During World War I and World War II, the United States government asked its citizens to plant gardens in order to support the war effort. Millions of people planted gardens. Emphasis was placed on making gardening a family or community effort - not a drudgery, but a pastime, and a national duty.

Today food travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to table. The process of machine-planting, fertilizing, processing, packaging, and transporting food uses a great deal of energy and contributes to the cause of global warming. I try to purchase locally through farmer's markets, and through organic food delivery services like Spud that offer local food sources, but even when I can reduce the average distance traveled per grocery item to 350 miles (like I did on my last Spud order), well, that's still 350 miles. Not exactly a short drive.

If I eat from my garden, that's 0 miles traveled. Plus hey, the veggies and fruit from my garden are much fresher. I know what went onto them, I know who has handled them, and I know what kind of soil they grew in. Especially comforting these days when salad tomatoes are contaminated with salmonella.

Not to mention, food and food packaging waste are primary components of landfills. Growing your own food involves no shopping bags, no plastic wrap, no packaging...and any food waste leftover can go straight into your compost pile. Because you DO have a compost, pile, right? Another super-easy project that pays off handsomely and makes a huge difference in your waste footprint. Brown gold, baby!

Here's what we're growing in our garden this year:
Figs
Strawberries
Melons
Zucchini
Round Summer Squash
Buddha's Hand (a non-edible citrus, used for scenting the house)
Globe Artichokes
Meyer Lemon
3 types of Tomatoes
Basil
4 types of Peppers
Corn
Red and Green Shiso (a type of japanese green)
Chard
Violetta Artichokes
Mixed Salad Greens
Pole Beans
Lemon Balm
Beets
Pumpkins
Santa Maria Plums
Apples

It was kind of a chore tilling the soil in my garden this year, but not THAT bad...just a few hours and then it was over. My veggie garden used to be a side lawn, but I had the lawn taken out and lots of soil and compost tilled in a few years back. Cost me about $450, and I had a drip watering system installed at the same time.

So now in the springtime I just push my shovel in at each spot next to a spout in my irrigation system, turn over the soil there, hack at it with my shovel a few times to mix up the soil, dump a little new compost in the hole, and stick the plant in.

Once I'm all done, I cover the area with mulch, water well, and that's it. I go in about once a week to do a little light weeding, I put tomato cages over the tomatoes, and supports around the beans. Other than that, I don't do much except harvest.

Julian helps me with plum picking, and we make plum butter (like jam, but thicker and not as sweet) and put that up in jars to eat the rest of the year on toast and in yogurt. Ideally I would like to grow enough to preserve other fruits and veggies for year-round eating, but with Adrian being so little, my time is kind of limited. He's too little to help, and wants to be inside the garden fence with me. Maybe next year I'll really kick things up, grow more and start canning my own tomatoes, making pickles, etc. The kids LOVE the garden. Picking a strawberry and popping it in their mouths totally sweet and warm from the sun is heaven for both of them.

I do have to brag that the applesauce from our mini apples is the sweetest and most flavorful you will ever taste. The regular jarred stuff has nothing in common, it's all watered down and yucky.

Here are some interesting links to Food Not Lawns, Edible Estates, and an effort in San Francisco to revive the Victory Garden.
http://www.revivevictorygarden.org/resources.html

Dan sent me this NYT article today. I'll try to post some of our garden photos in the next few days...

Banking on Gardening
By MARIAN BURROS
June 11, 2008

CASSANDRA FEELEY prefers organic ingredients, especially for her baby, but she finds it hard to manage on her husband’s salary as an Army sergeant. So this year she did something she has wanted to do for a long time: she planted vegetables in her yard to save money.

“One organic cucumber is $3 and I can produce it for pennies,” she said.

For her first garden, Ms. Feeley has gone whole hog, hand-tilling a quarter acre in the backyard of her house near the Fort Campbell Army base in Kentucky. She has put in 15 tomato plants, five rows of corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra, peas, watermelon, green beans. An old barn on the property has been converted to a chicken coop, its residents arriving next month; the goats will be arriving next year.

“I spent $100 on it and I know I will save at least $75 a month on food,” she said.

She is one of the growing number of Americans who, driven by higher grocery costs and a stumbling economy, have taken up vegetable gardening for the first time. Others have increased the size of their existing gardens.

Seed companies and garden shops say that not since the rampant inflation of the 1970s has there been such an uptick in interest in growing food at home. Space in community gardens across the country has been sold out for several months. In Austin, Tex., some of the gardens have a three-year waiting list.

George C. Ball Jr., owner of the W. Atlee Burpee Company, said sales of vegetable and herb seeds and plants are up by 40 percent over last year, double the annual growth for the last five years. “You don’t see this kind of thing but once in a career,” he said. Mr. Ball offers half a dozen reasons for the phenomenon, some of which have been building for the last few years, like taste, health and food safety, plus concern, especially among young people, about global warming.

But, Mr. Ball said, “The big one is the price spike.” The striking rise in the cost of staples like bread and milk has been accompanied by increases in the price of fruits and vegetables.

“Food prices have spiked because of fuel prices and they redounded to the benefit of the garden,” Mr. Ball said. “People are driving less, taking fewer vacations, so there is more time to garden.”

Each spring for the last five years, the Garden Writers Association has had TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, a polling firm, conduct a national consumer telephone survey asking gardeners what makes up the greatest share of their garden budgets. “The historic priorities are lawns, annuals, perennials, then vegetables, followed by trees and shrubs,” said Robert LaGasse, executive director of the association. This year, vegetables went from fourth place to second, which Mr. LaGasse called “an enormous attitude shift.”

People like Rita Gartin of Ames, Iowa, are part of that shift. Last year she kept a small garden. This year it has tripled in size into a five-by-seven-foot plot because, Ms. Gartin said, “The cost of everything is going up and I was looking to lose a few pounds, too; so it’s a win-win situation all around.”

Ms. Gartin, who fits gardening into her 12-hour workday as an interior designer and property manager, is not intimidated by the 20 kinds of vegetables she has planted: she was raised on a farm with a giant garden. A fence has been erected to keep the deer and people out, and it’s where the pole beans and snap peas are already climbing.

She is ready to take a stab at canning, but reserves the right to freeze everything instead, she said.

“I probably spent maybe $50 for everything and that’s less than a week’s cost of groceries or the price of a gym,” she said.

Seed companies and garden centers say they didn’t see the rush coming. There wasn’t any buildup last year, said Barbara Melera, the co-owner of the D. Landreth Seed Company in New Freedom, Pa., who takes the pulse of gardeners at the 13 garden shows she attends around the country each year.

“We pack for all the shows and bring 16 different beans, 10 packets for each kind,” Ms. Melera said. In earlier years, by the time the shows end in March, she said, “we are lucky if we have sold two of the 10 packets.”

“This year,” she said, “we sold out the first show and literally sold hundreds. We never sell any corn; this year we sold out of corn by the end of the season. We saw the same thing in the mail order business.”

She said the greatest demand was for what she calls “survival vegetables”: peas, beans, corn, beets, carrots, broccoli, kale, spinach and the lettuces. “It was so different from what it has been in prior years,” she added.

Randy Martell, one of the owners of the Garden Factory in Rochester, says it isn’t just vegetables. “The potted fruit trees were sold out by the first week of May,” he said. “Blueberries, raspberries and grapes are sold out. I think those sales have doubled. Overall sales are up about 30 percent.”

Dottie Wright, greenhouse manager at one of the Dammann’s Lawn, Garden and Landscaping Centers in Indianapolis, said she talks to people every day who are starting their first vegetable garden. “If they don’t have a yard they try containers for tomatoes and herbs. We can’t keep the herbs in this year.”

Thrilled as gardening experts are about this phenomenon, they know that many first timers don’t have any idea how much sweat equity is involved.

“Many people I sold seeds to have never gardened before,” Ms. Melera said, “and we have to find a way to educate them so the experience is successful. They have got to be taught.”

Mr. Ball of Burpee knows some of the new gardeners won’t stick with gardening beyond the first year. “Some people can’t get with the idea of digging a hole; getting buggy, sticky and hot,” he said. “Gardening is an active hobby; it’s a commitment.”

Doreen G. Howard, a former garden editor for Woman’s Day and now a writer for The American Gardener, is one of the committed. She has had a vegetable garden for most of the last 25 years. This year she has quadrupled the size of her vegetable plot in Roscoe, Ill., because of the economy and because she thinks the quality of store-bought produce has deteriorated. Once vegetables were just 5 percent of her garden; now they are 20 percent.

“Food prices have gotten to the point where we are seeing the difference,” she said. “It’s pushing our budget and we are a two-income family. It was never a concern before.” Ms. Howard said her grocery bill for two went from $100 a week to $140 a week this year.

She has chosen many vegetables that freeze well, investing in a secondhand freezer to store the bounty. She plans to dry the herbs that grow on the back porch next to boxes of mesclun, and to make pickles from the cucumbers and raisins from the grapes — her newest addition. And she is looking forward to a cellar full of Peruvian blue potatoes.

Some of Ms. Howard’s increased harvest will also go to food pantries through an organization called Plant a Row for the Hungry, which encourages gardeners to plant extra vegetables to share with the poor.

“I’m hoping to take $20 a week off my grocery bill,” she said. This is in the low range, according to Mr. Ball, who says a $100 investment will produce $1,000 to $1,700 worth of vegetables.

Ms. Gartin, now in her second year, says gardening is worth the effort.

“I got soft calluses from hoeing and digging,” she said, adding cheerfully, “but my fingernails are still pretty — long and not chipped. I probably spent 30 hours putting the garden in, and when I’d come into the house I’d be covered in sweat. But now it’s pretty easy because of all the rain we’ve had.”

And the vegetables, she said, are “awesome.” “It’s a totally different flavor from what you buy in the store. It’s exciting to go out and pick the fruits of your labor.”

Posted by msLaura at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

1:30pm
I can't believe it.

I had Lucy all mended up, all her wounds closed, she was gaining weight and really looking great. So I put her back in the run and she was having the time of her life scratching in the dirt for worms, visiting with Henrietta, etc.

I had the flies all under control too. Haven't even seen one out there in days, the gnat larvae and Solar Fly Trap were really doing the trick.

Then I noticed TWO eggs inthe nesting box yesterday. Could Lucy have laid an egg, after not laying for several weeks? Or did Henrietta lay two in one day (not unheard of). Well, everything looked fine with her, so I didn't concern myself too much.

Today when I went out to check on Lucy, she was in the Eglu again. This was late morning, so I had an "uh-oh" feeling. When she heard me she came out, and I could see bloody bits hanging down from her vent. Ugh.

Henrietta immediately came over to peck at her vent. I shooed her away and picked up Lucy to assess the damage.

Not looking good. It looked like Henrietta had gotten at her a little bit, she was dripping blood, and the prolapse was quite big, plus it was dirty too.

I took her inside to wash her off in the sink, then called the vet.

I am going to have her put down this afternoon. I think she and I have both been through enough. I don't want her life to just be about pain. At least her last few days have been good. And for myself, I can't take nursing her through one more major illness, and I can't afford any more vet bills.

So she's all clean and covered up in her hospital cage. I am going to lay down with Julian and take a nap, then we'll go in to have her put down after that.

Ugh, this sucks. After all that work and such a beautiful recovery from flystrike...THIS has to happen. Maybe she had problems to begin with and that's what brought on the flystrike. Maybe this is due to the damage to her cloaca from the maggots. Maybe it's just a coincidence. I don't know, but it's really awful. I feel bad making her wait until this afternoon, since she's probably in pain, but at this point Julian needs a nap, I coud use one too, and I'm not in any mental place where I can just go chop off her head in the backyard and get this over with. I wish I could, but right now I think a nice peaceful death at the vet's is best.

5:00pm
Well, we just got back from the vet. She said that it looked like her whole oviduct had prolapsed and come out through her vent, and wasn't likely that she would recover. She agreed that putting her to sleep would be the best thing. She was very nice and sympathetic, and isn't charging me for the euthanasia.

So now we're back home. That's that. Yuck.

7:30pm
The saga goes on and on!

The vet just called me and said that they haven't put Lucy down yet. The vet wants to give her one more try. At no charge.

If she looks like she isn't going to recover, then they will euthanize her. She may need to be spayed. If she recovers, I can take her home once she is healthy. If I decide that I don't want to take her afterwards, then they will find a home for her.

The vet said that she is eating well and not in any obvious pain right now. She is going to monitor her over the weekend and let me know what her chances are on Monday.

I expressed my concern that she has been in enough pain lately, and that if it looks like she will have a lot more pain in her future, then I would rather have her put down sooner than later. She said she understands, and if it comes to that, she will euthanize her.

So the story of Lucy continues. This vet is really quite something. Most vets won't even bother with chickens, even bird vets, and here this one is willing to do pro bono surgery on mine and care for her until she recovers at no charge to me! Just to give a chicken a chance. Remarkable.

I'll have to think of something really nice to do for her in return. I'm pretty poor right now, have no extra money in my bank account, but I could at least make cookies or something...I'll have to see what I can come up with. Any ideas?

Posted by msLaura at 08:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My new Solar Fly Trap KICKS ASS, originally uploaded by mslaura.

There must be a hundred flies in there. Jesus Christ, I didn't even know we had that many flies in the neighborhood! Totally gross.

I put in the nasty-smelling yeast bait that's been fermenting in a plastic gallon milk jug for the past week and they went NUTS this morning. They must have called up every relative for miles around to come and check out the new vile smelling brew in the Baker/Hamilton backyard.

I can't even find any flies in the chicken run now. I think they are *all* in the trap.

DIE SUCKERS! YES!

I am fighting this battle on another front too...I put the maggot-hunting gnat larvae in the soil around the run the other night (after Henrietta went to bed, so she wouldn't immediately dig them up and eat them).

So not only am I trapping every adult fly in a mile radius, I am going after their kids too.

Victory is mine, I can smell it.

Posted by msLaura at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I went to go pick up Lucy at the vet today and they gave me a rundown on what to do to care for her wounds. I had not *seen* the wounds up until today. I mean, I saw enough on Thursday to know that there was something really bad going on, but then I rushed her to the vet without inspecting. There was too much goo and matted feathers and I just wanted to get her there as soon as possible.

Today I got the full, clear picture. Holy fucking shit. It's a really good thing that I'm in my second trimester and no longer nauseous, and it's also good that I'm a biology major and have a really strong stomach for exposure to gory nastiness. Because otherwise I think I would have barfed all over the back room of the bird hospital.

I am tempted to take photos, but I don't want you to barf either. The knowledge that FLY MAGGOTS did this to her is absolutely the most disgusting part. Absolutely.

And supposedly her wounds are much, much better than they were before. Uh, when they were squirming with maggots. Now they are actually healing and closing up. But they are still horrific.

All around her cloaca is red, raw flesh. Like an open wound. But an open wound that you poop out of. AND have to lay eggs out of. Eggs are not small, by the way.

There are two vets at the hospital, and one of them told me on Thursday that she had an egg inside all queued up ready to go, and that she would probably lay it as soon as she felt better. So today I asked if she had laid the egg yet, and the other vet said, "No, what egg?"

Then she checked and found the egg inside, *still* ready to go. Poor little hen was just straining every few seconds as she was standing there, and the vet thought she had to poop. It turns out that there was a giant scab at the bottom of her cloaca that was holding it closed so that the egg couldn't come out. The vet had to tear the giant scab off so that the egg could pass, and then help to dig it out of her. Julian and I watched with open mouths. I fought the urge to run home and take an immediate sitz bath.

Julian took it all in stride, like a true farm kid. "Lucy has a BIG owie on the butt!" was his only comment. Yeah, no kidding. You can say that again.

Of course, this is not Julian's first traumatic, gory and violent animal experience.

The egg finally came out and everyone in the back room was enormously relieved. "Jesus, I'll bet THAT feels better!" was pretty much the phrase that came out of everyone's mouth at the same time. All women present.

Apart from the horror that is her cloaca, she has deep two craters in her skin several inches wide on either side. They were firmed up and scabby by the time I saw them. I can only imagine how bad they were before when fresh.

So I was told to spray her butt with warm water in the sink twice a day (yes indeed, a sitz bath), then dry her off and apply antibiotic ointment to all her wounds afterwards. I just did it tonight and I used up half a tube. I need to go get more tomorrow. It's especially hard because of the feathers. I have to pull them aside so that I can see anything, and then keep them from sticking in in the ointment. They have mostly fallen out where the wounds are, but there are still enough feathers around to make it difficult.

Julian the Unflappable Farm Boy has been an invaluable assistant. He stood guard over Lucy's carboard box while I got her crate all set up for indoor habitation yesterday. The kid's set to become a professional bouncer. Every time Bugs came a-sniffin' near Lucy's box, Julian attempted to whack him and shouted, "No, doggie! Don't touch Lucy!"
Then he stood guard right next to the crate door to prevent any unwanted dog intrusions while I was getting her settled in. Very helpful actually, because otherwise I would have had to turn around and whack Bugs away myself. Except that my Chicken Bodyguard was almost standing on top of me while all this was happening. It was a little crowded.

I kept finding him crouched down next to her crate afterwards.
"Are you being nice to the poor chicken? I don't want you to poke her or be mean to her, OK? She's sick and she needs to rest."
"No Mama. Just looking at her. I'm a Good Helper."
"OK, that's fine."

Posted by msLaura at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Chicken trauma time.

One of my hens had been inside the Eglu for a few days. Both girls have both been off their normal laying schedule, sometimes laying eggs at midday, so I figured that she was laying an egg in there when I went out to feed and water them, and didn't pay too much attention. Normally they are never inside during the day.

Today I lifted the egg hatch and noticed her inside again, along with a bad smell. I decided to take her out and inspect her, and to my horror she was VERY sick, with a bottom completely drippy and wet with diarrhea. I offered her some water and she drank a little, but would not eat.

I immediately took her into the bird vet (once I found one!), and to my worse horror, was told that she had several large wounds to her bottom, all of which were swarming with maggots!!!!

I have no idea how she would get a wound in the first place. I only have two hens and they are very gentle with one another. No rats or vermin in the run, which is enclosed. My dog hasn't touched them. Nothing sharp in there either. It's a total mystery!

The vet said that perhaps she had a small irritation that then got droppings in it and spread to become a bigger wound, and then several wounds as the maggots set in.

My God, she seemed just fine until a few days ago! I feel like the worst chicken owner in the world, but I honestly don't know how this happened! She has always been a slow and irregular layer compared to my other hen, but for the life of me I don't know what else could have happened to her. It's not like she's sick from a stuck egg or anything. They eat a very healthy diet, the run is safe and comfortable...I'm at a loss.

So now the vet says that she wants to keep her in the hospital for a few days on injectable antibiotics. The maggots are still coming out of her wounds. (yech!), so there won't be any stitching up until the wounds are completely clean and pest-free. After that she will need to be kept inside our house for up to a month until she is completely healed, otherwise there is a chance of maggots reinfecting the wounds. I will also need to inject her with antibiotics. If I can bring her home a bit sooner, then the cost won't be quite so high, but already the estimate is over USD$300 without overnight care, and I can't imagine that is going to be cheap once added on!

I really don't know what to do. She's a sweet girl, she's our pet, but the thought of paying USD$300 for a chicken that will still require ongoing care is killing me. Dan is going to flip...he is already complaining that the chickens have cost us $$$ and daily eggs aren't worth all this trouble, etc. I can't see him being thrilled about a chicken inside our house for a month either, especially since she is *tremendously* noisy in the mornings. And I have no idea where I would keep her, either.

I can't imagine telling the vet to put her down when she has a chance of recovering, but I honestly can't really afford the expense and upkeep of getting her better either. I am 5.5 months pregnant, with a 2.5 year old, a dog, a home-based business, etc. I have customers in and out of my house all day with small children, another barrier to having a sick hen penned up in my living room.

If I were a farmer she would probably have been in the stewpot a long time ago. If she were my dog I wouldn't mind paying $300 and putting in the recovery time, but she's somewhere in between for us. A pet, but not quite at dog level, you know? We don't sleep with her in bed at night, you know?

Sigh. When do you throw in the towel on a chicken?

UPDATE: I just talked to the vet again and she said that Lucy's not eating, and she is currently just sitting with her head down on the ground. Not good at all. They will keep her overnight, give her food by tube, keep her hydrated and give her meds to control her pain, and if she's not up on her feet by tomorrow then we'll talk about what to do.

For everything she said she *could* do, it would be $491. I just can't afford that right now. I set the limit at $400 (which is still a stretch) and if she doesn't get better with what the vet can do for $400, then we'll put her down. Shit, I have to sell over ten Ergos to make $400. And for that I might just end up with a dead hen anyways.

Then I have to find another hen, because they are such social creatures. Henrietta can't live on her own as a solo chicken, she would be too lonely. They do *everything* together. In fact, I'm kind of beating myself up for not noticing this illness sooner, since Henrietta was pretty disturbed about Lucy, now that I think about it. She ran over to me every time I went outside and tried to get my attention, I swear. Lots of loud squawking. Which I ignored. Ugh, bad chicken mom.

I am so grossed out about the maggots. Jesus Christ, that poor chicken. Not only were they in the wounds, but they had crawled underneath her skin and made tunnels away from the wounds. So repulsive to even think about. I am itchy all over. I hate every fucking fly I see. Disgusting little bastards.

Posted by msLaura at 03:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henrietta laid her first egg today. It's a lovely egg, the color of cafe au lait. Perfectly shaped, not small, not big. I guess the first egg a hen lays can be kind of an oddball, but this one was just perfect.

It turned out to be a double-yolker! So I fried it up in butter and I ate one half and Julian ate one half on sourdough rye toast. Delicious. I took photos to document this auspicious occasion, but for some reason they were lost. I think I jiggled the memory card when I was changing the battery today. Darn. I got some great shots of Julian making yummy faces while eating his egg. Don't know exactly what happened.

Henrietta and Lucy are so funny. They've lost their shy, timid, beat-up factory farm attitude and are now happy, healthy, glossy free-range hens scratching around in the backyard and eating every bug they can find. They roam around everywhere. Very affectionate too. They LOVE grapes, and will climb into your lap if you have any. I don't have any problems picking them up anymore, they actually like it. It's sweet to hold a soft warm hen in your arms. They like to be petted. They will also come over to the patio table if we eat outside, just to see if we might have something tasty to share.

Lately the girls are trying to come into the house to pay us a visit, but since their poops are large and arrive unexpectedly, this is taboo. The poops are the only downside to having chickens so far. They do poop a lot, but it's mostly grass and greens. We just hose off the patio once a day and move their coop around every few days. Then we hose down the grass where the coop was and all the chicken poop disappears into the ground and turns into fertilizer. Our grass is looking exceptionally green.

So far the dog/chicken relationship is about even. Bugs regularly chases squirrels around in the backyard and sometimes he'll take a run at the hens as well, just for the hell of it and because it's fun to watch them cluck and scatter. But then they'll chase him too, just for the hell of it. I think they all enjoy the company.

Posted by msLaura at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We had two sections of lawn in front of our house when we moved in. A large lawn to the left of our driveway, and a small lawn to the right of the driveway.

The small lawn was the most useless thing ever. It was hard to mow, too small to play games on...really just a ridiculous waste of space and resources. So last May I had the lawn removed and replaced it with a vegetable garden.

I paid someone to do the hard part, which was to strip out the top layer of grass/roots and rototill in lots of lovely dark, rich compost. Still, they did it in less than a day, and it was pretty cheap. Included in the price I got a simple little drip irrigation system, so I wouldn't have to do any watering. Picking out the veggies was fun, and the planting was super-easy.

What a payoff! All summer long we have been eating an ultra-fresh, incredibly delicious bounty of strawberries, melons, heirloom tomatoes, green beans, fragrant basils, sweet peppers, hot peppers, Japanese eggplant, cucumbers, lots of different salad greens, corn, and Swiss chard. We're still waiting for the artichokes and Meyer lemons to produce, they are winter crops.

Now ask me what work I did after I planted the veggies. Um, almost none. I went out and harvested every few days, pulled a weed or two here and there, sometimes turned the hose on and watered when it was really hot outside. Other than that, my plot was almost maintenance-free.

Now I'm wondering why *anyone* would want a big lawn when you can reap such an incredible bounty from putting even a tiny section of the land to a different use. I put much less effort into my veggie garden than I do our lawn (which needs to be mown, trimmed and edged weekly, and re-seeded fairly often in the bare patches). I'm sure we used less water for the veggie garden too. And we had all kinds of butterflies and big fuzzy bumblebees visiting the garden, whereas the lawn is just kind of blah.

We have a Neuton rechargeable lawnmower that kicks ass. It's so quiet you can talk on the phone while you mow your lawn. No fumes or gas to buy, just push a button to start it. And I don't use any chemical fertilizers or herbicides, just a top-dressing of compost in the wintertime. Our lawn looks pretty great without any of that poisonous stuff on it, and I don't have to worry about Julian and Bugs playing on it, or, in the case of Bugs, eating it.

Edible Estates is an ongoing series of projects to replace the American lawn with edible garden landscapes responsive to local culture, climate and landscape. The website has some scary facts on it:

• Homeowners use up to 10 times more chemical pesticides per acre on their lawns than farmers use on crops.


• Lawn chemicals drift and are tracked indoors where they may remain in carpets and on surfaces for up to a year when not exposed to direct sunlight.


• Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 13 are probable carcinogens, 14 are linked with birth defects, 18 with reproductive effects, 20 with liver or kidney damage, 18 with neurotoxicity and 28 are irritants.


• Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 17 are detected in groundwater, 23 have the ability to leach into drinking water sources, 24 are toxic to fish and other aquatic organisms vital to our ecosystem, 11 are toxic to bees, and 16 are toxic to birds.


• 2,4-D, the pesticide in most Weed and Feed products, is a neurotoxicant and contains half the ingredients in Agent Orange.


• Studies have found that dogs whose owners use 2,4-D lawn products are twice as likely to develop canine malignant lymphoma.


• Those are just a few...

Posted by msLaura at 06:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made the best salsa ever yesterday. Except for the garlic and cilantro, everything was from my garden. That's a picture of it at left. I served it up in a lovely Humuhumunukunukuapua'a (aka Picasso Triggerfish) plate from my Aunt Polly, who sadly just moved from Honolulu to North Carolina. Sad for me, not for her, because we only got over to visit once.

This was Round 2 for my homemade salsa efforts. Round 1 was pretty good, but too watery, and not quite spicy enough. This time I found perfection. Don't know if I can replicate it though...my recent garden recipes are so good because of the ingredients, and if I don't have those anymore, it's not quite the same.


SALSA FRESCA DEL JARDIN
* 2 heirloom tomatoes (sliced and sauteed in saucepan on high, just to evaporate some of the juice out of them)
* 1 heirloom tomato (raw)
* 12 jalapeno peppers, ripened to deep red flavorful mildness, cut in half and seared in a hot cast-iron pan
* a handful of Thai basil leaves, chopped
* a handful of cilantro, chopped
* one big garlic clove, slivered
* salt and pepper

So freakin' good, I couldn't believe it. We had it with chips for lunch, and then with Trader Joe's mini-tacos (most highly recommended) for dinner last night, and then I polished it off by adding the last few spoonfuls to the Tuscan White Bean & Tuna Salad that I made for lunch today (which was great as well, and no cooking required!) I substituted some tins of Trader Joe's smoked trout for the tuna. It was tastier, and trout has much less mercury than tuna.

The summer garden is finishing up. We've still got some zucchini, eggplant, melons, tomatoes and cucumbers, but production has slowed waaaaay down. It's time to start planting fall/winter crops. I'm kind of behind on that. Today is an incredibly beautiful Indian Summer day, and would be a great day to dig in the garden, but I have too many other things to do. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted by msLaura at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Julian is a crack-up. Every time he goes out in the front yard he scans the strawberry patch for any little spot of red, then points at it and says "Mom! Mom!" until I either pick a strawberry for him or tell him that it isn't quite ready yet.

The veggie garden is really coming along. There's corn, zucchini, japanese eggplant, 3 kinds of peppers, 3 kinds of tomato, Swiss chard, 2 kinds of artichoke, 3 kinds of basil, 2 kinds of melon, English cucumber, dwarf Meyer lemon and some other stuff...oh, strawberries. There were a few different kinds of lettuce, but they bolted (flowered) so lettuce is done for now.

Green beans were kind of a bust, I didn't pick them in time and they got tough.

I'm waiting and waiting for the heirloom tomatoes to ripen up. I have jalapeno peppers too, so we'll be making our own salsa fresca. Yum.

You can't slack off when you've got a producing garden. You eat food when it's ready, or preserve it somehow, or else you just miss out completely. The window of vegetable opportunity closes, no second chances.

The corn is really good. The tomatoes are remarkably sweet. The zucchini is unbelievably prolific *and* good. Cucumbers, delicious and not bitter at all, even the skin. LOVE the garden!

I really wish I had a fig tree, but our neighbors down the street have one in their front yard. It's sort of tucked away in an empty part of their yard behind some bushes, and no one seems to be eating the fruit, so when I walk Bugs past there in the evening I snag a few ripe figs and scarf them down.

Posted by msLaura at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am growing some MONSTER zucchini. This is one of them. I swear, I should enter a contest or something, these are Veggies Gone Wild. I have 4-5 more like this out on the vine still. Really need to get it in gear and start churning out Stuffed Zucchini (from my mother-in-law's fantastic recipe), Zucchini Fritters (ditto) and Zucchini Bread (yep). But I don't know, it's hot and it seems like I already spend 23 out of 24 hours per day cleaning up the kitchen, so I'm somewhat blocked about cooking lately.

Posted by msLaura at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Things have been quite exciting around here lately. So many new developments! Not sure where to begin, so I'll just jump right in.

Yesterday Julian was watching a documentary on Ethiopia with me and all of a sudden he got up, opened the sliding door screen, stepped outside, closed the screen behind him, *peed* outside (he was hanging out nakeybutt, as usual), then came back inside and sat down next to me again. I didn't really pay attention until I looked over and saw him peeing outside, at which point, flabbergasted, I told him what a good boy he was to go outside for peepee. I am also amazed that he shut the screen door behind him each time. Hell, *I* don't even do that. I usually leave the door gaping open for the flies to come in.

So how's that for a 14-month-old? Pretty damned impressive, if you ask me. Contrast that with the typical American kid still crapping in their pants until age 3 and beyond and I have to say...this potty training effort has TOTALLY been worth it.

Other new stuff this week:

• Says "Hi!" while waving. He's a real greeter now, waves from the front porch to all the neighbors passing by.


• Waves bye-bye to poop/pee in toilet after flushing, insists on throwing in a token piece of toilet paper, whether he needs it or not.


• Likes to wash hands, complains if his hands are dirty, sticky or sandy.


• Started making a loud "hoo hoo" noise all of a sudden. I was sure I had heard this before somewhere, and sure enough...in at least two of his books there is an owl hooting. When he sees the owl he starts saying "hoo hoo". He is a little bit confused about the owl hooting and a rooster crowing, sometimes he also hoots when he sees a rooster.


• Says "chick" when he sees a chicken.


• Uses sign language for "eat", "milk", those are old signs already. New signs are "swing" and an especially useful one..."hurts". If he bonks his head he makes the "hurt" sign and then pats his head where he hit it. Where this REALLY comes in handy is teething pain. It's so hard to tell when fussing is due to teething or something else, but it's much easier when he makes the "hurt" sign and then holds his jaw. Baby Tylenol coming right up sir!


• He uses the "milk" sign for three different purposes.
  
  
  
  • He wants to nurse.
  
  
  • He wants to sleep (usually accompanied by laying his head down on my shoulder).
  
  
  • Potty. Not sure how he has associated the "milk" sign with this, but somehow he has. If he is already nursing and he makes the "milk" sign, then it means he has to go potty.
  
  
  
  


• Yells "DIE!" over and over like he's possessed. This is actually very funny, at least for now. It's especially funny when he says "DIE DADDY!" or "DIE DOGGIE!". You know, funny in a gruesome way. But it's not like he knows what he's saying, he just likes the way "DIE" sounds, and then "doggie" and "daddy" are his only sure-fire rock-solid words, so what else is he supposed to add? I'm just glad that for now I am still She Who Shall Not Be Named. ;-)
  

So you know how pregnant women are advised not to gain more than 25-35 pounds? Well, what's the big deal, I figured. I'll lose that weight, and after all, it's for my baby's health, right? Plus, ice cream tastes really, really good. So I gained 65 pounds while pregnant with Julian. I was all chubby and round, with several chins to choose from, but I felt good and looked healthy and all that. No big deal.

At first I had a hard time losing the weight, then it just started coming off like crazy. And THAT'S when I found out the hidden downside to weight gain and loss. Skin. Your skin can't keep up with the expansion and contraction. So whereas my fat face was smooth and youthful, my skinny face is droopy and wrinkled. Damn. No one told me about that. I thought it was just about losing the weight and magically returning to your former self. No such luck. Grace Kelly said that at a certain age every woman has to choose between her face and her ass, and she chose her face. Now I know what she meant. Hrumpf.

We are getting back on a regular sleeping schedule. After Julian was sick, we started salsa lessons, went out to dinner a few times, and had other nighttime activities going on. He started getting to bed later and later, then slipped in an extra nap around 5:30-6pm just to ENSURE a late bedtime. Ugh. One night he didn't sleep until 11:15pm. I kept trying to put him down and he just kept popping up like a jack-in-the-box until I got sick and tired of it and just let him run around and play until *I* was ready to go to bed. Another night we tried letting him cry it out...yes I know, I said I would never do that again, and it didn't work this time either. He howled at his door like he was being tortured over hot coals. FOR 45 MINUTES STRAIGHT. Dan couldn't take it anymore and went in. He got him asleep in no time, but then he couldn't squat low enough to put him down in bed. When I finally came in the room Julian was just beside himself. I put him in bed and laid down with him and he was asleep in an instant. Poor baby.

So now we are on a fairly strict schedule:

Wake up by 7:30am.

Naptime at 11:30am.

NO late afternoon napping.
Bath and books at 7:30pm. Bedtime at 8:00pm.

Keeping to a strict sleep routine has been working just great. So much for free-form laissez-faire bedtimes. He sleeps so much better when he goes to bed earlier. He went to bed at 8:00pm last night and didn't wake up until 2:00am. Then he peed, went back to bed with me and stayed asleep until 6:45am. My life is much better, since him going to bed at 8:00pm means that I actually have some baby-free evening hours to spend with Dan again. Ahhhh. The downside is that we can't go out in the evening. We missed our weekly salsa lesson. But I'm willing to sacrifice occasional nightlife for sanity the rest of the week, and wanting to cuddle my baby instead of throw him out a window.

One annoying development: throwing. Julian's latest thing is to get right up close, about 6 inches away, and throw objects point-blank right at your face. He doesn't mean to hurt, he's just not that great at throwing far, so he wants to make sure he gets close enough. It's very, very annoying. I'm sure it's a phase that will pass, but right now it can't pass soon enough for me.

I ripped out the lawn to the right of our driveway and instead I have a big, fat, fantastic vegetable garden on a drip irrigation system. Or I *will* have a garden once I start planting. I'm a farmer now! After years and years of tiny little scraps of dirt and container plants, I now have more available acreage than I know what to do with. So far I've got heirloom tomatoes, artichokes and jalapeno peppers. There's still tons and tons of space, must fill it all up. Back to the nursery!

Here are some new pics of the boy. I haven't had time to put them on this page yet. Oh, and we're going to Kauai on vacation. Hooray!

Crap, only 50 minutes of babysitting time left before Ashley leaves. Sounds like she's having a rough time of it, too. It's raining outside, so no outdoor play for the Little Man today. Gotta go, I still have a lot to do during my limited baby-free time.

Posted by msLaura at 11:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ahhhh, Julian went down for his nap so easily today, it was fantastic. Of course, since I have plans to update this journal while he's sleeping, it will probably only be a 30 minute nap or something horrible like that. When we have to be somewhere at a specific time, well *that's* when the 2.5 hour nap happens.

Lately it takes forever to get this baby to sleep. He's *tired* all right, but playing and exploring is just sooo much fun that he finds it difficult to stop. I'm really glad that he's an incredibly funny and cute baby, because if he weren't so funny and cute I would be seriously, seriously annoyed by these bedtime antics.

Typical bedtime scene....baby is SOOOOOOO tired he's ready to drop. Crying/whining/fussing nonstop, eyes closing, the works. He has been playing like mad all day long and is exhausted. He's clean, he's warm, he's got his jammies on...totally ready for a good long sleep. I lay him down in bed and get ready to nurse him. Ah, nursing...he snuggles into me, puts his feet on my bell, and his baby body is totally still except for the little suck-suck-suck. Perfect, won't be long now until he's totally out.

Except that suddenly...a flurry of activity! Chubby legs start pumping and twisting in order to get underneath him at the right angle to get up on his knees. The arm spins around and there he is in prime crawling position, with a huge grin on his face. Hey! Look what I did! Bet you thought I was sleeping, right?

Then he tears off out of bed (the mattress is on the floor and he can climb in and out perfectly well) to go flip through one of his books, or beat his hands on top of his little bedside table, etc. He even knows how to turn the bedside lamp on and off, which is hysterical. It's basically a sliding dimmer switch, so now when he gets out of bed he turns on the light and everything. What a little man. One he even turned the light *out* before coming back to bed, which was quite talented of him, I must say.

After maybe five minutes of playing, he's back. Time for another quick nurse. Then he's off again. This scenario repeats 2-5 times until he is so tired that he can no longer crawl off the bed. Now he stays on the bed and just crawl-staggers around like a little drunk. I grab him and pull him down next to me in sleeping-nursing position, but he struggles to get up again, just one more time. Weaving around, he collapses back down. Will he stay down this time? NO! He's back up! He lurches around in a one-foot radius, dropping down, then struggling mightily to get back up. Now? Yes now...I grab him and pull him back in next to me, and this time he stays down. He might de-latch and roll away a half-turn (which is good, because it's easier for me to sneak away), but that's it. I quietly and carefully crawl out of bed and exit the room.

Glancing at the clock, I see that this whole production has taken an hour and twenty minutes. Jesus Christ! Now I'm a little bit envious of parents who just put their kid in the crib and let them go through all the playing/standing up/laying down/finally passing out by themselves. But then again, I wouldn't really want to miss it. Every time he comes back to nurse he is full of loving slobbery kisses and hugs and pats and snuggles for me, and we laugh and giggle together as he tries to bite my nose, then I pretend to bite his. I wouldn't want to miss his happy little sighs when we cuddle before he gets up to play again. It just takes so damn long sometimes, and I have so much CHORING to do. Then I get stressed out and start thinking, "Damn it, would you just SLEEP! Enough already! Aaaargh!" But if I'm not too stressed and I can relax about it, then I really enjoy that time spent watching him cruise around the room playing and then happily coming back to his Mama full of love and kisses.

Yes, I need to remind myself that it's a sweet, precious thing that won't last more than the blink of an eye, because all last week I was a Total Wreck, overwhelmed by motherhood and wifehood and
sick of being the lowest (wo)man on the totem pole all the fucking time. I lost my cool. Everything pissed me off. Goddamn stupid dog, whiny baby, and helpless husband...all sucking up every last ounce of my energy. My whole life morphed into an endless Give-a-Thon, with zero return. How had this happened? Didn't I used to be a fairly bad-ass, smart, independent woman with an interesting whirlwind life, frequent travels, intelligent conversations, loads of free time? How did I get to the point where the dog is wearing a clean fleece coat and has his teeth brushed, but I have on ill-fitting black sweatpants with baby snot on the leg and I haven't brushed my teeth or washed my face all day?

If the baby's sleeping, the dog needs to be fed. If the dog and baby are taken care of, then Dan needs something. I feel somewhat bitchy telling him to make his own damn coffee or put peanut butter on his own toast, but I haven't had a break for myself in months. Emailing during baby naps is as much as I get. I'm blessed with so much, but the whole 24/7 care thing does indeed get me down.

I also seem to have lost any and all power that I ever had, which is hard to
get used to. No one takes me seriously in my wife/mom role. My baby-on-hip is like a big sign that says, "Disrespect me! Don't even think about taking me seriously, I'm just a wife and mom!" And to think that people used to find me intimidating!

I am having a murderous time
with repairmen and the like, because no matter how authoritative I try to
sound, they all seem to want to jerk me around and rip me off. Then Dan
calls and they're out here in a flash apologizing all over themselves and
kissing ass. It's unbelievable. That has been happening over and over and
over again.

Julian probably picked up on my bad mood. He was so uncharacteristically fussy and troublesome for a few days, he drove me absolutely bonkers. Let's see, our fun activities of those two days included:

All of a sudden I have three interviews this week! Who knows if they will amount to anything, but that's three more interviews than I've had in the past three months!

1) Tomorrow at 2:00pm: WorldGate, here in Campbell (lots of Flash and ActionScripting for TV set-top boxes, not completely my arena but could be OK)
2) Friday morning at 10:00am: Centrata in Redwood City (mystery start-up in stealth mode, but very well-funded and a traditional UI Design position. Yay!)
3) Friday at 2:00pm: Information Express in Palo Alto. This would be a part-time thing to make some extra cash. Document retrieval and photocopying at night in the Stanford Library. Not a lot of money, maybe $600/month, but only two nights a week. The most sketchy though. I would be working all night to make what I used to make in an hour at Yahoo and seeUthere.com.

Woke up still sore and achy all over from yoga, but it was cloudy outside and I didn't feel like swimming. I had to do something to move around before sitting at the computer, so I decided to finish up my gardening project from yesterday. It turned out to be a good decision, very calming and productive way to spend the morning! I also took some photos of my lovely new additions...you will now be exposed to my plant fetish in full force! At left is a darling little aloe about to flower, and me snapping a photo of it in its new home on top of the TV in the bedroom. See that little green frame? It has been sitting on top of the TV with a fake photo in it for the past two months, driving me crazy. I finally put it to good use with a photo of Dan and I in Cuenca on our trip to Spain. He'll be glad to see it, he likes when I do those things. I'm still a little mad at him though, but I'm getting over it.

I repotted my poor trusty faithful Ficus benjamina, the one who suffered through a small pot, no light and practically no water for the past three years in my San Francisco apartment. It is flourishing on the patio and has grown a whole new set of shiny healthy leaves. At right you can see a hot pink kalanchoe in its sassy Chinese pot, my handiwork from yesterday. Isn't it lovely? New home: on top of my black lacquered table in our bedroom.

Look at these two succulents, aren't they adorable? The one at left is called Panda Plant, another Kalanchoe species, fat and round with brown fuzz on it. The one on the right was entirely insprired by Martha Stewart, because I read her "Paint it Black" article yesterday afternoon in MS Living and she redid her guest apartment with black accents (mostly on white): black furniture finishes, black fruit, black flowers and black pull-down shades. They were really beautiful and very much my style. She is so fabulous. I dig that woman. People are always threatened by anyone who is smart and accomplished and productive, they have to hate them for some reason. Anyway, my touch of black is an Aeonium, and the common name is "Black Tree". Isn't that cool? It's a Good Thing ;-) Their new home is the guest bedroom.

Now showing at left are the new Coleus and African violet in their snazzy pots on the dinner table in the living room. Those pots are so pretty. I'm feeling better about spending money on this now, it makes such a difference. And hey, with three interviews this week, I might even have a job soon to pay for it all! Wouldn't that be something!

Last on my photo tour is a shot of the passionflower in my tiny front yard, which is all of 8'x10', or something ridiculously small like that. Well, small though it may be, I now have a crop of passionfruit ripening out there! I tried to make my tiny plot a haven for pollinators of all kinds and it really paid off. When I first noticed the fruit I was surprised, since I only had grown the vines for its flowers and had never seen a vine that fruited. When I went online to get some info on passionfruit so that I would know when to harvest them, I saw tons of posts from people who could not get their vines to fruit at all. Well, give the pollinators something to come for and they will get the job done. I must have seen at least 15 different species of bees and wasps of all types, sizes and colors out there this summer. Big, small, pale lemon yellow, dark yellow, big black HUGE solitary bees, June bugs, and of course, hummingbirds. I have a nectar flower for them too...big orange tubular monkeyflowers. In fact, I saw one today out there nipping at it, but my digital camera was too slow to catch him. The big draw for the pollinators was the Spanish lavender...they were all over that all summer and still are, een though most of the flowers have dried up by this point. Right now the main rave is a Salvia...I don't know what species it is, but it has long stalks of blue puffs (that color is like a beacon for bees and wasps) that they absolutely love.

Our neighbor Pat has a daughter who looks just like her, poor thing. She came over one day to introduce herself when I was in the front yard and she completely freaked out with all the bees and wasps buzzing around. She told me that she is allergic, so I can understand, but I'm out there all the time fussing around, brushing right up against those bee-laden flowers and they never bother me in the slightest. I suppose they are drunk off the abundance of pollen and nectar and are too busy socking it away to be mad at me, but I like to think that they know that I like having them there and provide those flowers just so that they will come visit me. We have a friendly relationship, the bees and me. I love to feed everybody. Somehow it makes me happy to know that all those bees, wasps and hummingbirds are experiencing some fine dining in my yard. If only I had more land! Even Bil noticed my yard and said something like, "Look at the goddamn biodiversity going on out here!" Nothing makes me happier....not bad for 8'x10"!

Posted by msLaura at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)