Just The Two of Us

Ripe for Looking

I have a seriously bad track record of picking watermelons at the wrong state of ripeness.  They are either completely underdone, or a little too far gone.  I'll admit, it's not really a strength of mine.  Nevertheless, every year I grow some more in our garden - eventually I will get it right, don't you suppose?

So can anyone tell me if this watermelon is ready to pick?

 
Can't see it?  Let me try to get a little closer:

 

Ok, perhaps not yet, but isn't it darn cute?

Poundage. Is that even a word?

So we have a few guesses on how many pounds those carrots were.  Thanks to everyone who "played".  Here is the picture of the carrots, washed, peeled, chopped, cooked and bagged:

So, are ya ready??  We had guesses ranging all the way from 18lbs up to 75lbs, and guesses coming in from Africa to Australia to Hawaii to the U.S.  So thank you, Mary Kaye, for your unabashed optimism with that 75lb guess.  Cami - about that 18lbs.. surely you had more faith in my gardening ability that THAT! Or not. Jon and/or Katie - didn't you have better things to be doing on your honeymoon? Just asking. :-)

The most impressive guess was that of my Mom.  She wasn't the closest, but she was pretty darn close at 56 pounds.  It's impressive because she can look and actually gauge these things.  I suppose cooking 2 meals a day for 12 people (many times more than that) hones up that particular skill.

We do have a winner - coming in at 55 pounds was Mary R.  Notice that since my Mom's guess was most impressive to me, Mary's wasn't, although she won.  She just took a semi-random number (well it wasn't random, but I'll spare her the "outing" on my blog) that had nothing - NOTHING to do with carrots.  It just so happens that she was close.  But that's ok.  We like Mary.

The actual poundage (there's that word again) was [insert drum roll....] 53.5 lbs.

RW and Nathan (Karen's husband) both asked us if we'll go a little easier on the carrots we plant next spring.  We'll see, we replied.  We'll just see.  When we are pulling out a little 1.5lb bag of organic, frozen-the-same-day-they-were-cooked-carrots from the freezer in early February, we just might decide it was worth it.  But it sure did make for a long day.  And orange hands.  And oozing blisters (don't worry, they were bandaged). And sore feet.  And aching backs.

So congrats to Mary R... That Amazon.com gift card is cyber-spacing it's way over to you!

Overboard.

Back when Karen and I were planning our garden extraordinaire, we were fairly specific about what we wanted.  Carrots were something we wanted.  We also realized that carrots were in a category all their own - a carrot being, well a carrot, only grows one at a time.  This is opposed to the other stuff we are growing, like for instance peas, which get about a thousand peas per plant.  Well not that many, but for sure more than one.

Because of this short-coming on the carrot's part, we decided that we needed a lot of carrots.  Like 2 1/2 rows of carrots.  50 foot rows, which equals approximately 125 feet of carrots.  We planted.  We waited. We learned that carrot tops look a lot like weeds.  We learned that we didn't plant our rows in a straight line.  We learned our husbands would make fun of our not-entirely-straight-but-not-horrible-either lines.  We learned that weeding around those little look-like-weeds baby carrots for 125 feet was not a lot of fun.  We learned that thinning carrots feels a little like murder, otherwise known as carrotocide.  We learned that we were pretty much the only ones in our families that felt that way.  And then we learned to wait.

We waited all the way until this past Sunday.  Sunday afternoon was the designated carrot-picking day.  It was also to be carrot-washing day.  Oh, and carrot-peeling day. And carrot-chopping day. And carrot-cooking day, carrot-bagging day and carrot-freezing day.  It was going to be an all-around carrot kinda day. 

Unfortunately, Karen worked until 3:00pm, so we didn't get started until 4ish.  No sweat.  I thought it would take about 20 minutes to pick our carrots - after all I'd picked one or two before and they just pulled right out of the ground.  No problem. Except there WAS a problem.  I started digging up carrots while Karen started digging up potatoes (the potatoes are a story for another day).  I promptly snapped the first 10 and only pulled up the top part.  I was getting increasingly LOUD advice from the potato-picker everytime she heard a "SNAP".  Since it had just rained, the carrots were stuck solidly in the clay-soil.  They required digging.  A lot of digging.  It took just slightly longer than 20 minutes.  It might have taken 2 hours.

We hauled them inside the house and dumped them on the counter.  Then we stood back and stared.  This was slightly more than we had anticipated.

We (well, Karen) decided that we needed STATIONS.  You know, like a carrot-washing station, a carrot-peeling station, a carrot-cutting station, a carrot-cooking station, a carrot-cooling station, and a carrot-bagging station.  You may have been perceptive enough right there to realize that we had slightly more stations than people.  About 7pm I put in an SOS call to RW:

ME: "HI!  How ARE you?" [that's called the deflection strategy]

RW: "Fine, Babe.  How's it going?" [still blissfully unsuspecting]

ME: "We are GREAT!  Do you want to come over for Chinese food?" [that's called the slightly manipulative strategy]

RW: [perking up] "Chinese food??!"

ME: "YUP!"  [And then in a quieter, yet confident voice] "canyoupicksomeupandcomeoverhereandhelpuswiththecarrots?"

RW: [slightly deflated, now catching on to the real reason of the call] "Really?  You really need help with the carrots?" [oh I don't know- take a gander at this picture and tell me if we needed some help with the carrots..!]

But RW is a good sport and soon showed up to help with the carrots.  It became an "all-hands-on-deck' operation.  RW washed the carrots (and why didn't we think of the hose, like he did?) and then peeled, Karen and Nathan peeled, and I chopped and cooked.  Karen was then in charge of the cooling and bagging stations.

We peeled, chopped, cooked and bagged right up until 10pm.  And then we took our 1 quart freezer bags and weighed every last one.  So here's the big question:

How many pounds of carrots did we end up with?  In the interest of full disclosure, this was AFTER they had all been peeled (I think there was actually more peels than hard-wood on that floor) and AFTER we threw away the nasty ones.  Leave a comment with your guess, and the person closest to the actual full weight will win a $25 gift card to Amazon. And if you were actually in that kitchen on Sunday, you can't enter the contest.  Just so you know.  If you were there, I won't be buying you a gift card.

And I'll leave you with one last tid-bit.  Whilst explaining my orange hands to a co-worker two days later (umm, not kidding.  They were ORANGE), she said:

Well-Meaning Co-Worker:  "Well, at least you had a food-processer to chop the carrots!  Can you even imagine chopping them by hand?" [tinkling laughter]

ME:  "Food processer?"

Well-Meaning Co-Worker: "That's what you used, right?  Who'd chop all that by hand?"

ME:  "Me.  I'd chop all that by hand.  I DID chop all that by hand. CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP.  That was me.  By hand.  CHOp CHOp."

Well-Meaning Co-Worker: "WHY didn't you use a FOOD PROCESSER?"

ME: "If I had thought of that, I most likely WOULD have used my food processer". 

But since I didn't think about it, I'll just show you my orange hand.  And pretend I didn't hear that little idea about the food processer two days too late.

Starchy Diet

A couple of weeks ago Karen and I decided that we needed to dig up a potato to make sure they were growing.  Really, it's not as if we had a plan in case they were NOT growing.  The reality is that we just wanted to see if there was anything down there in the deep recesses of the dirt.  If we could have taken an X-Ray of the ground, we surely would have done that, but since that particular technology wasn't readily available to us at the time, we dug them up.  Or I should say, Karen dug them out.

K: "DEB.  Can you get me, like, a SPADE or something?  I don't like digging with my fingers."

ME: "You're doing a good job.  Keep digging."

K: "How far down are they??"

ME: "Seven inches, remember?  RW dug those holes.  Seven inches."

K: "I'm NOT digging down seven inches with my finger!"

ME: "Yes you are.  Keep digging."

Clearly I was on the "managerial" side of this particular garden operation.  Karen is good-natured.  Mostly.  She gave me a dirty look (to match the finger she was digging with) while I made a show of looking for a spade.  I "made a show" of it, mainly because I was fairly certain that I had taken those spades home with me.  Lest you think I'm a horrible friend, be assured that this type of conversation goes both ways.

After a few minutes of heavy digging and three pounds of bug-infested dirt in her fingernail, she hit the jackpot.  She dug out a few potatoes and we examined our load:

They clearly had, let's say, further potential.  Karen, feeling generous, sent me home with the entire potato haul.  I did what any self-respecting gardener would do, I pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees, tossed some steak seasoning on them, and roasted them:

And then, to the complete amusement of RW, I ATE them:

It's not exactly what I had in mind when thinking of eating a baked potato for dinner. It's slightly disappointing when the slab of butter is actually bigger than the potato.  I know I'm trying to cut back on calories, but for some reason I was still hungry after devouring this particular delicacy.

At least there's something down there, under the ground.  I'm pretty sure that next time Karen will be forcing ME to dig out the potatoes.  I'll be smart enough to bring my spade.

Oh How Our Garden Grows

Many people gave Karen and I looks and "advice" when we announced that we were planting a big 'ol garden this year.  Big, as in approximately 45' x 50'.  Nay-sayers shaking their heads, giving us "the look" that clearly indicated that we, gardening novices that we were, had NO CLUE what we are doing.  Sadly, this included one of our husbands, who shall remain nameless.  But we forgive him, because now that he sees all of the good stuff growing, he has converted to our big idea.

This is usually how the conversations went:

NAMELESS MASSES OF VARIOUS PEOPLE: "Wow a garden - cool.  How big will it be?"

BRILLIANT NOVICE GARDENERS: "Oh, about 50 feet by 50 feet."

["knowing" stares by the NAMELESS MASSES OF VARIOUS PEOPLE]: "Umm, do you have ANY clue how big that is?"

BRILLIANT NOVICE GARDENERS: "Yes. Yes we do.  We've measured."

NAMELESS MASSES OF VARIOUS PEOPLE: "You aren't going to plant SEEDS, are you?  At least you'll buy the plants already started?  Because starting with SEEDS doesn't really work.  Especially if you don't know what you are doing."

BRILLIANT NOVICE GARDENERS: "Yes. Yes we will.  Including the tomatoes."

NAMELESS MASSES OF VARIOUS PEOPLE:"Ummm, TOMATOES?  By SEED?  You KNOW you have to get all sorts of special lighting and equipment for that to work, don't you?  Tomatoes don't usually work well that way.  Buy the tomato plants."

But the BRILLIANT NOVICE GARDENERS planted tomato seeds.  Did it work, even without any special equipment?  You be the judge...

Spring tomato "planting" at my house (and as a side note, the scruffed up window sill in the background was the work of ZekeTheFreakRatTerrier, but that's a story for another day):

Summer tomato "growing" at Karen's house:

The carrots, potatoes, beans, peas and corn we all sowed directly from seed into the garden.  It doesn't look as that fact has made them suffer much:

So perhaps the BRILLIANT NOVICE GARDENERS were not so uninformed after all!

An Apple A Day

I have always wanted an apple tree in my yard.  I have visions of a large tree swaying under the weight of hundreds of beautiful, ripe, Minnesota Honeycrisp apples just steps outside my back door.  Unfortunately for me, I was blessed with a very small back yard.  Fortunate for RW, because that's less to mow.  And fortunately for me, Karen and Nathan recently built a house on some acreage.

Karen and I had big ideas for this acreage [as if it's my land, but HEY!  I can always contribute my opinion, right?]  For awhile we had decided that we would till, plant and harvest a five acre garden. Didchya catch that?  Five acres.  And we were going to do this in-between raising four kids, taking care of husbands and working.  We felt fairly certain that five acres(!!) would yield enough produce for the eight collective people in our families.

We eventually pared down the garden to a mere 45' x 50' plot.  More on that another day. But we had another dream... APPLES!  We poured over catalogues, discussing the merits of various apple trees, our husbands looking on in resigned apprehension.

RW: "You really want an apple tree?"

Karen: "Two.  Actually we want two."

ME: "Yeah.  I'm buying one and she's buying one."

RW: "Where are you going to put these apple trees?"

Karen & I simultaneously: "HERE!" [we were at Karen's]

Nathan: "You guys want the trees, but we'll have to do all the work, you know that's what will happen."

Karen and I assured our husbands that other than digging the holes, we will do ALL the work.

We happily ordered the two trees, plus a third one to pollinize.  Then we started planning.  Karen did some research and realized that since we purchased "bigger" trees (they had been growing awhile already), we needed BIGGER holes.  I believe the dimensions she decided on were close to 4' x 6'.  Holes.  Big ones.  RW and Nathan were more than a little skeptical about the size of these holes.

RW: "I've seen baby trees - there's NO WAY you need a hole that big!"

Karen: "No, really!  I promise!  These are coming bigger.  The root ball is really big, so you need a really big hole!"

RW didn't believe her, and brought it up several more times.  But Karen had done her research, so big holes, it was.

The morning of our big tree delivery, RW and Nathan set out to dig those holes.  Three of them.  4' x 6'.  For those who cannot imagine the dimensions, trust me on this.  They were WIDE and DEEP.  Karen and I tried to stay out of their way, as we could tell they weren't in the most.... cheerful... of moods.  Digging their holes.  4' x 6'.  Now I should mention here that they DID have the help of a rented post hole digger, but much of it was manual labor.

Karen and I were in our garden looking very busy  when we saw the dust cloud coming down the road, indicating that FedEx had arrived with our long-awaited trees.  Karen ran over to meet him.  I [wisely] stayed in the garden, curiously glancing over to see the size of the trees that were being unloaded.

I saw Mr. FedEx hand off one smallish box to Karen.  Hmmm, I thought.  That one must be the crab apple tree.  The Honey Crisps must be coming next!!  WAIT!  What is he doing?  Why is he getting in his cab again?  Where are our trees?  Did they mess up the order?

Nathan wandered over and took the box while Karen started darting furtive and panicky glances in my direction.  The box was opened.  Three trees emerged.  From one box.  From one "smallish" box. Our husbands had just dug ENORMOUS holes for three very small trees.

I admit, we were a little sheepish.  And we DID actually feel bad for our hard-working husbands, who needlessly toiled for hours (quite literally) over a job that could have been done in 20 minutes.  We [very briefly] contemplated getting the camera and going over there to take a picture of the[small] trees in the [quite large] holes they had dug, but we [wisely] thought better of it.    As soon as we get some apples, you can be sure we will thank them with an apple pie.

We Have a Winner!

OK, I admit it.  I was a little freaked out for a week or so when Cami's guess was by far the closest to the reality of 135(!!) peppers in that pile.  Why, you ask, did that freak me out?  Well, because Cami lives just down the road IN AFRICA.  Mozambique, to be specific.  I'm sure she would have found that quite humorous, should I have to send her a heavy little package that would surely get stolen the moment it disembarked from the airplane.  In fact, I can hear her evil little laugh RIGHT NOW.  Really, it's not evil.

As it stands, I lucked out, because I don't have to mail it at all :-).  My lovely sister Mary Kaye, came in the closest with her guess of 123.  And she doesn't live too far away, as it turns out.  So thanks to all who played!

The other night I asked RW if he'd like half a watermelon.  He was slightly puzzled, but said "Sure."  This is what I gave him:

Isn't it just the cutest thing EVER?  And it was oh so gooooood!  The only thing missing from this treat was it's cousin, the baby cantaloupe, which grew at Kira's house - check that one out here.  Oh, and would anyone like any peppers?  I think I have another 200...

It SEEMED Like a Good Idea At The Time....

It started innocently enough.  Remember that I planted a vegetable garden for the first time this year?  Well, I also bought a few hot pepper plants to grow in pots on my patio.  Why exactly I thought this was a good idea, I'm not sure.  I have very little tolerance for spicy food.  I make an awesome guacamole about 3 times a year, but that's about it.   Well... they've been producing - if I can use the phrase - LIKE BUNNIES.  Take a gander at what I picked JUST TODAY from these plants:

Can anyone guess how many hot peppers are in that pile? Leave a comment with your guess, and I will send the winner a brand new item from Pampered Chef.  So... minus the 3 I'll use in the next year for my guacamole... that leaves a whole bunch left over.  What to do.. what to do?!

The rest of the garden has been unusually productive as well, given the fact that I usually kill off anything I try to grow within the first few weeks that it is in the ground...

A few weeks ago I picked all this in one day (I was pretty proud of my little garden!):

And just this morning, we ate our first garden cantaloupe!  Ripe, juicy, sweet... YUM.

Now the zucchini are another matter.  See that one really big zucchini? (and yes - that green-speckled yellow squash?  Well, that's the result of some serious cross-pollination.  I call them ART.)

Well, I decided to shred it up, and see how many loaves of zucchini bread I could make from it....

That would be... 16(!!) loaves of zucchini bread.  Actually, I could have made 18 from that 1 zucchini, but I ran out of eggs before running out of zucchini.

So, all to say, my garden has been a rousing success.  And be sure to vote on the peppers... all you lurkers...!  I'll announce a winner in the next week or so.

Now on to my guacamole...

March Gardening Tips

I was browsing through one of my gardening magazines that arrived this month, and decided to implement their "March Tips", which CLEARLY, were written for Minnesotan's.  Here is what I did to get a jump on the season:

1. Create An Outdoor Focal Point:  After careful consideration, this is what I chose...

2. Prune Roses:  Well, I think my roses are just to the left of that "thing", which I apparently left "as is" to provide me with a "winter focal point":

3. Aerate the lawn:  Well by golly, I shall do so.  I shall sink UP TO MY THIGHS IN SNOW and aerate the lawn.  Or, on second thought, have ZekeTheFreakRatTerrier do it for me.  That way the lawn gets fertilized as well:

4. Scatter seeds:  Ok - I've got JUST THE SPOT for that.  I'll get my seeds and scatter them HERE - and the icicles provide the most wonderful drip irrigation system!:

5. Oh dang.  I'm tired of gardening already, and it's only March.  I think we'll just have a barbecue, instead.  Come on over!  We've got the grill, fireplace, chairs and table just WAITING FOR YOU!

HAPPY MARCH GARDENING TO YOU!