Squash is good, most squash recipes not so much

I grew squash in my garden this summer. I planted too many plants (as usual) and ended up swimming in summer squash, cucumbers and acorn squash. I managed to eat or share all the cucumbers, almost did the same with the summer squash (a few ended up in the composter, poor things). Luckily, acorn squash are a little less picky about time, so the last 5 of them have been waiting patiently for me. Then to top it all off, someone gave me an organic butternut squash last week. They've been sitting on my kitchen table, taking up a bunch of room and mocking me, telling me that I'd have to cook them with brown sugar and butter like everyone else does.

But I'm not one to be bossed around by cucurbits, and I have searched high and low for squash recipes that don't taste like pumpkin pie or that Thanksgiving yam stuff with the marshmallows on top. A while back I stuffed an acorn squash with black beans and ground beef and garlic and cumin and chili powder, topped with cheddar cheese. It was good. Too bad I didn't write down what I did.

This week, determined to use that butternut squash, I found a recipe for Garlicky Baked Butternut Squash that sounded worth a try. I didn't have parsley so I substituted basil and rosemary, and had to use half acorn squash, but overall it turned out really good. Note: acorn squash takes longer to cook than butternut, so nuke the acorn a bit first unless you want acorn lumps in a sea of butternut puree.

Best part about the recipe is that Nigel refused to try it. How is that good, you ask? It means that I get leftovers.

Intoxication

I'm in full-on yard work mode right now. It's a neverending job, of course, but in the spring it is fun. It's not too hot, and I'm busy thinking of what my gardens could look like, with just the right amount of work and money and landscape know-how. (I don't really have the ability to follow through on that, but that's another post, to be tackled in August some time.)

But for now, I have my favorite bits of spring, the first buds on my roses, the little spinach leaves, the blossoms on peas, and my irises. These flowers are all gifts from other people's gardens, and I love them. While weeding this bed yesterday, I was accompanied by their wonderfully sweet scent, wishing that they'd stick around all summer long. However, in looking pictures of them, I am reminded of the constant problem of living where I do-- no picture of prettiness is without the ugliness of urban(ish) living.

Here, a photo of them shows off my neighbors' garbage cans and pool and shed. I've planted some roses near the alley to try to screen this from view, but it will be some time before they are large enough to do any good. I tried pictures from other angles, and the ones with our house in the background aren't much better. I'll fix that this year, right?

Something to report!

Sorry folks, for being absent so long. I just had nothing all that interesting to write, so I didn't bother. But this weekend saw something done to the house, so I took pictures. On Saturday I got all twitchy about the 40+ feet of yew bushes along the south side of my house and started sawing them down. With my neighbor's trusty hand saw, I deleted three of the overgrown buggers with my bare hands. I unfortunately have no photographic evidence of said bushes-- I neglected to take 'before' pictures.

On Sunday, Mr. Deplume borrowed a friend's chainsaw (we really do have tools of our own, just not the correct ones for this particular job) and went to work on the rest of them. Within an hour or so we went from this (the bush-free part of the house to the left of the screen is where the bushes I removed had stood):

From House

to this:

From House

I count it as an improvement, although removing the one very large eyesore revealed many little ones. There is a water meter, electric meter, air conditioning unit, furnace vents, a few miscellaneous wires and boxes for phone and electricity, a defunt cable hookup and chunk of broken veneer on the foundation we hadn't noticed before. Of course there are still 40-year-old yew stumps that need to be dealt with, as well. I foresee a bunch of my summer being involved in installing trellises and fences and camouflage plants. 'Tis the fun of home ownership, I suppose.

Eww.

Note to self: Do not look up ways to prevent apple pests whilst eating breakfast. Not only are the pictures of the caterpillars yucky, but reading the words of one cheeky organic grower put me right off my feed. What were the words, you ask? Why of course they were "where's the other half of the worm?" blarf. Anyway, after wasting about an hour on the internet trying to become an expert on organic orchard maintenance, I think I'll just call my local Extension office and let them tell me what to do.

On a happier note, reading about apples and orchards always makes me sing this song.

Thanks to yesterday's comments

I'm now faced with a real hankering for blueberries. I even woke in the middle of the night and thought about where I could put a couple of blueberry bushes. It didn't help that it was 46 and sunny yesterday, so I was outside feeling like spring is around the corner. Last night the temperature dropped 30 degrees and it is winter again. Blargh.

Speaking of yesterday, I spent the afternoon doing cleanup work. It was lovely. It's funny how something that is so objectionable in July is an absolute joy in December. I picked up all the limbs that had fallen during the ice storm of a couple of weeks ago, raked the pile of leftover leaves to where the garden will be in the spring (I plan to choke out the grass with them, newspaper, and a healthy layer of compost. Don't laugh! I read right here on the internet that it totally works!), swept the garage, and I climbed out on the roof and cleaned the gutters. The gutter cleaning was cut short, though, because the metal roof on the garage was a little slippery. Not to mention that I wasn't wearing waterproof gloves and my fingers were getting cold.

Anyway, the dose of vitamin D I got out there was much needed. I hope it's enough to get me through the next few weeks, until the next sunny and "warm" day.

And one of that, and three of those, and a couple of these..

You know how you go to a church potluck, and everything looks so good that you have to have a bite of each, and by the time you head back to your table the plate is heaped with a 5" mountain of food, with no reasonable ability to consume all of it?

That's how I felt yesterday while looking through the first 2009 seed catalog that came in yesterday's mail. I was picking out carrots and peas and new tomatoes and beans and even trying to figure out how to find enough sunny spots in the yard for a few blueberry bushes. I won't even get started on my desire to grow those sunflowers that grow to 12 feet tall. And then I looked at the groundcover section and dreamed of getting rid of those overgrown yews along the side of the house. I was practically drooling by the end.

But like the potluck, there's no way I could do all of that here. I have too much shade, not enough time, and a paltry budget. I should note that I have plenty of motivation right now, but know that although we've had plenty of cold and snow already there's lots of time to go before I get to start playing with seeds. My motivation levels experience precipitous drop each year as soon as the humidity and temperatures hit 85 degrees. By mid-July, I usually regret all the work I made for myself and want to hide in the air conditioning until fall.

Today, though, I dream of lush gardens and warm soil.

Gardening is hard work

I spent 3.5 hours mowing, then weeding, planting, weeding, and transplanting. And it still mostly looks the same as it did this morning. A few weeks ago, we removed the grass from an area outside our back door. My mama dug up a few of her perennials for me, and I finally managed to get them all in today. I put in two rudbeckia plants last week, then today I put in the coneflowers, the peonies, and some dame's rocket. That was seriously toilsome work, as the soil there is pretty hard packed and rocky (it's right near the gravel drive and alley). Mr Deplume tilled it for me, but the poor little tiller had a hard time with all the hackberry roots in the way. So it's up to Normpower to dig holes big enough, then add enough compost and garden soil to allow the plants to grow. There's at least a 68% chance that everything in that new bed will die this year and we'll have to start over in 2009.


Since the kids were playing nicely outside still, I started efforts to fix up the back garden. It's pretty overgrown with grass, and weeds. Until last spring, there were giant yew bushes int hat area, until Mr Deplume borrowed a chainsaw. Now we only have giant stumps. Taking those things out will be unfun. Since I prefer fun, I'm ignoring them, and planting stuff around them. Luckily, the soil there is nice and black and loose, and has very little foot traffic. After clearing a good-sized patch, I put two peonies in (I know it's the wrong season for peony planting, but I had them, so in they went), moved a volunteer heirloom tomato plant to another location, and left one where it popped up. There are still about 50 tomato seedlings in the other end of the bed, but that will be work for another day. At least there is progress. I'll be taking a second shower today as I completely reek, primarily of creeping charlie.

I was going to share a picture of my newest knitting project, but I've prattled on too long already, and still I need to run to the grocery then shower. And my hands hurt. And by now, I've lulled you all to sleep anyway, so it would be a wasted effort. If you have read this far and are interested, you can go look it up on its Ravelry page. :)

Gardening season has begun!

It's all of 25 degrees here, so nothing is going in the ground yet, and the lawn is still the color of a paper grocery bag. I have sent the kids out this afternoon to pick up all the recyclables that got blown across the yard in the last wind storm, so at least it will no longer look derelict. The weather promises to be a little nicer this week, so I might be able to clean up a few of the winter leaves and start mapping out what will go where this year. Of course only about 10% of my March plans get carried out each year. I hope that by the time I'm retired, I'll have one of those happy little gardens that cause people to slow down a little as they walk by the house. That would make me truly happy.

And today, I started on a new garden adventure, Winter Sowing. Winter sowing is a process where you plant seeds in plastic containers while it is still winter, then set them outside and wait for them to sprout in their own time. The containers serve as little individual greenhouses, reducing the need for watering, and protecting the seeds from the winter's hungry critters. To my spring-starved self, this concept seems to be genius. A perfect storm of frugality, recycling, and excitement for spring. So today, Nora and I cut apart some milk jugs and an old cranberry juice bottle, filled them with potting soil, and planted basil, dill, cilantro, lavender and rudbeckia. As soon as I gather some more containers, the rest of the herb seeds I have and some more flowers.

There's still a chance that the whole idea is silly, and I'll spend months staring at the stupid bottles, only to find out that wintersown.org is an elaborate web hoax, designed to make me look stupid. Only time will tell.

The Sacred and the Profane

Yeah, that's an overstatement, but I've got two pictures to post today, and one is very pretty. The other-- no so much. I'll start with the good one.

This spring, I bought a bunch of bare root plants. I'm actually up to about 50% "promising" with them. I bought 4 astilbe crowns, and planted them this spring, before a nasty nasty cold snap that killed off their new little shoots. Now 3 of the four have finally re-sprouted, although yesterday I saw that one has gone missing. I don't know whether to blame kids or rabbits. I also bought a raspberry bush, which certainly seems to be as dead as a doornail.

I also bought a bare root rose. At out last house, there were three beautiful rose bushes there when we moved in (two dark red and one yellow). Two of the three bushes survived throughout the 7 years we lived there, we lost the yellow one a year after we moved in. I tried planting a few more, but tragedy usually befell them. Once, My toddler daughter fell right onto one, breaking it off at the graft.

But I got courageous this spring and bought one at Menards, a yellow Grandiflora named 'Gold Medal'. I figured it was worth a try here at the new home. I stuck it in the ground (also before that cold snap) and it actually took off! And now I have a single bloom on it. I'm so excited to have a new rose actually living to this point. I have taken way too many pictures of it, as there's a chance that I'll kill it before next spring.

Now to the considerably less pretty. I decided to use up all the wool that I've bought at my local thrift store this year, in a bag to be felted. I'm using a free pattern called the Felted "No Rules" Bag: I love anything without rules. So far, my total yarn cost is $2.05, but the trade off is that there is no pretty in this bag at all. It started out looking like a Green Bay Packers theme, but I did get that under control. No offense to the boys at Lambeau Field, but I'd rather not scream "Packers Fan" at the farmers' market all summer. I suppose if I had spent a wee trifle more time planning it out, it wouldn't be so ugly, but that's all water under the bridge now. I figure it will be a conversation piece. Maybe I'll give it a name like "Ode to Frugality" or "The Go to Hell Bag", so it seems like it was all on purpose. I firmly believe that in this life, you can get away with nearly anything, so long as you act like you know what you are doing.

Happy Zone 5a Average Last Frost Date!

No worries about a frost today. It's going to be 85 degrees! I planted a few beans this weekend. I dug out the space by hand, and even built my own tepee. Those better be some good beans, as that was very hard work. They are Chinese Red Noodle beans that a friend sent me. She also sent me some Principe Borghese tomato and Jelly Melon cucumber seeds, but those seedlings aren't ready to be planted outside yet. (I finally looked up pictures of the cucumbers-- they are really scary-looking fruits!). I am so very ready for fresh vegetables: one of the worst things about living in the Midwest is the lack of real tomatoes eleven months of the year.

In the new little plot I created last week, the raspberry bush seems to be dead. I don't know why I even attempt bare-root plants. I have about a 10% success rate with them. I need to go ahead and learn my lesson: it is worth the extra money to buy regular plants. I planted some lettuce and spinach in the same plot. I have a couple dozen little lettuce seedlings out there, but no sign of the spinach. I know you are all on the edge of your seats, waiting for news of my spinach; I promise to keep everyone posted.

In knitting news, I have not picked up needles in three days. (I know!) I plan on making a rectangular lace shawl next, but won't have the yarn for another week at least. I hope it is as pretty in person as it looked online. We don't have a whole lot in the way of local yarn shops here, so I am learning the "joys" of internet yarn shopping. One of those joys is not knowing if the seller's photo accurately shows the color of the yarn. Oh, the drama!

And now for a joke. My mother sends me jokes in her regular emails, and I admit to not reading the long ones. But this one was short, funny, and knit-related. So here it is:

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL OVER! "

"NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

An FO and a new bed

I've finished the little scarf that I started a few weeks ago. I made it long enough to tie at the back of my head instead of being just a headband. In fact, if push came to shove, I could use it as a belt. I might have gotten a little carried away. It's made from Omega Sinfonia cotton from Hobby Lobby. Since my previous cotton knitting experiences were all with dishcloth cotton, this sport weight mercerized cotton was really nice. But I do wish it were a little narrower.


In outdoor news, I created a new flower bed yesterday. This had previously been a weedy patch of weeds, with weeds growing all over it. But now, after a whole bunch of time getting my fingers dirty, it is home to a new raspberry bush, and some spinach and lettuce. I 'm thinking about extending it along the fence and putting in a bunch of asparagus and rhubarb. I still need to figure out how to edge it. I don't like those little plastic flower bed edge thingys, but I need to do something to keep the weeds (and my husband's lawnmower) out of there. My poor trillium were decapitated last weekend in a horrible lawnmower accident. I'm still not over it.

Some giant yew bushes to the left of the picture will be removed in the next few weeks, thus allowing much more sunlight to the area. That is going to be a humongous task. But the bushes are huge, and serve no purpose except to steal valuable sunny real estate in my mostly shady property.