The $40 Tomato

We awoke to another morning of temperatures hovering in the mid-30s.  Again I say...it is APRIL!!  Never mind though as I am happily daydreaming away with the help of my Gardener's Supply Company catalog.  This catalog contains very useful garden tools.  All manner of plant supports, trellises, comfy gardening boots and gloves, (and of course products that promise to increase your Fall harvest by 50%), are displayed in page after beautifully photographed page.  It's enough to make a cold-weary gardener giddy!

I've been looking at products designed to give you an earlier start in the garden.  These products promise to protect your plantings from frost, give them a continuous supply of water and fertilizer, and support them as they grow to enormous heights (given that they are being continuously feed and coddled...).  The lovely photos of these amazing products have me folding down page corners to mark the things that I must have.  Self-watering pots?  Check.  Stackable tomato cages? Check.  Pop-Up protection for your berries from birds?  Check.  My list includes these items and more.

So I added up my wish-list, just to see where I was at, and realized that if I purchase these many useful products, I will have a tomato that costs more than $40 at season's end!

I feel, in some sense, as though I would not be doing any justice to my farming roots (both of my grandparents were farmers), if I didn't at least make an attempt at thriftiness.  The true farmer is a very resourceful person--able to take ordinary items, things that might otherwise go into the garbage, and transform them into useful garden implements.  The products in the catalog look amazing, and I'm sure they do increase your vegetable harvest, but it also seems to me that the idea behind growing vegetables is to be self-sufficient, have fresh produce and possibly to save money.  Not grow $10 heads of lettuce.

I do love my tools though, and I've spent more money than I care to say over the years on some awesome garden products.  Sometimes I find a product I can't live without (like All-purpose garden fabric for row covers), and sometimes the products just don't pan out (like the upside-down tomato hangers that I thought would transform my garden space).

But at this point of the year I am still in the daydreaming phase of the vegetable garden.  Looking at photos of huge, healthy tomato plants, and beds brimming with fresh produce is an ideal way to pass a cold spring.

Pretty Spring Lambs

Nothing heralds Spring quite like baby animals.  And farm animals in particular are a welcome sight after a long winter.  We recently visited some friends' new lambs, and of course we "oohed" and "aahed" over them.  Lambs rank very high on the cute scale!

Two week old Jacob lamb

We think their spots make them look like little cows.

Sticking close to their mama

Grace with a little lamb

Thank you Ande Family for a fun farm visit!!!

Whomping Willow

One of the gardens I tend has a very old willow tree.  It is gnarled, twisted, ancient and huge.  And every time I look at it, visions of the whomping willow from the Harry Potter books fill my head.  The smallest breeze stirs up the branches and makes the tree come alive.

But I'm not afraid of this particular willow. (It has never seemed inclined to attack...)  So though it looks rather menacing with it's giant arm-like branches, it seems to be quite gentle.  And it plays host to countless birds, squirrels and insects, which would make it fall on the side of "good".  Or at least I think so anyway.

The truth is that I think of this tree as a gentle old soul.  Knowing the age of some other trees on this property, I would place this tree's age at close to 100 years.  There is no doubt that it has seen many more years than I.  

The willow and the plants around it are looking especially beautiful right now.  Because of our extreme cold temperatures, gardens are having some unusual flowering companions this year.  The Oregon Grape (Mahonia aquifolium) behind the willow would normally be almost done flowering, but this year it is in full bright yellow bloom.  The new, pale green willow leaves are just unfurling--a bit late.  And the light green carpet of montbretia (Crocosmia crocosmiiflora) in the foreground is looking fresh and lush.  The pale green and yellow combination of these three plants together is really striking this year.  I suppose this unusually cold Spring is one more way for Mother Nature to play with planting palettes.

The Beauty of Moss

An ancient stump, covered in moss and kinnikinnick.

Normally this time of year, my attention is caught by spring flowers and the crazy antics of the birds.  But this year has been so cold and rainy that the flowers, though still beautiful, have been a side-note to my weather complaining.  When the skies have opened up in a flood of rain, it is hard to enjoy blossoms--especially as I watch them get drowned or knocked about by hail.

I was surprised to realize what HAS captured my attention this spring.  We went camping on the Oregon Coast for Spring Break and I couldn't stop talking about the moss!  When Brian finally joked that he didn't want to hear another comment about moss, I realized that moss is the thing catching my eye.  And how could it not, given that this year has been ideally suited to it's needs.  In Bandon, OR where we camped, moss dripped off the trees, clung to roots and branches and covered the forest floor in an emerald green cloak.  Walking through the woods it felt as though a soft blanket was delicately covering everything.  I felt the need to be quiet, and found the moss covered woods strangely soothing.

The Oregon coast is a wet place.  It is misty, foggy and rainy--frequently all three at the same time!  So it is no wonder that moss has found a perfect home deep in the coastal pine forests.  We have camped there many times before and I'm familiar with the area's native plants.  Many of them are our native plants too.  But on this particular trip, the moss really stood out for me.  We hiked up a little trail behind our campspot and I felt like we entered into a fairy land of emerald green, moss covered forest. It was beautiful!

A trail through the mossy woods

And upon returning home, my eyes were opened to the moss we live in.  I usually don't have much patience for moss.  I've loved it in certain garden situations, but spend my spring lawn energy on trying to get the moss out of our grass (a common problem here as even the sunniest garden spots struggle with low light during our winter months).

As we drove home from the Oregon Coast, I couldn't help but notice--now that I was seeing moss-- that we too have moss that drips from trees and carpets the forest floor.  Maybe not quite as much, or quite as thick, but clearly, we live in a wet place too!

I'm still not loving our very cold, wet spring.  I'm still complaining about the weather even knowing what a futile complaint that is.  And I'm still hoping that our summer will be hot enough to bake out all of the moss growing in our lawn and gardens (and sidewalks, and rooftops, and siding.....).  But for right now, I've decided that moss is beautiful.

Nettle Soup

Complaining about the weather is truly childish.  We can't DO anything about it. It doesn't help to complain.  And yet, people have been complaining about the weather since, well...probably since there were people!  We complain when it is too hot, too wet, too humid, or too cold.  We complain when it rains, when it snows, and then we complain when it doesn't rain or snow.  So, it's very uninspired to complain about the weather. And yet, I am filled to bursting with the desire to simply rant on and on--pages of ranting--about our weather.  So, if you can indulge this little outburst...

I AM SICK TO DEATH OF RAIN!!!  It is April.  Surely it is not too much to ask for a little sunshine.  A little warmth. No more temperatures down to the 30s at night!!!  Come on already!!!  I am tired of the wet, dank, gray, moldy, cloudy weather we've had for the past twelve months.  (well, maybe not the last twelve months entirely...)  We didn't even have a summer last year for cry'in out loud!  When will this rainy, gray season end?????

OK, I feel slightly better having gotten that off my chest.  Now onto what I was really going to write about:  nettles.

Entering into the territory of exotic cuisine, I cooked with nettles last night.  I made a nettle-potato soup, and my family actually ate it!  Well, Grace didn't try it, but her idea of a balanced meal is assorted types of white food, so a nettle soup would be way out of her comfort zone.  And actually, Brian was at work, but three out of five isn't bad, right?

This dinner idea came out of Saturday's edition of the Bainbridge Islander:
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/mar/26/stinging-weed-and-scrumptious-dinner/
Their front page was a story about people gathering nettles for soups and stir-frys.  I've read about people eating nettles before and it has always intrigued me.  First of all, I'm a gatherer at heart.  And second, I haven't been able to harvest anything for so long now that the tender new shoots of the numerous nettles in our woods are actually looking quite tempting.

A patch of nettles in our woods.  Who knew that these stinging weeds were actually tasty?

The article I read also talked about the high nutrition of nettles.  They are apparently a powerhouse of vitamins and minerals--full of all the nutrients we might be lacking after a long winter.  So it seems that nature has provided us a plant filled with everything we need, ready right when we need it.  And it's growing happily in our woods without any cultivating on my part. Of course the irony isn't lost on me as I pull out the nutritious happily growing "weeds" while trying to coax things like basil out of my garden.

Harvesting nettles isn't exactly easy--they really do have a powerful sting which can burn for days.  But, my need to harvest something and my crankiness about the weather motivated me to put on some stout gloves and try to collect nettles without getting stung.  Adventure farming you could say.

I used a recipe I got on-line (you really can find anything on the internet...) and aside from collecting the nettles, it was easy.  I sauteed potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic in some olive oil.  Then in a separate pot I boiled a gallon of chicken broth (I'm sure you could use any liquid) and using tongs, I added my fresh picked, tender nettle leaves.  I let them boil for a while and then added in the potato mixture and some salt and other seasonings.

After it had simmered for about an hour, I put my soup mixture through the blender to make a sort of cream of potato/nettle soup.  It would have been fine unblended, but I wanted the presentation to be as benign looking as possible.  After all, we have all been stung by nettles, so I wouldn't blame anyone for being a bit wary of nettle soup!  And, surprisingly, it was good!  People even had second helpings (okay, Sophie and I).  And I had fun cooking food from the "garden" -- something I haven't been able to do in months.