Days of PDX

Today marks my 11th day in Portland, Oregon.

The house is still full of boxes, though fewer and fewer as time passes. We haven’t had many times we needed to open something in a hurry, but there have been one or two incidents.

Peaches and strawberries are still in season. I didn’t manage to each ANY in Chicago this year, so I can’t tell you how happy this is for me. So far in PDX, I have eaten peaches straight and in cakes and as sides to savory meals. I have gorged on strawberries. (And tomatoes.)

There’s a farmers market just across the street from my house. And there’s a couple green spaces nearby that are fun to walk around. A big park nearby has me considering purchasing this cart and an exercise pen to have a makeshift yard for the pups to run around in while I work nearby.… Continue reading →

14 July 2014 Garden Photos

Bill and I left town for about two weeks. When we came back, our garden had gone kind of wild. Others were watering for us, and may have harvested a few things. I don’t know. I did, however, take a bunch of photos. There’s a sample below, including a tomato I’d like diagnosed, please! If you’d like to see more, just click through any photo to get to the image within the flickr set & poke around!

After we took all these photos, we went to dinner. Then we came back and harvested a ton of green bell peppers. I’m going to demand Jen share her stuffed pepper recipe.… Continue reading →

More Garden Photos

On Sunday, I called my father and he accused me of only calling out of “an overdeveloped sense of obligation.” This was a load of crap, of course. I called him out of a perfectly tuned sense of obligation. Eventually, we both agreed we could maybe call one another more often.

Then he asked for garden photos and I said he clearly wasn’t reading my blog. To which he admitted, but then pointed out I could be more aggressive about sharing. So, I’ll do that. And I’ll put up a few more photos, because I love him and I think he’d enjoy them. Also, because I enjoy sharing them.

This isn’t my usual view walking in, as I tend to enter from the southwest, not the east.… Continue reading →

Gardening 2014

I’ve started a bit of gardening again. Previously, I’ve done kind of a lot of container gardening, but I’ve been pretty clear that it’s more for the joy I find in growing things than any sort of self-sufficiency. This is pretty good, because sometimes I only get three tiny tomatoes.

But I’ve taken to gardening on a larger scale. Sort of. I got a plot in a community garden near-ish my home. And then I promptly agreed to share it with a new friend, John. John promptly filled his half of the plot with tomatoes, peppers and basil.

My half of the plot promptly got a couple of mustard greens. And the sage cut back dramatically. But it still basically looks like this:

My friend Toni has sent me some seeds, as a gift.… Continue reading →

Taming the Mania

Note: I wrote this post on the 23rd & then had some issues getting it uploaded before I left for Baltimore. So please read it accordingly.

My home smells a bit like lovage today. Very faintly. I, as planned, stripped all the leaves off and chopped them very finely. They’re frozen in ice cube trays now. I put the stems out with hummus to see if they’d be an adequate celery snack substitute. Only Bill was willing to try them (I don’t like celery much), and he said the stems were entirely too woody for that kind of consumption. So, into the stock bag they went.

I also chopped the rhubarb into chunks and froze that on a freezing sheet1. I’ll dump that into a baggie today.… Continue reading →