mountains, meadows, creeks... To take the moments of peace that we find while two days in to the back country on a pack and hold it close forever.

Does this make me anti-social? Weird? A tree-hugging-hippy? Anti-American? What if we re-thought the American dream... Mine certainly isn't the biggest house on the block with the newest cars and track lighting. I think that more and more people are awaking to realize that this suburban dream is a myth, one that we need to leave behind in our search for sustainability in our community and in ourselves. So where do we go from here? I'm still looking...