Author: crescentinthepines

Baby Bok Choy Udon Bowl with Poached Egg

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April has arrived and per the adage she brings with her showers. A week’s worth at least according to the forecast and in taking full advantage this week is all about seeds that can be broadcast at our house. In areas tedious to mow and bordering to the woods, I have broadcast all my favorite wildflowers, a few dozen types from indian blanket and lupines to black eyed susan and coneflower, almost all native and all capable of reseeding themselves. Low maintenance is nice. But with still more old overgrowth to clear, the busiest gardening month arrived, and the house’s interior to finish, unfortunately the fencing projects and our chicken coop have to be put off, for now.                    Most days are gray and cloudy lately, but just enough humidity hangs and just enough warm sun comes through to spur on the baby bok choy. It probably doesn’t help having planted a bit too much to keep up with, but I adore fresh bok choy. The cool rain inspired soup cravings, so I opted to make a sort of play on some favorite Asian soups, mixing and …

On sets

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There are those to whom the cutting scent of a freshly sliced onion is acrid and unpleasant, but to me it’s a sharply clean delicious smell, pungently sweet, a salvatory crier of summer when the first faint scent of wild onion being cut down by the mower drifts in through the open window and perhaps no one misses a few slices taken of the sweet Vidalia being cut for sandwiches. Yes, I am the kind who eats onion raw and unashamedly so. Thus it is that while I enjoy growing onions from seed, I find amending the garden with onion sets for an earlier crop of onions and a still earlier crop of green onions to be the best option. For those of you of like mind, or those who simply want to skip growing your onion from seed, here is a quick and simple guide to setting up an onion bed and planting sets or plants: Plants or sets? Completely your choice. Plants have the green tops and sets don’t so be sure you put …

Waste not

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Not one for wastefulness, as we’ve worked at cleaning up the overgrowth and saplings choking each other for space in the long unkempt wooded section of our property, I’ve tried to find use for every tree of any size that has to come down aside from just firewood. (All that pine is no account for firewood anyway.) Those paired with the two stacks of forgotten building materials left by the former owners have become the primary materials in building the framework of my garden. From deer fencing corner posts to bed frames, they have played a role in every job involved in building the garden spot saving both money and waste.         That in mind, a year and some change ago I shared an entry on the other blog about using otherwise unneeded palettes and cinderblocks for building a garden bed and so well does the idea work that I decided to share it again. These palette bed frames are too shallow for larger plants, but for leaf lettuces, herbs, and other surface crops …

Seedlings

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It feels innately warm, the virescence of spring, the electric glow of green budding against an often grey or pallid blue sky. Inside, for over a month, tiny cups of earth have been scenting the house, warm and ancient and fertile. And every day for the last few weeks, a new raised disturbance in the surface of the soil, a loop all serpentine and pale milky whitish green appears, one leaf, then two, unfolding and stretching and rolling out in a slow vaguely feline style.   And every time I pass the counter where they’ve taken shelter from the passing snows, I smile. The heart shaped pairs of purple green leaves on the baby cabbage, pointy long stems of onions and leeks unfurling like tiny whips, the heart like curls of eggplant and peppers first leaves, the showy bold overachievers that are rapidly growing young tomatoes. Every year come beginning of February, newspaper page after newspaper page is rolled into tiny cups and seeds are begun, tiny wishes for spring, tiny hopes for tomorrow. And hour after …

Chicken & Noodles

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  There are few things in this world more comforting than being home with nowhere to go while snow pours down outside. I’m not certain how long I stood at the window, tracing the paths of individuals flakes with my eyes, admiring their graceful fall. I marveled at the rapidity with which the yard turned from swathes of the first spring green to a soft blanket of stark white while the cardinals whirled, three red males and a harem of a flock, in their whirling dervish patterns in and out of the tree line. I had been outside when the snow started, first occasional then constant fat fluffy flakes like feathers from some unseen molting bird.  The whipping wind rattled through the trees, an undecided gale from the north, was it winter wind or a frozen harbinger of spring? And the stately pines tossed to and fro, whispering age old stories in an unintelligible hypnotic language. Unfortunately, that calm was cut short at Winston’s behest, who rejects any form of falling moisture without exception and wanted no more being outside.  However, …

Home.

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“It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace.” – George Bailey Sr . Once upon a time, not quite a century ago, there was a cabin built in central Oklahoma on a small farm. The house was happy and well-loved for many decades, until the capital city outgrow its borders and all the neighboring communities and towns swelled with the weight of growth. One day, the farm land around the little house began to change as it was split and crushed under imminent domain for the expansion of the interstate. Soon big companies with big money came and began buying the remaining land around the little house and its little farm. And then the little house’s last family member, its last holdout, passed away and the sad little house was left alone with the big businesses and their big money. But another family had seen the little house and loved it very much so they bought a piece of land much farther away from the big businesses and …