The other day Mary followed me out to our garden while I was planting some broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Last year both plants were complete failures, but I decided to try again. After all, it’s 2020! Anything is possible! Mary was chatting to me about her new stuffed animal obsession (bunny surprise) and I gave
Are you planting a Quarantine Garden? Or, to use the more hopeful name, a Victory Garden. A few weeks ago I packed up my face mask, hand sanitizer, and my best “don’t you dare come within six feet of me” glare, and went to a local garden center. At that point, I hadn’t been out
Every year I plant at least three jalapeño plants and harvest buckets of jalapeños every week. This recipe is why. I love jalapeño poppers. Years and years and years ago I posted my very favorite jalapeño popper recipe. You can find that recipe here. It’s still a phenomenal recipe, but I haven’t made it since I posted
Suburban gardening is almost exactly like urban gardening. The only differences are that we don’t keep up with new music and we pay lower taxes. After nearly two years of barely doing anything to take care of our yard, Tom and I devoted several weekends to mulching, weeding, and getting our garden started. We removed
We spent so much of spring break doing yard work that I barely recognize myself. Or my yard. The last time we did any significant yard work was the same week I cut my thumb, nearly two years ago. Since then our yard is making our house look increasingly abandoned. We got a giant load
This summer, in the strip of yard where we grew pumpkins last year, we planted watermelons. We decided on a watermelon because when I left to go pick up a few seedlings, Thomas shouted, “I want watermelon!” Certain that what he meant wasn’t “I want watermelon NOW,” but instead, “I want to plant a watermelon
How’s you’re vegetable garden doing these days? It’s late September, hot, muggy, and how my garden’s doing can be summed up by, “I forgot about my garden.” Every year, every single year, in the springtime I am positively giddy about planting a garden. Then after three crippling months of heat and humidity and weeds and vine borers,
It’s mid-July, and right on schedule we have homegrown tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers from our garden. We didn’t plant much this year. We have a small space for our garden, but more importantly, I was trying to be realistic (for once) about my ability to maintain a garden. I tried to be really thoughtful about
It’s fall. Usually this is the time of year that I begin my campaign of reminding people that fall is awful. Guess what? I’m not going to do that! Even more evidence that I’ve matured a lot. There’s a lot of excitement in our family surrounding fall this year; David started school, we’re welcoming a new baby. And
Last year after the chaos of moving into our new house, we immediately shifted gears and started the chaos of selling our old house. The house didn’t need any major renovations, but we painted, cleaned, and replaced the roof. As usual, I let Tom take the reins for all the time-consuming, labor-intensive stuff while I focused on