Tuesday, March 17, 2009

it lives!

i had the best day. one might even dare to say i had the perfect day. first the weather was spectacular - sunny, high of 70, and the morning smelled of possibility and dew. i had made a "wake up casserole" (fried shredded potatoes, turkey bacon, spinach, eggs, and milk. duuuude) and dropped it along with my children off at our dear friends the tolentino's house. their son jakin is augustine's best friend and their daughter mya is olive's occasional sparring partner. then david and i headed over to the garden and got busy. first order of business was cleaning up the plot a little and throwing the stuff in the second compost. then out came the wheelbarrow and david scooped while i hauled and dumped the compost that was finished from the first pile onto the garden. that took about an hour but it was quiet and just the two of us enjoying the sunshine, perfect! then we raked the piles around and david tilled the thing while i rearranged the compost area (making the two areas more equal and defined, and putting down a layer of medium sized sticks at the bottom of the now bare first compost area to get ready for the next pile to go on top of it) i find banging rebar into the ground with bricks and hauling around sheet metal to make a compost bin very cathartic. lol.

david was still busy with the tiller (the garden space is after all about 1100 sq/ft i believe) so i got cracking on something ive been sort of intimidated to take on - pruning the raspberry bushes. this task has been denied for years because honestly we didnt know what the heck we were doing. after researching it i've come to realize that while the roots of raspberry bushes are annuals, the canes themselves are biennials. every year a new cane grows but does not produce fruit until the following year. then it dies. my problem of course was then, how do i be sure im removing the spent canes and not the ones who are the new ones that simply havnt begun to fruit? this stressed me out something fierce as seriously and truly i would be so sad if our bounty of organic berries was effected by my error. luckily the spent canes were pretty brittle so it was easy to tell which were alive and which weren't. but! stay tuned to see if i was right.

after david was finished tilling we raked it flat, marked out the rows and put down the seeds that were frost tolerant (onion sets, collards and the first sowings of spinach and carrots,) the rest will go in following the last anticipated frost date for central ohio, which is april 15. threw some water on it, slurped deeply from our kanteen and high fived at a job well done.

we borrowed a cell phone from rachel (babysitting the kids) because of course we dont own one, and called to say that we were heading out for a quick lunch and we'd be over soon. panera - i dont need to say any more. i seriously believe those people beamed into my brain when making their orchard harvest salad with the cherries/cherry vinaigrette. i could eat it every day and it is always the perfect addition to a good day or pick me up to a bad one. david even bought me a cherry danish which is definitely my favorite pastry, yet i never even buy them for some reason. (are we noticing a cherry theme here? hi, my name is jenny mae and i am a cherry addict. THERE I SAID IT)

we picked up the kids, they napped and we enjoyed our lunch while watching a movie. when they woke up we went to the zoo/aquarium! how many great things can we smash into one day!?! now we are back and augustine has requested a picnic for dinner.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your day sounds so fun!! Wondering if you would mind sharing the casserole recipe? :)

Olive said...

here it is

http://makefoodnotwar.blogspot.com/2008/04/wake-up-casserole.html

i added 2-3 ounces of frozen, well-drained spinach to the egg mixture this time. you can mix it up in so many different ways with different cheeses or veggies even. ive added broccoli before and nixed the bacon

mandi said...

oh my goodness...that is a great day! funny, i blogged about my fantastic day today too!

Ashley Malefyt said...

Hi, just wanted to leave a comment saying we've started another blog for our adoption!
savingolive.blogspot.com

Unknown said...

Your post inspired me to make a recipe i've been wanting to make for a long time! All this talk about cherries got me wanting some. The recipe is on my blog if you want to give it a try. chocolate chip cherry pecan oat bars! Oh and we tried your wake up casserole and everyone in the house devoured it including 3 kids with very different tastes. It's defieitely a keeper, and such a good basic recipe that you can add anything to. Thanks! Aimee

Olive said...

ashley - we are feverently praying for you guys! i have been since you first posted about her on your other blog. God is faithful, God is good!


aimee - YEAH!! i agree that it is a fantastic basic recipe with so much potential for variations based on different tastes. it's almost like a quiche but with, in my opinion, a tastier base (potatoes!!)