The Urban Farm

When I was growing up, summer meant gardens. I have lots of memories of playing in gardens, and of picking beans, canning beans, picking corn, putting up corn, picking tomatoes, canning tomatoes, etc. I liked most of the vegetables my parents and grandparents grew--beans, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, okra, squash--but by the end of the summer, everyone would be sick of vegetables. You couldn't visit anyone without having them press a bag of produce into your hands as you said good-bye, and you didn't let anyone who came to your house leave without a bag from your own garden. 

I have lots of memories of driving down from the mountain from my grandparents house with my mom saying, "What are we going to do with all this corn!" (Or all these tomatoes, or all this okra..)

Now, in the city and many miles away, we are in the same situation here in Denver.

 

This is a very small portion of the produce we are dealing with around here these days. Mainly, we have too many tomatoes. We planted 19 plants, which you see in baby form at the bottom of this post. 

Here they are in early August. I was trying to take a picture of the sunflower; the tomatoes are the large mass of bushes in the center of the picture. They are as messy and matted as they look. 

This is from a little earlier in the summer, when you could still walk between the plants. Now, trying to pick tomatoes is like trekking into the jungle. We currently have 4 large bowl of tomatoes on our counter, and I use tomatoes as part of every single meal. I am also a tomato hawker. I have stopped short of asking strangers who pass our house if they want to pick some tomatoes, but I have seriously considered putting up a sign that says "Free tomatoes--pick your own."

They are delicious. We planted several kinds: some larger orange and red plums that are good for fresh tomato sauce, and lots of cherries, red, orange, and two types of what Amelia calls "little yellow tomatoes." Last summer she ate them by the pound. She likes them this year too.

 

Speaking of the sunflower, here is is. The baby sunflower is also in the linked post above.

 It's very tall now.

And below are some shots of the garden, produce, and Amelia from July.

Discussing the crops.

We tried potatoes for the first time this year, in the bowl at the back of the line of veggies. We got enough for 4 or 5 batches of hash browns.

Large zucchini

 

I don't know what you see here, but Dean and I snickered when he brought this in. Amelia, whose mind is more innocent, pointed out that this is two squash growing together.

The garden has been a lot of work. We are busy all evening on the urban homestead--I forgot to even mention the community garden, half a block down the street, where we have corn and squash growing, and where we grew basil (already harvested and made into pesto) and edemame (a kind of soybean you can boil and eat from the shell, which is fun for Amelia). And the backyard, where we had early radishes, sugar snap peas,  and arugula, and where we've planted another round of peas, radishes, and spinach for the fall. Whew. But it's really cool what we've (mostly Dean) managed to do with a small amount of space. And most of all, I am glad to have the summer garden part of my childhood back in my life.

This Is Your Brain on Toddlerhood

There have been a couple of times in Amelia's life that I have felt I could almost see her brain developing. The past week or two has been one of those times. From the moment she wakes up, she goes a mile a minute, talking, playing, reading, singing, moving toys and pens and buttons and who knows what all to the places they clearly need to be, and generally directing things around the house.

Her language development has been the most obvious--when she isn't cruise directing, she has been stating or describing what she is doing or what is happening around her in alarmingly complex sentences. I have been calling her "the narrator." When you go in her bedroom to get her when she wakes up, she will inform you "Mia sanding in her cib." In fact, now she might also say "I sanding in my cib"--she is getting more and more pronouns right. She says things like "Mia go with Daddy to pick tomatoes," or last night at dinner when she happened to glance up and out the window, "I'm looking out the window." Sometimes when she speaks she falls into a kind of "uh, uh, uh" noise and you can tell the wheels are turning in her mind as she looks for the right word or maybe the sentence structure, but more and more she just talks. She talks all day long. And she still prefers that you repeat back what she says. I don't miss not the quiet, exactly, but our days our... full.

Another reason our days are full, and this is perhaps related to the brain development spurt, is that Amelia's naps have suddenly and substantially shortened themselves. She was napping from around 12-2, and now she doesn't seem ready to go down for a nap till 1 or 1:30, if then. Then, she naps for about 45 minutes. She has a hard time settling down, and when she wakes up, after a period of initial fussiness, she is ready to go for the afternoon. She has been sleeping at night, though, for 11-12 hour stretches, from 7:30 or 8 to around 7 in the morning, so I am thinking since she is sleeping so long at night she just doesn't need a long nap. It's not the best news for me, break-wise, but it's not terrible. I am trying to take advantage of being able to have longer morning outings, and drastically decrease the number of things I try to do during her nap. (In fact, one of the things I have been doing during her nap is sitting down and watching "Friends," which conveniently reruns every day at 2:00.) Since I have less time during the day and more time during the mornings, I have been trying to get up a little earlier and enjoy the quiet. The early mornings have always been the best poem-writing times for me anyway, so maybe this is a good development for me, writing-wise.

Another note about toddlerhood--Amelia has had some real live tantrums lately. These are sometimes times when she is tired or maybe related to not feeling well, with the cold, for example, or last week she also tested positive for strep--one of the best tips I got about toddler behavior is that when they are acting SUPER terrible, they are probably sick. But there have been a couple of tantrums that seem mostly just about Amelia not getting what she wants, which I suppose is normal for almost two. Last week, we stopped by the "dinosaur bone museum" to play for awhile, and when we were leaving, not feeling well myself, I forgot to do my usual "in a few minutes, we have to say bye-bye to the museum" thing to prep Amelia for our departure (which usually works really well). We were walking toward the door, and Amelia seemed to realize we were leaving, and she just lost it. She was crouching and clenching her fists and screaming "dinosaur bones!" She was in fact standing directly underneath dinosaur bones, but no attempt of mine to point that out to her, or to calm her down in any way other way, worked, so I finally had to pick her up and carry her screaming to the car. She cried most of the 20-minute drive home, and what finally made her stop was a tip I read in The Happiest Toddler on the Block: "gossip." The author recommends that you "gossip" with your toddler's stuffed animals (or other family members, if they are around), both to discuss bad behavior and praise good behavior. The idea is that toddlers like to overhear stuff and sometimes you can get more across if they think you are not talking to them. So I talked to Elmo, who Amelia had carried around the museum all morning. "Hey Elmo! Listen! Amelia had a tantrum at the museum, and Amelia is so angry! Amelia wanted to stay at the dinosaur bones! But Momma doesn't understand tantrums. Momma understands big girl words! And Amelia is so good at big girl words!" And etc. Every time Amelia would start crying again I would say "Hey, Elmo! Listen!" And she would listen. By the time we got home, she was calm. I had asked Elmo if he thought Amelia would rather play with buttons or bracelets when she got home, and as we pulled into the garage, I heard a tiny, tired voice: "buttons."

We played with buttons, then had lunch. Toddlers are tiring. Lovable, but tiring.

The interesting thing is that Amelia still remembers this vividly. "Mia cied at the dinosaur bones. Elmo had to listen! Momma doesn't unersand tanums."

On a side note, with all these sicknesses and tantrums, sometimes I really miss breastfeeding. I just know it would calm her down so easily. I can pick Amelia up and snuggle her, and carry her around, and goodness knows I do, but it's not the same. Just saying, for the record: I don't regret weaning when we did, but I do miss the closeness, the calming nature of breastfeeding.

What else? We went to the zoo, and it was one of the first times Amelia was actually excited about the animals. She liked the elephants and hippos the best



and enjoyed peering over the wall at "Monkey Island."



She also fed some lorakeets



and rode the train with her friend Pigit,



and on another visit to the zoo with (L)u(l)i, she rode the merry-go-round.





We canceled a camping trip we had planned for this weekend because we all got colds, but we did go to a baseball game Sunday afternoon. The Rockies have a section called "The Rockpile" that features $4.50 bleacher seats, a good price for people who might only last a few innings. This was our view from our seats



and Amelia and Dean watching the game.



We had a good time--the day worked out well, since Amelia napped early and the sun went behind the clouds just time for the game. Amelia liked watching the people and even some of the game ("That man running!") She danced when music played and clapped when the other fans clapped, and the enjoyed her first experience with Dippin' Dots (which cost the same price as our seats). We lasted until about the 6th inning.

Our garden is thriving in the summer heat. We have piles of tomatoes, squash and zucchini, so much that I have just been planning our meals about what could include those things. We have a good amount of peppers, tomatillos, and cucumbers, too, and just picked some very pretty tri-color corn. This is our garden a couple of weeks ago; things are even taller and bushier now.





Finally, we are battling out an attempt to grow out Amelia's bangs. I really want to grow them out, since they grow fast and they are hard to trim, and our favorite hairdresser lives really far away. But Amelia is not a fan of hairclips ("Cips out!) so she looks pretty shaggy a lot of the time. Here is a picture of her with cips, just to prove she doesn't always look like a sheep dog.



We had some success with using a rubber band for a "ponytail" yesterday, and I made a big deal about how "now you can see!" So we'll see.

2011 Garden

"Garden" is one of the words in the description of this blog, but I have posted almost nothing about our garden this year. It's not for lack of garden work being done, although most of the work has not been done by me. Dean started plotting and planning the garden back in the fall. Since then, he has dug up a yard full of grass and stones, designed and laid a stone pathway, built brick and wooden beds for plants, built trellises for peas and beans, started seeds of all kinds, ordered and planted flowers, given tender loving care to seedlings, arranged approximately 500 soaker hoses and made approximately 10,000 trips to Lowes and Ace Hardware.

This weekend, he planted the last of the seeds of the season, corn, beans and squash: "the garden is officially planted."

Our little Denver yards have been turned into an impressive city garden, if I do say so myself. In the backyard, we have peas, radishes, beets, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, and lots of flowers. In the front, we have broccoli, corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and corn, plus some flowers and cactuses (cacti?) on the porch.

Here is a little walking tour of our garden, with "before" pictures from April and "after" pictures from today.



Here are the baby peas in April:



and here is a picture of the newly-planted flowers and peas from today. It's safe to say that the peas have grown.



On the other side of the path from the flowers are the strawberries. Here they are in April (they have grown and overcome a strange outbreak of brown spots but still look pretty much the same):



Against the fence and beside the strawberries are blueberries and asparagus. No pictures of those today, as both still are very small.

Moving to the front yard, here are the baby broccolis, right after they were moved to pots:



and here are the front beds in April, just after they were built:



Now here is the front yard today:



You can see how much the broccolis have grown. In the front beds are peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and corn.

Here is a view of the other side of the yard from the sidewalk. As Dean said, our yard looks weird. The teepees are for beans to grow up, and the metal trellis is for cucumbers. Behind the beans and cucumbers will be squash.



Finally, here is something very cool:



my hanging cactus flowered!

Now, fingers crossed against wilts, droughts, bugs, and mysterious plant diseases of all kinds.

19 Facts for 19 Months

1. 19 months has been a lot of fun! I somehow never imagined Amelia being older than 18 months. 18 months was a big milestone in my mind, a sort of "I've made it this far so I think I'm gonna make it!" I remember holding 3- or 4-month old Baby A, enviously staring at parents with 18-month-olds. So when Amelia turned 19 months old, it was kind of a shock: it keeps going after this? Maybe because I truly had no expectations, I have been pleasantly surprised.

Part of that is because 2. Amelia is talking more and more. With talking comes communicating, so it's easier to figure out what she wants and doesn't want. Also, it's hilarious. She repeats tons of what we say, including, this morning, "suck it." In context, it was fine--she found one of those mesh baby teether things and I was telling her what to do with it: "You suck it." She spent the next hour saying, "Suck it! Suck it!" Then she stopped. I am hoping she has forgotten it.

3. Other, less disturbing things she says:
"Momma Epyoo" (Momma help you.) She says this when she wants me to help her.
"Naken" (Naked). She loves to be naked. She needs Momma Epyoo to undress, though.
"Peekaboo!" It's adorable. She actually memorized a little peekaboo book, Peek-a-who, from the library. She has also done a few short sentences: "Momma comin'?" "Daddy doin'?" She makes it clear to us that we drop our "g's."

4. Amelia loves her extended family, and talks about them all the time. If we talk about what we are doing, she lists all of her family members and we have to say what they are all doing at that moment.

5. Amelia loves to sing. We also have to include all family members' names in one of her favorites songs, Raffi's Willougby Wallaby Woo. Other favorites songs include Raffi's song about going to the zoo, the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Old MacDonald.

6. We really are weaned. It really is done. Overall, it has been easier than I thought. Amelia asks for "mik" fewer times each day, and yesterday she seemed to do it almost as a joke. She drinks a lot more other liquids, which makes sense. She likes juice of all kinds, regular milk, and "chocate mik" (which is really chocolate soymilk, mostly for the sake of variety).


7. Amelia still snuggles! She likes to hug, to sit in my lap, or to play a games where she pushes me over and falls on me. And the last couple of naps, she has let me rock her to sleep! This is a huge improvement over crying for 10 minutes each and every naptime. I do think sometimes kids just have to cry themselves to sleep--or Amelia does anyway--but I just cannot take it at naptime.


8. These days Amelia is napping around 12-2, give or take 15-20 minutes on either side. It's predictable, for now, which probably adds to my general enjoyment of the days.

9. And we have a pretty set little routine, something I also enjoy. Amelia wakes up between 5 and 6 (sometimes before 5, yikes, but less and less). She likes to play upstairs for a while, then come down and have something to eat and drink. If it's cool and the heat is on, she likes to sit on the big heating vent in our living room and eat her snack. There are fairly large holes in the vent. Sometimes, from the kitchen, I can hear her muttering "too big, too big" or calling "Uh oh!" I have removed a wide variety of items from the vent, but luckily there is a flat place under the vent to catch anything that happens to fall. This is not the best toddler habit but I have decided that for now it is not a battle I want to fight. And it buys me time to clean up the kitchen.

After Dean leaves for work, Amelia and I play downstairs for awhile and read some books. Then we go upstairs and I take a shower while she plays in the bathroom. I take some toys in there to entertain her or she looks at the toiletries in the various baskets I have. (All babyproofed.) This week, she discovered a drawer that contained tampons and has been having a great time dissecting them. Again: it buys some time.

Then we get dressed, a long process, since sometime in the morning Amelia usually become naken. I try to brush her teeth, and once we are ready, we leave the house. On Mondays we go to the grocery store, and other days we go to the Children's Museum or some other fun place, or run other errands, or if it's nice, go to the park. I try to have her home by 11, and we have lunch. Then she messes around till noon while I half play with her, half straighten up. We read some more books, then nap.

After her nap she likes to play with animals in her crib for awhile, and then we usually try to get out of the house again. Amelia is much more grouchy about being in her car seat in the afternoons, so I don't like to go anywhere too far. My favorite thing is to just spend the afternoon in the park, but we haven't been able to do that much lately. Apparently of the 65 non-sunny days a year Denver supposedly has, 31 are in May. So afternoons this week have been challenging.

Anyway, Dean gets home around 5:15, and we all play/work in the yard, or I go to yoga (!; see below). Amelia tends to be hungry for dinner early, between 4:45 and 5:30. We feed her, then she plays till bathtime and goes to bed between 7 and 7:30.

The days are mostly very good.

10. One of my Mother's Day presents was an unlimited summer yoga pass. I picked it out myself. It lasts through July and I have been going to yoga as much as I can. I go in the evenings to a 6-7:15 class. It gives Dean and Amelia time to play and do the bath-bed routine. We have found that when I am in the house, she is much fussier about having me be right with her. If I go to "cass," she might be a little upset when I leave but quickly gets over it and everyone has a pleasant evening, especially Momma. I love going to yoga. May has been a bit more sporadic than I planned, but I have made it to at least 2 classes a week. I am hoping to go more even more often in June.

11. Teething: Amelia is getting her canine teeth. This has truly seemed to last forever, and they seem to bother her a lot more than most of her other teeth. She has drooled, run a low fever, and gnawed on her fingers a lot over the past two months at least. It has gotten so that when she gets too fussy, I just get out the Orajel. I will be glad when the teeth are finally in.

12. In other toddler behavior news, I should touch on eating and sleeping if only for the record. Amelia's eating remains very toddler-esque: she will eat like a horse for a few days, making her mother very happy, and then seem to eat almost nothing for a day or two or more. Highlights of the eating times have been berries of all types, a return to chickpeas, and tiny broccoli florets--raw. Discovering that she liked broccoli was an accident. I gave her a crown of broccoli to hold in the grocery store and she started chewing on it. She is definitely a grazer. Her favorite snacks are salty, crunchy ones like pretzels, crackers and Veggie Straws.

13. My most hated baby-related chore--and I have thought this through--is changing crib sheets. It's terrible! The sheets are super tight and they get caught up in the bumper pad and it takes forever and I think I pull a muscle every time I do it, which is often because Amelia spends so much time lolling in the sand in the park.

14. We are not exactly potty training, but we now own 2 training potties, one that sits on the floor and one that sits on the big potty. Amelia likes to take apart or fill with toys the one on the floor but other than that has no interest in using them. But since she is naken so much she is becoming more aware of when she needs to use the bathroom. She says "pee-pee" for both pee and poop, then proceeds to go on the floor. It seems to upset her so I try to be very upbeat and encouraging about it:


Me: Pee on the floor! That's great! Let's get a towel!
Amelia: (standing naked in a pool pf pee, looking upset) Momma epyoo! Towel!

15. Our garden is planted and growing. I owe you an entire garden-related post, but we (and by we I mean Dean) have planted tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, peas, radishes, and flowers, and squash and beans will be planted soon. Our fingers are crossed.


16. I love my Denver friends. The playgroup has really gelled, and I spend a lot of time with my neighbor and her daughter. It makes living here so much easier.

17. I still clean too much. I am trying to cut back, I swear.


18. How many ambulance rides have you taken in your life? Because Amelia has now had two. Last week, she fell out of her wagon and hit her head. She cried inconsolably for over 10 minutes, then got sleepy, so Dean called 911. Luckily, by the time the paramedics got here, she was much better. They took her to the ER just in case. The doctors all thought she was fine but watched her for 2 hours (in hospital time, if was just over 3). We were super relieved. It was terrifying while it lasted--one of those times that reveals to you the fact that your child is your entire world--but I think it says something that I just thought of it here at the end of the post. Um, welcome to parenthood? Just as I felt when she got through the appendix episode, I am deeply thankful that she is all right, still her sunny, funny, lovely self. I would think that Amelia could be finished with ambulance rides now, though. Seriously.


19. This is my 350th post. I am glad blogging is still part of my life. I had a community of blog "friends" long before I had very many real mom friends. I love the blogs I read (and I should say I stole this idea of a listed post from Liz's birthday post on BC), and I love writing posts too. This is the only baby journal I keep, and it is so nice to share Amelia with so many others.

28th Week Update

Twelve or less weeks to go. Or a couple more, I suppose. I think less.

The most exciting event of the week was meeting baby Lucy! This is Lucia Armijo, the new daughter of Enrique/Henry and Caroline, our friends from Dean and Enrique's law school days. I got to hold Lucy and play with her during her tummy time and she even feel asleep in my arms. Sadly, I forgot the camera (as usual), but you can see and read about Lucy on Caroline's blog. She is tiny and adorable. It was great to talk with Caroline and finally meet Lucy.

In other news, Dean and I attended session one of "Make Way for Baby" last week. We go back tomorrow. Let's just say that the first session was not all I had hoped for. Mainly, the teacher was terrible. I am probably pretty judgmental of other people's teaching, but really, she was awful. She has a very confusing way of explaining things that involves starting whatever she is saying with the conclusion, then backtracking to an example, which she repeats four or five times (seriously, almost word for word), and then she works her way back to preliminary points, and ends by restating the conclusion. It's extremely irritating. Also, she said things I think are just wrong, such as "The baby sucks the calcium from your bones." And worst of all, she seemed embarrassed when she taught us about some of the laboring positions. Some of the class members were sort of giggly and shuffly about getting down on their hands and knees and such, and it was like she let the students' discomfort make her uncomfortable. Come on people, we're talking about giving birth. It's not the time to be modest. ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE THE TEACHER.

But, much to Dean's dismay, we're going back anyway, because we have paid. And despite it all, attending the class did make me feel better. It was nice to hear, in a hospital setting, about some of the things I want to do that I had anticipated the hospital being difficult about. I have reached a nice Zennish (can one be Zennish? or do you have to be just Zen or not?) state about labor. I have a plan and I am not interested in hearing any more stories or opinions about the whole thing, particularly anyone's estimations or descriptions of how much it hurts. (NOTE: That statement does not apply to all the moms I know, who have been great in talking and offering advice, or to anyone I specifically ask. I'm just tired of random people, such as, oh, the saleswoman at Gap, telling me their thoughts about giving birth. Another annoying thing random people do is say "Oh, you'll never sleep again.") I will write about my plan later.

The wiggle baby needs a new name. Well, obviously--but what I mean is that she has not been as wiggly. In fact we had an unscheduled ultrasound about it this week because I called my doctor about a few other questions and mentioned that the baby's pattern of movement had changed. (Everything I've read says to tell your doctor if the pattern of movement changes.) She was still kicking and moving, but she was not as wiggly. I figured the doctor would tell me it was fine and not to worry--but instead he said he would call for me to get an ultrasound if I wanted. After that, what are you going to do but get an ultrasound? So we got to peek into the baby's world another time. She is fine. Today she started wiggling again a bit. Who knows. Anyway I know that her repertoire has expanded some. And I won't post the graphic picture that proves it, but we are very sure now that she is a girl.

What else? Dean and Luli (his mom) are going backpacking this weekend. I've been missing the mountains, but despite Dean's offer to carry all my stuff, I declined his invitation to join them. I've been doing okay walking up the Metro escalators, but I am not sure how I would do with mountains. Not to mention two nights of sleeping on the ground and not having an assortment of food, such as cold milk, banana bread, and watermelon Popsicles, to eat upon waking in the morning.



Here's Dean getting ready. Suki is helping. She loves maps.

And our garden is doing well. We have beans, tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers. In fact, I am signing off to figure out what to do with it all. I have been thinking of it all day as a "farm supper."



Here are the beans. Some are purple, but they turn green when you cook them.

If you have baby name ideas, I am officially open to suggestions.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I'm posting a lot today. It's feast or famine with the posting, I guess. Monday is my day off, and I have either bad allergies or a cold plus residual travel exhaustion, so I am sitting around all day.

I was going back through my email earlier today and came across this video sent by my cousin-in-law Suzi from San Fransisco. Suzi is a teacher-gardener and this video is about the community gardens she helps to run in San Fran. If you have a few minutes, you should watch it; it's EXCELLENT. The video, and a question from Liz about our composter and rain barrel, have inspired me to finally write a post about our garden, something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

It all started with the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I bought the book in the Charlotte airport last June on the way home from Heather's graduation. It's about how a writer and her family move from the arid west to the Appalachian mountains to try to grow all of their own food for a year. Actually, they don't have to grow everything; they get some of it (sweeteners, flour, wine) locally. They define "locally" pretty strictly; I think it has to come from their own town. Each family member is allowed one sort of "free pass item" that they are allowed to buy from far away. (I think they choose coffee, spices, chocolate and dried fruit.) The book records the year as far as planting the garden, watching it grow, harvesting crops (and animals), and planning for the next year.

It's a fabulous book. It asks extremely important questions about our food. How many of us can say we know where our food comes from and how it was grown? Who planted and harvested it? How far did it travel to get to us? Who fed and raised our meat, and what were those animals fed? Kingsolver points out food facts that we may have forgotten or never known, such as when certain fruits and veggies are in season. For example, if you live in the Northern hemisphere and are eating asparagus in September or cherries in January, those items had to have come from very far away (or California, I guess). She talks about the problems all that traveling causes for food, not only environmentally in terms of the fuel for shipping it, but also in nutrient content and, most simply, taste.

The book made both Dean and I nearly desperate to start our own garden then and there. Both of us grew up around gardens. There's a reason so many of my poems contain garden imagery--helping someone in a garden was a regular part of my childhood. My great-grandmother, grandparents, aunts, uncles and parents all grew gardens. We picked beans, snapped them, and canned them. We washed silk off corn and cooked and froze it. My grandmother cut up a plate of cucumbers and tomatoes to go with almost every meal. People cooked corn, beans, squash, okra, and who knows what else in every imaginable way. No one visited anyone else or let any visitor leave without a bag of whatever produce was in season at the time. At the time, I took all this for granted, or disliked it. When I was young, I never was one to enjoy getting dirty and sweaty and itchy in a garden. But after I read Kingsolver's book, I was in despair about not having a garden. It seemed not only like I had lost a piece of who I was but that I was in real danger of forgetting or never knowing one of the most elemental pieces of knowledge possible: how to grow food to eat.

So we really wanted a garden, but we couldn't have one right then, because it was June and too late to start a garden. Also we had (have) a very, very small backyard. At the time it contained two large trees. We grumbled and worried and tried to be happy with the couple of cherry tomato plants we had grown on our porch.

From this point the story is really mostly Dean's. Fall came, and I put my garden wishes on the back burner while I taught and wrote and read poetry. But Dean kept thinking and reading, and talking to Luli a lot about gardening and what we might be able to do with our small space. With the permission of our landlord, he cut down the two trees in the yard (with a handsaw). By early winter, he'd read Grow Vegetables: Balconies, Roofs, Terraces and Square Foot Gardening. He'd used some Christmas gift money to buy a set of grow lights, seeds, and various books and garden tools. He'd read the farmer's almanac. He had a spreadsheet, a whole calendar filled in with garden tasks, and a plan.

Thus began my role as garden helper. (By the way, by this time I was busy with the primary role of baby grower.) Every weekend, even in the dead of winter, Dean had some garden tasks for us to complete. We planted seeds and put them under lights. We watered. Later we transplanted. We cleaned up in the yard. One weekend Jim and Luli came to help us build trellises and boxes for the square-foot boxes. (Well, okay, they helped Dean while I mostly laid on the couch.) In the early spring we planted, transplanted, and watered some more. Every morning at 5AM the lights in the next room would click on, and at 9PM they'd click off. (Yikes, and that memory reminds me of nausea.) And our garden grew and grew, even inside.

When it got warmer, we put plants outside for a few hours at a time so they could adjust to life away from their lights. We dealt with sunburned broccoli and wind-blown tomatoes. One by one it was time to put the plants outside (a part that always made me sad in a way that I think might be particular to mothers or parents). After some of the plants were finally in the ground, Dean devotedly ran outside in a hail storm to put sheets over the babies. (The storm stopped 3 minutes later.)

Since then, we've planted, weeded, clipped, staked and re-staked. We've coaxed baby peas up their trellises and been astounded by tomatillos that are taller than us. We've had a bumper crop of kale and mustard greens, but, sadly, no broccoli--it grew up strong but never flowered. Right now we are dealing with what we think is "early blight" and blossom-end rot on our tomato plants. Both are caused my excess moisture, and we have had a lot of rain. We have baby cucumbers and baby squash. The beans are flowering. Zinnias, marigolds, basil and dill are doing very well, and we have sunflowers coming soon. Yesterday we picked 5 beets (and today I am wondering what exactly to do with beets). The radishes that did quite well have gone to seed (we let them grow because their flowers are pretty).

I'm really amazed that we done so much with a garden in just a year. Like I said, most of the credit is Dean's, but we've both learned a lot. Obviously, we still but most of our food from other places. We try to buy what's in season from farmer's markets when we can (although my weird food issues have made that harder lately). It's been really nice to reclaim some of my heritage in the form of this tiny, wonderful city garden.

The Weekend In Pictures

Well, words and pictures. We had a busy weekend. I graduated from my MFA program on Friday, and on Saturday Jim and Luli, Dean's parents, came up for a birthday visit and a Will Oldham concert. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the concert, since they didn't allow cameras, but it was a lot of fun. I also have no pictures of today: Dean and I took a picnic to the tidal basin area, and then I stayed on the Mall and watched part of the Memorial Day parade. It was a great DC Memorial Day activity, but they didn't allow cameras. No, really, I just forgot the camera, as usual.

Anyway, here's the weekend's photo album.

My graduation was Friday. It was very hot wearing the robe. It made me sleepy. Graduation ceremonies are so strange, but they are nice punctuation. Here I am with my poetry friends, the people I started the program with 3 years ago...



My family made a whirlwind trip up to see me graduate! Stupidly, we did not take any family pictures at the graduation. But they did get me some gorgeous roses:



and here are some books they brought for the baby (on the beautiful new table Luli made; more on that below).



The baby has a promising library already.

On Saturday, my parents went home and Dean's arrived, bearing many gifts. It's not her birthday, but most were for the baby. Here are some clothes:



and a sling Luli made! I am trying it out with my Cinnamon Bear.



There were also some new clothes for Mama. Here's the cute top Luli made for me:



Sadly, some of the clothes, including the gift from Linda, which I LOVE, do not fit. Sigh. Anyway, Dad-to-be got something he's been wishing for: a rain barrel! It's thundering now, so we're hoping to be able to use it soon. Here it is with its friend the composter:



Just for fun, here's how our garden looks now:



and a close up of the peas:



The most exciting gift, for the whole family, is the beautiful table Luli made for us.



Here's a close up:



and a side view:



I love this table. It is just gorgeous and perfect for the space. It's a drop leaf table, so we can make it small if we need to, or big enough for a large workspace or a dinner for 6 (we think) if we need to. Thank you Luli!

Finally, Suki was a little sad that no one brought her presents, but she found consolation in the bag the presents arrived in:



All in all, a great weekend. It's not often we get to see both sets of parents! Now I'm coming to terms with the end of the holiday--I start my new job in the English department tomorrow!

Baby Belly; Baby Broccoli

I don't love this picture, but you can kind of see the change. The shirt is too loose, maybe.

Also, these are the broccoli plants that we've been photographing along with my belly. It occurred to me that eventually, long before the baby is born, we'll be eating this broccoli and I'll have to take pictures of something else. But for now, here's the baby broccoli, just transplanted into their boxes outside.

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