Pete Control

Well, we're around two weeks into gardening and we just now have many sprouts coming up in our gardens after our lovely recent rains.

Mr. Neighborhood Cat seemed to respond to our cat repellent spray, and Mr. Pete seemed to respond to the sprouts.

As in, he dug them up.

Only one of the yellow green bean squares was really damaged, and I think I managed to replant what was left of the sprouts fairly well.

Post damage-control:

Pete dug around in the marigold sprouts, too, and we can't spend all of the time he is outside watching him, so we came up with this:

Chicken wire! 

We got the idea from the square foot gardening book, but we cover the top with wire yet. We're not sure we will need that. (We'll probably end up doing it next weekend just to keep the birds out.)

It looks kind of trashy, but if that's what it takes to keep the damn dog out of my green beans, I'll do it. Pete hasn't even been interested in the other garden bed. He seems scared of the tomatoes. That dog....

I'm sure Chris was secretly pleased; he hates green beans.

I have a pot with nasturtiums in it. They just started to sprout, too. They looked really neat after the rains. The sprouts had rain drops trapped in their leaves.

(Sorry the picture kind of stinks. The sprouts are tiny!)

The pot was knocked over, so I had to replant a lot of the nasturtium sprouts, too. I didn't realize what intricate root systems such tiny sprouts would have!

Even though I've been really frustrated with that stupid dog today, I'm trying to remember the neat things I'm learning about plant sprouts. 

Dumb dog. 

(Who, me?)

Hobo Dinner

Apparently this meal is common in the scouting world, but I had no idea it existed: Hobo Dinner!

You'll need: 

4-5 medium potatoes

4-6 carrots

1 red or yellow bell pepper 

2-3 tomatoes

(optional, but not FODMAP friendly*) 1 onion

3-4 links polish sausage 

2-3 Tbsp butter

foil

an oven or a grill

Preheat oven or grill to about 350F.  Wash and chop the veggies into 2 inch (ish) pieces. Slice the sausage the same way.

Cut 3-5 large pieces of foil.  Fill each with a mixture of veggies and sausage.  Divide each tablespoon of butter into cubes or smaller pieces and spread the butter out among the foil packs. 

Seal the packs and place on the grill/in the oven for 30 minutes. Turn. Grill/bake for another 30 minutes.

Enjoy your moist and steamy veggies and yummy sausage hobo dinner!

*I'll post more about the FODMAP diet later. Google it if you're curious. 

We have sprouts!

Well, we've already learned a few lessons since we started gardening.

For instance, even though April 15 is a good day to plant things in our area, this year the weather is freaky and we really should have waited... the past two nights had frost warnings! It's almost May! Mr. Weatherman said we are 18 degrees below what we normally are this time of year.

We covered our beds with old blankets, and we didn't have much frost damage. One plant lost a few leaves, but otherwise they seem fine.

We got lucky.

And look!

Our purple green beans are sprouting! Woohoo!

So far we have marigold, lettuce, and purple green bean sprouts. It looks like we'll have some yellow green bean sprouts before long, too. 

I discovered stickers on Photobucket. I think I was having a little too much fun with them.

Behold!

Mystery Dog!

Yarn Loot

A couple of weeks ago I found some gift cards that we didn't use from Christmas, so Chris and I split them up, and I got a whole bunch of yarn-related loot!

Behold!

(Click to enlarge)

Links to the books/previews on Amazon:

Animal Hats

60 Quick Baby Knits

60 More Quick Baby Knits

The Chicks with Sticks Guide to Crochet

Happy Stitch

Little Crochet

So many projects! I think there are around 200 patterns/projects between all of those books. Maybe more.

I am determined to learn how to crochet this go-around. I can chain stitch and single crochet, but when I started trying to teach myself how to double crochet, things started getting really off. Crooked off. I have one decent potholder and a funky blob amigurumi wanna-be from my first attempts at crochet.

The fancy-shmancy potholder

Blobberella the Amigurumi Blob Thing

The Chicks with Sticks book is a fun read so far, and things seem pretty straightforward. If you don't want to spend $50 at your local yarn store for a beginner's crochet class, you might consider this ~$12.00 and try to learn by yourself. If this doesn't work, then I'll pay someone to teach me.

Since so many of the books are baby patterns, I feel like I should post a disclaimer. We are not expecting an addition to our family. We aren't planning on kids for a couple of years. Pete-pup is plenty of kid, thank you. But! We have friends and relatives who are having kids, and I love love love knitting baby things. The patterns in the "60" books are more difficult than my standard knitted gifts, so I'm really looking forward to learning new techniques and creating bigger projects.

Also, I figure if I pick one big project from each of the books, I just might be finished with them by the time we have a child. If I really get to work, maybe I'll make some more and reserve them for a second kiddo. You know, so they don't moan about their arrival being treated differently than the eldest and their baby book being incomplete or non-existent. I mean, these are my future kids we're talking about here. They're probably going to be whiny like me.

Currently I'm working on a baby blanket called the "Bring it On Blanket" found here.

The pattern is quite fun to knit, and I normally pick it up in the evenings when we are watching something on Netflix or Chris is playing video games.

I'm using Hobby Lobby's I Love This Cotton brand yarn in Pale Denim, Taupe, Pistache, Banana (orange bananas? I promise that color is actually light orange in person), and whatever color pink that is in the picture. I probably threw away the label when I balled up the yarn. Oops.

I'm pretty proud of myself because, as far as I can remember, this is my only project that I have on the needles right now.


...

Actually, I thought for a few minutes, and this is my 2nd project that I currently have on the needles. But that first one is a blanket that has been on indefinite hiatus for about two years, so it doesn't count.

So! I am doing pretty well. :)

Look How Our Garden is Growing!

One of the things that excited me most about home-ownership was the idea of a backyard garden. Back on our third-story, North-facing apartment balcony, we attempted to grow some tomatoes in one of those upside-down hangy things.

It didn't turn out too well. We got one tomato, and it barely turned orange. That poor plant tried its darndest, though.

Chris and I built our own beds out of pine according to the specifications found in All New Square Foot Gardening.  I bought the book last fall. I like it. We are using this book combined with our grandparents' and my dad's advice for our first garden. For the soil we used two parts garden soil to one part potting soil like my grandma and someone on HGTV (maybe? I can't really remember) suggested.

Our beds

Both beds have marigolds and nasturtiums (or nasty-terd-iums, as my husband likes to call them. I'm assuming he is referring to the cat poo from our friendly neighborhood wanderer who decided the beds were his personal litterbox rather than returning to the mindset of a 12-year-old). 

The South Bed has lettuce, carrots, cilantro, oregano, green green beans, yellow green beans, and purple green beans.

The North Bed has tomatoes and peppers. They are all transplants. Since this is our first garden I didn't want to attempt growing them from seeds indoors. If this goes well, maybe we'll build a cold frame and a mini-greenhouse in the backyard for starting seeds next year. 

The North Bed

Lettuce sprouts from the South Bed

Look closely or click to enlarge. They're there, I promise! 

Here's the official Emily-can't-remember-what's-what-so-she-made-a-chart Garden Chart

I'm really excited about growing some of our food ourselves. I'm sure we'll make plenty of mistakes along the way, but as long as we try, I'm not too concerned. 

I'll be sure to post lots of pictures as our yummies continue growing.