Quick photo Saturday

Planning her great escape while Daddy builds the inescapable big-girl crib.

A new arrival! and the joys of caffeination

Announcement announcement! We're expecting a playmate for Heidi sometime in the beginning of February! Hurrah!

And as of this morning, to all the naysayers who say that caffeine is bad for you during pregnancy, I say blergh. 

When I found out I was pregnant, I ceased my morning coffee, and coincidentally absolutely ceased to be productive during the day. At all. After feeding Ryan breakfast, packing him lunch, making him coffee and sending him off to work at 6:15 am, I would go back to bed. Wake up when Baby woke up, nurse her in bed while dozing for, oh, an hour. Trudge out to the kitchen, make breakfast for us. Eat at leisure. Put on boots and go garden, lament that it was only going to be shady for 30 more minutes. Get one row weeded, trudge back inside. Put baby to nap, sleep. Wake up when she woke up, trudge into the kitchen to eat some lunch. Finally, at about 1:30, think about the fact that I should clean a little, or maybe work on the book. Simultaneously realize that I haven't made bread or thought about what's for dinner. Make bread, spend 30 minutes thinking about what's for dinner. Decide to make spaghetti and therefore not to worry about it for 4 more hours. Put baby down for afternoon nap; fail at self-discipline and lay down anyway. Have finally swept the floor by the time Ryan comes home. Have to admit to him that in 10 hours I've only weeded one row and swept the floor because I'M JUST SO DARN TIRED.

So last night I admitted to him that I just can't do this healthy thing anymore. Unless, that is, he's happy to have a wife who sleeps all day. He said, "well, then drink coffee!" (This is the same man who tried to forbid me any caffeine whatsoever when I was pregnant with Heidi. Tried. For our own good, of course.) And this morning, I had two cups of blessed blessed coffee.

Which means I weeded almost all of the watermelons AND the radishes AND the turnips.  And trellised the peas. And weeded the one canteloupe plant that I had forgotten to put straw around. And picked all the dangerously fungus-y looking leaves off the raspberries. And ate three blueberries and one absolutely perfect strawberry.

I was going to bring it up to the house to take a picture of it, because it was perfect. And then I smelled it. I couldn't help myself. It was deep bright red and shiny, small and round and just ripe enough to have the seeds fall off in little squishy patches when you squeezed it. And it was SWEET AND DELICIOUS.

All before baby's naptime. She played on a big fuzzy blanket out in the shady part of the garden, and then got bored, whined a bit and fell asleep. To be quite honest, I wouldn't have done so much out in the garden if she hadn't fallen asleep, but once she was asleep I thought it a shame to wake her up to bring her inside. She also learned that weeds are itchy when you crawl off your blanket onto them, and that dew is chilly. She has some little red bumps and lines on her skin from the grass. And you know what? I'm ok with that. I'm working so very hard at overcoming my hyperprotective instincts.

I might join Heidi for nap #2 this afternoon. In fact, I hope to. I'm gestating; I'm entitled. But oh my goodness, my life is so much happier this morning for being caffeinated. If anybody knows how to be coffee-energetic on only water, I'm willing to listen. In the meantime, though, natural health and responsibility are far less important to me than feeling human.

Radish harvest!

Our first harvest! I know it's late in the season. We planted late. I still think they're lovely. Now to figure out what to do with them.

Montessori at home - how does this work??

Sorry for the week of silence. It was a busy weekend, and a busy week making up for it. Ren Faire, party, shopping, unpacking, and the garden going crazy. Blogging, not so much.

I <3 Ren Faires.

I was researching this morning how to make my baby's environment more discovery-friendly. I knew Montessori had programs for infants. What I found was mostly what I already knew - play mat, lots of floor time, simple toys made out of real things (not plastic). I had already tried to incorporate as much of this as I could into our life, but it's always been difficult. My baby hated tummy time for months. Now she doesn't mind it so much because she's getting a bit mobile, but she gets frustrated at being at the level of our feet. She would much rather sit in her high chair while I bake bread, playing with a toy and munching on pieces of dough. She wants to be up on my level and involved in my activities. And it's not like I can let her crawl around on the table while I sweep the floor. Dailymontessori.com says not to use swings or baby seats, because it hinders development and encourages passive observation of the world. I can't function without one, unless I want to listen to my baby scream from the floor. Clearly, the thing to do is to get down on the floor and play with her (and I do), but I don't have all day to do that! I have too much work to do to confine it all to naptime. Have any other moms found how to make this work - give maximum freedom and encourage mobility while still getting your work done and keeping the house in order? Or is my baby the only baby in the world who feels abandoned when I leave her to play on a mat on the floor while I get housework done?

Right after reading the article about crawling time for babies, I took her outside to garden. The carrots finally appeared, and I needed to weed them. I chuckled to myself as I carried the Bumbo outside to put her in. Maybe she could learn more if I let her crawl around and pick all my seedlings. But until she's old enough to understand instructions not to pick the plants, I'm not going to let her. Take that, idealistic educational theorists. At least I brought her outside.

and she taste-tested the grass and dirt for me

Current plant count (as of the plants I bothered to count last night and today)
266 corn stalks
21 watermelons
15 squashes
5 canteloupes
8 cucumbers
12 tomatoes
2 raspberry bushes
2 blackberry bushes
6 strawberries
2 blueberries
and I haven't counted the carrots, radishes, turnups and peas.

and one raspberry!!

strawberry flower. so excited.

Weeds, seedlings and pine needles.

"All one hot morning, the beans were popping out of the ground. Grace discovered them and came shrieking with excitement to tell Ma. All that morning she could not be coaxed away from watching them. Up from the bare earth, bean after bean was popping, its stem uncoiling like a steel spring, and up in the sunshine the halves of the split bean still clutched two pale twin-leaves. Every time a bean popped up, Grace squealed again."

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little Town on the Prairie

I didn't actually witness any seedlings popping out of the ground today, but I swear, there were some spots that were bare when I started weeding but had brand-new chartreuse sprouts by the time I came back to them.

I have spent the past week or so fearing to walk into the garden. I didn't know where the hills of watermelons, cantaloupes, or squash were. The rows of corn, radishes, turnips and carrots were easy to find, but we put them on the back fence! To get to them, or to get to the berry bushes, I had to tiptoe around unidentified hills of seeds. When we planted them, I put a pile of compost on top of each, and at the time the black spots showed up starkly against the reddish soil. But then it rained every day for five days straight, and when I looked again, there were no more black spots warning me where not to step.

So today, as I picked grass and eagerly examined the ground for any trace of seedlings, I squealed with glee at the sight of a definitely-watermelon sprout. I gathered up some nearby rocks (see? even a curse like rocky soil can be a blessing if you're imaginative) and built a little circle around the precious seedling. I felt vaguely pagan and Druidical, as if I were making a sacred stone ring to protect the gift of Mother Earth, but in fact I was just marking off where I should not step, in such a way that I would be able to see it once I was again 5'7" off the ground.

I put rock circles around the other seedlings I could find, and in several places where I couldn't see seedlings but I imagined that the tiny clover sprouts might be melon sprouts. When I tried looking for sprouts 3 feet apart from each other (the distance we'd planted the melons) I invariably failed, so eventually I went back to picking grass.

And then I found the squash! I had begun to fear that the squash just wouldn't come up, and one of the squash patches still doesn't seem to be very active yet, but the patch that gets the most sun is coming up with a vengeance! Some of those seedlings didn't need a stone ring because even I in my blindness could see them.

When I made my way back across the garden, I built a few more rock circles for seedlings I hadn't seen before, which leads me to believe that they must have sprouted while I was working. Grow, babies, grow!

Little watermelon in a Magic Rock Circle

Peas! We have 4 hoop trellises with 2 rows of peas each.

A squash in a Magic Rock Circle. Judging by the way the mud is displaced around it, I'd say it popped up today.

Corn. And weeds. And more weeds. And more corn.

Tomahtoes. Twelve of these.

Either turnips or radishes; don't remember which we planted in which row. Also pictured: weeds.

I included some pictures of the pine-needle mulching I did yesterday. Pine needles lower the pH of the soil (make it more acidic), which I hear berries appreciate. They're also GREAT for weed control. Ever notice how sparse the grass tends to be under pine trees? YEAH. Not to mention that if you have pine trees, you have FREE MULCH.

Strawberries

Arranging the pine needles around the plants reminded me of bird nests.

Blueberries

Raspberries. Next on the agenda: train this plant onto the trellis! It's growing like crazy!

We will soon have straw to lay down for mulch on the rest of the garden. I can't wait. It helps keep the weeds from taking over, and at the same time it keeps the soil cool and moist and keeps your plants' roots from being scorched. And as it decomposes, it adds organic matter to your soil! You win all around! Some think it's not as pretty as bare soil in between rows, but I'd rather look at a lush, weed-free garden mulched in straw than a scraggly choked-out garden any day.

Quick link: thegardenlady.org

Googled "can I mulch raspberries with pine needles?"

Discovered www.thegardenlady.org.

Answer: YES, and potatoes, and blueberries and strawberries (already knew about the blueberries and strawberries; blackberries too, though she didn't list them) and azaleas. AND dump coffee grounds around them.

So concise. So exactly what I needed to know.

So putting this website on my favorites bar.

Our Favorite Bread

It has not been easy finding a bread recipe that works for our family. My ideal bread is whole wheat: flavorful, hearty, with a texture you can really sink your teeth into. I once tasted an olive bread from Central Market. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. It had chunks of kalamata olives baked into it. It was quite simply the most delicious piece of bread I had ever tasted, and I still remember it with reverence.

Ryan's ideal bread is Wonderbread.

This would not be a problem - I could buy my olive bread (if there were a Central Market anywhere nearer than four hours away) and he could buy his Wonderbread, if not for the fact that we also want homemade bread. For two years we have, either one or the other or both, been unsatisfied with the bread that has come out of the oven, and our frustration was high.

Then, three weeks ago, I accidentally found a bread recipe that satisfies both of us. It has the whiteness of white bread and the healthiness of whole wheat; it has a wonderful crumb; it has a delightful crust. It is flavorful. It's a very modified version of the Potato Bread in George Burnett's The Breadman's Healthy Bread Book. I intend no copyright violation, and I think that I have modified the recipe enough to avoid any copyright violations anyway. At any rate, surely he won't sue someone who has a link up to his book on Amazon and an endorsement to buy it because it has lots of other great recipes too, right?


Hope so. Anyway, here goes.

A Friendly Home Potato Bread

In a bread machine, mix

1 cup water

1 Tablespoon butter

1Tablespoon honey

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup soft golden whole wheat flour

1/3 cup mashed potato flakes

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Set bread machine on dough cycle. Place an oven-safe dish with at least 2 cups water on the bottom rack of your oven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. When bread machine beeps, shape dough into a loaf and turn it out onto a floured baking stone. Let rest for 10 minutes, longer if you want a lighter texture, but don't let it rise so much that it will fall if you touch it. Use a serrated knife to cut lines about 1/2" in the top of your bread, to make room for oven spring. Bake on the middle baking rack, above the dish of hot water, for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Pretty simple, but there are some Very Important Rules.

1) You HAVE to use soft golden whole wheat flour. The nutty flavor that we all associate with homemade whole wheat bread comes from hard red wheat, which is the common grocery store whole wheat flour. If you like that flavor, fine, but I know sometimes it's hard to get used to, especially for all of us who grew up on grocery store bread. I use Prairie Gold from Wheat Montana Farms. Seriously, DON'T CHEAT ON THIS INGREDIENT. (before you die of a heart attack, the link is to a 50 lb bag. It's about twice as expensive as grocery store all-purpose flour. I do NOT pay $50 for a 5 lb bag of flour.)

2) Don't forget the dish of water in the oven. The steam will give you a wonderful, thin, crisp-but-not-crunchy fresh-from-the-bakery crust.

Hope you enjoy it as much as we do! If you have trouble with the recipe or if you find you have to make altitude adjustments, please let me know. I'd like to be able to post the best, most complete version I can.