Tag Archive | living soil

Salad

Apr12

I’m grateful I could spend the morning in the garden, continuing to work the soil in the raised beds and plan what will go where when it’s warm enough to start planting in earnest. I’ve already got carrots, greens, peas, and garlic in, as well as the marvelous perennial onions lining the east edge of a bed. I uprooted a few from the nursery patch (behind the red chair) to fill in some blanks along the row. These will grow lovely tall flowers that are pollinator magnets, and hopefully deter some pests. I had a few leftover, so I brought them into the kitchen.

Wondering what to have for lunch, I remembered I had an avocado and some store-bought lettuce (not for long!), and some homemade dressing leftover, so decided I’ll make a simple salad, throw in these scallions. Then I decided to use up those last couple of bacon strips, but the skillet needed to soak for a few minutes. Picture me grateful for all these options all through this thought train. I bet those asparagus are ready to cut, I thought, I’ll do that while the skillet soaks, and toss them in the salad too.

Stellar and I walked out to our secret asparagus patch and cut the four spears that were tall enough. Back in the kitchen, I realized I also had mushrooms. Hmmm, sauté some mushrooms in the bacon grease, oh and then sear the asparagus. Suddenly the simple salad had become unexpectedly complicated.

Anatomy of a simple salad

This was taking longer than I’d planned on for lunch. But, the reward promised to be well worth the time… and then I realized that the reward was the time I had, the ingredients I had, the leisure I had to create a complicated salad from a simple idea. Might as well chop up that last little bit of Havarti.

I’m grateful for all those elements, and for attending to the insight that allowed me to relax and enjoy the process of creating the complicated salad; I’m grateful for Janis who taught me years ago to make salad with plenty of whatever was on hand besides lettuce; I’m grateful to Philip for still bringing me whatever I want from the grocery store; I’m grateful for the Vermont maple bowl that is my staple dish when I eat alone and has served me well for over twenty years; I’m grateful for the plants and animals that contributed to my complicated, delicious lunch. I’m grateful for salad.

I’m grateful that The Hitching Post in our little town carries such quality soils, plant foods, and other gardening supplies. While picking up more dirt, I also grabbed a few bags of seed potatoes. Tomorrow is a root day!
And I was grateful to see that they have this creative poster promoting water conservation front and center on their counter!

Compost

Mar25
It’s nothing fancy, but does make use of old palettes and works quite well for recycling waste scraps into dirt.

I’m grateful to be learning the art and science of composting. I still don’t put in the time and effort required to get multiple servings each year, but I always seem to get a good few cartloads of nutrient rich dirt for the simple effort of cycling all my food scraps and garden ‘waste’ through a series of three slapdash bins. This morning as Wilson was turning the contents of the two outer bins, in varying degrees of decay, into the center bin to start a new cycle, he found the ancient moose antler I’ve been wondering where it was. Before he closed the bin Stellar took a strong interest in it, but we all decided to leave it to further break down adding more minerals to the mix. I’m grateful to have help in the garden this spring, to do the physically challenging chores while I supervise and get to enjoy the lighter work, like raking spring cleanup clippings into piles to add to the compost bins.

The three bin system works really well. I put rough stuff in one, medium stuff in another, as I clip and cut back and prune and rake, and keep a third pile active adding kitchen scraps and fine material like rotted leaves, old potting soil, grass clippings, etc. When the active pile is full and has sat for awhile, we turn the top layers over into one of the other bins until we reach good compost in the lower part, and that second bin becomes the active pile. In this way, the active compost rotates through all three bins as it goes through its stages of decomposition, eventually leaving a deep layer of compost in the bottom of each bin. I’m no expert in compost – there are probably thousands of how-to websites and videos available – but the system I’ve evolved works just fine for me and my little garden. It’s so gratifying to dig down into a pile and find buckets of rich garden amendment, scraps transformed into dirt like magic, to nourish the garden beds. Healthy, living soil is the foundation of a good garden.

I’m also grateful for the grilled cheese sandwich I made after spending the morning working in the yard. I used provolone and havarti with mayo and pesto. The only thing better than mayonnaise on two sides of a sandwich is mayo on three sides! I’ve finally caved to the idea of spreading mayonnaise instead of butter on the outsides of the sandwich. On this one, I used a layer of pesto inside with the cheese, and spread a light layer on the outside of one piece of bread, then covered that with mayo. Then grilled it slowly in a small iron skillet over low heat until the cheese was melty and the pesto had crusted on the outside. So simple, so delicious! A good hot sandwich after a cold morning’s work outside.