Part 2: Beginnings of a Vegetable Garden
I would like to start off today with a BIG THANKS to everyone who has left comments and sent words of encouragement and advice for our gardening adventures. I had NO IDEA how passionate people are about gardening! Also a big thanks to wordpress.com for the honor of my freshly pressed feature! I would have never received all of this amazing advice and positive energy had it not been for that – so again, thanks!
Yesterday I was gifted with warm weather. I walked out with a coat on to plant my little transplants, and was met with a very welcomed wall of warm air. You don’t have to ask me to take of my jacket twice! Miami girl was very happy. So I took Radha out to help me – and we got through about 9 transplants before I could no longer keep her entertained…I guess that is still pretty good! I finished the rest during her nap (thank goodness for baby monitors!) – you can see the results above.
As you can see above, I revised my plan a bit. Given the number of people who agreed that you can crowd lettuce and cabbage if you are harvesting them continuously, I planted the buttercrunch lettuce, mesclun mix and chinese cabbage 4 to a square foot instead of spreading them out more. So these freed up some space in my cool weather bed! I have highlighted in blue the areas that are currently empty with my potential plans. I am off to some nurseries this afternoon to see what other plants/seeds I can find. I have to get it all in within the next few days because starting Monday I am working for 12 days straight – which means very little time for gardening =(
- My spreadhseet for the details of the garden plan
True to my reputation for Obsessive Compulsive personality, I made a spreadsheet to help plan the garden beds. As you can see, I have only gotten through the cool weather bed plans. I have ideas for the warm weather bed – but need to do more research. Another reader commented that once my lettuce and cabbage are done for the season, it will free up space to plant more warm weather plants there. YAY! Maybe more tomatoes? Or red bell peppers? I can always make more salsa! Anyone ever grown tomatillos? I would love to have some fresh ones.
And now for the beautiful transplants.
Above: Buttercrunch Lettuce
Below: Chinese Cabbage
Below: Mesclun Mix
Below: Arugula (I can NEVER eat enough arugula!) Funny story: first time Luv or I ever ate arugula was in Italy during our honeymoon 8 years ago (yeesh!). We would go to restaurants and other salads, it would say “rocketta” salad. Growing up in Miami, I know a fair amount of Spanish – which helps in Italy – but didn’t really help here. Well we tried it, and LOVED IT! So we asked various waiters – what is this salad? And all of them would say “Rocket salad!” Clueless, we still had no idea what we were eating. We just kept eating it. FINALLY, someone was able to tell us that it was arugula (writing this, I’m getting embarrassed to admit that we didn’t know what it was). Ever since, we have been hooked, and buy it in large quantities. So I’m really looking forward to this part of our garden =)
Our various herbs – plus spinach. The mint is the only plant not yet planted – Luv is going to build a separate, long and thing rectangle planter for us to keep outside the kitchen on the deck for that so it doesn’t take over our entire bed. I will probably have another one there for more cilantro and maybe some basil (hmmm….getting hungry).
I left the cilantro at 1 per square foot because from what I read, you could put 4 in a square foot together, you should wont get as much yield on the plants. Since we love cilantro, I figured I would give it as much room to grow as it needs!
The lettuce and cabbage subjected to crowded city life… ha ha…
I got a “good job mommy!” from Radha!
- My “high five” from Radha for finishing!
Next steps:
1) Buy and plant transplants for my remaining 9 square feet in bed 1
2) plan bed 2 and possibly start seeds indoors so they are ready to plant in a few weeks
3) build planters for mint (and more) to keep on deck outside of the kithen
4) RAKE UP ALL THE TONS OF LEAVES ALL OVER MY LAND!
Playing with processing
The other day I posted some pictures I took through my skylight that looked like reflections in water. Well, I took a few more and decided to have fun and play around.
For each picture, i cropped and often changed white balance or tried random presets (all in Lightroom) to have fun. I also included the original for each picture so you could see the transformation!
- Original for the pictures above
- Original for the three pictures above
- Original for the picture above
The following is a video of what the weather is like today…similar to when I took the pictures above except very windy! I am standing inside looking out of our skylights, and all that noise is the wind and debris falling!
http://www.facebook.com/v/1979667454115
On a happier note, the weather was great yesterday, and I had the opportunity to capture some sights of spring on the trees! I tried to explain to Radha that while the weather was cold, the trees have been sleeping, and they are starting to wake up. I think she understood because every time we saw some leaves, she would say (in hindi) – “trees woke up! trees woke up!”
My new pledge (and blog)
I have a new commitment:
Appreciate one of life’s Simple beauties every day for a year, and
Photography has taught me that you can find beauty in EVERYONE and in pretty much EVERYTHING.
After a particularly challenging day with my 2 year old daughter yesterday, I decided that I needed a little bit of perspective. I try to remember this while I am having a tough day…and it often helps me re-group and cool down.
So I have decided to pledge the following:
Each day, for at least 1 year, I will appreciate one of life’s Simple Beauties.
Whether it be a photograph, a person, a thought, an everyday invention, or a moment with my daughter, husband or family.
I will appreciate it, revel in it, blog about it..and then try to remember it the next time I’m in a “not so positive” mood.
Hopefully my thoughts and experiences will add some perspective and happiness to your days as well!
So please visit: Simple Beauties.
And if you are so inclined…subscribe for email updates or leave a comment!
The Beginnings of a Vegetable Garden
If you would have talked to me a month ago about making and keeping a garden this year, I probably would have laughed and said “yeah right.” The most “gardening” I have ever done is a basil plant that I kept alive for about 6 months. You see, I am from Miami. Where one city blends into the next. In fact, the first time I ever saw a farm was when I went to my (at the time) boyfriend’s (now hubby) house in Westminster, Maryland. This is a story he likes to retell many times because as we were driving past the many fields of corn, I said “what are those tall cylindrical buildings?” Really. He looked at me as if I were making a really funny joke. And then…”really?” Yup – that was my extent of farm knowledge. Fast forward to today: still no new knowledge about farming (except what I have been reading in Omnivore’s Dilemma).
As I mentioned in a previous post, we have a friend/couple that has inspired us to eat better and be more conscious about various sustainability issues, and they have passed the gardening bug onto us. We have been contemplating it for a couple of weeks now…I have been reading online and often getting overwhelmed by the different options and facets of gardening…and finally took the plunge this weekend.
We have decided to go with two raised beds, each one 3×11 feet, dedicated solely to vegetables and herbs. Part of the motivation and excitement for us to be able to raise our own food that we can then harvest and eat! Talk about green, organic and “natural” food!
Although we have a fair amount of land, there is not really much accessible, flat land that gets unobstructed sun. And unfortunately most of that obstruction comes from the neighbor’s trees…i.e. not ones that we could prune.Although we have a fair amount of land, there is not really much accessible, flat land that gets unobstructed sun. And unfortunately most of that obstruction comes from the neighbor’s trees…i.e. not ones that we could prune.
However we are keeping a positive attitude and hoping this will work! So these are our pictures from the weekend – these first ones are of us creating the raised beds. We bought untreated cedar and made a simple set up following the instructions from a Lowe’s video on YouTube.
Below you can see the first raised bed area where I started to remove the sod where the bed will sit. It is not easy work! I definitely have a new appreciation for the hard labor that goes into farming! I have a particularly weak core (i.e. my core muscles) and was SO FATIGUED after doing this work. I felt like I couldn’t hold myself up adequately. It was pretty pathetic.
Below you can see one bed finished and ready to plant. Luv (my husband) finished the second bed as well – so they are now both ready to plant! Yay!
I am especially excited about the fact that we were able to buy all of our soil and compost from Meadowbrook Farm, which is a farm literally at the end of our block! It makes me so happy to be able to support a small, local business/farm. Not to mention that it was extremely handy when at 4:45pm on saturday, 15 minutes before they closed, we were able to run over there when we realized we were 17 bags short of soil! And 15 minutes later we had the soil paid for and delivered at our house. It was AWESOME. I’ll write about Phase Two: Transplanting our Seedlings soon!
In the meanwhile, here is my garden plan:
Note: Most of the reading I did said that most lettuce and cabbage need about 10 inches between the plants. However I found a couple of sites that said this is the amount of space you need if you are going to let the plant reach full maturity and then harvest the entire thing. On the other hand, if you are planning on harvesting the outer leaves at regular intervals, it is ok to make them a little crowded since you are never really letting them get to full maturity.
Lastly, here are some pictures of our little helper!
Baby Daffodils
The daffodils are making their way out of their little buds. I’m so excited to see what this new land will bring with the spring!
Reflections
I am in the process of completely revamping my “prints for sale” page on my photography website, and have thus been going through many of my old pictures to decide which ones to include. One cool thing about this process is that I have realized that I have definitely become better at post-processing – both in terms of making a picture look better, but also in the different creative things you can do with a picture. I found the above image, which I almost through out – because the original is very dark, and much larger, with no clear point of focus. However I decided to play around with it a bit, and came up with what you see here. I was surprised to see that many of the berries were actually in focus – despite looking like they were are terribly underexposed in the original format of the picture, and I was even more surprised to see that you could see my reflection taking the picture in almost every one of them! Kind of reminds me of a fly’s eye =)
Hello Sun!!
I MISSED YOU!
The day always seems more cheery and exciting when I wake up to bright sunlight streaming in from the skylights.
It always puts me in a GREAT mood!
Have a great Saturday everyone!
What's in a name?
For some time now, I have been debating changing my blog name. I don’t know why it really matters since my blog is not huge and I think most of my visits are from links, not people typing in the name… but for some reason, my current name is just not sitting right. Probably because most of what I write about is not specific to being a mom, it is just specific to me. I basically find myself sharing the different things that I like to create and make – whether it be photography, sewing or knitting or anything else.
SOOOOO…..
I have decided to change the name of the blog. This was the next big step, is what to change it to. Most of the names I came up with were already taken. Then my husband suggested incorporating our background (Indian) and using a simple set of words in Hindi. I didn’t want it too long, but again, since most of my visits come from other links, I doubt it will make much of a difference (I hope!).
So given that I write about things I make, I have decided to go with: “Haath Se” or haathse.wordpress.com
Haath Se means “by hand” – i.e. things I have made, done or created by hand.
Pronunciation: Haath – “aa” is like saying HOT but keeping your mouth wide; “th” is kind of like “the” but a little more breathy
Se – is pretty much just like it looks =- with a short “e” sound
So keep your eyes open – it will change the address later today..i’m not sure if that means you would need to resubscribe…but if so, PLEASE DO!
Thanks!
Subha
A view from a skylight
Perhaps the biggest selling point for the house we moved into last summer, was the skylights. I remember walking through the main hall (where the entire ceiling is a row of skylights) and seeing the trees outside and feeling peaceful. I thought to myself: I can only imagine what this is going to look and feel like in the fall with the leaves change colors. Well, i am sad to say that although I have many pictures of the tree and their beautiful color leaves, I don’t have any of them from the skylight (I will not make that mistake again =)
Today, however, I bring you the view of the trees as seen through the rain and snow dripping down the skylights. I like that it looks like a reflection in water…but it is actually a view through water.
For some reason one side of the house has water dripping down the skylights, whereas another as mostly single drops that have not yet started to slip and slide down their path to meet the pile of un-raked leaves sitting at the base of the house.
One of my favorite things to do with photographs is to play around with the crop and various effects to make an abstract image that you wouldn’t really be able to see with your eyes.
i CAN”T believe it is snowing…
Didn’t spring technically start last week?
And you wonder why I think about moving to Miami?
Don’t get me wrong, snow is beautiful and fun at times…but I do not like having winter last into April. By now I should be enjoying the outside with my daughter, playing and running around and not worrying about her little hands burning from the cold!
Ok…lets focus on the Cup half full:
Snow is beautiful. My husband loves it – so it brings a smile to his face. Snowmen. Snow angels.
Sorry, haven’t seen sunlight in a few days…this is what it does to me =)
Weekly Photo Challenge: Ocean
I read about the weekly photo challenge on Robin’s blog, and decided I’d like to join in on the fun. Apparently I started subscribing to The Daily Post just after this week’s challenge was posted, so didn’t know about it. Thanks Robin!
- This is actually from the Chesapeake Bay…which is of leads to the ocean…
- The Manuel Antonio coast of Costa Rica
- Costa Rica: Manuel Antonio beach view
- Mexico, near the Mayan ruins
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