Bright Refuge

Wintersowing

2012-02-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

This year for the first time I am trying wintersowing, where you create mini-greenhouses out of recycled containers, sow them with cold-hardy plants like perennial flowers, and place them outside until spring.

My sweet friend Amanda is saving her filtered water jugs for me to use. You can use all kinds of containers, but gallon milk jugs are among the best. These giant water jugs are even better. You cut around the jug, about 3/4 of the way up, stopping at the back to make a hinged lid that can be lifted. Cut off the spigot and leave it open, so water can get in and evaporate out. I also made drain holes across the bottom, and a few venting holes on the side. Some wintersowing sites suggest you drill the holes or punch them out with an awl, but I found it to be easier--less likely to result in bloodletting for a clumsy person--to heat up a metal skewer in the flame of the gas stove, and use the hot metal point to poke holes.
Then you fill the bottom with moistened potting soil or seed starter mix (I used a combination of both, so it was light for germination but would nourish the seedlings as they grew,) and sow it with seeds. Most wintersowing sites suggest you close the halves of the jug with duct tape, but I found an idea I like better. You just poke a hole in the upper lid and one in the lower, and tie the them together with a twist tie, or I used garden twine. This keeps it closed in the wind, but allows a little venting on the sides. It also seems like it would be easier to check the seedlings this way. I like how the height of these containers will allow even tall seedlings to stay protected until it's time to plant them out.

Then you set the jug outside, and wait until spring. I put this jug next to a container of asters I started last week. If it's been very dry, you water the jugs through the top. This method is supposed to work especially well for plants that need a period of cold stratification, like some flowers that are perennial in Colorado. They can freeze and thaw in the soil to stratify, but there is heat and sun inside the jug and the seeds stay safe from birds until they have a chance to germinate and grow. They also don't travel around, like seeds in the open do when snow melts.

These are some of the flowers I'm planning to wintersow. I'm intrigued by this idea, of using the sun and snowmelt to grow some of your seedlings without the resources of lights and water indoors. I hope that at least some of them work. It would be a lot better than paying for flats of nursery flowers in the spring.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

2012-02-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

It's indoor planting time again. Last year was a very lazy year for the garden, and I'm hoping to get an early start to get back on track this year. Here are the flowers I've started under lights so far.

Bok choy, leeks and purple broccoli (I couldn't find the seed package for that). I also started little round Parisian carrots in a container just to entertain R. If they grow, we'll eat those before they can get planted out. I also started four kinds of basil.

Here are the greens I've started.

I have four windowboxes with greens in the sunny front window.

Magenta Swiss Chard.

Asian Greens Mesclun.

Part of our upstairs guest room Seedling Empire.

I even colonized a closet.

Impatiens finally germinated when I put them on a heat mat.

Tiny Johnny Jump-Up seedlings, just getting started.

Holiday Weekend Trail Walk

2012-01-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

Overcast Sunday afternoon walk, through the messy muddy melting snow.

excerpt from "Year's End"

Now winter downs the dying of the year,

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin

And still allows some stirring down within.

- Richard Wilbur

Trail Walk January 8

2012-01-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

A Sunday walk down the snowy trail with our neighbor friends.

It's a perfect 30 minute walk to the school playground.

Thanksgiving 2011

2012-01-08T16:59:00.000-07:00

I have to catch up with so many blog posts. Thanksgiving 2011 was another gorgeous, shirtsleeves day for the weather, and once again we were lucky enough to share it with our cousins. Above is my cousin J, who brought half the food and also had the brilliant idea of floating cranberries in the kids' sparkling cider glasses.
As usual, all the action was at the kids' table.

R's little cousin N, the bon vivant, makes a spirited toast to the assembled family. We asked the kids to go around the table and say what they are grateful for, and this is a picture of him raising his glass and saying, "I am grateful for all of YOU!"

Charlie celebrated in the backyard with his traditional Thanksgiving visitor, Jake the gentle Bernese Mountain Dog. After dinner, we walked down the trail to play basketball.

Little C had just slid into a bloody knee and was handling it better than most grownups would. It still makes me laugh how she looks like an angry Gypsy.
Thank God for the blessing of family, a long sunny November day to enjoy each other, and a table filled with beautiful, healthy food. And little girl cousins, born one day apart, whose pictures we have been snapping together since they were newborns.

Happy New Year!

2011-12-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

A mezze platter to take to our friends' house tonight. Hummus, olives and crudités with homemade baked pita chips. And raw dolmades, with grape leaves I canned from our vines this summer, and a diced parsnip (instead of rice), pine nut, red pepper, avocado, lemon juice and tomato filling.

I have been reading so many "good riddance 2011" articles, about what a terrible year it has been. I work at our parish food bank, and that is where you see it. The people working two and three jobs who still can't feed their families, the hard workers who are skilled and experienced in struggling industries, who used to make a great living, but just can't find work any more. My family has so many more pressures and barely-squeaking-by times than we ever used to have. We are skating very close to the margins every month. But it still bothers me to ring out the old year with contempt. It was a good year! We had so much fun. Right in the middle of it, R turned from a shy sweet funny seven year old to a shy even sweeter and funnier eight year old.

So from a very selfish perspective, I have loved this year. The garden and D and Charlie and R, a child who is busting out all over with so much new information and excitement about life that she talks out loud in her sleep. Last night she was reading Roald Dahl's Matilda under the covers with a flashlight, and she got to the part that lists the books that four year old Matilda reads. It is such a great list that I will have to put it here:

Great Expectations
Nicholas Nickleby
Oliver Twist
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Tess of D'Urbervilles
Gone to Earth
Kim
The Invisible Man
The Old Man and the Sea
The Sound and the Fury
The Grapes of Wrath
The Good Companions
Brighton Rock
Animal Farm

And with each new title R would shout out to me, muffled from under her blankets, "What is that one about? Who wrote it?" and when I explained the authors and plots of the ones I knew (all of them but Gone to Earth? The Good Companions? Brighton Rock?), she would yell out, "Could you get that for me to read?" And she knows I will, I'll add it to her giant and growing bookshelf downstairs.

You could say that it has been a pretty universally awful year for--for, I don't know what to call it. For what I think is important in culture, social justice, general quality of life for humans. For some modicum of moral responsibility that would check or temper greed, or lacking that, legal restraints imposed by a wise and ethical and considered body. A friend made me laugh last month when she blurted out "There's one for our side!" about something in the news. That's why I love this Tennyson poem so much. Let the bad of the old year die. There was tiredness and falseness in it, but "ring out wild bells, and let him die." There was so much goodness too. Call out the bad things and work to fix them. But ring out the wild bells, against the snow!

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Lord Alfred Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
   The flying cloud, the frosty light:
   The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
   Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
   The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true . . . 

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
   The faithless coldness of the times;
   Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
   The civic slander and the spite;
   Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good . . .

Ring in the valiant man and free,
   The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
   Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Olive Bento

2011-11-28T07:10:00.001-07:00

Black olives; apple slices; turkey pepperoni and cheddar; homemade tomato quinoa bread; green salad with tomatoes, radishes and celery; granola bar in the center.

Balmy November

2011-11-23T16:52:00.001-07:00

Warm enough for shirtsleeves today as the sun is going down.

R appreciates Charlie's hard work on his bone.

Grissini

2011-11-22T15:42:00.001-07:00

Grissini, thick and thin and all ready for Thanksgiving. Whole wheat glazed with butter and honey; whole grain herb and garlic; seeded sourdough.

Hibiscus Bento

2011-11-21T07:58:00.001-07:00

Carrots and a radish rose; lemon hibiscus apples that I canned on Saturday, with oranges; organic granola bar and almonds; cheddar and whole grain crackers on spinach salad; and cherry-flavored dried cranberries in the center.

I canned a lot of apples this weekend. My generous neighbor Becky always gives us the apples from her unsprayed tree in October, but this year they were all black at the center (codling moth?), so we only got a couple of jars of pie filling out of them. I finally broke down and used store-bought apples, because we love opening jars of spiced apples and applesauce all year long. I made spiced apples for pie filling, and tried something new with dried hibiscus blossoms. Hibiscus blossoms are high in vitamin C and anti-oxidants, and they have a lot of heart-healthy compounds. They give the apples a fresh, citrusy taste that is complemented by fresh lemons. I infused green tea in the syrup, but the flavor didn't come through. The blossoms turn the apples a beautiful natural rosy color. I sweetened the apples lightly with agave.

R really likes these, and the jars look so pretty lined up on a shelf with the sun shining through. The dried blossoms make a nice tea too, either added to black or green tea, or by themselves with honey and lemon.

Lemon Raspberry Birthday Cake

2011-11-18T10:59:00.001-07:00

My lovely cousin Lara had a birthday yesterday, and I made her a lemon cake with raspberry syrup and lemon curd in between the layers, frosted with lemon buttercream. Sometimes short, two-layer cakes are nice. I used lemon extract, fresh lemon juice and lemon zest, so it was really zing-y and lemony. I kept the raspberry syrup on the tart side too.

I made a mini-cake with the leftover batter for D & R. I frosted it with whipped cream (that I whipped a little too long, it almost turned into butter). They loved it, but they were sad it wasn't bigger.

Rustic Ciabatta

2011-11-13T14:29:00.001-07:00

Cooler weather makes me want to start baking bread again, keeping a starter and experimenting. I have been reading this book by Jim Lahey, the originator of the no-knead bread method that was popularized by Mark Bittman in the New York Times. I have been playing around with it, using a sourdough starter and then following the book's instructions for proofing and baking. Pre-heating a dutch oven and then baking the dough in the hot pan is one secret to the brick-oven like crust and fantastic oven rise. Today I made a dough so wet that it had to be poured into the heated pan. I was hoping for a very free-form flat ciabatta, with a big open crumb and blistered crust. The dough is mostly white bread flour, with some rye and whole wheat flours, wheat germ and flax meal added.

It made such a beautiful, messy rustic loaf.

I dusted the top with kosher salt before baking, and it developed a shattering, crisp crust almost like a handmade pretzel.

The crumb could have been more open, but the flecks of flax and wheat germ, and the grey cast of the rye flour, make it interesting. This differed from the no-knead method in that I used a sourdough starter, and proofed it for only six hours instead of the 18-24 the book recommends. I have half of this dough on a slow rise in the refrigerator. I'll bake that off tomorrow and see what the difference is. In the meantime, a fantastic loaf for sandwiches or just eating plain. D loves it.

Flower Bento

2011-11-10T06:59:00.001-07:00

Mangoes and raspberries; green grapes; ranch dressing; raisins and carrots; green salad; turkey sandwich on oatmeal bread with carrot curls, cheddar flower and spinach leaf; gingerbread elephant & dog in the middle.

Halloween Costume 2011

2011-11-04T13:23:00.000-06:00

R wanted to be Kate the alpha wolf from her favorite movie, Alpha & Omega. She was disappointed that Charlie didn't think she was a real wolf. He was fairly mellow in the face of all the fierceness.
This wolf has dog treats in her paws.

End of Summer Festival

2011-10-03T22:09:00.000-06:00

These are from two weeks ago, at the Summerset Festival that celebrates the end of summer. We went with R's best friend E.

We went for the dog competitions. Agility, Flyball--all the events that border collie owners like to watch to get ideas how to keep our own dogs occupied. The frisbee dogs were so much fun to watch. The pure joy and the soaring and the effortless catches, which you know took months and months of training before it looked effortless.

They spent a lot of time at the dog adoption stations and were careful to pet every dog. They said they were looking out for ones that seemed lonely. There was a lot of sadness about the dogs we couldn't take home, especially in the car on the way home.

Remember the petite Sno Cones of your youth? They got about one-third of the way through these.

We ran into a little friend from school, who had just added to her Pillow Pet collection.

And we were so happy to come across our neighbor friend playing bass with the kids' band on "Rhiannon"!

There is a corner of the park with a giant old weeping willow. The girls spent most of their day climbing the smaller trees around it and playing underneath it. I kept waiting for them to pull us back towards the rides and the festival, but this is what they wanted to do.

The park is right next door to Columbine High School. The girls are walking back to our car through Leawood Park, where people congregated and injured kids were treated right after the Columbine shootings. This is the first time we've been here, although we live not far away. It was strange to see Columbine High school for the first time when there is carnival music playing, and kids running everywhere and laughing. You find yourself looking around for the scenes you saw on the news, the pattern of windows. It's not here. It's not here today. Is it good or bad, that waves of life just wash over this ground and mute the history underneath it. Life is fleeting, and today I am grateful for a sunny September day in the park. While I was there, I thought of the kids' voices and music as a celebration that the victims and families would be happy to see.

I lost that completely on the way home. I had a strong impression that moving past what happened there is a privilege that belongs only to people who lost someone close to them. I think we are not meant to give it only a glancing thought, "oh what sorrow took place here." On the way home we said Our Fathers and started a Rosary, but it still feels like I left something unfinished behind.

Chicken Pot Pie

2011-09-16T12:36:00.000-06:00

The first chilly, rainy days of the fall make me feel like comfort food. Chicken pot pie was my favorite meal when I was little. Everyone got his own little Swanson's pie in the metal pan, and the steam billowed out when you broke through the crust with your fork. Here is the pie unbaked and egg-washed:

And here it is baked, with the filling. I didn't use a recipe. I roasted a chicken, made a bechamel sauce and mixed it all together with onions and mixed vegetables, fresh sage and thyme and parsley. The crust is whole wheat. It didn't brown as nicely as I would have liked. I think that's partly because it's whole wheat, and partly because I used the convection oven.

I made some little tarts with the leftover dough and filling, with vegetable and leaf cut-outs. Fresh tomato and parmesan tarts used up the last of the dough.

I think I can put these in R's lunch, but I would have to put them in a thermos and break up the decorative crust. She still had fun rolling out the dough and cutting shapes with me. She keeps these tins in her play kitchen downstairs, and I always have to go retrieve them before I bake with them. I bought them when we were planning our wedding, thinking the caterer could use them, and I remember how the man at the garage sale said, "I would think you would not want any little tarts at your wedding." We bought a giant crystal ice bucket at that same sale. It broke when R was a baby and I still grieve for it.

Carrot Owl Bento

2011-09-15T09:11:00.000-06:00

Cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden; ranch dressing; corn wheels and a carrot owl; purple grapes; organic peanut butter & homemade strawberry jelly, with flax meal on whole grain bread; carrot curls; cinnamon almonds in the middle.

Pizza Margherita with Our Tomatoes

2011-09-14T09:13:00.000-06:00

The best thing about tomato harvest: Pizza Margherita with a whole wheat crust. I bake it on a terra cotta stone at 500 degrees. D likes it with half the basil cooked, and half fresh on top after it comes out of the oven. We didn't even get smoked out last night--usually a cheese drip hits the blast-hot oven, but this batch was very tidy.

Colorado Peach Bento

2011-09-14T09:00:00.000-06:00

Whole grain crackers; Colorado peaches; cheddar squares and turkey pepperoni; green salad with Ranch dressing and tomatoes from our garden; cinnamon almonds in the middle.

Spring Greens Bento

2011-09-08T13:50:00.000-06:00

Cherries and pistachios; Asian pears and orange slices; tomatoes from our garden; roast beef, tomato and spinach on whole wheat, on top of spring greens, with spinach and cabbage butterflies and orange pepper confetti; chocolate covered cashews in the center.

Teriyaki Bento

2011-09-06T08:23:00.000-06:00

Cherries; mangoes; carrots; teriyaki chicken on brown fried rice; granola square.

Garden Tomato Bento

2011-09-02T07:57:00.000-06:00

Carrots; cantaloupe; tomatoes from our garden; cheese and spinach on a whole grain mini-Sandwich Thin; chocolate covered cashews.

Summer Fruit Bento

2011-09-01T10:37:00.000-06:00

Cherries; Tuscan cantaloupe; cole slaw with purple cabbage, broccoli, and carrots; chicken salad with spinach, apples, grapes and pistachios in phyllo cups; yellow pepper heart; gingerbread Scottie dog. Lots of colors means lots of antioxidants!

Love Bento

2011-08-31T08:55:00.002-06:00

Watermelon; leftover birthday cake; carrots; whole wheat sausage, spinach, carrot and cheddar pinwheels; yellow peppers.

8th Birthday Party

2011-08-31T08:53:00.001-06:00

Happy Birthday to our R!

Her kid party is in two weeks, but we had a family party on her actual birthday. She requested popcorn chicken, watermelon, Caesar salad, and sparkling grape juice.

First she had to finish her homework. Sad!

Lots of tulle hides how crooked the cake is. I was rushing to finish it before school pick-up.

Cookies & Cream ice cream!

Calico Critters for her dollhouse.

She fell in love with this stuffed raccoon from the grocery store. She begged us for it for a month.

Turning eight is momentous. She said, "I feel like a different person. I am in third grade and I am eight, all in the same week."

Birthday Bento

2011-08-29T09:22:00.000-06:00

My R is 8 today! Here is her birthday bento for school: Watermelon cut-outs with oranges and watermelon in the middle; homemade whole-grain cornmeal, parmesan and flax cracker flowers; same crackers for the "happy birthday" letters; ranch dip and imitation crab legs (she loves those); Caesar salad (another favorite); and white Toblerone chocolate in the middle.

Butterfly cookies to bring to school for her class treat. I used this King Arthur Flour recipe for whole wheat & oatmeal cookies.

Happy birthday little one. Your Dad and I love you so.

Cheater Chopsticks

2011-08-26T08:12:00.000-06:00

Grapes; homemade jardinière pickles from our garden; beef with cashews, carrots and broccoli on tamari brown rice; mangoes; all natural Panda cherry licorice in the middle, and "cheater" chopsticks I bought at an Asian market. They're fastened at the top and have a little loop on the side to keep a child's finger in the right place.

New Lunch Box

2011-08-25T08:27:00.000-06:00

Grapes; broccoli and carrots; whole wheat tortilla chips; turkey pepperoni and cheddar; and in the center, a chocolate raspberry whole grain turnover.

I made a batch of these whole wheat crescent rolls over the weekend, filled them with all kinds of fillings, and put them in the freezer for lunches. It's a great dough, very forgiving, and it rolls out easily and freezes and thaws well. It makes crescent rolls, pockets, pinwheels--all kinds of shapes. I learned that R will eat a lot of healthy things if I put them inside a dumpling or turnover. The chips are just whole wheat tortillas brushed with olive oil and sea salt and run under the broiler.

I love this new lunchbox. They have a short lunch period, and when I had lunch duty I noticed that she spent a lot of time unscrewing or unwrapping and then fastening it all back up again when she was done. With a PlanetBox, she just opens the lid and it's all there. So far it has been spill-proof and leak-proof. There is also an insulated carrying bag that holds a drink and an ice pack to keep everything cold.

Butterfly Bento

2011-08-24T08:50:00.000-06:00

Peanut butter and flax meal with homemade strawberry jelly on whole grain bread; bunny grahams; carrots with ranch dip; spinach; peaches and raspberries; Toblerone white chocolate.

First Day of School Bento

2011-08-23T13:15:00.000-06:00

First day of third grade! Lunch is a whole wheat crescent roll filled with chicken & apple sausage, cheddar, and spinach; whole wheat breadstick with turkey "ham" and cheese; mangoes with an apple pick; cashews; organic bunny gummies and organic chocolate milk. I found a great lunchbox to pack a bento-style lunch and keep everything separate and leak-free. I'll post more pictures of it later.

Eggs Mimosa

2011-08-12T18:25:00.000-06:00

I was so happy when I first saw my old favorite, deviled eggs, with a French name: Eggs Mimosa. I think eggs mimosa usually have the yolk grated over the top, like fragile yellow mimosa blossoms. We had a mimosa tree in the house I grew up in, but it was the pink-tipped variety. When we read Dr. Seuss' The Lorax, I pictured the blossoms of the Truffula Tree as the fluffy pink mimosa blossoms in our front yard.

We took this to a summer party last week. I put the eggs on lettuces from the garden, and sprinkled them with smoked paprika, capers, edible borage blossoms, herbs and and violas.

My Mom reminded me of how good and easy hardboiled eggs are when she and my Dad visited in May. I associate them with her 70th birthday family reunion, at a cabin at Vallecito in Durango. She made a batch and kept them in the fridge at the cabin, and we ate them all week. Such a smart little hit of portable protein.

I wish I were back at that cabin right now, with my whole family. I miss them. We took this picture of R and her little cousins as they got on the boat. It's still my favorite. R. is 4. She really does not want to go on the boat, and she hates how tight the life preserver is. Look at her worried face! But she is smiling, so that her daredevil cousins will think she's brave.

Play Practice

2011-07-19T18:00:00.003-06:00

We are putting on a show! A play written and performed entirely by kids. We had our first rehearsal with about half the cast, and they wrote two acts. Thank goodness for the patient Big Kid who agreed to be the director. And essentially the writer--he gets his ideas from the other kids, but he's the plot and dialogue man. R came up with the title "Amazing Animals" and the names of the characters.

Bangs for everyone! This is the little brother of the director. He and R are the villains, Aiden Alligator and Dianne Dingo. They terrorize the other animals.

They are both really into their parts and enjoy being evil.

S is a good and very practical director. His first question once we had scripts printed out: "Ok, so which of you can read?" In this scene, Bonnie Border Collie and Hermione Horse try to reason with the villains. To no avail.

But they peacefully broke bread together later that night.

And just as the sun was setting, a magnificent rainbow. It was a sign of good things to come for the mom of Hermione Horse and Bonnie Border Collie, who has had had a rough few weeks. But soon she will be sitting in our backyard watching the world premiere performance of "Amazing Animals."

Strawberry Sweet Woodruff Preserves Day 1

2011-07-19T17:27:00.000-06:00

This is my second summer of canning and preserving. Last year, I learned that what sells fastest at farmer's markets and makes the best gifts to friends, is berry preserves. That's what we use the most of in our house too. All winter long we bring jars up from the basement. We met our goal of no store-bought jam for a year, even after giving lots of jars away.
A trifle dish holds four pounds of strawberries.

I don't like commercial pectin, so I have learned the French method where you macerate the fruit in sugar overnight, then bring it to a boil and let it sit for another six hours or overnight. Then you boil only the syrup to the gelling point, and add the fruit at the end, so the fruit stays whole and doesn't overcook while you're boiling away to the gel point.This year for the first time, I'm adding the sweet woodruff while the berries macerate, instead of while they are cooking.

Sweet woodruff is an herb that's a natural accompaniment to berries. It tastes like vanilla and grass. We have it all over our backyard, and I am so grateful to whoever planted it years ago.

Strawberry Sweet Woodruff Preserves Day 2

2011-07-18T20:15:00.001-06:00

After the strawberries have steeped overnight in sugar and sweet woodruff, put them in a sturdy pot and bring them to a boil. I like a lot of bright, clean lemon flavor, so I add lemon slices to infuse while it boils.

Then let the mixture sit for another two or three hours at room temperature, or six hours in the fridge. This two-step process helps separate the liquid from the fruit, so you can reduce just the liquid and then add the fruit at the end. This is the only way for fragile fruit like strawberries to keep their shape and not turn into mush. Put the fruit in a colander, and drain the syrup into a pot.

Strawberries are very low in pectin, so I add a high-pectin fruit like green apples to help the jam to set without overcooking. I dice the apples and put them in the syrup. I also put the skins and seeds and cores in a mesh bag, and float that bag in the boiling syrup. Skins and cores have a lot of pectin, and it will leach out of the bag. You can push on the apple bag with a spoon to release more pectin, but be careful not to splash yourself with boiling jam.

Sterilize your jars and lids and tools in boiling water while you wait for the syrup to reach gel point. Waiting for gel point takes some patience and attention. Each batch took about 40 minutes for me today, at mile-high altitude. It's easier and faster to use commercial pectin, but it requires much more sugar, and I don't like the texture. This method makes a luxurious preserve, with strawberries and little squares of candied apple suspended in clear, ruby-red jelly.

Keep a close eye on the jam while it's boiling.

Just before it reaches gel point, the frothing reduces and the bubbles get bigger. You can almost feel it seizing up a bit when you stir it. The color is amazing, a deep, glowing pomegranate-red.

To check the set, use the plate test. Put a plate in the freezer, and drop some jam on the cold plate. Put it back in the freezer for a minute or two. If the jam wrinkles when you push it with a finger, it's done. Add the strawberries back in, and boil for another 5 minutes or so, until they are hot through.

Ladle the hot preserves into the sterilized jar. A jam funnel helps keep the outside of the jar clean. Remove air bubbles, cap the jar with a hot lid, and screw on a ring.

Place the filled jars in a boiling water bath, with rapidly boiling water to cover the lids by at least two inches. Follow boiling instructions for your altitude.

Nine pounds of strawberries turned into 14 pints of preserves. I used four cups of sugar and four and a half pounds of strawberries for each batch. There is nothing better than the 'ping' sound as the jars seal when you take them out of the boiling water bath.

The preserves are silky and gorgeous. The familiar strawberry taste, with a note of vanilla and grass from the sweet woodruff, and a bright citrus pop from the lemon.

Please note that this is not meant to be a comprehensive instruction about canning. It's important to follow all the rules carefully for a safe end product, so be sure to follow an approved method.

Monsoon Season

2011-07-16T00:41:00.001-06:00

I didn't think Denver had a monsoon season, but we seem to be in it now. The ninth straight day of torrential afternoon and evening downpours. I can't get enough rain. I grew up in New Mexico, where the weather never matched the brooding novel I was reading. When I first read Cormac McCarthy, I got a little pang of regret. If only I had read him in high school! I might have seen something romantic and interesting in the high country desert. All that love of New Mexico came later, long after I didn't live there any more.

If there isn't lightning, R and I have an agreement that we will run out into the storm and lie in the grass. It's irritating, because sometimes I am busy and not inclined to get wet. But rainstorms are few and far between, so I always indulge her. Most often the storm ends before we get tired of the wet grass. If it doesn't, we run inside to dry off and read books in bed until the storm is over. Usually we do that once every three or four months. We have both been enjoying the ridiculousness of doing our ritual every single day for over a week. We have gotten through a lot of chapters of Prince Caspian.

Yesterday there was a storm that looked to me like hurricane footage from tv. Sheets and walls of water, trees bent sideways, a river pouring down the street.

Once it had been over for awhile and I was sure the lightning was gone, I went outside to take pictures. The water had been much higher than this. It flooded the lawn and stopped just short of the basement windows. I tried to take pictures from inside the house, but you couldn't see through the sheets of rain.

For the first time I can remember, this storm was something other than, hurray! rain! It briefly turned into hail at one point, and we watched out the windows as water flowed up over the curb and cascaded onto the lawn. The thunder was tooth-grinding, earth-shaking, Charlie dove under our bed and wouldn't come out. That's when you start to think, what happens if this doesn't stop. The streets are flooded out. How is D going to get home? What's it like downtown?

And then the sun comes out, and the birds are singing.

D got home fine, Charlie got his walk and the water was almost gone by then.

We are back to appreciating how much the flowers, and the lawn, love this weather.

R and her best friend E are building a dam of rocks, against the next deluge. R is in a phase of wearing her Easter dress every day. Que sera.

I'm not sure what they mean for the dam to do. If it worked, it would stop the flow of water and back it up so that it flooded E's house across the street.

E told me that this is "the lock where I keep my friendship with R." I love that, because it's not a locket, it's really just a padlock. I asked her, does it have anything inside it? And she looked at me like I was crazy.

Trail Walk

2011-07-10T14:31:00.003-06:00

I am so grateful for the trail system that winds all the way around our house. We are always a minute away from feeling like we've taken off for the mountains.

Yesterday was the third straight day of afternoon downpours. It left the world so clean. Eerily green and glowing.

A hot bath, pj's, and falling asleep on Daddy's lap with Charlie after a long walk. Summer is good.

Happy Birthday Amanda

2011-06-25T13:24:00.001-06:00

Summer birthdays are the best. We had a party Thursday night for my friend Amanda.

I love this picture, with her Mom's arm around her.

I made this Cake for her, still my favorite cake recipe, Classic Yellow cake from Sylvia Weinstock. I doubled the recipe and made four layers. It was the tallest cake I've ever tried. I put plastic drinking straws through the layers to keep them from sliding around in the heat.

It's such a moist cake, it works really well at high altitude with the adjustments I made. Raspberry filling is between the layers. I carved it to make it even all around, which made it pretty crumby . . .

. . . but buckets of buttercream cover everything.

The cake is almost level, but then I piped the top in a crooked circle so it looks like it's not. Everything is a learning experience.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Right before the party, I put edible flowers from our garden on the cake.

Amanda's littlest son is a big fan of cake, and, as you can see from his face, ketchup.

Our neighbor Julie made this beautiful tribute to Amanda, using words we all gave to describe her.

Success! We made her cry.

Lemonade on the alligator as the sun goes down. Summer is good.

Backyard Race

2011-06-25T11:17:00.000-06:00

Father vs. daughter vs. dog.

Charlie tries to cheat, with one big leap across the finish line.

The Longest Day of the Year

2011-06-21T21:13:00.001-06:00

A walk down the trail with neighbor friends, on the evening of the longest day of the year.

The kids call this little inlet of the creek "the hideout." You have to scramble down a lot of rocks to get there. Today the mud was like pudding, but more slick.

Only one little casualty, and a small amount of blood.

It must be someone else's hideout too, because there is a tipi.

Still working on the hair situation.

Freedom!

Happy Summer Solstice, Charlie!

Look What Charlie Can Do!

2011-06-18T11:10:00.000-06:00

Some turkey hot dogs, a hula hoop and a free morning, and look what R and her best little neighbor friend taught Charlie to do.

Nightmare on Mullet Street

2011-06-18T11:03:00.000-06:00

Cutting your own hair is a rite of passage I guess, except that R already did this once, when she was three. This time she cut bangs, and hacked some off the sides for good measure. I sent her to the salon with D and a picture and very clear instructions: cut a short chin-length bob, take the length off the back to make it look less like a mullet. This is how the stylist interpreted that:

I would call this the full Joe Dirt. How is this a short bob? How is this not a mullet?

The original Joe Dirt. I guess R is lacking the sideburns, but that's about it.

If you put it in a ponytail it is slightly less awful. Going for this . . .

. . . not really getting there. Now do I cut my losses and pay someone all over again to do it right, or go back and have the original salon fix it (for free?)

Littleton Historical Museum

2011-06-18T09:24:00.000-06:00

An afternoon at one of our favorite places, the working farm at the Littleton Historical Museum.

First Day of Summer

2011-06-06T09:28:00.000-06:00

After a frenetic school year and a blog hiatus, it's summer! The last day of school was Friday. We made celebration cupcakes on Saturday.

And picked flowers on Sunday. Today is our first day at the pool.

Seed Swap Lunch

2011-03-06T19:18:00.001-07:00

After a crazy-busy week and weekend, the payoff was a seed-trading lunch today with my high school friends Tom & Margaret. Margaret is my friend who lives near Boulder with her family and has a . . . a homestead? a farm? kind of a little of both. A big hobby garden along with chickens, goats, pet rats, and an adorable shaggy dog named Agnes who decidedly does not like Charlie. D says Charlie was "fresh," and I think Agnes is quite a lady. Charlie was dense about understanding Agnes' "enough" growls and barks, Agnes got madder, so Agnes went back out to wait in the car.

Tom lives in Denver and has the most picturesque easement garden I have ever seen. He is an artist, so he's a master of the small space and the visual impact and the clever solution.

I took hardly any pictures. I made a turkey mole that took forever and had a million steps, none of which I documented. A really pretty salad with avocados and citrus and strawberries and watercress. Gone now--never to be documented. Margaret brought deviled eggs from her own chickens, Tom brought homemade chocolate-covered salted caramels that made the world stand still when you ate one.

These kids are great friends from so far back. R insists that she remembers when they were babies together.

We divided up our seed envelopes and ended up with so much more variety than we would have had on our own. This is going to be a fun summer and growing season. They are both amazing gardeners and I can't wait to see what they do this year.

We tried this for the first time, a wooden tool that makes little seedling pots out of newspaper. I love it so far. I wonder if they will dry out as quickly as my egg carton seed pots--those were so frustrating, never again.

Old friends really are gold, just like the Girl Scout song says.

Winter Citrus

2011-03-03T19:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had Italian sausage with caramelized onions and apples; toasted millet with scallions, spinach, cashews and red pepper; and windowsill greens. I like millet, but I can't get over the association with feeding my childhood parakeet, Blue Boy. There was always a feathery layer of chaff at the bottom of his cage after he extracted the insides.

There is so much wonderful winter citrus in the stores. We had a salad with blood oranges and navel oranges, greens, mint, Asian pears, strawberries and blueberries.

Winter Sun

2011-02-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

It's good to have a best friend whose house is thirty seconds away. They had a fun Monday holiday together today.

They put on a puppet show.

And found some more feather treasures on their cemetery walk.

The sun is low in the sky these short winter days. It hits our windows at a brilliant angle in the late afternoon, and floods the house with gold.

Valentine's Day 2011

2011-02-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

R helped me make and decorate these cookies for teachers and neighbors.

We packaged them up for delivery.

Her classroom party. They had a special Out of Uniform day.

Checking her loot.

After school, with two of her friends.

R and her Dad took off at the end of the day to deliver cookies to the neighbors, like they do every year.

Windowsill Seedlings

2011-02-17T17:30:00.000-07:00

Mint, chives and thyme in the front window, along with some salad seedlings.

Valentine's Day Bento

2011-02-14T08:59:00.002-07:00

R's favorite, roast beef, on whole wheat with spring greens. Cantaloupe and blueberries, carrots, apple hearts, and a cookie.

Acorn Squash and Tempeh

2011-02-10T19:43:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had roasted acorn squash with tempeh, brown rice and vegetable stuffing. I sauteed onions, carrots, red and yellow peppers (frozen, from our summer garden), scallions and walnuts, with some brown rice and cubes of tempeh that I brushed with soy sauce and browned. I hollowed out the squashes and baked them with the stuffing inside. The squash was soft and buttery and the stuffing was rich and crunchy. We had also had a spring green salad, mangoes, blueberries and little oranges.

And here is a picture that R drew for our wonderful neighbor Bernie. D's car that he drives to the train is not that good in the snow, and Bernie lent him his big SUV the past two days when we had a lot of snow and slick roads. R drew a picture of Charlie holding hands with Katie, Bernie's German Shepherd puppy. Charlie and Katie are the best of friends. If any dogs would hold hands, it would be those two.

Spinach Polenta Lasagna

2011-02-07T19:22:00.001-07:00

Tonight we had polenta lasagna, lemon broccoli, and grapefruit with pomegranate arils. This is such a free-form recipe. It can be infinitely expanded or contracted, and adapted to what you have on hand.

Spinach Polenta Lasagna
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
• 2 cups chopped fresh spinach, or 1 1/2 c frozen that has been thawed
and squeezed dry
• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• A few gratings of nutmeg
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped in a chiffonade, or thin ribbons
• 1 egg
• 1 sheet pan of polenta
• 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
• 1 jar or 4 cups tomato sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Brown the onion and garlic in olive oil and cool slightly. You could add other vegetables--zucchini, peppers, or mushrooms. Mix with ricotta, egg, spinach, salt and pepper to taste, and grated nutmeg.

Spoon tomato sauce into bottom of a square or round pan.

I made polenta the day before from the recipe on the Bob's Red Mill package, spread it out on a buttered sheet pan in a layer about 1/2 inch high, and refrigerated it. You could also make the polenta the same day, or use the ready-made tube of polenta from the grocery store. Cut this polenta into squares or circles, whatever shapes will fit best in your pan, and lay it on top of the tomato sauce in one layer.

Top with a half of the ricotta mixture, a layer of basil ribbons, and half of the mozzarella. Top with more sauce, and then repeat the layering. Polenta, ricotta, basil, mozzarella. Finish with the last of the sauce and a sprinkle of cheese. Parmesan would be nice here if you have it.

Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil and bake for 50 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake for 10 - 15 minutes to brown the top.

We also had Yogurt Cake from my favorite blog and cookbook and source for recipes, Chocolate & Zucchini. I make this cake so often. My adjustments are half whole wheat pastry flour and half all purpose flour, with some flax meal, and equal parts sugar and honey. The original recipe uses yogurt containers as measuring cups, and that's the way I memorized it. So that I can throw it together in the right proportions without thinking about it. I folded in some frozen mixed berries. The honey and wheat make it bake up browner than the original and with a crisper crust. I can also give it to R for breakfast, with fruit and maybe a little more yogurt--which I wouldn't do with white cake.

It's wonderful with whipped cream and berries on top, and a little windowsill mint.

Church Envelope

2011-02-07T08:25:00.001-07:00

Every Sunday before Mass, R fills out her envelope for the children's collection.

She always includes a little drawing that she's done. This is yesterday's.

And here is today's lunch. I roasted a turkey breast yesterday, so she has a turkey sandwich on whole wheat with spinach; pineapple and blueberries with the plastic rose that she loves to use to spear fruit; broccoli and carrots; whole grain bunny crackers and chocolate milk.

S'mores

2011-02-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

More snow today, a wet, heavy snow that hung off the branches.

Dinner was lemon chicken breaded in panko; sweet potatoes with oranges and cinnamon; spinach, and polenta cut into flowers and browned in a cast iron skillet.

We had a fire and made s'mores.

This is what it looked like under the streetlight at 7:30 p.m.

Roasted Beets with Lemon Ricotta

2011-02-04T19:12:00.002-07:00

Dinner tonight was salmon on spring greens with a honey dijon marinade; beets and carrots wrapped in foil and roasted with a head of garlic; the greens and red stems from the beets chopped and sauteed with olive oil and garlic; plain brown basmati rice; and another whole grain quickbread. My new favorite thing with roasted vegetables is mixing a little lemon zest into ricotta cheese and letting dollops of it melt onto the vegetables. Tonight I mixed in some of the roasted garlic, and some chopped chives from the windowsill.

This bread is my favorite quick bread yet, from the New York Times. I made the lighter version without molasses, and with part white flour. I used agave instead of honey, and added some flax meal. It's quick to mix up, and then there's warm fresh bread on the table in an hour. It has a beautiful crust. The cornmeal gives it some crunch. It's fantastic with butter and honey on it, or plain like D likes it.

I'm getting discouraged at how long it's taking me to figure out how to take good pictures with the new camera. I'm still happy that I can get usable shots in such low light. I finally broke down and ordered the full version of Photoshop to replace my old, unusable one. And it seems to be lost in transit. Now there's a delay to confirm that it hasn't been delivered, and to send a replacement copy . . . after waiting for it for so long, this last part is frustrating.

Snow Day Three

2011-02-02T15:21:00.004-07:00

We are on Day Three of this strange sick day/snow day week. R has been sick, then they canceled school for weather. It's been three days since R or I stepped outside. This morning it was fourteen below when we woke up.

Charlie is loving the attention.

Ice crystals are still on the upstairs windows at 3 p.m. Yesterday it never got above zero. Right now the sun is out, but it's five degrees. No burst pipes, and so far the cars are starting up.

Fear of Frying

2011-02-01T16:52:00.003-07:00

My R loves eggrolls, and I make them for her with a filling of carrots, cabbage, ginger, garbanzo beans, scallions and ground turkey. I lay spinach leaves on top of the filling and sprinkle ground flax seeds on top before I roll them up. I brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and bake them in the oven.

I don't really like them this way--they don't cook evenly, and much of the skin stays tough and chewy or worse, bakes to sharp edges that can cut your mouth. I have a fear of deep-frying, but I can't seem to replicate the bubbly, shatteringly crisp skin of a fried eggroll in the oven.

So today I emptied a quart of canola oil into my favorite All-Clad dutch oven, waited for it to get up to 350 on my jam thermometer, and put the eggrolls in.

R said, "That's what I'm talkin' about. This is just like Chinese Dinner." Which is what she has called take-out since she was two.

I made a batch the old way, to compare. This time I steamed the unbaked rolls for a few minutes, like you do with gyoza dumplings. That seemed to make the skin more tender once it baked, but half of them fell apart while they were steaming, and it's an extra step.

Here they are, baked on the left, fried on the right. I wonder how much oil they really absorb in frying, versus being slathered before baking. If they have so much good stuff inside and we don't have them very often, I think it's ok that they're fried. The bubbles and the crispy skin really are beautiful.

I also broke down and bought a new camera, with some help from my generous parents. I'm embarrassed to mention it because I have such a steep learning curve and it will be awhile before I can take competent pictures. But I'll keep practicing, and I'm excited to have a 35mm f/1.8 lens that works so well in close-up and low light.

More Christmas 2010

2011-01-31T12:05:00.006-07:00

Stomach flu on Christmas eve! It was so sad.

We let her stay downstairs with us. This is my nephew feeding tinsel to Charlie before we stopped him.

Santa is coming!! (My Dad, who actually owns his own Santa suit and does this every Christmas.)

He's here!

Trying to stand up without getting sick. She said, "If Santa touches my head, I know I will get all better." It worked--she got sick for the last time right before we took this picture.

R and her Granddad are on the same wavelength sometimes. This is in front of the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History. My Dad is so knowledgeable and widely curious. His historian's mind is constantly observing and sifting through and comparing. It must be a lot of fun to be him and live inside that mind. It's certainly fun to be around him. Going through a museum with him is quite an experience.

This is part of "La Jornada," a bronze installation in front of the museum that celebrates the early colonists.

Catching up on Christmas

2011-01-28T13:06:00.002-07:00

My Mom telling her grandkids the story of the family crèche.
When she was a little girl in South Dakota, a wounded soldier recuperating from World War II gave her parents this crèche. He had carved it himself, in loving detail, for the Cathedral downtown. The church told him it was too small, so he gave it to my grandparents. It was always in our house growing up.

This is a good time to catch up on Christmas photos because techno-tragedy has struck at our house. Within one month, we lost a) our computer; b) my expensive Photoshop software; and now, as of Sunday, c) my expensive, ten year old camera. a) The motherboard fried in a power surge (I guess surge protector strips are not enough protection?); b) My ancient Photoshop is not compatible with Windows 7 on the new computer and it's too old to upgrade; And c) my camera has a lens retraction error, not usable and not fixable.

It was all very old and kind of strung up like a house of cards, but it took a long time to pay off in the first place, it worked really well and I was used to it. Pretty much the most valuable and most-used things we own next to the house and the car, maybe the stove, and then we lost them all within a month. We replaced the computer. A new camera will have to wait until we pay off the computer, and $700- $800 for Photoshop . . . who knows when or if ever I'll get that again.

So, no new blog photos for awhile. I know I'll figure out a way around this and it will be good to get out of my rut with my comfortable setup. I miss my camera like my right arm, though.

My dad reading with R.

R's cousin, my awesome little nephew and godson. They are both second graders. I wish they lived closer.

Granddad playing basketball with R, my godson and his equally awesome big brother.

Granddad helping R out of a tree. He calls her by my name sometimes and then quickly corrects himself, which I love. It's usually when he's doing something like this, that he probably hasn't done since he did it with me when I was a little girl.

Saltimbocca

2011-01-20T19:02:00.003-07:00

Tonight we had chicken saltimbocca. Organic chicken breasts pounded thin, coated in flour, paprika, and lemon zest and browned in olive oil and butter. The sauce is shallots, vermouth, lemon juice, herbs and capers. I served it over whole grain spaghetti.

We also had grapes, lacinato kale and a salad with spinach, blueberries and pears in balsamic vinaigrette. Dessert was a whole wheat and flax banana muffin sweetened with agave and honey. I love the sparkle and crunch of turbinado sugar on top.

Orange Ginger Seitan

2011-01-19T19:06:00.005-07:00

Tonight we had ginger-and-orange-glazed seitan on quinoa; spring greens with blueberries and apples; and roasted sweet potato puréed with a little agave and my favorite spice for baking or for seasoning winter squash or pumpkin:

It's from Penzeys, and the star anise is what makes it brilliant.

I made the seitan from scratch, from the Real Food Daily Cookbook Chicken-Style Seitan recipe.

I like this recipe because it uses cannellini beans and garbanzo bean flour in addition to the wheat gluten, so it seems less like a hit of pure gluten. None of us has a problem with gluten, so I think seitan is a great high-protein occasional meat alternative, especially when I make it at home. Most of the supermarket meat alternatives don't seem like much of an option, with their highly processed soy, and sodium, and preservative chemicals.

I browned it in a cast-iron skillet and then made a quick glaze with freshly squeezed orange juice, grated ginger and tamari. I served it with stir-fried carrots, cauliflower, scallions and rainbow chard stems over quinoa. The organic rainbow chard was so beautiful at the market today, the stems were all shades of lavender/violet pink and bright golds and red and deep purples. It's always such a scramble right at the end to get it on the table while everything is hot. Especially since R asks for miso soup with every dinner now. I'm glad she likes it, but there is another extra step. I cut the scallions on the fly. They taught us in cooking school to cut our scallions so elegantly, into slender little O's. I didn't realize how shameful these are until I took a close-up picture. But it's just family dinner on a Wednesday, and it was good.

Back to Bentos!

2011-01-19T13:49:00.002-07:00

It has been quite awhile since I took lunch photos in the morning. For various reasons--keeping things cold, lunch box shape--they are often not really bentos any more. They're not in one box. But I think the principle is the same.

Bean Soup

2011-01-18T18:46:00.005-07:00

I am trying to be better about making whole-food meals from scratch, and eating less meat, more whole grains, and more fruits and vegetables. More colors on the plate, for variety and nutrition. Taking pictures in the wintertime is another story, when it's pitch dark by the time dinner is on the table.

Tonight was 16-bean soup that simmered all day in the slow cooker; peach and Rainier cherry cobbler from the peaches and cherries I canned over the summer; kale with caramelized onions; steamed carrots and oranges. I put out some preserves I canned in June, strawberry preserves with black pepper and mint. The black pepper just gives it a hint of heat, more like a warmth at the end of a bite, and the mint is un-identifiable, something fresh and grassy under the straight-ahead sweetness of strawberries.

The preserves were so good with this Oat Soda Bread from 101cookbooks.com. You make the oat flour by whizzing rolled oats in the food processor. I substituted white whole wheat flour for the all purpose flour. What a great recipe! It's a whole grain quickbread, no yeast or rising, a way to have warm homemade bread on the table for dinner without planning ahead very much.

Cooking beans at high altitude can take forever, but this soup went into the slow cooker at 9 a.m. and the beans were soft by dinner at 6.

I have big plans too, to get back to taking pictures of the bento lunches. Over the weekend, I made and froze brown rice onigiri, baked egg rolls, some healthy muffins and cookies, and two batches of homemade seitan. I still take a lot of time with R's lunches, but it seems like we're busier this year, and taking photos before we leave for school at 7:20 has eluded me since September.

Cemetery Walk

2010-12-20T14:37:00.002-07:00

After we took the Christmas card photos on Saturday, we stopped to get R's neighbor friend and took Charlie for a walk to the cemetery near our house.

E is getting so brave with Charlie, she loves to walk him on his leash.

They are such good friends. I love to watch how they hang on each other's words and die laughing at each other's stories. A best friend is so important when you're 7 and 8.

The late afternoon light in the winter in Colorado is golden and lovely.

A lot of bobby pins went into her Christmas picture hair!

We walk in the cemetery a lot with Charlie. The girls are so interested in the headstones, and they always stop to say a Hail Mary and an Our Father. They make up stories about the lives of the people who are buried there.

They wanted to climb in Jesus' lap like he was Santa. I think that's more sweet than sacreligious. I hope they feel that way about Him.

Saying goodbye and comparing treasures they found on their walk. A long pheasant feather, and some pretty rocks.

Clothespin Ornaments

2010-12-20T14:11:00.003-07:00

We had a party last weekend with our little neighbor friends, to make clothespin Christmas ornaments.

A big mess and a lot of fun.

R's best friend is her little neighbor E. E used to be afraid of dogs, until she met Charlie. Now she goes on walks with us, and is brave and holds his leash.

When they got tired of making things, they roasted marshmallows.

We had so much fun with the ornaments that we played hooky from school on Thursday and made a bunch more. That was such a fun day. We were burnt out from all the school and church activities. We needed a day to sleep in and just slow down and spend time together listening to Christmas carols and glueing and cutting.

These are my ornaments.

R was much more prolific. These are hers.

Look at the detail on the little faces! Pretty good motor control for a seven year old. Once she figured out how to use a Sharpie instead of a paintbrush.

Christmas Card Photo Rejects

2010-12-20T13:14:00.003-07:00

Harder than it looks, getting a seven year old and a border collie puppy to take a photo where they are both sitting still with appropriate facial expressions.

Is that enough pictures?

Can we be done now?

Seriously. I want to go play.

Everyone is over it.

I am going to give you this look until you release me.

Daddy comes to the rescue, making funny faces behind me.

A helping hand from Daddy.

I do love living in this crazy house, despite the noise and the toys and the dog hair.

High School Friends and a Luminaria Walk

2010-12-20T12:47:00.004-07:00

Last night my high school friend Jennifer had a party for two other high school friends who live in or near Denver, and our high school friend Andrea, who was visiting from Albuquerque. Andrea has been my best friend since we were in kindergarten together at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Albuquerque. Jennifer made posole and tamales, and we went for a luminaria walk through her wonderful old Washington Park neighborhood. The kids had a ball running through the park and around the lake in the dark, and the houses at night all lit up for Christmas were so festive.

The kids range in age from ten to four.

Catching up with old friends.

Who knew back in high school that all these beautiful kids were in our future?

And last weekend we had a birthday party for my high school friend Tom at our house. No blessing in the world like old friends. We are all so lucky to live near each other and have our kids play together.

Basketball

2010-11-14T16:41:00.004-07:00

When there hasn't been a blog post in awhile, I feel like I should break the spell with something that is not very dramatic.

There's a basketball court tucked away near the trail behind our house. Today we took our ball and R tried to hit the regulation-height hoop. The hoops at school are quite a bit shorter.

R is a tongue-concentrator. I used to be too.

Beautiful, bright clear November day. The temperature starts to drops as the sun moves lower in the sky. Charlie always seems to be involved in something much more interesting and high-stakes than we are.

7th Birthday Part II

2010-09-10T20:35:00.003-06:00

On Sunday, her actual birthday, we had her small family party.

She asked for popcorn chicken with honey for dipping, sparkling pink lemonade, jello, and a Funfetti cake. She's never had jello before. She took one bite and said "This is not very good. It kind of tastes like sugar and color. Is it pretty junky?"

She asked for some furniture and Calico Critters for her dollhouse. I think she was happy.

7th Birthday

2010-09-10T19:56:00.005-06:00

My R is 7! We had a "Fantastic Mr. Fox" party on August 28. We showed the movie in the backyard as soon as it got dark. There were cousins and school friends and neighbor friends and their siblings.

They all made up their own games and ran around in the backyard until it got too dark to see. Then we started the movie.

Friends in the sunflowers.

Banner with all the "Fantastic Mr. Fox" characters.

The favors were bags of Mrs. Bean's Famous Nutmeg Ginger Apple Snaps. If you've seen the movie, you'll know that these figure prominently.

She hates being the center of attention. But everyone is singing Happy Birthday, and it's for you! In every birthday picture since she was three, she's had some version of this I hate it/I love it expression.

Cutting the cake.

The girls.

And the boys.

Rapt attention. It was pitch-dark--these are flash photos. D built a giant movie screen from scrap wood and painted it white, and we hung a sheet over it.

Mr. Fox!

Birthday girl.

Christmas lights in the trees!

After everyone left at 10:30, we sat on the back deck and watched the stars. Charlie relaxed in the dark with a bone and a tennis ball.

We let the birthday girl fall asleep in a deck chair. When she woke up (in her own bed), she was seven.

Late Summer Garden

2010-09-10T18:25:00.004-06:00

Back in school, birthday over. Harvesting and canning and wondering how early first frost will come this year. Lots of blog posts to catch up on. For now, some shots of the early-September garden and R's little neighbor friends playing in it.

These sweet peas are so glorious. Worth all the work of growing them from seed.

All picked this morning. These are mostly Opalka tomatoes, the oval paste ones that are best for canning. I have a lot of sauce to make! I borrowed a dehydrator and it's working right now, filled with zucchini chips and tarragon. The peppers that we don't eat in the next few days I'll cut up and freeze, or use as a little hit of color in pickles.

I sold some of these at our neighborhood farmer's market in August.

Early morning sun on the just-picked tomatoes.

Pasta salad with lots of tomato varieties. Kellog's Breakfast are the orange, then there's Green Zebra, Paul Robeson (my neighbor Julie calls them Roy Orbison, which cracks me up!), and black cherry and lollipop (yellow cherry).

Funny girls and some overgrown broccoli.

Ready for pickling.

Cosmos, bean and cucumber blossoms, and Fairy Tale eggplant.

Strange to think that there could be snow on the ground in a month.

Harvest!

2010-07-22T12:35:00.002-06:00

July has been pretty light on blog posts. Too much weeding and watering and, to be honest, doing nothing all day at the pool with R, to be on the computer much.

We have lots of little green tomatoes. I hope that this year is better than last and they ripen before the first frost. Colorado has a frustratingly short growing season. But we've had a heat spell this week, and everything is taking off. Here's what I harvested today:

Ready for making pickles! Cucumbers, purple peppers, red pepper, eggplant, squash.

Coosa squash, Fairytale eggplant, Ronde de Nice squash, bush pickle, and purple pepper.

Sunny yellow summer squash.

And blue borage flowers. They taste like cucumbers and are lovely in a salad or an iced drink.

Peas!

2010-07-02T22:40:00.003-06:00

Much later than I predicted, the peas are ripe. I planted the seeds around St. Patrick's Day. Late June, they finally are ripe. This picture of D I think will always remind me of the June that so many payments came due--school tuition deposits, summer pool membership, summer lessons for R--that he had to put off getting a haircut until July. He's a very good dad.

We've had several harvests, and lovely bowls of just-picked, barely-cooked, peas. The first were so good we ate them plain, the last few we added butter and salt and ribbons of fresh mint. R is mostly indifferent about the garden. She has always liked cherry tomatoes. Not much else besides flowers interests her. But she liked these peas. She liked pulling the strings and opening up the pods and she said the just-picked peas tasted "like a lollipop."

Peas and paws. See Charlie's little white socks at the top of the picture? He loves it when we're outside. He steps up his game, and it's rare to get a picture of him that's not blurry, out-of-focus motion.

Double Rainbow

2010-06-26T21:11:00.002-06:00

It rained through the sunshine tonight, and then a double rainbow appeared over our house.

R's little neighbor friend was excited too. They came out at the exact same time, and shouted across the street to each other.

There was enough rain to run down the gutters--great for splashing.

R and the rainbow.

Dashing back inside.

Front Yard Garden, June 21

2010-06-21T21:05:00.003-06:00

Front porch flowers and herbs

Front porch

Garden looking north

Garden looking through the sweet peas

Pepper blossoms

Adorable baby peppers, hail-damaged leaves

Glorious lettuce

Cucumber blossoms, hail-damaged leaves.

Eggplant blossom

Eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil

Interesting cabbage

. . . and baby beets.

Back Yard Garden, June 16

2010-06-16T21:11:00.004-06:00

We had a couple of mid-nineties days, and then four days of drenching rains and nighttime temps in the 50s, and even hail. The garden is confused, and I'm not a good enough gardener to know what it needs now. I'm just watching it. Propping up the flattened tomatoes, pruning off the dead leaves and making sure the bottom leaves aren't sitting in the mud. But everything seems to be doing ok. The tomatoes and peppers and eggplants have some hail damage, not as bad as the flowers and salad greens. They are kind of sitting there and not growing, like the cucumbers. But they look healthy, and we are back into hot temperatures this week. The beans are growing, I'm planting new ones where they didn't come up. Behind them are two strips of sunflowers, covered with screens because something keeps digging them up every time I plant them.

Hail-battered beans. The front yard garden and flowers are worse. But it's nothing like what they got in other parts of Colorado. Entire crops are ruined.

Charlie through the peas! You have never seen "alert," until you have lived with a border collie.

I planted these peas the second week of March. I think I thought they would be setting pods before now. But I'm so happy with the delicate flowers and the baby pods. The flower is exquisite, it tastes like a pea. Maybe some year I can find room for a whole field of peas, just to harvest the flowers and not feel guilty that it won't turn into a pod.

Dancing peas.

We have had some beautiful salads from the garden. Walking out the back door while dinner finishes cooking, picking ten kinds of greens and having them on the table five minutes after they're picked . . .that is something I don't think I will ever want to give up.

French Breakfast radishes.

Potatoes, coming along.

They start out in such neat rows. Even after weeding, it's a tangle of peas and lettuces.

Monkey Bars

2010-06-16T16:00:00.003-06:00

June is going by so fast. I hope we're able to slow summer down this time. Many days it's been too cold and rainy for the pool, and the first week of June R went to a camp at another Catholic school. Her last day of camp, we took her to a park in Englewood that has a little petting farm and a train.

The train winds around and goes over a river.

The playground has bigger monkey bars than she's used to, and she was eager to try them.

Then she got discouraged because she couldn't hold on. She kept dropping off.
We suggested that she take a breather and play on something else for awhile.

She walked away and said she just wanted "peace and quiet" so she could think about it.

She climbed back up and tried it again.

And she fell down again. But this time she thought it was funny. If you were expecting an inspiring story about how R went back again and again until she mastered the monkey bars . . . this isn't it.

I love my funny little girl.

Grape Leaves

2010-06-16T15:31:00.002-06:00

We should have pruned our grapes earlier. But we did finally get to it, and I did something I've been wanting to try for two years. I canned the leaves.

Wash them and trim off the stems . . .

. . . wrap them loosely in bundles . . .

. . . and blanch the little bundles briefly in boiling water. They immediately turn army-green. The blanched leaves all by themselves have a lemony, pickle-y taste, which surprised me. Whenever I've had stuffed grape leaves, I thought that taste came from the brine.

Pack them into pint jars in a salty, lemony brine. A wheelbarrow full of leaves turned into six pint jars of rolled-up leaves. Ready whenever I want to stuff them.

My first batch of dolmades. I made a green pesto with sorrel, some spicy greens from the garden, walnuts and parmesan. I mixed it with brown rice. Each leaf got some rice and pesto, a little dab of goat cheese, and a red pepper sliver. I put them on a plate with grape leaves and more salad from the garden.

This is my favorite time of year, when the peonies and red roses bloom briefly at the same time.

Our new bare-root roses along the driveway are budding. I hope by next year everything will burst into bloom together.

Underneath the roses are a handful of old strawberry plants with these tiny, intensely sweet alpine strawberries. Some day I'll transplant them and add more plants and have a whole strawberry patch. And raspberries, and more fruit trees! One step at a time.

Margaret's House

2010-06-11T20:46:00.009-06:00

My high school friend Margaret lives in Hygiene, in the St. Vrain Valley near Boulder and Longmont. She is a sculptor and ceramicist, and they have a house filled with her artwork and an amazing garden and menagerie of goats, chickens, and a sweet dog named Agnes. They have a zip line between their trees.

They have the choice of using city water, installing a cistern to store river water, or periodically opening up the ditch to flood their property with water from the St. Vrain River. They chose the most environmentally friendly and labor-intensive option--periodic flooding. I couldn't picture how it worked until we visited them two weeks ago.

When the farmer upstream is finished irrigating, Margaret's family can open up the ditch. They have long plastic irrigation tunnels, which they move around their property. They poke holes in the tunnels, and the water flows out.
It's a big, tiring, dawn to dusk affair. It's amazing how much labor and logistics are involved. Positioning the tubes, turning on the water and letting it flood, then turning off the water, draining the tubes so they are light enough to move, putting them in a new position, and starting all over again.

It was a big watering-day party. The kids get gloriously muddy sailing leaf boats down the ditch.

It was a great lunch too. Margaret makes hummus with white beans and almond butter, and it is so much lighter and better than the tahini-garbanzo version. I have been making it like that ever since. You are always in for several revelations at Margaret's house--that was just one.

Margaret tends her flocks.

She has a beautiful garden. Tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes, onions, lots of different squashes, beans, herbs, salad greens. I know I'm forgetting a lot. We brought her two tomatoes and a Japanese eggplant, and she sent us home with a big bag of straw for mulching, which THRILLS me.

R was thrilled with their pet rats, Sammy . . .

. . . and Valentine. (My apologies if I got that backwards.)

Violas, chive flowers, and (Sammy? Valentine?)

Feeding the goats. Who are as sweet and friendly as dogs. Margaret says they're like that if you raise them from babies and bottle-feed them.

Geyser!

Baby girl in a tangerine towel.

We drove home as a rainstorm was collecting itself.

We stopped at Harlequin's Gardens on the way home, a sustainable nursery that my other high school friend Tom keeps telling me about. We came home with a Rosa Bianca eggplant, a lovely Coosa summer squash, and another exotic summer squash that I can't remember the name of. It's apple-green, round and good for stuffing. The rain was beating down by the time we got home, and I bet we all slept well that night.

Charlie is One Year Old!

2010-05-31T19:48:00.007-06:00

R worked hard on his party invitation.

They delivered them to two neighbor families.

She also worked hard on a sign and decorations for his party. A recurring theme in all his party decorations is, "The biggest bone in the WORLD!" I love to see her testing the limits of the paper to make the bone as big as she can imagine.

She made him a card. She had this all planned out months ago. She has been asking me about Charlie's first birthday party since we first got him.

The guests arrive!

It was a very fancy party.

We made him a birthday cake from a recipe I found on the internet, with chicken baby food, whole wheat flour, carrots, and banana/peanut butter frosting. The humans had carrot cupcakes.

Charlie really didn't like the "party" part of his party. I tried to be sensitive to that, to give the kids their big moment, but not freak Charlie out too much. He loves kids, loves attention, loves to play, but singing and the candle flame and Dan having to hold him because a couple of the neighbor kids are afraid of dogs . . . he was a very good sport. He did not enjoy it.

The kids sang happy birthday, then we hustled him outside so the dog-lovers could play with him and the not-so-sure-about-dogs kids could watch him through the glass door if they would rather.

He did really like his cake.

He loves kids, loves all people so much that I am impressed when he follows his training and doesn't jump on them. He just quietly explodes inside his body, but from the outside, he is perfectly behaved.

I think because he is a border collie, and feels like he is in charge of everyone on his property and must know where they are at all times and protect them against unexpected dangers like open flames and loud noises, he especially appreciates the quiet aftermath of a party.

Charlie is one of those remember-all-your-life dogs. I already had one of those, another border collie named Gracie. I didn't think I would get another one. I wasn't expecting it. I was expecting a companion for R and a dog we could all run and walk and play with. For awhile, that's what he was. A funny and beautiful little puppy, who made us all laugh and fit right in to his space in our house and took to his training like the brilliant dog that he is. When he got his second set of puppy shots, it must have really hurt. He climbed on me, up me, as far as he could go, and buried his head in my neck and then relaxed his body like he thought he was safe. I remember thinking right then, oh no, this is not going to be a dog that I love like that. Who utterly breaks your heart if he gets hurt or sick or dies. I remember steeling myself against it, trying to get back to the much easier role of detached friend and care-giver, which I was taking on for the sake of my daughter, you know. But of course, they are all dogs that you love "like that." Especially Charlie.

Everything is Blooming!

2010-05-28T20:56:00.002-06:00

This has been the most glorious spring for our yard. It's only now getting hot and dry--now that it's almost June.

Our new Ingrid Bergman tree rose, planted where we dug out the rocks along the driveway. We had almost given up on the tree roses, until the dead sticks started growing new shoots.

There are green cherries on the new cherry tree!

The front yard garden is mostly all planted.

Beautiful broccoli.

Aspens by the front door, in the last light, shivering and rustling. There is a beautiful passage in a James Russell Lowell poem, "The Singing Leaves":
Only the pattering aspen
Made a sound of growing rain
That fell ever faster and faster
Then faltered to silence again.

There are Siberian Iris by the side gate, and a small patch of strawberries.

And a visitor inside the iris, that I didn't see when I was taking the picture. What in the world kind of bug is this?

Then on to the backyard garden, the messy, work-in-progress garden. Everything back here has to be reclaimed from years of neglect and overgrowth. And the cursed, cursed, rocks, with weeds growing up through them, that are everywhere. Why would someone landscape a one-third acre lot with mostly rocks? I guess so you don't have to water. But it has been a frustrating thing to inherit. Before you can plant, you have to excavate. Charlie also charged through the beds and ruined a few early crops, so we built a rabbit fence around them.

One of two lilac bushes. This one is much more fragrant than the other one. It makes you swoon when you walk by.

The peonies are close to being my favorite thing about the house. There are two more back here that never flower--maybe they don't get enough sun. And a gorgeous ruffly paler pink one in front of the house, that is just about to burst into bloom.

They are also delicately scented. Just an impossibly lovely flower.

English peas, planted around St. Patrick's Day. They are still not blossoming or setting pods. I don't know if I should be worried. They are lush and beautiful though, climbing their trellises.

There are some really dazzling parts of this yard, that survived the neglect of intervening years. I love the dwarf blue spruce when the giant purple alliums are blooming all around it. I think these allium are called Star of Bethlehem.

R carried her net around the backyard tonight "collecting treasures." I love to see what she collected. Some of Charlie's tennis balls and a mysterious golf ball; his squirrel toy with the stuffing gone, that looks heart-stoppingly like a real massacred squirrel when you find it in the grass; some pretty rocks; lilacs and an allium blossom.

Almost Summer Bento

2010-05-27T09:19:00.004-06:00

Only a few more days of school. The neighborhood pool is already open, and we're ready for summer. Lots going on in the garden! I'll update soon.

Last weekend we had a front yard tomato seedling sale. My neighbor friend and walking partner Julie and her kids came over to help and to run the lemonade stand. We put these signs up around the neighborhood.

This is my next door neighbor Jeri on her way over to patronize the lemonade stand and thrill the kids.

The kids had fun at first, but it was so windy that there wasn't much walking-by traffic for their lemonade.

Julie helping.

We had a bake sale too. It took forever to make everything, organize the plants and make the signs, set it all up. D got called in to work for the whole day Saturday, so I was on my own. I thought about canceling, but I had already put an ad in Craigslist. Then the gale-force winds started. They blew down all our signs within the first half hour. The plants all blew over and some broke. The kids took shelter under the tables. At one point the wind picked up a kids' chair and blew it down the street. The best laid plans . . . it was discouraging. I did sell a few plants and met some interesting neighbors and got some gardening advice.

May Snow

2010-05-12T09:38:00.002-06:00

We are back from a wonderful trip to New Mexico to celebrate my Dad's 80th birthday with my mom and my brothers & families. What a memory--a lot of pictures to go through.

In the meantime, we came back to an overnight snow. The crabapples are just budding and the cherry blossoms are out, but it looks like the snow didn't hurt them. We're supposed to get a few more inches of snow tonight.

Our new little Montmorency cherry tree that we planted last spring. This is its first year for blossoms.

I like the crabapples best when they are at this stage, the intense pink just before they open.

Happy Birthday Dad! Thanks for all the time you spent with us. More pictures to come.

Hoppy Day Bento

2010-05-04T13:24:00.005-06:00

This rabbit bento pick says, "Have a hoppy day." First graders love puns, and sometimes you just have to accommodate them.

I love that it's sometimes warm enough these mornings that she can play outside with Charlie for awhile before school. They both have so much fun that I hate to make her come inside, do her hair, put her shoes and backpack on . . . soon it will be summer and they will have lazy mornings.

Charlie in the Window

2010-04-28T08:00:00.002-06:00

Charlie likes to run up to R's room, jump on the bed, put his paws on the windowsill and watch when anyone leaves the house. He is such a border collie--he in in charge of the whole house, and he has to know where everyone is at all times.

This is this morning before school. R loves it.

And here is today's lunch. D is off work today, because he has to work all day Saturday. We have a lot of yardwork planned.

Rainy Snowy Monday Bento

2010-04-26T07:12:00.001-06:00

It has been good weather lately for lawns and trees, and frogs. One drenching rain storm and rain/snow storm after another.

Red Riding Hood Bento

2010-04-19T10:30:00.003-06:00

This lunch has Red Riding Hood and a mushroom and butterfly, no theme, no reason. Just that the school year is winding down, and I'm realizing I am not using up my handmade bento picks fast enough.

Lovely Wheelbarrow

2010-04-18T19:57:00.002-06:00

This is the wheelbarrow's inaugural project. This side of the driveway has filled me with despair since we moved in. Rocks wedged down into the dirt when the car drives over them, boiling hot in the summer, ugly and depressing. I won't douse the whole thing with Roundup, so weeds take hold between the rocks that are almost impossible to pull. But there is no budget for a landscaper or a a work crew, so what could we do?

We spent Saturday and Sunday digging out all the rocks by hand. They went a foot deep in some places, and were imbedded deep in the clay soil. We hacked away with spades and rakes and scooped with our hands, filled the wheelbarrow and dumped it, over and over again. D blanched when I suggested it, but he worked alongside me all weekend. He was the wheelbarrow man too, so he can hardly stand up tonight. And now this is what it looks like.

I can't express how wonderful it feels to have a stretch of rock-free soil there. We turned over the dirt and worked in bags of compost and manure and peat, until it's soft, fluffy loam for planting. I don't really like the rocks going up to the house either, but they have some surviving plantings from a previous owner, and they're not terrible. That project can wait.

I used to think about this at night before I fell asleep. The rocks all gone and a soft bed for rosebushes, or whatever we want to put there.

I raked out this bed today too, and put fresh mulch. I planted some perennials there last year, and it looks like they came back. A good raking and lawn aeration and mowing and weedeatering the edges, and the front yard should look so much better than when we moved in.

Happy Birthday Mama!

2010-04-16T08:51:00.002-06:00

Church directory picture, Our Lady of the Annunciation, Albuquerque, NM, 1972. I love my little brother's snazzy plaid jacket! And I remember that yellow dress and how I wanted to wear it all the time. We love you Mom.

And here is today's bento.

Tilapia

2010-04-12T16:37:00.003-06:00

I don't think R has ever seen me cook a whole fish before. The summer savory and marjoram and rosemary are big enough now to start snipping, and they should be good on Tilapia with some butter and shallot salt, white wine and lemon. I doubt I'll take a picture when it's cooked, because I'm never very good at getting dinner on the table and taking a picture at the same time.

She wasn't freaked out, but she wanted to look at it. "Take it outside so I can see it in the sun. Is that his eye? Can I touch it?" She has also never been fishing, which is a shame and I hope we can fix that this summer. She wanted to know how the fish dies, and we talked about animals giving their life so you can eat them. I hate the mealy-mouthed sound of my voice whenever we talk about that. It always sounds sanctimonious or too flippant--I never know how to talk about it, even though I've thought so much about it and it's so important. That is, in fact her nightgown in the picture--she changed clothes four times after school today and finally settled on her nightgown.

Introducing our new wheelbarrow!

2010-04-10T21:40:00.002-06:00

We found this on Craigslist today and I could not be happier. I have big plans for this wheelbarrow. D is fixing the wheel with his toolbox. We bought the toolbox at an estate sale when we were first married. It came from an old house in Park Hill. We found it in a shed full of tools dating back 50 years. I would like to have met the man who owned those tools, because they were so lovingly collected and well-worn. Now I associate the old metal toolbox with D as he travels around and fixes things in our run-down house. Which is steadily getting less run-down! Especially now that we have a sturdy wheelbarrow. I notice in this picture that R really needs a haircut . . . she is trying to grow it long enough to "make pigtails."

And now for something completely different.

2010-04-08T10:44:00.002-06:00

R and I have both been sick this week, so lunches have not been very photogenic. I read this morning about this owl who is afraid of heights. He fell from his nest as a baby and has been raised by a human handler. Now that they are ready to release him into the wild, they discovered that he won't fly any higher than five feet ten inches--which is exactly the height of his handler.

I wish them luck. Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time with a six year old and a puppy, but I love the look on his face: "No, I won't do it. Talk to me all you want, but I will not. It is too high."

Easter Egg Bento

2010-04-06T08:03:00.001-06:00

Easter Sunday and Mary Poppins

2010-04-05T14:53:00.003-06:00

Easter morning, Mass and new shoes and white gloves.

A rabbit was eating grass in the front yard.

He was not at all bothered by how close we were.

Then we came home, got out of our dress-up clothes, and shoveled compost in the backyard for a few hours. It is such a good feeling to move that big pile around with a pitchfork and get to the black gold on the bottom layer. A little over one year's worth of yard trimmings and kitchen scraps. D is a lot like my own Dad, always willing to stop work and talk to his daughter. And lift her up high, and be a safety net underneath her when she wants to swing from the locust tree.

She is waving at her neighbor friends: "Daddy's taking us to see Mary Poppins!" D got tickets to the Broadway touring company of Mary Poppins, on their last night in Denver. The 6:30 p.m. show.

R in the car on our way to see Mary Poppins.

I only had my cellphone to take pictures, but this is downtown Denver in front of the Convention Center's giant blue bear. I hope R remembers it for a long time. It was a wonderful show, and the whole experience of being downtown at night and sitting in the dark waiting for the curtain to come up reminded me how rarely I do anything like that any more. We're going to try to do it more often.

Seedling Update

2010-03-26T12:54:00.002-06:00

I need the salad greens in the upstairs bedroom to move outside to make room for tomatoes, but it won't stop snowing.

Basil, marjoram, arugula, chervil, summer savory. These were all planted around Valentine's Day.

Mesclun greens.

Chives, sweet peas, more arugula, and on the left, the flower R chose from the seed packet. Pink Fairy Candytuft. Isn't that what you would choose, if you were a six year old girl?

More sweet peas, reaching for the light.

The north wall has more salad greens and herbs, and way in the back, pink Evening Primrose (again, chosen by R from the rotating racks of seed packets at the nursery.) I love the lottery feeling of letting her do that. She actually picked flowers that might do very well in our garden.

We got well over a foot of heavy, wet snow on Wednesday--enough for a snow day from school. It's already melting away from the crocuses, but there is more snow coming tonight.

The snow was so wet and heavy that it damaged a lot of trees. Three big branches from the gnarled juniper that shades our back deck came crashing down. I don't know now if we should just cut it down. There would be no shade at all on the back porch.

Right before the snow came, I put up more pea trellises and planted about half the peas. I held half back to plant later. We'll see which ones do better. I sprouted them first on a paper towel, so I think they will just wait under the snow blanket and pop up when it melts. The snow was so heavy on the netting that it wrecked the trellises and I'll have to re-do them.

I did experiment with a GrowBag planted with salad greens almost 3 weeks ago, that I keep outside. The snow is melting off of it. The seedlings aren't dying, but they're not really growing either. This is only the second year we've had a garden here, so it's all a grand experiment.

I planted these tomatoes in peat pots today. I hope by the time they germinate, there will be room under the lights for them. I actually started a handful of tomatoes three weeks ago. Those are the ones I might try to set out earlier than last frost, inside a Wall-O-Water.

Daddy, Jesus & Santa

2010-03-26T07:56:00.003-06:00

Yesterday D was off work, because he has to work all day Saturday. We went to the kids' Mass together, and then we sprung R from school. We took her out to lunch and played hooky at the movies for the afternoon. We saw the new Disney movie, "The Princess and the Frog." R had a lot of questions on the way home about falling in love, and what it means to be in love. She decided that she is in love with "three people: Daddy, Jesus and Santa."

Asparagus Lasagna

2010-03-22T11:51:00.002-06:00

For dinner with D's family on Friday, I made asparagus lasagna with homemade noodles, in individual ramekins. I wish I had taken a picture of R making the noodles with me. She loves to crank the handle on the pasta roller.

Salad; broccoli rabe, black pepper & parmesan crostini; and soup made from the tomatoes from our garden that I canned this summer. It's topped with Greek yogurt, a sprinkle of smoked paprika, microgreens from the windowsill, and cheese toasts. Then there is the Extra-Fancy screw-top sparkling juice. I am the only champagne drinker, or I would have splurged.

And baked lemon custard for dessert, with raspberries and a geranium blossom. This custard bakes creamy on the bottom, but cakelike on the top. I couldn't figure it out until D pointed out that it bakes with a water bath that goes 3/4 of the way up the ramekins, and the cake texture starts where the water bath leaves off.

This picture is small because it's a screen grab from the video camera. The girls went into the kitchen after dinner with their juice boxes and told knock-knock jokes to each other. Here's an example of one of R's knock-knock jokes: "Knock knock. Who's there. Water bottle. Water bottle who? Charlie! Bad dog! Spray you with the water bottle!" (water squirting noises.) Oh dear. Poor Charlie, but it does work to stop him from barking at the fence and digging in the garden.

And then it was over.

2010-03-21T17:50:00.002-06:00

Let's see what else happened during our week of spring break. Here's another picture from our morning with my walking partner Julie's kids, who love poking sticks in the river as much as R. does.

Lunch and shopping in downtown Littleton, with D's mom and his brother and family. This is R's little cousin K.

That night we all had dinner at our house. The kids piled on Grandma, and Charlie loved it.

We went to the zoo with Julie's kids.

And look who ran into at the zoo! More cousins! That was such a nice surprise. It was spring break for all the Catholic schools.

And finally, a birthday party for a school friend. It was a dress-up tea party. The foot of snow from the day before is almost melted. It was so kind of D's mom to travel all the way here and spend the week with us. We had a great time. This afternoon I raked out the backyard garden beds and got them ready for peas and carrots and beets. Back to school tomorrow.

Spring Break Day 3

2010-03-19T10:13:00.002-06:00

This was Wednesday, in the little river along the canal trail. And today--in keeping with Colorado Spring Break tradition-- it's a big snow storm.

Hello Horsie

2010-03-17T00:26:00.004-06:00

Although technically, I think this is a mule.

Spring break, D's mom is visiting all week. We went with R and her little cousin to the working farm at the Littleton History Museum.

Farm Bento

2010-03-11T09:42:00.003-07:00

R likes to make her lettuce wraps herself. I think most of the fun is the choosing and the filling and the wrapping. But they barely have enough time to eat lunch, and I was afraid she'd get it all assembled and then the bell would ring. It reminds me of my mom's story about when my cousin Brenda was little, and she spilled her milk. My granddad picked up her hands and turned them over in his and said, "It's amazing they can do anything at all, with hands this little." First graders can do a lot of things, but their hands are still pretty small.