Look who survived the winter

Carrots & potatoes



I've come to the understanding that carrots can turn into monsters if left to their own devices.



Lettuce



Mint

I have some more exciting gardening news to share... but in an attempt to give this blog a spring rebirth, I'll save that for next time. Stay tuned.

Potatoes, the popularity of buttermilk, and pig collecting

So, what's been going on? (You ask.) (I ask.)

I've been very very busy and tired and tired of being busy. My previous attempt to make a "holiday"-themed product did better than I expected with the addition of Father Daughter Robot Flip Book . I think I sold 12 copies of it since my last posting, almost too much to keep up with on top of my other assembly duties. Production in general has been held up due to an series of setbacks and inconveniences.

My car was rear-ended a few weeks ago. And that has slowed down production, not to mention turning me into a car-shopping/insurance-cringing/pill-popping/wheel-screeching mess. My car is "totalled" although it is still currently driveable, I'm trying to find an alternative. It takes too much time. And there's too much to find out about cars that I don't know or don't want to know or don't know I need or want or don't want to know. Sorry, this is my current thought process of chaos and being overwhelmed by everything.

So last Friday I took a field trip to see a vehicle out of town. All did not go as hoped, but I won't tell the sad story here - suffice it to say we turned toward home still in the duct-taped-together auto.



Luckily we happened across Allman's Bar-B-Q in Fredericksburg and they were kind enough to let us in just before the lunch rush, as well as let me photograph some of the pig collection. Mr. Pork Chop would be proud.



And I'd like to say something witty about the popularity and price of buttermilk these days, but I really don't know what that might be.

In other news, I dug up some russet potatoes, which surprised me with their varied sizes:





And, there's other things.

I'm trying to make lookability.com, but right now it's just a booby trap leading you in circles back and forth from hither and yon. I have nearly everything that exists about web design to learn and then forget and then learn again and then learn it's obsolete once I've finally memorized it... but I'm hoping I can get something going there, if only for practice.

So, more later.

crazy salad

I picked some stuff out of the scraggly garden.  What we have here are greens including: arugula, radish, pineapple sage, 2 kinds of lettuce.

Then there's a radish, a kohlrabi, a baby onion, brocolli florets.

And in the herb dept: fennel, oregano, parsley, coconut thyme, basil, rosemary, dill, marjoram.

I took all this stuff plus some storebought carrots and some tidbits from jars, and made a crazy salad:



I was going to write about grasshoppers (not eating them) and show a little grasshopper I made last night out of fimo, but that will be the next installment. 


image hosted by flickr

Turnips!

I just ate the most delicious turnip ever.  I'm not sure that I even remember eating a turnip ever before.  I bought these white Japanese turnips at the farmer's market courtesy of Amy's Garden.

As for my own garden, the hollyhocks have finally bloomed after a full year.  I'll have to take a photo soon.  I've also re-discovered how wonderful fennel is.  The pea vines are wilting/drying up, and maybe that's normal, but I don't really know.  As with everything else, there is way too much research and learning to be done.  And as with everything else, I just take mental notes, mostly consisting of don't do that again, I can't seem to remember the details other than what not to do.

Some non-organic projects are coming along.  But I really need to get cracking on a few things.  Finally sold another item on etsy but I am totally thrown off by the new postal practices (after I finally figured it out and even had a scale) so I have to go to the P.O. and see if I can make heads or tails of it.  Hmmm.