Finished the fence around the garden today. Came in at around 210′.
Mowed some long grass with the non-motorized mower. Raked up the grass clippings and dug them into the garden where we’re going to put the corn and some of the tomatoes.
Dug up more quackgrass.
DW planted 3 rhubarb crowns along the South property fence near the East end.
Picked some dandelions from the back yard today. It’s a gorgeous, sunny, breezy day, and it was nice laying out in the lawn picking them. And now that I think of it, that’s the first harvest of the season!
One of the good things I remember from my childhood was visiting my grand-aunt and uncle’s farm out in Lebanon, Connecticut. My aunt was a fantastic cook, and we had some memorable meals there. She was a big fan of dandelion greens, probably because they didn’t cost anything as much as for any other reason (frugality being a virtue she valued above most others, like many from her generation). She would often serve them as one of the vegetables with a meat such as spare ribs, and even though they were quite bitter, since she harvested them all summer, they somehow went with the meat really well.
Anyway, I washed all the ones I harvested this morning, then had some of them as a salad with my second breakfast (along with 4 of C’s eggs, scrambled) and put the rest in the refrigerator to cook for dinner tonight. They have a very mild flavor, with just a hint of bitterness.
CR’s chickens are getting more and more of their food from pasture this time of year. With those eggs and the greens picked less than 30 minutes before they wound up in my stomach, that should be about the healthiest meal ever.
I cooked some dandelion greens for dinner, just boiled them for a very few minutes with some butter. They were okay, but the bitterness seemed more pronounced.
I bought a copy of Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants by Bradford Angier yesterday at Borders. I’ve wanted a wild edibles book for a while, and this looks like a good one. It’s certainly fun to browse, and I strongly prefer illustrations over photographs.
And speaking of shopping, I tried to browse the sale DVDs at Borders yesterday, and I could barely do it. I’m so used to shopping online that trying to look through stacks and stacks of physical items was immensely annoying. To find the book I wanted, I immediately asked for assistance instead of spending 15 minutes looking as I would have 5 years ago.
This post talks about the difference between what I’m doing and what I should be doing. If I want to be honest, I can’t blog about only the successes and happiness in our lives.
Today is Saturday, so that means that DW is at work until this afternoon and I have both boys at home. And that means that this is my chance to have an influence on them, to be their father, to make them into good humans.
It also means that this is my time to get some stuff done around the house, especially, this time of year, yard and garden work.
So, we hang around in the house for a while this morning, playing and reading while waiting for it to warm up outside. Around 9:30 am or so, it’s warm enough and we’re pretty much done with being inside. We go outside. I move the vegetable plants out of the greenhouse and into the sun and water them all. Meanwhile, the boys are picking dandelion flowers and putting them into a bucket for me. I didn’t ask them to do that, but that’s fine.
By the time I get through moving and watering (maybe 10 minutes tops), they’re done with being outside and ready for a break — inside. There’s a ton of work to do out there, but I can’t leave them inside by themselves (because they’ll probably end up fighting) and I can’t talk them into staying outside with me. So we all go inside.
Frustrating. Am I asking too much of them? Will this work when they get older (they’re 4 and 6)? Should I just insist that they stay outside? How much should you pay attention to the stated wishes of 4- and 6-year-olds?
Ending and Beginning 