In A Pickle

I have to admit, I was a little shocked to realize it's been nearly a month since a new post graced this little corner of cyberspace. The thing is, I'm almost always working on a blog post in my head and it's a bit surprising to realize that not a single one of those thoughts have actually made it out of my fingertips and into reality.

As I'm apt to do this time of year, I'm feeling a nudge for some change in my life. But when I really look at things, it seems that maybe things already are changing. In the last few years, I've devoted so much energy to being a "writer," yet somehow, in the last few months I've been watching what feels like all of that focus and resolve draining away. Last month, for the first time ever, I turned down a freelance job from a gig that I've been doing since November 2009. Despite my intentions to be the best freelancer/blogger ever this summer, even with a full-time job, somehow I've barely blogged or written a word. (Have you noticed?!) Other things that have given my life structure in the past have been missing this year too, from regular ice fishing trips in the winter to blueberry picking and canning peaches this summer.

It's all a bit discomfiting and as a result, I've been suffering through an endless case of the "mean reds." You know the mean reds, don't you? As Holly Golightly put in Breakfast at Tiffany's, "The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of."

What I didn't realize when I started chasing my crazy marathon dream this spring was how much energy it would require and how it would dominate my free time. Even only running somewhere between 9-12 miles each week sucks up a great deal of my free time in the mornings since I tend to run on work day mornings. The mornings I don't run are spent cleaning the bathroom and other exciting household chores. The running's been a good thing and my body is stronger (and slimmer) than it has been in years. I'm also happy to report that the childbearing hips I'd been developing over the last couple years are now a distant (and unpleasant) memory.


But if this all just sounds rather depressing, what I'm really trying to say it that there's only so much time in each day. Our priorities dictate how we use that limited time and apparently priorities have been changing around here.

The garden has been in hardcore harvest mode for the last month or so and has been demanding a fair amount of attention. I've been canning (dilly beans and pickled carrots and daikon radishes pictured below) and freezing (16 lbs of green beans and at least that much again of kohlrabi) and drying (mint and oregano), whirring (pesto) and shredding (zucchini). I'd say we're at least at the halfway point for harvest 2013 and we have been blessed with another bountiful year. That said, I never want to blanch another green bean ever again. Well, at least not until next year.

We had a strange hot spell at the end of August that really tested everyone's good humor. At times such as those, I'm especially happy to live only an hour away from a Great Lake. When it's 95 degrees at your home, it's lovely to go spend some time next to what essentially is a very foggy refrigerator.

We finally pulled up all of our giant kohlrabi (and blanched it and froze it, oy). The biggest kohlrabi (below) ended up weighing in at 6.5 lbs. Not quite the 8 lbs promised on the packaging, but still a pretty impressive cruciferous vegetable specimen. I'm usually not for giant vegetables (probably because the only vegetables I've ever encountered in giant form are zucchinis) but I found a fair amount of Wallace and Gromit-ish pleasure in our large kohlrabi.

 

Speaking of beautiful vegetables, check out these beautiful Yukon Gold potatoes we pulled out of a rotting pile of straw. We hadn't really planned on doing the Stout method of gardening again (basically, where you put seed potatoes on the ground and cover them with straw and forget about them) but I'm so glad we did.

Andy and I had to run into town last weekend to attend his cousin's wedding celebration, which was a lovely event with really, really good eats. We didn't stay too long, but did manage to capture the most truthful photo of the two of us at a social gathering ever taken. Ha. Hahahahaha.

 

This weekend, my friend Sarah comes to stay with us and I'm so excited to have her up when the world is not either totally frozen (February) or one mucky mess (April). I'm not sure what we'll get up to exactly, but I'm looking forward to it immensely.

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How Does Your Garden Grow

When I got home from crafting weekend a couple weekends back, I swear the veggies in our garden had doubled in size.Although winter took a while in leaving this year, we've had a decent growing year so far, with plenty of rain and a bit of heat. I've been marveling at how well the garden seems to be doing this year and then I remember that's because we simply gave up on some veggies (salad greens, spinach, onions, to name a few) that have always struggled in our garden and have devoted their previous (and precious) garden space to veggies that consistently thrive, like beans and kohlrabi. At the moment, everything points to a very productive garden year.

 

These potatoes are growing in soil this year rather than straw bales and seem to be quite happy. 

 

We did end up recycling the straw from last year's straw bale potato experiment and have potatoes growing there too. 

 

I've been trying to keep up with pruning suckers on the tomatoes to make them more productive and to make them a little more manageable. Still, we're well on our way to have "monster" tomatoes that need to be tied up so we can get to the front door.

 

Beans and cabbage in a corner of the raised bed.

Baby gherkin.

Herbs and a baby eggplant.

We're growing kossak kohlrabi this year, which can grow up to 10 inches in diameter and 10 lbs! I'm planning to have a freezer full of kohlrabi for winter dinners this year.

Peppers (bell and jalapeno) and a not so baby eggplant.

The guys with the party hats are here!

The watermelon (with cosmos in the back) is finally coming into its own.

How does your garden grow?

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Why Hello There

And with that, we marked the longest stretch without posts, ever, on Of Woods and Words. Sorry about the radio silence there. The end of last month and the start of this month have been filled with seven day stretches of workdays, baby showers, social obligations, and company. Needless to say, I'm awash in blog material that just needs to morphed into actual blog posts. I plan to work on that this week, as well tackle the mountain of laundry currently living behind our bedroom door.

But don't worry, I'm still here, alive and kicking.

 

Well, hey there!

Before we move forward, can we just take a moment to remember Google Reader, the Google blog feed organizer that had its last day in the sun last Monday. If you're like me and used Google Reader to organize all of the blogs you follow, it was a sad day indeed. Like so many have with the demise of Google Reader, I've transitioned over to BlogLovin' this week, which of course I don't like nearly as well as Google Reader. Change is hard! If you're also experiencing Google Reader withdrawal, fear not, you can follow Of Woods and Words on BlogLovin' or subscribe via email and never miss a post again. Of course that would require me to actually write posts. Erm, about that . . . .

I actually had a bunch of photos dating back to 6/25 hanging out in an unpublished blog post that I thought I'd share with you. The photos from the garden are pretty funny because the garden has exploded in size since I took them. Nevertheless, here are some snapshots of summertime around here. Over the next week or so, I'll update you on the garden, knitting projects, baby showers, running and a lot more.

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Garden Tour 2013

The garden's been in nearly two weeks now, but I haven't gotten around to post a little "tour" here, mostly because it's been so blinkin' cold that the plants have just been languishing in their new "forever" homes.We're now in a string of days with highs in the 70s, so hopefully the plants will get the memo and do some serious growing before we dip back down to the mid-60s. I know it's June in Minnesota and I shouldn't be surprised by cool temps, but after a few HOT summers, this cool spring is a little disorienting. We also haven't had any rain for at least a week, so last night Andy and I finally pulled out the garden hose and gave everything a good drink.

Here's the terraced garden. My goal with this garden is to make it "effortlessly beautiful" - a goal I've been working towards for three years now. ;) We need a few more perennials to actually achieve that goal (note the bare soil patches - where I've planted a wildflower mix) but we're definitely getting closer with each passing year.

Poor little chilly tomatoes. They're developing a rusty colored mildew on their larger leaves, but are still putting on a lot of new growth. I'm more inclined to think that the mildew is actually goosebumps.

Four little peppers - three bells and one jalapenos. There were five peppers (two jalapeno plants) but we always end up with more jalapenos then we could possibly ever use, so we gave one plant away to a neighbor. This means I've spared you from a whole summer of "five little peppers and how they grew" references. You're welcome.

Little potatoes poking up.

We pulled off the row covers last night and discovered the kohl crops going nuts: kohlrabi, kale, broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts.There's also Swiss chard and pole beans poking up around the edges.At least someone likes the cold weather.

The rhubarb gets bigger each year, but is it big enough to harvest?

The squash plants are getting too big for their plastic gallon cloches. I'm not sure they're really going to like conditions outside of their cozy cloche though. 

Carrots, beans, and leeks hanging out under the row covers.

How does your garden grow?

 

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A Botanical Field Trip

Andy and I took a botanical field trip down the lake yesterday. Last week, I'd received an inquiry at work from an individual who'd discovered a small structure while camping on the lake a few weeks back. The individual who "found" the structure (I'm sure people have been finding this at least a couple times a year for the last 70 or so years) seemed to think it might be part of a trapper's shack, while I was more inclined to think it was a root cellar left behind from a resort that closed down in the early 1950s.

After visiting the site myself, I'm still leaning towards root cellar and also maybe bear den? The entrance seemed really wide open for a structure that's mostly sunken into the side of a small hill for a good 70 years, which makes me think "somebody's been sleeping in my root cellar." The inside of the small structure (which is maybe 8x6x6 - I could stand up in it) is filled with sheet metal and other scraps - maybe an easy way to clean up the site without actually having to bring all the junk from the old resort operation down the lake to dispose?

We also found a stone retaining wall that was probably part of the resort and it seemed pretty obvious where the main lodge building would have stood. 

Another reason I wanted to visit the site was because I'd always heard about the domesticated flowers that still bloom there, decades after the last permanent residents packed up. I'd heard that tea roses bloom in the mid-summer and the person who reported the structure above also mentioned daffodils blooming. After poking around the site a bit, I wonder if he didn't confuse daffodils with dandelions. There were plenty of dandelions to be found (which are too common of a weed to indicate any sort of civilization, I think) and I also think we found the tea roses, although they were just leafing out and appeared to be covered with some sort of fungus.

In our haste to find the structure once we got to shore yesterday, Andy and I breezed right past the shrub above. Yep, that's a ginormous lilac bush - a shrub that thrives into the Northwoods but which doesn't get here unless someone plants it.

There were also domesticated lily of the valley (easy to distinguish from the "false lily of the valley" wildflower that are very common in this area) and forget-me-nots galore which may or may not have been intentionally planted. Technically a wildflower is any flower that's not intentionally planted.

As I poked around looking for botanical signs of civilization, I actually happened upon a wildflower I'd never seen before. At first I thought it was some sort of orchid, but it's actually a type of milkwort known commonly as Bird-on-the-Wing. Google failed me completely for identifying it when I got home and I actually had to use two books (shocking, I know) to figure out what it was. It's just budding out - usually it has two petals that stick out perpendicularly from the center of the flower so it looks like a bird in flight.

We also found plenty of blueberry bushes loaded with blossoms. Another good picking season ahead. :)

If you're in the woods on a still morning or evening this time of year, you get a heady whiff of something floral. Turns out that wonderful intoxicating aroma comes from the red osier dogwood blossoms. I will be sad when the dogwood blossoms start to fall - they've been making my morning runs pretty delicious.

 

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