August garden & other life stuff.

The kitchen floors are scheduled.

We are mixing floor stain.
Dread paralysis.

The kitchen and addition were two different floors.
Both of which were different than the rest of the first floor.
We are making it all uniform.

Here is the before/after on the addition.
Here is the last time Paul and I chose floor stain— spoiler alert: it did not go well.

Next: garden.

We’ve had a phenomenal amount of rain.
We have frozen endless amounts of kale and basil.

Peas are over.
Cucumbers are coming to their end.
We are not yet in peak tomato season, but very soon.

Here is how we freeze the kale and other green stuff.

I am bad about doing basil.
You aren’t supposed to let it get a flower.

So once I SEE the flower starting– then I am like oh, I definitely cannot wait ANY longer.
Then I wait at least another week.

Doing THIS MUCH BASIL?
Literally, ANYTHING else is more appealing.

It would be intolerable without Paul.
The man is a machine.

We make giant batches in the food processor and freeze it.
You can use ice cube trays. I go bigger.

It’s our garlic. I don’t peel it.
Just slice off the roots and rinse.

Frozen greens are NOT something you’d want to unthaw and eat plain.

I add them to the pan with olive oil, more garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, butternut squash, carrots, whatever’s in the fridge… or skip the tomatoes and do ginger and cabbage… also: mixing fresh veg with frozen I think tastes better.

A post shared by Victoria Elizabeth Barnes (@victoriaelizabethbarnes) on Jul 31, 2018 at 7:01am PDT

Dahlias:
Our last three winters, I have regretted digging— we had very mild winters, and whatever-percent of tubers I would’ve lost would have been WORTH IT– to skip the task.

Then, last fall, life was crazy.
Paul wasn’t home much.
We didn’t dig.

So we had ALL THE WINTER.
So my Dahlia-return-rate is not great.

I took cuttings of the ones that came up early… (here is how to take and grow cuttings) I stuck them right into the dirt— not bothering to baby and transplant, the ROI is not great, but the simplicity is unbeatable.

I still have plenty of bare spots… But the sunflowers chose this year to REALLY re-seed themselves, so that sort of distracts from the haphazard places of nothing.

Compost:
We have simplified our method of composting.

We use a 5-gallon bucket.
During garden season, it gets filled almost daily.

We used to transfer that bucket into a “real“ compost pile.
Now we just dump it directly in the garden.

It does not look nice.
But the garden LOVES it– tomatoes especially!
AND SO MUCH SIMPLER.

New tool:
I bought a new water wand. The kind I’ve had in the past were just the rainshower kind… but this one– you can also select the spray, and the head is articulated so you can position it in different angles, AND the water-pressure adjuster thing actually works so you can set it for a fine setting that won’t smash seedlings.

I have been using it since spring and I really like it.

Life:
Paul likes to DO things.

I like my husband to not be reminded every minute of the day how his wife is utterly unsuitable for him and literally any other one would have been better.

My brothers are coming home in September for a parent-milestone-birthday… we are not an omg birthday family– it’s just an excuse to force the boys to come home.
Thanks, dad!

I think I might get to see my bff around the same time.

I really wish the floor mess was not ALSO happening. But I am trying to just focus on the good parts and not let the stress of the other ruin the rest.

Reading: Happens Every Day, by Isabel Gillies.

It’s a good memoir.
A great beach read.

What a terrible thing to say about the disintegration of someone’s life.

Life tip gleaned:
If your husband is a writer.
And he leaves you for a writer.

Definitely write a NYT bestseller.

OTHER GARDEN POSTS