Gardening – The Creative Salad

Peak into the Garden

For Earth Day let’s head out to the garden!

We inherited an amazing assortment of plants when we moved into this house rental. Buried under the weeds we’ve found so many goodies:

Borage, lavender, oregano, chives, chard, garlic, flax, poppies, strawberries, rosemary, ferns, roses, to name just a few. We also have some pretty amazing trees and bushes growing in our yard including pineapple guava, pear, plum, olive, and fig.

What a feast for the senses we shall have this summer!

Oh, and the seeds planted in our Fairy Garden have sprouted!

Our daughter was incredibly excited about the seedlings. So excited that she called Daddy at work to share the news. (Heaven forbid he have to wait eight hours to find out!) Yet not excited enough to water the garden plot herself; that task has fallen to mama (no surprise there!). Nevertheless we’re all looking forward to seeing what wildflowers grow in our little Fairy Meadow.

Spring Garden Plans

Spring has sprung here in Sonoma County: seventy degree days, bright sunshine, occasional showers.

Perfect gardening weather. Ideal weed growing conditions.

So we have begun the process of reclaiming the front yard at our new house from the past three months of neglect. What can I say? We’ve been focused on other things. (IMAGINE THAT!)

We have many hours of weeding and planting ahead of us.

We’re preparing one bed for veggies and herbs,

planting native grasses by the deck,

and transforming the middle bed into a…

fairy garden!

Botanical Interests, may I congratulate you on your BRILLIANT marketing. Once our daughter saw “Fairy Meadow” all other seed mixes fell by the wayside. Who wouldn’t want their very own fairy garden?!

Now we’re just keeping our fingers crossed the seeds sprout since a five year old insists on being in charge of watering “her garden.” Stay tuned!

Grow It, Cook It

Our daughter has been pouring over a fantastic gardening cookbook for kids: Grow It, Cook It: Simple Gardening Projects and Delicious Recipes. Yes, a book about gardening and cooking — two of our family’s most favorite things! This cookbook aims to get children involved in growing and preparing their own food. What better way to get kids excited about the food they eat than to grow and prepare it themselves!

Let’s head out to the garden and harvest some strawberries!

Grow It, Cook It presents how to grow a particular plant, and then incorporate it into a delicious recipe (with stunning photographs!). Here are some examples from the book:

The book also includes a section on seed saving:

Now to make something with our harvest of strawberries!

I think a batch of strawberry fruit spread is in order. That is if I can convince our daughter to stop gorging herself on the delicious berries. Who can blame her?! Homegrown produce tastes the best.

My (Lack of a) Summer Garden Plan

Our spring perennials are beginning to burst into bloom:

While we’re certainly enjoying the flowers in our front yard, I’ve made a radical decision regarding our vegetable garden this summer: we’re not going to plant one. I feel as though I only have so much time right now and I’d rather use that to dehydrate and can crops from friends’ trees and the farmer’s market than grow a meager supply of vegetables in our tiny front garden.

(I found making this decision–even typing it here!–to be so liberating, such a weight off my shoulders. Clearly this is what I need to do this year.)

I imagine that this is a temporary move and that we’ll plant a vegetable garden again next year, but this year we have other stuff going on. I can only do so much right now. My plate is full.

Not that I’m complaining! On the contrary, life is good!

Tips: Landscaping for Privacy

I’ve been reading all sorts of wonderful gardening books from the library recently: Free-Range Chicken Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful, Chicken-Friendly Yard; Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living and The Essential Urban Farmer (never-mind that we live way out in the country!); Landscaping for Privacy: Innovative Ways to Turn Your Outdoor Space into a Peaceful Retreat; Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces; and Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates of the San Francisco Bay Region.

I particularly enjoyed Landscaping for Privacy, which focuses on using natural elements to block out visual and auditory clutter. I loved their use of water to reduce ambient noise, round-up of fence materials (some familiar, others creative and new), methods to keep pests from vegetable gardens, ways to incorporate play spaces for kids, and delineate spots for dogs. Here’s a sneak peak inside the book, featuring some of my favorite pages to savor and enjoy:

Someday we’ll own our own place and then I’m buying a copy for sure. This book’s a keeper.