oh, those seeds.

While I am by no means a master gardener and I just garden a small strip of partial-shade yard closely abutted by two houses (and tons of pots), I am a very enthusiastic gardener. I love growing food. I love the creativity, color, and dynamism of gardening. I find comfort looking at and caring for these plants and I love that our yard is a riotous chaotic colorful interesting living place in a neighborhood where most people never even enter their side yards but to mow. So - Colorful? Unusual? Rare? Oh yes. Interesting story behind it? Definitely. We're not out there months of the year working on the garden to have everything we already know. I want to experiment with new varieties and try to find the most outrageous, colorful or unusual fruits and veggies to go along with my regular favorites. If I can expand and change a bit every year then I am learning and growing along with my garden. Sometimes things fail, but the amazing thing is that most of the time things grow and flourish. And everything we try, everything we taste, everything we remember, nourishes us, in more way than one.

What I look for in seeds is open-pollinated heirloom varieties. That is very important to me and I think important to the future of our food biodiversity. If I find biodynamic or organic seeds that are both of the above that is a bonus. I stay away from the big 'M' and don't buy any seeds from any company owned by them, or who use seed suppliers owned by them.

My favorites list may change from year to year as we experiment with new and different seeds, but I always have a good handful that I just have to go back to year after year.


Here are a few fav's this year:

Seed Savers Exchange - We hope to visit their Heritage Farm this summer.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds - They are out there changing the world one seed at a time and they rock. We may take a road trip to visit them this summer too.

Abundant Life Seeds - (some Biodynamic seeds)

Peaceful Valley

Southern Exposure

Seeds of Change

This is just a few on a big list of good seed companies. Email me if you would like some more...


I was digging through my iPhoto, looking through pictures from the garden last summer and they all looked so lovely (on these blah Feb. days) that it aches. While I like winter, by now I'm numbed by the monotony of color and cold, and when I look back through garden season photos each winter I am hit by how happy and intensely colorful everyone and everything looks! The green lusciousness, the flowers, the vegetables, the blue skies and little boys lying in the warm grass watching the clouds go by. And to think that all those garden photos were taken more than SIX MONTH AGO. Well, I think I'm ready for some seed starting and garden planning. I'm ready to plot and plan. I'm ready to dream a little (or a lot) - and find some riotously colored veggies and fruit to grow. How about you?

seed catalogs.

I swear I could do this all day. Every day. Anyone else just LOVE reading those seed catalogs?

But of course there is so much to distract me (in a good way) from them -


Sweet little boys who have big plans each day.

Beautiful flowers blooming in the sunny window.


And then there is the baking...

But the boys will also sit with me and we'll go through the seed catalogs together. Reading those unusual names, seeing those which are rare heirlooms and reading their story, dreaming and planning what we can plant where, looking for those with the shortest grow time for our northern climate....too much fun. A loves the funky blob covered squash and G loves the longest most purple beans. Both want a bean teepee, and have hopes for the popcorn succeeding this year.

This year we are expanding our garden again. Planting more containers. Converting more of our tiny lawn to food. And we hope we are also expanding into a community plot. We have found something not too far away, and are crossing our fingers it will all work out and give us a few hundred square feet of solid growing space. What a luxury. We also have plans to get a second plot there to create a special kids garden (more on that soon)!

So, lots to plan. The three of us will be creating our watercolor and marker garden layouts and finishing our plans to get everything narrowed down to a final list. My eyes are bigger than my space (as usual), but figuring it all out and deciding on what interesting new things to grow and where to put them is the fun part!

Like the night sky.

"Mom, look! It is like all the stars in the sky and galaxies in the entire universe are on one small orange peel."

Exactly.

Happy Imbolc.

Today the boys had a friend over for some Imbolc crafting. We made orange skin beeswax candles, painted terra cotta pots and planted crocus bulbs, baked sugar cookies that the boys rolled in golden sunny sugar, and celebrated the returning sun.

"Fire and purification are an important aspect of Imbolc (St. Brigid's Day). The lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months."

Tonight we will have dinner by candlelight, burning our sun shaped orange citrus globes to light our way into the coming spring, read some poems, and have a cozy evening at home.


It is easy to make orange skin beeswax candles. Our friend brought the oranges - the tops cut in a zig zag pattern, and then all the fruit center removed (yum), leaving a perfect shell for the beeswax.

I melted beeswax in a double boiler we use just for candle making.

We then put 2/0 cotton wick into a wick holder, and pinched it closed with pliers. I dipped the wick into the melting beeswax to coat, and dripped a bit of beeswax into the orange to secure the bottom wick tab in place. We then wrapped the wick around a chopstick balanced on top of the orange...to hold the wick straight.


Once the wax was melted, we chatted with the boys about wax safety, and then with me holding their hand over the handle and guiding the pot, we poured the cooling beeswax slowly into the oranges. We left just under an inch of space of headroom at the top of the peel. We let the candles sit to harden/dry. When they are hard, we unrolled the wick, and trimmed it down to 1/4 - 1/2".


The candle is ready to burn - the orange ball is so sunny and inviting and the smell of beeswax is amazing. We will burn these tonight, and continue to use the candles until the peel is no longer fresh, and will then peel it off and use the candles in a heat safe dish or canning jar until they are done!


Happy Imbolc to all of you...to the return of the sun!

Photos of the Day - one year ago.

One year ago.

Tomorrow (Monday) we are planning some crafts and projects for Imbolc (the day halfway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox in the northern hemisphere here). Can't wait!