Oh, my stars and garters!

Salad every day

I am going to grow lettuce every winter until I am dead. It's the only vegetable I have consistently had good luck with.

The winter bed filled out impressively after the long, slow rains we had in late fall and then pretty much exploded this week after a huge storm dumped five inches of rain at our house and spun up an F1 tornado a mile and a half from here.*

Even in dry years when I have to water by hand, we get more than enough for salads. Since our hard freezes rarely last more than a day or two, if that, I just throw some plastic sheets and a big comforter over the whole mess and it sails right through. We'll eat off this until it gets really warm, when it'll get bitter and go to seed.

Half the beets are ready too, but I think I can leave them in the ground until I want to use them.

*It was an incredible storm with nonstop intense lightning, rain, and thunder that went on for hours, almost all night. Eric said the only time he was really concerned was when the wind whipped the plants on the porch every which way just before it started raining up, but it sorted itself out after a few seconds. Luckily no one was hurt, so I'll remember it fondly as one of the longest and most interesting storms I have ever seen.

Beeting, eating, fleeting.

This afternoon I made the beets into beet hummus with a side of goat cheese and cooked up the beet greens to put into a couple of quiches that Eric generously made. Then I took everything to work to share.

Completely independently of that, someone brought a beautiful giant tomato from his garden and two other people brought cookies. We had a spontaneous little feast.

I really like my coworkers; they are on the whole kind,  smart, and fun to be around. However. I'm glad it's only a few days until I'm not seeing quite so much of them.

Look, we grew beets! Office beets!

Reset beets

It's been about five weeks since coworker Louisa and I embarked on our beet odyssey, and I have to say so far the results have not been encouraging, Lil Wayne's endorsement notwithstanding. Our resident master naturalist and the office pessimist both told us one of the reasons we were having trouble was that we did not have enough soil depth for our little guys to stretch their taproots into.

So I made some beet boxes by caulking 12-inch-tall 4" PVC pipes to sealed toilet flanges with holes drilled in the bottom for drainage. That ought to give them a little more room.

Beet seedlings just before the move. Hey, check out Pointy back there!

There was also some concern that the soil wasn't rich enough for the beets, so I mixed some potting soil with a little compost and Lady Bug fertilizer for energy and some builder's sand for drainage and ease of root growth. That, coupled with more diligent use of light, just may do the trick. And if it doesn't, we planted container-friendly cilantro in the old pots, so at least we'll have something to munch on come May.

Quiet-o

This perfectly ordinary month has been a fine palate cleanser after the bloated indulgence of the holidays.

I've been trying to do one fun thing and one productive thing every day before I go to work at four. Given my fairly generous interpretations of "fun" and "productive," it's been working out ok. Yesterday was warm and bright, so I combined the two by taking a bunch of photos on a brisk walk to the drugstore. 

The beets are doing a little better today; maybe they decided to try harder after I told everyone just how much they suck.

Willa the dog is both great and terrible. Eric has proposed a temporary renaming, but don't worry, we would only call her McShitty until she grows out of her hyperactive, willful, crotch-pounding, pen-stealing, lettuce-plant-destroying phase.

She is also fuzzy, affectionate, and totally willing to play dead when I say BANG. I always wanted a dog that would do that.

Oh, and since this post seems to have morphed into an update round-up, I should mention that both cats are doing just fine.

My beets suck.

It's sort of depressing.

Leggy

These little beet bastards were waiting for me when I came into work yesterday. It was dark and rainy all weekend and I was not here to turn on the plant light, so they were straining up toward the window. I'm not sure if they are doomed or not. As always, stay tuned.

Beet down!

I'm back on night shift and soon to be chained to my desk again, so it's time to resurrect the office farm.

Long-time readers will remember the saga of morning glory, which clambered up a tower of taped-together chopsticks and strings to produce one perfect blue bloom at the very end of my bad work times.

Long-time readers will not remember the carrots I grew two years ago, because shortly after planting the seeds and posting a picture of the pot, the entire office became infested with gnats. Like, it was really bad; people were inhaling them when they talked and everyone was irritably waving their hands in front of their faces. It took me a few days to realize that I had brought the gnats in with the soil I planted the carrot seeds in.

I quietly took the infested pot of struggling seedlings home and left it on the patio where all the seedlings withered in the sun. Until today, I kept quiet about these failure carrots because I was mortified and also because I was afraid an angry mob of gnat-besieged coworkers would mass in my office and pelt me with sharpened blue pencils if I confessed.

This year I am going to try to grow a beet. Just one beet, because that's all I have room for. The package says that should take about half the season. After that I will switch to cilantro, which would be nice to have in the office all the time in case anyone has a lackluster taco that needs garnishing.

So. I have a pot full of (sterilized) soil, a packet of seeds, a grow bulb, and lots of time. Tonight I soak the seed, and tomorrow I plant it. I will, of course, keep you posted.

Summertime rolls

We had the upstairs insulated, the doors sealed, the thermostat moved, and the a/c ducts replaced recently. And right now I am roasting beets in a 425-degree oven as I type this and I can't even tell, except for the occasional whiff of dirt smell. A month ago even boiling water up here would have been inadvisable as it was usually about 86-88 degrees in the kitchen every night when the sun went down, and so much as glancing at the oven would jack that up to about 92. I thought getting new ducts would be one of those shitty necessary but not-at-all-exciting expenses, but I was wrong. All of a sudden being able to inhabit half our house for half the year--and cook, really cook, year-round--is fantastic. This is easily the best money we've spent since we moved in three years (and three long, hot summers) ago, especially since city rebates paid for almost half of it. 

Being able to hang out and cook upstairs also meant I got to make spring rolls yesterday afternoon, and holy cow, they are so easy and fun to make. I mean, the prep took a while, as prep tends to, especially the first time I make something, but they were really simple. 

I had no idea. I was so scared. I thought it would be lots of complicated folding and nimble wrist flicking and exhibiting patience and all that stuff I'm horrible at, but the rice wrappers are easy to roll and fairly forgiving, and it's very satisfying to watch the plate fill up with damp, tidy packages of deliciousness. The recipe is here, and I can't recommend it enough. You can sub chicken, beef, tofu, carrots, cucumbers, Vienna sausages, whatever the hell you want for the shrimp. And I just used sweet chili sauce for the dipping since we had a bottle handy, but I'd like to try a peanut version next time. And now I want to make every summer recipe, ever, just because I can. Suggestions?

Beety eyed

Hey, what do you know? The lettuce not only survived the cold snap, it seemed to like the fake greenhouse. It was bigger than ever when I took the plastic off this morning, and a few spinach seeds I'd tossed in there and forgotten about even sprouted under the cover. It's supposed to freeze again tonight, but not nearly as bad, so I just threw a sheet over it before the sun went down. The end about the lettuce, forever.

To prove I do leave the house sometimes, here is a picture I took today on the hike and bike trail. I almost never go down there. People who are super-serious about exercising weird me out a little, to be honest, and the trail is a constant flow of gasping, vacant-eyed people in technical gear. But it was a nice day for a long walk, and there are some really great views of the city and the park from there. Note to self: It is dumb to avoid fun things just because there will be other people there enjoying them too.

Later I took a nap and then got up and roasted some beets. I have never felt one way or the other about beets, but Eric has always professed to despise them. Yesterday I learned he had only ever eaten them pickled, and I thought maybe that was the problem. Lots of canned vegetables, like spinach and asparagus, are  revolting, but their fresh counterparts are great. 

So I laid down some fat beets. (Sorry.) The rooty parts look a little like rat tails.

I cooked up the greens too, just to be extra beety about the whole thing. 

The verdict: Beets are tasty with salt, pepper, and goat cheese, but the work/mess-to-deliciousness ratio is not quite balanced enough for them to make it into our regular dinner rotation. 

Eric: That was pretty good.

Me: I wonder what our poop is going to look like tomorrow.

Eric: You know, I was just thinking the same thing.

Me: Aww. That's why we are married.