Month: February 2016

Moving house

February 27, 2016 / Lindsey / 7 Comments

Moving (c) The Herbangardener

Yep, we have moved again. It’s such a breeze and so stress free, you know, we can hardly get enough!

This last year, circumstance dictated that my folks reclaim their home that we had been renting from them for the past three years, which meant we needed to find ourselves a new pad. Their house is where I grew up, so this homebody’s roots there run awfully, awfully deep–soaking up comfort and familiarity and cherished memories like precious life-giving droplets of water over these past few terribly challenging years. Difficult to pack up and go, you bet. Our move has blessedly been to a place just a couple hours “down the road,” so visits back are realistic and doable on a semi-frequent basis — which has been helpful for my heart which does not, alas, sway to the currents of logic or plan or situation, and does not apparently even realize that it’s actually their house and not mine at all. Helpful also in that I finally found some good doctors and I’m not, and I repeat not, in the mood to drop them and doctor shop in a new city right now. Commutes back for doctor appointments are softened by wonderful time spent with my family so this setup is working well, considering.

Going through the experience of a home purchase was new to both F and me. I would totally not recommend it. We’re lucky that we also did not have a house to sell at the same time! How do people do it?? We felt heroic for getting through it (applause especially to F) but wow, the stress was busting out the seams. Hopefully we will not have to buy, sell, or move again, ever, for the rest of our whole entire lives but if we do, I think it will definitely be easier the second time now that we’ve traced the learning curve.

We got really lucky with the place we found. And by lucky I mean that if we’d missed seeing the new Zillow listing by a single day, it would’ve been gone. And since we already had a contract on another house the realtor wasn’t sending us any new stuff so it was F that stumbled upon this one thanks to his persistent internet searching late into the night. We shudder now to think of ourselves at the first house we had the contract on! Instead, we lucked into a perfectly sized, solidly built 60’s house (we’re only the second owners!) on three irrigated acres. We wake up to meadowlarks and mountain vistas. It’s a special spot, as you’ll see:

Tractor mowing the pasture (c) The Herbangardener

Wish this tractor were ours!

*****

Green Smoothie: Pineapple-Banana-Spinach-Chia

February 7, 2016 / Lindsey / 0 Comments

Green smoothie, (c) The Herbangardener

I made up this green smoothie recipe a couple weeks ago and it’s becoming a favorite. Not too elaborate, tastes good, just right. The proportions are easy so I’m pretty much guaranteed a tasty result.

Pineapple-Banana-Spinach-Chia Green Smoothie

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Half a pineapple – Cut off the rind, and cut into chunks.*

1 banana

1 Tbsp chia seeds soaked in 2/3 cup water**

1 handful (5 medium) ice cubes

~1/2 cup cold water (in addition to what chia soaked in)

3 oz of fresh spinach (One big handful)

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Put everything except the spinach into your blender. Begin blending. About half way thru, add the spinach. Finish blending and serve.

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* If you’ve got a good blender, like a Vitamix, include the core of the pineapple since there’s nutrition in it.

** The way I do chia is add the chia seeds and water to a small jar, shake the jar, leave on the counter all day or overnight, shaking a couple times, then pop into the fridge to wait for the next time I make a smoothie. If you’re doing the chia then and there, soak for 10 or 15 minutes before adding to the blender.

Green smoothie ingredients, (c) The Herbangardener

Soaked chia seeds, (c) The Herbangardener

Green smoothie (c) The Herbangardener

*****

Catching up: Late Summer into Autumn

February 3, 2016 / Lindsey / 2 Comments

Lindsey The Herbangardener, (c) The Herbangardener

Your eyes do not deceive you my friends! Yes I am finally updating my blog.

February of 2016! And I haven’t even shown you the rest of last year’s garden. There’s much to tell you about since we last chatted back in July, but first things first and this post will be for catching up with the rest of the season. Last summer’s garden is a distant memory already and these pictures remind me that it was a pretty good year although at this point I can’t even quite remember the details of it. Right – oh, I know. I remember I was impressed actually with how well things did considering the long-lasting, cool spring we had paired with a few pelting hailstorms, each one progressively more damaging, leaving leaves and stems hanging by threads. All that hard work, seed starting, transplanting, and coddling, shredded! It was a Great Year for roofing companies, let’s just say. I think I may have already talked about the hail — I bet I did, this is sounding familiar. No matter; it was a surprisingly satisfying year with a solid harvest in general and more tomatoes than expected. Then again when you set your expectations to ZERO, a number of things do tend to look surprisingly good! (Do you smell a life lesson too?)

The pictures really do look luscious don’t they? The beauty of this garden absolutely fed me and kept me grounded when I needed to block life out for a while and put my bare feet on the earth and my hands in the soil, or relax with a cup of tea and admire my living, growing, changing, edible creation.