More high-altitude gardening

So this is the post that I started last summer to write more about the garden. I got stalled on it because I never felt like uploading and editing photos. That really shuts me down every time. But I must persevere! So, I think I've decided to give up on photo editing and just drop them in here with nothing but some auto-contrast and maybe a drop shadow. Here's one now.

Summer 2010 was the first year for our new outdoor garden and greenhouse. Putting the new garden in the dogs' yard turned out to be the right choice to keep out the critters. It established a kind of DMZ that the deer and bunnies, et al., couldn't cross to get to our delectable little plants. We got a late start on planting and running a line up from the rainwater tank, but overall it was a good first try, I think. The girls were enthusiastic (albeit ineffective) helpers, and I'm glad that they are enjoying the garden chores.

The greenhouse was the real winner last summer. The harvest was bountiful by subalpine standards, plus we were able to extend the growing season in there by heating it. Since our house forms one side of the greenhouse, we originally heated it just by opening a basement window. This worked fine, but it seemed a tad inefficient in terms of energy use, so we eventually got a little electric heater.

I heard that there's a book out now about some guy's gardening experiences called "The $64 Tomato." That is spot on for us because we are always talking about our two-hundred-dollar salad. Hopefully, we are just paying for the initial infrastructure, or investing in healthy habits for our children, or saving the planet, or something, because this is not turning out be an economical way to obtain produce. It is, however, turning out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Hiatus Terminus

OK, I'm back. I got off to a lovely start last spring, but then I dropped this blog entirely for fall and winter. I just wasn't interested in posting. Now, however, I've been spurred back into action primarily by my husband who claims that he needs me to provide something for him to read while he's sitting at his desk drinking coffee in the morning. (I'm certain that any mother at home with small children can see the irony in that, by the way.)

If you're wondering why I'm publishing a post dated May, 2010 in March 2011, it's because I had originally started this as a post about Jelly Bean's last day of preschool. So let me catch you up on some of the highlights that have passed.

First off, Jelly Bean graduated from preschool last May. They wound up the year with a little ceremony in which each kid is given a certificate that predicts their future occupation. At the end of her first year, Bean got the Little Scientist Award which delighted me and distressed her accountant father. This time, however, her teachers made a comment on her personality that made us both laugh by bestowing upon her the Little Politician Award.

The Magic Kingdom

It turns out that Disneyland is even better through the eyes of my daughter than it was on my own first visit. It really was a magical place for Jelly Bean. When you ask her now what her favorite part was, she can't even choose. I suppose that is because the whole trip was packed with one glorious surprise after another. She just says, "Everything. Everything was my favorite." She was truly enchanted.

We spent a week in California this May--visiting family, weathering illnesses, going to the beach, hemorrhaging money, and taking the girls on their first trip to Disneyland. I had been putting off the grands and aunties who were pushing to take the Bean to the Big D for a few years because I thought she was too young to really appreciate it. I'm glad that I did. I have decided that 4 1/2 years old is the optimum balance of being old enough to handle the long days and long lines and yet young enough to fully appreciate the magic. Sweet Pea, at almost 2, was definitely not at the optimum age. I would have left her at Grammy's house if there had been anyone to watch her for the day. There was not, of course, because everyone wanted to be with the Bean for her D-land christening. She could have been in a Verizon commercial: Jelly Bean followed by her "network." We had my aunt, my cousin, my little cousin, Grammy and Papa, Papa Dude, and Mommy, Daddy and baby sister. The kid didn't make a single request that didn't have at least three people clamoring to fulfil it. She even had my aunt calling my cell phone from 300 miles away and demanding that we get a present for the girls from her. It was like the scene in Hitch when Cameron Diaz asks the accountants for a pen.

I thought that Jelly Bean would catch on to the situation and cash in, but she hardly asked for anything. In fact, the only purchase that I remember her requesting was a glow wand from one of those vending carts on the way out of the park at night. By the afternoon of Day 2, the grands couldn't take it any longer and crumbled at the Princess Pavilion. They took matters into their own hands, and the purchasing began in earnest.

In the end it turned out that she didn't ask us to buy anything for her because she was blissfully happy at every turn. She was just taking it all in, riding rides, meeting characters, hugging princesses, dancing in the parade. Jelly Bean has a pretty decent grasp of real and pretend, but I think that the edges blurred nicely while we were there. Now whenever we see images of Cinderella or Tiana or Jasmine, the Bean is like, yeah, I've met her, we're buds. One of my favorite moments came when we were riding the submarines, which, for those of you who have not been to the park in a few decades, has been remodeled to feature Nemo (the fish, not the captain). They've got some pretty nifty projection system to make it look like the animated creatures are really swimming around in the water outside our submarine portholes. We were floating along, watching these little scenes with Finding Nemo characters, and at one point the animated Dory looked toward us and said, "Hey! Why is that whale eating that big yellow submarine?" Jelly Bean gave a little start and exclaimed, "Mommy! She knows we're here!" It was perfect.

I admit that the week was not without its drawbacks. I had been dreadfully ill with an unshakable cough and cold leading up the trip. It lingered the entire time with the charming addition of a case of conjunctivitis that landed me in the urgent care clinic for the better part of Mother's Day. Sweet Pea held up reasonably well for both full days at the park, but then she debuted her newly acquired stomach bug with a spectacular episode of projectile vomiting at the character breakfast at the Disneyland Hotel. That was the beginning of a 6-day gastrointestinal nightmare. Brava, Sweet Pea.

And of course there was the inevitable and unmitigated outflow of money that is associated with any family vacation involving licensed characters. Just for posterity's sake, I will tell you that I purchased a 2-day pass for two adults and one child for...wait for it...$433. Is anyone else shocked here? I imagine that my girls will someday be reading this after they have taken their children to Disneyland and laughing at how quaint my ranting is (similar to the way we snicker at our parents for complaining about spending twenty thousand dollars for a house in the 70's). We questioned the "cast member" who loaded people onto the parking trams about how many people visited the park each day and spent some time, as does everyone I suppose, trying to calculate the daily ticket sales. I also contemplated the operating costs for a day at that place. What does the loading dock of Disneyland look like? Are there 18-wheelers full of mouse ears pulling up every morning? Is there a freight train loaded with cotton candy rolling in? (Side note: the Bean had her first cotton candy at Disneyland and said, "It tastes like hair.") Anyway, that company is a monster. I wasn't blind to the commercial genius of the whole operation, but you know what? It was all worth it. They do a great job, and it was still enchanting, even for me. I loved taking the girls there, but I confess that I would go to Disneyland again, even without them.

By fortunate coincidence, we happened to walk into the park on the morning of our first day right at the moment that Mickey was leading a marching band down Main Street. They stopped in front of us and did a few tunes and then off they went. I said, "Jelly Bean, wasn't that nice of Mickey Mouse to bring a marching to band to greet you on your first visit to Disneyland?"

She said, "But how did he know I was here?"

And I said, "Because it's the Magic Kingdom."

Veggie Pancakes

Eeyore loves breakfast. He loves to cook breakfast, go out to breakfast, have people over for breakfast, make breakfast for dinner...well, you get the point. He's the man when it comes to breakfast. A couple of years ago he got onto a pancake kick and was making them pretty much every Saturday morning. I finally had to put a stop to it because I was feeling terrible after every pancake breakfast. It was just too much sugar. Sugar in the batter, white flour, which is basically just more sugar, and then syrup on top of it all--ugh. Honestly, if I'm going to suffer that icky, almost-nauseated feeling until lunchtime, then I'd rather just eat donuts and do it up right. So I told my husband that it was time to turn in his spatula and move on. But being the breakfast enthusiast that he is, Eeyore was determined to change my mind, and so he set about working on a new pancake recipe. He hit upon the veggie pancake idea one morning when he discovered some left-over butternut squash in the fridge. It has taken hours of griddle time and some serious flops (note to readers: never use broccoli in pancakes) to perfect the recipe, but the beta testing finally paid off. These pancakes are delicious and healthful, and they don't give me that sugar hangover for the rest of the day.

Veggie Pancakes
1 sweet potato
1 zucchini
1 carrot
1 handful spinach
1 banana
2 eggs
1/2 to 1 cup milk
1/2 cup whole milk plain yogurt
1/2 tsp baking soda (this is for high altitude--use 1 tsp for lowlanders)
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
pinch of salt

Peel the sweet potato and roughly chop the vegetables. Boil the vegetables until tender (about 5 minutes or so), leaving the spinach out until the last minute. Drain and puree. You should use 2 cups of vegetable puree for this recipe. Mash the banana, lightly beat the eggs and add both to the veggie puree. Add yogurt and 1/2 cup milk and stir. Mix the dry ingredients and gradually add to the batter. The batter will be thicker than regular pancake batter, but it should still pour. Add more milk if necessary to adjust the viscosity. Cook on a buttered 325-degree griddle. These are more dense than regular pancakes and need a little more cooking time to be sure that they are cooked through.

These pancakes are so scrumptious that you don't even need syrup on them. I usually just eat them with a little butter, but you could drizzle on some honey or syrup or even spread on some fruit preserves. The girls absolutely devour them, and who doesn't love a recipe that gets kids to eat vegetables for breakfast? Yum! Enjoy.

Gardening Within Sight of Treeline

OK, I admit that we are still quite a distance from the tree line, but at over 8600 feet elevation, we are high enough for the yogurt to explode onto my shirt every time I pop the foil off, for the girls' helium birthday balloons to descend pathetically to the floor within hours, and for the opening of any carbonated beverage to feel like a game of Russian Roulette. If we are at such an elevation as to have our coastal-dwelling house guests gasping for breath merely from the effort of getting up from the sofa, then just imagine how our unsuspecting garden plants must feel when I drag them up the mountain and plant them here. The difficulty is compounded by the fact that planting outside before Memorial Day is a recipe for almost certain disaster. Add to that the problems associated with living in a forest that is teeming with voracious wildlife, and gardening here can be a bit of a challenge.

I had absolutely no experience with gardening growing up. We didn't even have house plants. Our yard was a little suburban wilderness where the vegetation fended for itself while having no tangible involvement with the occupants of our house. My husband at least grew up in the presence of well-landscaped yards and the occasional fruit tree, but he didn't really participate in said landscaping. So we were venturing into uncharted territories when we started gardening. We had to invest in quite a lot of infrastructure when we first built our garden in order to protect our little plants from the elk, deer, rabbits, foxes, squirrels, birds, raccoons, bears, and whatever else lurks around here looking for a free meal.

We got a taste of just how ambitious those woodland critters can be when we planted a baby cherry tree two years ago. I had been told that a Montmorency cherry tree would do well at our elevation, so we went to the garden store and toted home our new little tree. We dug an enormous hole, removing mounds of our free native dirt and replacing it with expensive new dirt. Then we added peat moss, root stimulator, compost, and, judging by the cost, probably a bag full of diamond dust--whatever the garden store guy told us to buy. We were determined to give our baby tree the best possible start in its new semi-hostile home. We knew that it would need to be fenced and netted and eventually staffed by armed guards, but we thought that all of that could wait a day or two; it was getting dark and we needed to put Jelly Bean to bed. After we had been inside for no more than an hour, my husband happened to look out the window and saw a small herd of deer eating our new cherry tree. He went tearing out of the house, yelling, arms waving, and still the deer stood placidly munching on our tree. They didn't bother to move until he actually threw rocks at them. He wound up tearing out some fencing from our property line and building a fortress around the tree that very night by light of the car's high beams.

As a result of all of this harassment by the local wildlife, we designed the "Veggie Vault" when we started our garden two years ago.It is completely surrounded, including the top, by rabbit wire. It has served us moderately well for two years, but we are expanding this year. As it happens, we chose its location more for convenience of building than for optimum sunlight, so we have now decided to turn it into our greenhouse. We plan to add plastic panels and grow lights and subsequently move beyond the stage of novice gardeners and into the advanced realm of novice greenhouse gardeners. The new garden is going to be out back in the dog's yard. We figured that if we fenced a garden inside the larger fenced area, then we might stand a better chance of defending against the wildlife.

We got started on clearing and marking the new plot yesterday. It was a really gorgeous, sunny, warm day--one of the first this year--and Eeyore couldn't resist playing hooky from work and playing outside instead. It was the only day besides Easter that he hasn't been to the office since tax season got seriously under way in late February. We debated the boundaries, marked them with string, and got started raking and clearing. We also took down four rather enormous trees under the guise of clearing a "defensible space" (forest-dweller lingo) near the house, but we really did it because they cast deep shadows upon our proposed garden. Eeyore dearly loves using his chainsaw.

You might be wondering why we are going to so much trouble and expense for this garden, and I wouldn't blame you. Our harvests are pathetic--pumpkins the size of tennis balls, carrots and zucchini the size of fingers, and precious few of those. Last year we were joking about eating a $200 salad after the total costs were tallied (including the 1000-gallon water tank filled by a truck since we cannot use our scarce supply of groundwater outside--did I not mention that yet?). And it's not as if we don't have a ready supply of fruits and vegetable available here. There are two brand new big chain supermarkets ten minutes down the road. The thing is...the kids love it. Jelly Bean is absolutely enchanted when those first green shoots break the soil. She wants to work in the garden every day, and she will eat anything that we grow. I truly believe that growing a garden can teach so many lessons to my children--lessons about patience, delayed gratification, healthful eating, responsibility, good stewardship of the environment. There is an invaluable supply of teachable moments provided by the garden. So keep watch here for updates on the exciting developments in the Veggie Vault and the as-yet-unnamed new plot. If we're really lucky, then we might get a cucumber into the Museum of Miniatures.

"He is risen."

I was awoken by little footsteps on Easter morning and only opened my eyes enough to see that the first number on the clock was a 6. I told the little face that was two inches from my own that she knew that she was supposed to wait until "seven-zero-zero" to wake up Mommy and Daddy. She said, "But Mommy it IS seven-zero-zero." I looked again and, what do you know, there must have been a 59 following that 6 I had seen because it was exactly 7 am. So we're groggy and sleepy and unwilling to wake up because I had stayed up too late the night before knitting reversible egg/birds for the Easter baskets (photo at right--cute, yes?), but I said to her, "Jelly Bean, He is risen." And she said right away, "He is risen indeed." How sweet.

I love Easter. It used to be hands down my favorite holiday and even now it still might be. Easter really is the most important Christian holiday. You know how people go around saying endlessly, "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" at Christmas? Well, Easter is the reason for the whole religion! Except that that doesn't rhyme... Anyway, I love that Easter is so filled with joy. Joy for our risen Savior, joy for the beginning of spring, joy for chocolate. Where I grew up in California there were fruit trees everywhere, even in the suburbs, and Easter always fell during peak blossom season. It was just beautiful and warm every year, and if I had had children when I lived there I could have dressed them in adorable little sundresses, maybe even with little hats, and taken them out to hunt for eggs on lush green lawns...but now I live in Colorado.

Spring is not beautiful and warm. In fact, I contend that we don't even have spring here. We just have a few muddy, windy days to break up the time between huge, wet, sloppy snowstorms. I have to look for sweaters to cover those cute little dresses if I can muster the spirit to even buy them in the first place. And we are usually hunting for eggs in the living room while sleety snow falls outside the windows. This year, however, it was at least a little bit sunny. It was still windy and freezing but at least we managed to spend ten or fifteen minutes outside watching the kids hunt for eggs.

OK, enough complaining. Easter 2010 really was a lovely day over all. I was awakened to the aforementioned affirmation of my 4-year-old's faith, and then we went down to watch the girls open their Easter baskets. They were delighted, of course, and it was practically like Christmas morning because two different sets of grandparents had sent presents. After church and nap, our friends came over for dinner. The kids, undaunted by the arctic winds, were adorable hunting for eggs, and we had a delicious meal with good friends. I had forgotten to make the custard pie that my husband wanted, so he and I just up and made it after we put the kids to bed. We ate it straight out of the oven when it was still too hot to even taste, but it was wonderful. Oh, and by the way, I offered little pieces of custard pie to the girls after lunch the next day thinking that they would be ecstatic about this unexpected dessert windfall. Jelly Bean said, "Mommy, I don't like this quiche," and Sweet Pea fed hers to the dog.

To blog or not to blog...that IS the question

Well, here it is--my very first blog post. Several of my friends have been blogging for quite some time now, and I have never felt even the slightest inclination to follow suit until very recently. I have never been one to keep a diary or journal or do any kind of writing for myself. I'm a talker. I'd rather talk about everything with other people than write it down for myself, so naturally blogging did not hold a major draw for me. Plus, I never learned to type. I get teased about being the fastest two-fingered typist ever seen. So what am I doing here? Good question. Why do people blog, anyway? To whom am I supposed to be writing?

Well, I think that, for me, this blog will serve essentially in lieu of a baby book for my girls (Jelly Bean & Sweet Pea, I believe I will call them here). I've been thinking lately about how much more lax I've been about filling out the Pea's baby book as compared to the Bean's, and Jelly Bean's certainly isn't what anyone would call a comprehensive record of her babyhood. My husband and I have been talking about writing down all of these cute or surprising or even horrifying things that the kids do, but neither of us ever does it. And so they fade away into our ever more poorly-functioning memories until we are left with just a vague impression of what life was like when the girls were little. I know that I can (and do) lead a happy productive life without knowing how I pronounced the word "cookie" when I was a toddler, but I sometimes wish that I could read more about those days. I have the usual baby book, conscientiously filled in by my now long-deceased mother, describing the dates of major milestones, mostly relating to bodily functions--eating, peeing, cutting teeth, etc.--but it doesn't have much to say about those ups and downs and funny moments and quirky behaviors that really capture the character of a little girl growing up.

So I hope to record enough here that the girls can someday sketch out a decent picture of what life was like in the days before they can clearly remember it, or to let them in on a different perspective of those years when they are ready to see it. Right now Jelly Bean has tearfully retreated to her room for quiet time even though she is NOT TIRED, and she NEVER gets to do what she wants, and nap time is TOO LONG. (Darling Bean, I hope that you read this very paragraph someday while your own children are napping, and you realise that 2 hours is but a blink of an eye when you are on the mommy side of nap time!) I suppose that I also hope to put enough of myself into these pages that the girls can look back and see who I was and how I've grown up with them too.

Note: As a toddler, Jelly Bean said "coogie" in an unnaturally low voice. It was hilarious and adorable and I don't think I ever got a proper audio recording of it.