Happy list.

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"S p r i n g t i m e  is the land awakening..."

blackberries in the yard last summer

What better day to make a happy list than today...68 degrees and sunny and murmuring of spring?  Thank you, Tara, for the lovely idea!

  • Envisioning my flower beds bursting with wildflowers in just a few short months.  I've got 5 or 6 packets ready to plant...
  • ...and juicy, tart blackberries ripening on the white trellis in the back yard.
  • Driving really fast with the sunroof open, windows down, and Margaritaville on a radio, as it was when I took a quick trip to the post office earlier...
  • The little book/music/tea exchange program Jenni and I have going on.  I can't wait to borrow her copy of Peace Like A River by Leif Enger, and I sent her my Rosie Thomas When We Were Small CD, an all-time favorite. 
  • Tazo Passion unsweetened iced tea - the only drink I'll get at Starbucks.  Now I'm craving it...
  • How my hubby looks in his grey workout jacket from Lululemon.  Yowza.
  • Thinking about future fun 4th of July birthday pool parties for our little girl.  Fresh-baked berry pies and that wonderful feeling of eating lunch in the sun while still wet from swimming all morning.
  • Amy Butler fabric - there's not a single pattern I don't like.  Also, have you seen her rugs? There aren't words.
  • In anticipation of Shauna Niequist's new book, Bittersweet, releasing later this year, reading this beautiful excerpt and savoring this line, "I believe that suffering is a part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything’s easy."
  • 2010.  It's been a year of restoration, redemption so far.

What are your happies right now?

Patch of beauty.

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This is an ode to my garden and all the beauty she brought into our lives this spring and summer.

Oh, she had some shining moments. After four years of laboring and learning, we can celebrate all the food produced by the work of our hands and the blessings of earth, wind and rain: bulging tomatoes, foot-long squash, peppery lettuce, savory and sweet herbs, fuzzy okra, shiny green bell peppers, and spiny canning cucumbers that were crunchier than any I've tasted before. And then the wildflowers...it seemed that new ones sprouted up each morning - a different variety, a different shade. The whole place hummed with color and life. A haven in our own backyard.

There was much hard work and struggle. We composted, dug, planted, weeded, pruned, prayed for rain, and had a moment of silence for our beloved pole beans that shriveled up and died a few weeks after the first harvest. But as the metaphor always is with growing things, with the struggle, there has been beauty. And community, too, as we got to share our garden bounty and discoveries with so many others {photo of me and Mary in the garden one June evening}.

And then, a recent discovery: with the sweltering, uncomfortable weather that can be so burdensome in Texas, there's a unexpected gift on the flip-side: a second growing season! When everyone else is retiring their gardens for the fall, we haul out more compost, turn the soil again, and replant a bunch of seeds for a second harvest! Fall is coming. I can feel it - beneath the heat that has finally begun to relent, a subtle breeze and coolness is rising. Perhaps this fall, our pole beans will be successful...

For now, we will keep doing our part: tending our garden, feeding people, using the ability given by our Creator to go on creating. We'll keep cultivating our own little patch of beauty nestled behind our home and between three fenced walls. Here, we grow things and in our own little way, take part in redeeming the earth.














Life is indescribably beautiful.
Enjoy it today, and say thank you.

 

Spring harvest.

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"In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it."
~Frank McKinney Hubbard

This quote is becoming truer everyday, as we find ourselves less and less at the grocery store, and shopping more and more at local farms, or eating produce from our own back yard. But I'm finding that the joy that comes from harvesting enough vegetables to make an entire crunchy, colorful salad, from our very own back yard, is worth every bit of work. We spend every day doing some life-giving work in the garden - removing the endless sprigs of grass from our raised beds of lettuce, or untangling English ivy that loves to twine itself around every square inch of the yellow trellis. And I have found that the care we put into it only makes the arugula taste spicier, the tiny pole beans sweeter.

Here are two of our largest "harvests" so far...what delicious salads they made!


i spy 2 basil leaves and 2 pea pods!
and a variety of lettuce - "craquerelle du midi" romaine
and a cook's mesclun mix - mmm!


more lettuce including a cute baby romaine
and our first 3 squash,
which we actually sliced with a mandolin
and ate raw in a salad

a closer look at the red orach

For a garden-fresh salad, all you need to "dress" them is a simple vinaigrette:
3 tbs. extra-virgin olive oil
1-2 tbs. vinegar (my favorites are Sherry Vinegar & Apple Cider Vinegar)
A small dollop of Dijon mustard, if you prefer a creamier dressing
Sea salt & black pepper to taste

Whisk it all together, or shake in a glass mason jar, and pour over the fresh greens. Delightful!


Barbie-sized things.

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One of my absolute favorite things about growing up is how much my mother humored me and fostered my crazy imagination. I'm sure every day was something new for her - "Oh dear, what has Christine come up with now?"

"Hello, Dawn," I would say as I descended the stairwell into the dining room. That was how my mom knew that I was no longer Christine but my imaginary alter-ego named "Kim." She would carry on a conversation with Kim as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. Mysteriously, Kim would always ask questions about me such as, "So, Dawn...how has Christine been doing on her chores? Has she been good lately?" and then disappear before my mom could lift her head up from the vegetables she was slicing for dinner.

This explains a lot.

There was also the instrument I invented called the "Konoto," which was really just a hardcover "I Can Read" book with "strings" drawn on the cover and then held in my arms like an autoharp. {Do you remember "I Can Read" books? Oh how I loved Frog And Toad!}

But some of my most memorable "toys" were all the everyday items that were "Barbie-sized." That means they were just the right dimension to be life-sized in Barbie world. For example, the little plastic white stand that sat in the middle of a hot cheesy pizza from Rocco's. These, of course, became Barbie end tables for my living room setup where a hot pink and black zebra-print scarf was the rug. And how about the wooden toothpicks with red, yellow, green, or blue fuzzy tips that held sandwiches together at 42 Main Delicatessen? Barbie torches, or sparklers for a 4th of July celebration, of course.

Now, as a grown-up, I'm proud to announce that I have Barbie-sized produce in my garden! Teeny inch-long squash, and baby green tomatoes that will soon be juicy and bright red and difficult to hold in one palm. My favorite of all has to be the baby pea pods. You can stare and stare at the vine for several minutes before you see them, and then all of a sudden your eyes adjust, and you realize that adorable mini pea pods are hanging everywhere! We are definitely going to get more than a single cucumber this year; in fact I'll soon show you what we've already harvested. In the meantime, I'm enjoying each and every stage of growing things.

It's not easy to tell in the photos, but not a single one of these veggies is more than an inch long...

yellow squash - if you click to enlarge it, you can see that the surface is fuzzy!


zucchini

pea pod

tomato


cucumber


green bell pepper


sweet peas - these aren't technically veggies but they remind me of four little girls in dresses on their way to kindergarten

On with the imagination! We are never too old, I say.

Flowers, flowers everywhere!

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Something I've always wanted: fresh flowers in vases all around the house, from the first day of springtime, to the last day of summer. And that is what I'm aiming for this year. With the way my roses are blooming, it should be pretty attainable!

On Friday night, our dear friend Kyle came over, toting her parents from Nashville, her sister who is a baker, a gorgeous bouquet of ranunculus and other wildflowers {for me!} and this incredible mascarpone tart with balsamic glaze {swoon}. We grilled chicken and brats on the barbie and roasted carrots, onions, and new potatoes. Michael Bublé serenaded us in the background as we drank Cabernet, talked about exotic places we'd traveled, and enjoyed the delicious food we had each contributed. And I even got to wear my favorite skirt. Perfect.

So I've been admiring these fresh wildflowers about a hundred times a day since Friday...they seem to stop me in my tracks every time I pass by. There's something striking about the bright colors of grape and tangerine against my chocolate brown walls...





The bouquet was so large that I gave some of them a home in the kitchen...



{another gift from Kyle in the background...a bottle of wine she brought back from Greece - there's not a single word of English on the bottle!}

But that's not all...I also have gathered every vase, glass jar, or bottle I can find and stuffed them with fresh roses from our garden - on the kitchen window sill, in the guest room, in the bathroom, on the dining table. Some stems have 6 buds about to burst open!



Mmmm, fresh flowers. Such a simple gift in life.