Catherine's Gourds

This deserved its very own post. Catherine grew the most beautiful bunch of gourds! These are all Bushel Basket gourds from my starts. Aren't they wonderful? In a few more months, they will have cured enough that she can remove the skin and start making art with them.

Almost Spring

It is beginning to feel like Spring. Down the street, the tulip tree is blooming. We get to enjoy it as we walk to the farm, which we now do daily.

At the farm, the daffodils are blooming. The first one bloomed on 1-25.

I have been getting our seeds started. I put these in on 1-24, and I just planted 2 more flats yesterday (2-9). Flat A is tomoatoes: Blue Beauty, Caiman, Black Icicle, Black Krim, Indigo Apple, Indigo Rose, Momotaro, Pink Berkeley Tie Dye, Tangerine, and Cosmonaut Volkov. Flat B is two rows each of saved Indigo Blueberry, Sungold, Principe Borghese, and then 3 rows of Pizza Pepper.

Flats C and D are Peppers. C is all Jalapeno, while D is 1-7 Serrano, 8 Jalapeno, and 9-10 purple Jalapeno. They are all well up by 2-7. On 2-9 I planted more peppers: Flat E is Serranos in 1-7 and Jalapenos in 8-10. Flat F is specialty peppers: 1-2 Fish, 3 Red Thai, 4 Pasilla, and 5-10 Nardellos.

I planted peas in Sector 4 on 1-30. I made squares of each variety, with the shortest in the front.

Meanwhile, at our house, the Hallmark broccoli are thriving. The heads are huge!

They are as delicious as they are enormous.

They headed up later, which was actually an advantage.

At the farm we're harvesting broccoli and lettuces, and drinking Hoppy Lager.

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What We're Eating
With all that broccoli, I made some quiches. I'm working on perfecting the crust.

We also had a Wurst and Kraut fest with Tom and Nancy. And Tom was right: the kraut is much better cooked, even if that kills all the lovely probiotics.

And we helped Jacqueline celebrate her 50th with a brunch party. This "blue plate special" is actually a cake!

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We got the new piece of fence up at the farm. One day we set poles...

And the next day we put up boards.

It makes a huge difference!

I got the tub area thoroughly cleaned out and the butterfly bush well pruned back.

But it hasn't been all work... We went to the Hop Hunter release party.

We saw Tom's Band, Old Spice, play at Shenanigans,

and ran into Sal and Denise from Malvinas.

And we shot some pool at Duffy's with Tom.