Beauty of the Earth

Spring has finally arrived to northern Indiana! And those greenhouse seedlings have been thriving in the warm, humid weather. We've had some great thunderstorms in the last few weeks as well.

Today is one of my rare days off from the bank, and instead of being beautiful outside for me, it's gloomy and they're calling for severe storms. So I have made a nice long list of things to be accomplished. I am discovering that it helps me to make lists - so that I can physically see what needs to be done and worked on, and that it isn't really as much as I think, and therefore keeps me from becoming to overwhelmed.

My darling Alex bought me a new lawn mower for our anniversary, and girls out there, I know that you might be a little put off by an anniversary gift like that, but it was a gift I really appreciated. Alex and I have an agreement when it comes to caring for our home. I do the outside work (that I am physically capable of doing, since I'm only 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds) and he does the inside chores that I don't like to do - like vacuuming. Yuck. So I was really pleased with the new mower, which has a catch bag on it, which now means that I can finally collect the grass clippings to use for mulch around the veggie garden.

I had some gorgeous red leaf and buttercrunch lettuces growing in the back garden, and imagine my shock yesterday in the morning when I stepped out the back door and found a family of bunnies muching away on them! So much for our fresh salads! But I'm not discouraged, because Alex finally said we would stop putting off the building of the fence and it's officially on the to-do list for this weekend. Sometimes it takes a loss to get other things accomplished.

I got the corn planted this weekend, and transplated the Early Girl tomatoes into bigger pots. They're almost 6 inches tall now, with 6-8 leaves, so they made it out of that brutal cold snap and are very healthy now. Still not ready to leave the greenhouse, but soon!

Had one of my little impatient moments the other day and got frustrated over my sugar snap peas, because they haven't shown a single sign of bearing yet! So Alex said "When did you plant the seeds?" and I pulled out my journal and was reminded that I planted them on March 30, instead of March 17, like I've done in the past. They take 60-75 days to bear, so I've still got about 14 days before they will show signs of flowers and pods. Silly me, getting impatient. :) I apparently forgot that the principles of sowing and reaping are not just for my spiritual life.

There are tiny buds on the raspberries, flower heads on the onions and leeks, and lots of broccoli, carrot and beet tops pushing out of the dirt. The potatoes are simply astonishing - about two feet tall now and a gorgeous emerald green. I've been building up the mounds around the plants so they will have plenty of growing space. I'm pretty sure I'll have spuds to spare this fall, but I'm also looking ahead to winter, and anticipating quite a haul for the root cellar.

Well, there's a lot to do today, so I'll leave you with these few pictures, which I snapped quickly this morning before the storm blew in.

The Official Start

Although I technically seeded my spring cabbages back in December, today marks the first official day of the Peek Family's 2011 Vegetable Garden! Hooray!

I have BIG fat plans for this year's garden, including turning my front yard into a virtual haven of edible landscaping when not only will the vegetables flourish, but the wildlife (except for that wretched mole!) will be welcome and enchantment abounds. My magnolia tree is about to have its own special raised bed and the days of those 3 Bradford pear trees (that serve no purpose except to shade important parts of my yard that need the sunshine and drop nasty inedible fruits all over the sidewalk in the winter) are numbered!

I had to scrub under my nails and pick dirt out of my nose of course, but these annoyances actually made me smile because I got to spend 2 hours out in the dirt.

I started today's efforts by digging all the leaves out of the front flower bed. Friends, autumn's leaves are nature's way of protecting things over the winter. I piled up the autumn leaves around all of my perennial herbs in the front flower bed this winter, and while they hibernated under 6 feet of snow (we had 5 snowstorms over this past winter) the leaves kept their roots warm and safe. I just cleaned out all the leaves and I am delighted to see the new growth coming in on the lavender, parsley and thyme. I intend to intersperse basil, oregano, marjoram, sage, lemon verbena, chamomile, comfrey, tansy and angelica around in the front and make a tea garden envious of the most austere British gardener. I'd like to have a row of sunflowers along the porch wall as well, but I tried that last year and was not successful. This year however, I am using a new seed company, and will try it one more time.

I went to our backyard and extended the bed that I used for lettuces last year and joined it to the bed that formerly held pumpkins. I now have blisters on my thumbs, but they are trophies of my hard work. This bed is now four feet longer than it was previously and will hold an heirloom variety of sweet corn called 'Country Gentleman' or shoepeg corn. It is an open pollinated variety, not a hybrid, and I am planting it so that I can save seeds for next season as well as enjoy fresh sweet corn this summer. But I can't plant corn until the beginning of May, as the ground is simply to cold right now to ensure proper germination. So instead, I direct seeded sugar snap peas and seed potatoes into the far right third of the bed, since they are relatively cold tolerant and the peas will germinate and grow quickly.

In the green house, I sowed a lot of seed today, including several for the heirloom tomato pictured above, which is a variety known as a pineapple tomato. These tomatoes are heirloom, so their seeds are savable, and they grow to be about 5 inches in diameter and I am told they are sweet enough to eat for breakfast. I also seeded another heirloom variety called the Pink Accordion, which also grows to be quite large, and has a rosy pink hue instead of red. And of course, I seeded my Early Girls, which I am just dying to get out into the garden itself. Early Girls germinate in less than 10 days and then grow and ripen in about 60 days, and I hope I can wait until the beginning of June to taste my own sweet tomatoes. And tonight I plan to pay a visit to the garden center to pick up a few more peat cups and another bag of seed starting mix, so that this weekend I can get the rest of the produce started. The lettuces and broccoli didn't get the early start I was hoping for this year, due to all the frosty weather and snow that wouldn't let up.

If you're in my neck of the woods, do stop by and see what's springing forth from the ground!

Old Man Winter Better Move Along

March and April of 2010 was probably what I would describe as a perfect spring. When March rolled around, the days immediately warmed. They rose to the mid 50's and 60's and stayed there consistently until the end of May. It rained a lot in April, a perfect amount I would say, because my garden had plenty of water throughout the summer with very few efforts to keep it hydrated with the sprinkler. The sun shone and warmed up the ground beautifully and most of my seeds in the greenhouse germinated and sprang to life without too much coaxing.

This year, Old Man Winter has me by the balls. Figuratively speaking of course, since I don't actually have any balls to be had by. This winter weather just will not let up!

Come on Mother Nature! You need to shake off these blues you've been feeling and let some sunshine in!

I have cabbages, broccoli, peas and lettuces to plant, and the ground is hard and frozen. It actually snowed last week. Not that snow in March is an uncommon occurance in Northern Indiana, but instead an unwelcome one.

So Friday is April 1 and I have a paycheck coming in. I have planned to use part of that paycheck at the garden center on a few trinkets to help me finish up my landscaping. It's also supposed to be reasonably warm outside. With any blessing from Mother Nature, the herb garden should be planted by Sunday, and the seed potatoes should be in their beds.

I'm going to be visiting my sister-in-law, Rosa, in mid-April to help her and her family plant their 2011 vineyard. It's very exciting. In the last couple years, they have become very interested in wine and the fine craft of wine-making. And the products have not been too bad either! Personally, I teared up a little bit when I drank the last dregs of her cherry wine! It's definitely a retirement investment for them, and I envy them a little bit, because they have the kind of property that I would really like to have someday - 12 acres of land, space to hunt, horses, a perfectly proportioned home for the amount of land.... and so on and so forth. One day, one day. That's what I continue to remind myself. Alex and I will not always have to live on a 37 foot wide plot between the cruddy neighbors that we have now that keep encroaching on our property lines. One day, we'll have that 12 acres, maybe even more.

So anyway Old Man Winter, I'm really ready for you to shuffle along until November. Please move along so that I can get outside and get our summer produce going! We need to eat you know!

Been Awhile!

My goodness! I feel like I'm returning from death - I've been away for so long!

Well, to get the good stuff out of the way at the very start, I am very pleased with my new job at the bank. I like the people that I'm working with, I like the customers (thus far) and I haven't run into anything that I'm uncomfortable with yet. I am concerned with getting referrals when my 90 day grace period is up, but I guess that if I can trust God to come through for me when I needed employment, I can also trust Him to come through for me when it comes time to meet my quotas for the months. My feet get tired by the end of my shift, but there is always something to do, so I'm never bored. The pay is great, the best I've ever received for any job, and I've been working much more than I was promised - the last two weeks I've logged more than 70 hours, and I was hired to do 40-45 hours over a 2 week pay period. This makes my husband really happy since he no longer has to work excessive overtime to help me pay my share of our bills.

My branch manager asked me if I woke up or went home with feelings of never wanting to come back. I told her no, and she asked if I was being honest. In the back of my head, I thought about the dreaded insurance job that made me cry every single day and put feelings of dread, anxiety and guilt into my spirit - all things that are unnecessary. I haven't felt any of that working for the bank. With the insurance job, I knew from the second day of training by the feeling in the pit of my stomach that it wasn't for me. I enjoyed the training for the bank and I transitioned seamlessly into the branch activity. By my third full day, I didn't even need to be supervised. My drawer has balanced every day, and my work has been perfect.

Yes, I am aware that I have a personality defect that is linked to performance. Why do you think I wanted to become a concert pianist? Everything in my life is a performance. It's unhealthy, but I mentally validate my self-worth by how I perform at any given situation in life. It passes after a few weeks and I become more tolerable of my own mistakes and less disappointed in myself. I've learned to adapt. I should probably ask for healing for that, but it's amazing what we learn to live with.

Now for the ADD moment of the day - I was horrified to hear the Weather Channel using Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as a background for disaster photographs from Japan.

I am always hesitant to comment on any kind of disaster that happens around the world, just like I am very hesitant to comment on anything political. There are far too many opinions out in the etherspace, and most of them have zero substance. I don't know why it happened, or what will come out of it, or if people around the world will handle it correctly, and therefore I am not qualified to offer any kind of opinion. I AM very sorry for what has happened, and human suffering brings me to tears, but I really have nothing else to say about the situation at this time.

I've had to shut my website down for a couple weeks. There is a LOT to do, and keeping up with orders was getting difficult. Just until I am more comfortable with work, get the spring yard cleanup underway and the plantings finished, and finish up some other projects around the house. So fear not! L.Peek Designs is not out of business! I just need to play catch up. :)

Speaking of catching up, I have been sitting around all morning. It's time to get busy on my day off!