Community Garden Progress

We now have six plots in The Woodlands Community Garden and it's growing larger every day! We have a crew of student interns from the Urban Nutrition Initiative at U Penn working to shovel and build plots, make signage, and build a tool chest. Nic, one of my garden co-conspirators, works at UNI and is supplying the crews with lumber for these projects. So far the only money we've had to spend on the garden was for food for work days.







Last week we scored some free soil and tomato plants and stuck them into one of the finished beds. Soon we'll bring together the people who want these plots so we can hammer out the rules of the garden, collect yearly dues and get to gardening.



We've also decided to collaborate with a nearby elementary school that expressed interest in vegetable gardening. We're reserving some of the raised beds at the garden for them so they can walk over during the day and teach lessons during the school year. This is the part I'm really excited about, I would love to expand the garden to make space for more schools to do garden-based learning.







Meanwhile, at the Blue Line Garden . . .



. . . everything is blooming! We still don't have permission to build on this land, but Nic and the UNI crews will be weeding and mulching this lot so it will be primed and ready to build when the time comes in the fall.



This has all happened so quickly. By the end of the year we will have built two gardens. More importantly, we will have built two more community spaces where people can relax amongst green and growing things and take pride in their neighborhood.

P.S. Check out the trailer for a new documentary about community gardening - A Community of Gardeners. I may have teared up a bit while watching it . . .

Parlor Profile: Mitchell's Ice Cream

When we were in CA a few weeks ago I dragged M to one of my favorite ice cream places in San Francisco. My friend Rho introduced me to it when we were both living in California and we shared a wonderful afternoon filled with ice cream, cherries and the beautiful view from the top of Bernal Hill.



Name: Mitchell's Ice Cream

Location: San Jose Ave., Bernal Heights, San Francisco CA



The Scoop: Mitchell's has been owned and operated by the Mitchell family since 1953 in the same spot in San Francisco and they make all of their ice cream on site. They are famous for their tropical flavors and they import fresh ingredients from the Philippines to make exotic flavors like Buko (baby coconut), Langka (jackfruit), Ube (purple yam), Lychee, Macapuno (young coconut), and Halo Halo (Buko, Langka, Ube, Pineapple, Mango and Sweet Beans).



The Flavors: We tried Halo Halo and Sweet and Salty Peanut.



The Price: One two-scoop cone ran us $4.80. Yikes!



The Verdict: I've decided to stop imposing a rating system on these ice cream parlors because honestly, would I ever give ice cream a bad rating? So needless to say, the ice cream was delicious. It was thick and creamy, melting down my hand and leaving me feeling a little uncomfortably full, the way good ice cream should. The Sweet and Salty Peanut was exactly that, who knew I would like salt in my ice cream? And if I had to choose again I would go for one of the tropical flavors by itself instead of getting Halo Halo which is all of them mashed together. I've had Ube in the past and it was earthy and bright purple, which gives it a leg up in my book. But I would be interested to taste the difference between "young coconut" and "baby coconut." Maybe next time (why must you be 3,000 miles away from me, Mitchell's?).

You're Green with Envy

CSA box from Red Earth Farm.
July 14th, 2009: Escarole, red leaf lettuce, zucchini, green beans, cucumbers.

The black swallowtail butterfly

Papilio polyxenes asterius Stoll.

may i be gay

like every lark
who lifts his life

from all the dark


who wings his why

beyond because
and sings an if

of day to yes



- e. e. cummings, 73 Poems, 43 (1963)

Harvest time!

We cleared out some space in the garden, harvesting the emerald oak leaf lettuce, fordhook swiss chard, oxheart carrots, watermelon radishes, golden beets, a pound of bush pickler cucumbers and some of the 'Desiree' potatoes. Whew!


***New Desiree potatoes***


***Watermelon radish***


***Golden beet - FAIL (well at least we can eat the greens)***


***Oxheart carrot - semi fail***

I realized that since we had such a cold and rainy spring I could probably have left the above crops in the ground a bit longer. Ah well.


**Bush pickler cucumbers***





These cucumbers, though clearly not an actual bush variety (liars!) are super producers. We're going to be pickling all summer.




***Fordhook swiss chard***


***Zinnia - more of these next year for sure***



After we cleared all that space we replaced it with Italian basil, Black Beauty eggplant and Garden salsa hot pepper. I also yanked out a bunch of those marigolds. I'll remember to plant miniatures next time.



And that's how my garden grows.

I Heart Produce

It was meant to be more circular but on second viewing it seems to be a heart. Frisee endive, summer squash, new potatoes, beets, bulb fennel, and Italian flat leaf parsley.

As always, see the entire season of CSA boxes from Red Earth Farm on my Flickr page.

Breaking Ground!

Last week we broke ground on The Woodlands Community Garden! Twenty volunteers came out for a potluck and work day to remove weed trees, clean and cut lumber, and dig out plots.

There were a few "volunteer" hackberry trees growing out of the wall on the south side of the garden. Removing them opened up the southwest side of the garden and will allow us to install a few more plots on that end.



The lumber we have was scavenged from a house demolition and was covered in old rusty nails and wires. We removed all of that and cut them to size so we could create 8 foot square plots.



It was starting to get dark when we dug up the grass for two of the plots, removing that living barrier and allowing the plants more roots space in the future.





We dug out two plots and we have lumber for four plots right now. Currently the space will allow eleven 8x8 plots! We plan to share the plots in the first year, so 22 people will be able to garden on 4x8 foot plots.



The perennial plants we put in at The Blue Line Garden are also coming along nicely. We had a few weeks of rain right after we planted them so everything is well established.



A bunch of the plants are blooming too! The echinaceae, verbena, yarrow, and coreopsis were in bloom when we went to check on the site and water it the other day.

Just a little sweet

My dad does not have a sweet tooth (unless we're taking about Entenmann's chocolate donuts or chocolate covered marshmallows at Easter). So it's hard to come up with things to bake for him for holidays. At Christmas I made panettone, an Italian sweet bread that he really likes. It came out a little dry but I will definitely try again next year. And I think I've found another possibility - biscotti.

For Father's Day this year I made the Choco-Cran Biscotti from my "Most Loved Cookies" book by Jean Pare. I've never made biscotti before, but it was a sinch! It's basically just a twice-baked low-sugar cookie.



It wasn't too attractive before I twice-baked it, and it was a little crumbly afterwards, but it's definitely a recipe I will try again.

California, I'm comin' home

Here are some random pics from the trip to CA last week. I think I did a pretty good job packing, considering we were in temperatures ranging from 60 to 105 degrees F.


***The sunflowers are blooming in the fields around Davis!!***


***Tasting a little port at Heitz Cellar, missing Sissy***


***I visited Nicole and got to see the alphabet series in person (and take home "beehive")!!***


***The Full Houses***


***There is a whole collection of shoe planters in Alamo Square, San Francisco***


***I had to take a picture of those incredible balconies***



We ended the week with the wedding of my old roomates, Mike and G. I was living with them in Davis when I started this blog in early 2007. I've officially hit the age when all of my friends are getting married and it's surreal. There were two other weddings on the same day as this one! And as my coworker Rose said, this weekend "Facebook was blowin' up with wedding albums." So true. And so strange.



It was a lovely trip. I got to see many old friends and I dragged M around to a bunch of my favorite places; St. Helena, 826 Valencia, Mitchell's Ice Cream (more on this later), and the yard on F Street where we finished off the week with a BBQ and an evening of wine and mojitos. (Full disclosure - I probably shouldn't be able to drink as many mojitos as I did when I can't even spell the word - my first try went like this: "moquitos." For shame.)

Yummerson

The box, 6/30/09:
Green onions, green leaf lettuce, snap peas, zucchini, kale, eggs!