We have a new system in the garden: we now have pretty red flags on little sticks to put in our garden plots when we are away. The flags alert fellow gardeners that our plots may need watering. When we are tending our own gardens we can easily spend a few minutes spraying our neighbor’s
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries
Garlic and Gooseberries: New Spring, New Plan
Spring, summer, fall, winter, and then back to spring. The rhythm of a year is both reassuring and haunting. When you are going through a new experience – a job, a new school or city, or any life change – the first year is unfamiliar and every season is unexplored territory. Then suddenly, you are
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Light Streams In
I walked out the door without a jacket this weekend. An unfamiliar warmth and exhilaration swept over me, quickly followed by a wave of distrust. Not sure if I could really believe that our long winter is finally over, I went back inside and got an extra layer, just in case. The plants and blossoms
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Lessons from the Garden
The inevitable darkness of winter has arrived. In November I cleaned up our tired garden in preparation for its long rest, pulling up and composting the yellowed vines and spent plants, and removing the buggy broccoli stalks. The cilantro and arugula had shot up, flowered and gone to seed, so I scattered the little
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries/Wednesday Wandering: Gilroy Garlic
When I was a child in California, my family often went camping. So many images are woven into the memories of those early days, our car pulling a trailer over miles of highways, the scent of pine trees in the campgrounds, the barren, dry hills of southern California. Somewhere in the basic vocabulary lessons of
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: My Runaway Pumpkin
As I was leaving the community garden the other day, I happen to glance back and I gasped. From where I was standing on the path I could see into my neighbors’ plot, and there, on their side of the fence between our gardens, was a sweet little pumpkin. MY sweet little pumpkin. A vine
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries/Food Friday: Saving Sage
All summer I have been drying herbs to keep for cooking during the year. My kitchen table always seems to have oregano or sage, tarragon or thyme laid out on paper towels. The lemon balm, lemon verbena and chamomile never got too robust, but I did get a bit of them dried and put away
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere
The calendula has arrived! I planted seeds early on, but never knew if they had taken hold, not quite sure how to distinguish their green sprouts from weeds. Suddenly though, there are beautiful orange and yellow flowers everywhere. It makes me happy to see them, bright and cheerful spots of color. Soon I will be
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Benign Neglect
A month or so ago, I was already feeling the melancholy of fall approaching but my garden ignored my dark cloud and just continued growing. I visited a bit less often as I was out of town and other tasks were calling for my attention. Somehow I felt the garden was winding down but it
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Melancholy
When I came home from the garden the other day and started to make dinner, I found myself overcome with sadness. I stopped washing the zucchini – from Trader Joe’s, not the garden, since only one has been harvested from my enthusiastic plants – and let the melancholy wash over me. Why was I sad?
Read on »Food Friday/Garlic and Gooseberries: Italian Zucchini and Leek Omelet
In honor of my daughter’s upcoming semester in Italy, I made what I call an Italian omelet for brunch the other day. Actually, I am not sure if this is how they make omelets in Italy, but somewhere along the way I learned this technique and have always called it that. Using our first zucchini
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Everyone Needs Space to Grow
The milk spray was a success! It seems to have gotten rid of the powdery mildew and the zucchini are robust again. That is a bit of a mixed blessing, however, as they are now taking over that part of the garden. They have crowded out the eggplants which had been the strongest and most
Read on »Food Friday/Garlic & Gooseberries: Swiss Chard and Bacon Soufflé
Soufflés seem to have gone out of fashion. Why is that? I think maybe they seem intimidating, and yes, they do have a lot of steps that might seem complicated at first. Then there is that persistent possibility that they may not rise, or that they will rise and then fall before getting to the
Read on »Garlic & Gooseberries: Midsummer Report
Progress: The garden has been busy growing and the first eggplant has been harvested along with our first and only yellow summer squash so far. There are lots of zucchini and yellow squash blossoms but only one actual squash. I had never heard of anyone’s zucchini plant not producing until I met my neighbor, who
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Bolting
Browsing in a small bookstore recently, I came across this treasure: Vegetable Gardening in the Northeast by Marie Iannotti. Even in today’s world where it seems every question can be answered by a Google search, there is something very comforting about holding a book of instructions in my hands. It feels like everything I need,
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Gooseberry Demise
I imagine you all waiting with bated breath for news of the unripe gooseberries I brought home the first day, the very berries that inspired the name of this series, along with the now dead garlic. Well, I have a story for you. My fruit allergy did not stop me from wanting to make jelly,
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: New Life
A very exciting day at the garden! I visited a few days after the rains from hurricane Arthur had passed, followed by temperatures in the 80s and 90s, and I could practically hear the plants growing. First of all, it had become obvious which of those new shoots were weeds, and which were not. Hallelujah
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: A Bit of Bartering
On a recent weekend day, my husband decided it was time to be proactive in the bunny wars. We had not yet experienced any attacks on our young sprouts, but chicken wire seemed to be a good idea. So he unrolled fencing and hammered posts into the ground to anchor it, and our little plot
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Little Sprouts, Little Critters
There is something going on in my garden and I am feeling a bit uneasy. There are tiny green sprouts everywhere on the rich dark soul. At first it seemed obvious that the seeds I had planted were starting to grow, but now after the first big rain they are coming up even where I
Read on »Garlic and Gooseberries: Meeting the Neighbors
We have slowly been meeting the other gardeners, and they seem to eye us with caution. I don’t blame them. This community garden is sort of off the map, having been grandfathered into the city’s program, and the gardeners are all very happy to be left to do their own thing. The only two rules
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