CSA Box Chronicles

I'm over on the Good Sam Blog today with the most recent CSA Box Chronicles.  The grant deadline marathon is at about mile 18.

Confessions of a Too-Full Vegetable Drawer

What to do when you're overwhelmed with the produce in the fridge and the next CSA share is on the way?

Follow my true confessions over on Neighbor Notes today.

Quick Confetti Refrigerator Pickles

CSA Chronicles Continue - Fire up the Grill

I'm over on Neighbor Notes, the Good Sam blog, talking about things to do with grilled vegetables.

Summer Squash with Basil and Onion ready for the Grill

The CSA Box Chronicles debuts

Maybe having a deadline to write for another blog will stir up my commitment here.

Find me today on Neighbor Notes ....

Seedlings!

Egg Carton Kale

The tomatos and broccoli of tomorrow

A use for all those wine corks!

Signs of Spring

It is spring.  I plan to try to control myself this year, to watch the progress of the season in a calm and orderly fashion.  In spring I am prone to wretched excess.  I abandon myself to flights and compulsions; I veer in various states of physical disarray.
          --Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I spent the weekend fascinated by the Weather Channel coverage of the blizzard in the Northeast (yeah, really) while I was enjoying a sunny weekend full of all the signs of spring around me here. 

There have been regular, short spurts of cold here with long warm stretches in between. Right now a drought-busting rain is settling in for the next few days. Half of my irises have already bloomed, the Carolina jessamine covering my porch is about to bust wide open with yellow blossoms, summer perennials are starting to push through in the flowerbeds, and even the blueberry bushes and figs are threatening to send their leaves open. What if some storm system rolling in from the west collides with an artic blast and dumps ice all over this new life? I felt a bit envious of those big fat snowflakes falling on Jim Cantore, but now that my heart is committed to the spring waiting to explode around me here I want the snow to stay far away.




Sunday Stroll 12.2.12

 

Sunday's stroll was in the neighborhood - by the community garden and down the street. . .

By abandoned and broken homes on the left. . .

And abandoned and broken homes on the right . . .

But finding signs of life in each place...

 

narcissus blooming for the holiday in an empty garden bed

 

 and a truck in a driveway unloading friends who are now neighbors, filling up the empty spaces of a street and community.

Backyard Garden Expansion Update

The backyard garden expansion beds are nearly completed -- not beautiful, but made of materials I already had on the property. Next summer they should hold early peas, tomatoes, and winter squash.

Buckwheat seedlings doing their best after a late planting.

The buckwheat I planted as a cover crop went in a little late, so I'm not sure how much more it will grow before a hard freeze kills it back. Once that happens, I'll add some manure and soil conditioner, top with more straw for the rest of the winter, then plant another cover crop of peas & oats or rye in February.





















I also transplanted some liriope that was growing in the bed area to line the paths between the beds. It can be mowed like grass and is green and hardy. I'll continue to transplant from the spots where it pops up and from behind the back fence.

Foraging Urban Style

It's just about impossible for me to pass up the opportunity to pick up pecans in the fall, if there are pecans to be found.  It was completely delightful to discover that my workplace was adjacent to a lot with two large pecan trees that conveniently drop nuts into our parking lot.

For the last 3 Novembers, most work days have ended with me slowly walking that edge of the parking lot, nudging pecans out of the thick, manicured grass and shoving a couple of handsful into my pocket or lunchbag. It usually adds up to enough to make a pie and put the toppings on a casserole or two. And shelling them makes me feel a bit less idle on a football Saturday.

 

 

Have you seen the price of pecans this year? Outrageous! So, I decided that my foraging needed to extend to the other side of the fence, onto the vacant lot that is now under contract with my organization, where there are always pecans just out of reach.










I planned the expedition for a sunny afternoon, with a bucket in hand.  It started in this alleyway:



 

Then I walked by this pile of trash (which was passed by with lots of stomping and clapping to shoo away any rats).



Apparently I was gathering nuts nearby someone's "home".

I ended up with enough pecans for two pies.


One made an appearance at this year's Thanksgiving dinner with family.  The other will be made for our staff Christmas potluck:  a "tree-to-table" dish, city style!

Garden Expansion - Back Yard Edition

The targeted area next to the asparagus (and rogue tomato) bed
 

I'm expanding my gardening bed space in the back yard, now that I know there is enough sun to add some veggies next to last spring's asparagus bed. 





Relocating the materials

 

I'm trying to use "found objects" to get these beds started, so the bricks from my old kitchen chimney and blocks used for some unknown and indecipherable purpose in the back yard are being re-purposed. This weekend, I'll dig up the weeds and plant a cover crop.  Hopefully by spring they will be ready to cultivate.

Simple Life in the City

If you were to peek into my Google Reader right now and scroll down to the "Lifestyle" category, you would find subscriptions to a host of homesteading and gardening blogs that tout a simple, self-sufficient and sustainable lifestyle.  I gravitate there, I dream there, I follow a couple of idealistic 'train wrecks' there. 

Or you could peruse my Pinterest boards about gardening and the home, where I lovingly post pictures of rustic and rural and simple style.


Copyright What's in A Home?

But that isn't where I really live.

Why is it that I am of "two minds" about my actual choice of lifestyle and the lifestyles that absorb my online attention? Am I foolishly living in the wrong place? Or do those minds meet somewhere hopeful and helpful?

I love the pictures of harvests, the stories of livestock and sustainable home improvements in the homesteading blogs.  Yet the world of the homestead in the blogger universe sometimes seems uniform and isolated; a community that is generally one color and one persepective.  I connect with the descriptions of hard work, homemade bread on the counter, laundry on the line,  and dirt under the fingernails. But not with the sense I get sometimes that the ultimate goal is to get away from all the trouble in the world and take care of yourself.

The view from my front porch is rich and diverse.  My relationships with my neighbors definitely offer many different perspectives.  It inspires me. And it exhausts me. 

In the very same place I'm trying to grow my own food in raised beds around the yard, I'm also trying to figure out how to keep out whoever keeps breaking into my house and stealing food from my freezer.

So I run away to the blogs about the "simple" life and long for a change.

What exactly do I think "simple" means? Easy? Undistracted and serene?

Well, not exactly.  Here are some definitions I found:
Not involved or complicated; easy to understand
Unadorned
Consisting of one part only, not combined or complex
Modest
Sincere
Frank

(Granted, it also means weak in intelligence or feeble-minded.)



Copyright What's in A Home?  Lyrics from GoodieMOB

Let me be frank.  The question that is eating away at me is whether there is a way to embrace the things that I so naturally enjoy and am interested in (including a garden and a creative outlet in my home) and all the while live an easy-to-understand, unadorned, unadulterated, and sincere life that is rich in relationships, invested in others and in community, and, most importantly, connected vibrantly to the very heart of Jesus.  Can I live this way in this city?  I don't know. 

It isn't easy.  It isn't serene and undistracted.  In short, it isn't MY definition of "simple".

"Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil; cling to what is good."  Romans 12:9

Fruit of the Freeze

The first real freeze of the season sent me scrambling to gather in my poblano peppers, banana peppers, and green tomatoes.

The poblanos were tossed on the grill and roasted over the flames.  After blackening the skin on all sides, I peeled, seeded, and sliced them and put them in the freezer to await some pizzas, enchiladas, and chili.

The banana peppers and the green tomatoes became pickles.

Actually, I added onions instead of peppers in the green tomato pickles, plus a little celery seed.  It will be a couple of weeks before I know if they are any good.

Grove Park Community Garden

We launched a community garden for the neighborhood with a work day on April 18. We built 9 raised beds and built up the soil with lots of wonderful compost. The land is in our city park and given to us by the city. The hope is that it will become a garden that draws the community together, increases our mutual pride in the neighborhood, and ultimately provides healthy, fresh organic produce. The local schools and park summer programs for kids are going to participate in the garden too!

Been Thinking

Today I spent the entire day working on my front yard landscape. I've spent a lot of time thinking what I want to do, carefully saving up for what I could afford now, deciding what could wait until later, and reaping the benefits of surplus from friends' yards. It was good to more solidly plant another "root" in Grove Park.

This fall and winter, I felt quite isolated and not plugged in here at all. In fact, I had begun to wonder if I would ever be able to make any inroads. Plus some of the next steps of "cross cultural" adjustment were happening: the days when everything was wonderful and interesting passed, and a season set in when I couldn't stand anything about where I lived. Not the way people seem to always yell when they communicate, my inability to understand what some people on the street were saying, the apparently irresistable need for the guys hanging out at the corner store to keep making comments louder and louder to get my attention, and the seeming endless lottery ticket lines at every overpriced convenience store.

So I've been "saving up" to post some observations about my neighborhood based on the end of the honeymoon and hopefully the passing of the days when I couldn't see anything good about it either.

Gas always costs at least 10 cents more per gallon anywhere near my house. I have the luxury of often being able to get it cheaper when I'm running an errand in another part of town.

My car insurance doubled in the fall. Doubled. I haven't had an accident or a ticket. I drive 3 miles round trip to work, compared to the 12-15 I drove when I lived in Decatur and paid half for my insurance and 10 cents per gallon less for my gas. It doubled simply because of my zip code. I won't ever be so quick to say that people who don't make much money should be more responsible about keeping their car insured. I'm not sure how anyone affords it in a neighborhood where the median income is about half what my salary is. (and my salary isn't big).

There isn't a Publix or Kroger in my neighborhood. If you don't have a car, you have to shop at the Super Giant or convenience store or take 3 buses (45-55 min each way?) to get to the nearest Publix and then you can only buy what you can carry back by the same way. That Publix does sell chicken feet though

Papa John's won't deliver a pizza to my street.

At the local NPU (neighborhood planning unit) meeting last week, it was announced that Fulton County has passed an ordinance that a dog can't be left on a chain or rope all the time. This was followed by a long and sincere discussion about why Fulton County would want all those dogs running loose and not tied up. It was not an option to fence the yard or keep them inside. (I'm casting an eye toward my pup curled up asleep under my dining room table and my old dog curled on her bed by the door as I type this). My favorite quote of the evening: "To give an animal freedom, we must enclose it."

The list of ad hoc NPU committee priority needs includes: abandoned and derelict houses that play home to drug dealers and prosititutes, prosititution, concern about businesses opening in the neighborhood that have lately included a pawn shop, an application for a pool hall, and one of those tax credit loan shops.

The best collard greens I've ever tasted were around the corner at a restaurant called Soule. But when I walked the 2 blocks home just after dark at 6:15, I had 2 people pull up next to me assuming I was a prostitute. (see the ad hoc committee list above)

The South Evelyn Community Club is trying to resurrect. I'm amazed and encouraged at the people on my street who have known each other and lived together for more than 40 years now. There's incredible history that I'm blessed to be now included in. They are even letting me host the April meeting.

The Grove Park Community Garden has been approved by the city and will open after Easter. It may only be me and Chris T., who started it to begin with, but it seems quite hopeful.

I don't know that I have any point to this post, except to point out the realities of my chosen community with its warts, its beauties, and the injustices and obstacles it faces.

And as I go to publish this post, I hear 3 gunshots. It's not even 9 p.m., but it's a warm night and people have been out and about ( and some of them drinking) all day.