Fencing in the kitchen garden

Josh and I have something of a squirrel problem in our backyard kitchen garden. Accustomed to running free and wild thanks to the apartment's no-pet policy, these squirrels are daring. They take risks. They chew on plants and dig up bulbs with abandon. But the last straw came when they started munching on my still-ripening strawberries. We decided it was time to take action.

On the advice of my dad, a long-suffering veteran of the wars against backyard rodents, we built a basic fence to enclose the container garden. Josh prefers to call it a "squirrel vault," which to my mind implies a cage for keeping squirrels in. But whatever, it sounds majestic and menacing. And he did most of the hard labor.

Our Fence

After measuring the length and width of our container collection, we had four two-by-fours cut at the hardware store. Hoping to keep the fence/vault portable, we chose to use hook-and-eye latches to hold the four sides together. Then we stapled vinyl-coated poultry wire to the boards to keep the vicious varmints out.

So far, the squirrel vault has held strong, though we may have to add a roof (which my dad recommends). The gauge of the wire is small enough that the squirrels can't poke their heads in, and we tied the sides together to prevent them from crawling in. Unfortunately, the backyard drains poorly, so the fencing has collected water during our many epic rains. Pros and cons to the squirrel vault, but we'll take it.

Fencing in the Past

Thomas Jefferson used ten-foot tall fencing, called "paling," at his late-18th century Monticello estate to keep out deer and other domestic pests from his vegetable garden. This consisted of boards placed tightly together, "so near as not to let even a young hare in." While other gardeners, especially hard-working housewives, probably didn't have the luxury of ten-foot tall boards, many families constructed at least a short fence to demarcate their gardens and hopefully deter some critters.

I kind of want that ten-foot tall fencing for my own garden. I bet Thomas Jefferson never had trouble with squirrels...

The best-laid plans of gardeners

It's been some time since we've visited the container garden. Let's take a stroll, shall we?

Here's the basic layout: broad beans (the happy tall stalks in the corner); sugar snap peas climbing those bamboo trellises; one strawberry plant; onions flanking tomatoes and peppers; garlic and carrot shoots; lettuce; hyssop; an attempt at a Three Sisters planting (corn, green beans, and pumpkin); and rhubarb, generously given by my friend Gaia. There's lavender and lobelia, too, to pretty up the backyard.

A bit different from my original plans, right? While some of the seeds I started came up vigorous and healthy, some of the others grew anemic and spindly. And after I hardened them off and planted them in containers, we endured epic torrential rains. First in the spring, then just a few weeks ago. Day after day of rain, rain, endless rain, can do a number on your tender plants. And downpours from southern tropical storms can tear the leaves of your rhubarb plant to shreds.

Yes, shreds.

We've also discovered that our squirrels are vicious, vicious creatures. Since we moved in last summer, we didn't have a chance to find this out during the regular growing season. But oh, are we learning. They shimmy up drainpipes, they cling to our second-floor window screens, and they nibble at my almost-ripe strawberries to show who's really in charge. (Hint: it's not me.)

Nevertheless, we persevere. Next week I'll give you a glimpse of the "squirrel vault" Josh and I built to keep out those dastardly rodents. After the torrential rains, I replaced some of my drowned seedlings with more vigorous starts from the farmers' market and the store, and they're happily taking root. And while it's momentarily disappointing to see plants brought low by weather or critters, I'm excited to see what this adjusted garden will produce over the summer. (I'm also accepting any and all advice for dealing with squirrels, which are quickly becoming my fiercest enemies.)

Two years

Dear blog,

Today you are older and hopefully wiser. (I'm not sure I am.) We've done quite a bit this past year...

• cooked from recipes from 1967, 1903, and the 1st century AD
• visited Downton Abbey through Victorian and Edwardian recipes
• analyzed nutrition, 1900-style
• fallen in love with making ice cream
• canned tomatoes
• gotten nostalgic with old family photos
• harvested from my kitchen garden
• planned and started a new garden
• made some tasty grown-up drinks
• explored the impact of Christopher Columbus and the first Thanksgiving
• gone maple sugaring with my parents
• visited old houses, gardens, and estates

Yes, we've branched out past historical cooking. We're still learning from old recipes, but we're also referencing the past more loosely, imbuing the present with old-fashioned methods, activities, and hobbies. We're visiting old mansions to look at what's survived. And I have to say, I like it.

I'm excited to see what this coming year will bring. Thanks to our wonderful readers, as always, for following along. You make it so much more fun!

Love,

Abby

Afternoon Adventure: Longwood Gardens

A month ago my family met up in Philadelphia to celebrate my sister's graduation. We had some free time before the festivities began, so we drove about an hour outside of the city to the Brandywine Valley, former home of painter Andrew Wyeth and current location of some absolutely beautiful estates and gardens.

We spent the early afternoon at Longwood Gardens, a stunning estate with acres of gardens and a classic conservatory. Because it was Mother's Day, we had to navigate wandering crowds, but the whole place is so big that we hardly noticed most of the time.

Longwood began as a farm and arboretum built by the Peirce family, who purchased the property from William Penn way back in 1700. As Quakers, the Peirces respected the land and focused on planting and preserving native trees. By the time industrialist Pierre du Pont purchased the land from the Peirces in 1906, Longwood was already known for its collection of trees and aesthetic beauty.

But it was Pierre du Pont who slowly molded the property into what we see today. He used his immense fortune and his interest in conservation to develop the property, designing a range of gardens, building a gorgeous conservatory to house indoor plants, and installing of-the-moment fountains around the grounds. Inspired by the world's fairs he visited in his youth, he referenced the architecture and horticultural designs he saw at these fairs, making for an estate that is at once rooted in the past and forward-looking.

We could have spent all day at Longwood. Because we wanted to check out another estate (and eat lunch), we had to drag ourselves away after a few hours, but I definitely want to go back. We wandered through the fountain gardens, where my dad marveled at the 1930s-designed pumps.

I took a few too many pictures of utterly indulgent garden fixtures that I really, really want in my someday-garden, like follies and walls of sculpted fountains.

We spent a long time in the vegetable and fruit gardens, where I took copious notes on scenic fencing and supports for climbing vines. (And I crushed on rows of raspberry bushes.)

Horticultural Dome, Chicago World's Fair

Just before we left, we stopped in the conservatory, which reminded me of all those long-ago photographs of the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, with its huge hanging plants and light-filled rooms. (It also made me feel like I'd stepped into the steampunk world of Bioshock Infinite, which begins at an alternate version of the 1893 Exposition.)

Longwood is the perfect place to slow down and relax for a day if you're in the Philadelphia area. We left inspired and refreshed, and that's exactly what we needed on a busy graduation weekend.


Works cited: Longwood Gardens History. Paul V. Galvin Library, World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Spring greening

Ah, spring! When a young lady's fancy turns to...plants?

Yes, it is all plants, all the time around these parts. When Josh and I go for a walk, I coo over the tiny purple stars blooming in the myrtle. I envy the flocks of daffodils cheering up the still-drab grass. I tend lovingly to the starts toughening up under my grow light.

Now that the weather is warming up, I'm slowly getting the plants ready to go outside. This is a process called hardening off, and you have to take the plants outside in the sun over a period of days, letting them stay out longer each time to get used to wind, sun, and fresh air. I've also started moving some of the biggest starts into actual containers for the official growing season. (You can see the results of using Cow Pots below--the roots just grow right through the pots!)

So far, I've had mixed results. The plants are hardening off just fine, but last week I left some of the snap peas and peppers outside during a rather serious few days of rain, which meant the plants went swimming. The poor guys got so waterlogged that I had to pour off rainwater on more than one occasion. But they seem to be perking right up now that the sun has returned, and I'm looking forward to moving more starts into containers.

And perhaps the most exciting news around here is that I got permission from our landlords to spruce up the yard! I've been busily drawing up plans and completing soil tests to prepare the yard for planting. Because we live in an old house (danger of lead) and the yard isn't huge, I'll be sticking with the container plan for my edibles and planting only ornamentals in the actual yard. But it's still tremendously exciting. Plus, it gives me more of a reason to admire other people's plants...right?

The wearing of the green

Almost all the seeds I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted, and my seed tray is now a veritable wonderland of tiny green sprouts and tendrils.

While I love all the phases of the growing season (except perhaps pest control--haven't figured out a green way of combating aphids yet), this is definitely my favorite. I kneel down in front of the seed tray at least once a day, murmuring sweet nothings into the seedlings' unfurling ears. Maybe this makes me crazy...but that's fine.

Looking at the moss-like cover of the tiny lobelia sprouts puts me in mind of lush gardens and winding paths leading to secret hideaways. It's my someday dream to build a Secret Garden, as magical as the one at the end of Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, and meanwhile I have to be content with filing away inspiration and images for later. The website Gardenista has been particularly fun to pore over--it's full of beautiful gardens from around the world, as well as advice on how to create your own.

Tell me, do you save ideas for someday gardens or someday houses? And is Pinterest good for this sort of thing? I'm tempted, but so many kinds of social media make me wary.

Starting seeds

Earlier this week, it was finally starting to feel like spring. The air lost some of its chill, birds chirped in the tree outside our dining room window, and the first crocuses poked up from neighborhood yards. Of course, this morning it's snowing, so we need a good dose of cheer to pick up our spirits. Let's talk about this season's garden.

I ordered seeds from Fedco and Vesey's, two small-batch, cold-weather plant vendors recommended by Henry Homeyer. Both are great because their plants are bred to withstand northerly climates, and Fedco sends a limited number of seeds. This way I don't feel guilty for wasting seeds. In the end, I may have gone (slightly) overboard for my modest container garden, but they all looked so good! Two small packages arrived with the seeds a week later, and I looked through them longingly as I waited for the right planting day.

The last frost for Rhode Island lands somewhere between March 30 and April 30 (specific, I know). I decided to start the earliest seeds (4-6 weeks before the last frost) over the weekend, and I spent a lovely few hours setting up my grow light and arranging pots and growing material.

This year I'm trying out Cow Pots, these super-environmental seed starter pots made of composted cow manure. Once the seeds are ready to transplant, you simply put them in the planting medium, pot and all, and the pots gradually degrade while giving your plants a jolt of natural fertilizer. They sounded awesome, and they (barely) smell at all. Josh was wary, but so far he hasn't complained.

Here's what I planted:

• sweet peppers
• hot peppers
• spinach
• lavender
• cosmos
• sugar snap peas
• tomatoes
• lobelia

My sown seeds are now sitting patiently under the grow light, and I may or may not be excitedly checking them at least twice a day for progress. No signs of life yet, but it's early days. If you're planting a garden this year, have you started seeds yet? What are you growing?

Planning the garden

Today I taught my first session with a new group of students: little guys (to me, anyway), 4th - 6th graders. We talked about reading and books and the program we'll be starting tomorrow. The kids were fun, energetic, and so genuine. I always maintained that I could never teach anyone younger than 7th grade, and yet...I'm looking forward to this semester.

I don't want to get all cheesy on you guys and talk about new beginnings and whatnot, but with January being so gloomy, it's hard not to dream about a fresh start. And since I'm in the middle of a crash-course fresh start at school, I've been thinking about beginnings in other areas of life, too. Lately of the green variety: the garden.

Last summer I tried out container gardening for the first time, ambitiously calling it my "kitchen garden." There were tomatoes, spinach, snap peas and lettuce. The squirrels probably enjoyed more of its bounty than I did. And yet there was something so satisfying about growing a tiny garden from start to finish. I watched my little seedlings obsessively, bending down to check on them every morning, and when they moved to bigger containers I stuck my finger in the soil every few days to make sure they had enough water. My dad and I traded tips on growing the best tomatoes. When autumn arrived and it came time to clean out the pots for next season, my heart ached a little bit.

But! Now it's time to plan for this coming season. I've hunkered down in the dining room with library books and an organic gardening text recommended by a friend. I'm taking notes on what plants to grow together and what seeds to order from catalogs. And over the weekend I fell for a few pots of herbs at the farmers' market, because who wouldn't? They now sit on my great-grandmother's plant stand in the living room.

So here's my tentative plan, in containers once again:

• snap peas
• peppers
• kale and spinach
• carrots
• herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme (try growing those together without breaking into song); lavender, oregano, cilantro, and dill
• flowers, just because

Ambitious? Yes. Doable? Uncertain. But planning the garden makes January a little less gloomy, and there's something to be said for that.

Are you planning a garden? What will you plant?

"Field Notes" notebook: Column & Stripe.

Harvest

Suddenly it's fall.

Vendors' stands overflow with corn and pumpkins and squash and apples at the farmers' market. Mornings are chilly enough to put on a warm sweater. Starbucks has switched over to Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Salted Caramel Mochas. Saver's now advertises Halloween costumes. Corporate America is ready to remind you that yes, it's really September, just in case you can't tell.

This afternoon I stopped by a craft store to get some dried flowers and other materials to make a fall wreath, which involved walking by garlands of garish orange leaves and flowers with colors you'd never find in nature. It's funny that big box stores tell us to mark fall, traditionally a time of harvesting natural foods, with fake decorative plants. While I tried to find the least obnoxious materials for my wreath, I think it's still going to feature at least a few plastic grains.

Ah, well.

Recently I've found myself thinking a lot about harvest time and how to stay close to the land and the seasons. My parents visited briefly this weekend, and we walked around the new neighborhood and commented on the abundant gardens people grow here. My parents love to garden, though they seldom can devote as much time as they'd like to their plants. When I was little, they had a big plot in the backyard where they grew corn, squash, tomatoes, and giant pumpkins. There's a picture of me, aged 6 months, sitting on top of a pumpkin that's bigger than I am. Looking at old photos like that, I get the sense that our lives revolved around the garden and the seasons in a way that we've tried to recapture ever since. My dad still tends to a few tomato and cantaloupe plants, and you all know the saga of my own kitchen garden. But there's something about the demanding nature of a big garden that ties you down to the land until you've harvested every last crop.

(I tend to get rather poetical and starry-eyed about the idea of farming. I suspect that if I ever did start my own farm, those romantic notions would never survive.)

So, mind full of dreams and desires to root myself to the earth, I've been looking at some photos from the old garden. The year my sister was born, my parents planted wheat and harvested it at the end of the summer. In a few exhausting days, my grandmother helped my parents reap, thresh, and grind the wheat into flour, that my dad then used to make bread.

It's a great story, one that speaks to my family's strange desire to mimic old-fashioned farming methods.

I love looking at these photos from long ago. There's my sister, just a babe in arms.

There I am, a little two-year-old helping out with the threshing and the bread-making. There are my parents, younger versions of themselves when they had more time to work in the garden. And my grandmother, with whom I wish I could share my growing love of all things crafty and historical.

And this last photo, where my dad is teaching me how to knead bread, which explains everything about this blog.

Happy fall, friends.

Kitchen garden (V)

It's been a while since the last update from the garden. Unfortunately, in between moving and travel, the poor tomatoes and peas had a rough transition. Those big green tomatoes I planned on harvesting? The squirrels at my new place have a fondness for them. While I waited for each tomato to ripen, the squirrels got impatient and helped themselves.

(The worst part was how the squirrels would carefully remove each tomato from the vine, take a big bite, and then leave the now-rotting tomato on the balcony to taunt me. Now I know why my dad has a book called Outwitting Squirrels.)

But somehow I managed to salvage two tomatoes, which now sit on the kitchen table waiting to be enjoyed. They're small and misshapen, not the giant fruits I'd hoped for. But they're red and they smell fresh and ripe...so I'll take them.

Kitchen garden (I)

Kitchen garden (II)

Kitchen garden (III)

Kitchen garden (IV)

Kitchen garden (IV)

It's been pointed out to me since last week's post that my memory is playing tricks. We didn't sing "Summertime" in high school, we sang it in middle school...with my friends, not my sister.

Maybe it's because I'm too busy thinking about my tomatoes. And that little guy above. He's taken up residence between two tomato cages, and he's a stubborn one. So after trying to discourage him several times, I decided to let him be. And now I'm glad I did.

I've been on the road these past few weeks, shuttling between Ohio and Rhode Island and Maine and Connecticut and New Jersey (sometimes with the little hamster in tow). These travels have been alternately exhausting, difficult, and relaxing. I haven't always had time to worry about how my plants will get watered while I'm away. And despite a wonderful week on the lake in Maine, and a fun wedding weekend with family, nothing warmed my heart quite like coming home to my beautiful tomatoes, which have finally sprouted fruit.

I'm hoping to harvest that first red cherry tomato before Josh and I leave for Ohio (once again), bound for a family vacation in Canada. And meanwhile I'll just enjoy peeking in on the tomatoes in between travels, watching them ripen.

Previously:

Kitchen garden (I)

Kitchen garden (II)

Kitchen garden (III)

Kitchen garden (III)

Dropped in to share this exciting development in the kitchen garden: three pea pods have appeared, with more on the way! I am half-tempted to name them, but the rational part of me reins in that enthusiasm.

I'd been amazed by the tightly furled white flowers of the pea plant. Now, these flowers have given way to light green pods that wear the dried remnants of the flowers. It's a beautiful reminder of how efficient nature can be.


Other plant news is less exciting, but still encouraging. A few weeks ago I gave in and purchased lettuce and spinach starts, since growing them from seed was a decided failure. The lettuce has settled in nicely, as has one of the spinach plants. I could begin snipping off leaves for an evening salad at this point, I think. But the other spinach plant has been struggling.

Finally, the tomatoes are growing like gangbusters. It's incredible. All three of them have flowered, so I'm waiting impatiently for the fruit.

I'll be back tomorrow for a review of a TV series that's (somewhat) related to kitchen gardens!

Previously:

Kitchen garden (I)

Kitchen garden (II)

Kitchen garden (II)

An update on the garden:

• The tomatoes are flourishing, after being re-potted to deeper pots and staked with bamboo and sisal. (I think it looks rather pretty, don't you?) However, I originally planted three per pot, and since none of them died off, that meant they would eventually compete for light and water. So the other day I had to decide which plant was the weakest link and pull it from the pot. It gave my heart a pang to do it. My dad calls it "playing God." Josh calls it "the Sophie's Choice of gardening." While they're both accurate, I think the latter description captures the pain of it.


• I sprouted some sugar peas and now they're going great guns, which makes Josh happy because he loves peas and I tolerate them. "You're growing peas for boys!" he says. Personally, my favorite part so far is the way they grasp onto the sisal with thin tendrils. They're little but strong, those pea plants.


• My lettuce is by far the weakest link of everything I've planted. First animals dug them up, and now they're thinning out by themselves. I might have to call it and purchase some starts at the farmer's market on Saturday...but I hate admitting defeat.


• The herbs are doing well. Lemon balm is under the grow light, and basil is flourishing on the windowsill. At least there will be flavor this summer!


• Finally, there are strawberries-in-a-bag that I replanted in a regular pot. They sent up one squat sprout, and since then, nothing. Maybe if I move it to a sunnier spot...that sure did the tomatoes wonders.

It's funny, I was never much for gardening before this spring. I dreamed of having a garden one day, but it wasn't until I actually had plants to care for that I found out what all the fuss was about. You think about your plants like they're your children (or your pet dwarf hamsters). You dote on them. You worry about them when you're at work and the sky threatens rain and thunder. Suddenly, you're happy to spend a half hour or more just looking at them, marveling at the way the pea shoots curl around their stakes. How do they know how to do that? It's fascinating.

A few days ago I finished a wonderful YA novel, The Wicked and the Just by J. Anderson Coats. It's set in Wales circa 1294, and tells the story of Cecily, an English girl who's moved to occupied Wales against her will, and Gwenhwyfar, a Welsh girl who's just trying to stay alive now that the English have taken away everything she knew. There's so much to love about this novel, from the strong, distinct voices of the two girls, to the dual narrative that gives you just enough information, to the masterful way the author describes her setting and makes you see, hear, and smell medieval Wales. But one passage in particular gave me pause for thought.

One of the few pleasures Cecily finds in her new home is planting her own kitchen garden, full of tansy and rue and other medieval-sounding plants. Here, when she's sowing her garden afresh after a hard winter, she captures the very feeling I've been experiencing with my own garden:

"But there's something about coaxing life from ground that shrugs at you, that makes you tend it with fish guts and holy water, coddling it as if it's an old sick hound. It matters more. You harvest every blade and seed and grain. You cherish what the earth bestows."

While I coddle my plants with organic plant food and tap water, the feeling's the same: I cherish those plants as if they were beloved pets. It's magical.

If you've planted a garden this spring, how are your plants coming along?

Previously:

Kitchen garden (I)

Mount Vernon

About a month ago, I chaperoned my tenth-grade class to Washington, D.C. on their annual five-day field trip. Not only did I lead the trip, but I also had spent the entire year planning and preparing for this adventure. Therefore, the trip entailed:

• 33 teenage girls
• 4 chaperones (including me)
• 1 long-suffering bus driver
• 1 viewing of National Treasure and Tangled
• endless fast food
• 3 1/2 days of walking, walking, walking. And then more walking!
• 12 monuments (the FDR Memorial was my favorite)
• 8 museums and visitor centers (including the National Archives, the Capitol, and the Holocaust Museum)
• more reminders about not slamming hotel doors at 6:30 in the morning than I care to recount

Overall, it was a fun (but absolutely exhausting) trip. I have never slept so well as the night we returned home. And while there are loads of stories I could tell, I'd really like to tell you about the morning we visited Mount Vernon.

Mount Vernon is George Washington's gorgeous estate, which is in northern Virginia overlooking the Potomac River. When you stand on the front porch of his mansion, you can look out over the sloping hill to the river beyond, and you completely forget where you are.

While the mansion was beautiful, we were herded through it like cattle to accommodate the huge numbers of tourists. Apparently we'd decided to visit D.C. during prime school visit season, so we had to contend with a group from nearly every other school in the nation. So I appreciated seeing rooms like Washington's bedroom (although I didn't understand the fascination of seeing the bed where he died), but where I really enjoyed myself was in wandering the grounds of the estate.

I found a group of my students watching the sheep. They squealed over the cluster of lambs lounging in the sun, and debated among themselves what to name each one. Luckily they refrained from bleating at the sheep, which is what some other teenagers were doing. You always see a group of kids doing that at farms or living history museums--it's funny, but it's also a commentary on how distanced most kids are from farm animals.

Then I wandered down to the Pioneer Farm, which represents George Washington's innovations in farming techniques. Apparently he grew frustrated with the farming methods used by early Virginian tobacco farmers (this was colonial Virginia, remember), and so he turned to new kinds of plowing, fertilizers, and crop rotation to get the most out of his crops. You don't usually think of Washington as a farmer--he's got that refined, first-leader-of-our-country air about him in all his portraits--but apparently he considered himself a farmer before a commander. When he was away from home, he'd long to get back to Mount Vernon to try out new landscape designs. Landscape design!

It was a gorgeous spring morning, just warm and sunny enough to remind us that summer really is on the way. Walking around the raised beds made me excited to get back to my own garden. And it nurtured that far-away dream I have of an outdoor space that's just for gardening: raised beds, or maybe a plot with neat rows, for tomatoes and spinach and kale and potatoes. All my favorite vegetables. Who knew I'd turn into such a gardening freak?!

And it was fascinating to look around at a recreated 18th-century Virginian farm, complete with old plows (tugged by horses), woven wooden supports for climbing plants, and examples of fencing (yes, he really did experiment with different types of fencing). It's so different from farming today, so much closer to nature, in a way. But I suppose you'd sacrifice efficiency and output for old-fashioned methods.

Perhaps I just got starry-eyed at Mount Vernon, the way I often do with history. It's a struggle for me not to consistently see old methods and techniques as better. But it certainly got me thinking about the overlap between the 18th century and today, and how I can apply some of those more natural methods to my own garden. And that's got to be worth something.

Kitchen garden (I)

I've thought about starting my own little garden for a while now. My front windows are filled with plants, sure, but of the amaryllis and African violet variety rather than the edible kind.

When I graduated from college and first started living on my own, my parents gave me a set of lucky bamboo as a housewarming gift. Somehow I managed not to kill the bamboo, and now, four years later, they're growing strong in my kitchen. In the morning the leaves catch the sunlight, and they make the whole room feel cheerful.

However, I've had mixed results with other plants. Flowers? I've been growing iris bulbs in pots for two years and they have yet to flower. The African violet is quite happy, though. Trees? This winter's Christmas tree--a miniature pine in a pot--is now browning quickly and might keel over come summer. Too bad we named him. (Lord Conington: Josh's invention, of course.)

decorating, back when the tree was lush

I've had the most success with herbs so far: basil, chives, rosemary. Having just the tiniest flavor of food that I grew myself makes cooking so much more exciting, and now I want to branch out to other foods. Besides, having my own little garden could give me one more insight into the past, back when people relied more on what they could grow themselves.

Since I'm a complete novice at gardening, though, I didn't want to make the first try too hard on myself. This is strictly container gardening for now, anyway, so I decided to start off with easy plants and a couple handy guides to urban gardening. (The City Homesteader by Scott Meyer and Apartment Gardening by Amy Pennington: both inspiring, neither intimidating.) In an epic trip to the home improvement store, I bought all the seed-starting, planting materials I'd need, plus a few varieties of lettuce, peas, and herbs to try. (Who knew that wandering the gardening aisles of Home Depot could be so exciting?!) Finally, my parents brought an extra grow lamp when they visited this past weekend, and we set it up and tended to Lord Conington (my dad was full of ideas to save the poor tree). Once I return from chaperoning a five-day field trip this week, I'll be all ready to start those seeds.

And in one of those serendipitous coincidences, a friend gave me nine little tomato plants to inaugurate my kitchen garden. They're not historic in the least--Americans were suspicious of tomatoes until the 1900s, and therefore didn't grow very many of them--but they're familiar as childhood, and just the right thing to start my garden.

So this summer, I'll hopefully be posting updates on gardening as well as cooking. I'm excited to use my own food for cooking--it feels more authentic, somehow, more rooted in nature and the past than in going to the grocery store. Are any of you gardeners? What are you planting this spring?