This past weekend, they helped me put mulch down in the front yard. I weeded, they mulched. It went quite well for a good 20 minutes before the mulch throwing began.

At another point in the weekend, we spent some time at Adam’s house and worked/played in his garden. Here, Berry attempts to mix soil and even it out in one raised bed.

And then we planted lettuce seedlings. Duncan was busy looking for garden fairies, but I’m sure he’ll help poke holes when it’s time to put some in our garden at home.

Wednesday night I got up in my weakened state to get a drink from the fridge and blacked out, collapsing on the floor, but not before squishing my face with the glass I was drinking from and bonking myself on the head. I have no memory of it, as I was already unconscious at the time.

It was very confusing to come around, lying on the cold, hard, wet floor (I was soaking in apple juice). I thought I’d fallen asleep somewhere. I ended up in Urgent Care yesterday as I went to work in the afternoon and was extremely dizzy. Fortunately, my brain isn’t bleeding. However, upon learning that I sometimes have an arrhythmic heart beat, I got to have an EKG and get to have some kind of Holter device strapped to me for a couple of days to check on my heart rhythm. Fun. I also have a very low resting heart rate, which doesn’t really surprise me, as everything else tends to be low as well – blood pressure, temperature, etc. Maybe my heart is just super healthy and efficient. Or maybe that’s why I blacked out.

What I was going to post about was our seed starting adventures last weekend. We don’t have much room in the garden here, but enough to grow some lettuce, arugula, etc. So, with Duncan and Berry’s enthusiastic help, we started seeds last weekend.

From 2010-02-February

It didn’t take them long to sprout on the kitchen window sill. This is how they look today.

From 2010-02-February

The ground is still too soggy to put them out any time soon – I need to work some compost into it that’s been brewing over the winter.

As our least is up mid-August, I won’t plant anything in the ground that won’t have ripened before it’s time to move out. I left a few dozen pounds of beautiful green tomatoes on the vines in Rochester when we moved. I’m told, by the new owner, that they were delicious. This time I’ll be putting them in pots.

More updates to follow soon. Some mysterious packages from grandparents arrived in the mail yesterday that the kids really enjoyed opening.

While I really enjoy eating food from our CSA, the Saturday Market or Creswell Farmer’s Market (what can I say, I can’t resist a farmer’s market), there’s something special about eating food from our own garden.

The most prolific producer so far is kale. I wasn’t sure about planting it — it’s not something we tend to eat a lot of. But I know it’s good stuff and I like to put it in soups. And I figure in the fall and winter we’ll be eating a decent amount of soup. So in the ground they went. And have since gone insane.

I took this picture when I first harvested it. Tonight we ate some more. And yet you still can barely tell I’ve been cutting it. After dinner, Kevin and the kids decided to eat it straight from the growing plant. You can’t get any fresher than that.

The idea came about after I told Duncan the story of going grocery shopping with him and buying kale for soup. He wanted to hold the bunch of kale and then started munching on it while sitting in the cart. I initially balked (as it hadn’t been washed) but then let him go for it. He wasn’t sure about that story, but decided to try it out again.

That’s not to say I have regrets about moving. Or working. Or having my mother live with us. But it is an adjustment. I don’t like knowing that I don’t have local friends, even though I didn’t often see my then-local friends in Rochester. They were still there. I knew where they lived.

So, how to combat this adjustment uneasy feeling, other than just going through the motions until more parts of our lives fall into place? I’ll check out a Unity Church on Sunday–at least having somewhere to meditate and focus on my inner life will give me balance and strength to adjust to my new “outer” life. And I’m sure new friends will come in time. I want to make an effort to find kid-friendly groups that enjoy nature–think mushroom hunting, going for short hikes, discovering kids playgrounds–and hope to meet some other parents.

I have one other plan to feel more grounded and connected to this new place we call home. And it’s already underway. Planting a garden. There’s a small patch of flower bed that our landlord tried growing vegetables in this summer. He cleared it before he moved out. And we added compost and peat and dug it up and planted kale, broccoli and pea plants I found at the local farmer’s market. Then the kids and I planted lettuce, arugula, mesclun mix, beets, carrots and radish seeds–most of which are already sprouting!

Watering my little veggie patch in the evening after work and checking to see which new seeds have sprouted makes me happy. It brings me relief–from stress, from the unknown, from the strangeness of moving. It’s a simple thing I spend a few minutes a day doing, but it makes me happy.

* I am making this condition up. Perhaps there’s a name for it, perhaps not. But when you move, you get into the groove of what has to be done, what needs to get packed or unpacked, disconnected or installed, and you just get on with it. It’s not until the blur of activity settles down that you can look around in your new life and consider what it means.

I’m also going through old files and getting rid of everything we can so that we have less to move across the country. Plus searching for jobs, enjoying the summer weather and spending time with the kiddos — I’m certainly not bored.

Looking through my old files that I have, for some reason, kept for the last 15+ years brings back old memories. Handwritten letters from my Dad that I cried while re-reading (and dried my eyes to e-mail the latest about our plans), old work contacts, pay stubs from my first full-time job as a journalist (I got a $0.65/hour raise. Woo hoo!).

It doesn’t bring back all the memories, though. Who was Ed Fink and why did I write him a check for $20 in the summer of 2000? And what did I spend all that money on at Target?

Those old checks go in the shredder. Along with piles of other papers.

My shredding policy is that anything that has my social security number, bank accounts, financial information or anything that could be used to steal my identity goes in the shredder. This creates reams of shredding. I am now on my second shredder, having burned out the first one. While I do recycle the paper, I’m not sure how environmentally friendly this practice is turning out to be.

My preferred double-top-secret identity protecting method is to then put the shredded paper in one of the compost bins behind the garage. Generally we have enough “green” compost matter to make adding some paper OK. But not enough for all that I’m generating at the moment. Plus I worry about the ink in the compost. My old checks “printed on recycled paper with soy-based inks” will be OK, but all the bank statements?

We did a lot of packing before we put the house on the market, but there’s definitely more to do. Plus we still have a bunch of furniture items to sell or give away. And then there’s that house to rent, job to find, school to enroll the kids in….*sigh* better get back to it. The shredder should have cooled down by now.

Which means we really won’t be eating those tomatoes I carefully selected at the nursery. Roma, an heirloom Brandywine, and two others whose names I can’t recall. I am enjoying the herbs, radishes, snow peas, rhubarb and asparagus, though. So it was definitely worth planting this year.

And while I may not get to reap the bounty of my hard work, I find the act of growing things relaxing and pleasing. We ate snow peas for dinner last night – snow peas that my kids helped me plant, poking the seeds and their little fingers into the holes I made for them.

Now that our time in this house is coming to a close, I’m getting a bit misty eyed at the idea of leaving. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet. It took me a long time to get used to living in this house and I wonder how I’ll feel when it comes time to choose another one? It’ll be OK – it’s all part of the adventure. And there’s no point in holding on to something you’ve outgrown just because of the uncertainty of what else might be out there.

All things grow – snow peas, tomatoes, children, even me.

I ate my first asparagus of the season today. There it is on my plate (or in my bowl, rather). Joining it was a sliced beet that Duncan dug up earlier this week while playing in my garden beds. Who knew that it was hiding there all winter?
Before you get too impressed by my incredible lunch, I feel I should explain. It’s true, other than the salmon it was all organic — from the mixed baby field greens to the mostly-ripe roma tomato. And the beets and asparagus, of course. But, I know, I know, farm-raised salmon! What am I thinking? Plus it was leftover from what the kids and Kevin didn’t eat at dinner last night.

People close to me know that I don’t ordinarily care for salad. However, I have recently had 3 salad revelations:

1. Baby salad greens make it so much easier. Sure, they seem expensive in the store at $5.99/lb for the organic variety. But the bag I buy that lasts me multiple salads a week weighs only about a 1/2 lb. And it means I actually take salad greens out of the bag and put them into a bowl and eat them, rather than letting a head of lettuce rot in the fridge because somehow, pulling it apart into little pieces fit to eat seems “too difficult.” I realize I should probably be washing it, but, hey, it’s organic e-coli, right?

2. Warm weather = shorts (as in pants). Mine don’t fit. This is a problem. I’m not buying more pants. And I can’t ride my bike in a dress. Therefore: salad for lunch.

3. It’s a great gluten-free meal. And when I add fish (or chicken or lobster or egg or king crab legs) it has protein, too. (Just kidding on the yummy sea food. I can only wish!)

Plus, it’s an easy way to throw in whatever happens to be ready to eat from the garden. I’m so glad I got my first stalk of asparagus. I’d been prowling around the bed for days.

I’ll also admit that we tend to turn to the TV a bit too much. But, in mid-meltdown, as one child hands you the remote and the other grunts something about Little Einsteins, it’s easy to click it on and play something from the DVR just for some peace (and a chance to drink a cup of tea while it’s still warm).

Today, however, after only one episode of the intrepid foursome and their friend, Rocket, we went outside. Kevin was finishing painting the garage, and today was apparently the last nice day of the year. It’s already much colder now.

I don’t know what inspired me to climb into the back of the garage and grab the rakes. It certainly wasn’t Berry fussing and whining at the garden gate the moment I disappeared. Or maybe it was. In any case, I faithfully reappeared, as promised multiple times in the 45 seconds I was gone, and started raking.

I wasn’t allowed to rake alone. Of course not. Mummy was doing something. Let’s do it too! “Mummy, I want a rake,” Duncan demanded. After getting him to ask for it nicely (“Please may I have a rake, Mummy?”), I consented, gave the other one to Berry, too, and let them get to work.

They did quite nicely — for at least 4 minutes. Inevitably, of course, the pile of leaves was too tempting and had to be plundered. Berry was very entertained wading through it, leaving a trail of leaves in her wake. Duncan preferred throwing his leaves, scattering them across the garden. I dutifully piled them back up again. It was part of the fun (and exercise – I wonder how many points 25 minutes of leaf raking gets me?).

After a bit, I got some totes out of the garage that we normally use to catch rainwater (we have no gutters at the moment, due to the garage painting) and got the kids to fill them full of leaves. That also worked well for a few minutes, but once I’d emptied them into the compost pile they didn’t want to refill them again. Oh well, at that point, Kevin was just about done with painting, so he took over and I went inside to make Berry’s half-birthday cake and cook dinner.

Our backyard, tiny as it is, is now strewn with kids toys. The turtle sand box, basketball hoop, water table, little slide and see-saw. I love it, honestly. It makes me happy to look out the back window and see all those things for them to play with. We can’t fit a swing set back there, so we do what we can with what we have.

Even with the toys, the lure of What Mummy’s Doing is too strong. Inevitably, I get interrupted with “help,” often in the form of digging in inappropriate places — such as where things are growing. Duncan, at least, has learned the boundaries of the vegetable garden and walks along the pavers, but not in the soil. Berry caught on quickly this year, but occasionally manages to somehow fall into my garden beds and took out a pepper plant earlier this summer.

One form of “help” we’ve found that they both enthusiastically get into is watering the garden. We collect rainwater from our garage roof in plastic tubs. Kevin has grand ideas about building a water barrel, but so far we’re just using totes with lids and it’s working well.

The kids love filling up watering cans (or at least pretending to in Berry’s case) and watering the vegetables. Duncan likes watering one particular square foot of the garden which quickly turns into a mud puddle. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell him it’s had enough water already, sooner or later he returns to that spot and sploshes some more on.

Explaining that the garden doesn’t need watering when it’s just rained – and everything is clearly still wet – also falls on deaf ears. It’s just too much fun. Why wouldn’t the plants want another drink? It tickles them, after all. I love him.

So here’s some shots (with my cell phone) of the two of them helping out. I will say that their participation is helpful when getting them to eat veggies at dinner. By watering them, Duncan has buy in. I mean, they’re HIS veggies. Why not eat them. I even got him to eat a raw green bean the other day – and he liked it!

I finally got around to screening my compost. Oh, what beautiful stuff. It’s not such good work for my back, but good for the rest of me (thigh muscles, spirit, etc.).

This was the best batch of compost I’ve made yet. Full of worm castings, hummus and rich black stuff. And worms. I’ve never seen so many worms (except maybe on RIT’s sidewalks after a heavy rain).

What am I supposed to do with the worms in the compost? Put them back into the pile? Put them in the garden? Eat them for dinner?

I tried hard to sift the compost lightly, to reduce the likelihood of grinding any worms on the hardware cloth. I probably cut a few in half as they desperately tried to wriggle through the holes into the lovely black screened compost beneath. Most of my worms went into the screened compost and then into the garden. I figure the garden can always use them. And, since I didn’t put any worms in the bin to begin with, they migrated from somewhere on their own and more worms will find the bin again for the next batch.

In order to answer my question — so I know what to do next time — I turned, as always to the Internet. Not, say, the Cornell Cooperative Extension, a reliable source of knowledgeable information. Why do that when you have Google at your fingertips?

What I found? Not much.

In worm composting (where you have a couple of pounds of worms in a bin!), you put the worms back in the bin. Gives me the heebies just thinking about it. I can touch worms, with gloves on. But I don’t want 2 lbs of the them in a container, thanks.

According to compostinfo.com:

Screening Compost

Your composting system may not break down all the larger materials, such as corncobs or wood chips, in the first batch of compost that you make. When you screen your compost, any material larger than your screen size can be removed. These materials are called “overs” which can go back into the compost system the next time that you build a pile. The overs provide bulk for aeration and microbes attached to these pieces will help jumpstart the new composting process.

Yes, nothing about worms.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has directions on how to build a free-standing compost screen, but, again, no worm info.

Surely I can’t be the only person with this question? I guess I’ll have to ask the Co-operative Extension folks at the South Wedge Farmer’s Market this week after all.