Spring has sprung!

It's the first full day of spring, and although the weather has been typically Seattle springlike (cool and wet, but not reliably wet, so you never know if you will really need that raincoat when you head out for work in the morning), many happier signs of spring abound.

One of the things I love about spring is the element of change. Every time I take a walk, whether around my garden or around my 'hood, something is blooming, sprouting or opening that wasn't the day before. Never a dull moment.

Even though the weather was bleh on Sunday, we got lots o' planting done at the homestead.

• 30 bareroot coneflowers
• 17 bareroot Nootka roses
• 12 forget-me-nots
• A 4-foot row of edible peas
• A 3-foot row of sweet peas
• 10 bunchberries (groundcover dogwoods)
• 10 Kinnickinnick
• 12 assorted gallon-size perennials from Costco
• 5 Camas (a NW native bulb)
• 1 maidenhair fern
• 1 hosta
• 24 assorted oriental lily bulbs
• 7 assorted dahlia bulbs

Whew!

The weather on Saturday is supposed to be respectable, so I will hopefully get the rest of my ferns (5) and hostas (11) planted, along with my annual fuchsia starts (20), one hellebore and two clematis that are still in their black plastic pots from last year.

Now that I'm starting to plant spring veggies, I need to yank out the last of the fall-winter holdouts. I feel guilty that I didn't eat more kale over the winter, but since it is still in great shape, I have plans to use up about eight cups of the nutritious greens in a fritatta and a turkey chili verde.

I've been entering everything I eat into the free nutrition calculator on Fitday, and it's been very educational to see the results. Given that many foods I eat appear on my menu repeatedly (eggs, sprouted grain bread, turkey breast, broccoli, salad greens, peppers, skim milk, cottage cheese, bananas, apples, avocados, whey protein powder, energy bars, frozen berries, whole grain cereal, nuts, olive oil, yogurt), it's interesting that some days I nearly hit the mark on all of the various important nutrients, and other days I'm way down on a few. Also, some days I seem to hit the 30-40-30 protein-carb-fat ratio effortlessly (within a percentage point or two) and on others I have to struggle to keep the carbs in check.

I figure that once I have a few more weeks of consistent food reportage logged, I can really start tweaking my menus. I'm aiming to have my weight lifting days a bit higher in calories and carbs, and my non-lifting days less on both. Once I start logging one high-mileage walking day on the weekend (for half-marathon training), I can have a higher-carb meal afterwards, too.

Tuesday's workouts:
Morning: Suhaila Salimpour's Bellydance Fitness Fusion Pilates DVD (40 minutes); Darshan's Bellydance Tribal Fusion NYC DVD (drills section, 30 minutes)
Lunch: 4-mile walk

Tuesday's food overview:
1786 calories (33% protein, 32% carbs, 31% fat, 5% alcohol)

Wednesday's workouts:
Morning: Rachel Brice's Yoga, Isolations and Drills DVD (30-minute workout)
After work: NROWLFW "A" workout with kickboxing warmup
Evening: Bellydance choreography class

Wednesday's food overview:
1842 calories (26% protein, 45% carbs, 29% fat)

Sowing the seeds of love

The combination of J's whimpering of "when are you going to plant lettuces" AND the fact that I actually meant to plant the first spring veggies last weekend AND a sunny window of opportunity in a day of very changeable weather forced me outside after work (at home today and after getting a pot of beef daube simmering on the stove.

One hour of work (and one hour of worrying that gusts of wind would blow my precious seeds away) allowed me to sow:

• Cabbage ("Ruby Ball" and "Derby Day")
• Broccoli ("Small Miracle")
• Swiss chard ("Rainbow")
• Wild Arugula
• Spinach ("Teton")
• Endive (frisee)
• Wild garden mustards
• Cilantro
• Lettuce (a mix)

All seed (except the cilantro) was from Territorial Seeds. While I drool over many seed catalogs, I trust Territorial the most, since their research gardens are, like my garden, in the Pacific Northwest, west of the Cascade Mountains (albeit in Oregon's Willamette Valley, which does have slightly warmer summers than Seattle).

Since this year I am trying to garden according to the phases of the moon and other astrological signs (sounds kooky, I know, but I think there is actually something to it), I have to grab my planting windows when I can, which can be hard this time of year when said windows may be filled with soaking rain. Today was one of the best days of the month for planting, period, and it was in the right moon phase for planting crops that grow mostly above ground. So, whew, I'm glad I managed to get it done!

Busy as a bee

Seriously. We saw our first bee of the season in the garden last weekend, and since so few flowers are in bloom right now, it was indeed busy.

The last three weekends have provided enough glimpses of springlike weather (with a strange, glowing orb in the sky and temperatures above bone-chilling) that I pronounce that the 2008 gardening season has officially begun in our small homestead. J and I took a trip to a specialty nursery that stocks more varieties of rhododendrons than most people can imagine. It is a dangerous, dangerous place (it would have been more dangerous if we realized at the time that many, many varieties of Japanese maples were also to be had).

We had planned on buying only a few small rhodies (by small I mean those that max out at about 1’ x 1’ or 2’ x 2’) as evergreen anchor plants in a still-empty bed in the middle of our front yard. Well…we came home with 10. For anyone out there who things rhodies are simply big-leaved foundation shrubs (especially ubiquitous in the Pacific Northwest), the diversity in just those few plants we adopted is astounding. Big leaves, tiny leaves (1” by 1/8”), round paddle-shaped leaves, narrow pointy leaves. Flowers in shades of lemon yellow, sky blue, violet, deep red, cream, white, cotton candy pink and pink fading into white. Lovely. The largest of these will reach 3’ x 3’ over many, many years.

In case you don’t think miracles exist, we arrived home with our plant bounty and immediately put ALL OF THEM into the ground. Unheard of! We also moved three plants to the front yard from their temporary resting places (a Viburnum, a small false cypress (Chamaecyparis pisifera ‘Snow’) and a small variegated-leaved evergreen shrub whose name I can’t recall...)

It’s amazing how a few hours work can transform a landscape. Especially when the rest of our front yard already has young shrubs and trees in place, along with a lovely-even-in-winter herb border, foxgloves that never figured out it was winter, a winter vegetable patch (mostly kale, chard and beets) and masses of emerging spring bulbs.

My ambitiousness extended to planting four bags of bareroot perennials from Costco, including bleeding heart (Dicentra), maidenhair and cinnamon ferns, trillium and about 20 assorted hostas. I plugged a dozen of the hostas around the rhodies, for a nice contrast of leaf size and shape. I’ll add some deep purple columbine later, along with three hellebores I picked up at Costco last night (I also picked up a bag of 12 variegated-leaf hostas [after swearing up, down and sideways to J that I had actual spots for them] and a flowering pear tree that has a narrow enough mature width for our fenced side yard.).

A lovely line of coneflowers (Echinacea purpurea)will flow on the street side of the rhody bed, once we pick them up from a conservation district native plant sale next week.

Indoors, most of my tomato seeds have sprouted (except for holdout Koralik...not sure what it's waiting for) and I hope to see action from my pepper and eggplant seeds any day now. With grow lights glowing from the basement 24-7, I'm sure our neighbors must think we're growing pot. Heh, heh.

Anticipation is making me wait...for spring

I am so ready for spring. And not just because Mother Nature is cackling as she sends temperatures in Seattle plunging again. It’s because I placed my annual spring seed order with Territorial Seeds this week. I can’t wait for them to arrive (My preeeecioussss...).

Of course, in planning my order, I ran smack dab into one of my most tormenting addictions: heirloom winter squash seeds. I thought I had it licked, but I guess my change in location was just a temporary salve.

You see, my previous house (about an hour north of Seattle) was on a half-acre lot. We had a HUGE vegetable garden. With all the space in the world for whatever my little seed-planting soul desired. Couple that with the fact that I think most vegetables are as pretty as they are edible, and you can see how I got led into temptation.

Winter squash wasn’t my only trouble. Summer squash was tough, too. And do you have any idea how many pretty heirloom pole beans there are? Do you? Then there were the lettuces: oak leaf, ruffled leaf, tongue-shaped leaf, butter head, speckled…the list REALLY goes on and on.

One thing about lettuces, pole beans and summer squash is that they don’t take up TOO much room. You can’t say that about winter squash. Boy, can those babies sprawl! So beautiful, too. In fact, almost too beautiful to actually eat… . (Don’t even get J started on this point. Boy, do I still hear about it!)

When we moved to Seattle’s urban core and had only small community garden plots to call our own, sheer space constraints pushed any thoughts of planting winter squash off the table. The space situation isn’t a whole lot better with the veggie plot that takes up most of the plantable area in our current back garden…but there’s a new twist to the plot this year. (Accidental pun alert: story plot…garden plot.)

When we turned our front yard from a sloping lawn to a leveled-off, retaining wall encased garden last year, most of the trees and shrubs we planted were small, to save on $ (since plants do grow, often faster than you know). So we have lots of bare space right now. Space where winter squash vines could quite happily meander.

Yes, when I realized this, I did have to be careful not to hyperventilate.

I felt pretty good, limiting myself to only four varieties of winter squash + one pumpkin, but J made me remove one from my online shopping cart [sniff]. The one I am most excited about, my non-negotiable, is Marina di Chioggia. This squash first crossed my radar years ago, but it became a must-have when I read Barbara Kingsolver’s account of encountering it in its natural habitat (Italy) in “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.”

I’m also pretty pleased with my pumpkin pick, Fairytale. I’ll also be planting some Small Sugar pumpkin seeds I already have.

2008 is going to be my best vegetable garden year ever (well, to date). With a smaller urban yard, and no guerilla gardening to be done this year (digging ditches, removing sod, putting in a side yard where once there was driveway), I can focus on my vegetable babies. Hey, spring! Hurry the heck up, will ya?

Ready, set...garden!

I bet you didn't know it, but today was the first day of my gardening season. It was the first weekend day of 2008 with no rain, so J and I jumped on the chance to do a little tidying around the old homestead.

It's amazing what a difference plucking up the kazillion tiny weeds that were growing JUST TO SPITE ME and laying down a layer of Zoo Doo can do to make the garden look almost springtime fresh.

We got enough Doo out of the plastic-covered pile on our driveway to actually reclaim a few feet for, you know, parking. I planted the last 240 of the, again, kazillion flower bulbs I bought last fall. Better late than never. They were tiny bulbs so the planting went fast, thank god, because my fingers were half frozen (maybe that was my just punishment for being so neglectful to them).

I trimmed back last year's now-dead top growth on the coreopsis, veronica and echinacea (but not on the foxgloves...I swear those things don't know it's winter). J cut back the canes in the fall raspberry bed and I started cleaning up the strawberry bed...until we called it a day for early cocktail hour. Can't work TOO hard, now.

It was a very good year

I know it's not Thanksgiving, but 2007 has been a significant year for me. So, as it draws to a close, it seems fitting to declare my thanks for what I'll call my Top 10 Events of 2007. In rough chronological order, they are:

1. Successfully rehabilitated my broken ankle (broken 10/12/06, lots o' metal installed on 10/14/06).

2. Set up home gym in basement with free weights and benches purchased inexpensively on Craigslist. Renewed my commitment to serious weight lifting...as all women should!

3. Resumed weekly bellydance class, this time from a fantastic new (to me) teacher. I feel blessed that both of my long-term teachers (to date) have been top-notch.

4. Completely landscaped our previously boring front yard. Thanks to He Who Puts Up With Me (who I will refer to as "J." from this point forward) for doing the heavy lifting on that one. We're talking rock walls, et al.

5. Reconnected with my long-lost high school-to-college best friend at my 20th high school reunion. (Also: Discovered that high school-to-college boyfriend was not aging particularly well.)

6. Lost 47 pounds since February (when I could start going for proper walks again), and am now at a healthy size 8.

7. Took an amazing workshop from Amy Sigil of Unmata. Marveled at the complicated ways in which the human body can move.

8. Welcomed a healthy (albeit a bit premature) niece into the world.

9. Walked a half-marathon for the first time, and saw my months of dedicated training pay off with a good finish time.

10. Discovered my next avenue for fitness fun, after a chance encounter with a visiting hooper named Spiral.

Phoenix rising

On my way home from walking Doofus today, I stopped by my community garden to do a little pre-fall cleanup on my plot.

I pulled out some mildewed calendula, cut back a few sunflowers that had been completely picked over by birds, and pulled out the bush bean plants that were finished producing. Then, as I cut back a tomato vine that was straining to reach beyond the boundaries of my plot, I witnessed a small miracle.

The artichoke plant that had been so rudely broken off at soil level, victim to a random act of vandalism, is growing back. Yes, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, this artichoke plant has mustered enough strength from its young root system, without benefit of any foliage to gather energy from the sun, to push skyward a dense thicket of beautiful, green new leaves.

I am so happy. My small garden has seen justice.

And shortly, I am off with He Who Puts Up With Me to go see "The Aristocrats," a movie all about the raunchiest joke ever told. That makes me happy, too.

What else is making me happy right now? The weather has turned cool enough for my boy cat to become a lap cat again (my girl cat is a lap cat year round, because she's an attention whore). And I have a crockpot full of spicy black beans with chorizo sausages simmering away. Yes, life is good.

See, I'm not always moody!