Garden Archives - Page 4 of 7 - A Golden Afternoon: Simplified Home Living

A Few Little Fall Finds

1. Honeycomb Earrings from oliveandcocoa.com that I love so very much.

2. Goat’s milk caramels’ from happygoat.com. These are awesome. Truly.

3. Adorable wicker backpack for picking apples on the weekend or as a very expensive toy picker-upper. brookfarmgeneralstore.com

4.Madeline Weinrib makes amazing textiles…that is no secret. madelineweinrib.com

5. Super-cute and cozy looking sweater-cuff boots from urbanoutfitters.com

6. How perfect is this marshmallow roaster? shopterrain.com

7. This camera has been on my wish list for a while. I do miss film. lomography.com

This Week:

I feel like I was able to take a deep breath in life this week. My husband was gone, but it was still a pretty good week. This was only because God helped me see it that way. This is a heavy travel time for my husband, mostly because he’s making up for a loss right now that wasn’t his fault. It’s a tough position for him and it also demands a lot from me. I don’t really watch TV with the exception of Project Runway and Top Chef, but I was able to watch the entire Mad Men series on netflix while he’s been gone. That a crazy lot of episodes. When my little buddy was crying this week , I was remembering what I said when he was a newborn babe in my arms. I told myself, no matter what, that I would take the time to cuddle him while I could and kiss his tears away. Someday he will smell like BO and will ask me what’s for dinner. My sweet girl is ridiculously distracted by birds during school. True, I created this monster by introducing her to the Audubon books, but it’s kind-of a problem. I’ve learned to help it by stopping for bird breaks in exchange for focus. It kinda works. My middle guy is constantly telling me I don’t play with him which is completely not true because I build him a Lego set (sometimes the same one every day) every morning before school. It still hurts my people-pleasing heart to hear those words but all I can do is my best. It seems that I am constantly hearing, “Let’s get together”. No, it’s not the song from “The Parent Trap”, it’s people that I care about who need a friend. I love and care about each one of my friends, but it’s so hard to have really good connections with people when you only see them every now and then. I can only have so many people over, ya know? We do so love to entertain, but it would be nice to take a break every now and then and be the company ;) It is great to see them when I can and this week I got to see quite a few. So, you see, at the end of the week, we can only do our best, every day, to pick out the things that gave us the most joy instead of the most pain. Sometimes my best feels like a failure, but this week God gave me the peace that it was enough and I am so very thankful for that.

28 is looking pretty good so far. Oh yeah, it was my birthday this week.

Another bright side to life: I’m thankful to still be in my 20’s a bit longer…

Garden in October

Just a little of what’s happening before the winter plantings. I had fun this year with the garden and at the same time I had the most pests, especially the 2 year-old kind. This was the year with the most expansion and I’m excited to plant more trees next spring! There have been so many people interested in gardening this year which is fun for me. I like to send people home with food whenever they come. I’m glad to have enough now to do that. This is the start of our 4th year in this house (crazy!) so the trees I rushed out to plant then are just now starting to produce. Wahoo!

If you are interested in starting a garden, just go do it. I started with 4 planter boxes, made by my husband, and expanded into my yard the next year. Although the boxes didn’t produce enough to share, I really enjoyed everything I learned during that time and recommend them for starting. I still use mine for my root veggies and to start my plants. I still remember how excited i was to bring my sparse but cute “harvest” in to cook with. Fun times. You have to start somewhere!

Here are the past garden pictures as well:

March

June

The curry plant is looking beautiful this time of year.

Just planted some peas a few months ago and they are coming in nicely. Oh wait, they were until the bugs got 1/2 of them.

It’s raspberry season! Even though the stores seem to carry them at the beginning of summer and they are draped across fourth of July desserts, now is their time to shine in the garden.

One pickin’ from our plant. These vines were never put back in the ground after we had taken it out to replace a piece of our fence. It didn’t grow much because of these but it still making a lot of berries right now.

Speaking of berries, our blackberries are on their way to 2012 awesomeness. They are going into their 4th year now and I’m finally getting the hang of it. If I train them now, I will get ridiculous amounts next year. Good deal. So, every few weeks I keep weaving the vines along the fence.

I planted 2 plum trees, Satsuma and Santa Rosa, this last spring and they are growing up too.

My middle guy planted watermelons just because and here is a baby one.

This pear tree is coming into its third year and is finally making pears

My persnickety mango tree that was here when we moved in finally decided to actually make some mangos. Sheesh. You give a tree some water and some love and how does it repay you…

We are getting a lot of apples this year which is sooo nice. These ones are on the other side of our fence which means my little unripe fruit snatcher can’t get to them.

The meyer lemons are turning colors soon. I’m gonna have fun with these fellas!

The kids and some friends planted lettuce and spinach in our front porch pots in August and they seemed quite happy there. Unfortunately, the next day some caterpillars moved in…I’m just keepin’ it real.

I love the passion fruit flower so much. More than that, I love passion fruit. It is one of my favorite flavors. It was one of the very first things I planted in hopes of getting many delicious fruits a few years later. Turns out, it was mis-labeled and is actually the non-fruiting version. Ugh. It’s pretty though.

The french tarragon is happy and I’m enjoying it before it goes dormant.

Fresh marjoram has been fun to have around as well. It has a very unique smell…much different than the dried kind.

Egyptian mint.

Another planting by my little buddy, a pumpkin this time.

A late season to tomato volunteer that is ready to go!

Roasted Brie with Figs and Honey

We were blessed with many figs this year. I LOVE the texture of fresh figs. The very thing that I love most, the seeds, is often what people don’t like about them. I had already made drunken fig jam last year and some regular fig jam as well, so I wanted to make something where you could have the texture and fresh flavor, but add some richness too. Enter: melting cheese.

I was thrilled to find these ceramic dishes at Anthro this last spring. They are perfect for displaying picked fruit from the yard.

All you need is some brie, figs, and honey. I used a goat brie from Trader Joe’s because that’s what I had, but any will do. I used some honey that we got from the Napa Valley where we visited a few months ago. I’ve bought it a few times before and it’s some of the best. Check out “Branches” honey from Katz and Company. Then, just roast at 400 until it melts into awesomeness. Drizzle with honey and sit down for a few minutes to enjoy. San Diego had a few random drops of rain today, so it was nice to enjoy this while watching “Fantasia” (the 1940’s version) with my family.

Quick Asian Pickles

I am so glad to be done with termites…for now anyway. We have had these crazy creatures in our house bugging us since we first saw their first “kick-outs” right after we moved in to our house 2 1/2 years ago. You see, our house was supposed to be tented before we moved in but while I was giving birth to #3 that wasn’t really taken care of for me by my realtor. Bummer to move in and find that out later but I’m over it now that everything is finished. We had to move out anything that might possibly enter your mouth (I even packed up my play-dough) and all of our plants. If you’ve seen my pantry, you know it was a lot to move. A big thank you to my parents for housing it all in their guest room. Thanks, Mom and Dad :).

This week I was recovering from a Sat/Sun migraine and the kids really wanted to make something so I opted for a surprisingly quick, quick pickle. We had 2 pickling cucumbers and 1 lemon cucumber we picked from our ~~backyard~~ local Red Farm. I knew it was enough for a jar so off we went.

I’ve been staring at this “Asian quick pickle” recipe for a while. I don’t know if any of the Asians make this kind of pickle but I’ve had similarly marinated Japanese cucumbers on my travels to the land of the rising sun.

Mix together all of the ingredients until the sugar is dissolved…minus the pickles, of course :)

Grab your cucumbers. Cut off the ends, peel, and take the seeds out.

^— They will look like this. Put the onions on the bottom of a jar (any jar because it’s not going into boiling water). Then, have the kids stuff the cucumbers in a jar.

Pour the liquid and put in the fridge. Enjoy almost immediately, but i think they were best the next day.

I let the kids snack on the leftover skins and seeds, then took them to my husbands office where he fangoriously devoured them all.

Asian Quick Pickles

(adapted from “Put ‘Em Up!“)

1 c. seasoned rice wine vinegar

2 T. low sodium soy sauce

2 T. sesame oil

2 T. raw sugar

a pinch or red pepper flakes

3 pickling cucumbers

1/2 a red onion or 1 large shallot

Here’s a lovely photo of my man and I whilst engaged, in Japan. I love that country, the people, and the honor that abides there.

Too busy to cook? Try this…

We’ve been super busy around here and although I’ve still been making regular meals, I haven’t had any time for projects. These jars are an easy way to enjoy the strawberry season and not let it pass you by. Alcohol and vinegar both allow you to throw whatever you want in without worrying about it needing to be sealed or processed. Endless possibilities! I am going to make lots of these this summer. The combos can be used for cocktails but you can also make some yummy fruit vinegars for salad dressings. The only requirement is that the fruit be covered by the liquid. Let them sit in a cool, dark place for at least 6 weeks.

Easy, right? Let me know what kinds of combos you come up with!