ursulas_alcove | Wordy Wednesday

There's been a lot to do, from physical tasks to mental tasks. There's been no time to catch up on podcasts or to watch all the DVDs from the library. My first on the list was to processes whether or not to merchant at Armistice (non-Pennsic). It is a tough choice. It pained me to see local people dissing the event and the Cooper's for trying to stay afloat. Look, no one asked you to attend. What other people do, is their choice. That angered me but I had to be sensible in my decision-making. I could not make the numbers work. Despite social distancing, the ratio of merchants to populace will be too high. I can't control that. The University, which fuels my business, will be virtual. I am sad but I have to play this one by the numbers.

Meanwhile, I am planning on vending at Great Lakes Fiber. I hope if you are in the Wooster (Ohio) area that you stop on by. The event is at the Wayne County Fairgrounds on May 29th and 30th. I am in the process of winding and dyeing 25 pounds of linen. I am excited about this! I invested in a lot of colors and yarn.

Today, it is snowing, a pretty dusting on top of everything. I spent hours yesterday covering just about everything with sheets, rugs, burlap and anything I could find in the garage. Tonight it will go down to 29 degrees but by Tuesday, it will hit 80. How will that impact the garden production? I think my biggest question is on the fruit trees. The plum is too big to cover. The Asian pear got two out of three branches covered. I really need an orchard ladder. Only that type will work on our hill. The currants are covered. The blueberries are covered. The fig tree is covered and the apple. Cold weather plants that have yet to be put in the ground, like chard, onions from seed, cabbage, and bulb fennel are hanging out under plastic in the cinderblock garden.

I would have to say that the claim that you can start a garden in 15 minutes a day is rather inaccurate. No, I don't spend much time weeding if I mulch properly, but the time observing, watering, covering, uncovering, and so on, is more than 15 minutes a day. If it's sunny following a cold snap, you can cook your plants under plastic even in February. Tuesdays are my busy day because it is the day we ship. I had three different software packages that sold things so printing orders wasn't straight forward. I got it done, but I also spent a few minutes while I was cooking lunch plopping in fresh soil into cinderblock holes and planting red onion bulbs. (We finally found someone selling organic onion sets.) I rushed back in, stirred the pot, ran back out, pulled the mustards going to seed, rushed back in, started plating, ran back out, I forgot to snip some green onions for the eggs. Chives don't like it here but green onions do. We'll take what we can get. The collard greens got a little crunchy, overcooking. My hands cracked from washing them so much yesterday. Covering the plants last night took two hours. It doesn't help that we can't find the mother-load of clothes pins. Somewhere there is a crow who's pinned up shiny artwork above the nest with my clothes pins. Maybe the crows even made a mobile with clothes pins, scraps of mylar balloons, and bellydancing coins above the nursery. Who knows?

But gardening is worth it. The taste of a freshly picked ripe fruit is so much better than store bought. It will have so much more nourishment for your body. Plants bred for transport to grocery stores and picked before they are ripe, just don't compare.

The van is packed full of the new strawberry plants as well as potatoes in grow bags. It helps to have mobile planters. With all that done, Wednesday is going to be a day to relax a little. I still have to find my yarn cards which actually means cleaning the attic. It's a good task for a snowy day.

There are a lot of little things that the house has eaten or the fairies have taken. One puzzler is that I know I bought a certain book. I had checked it out from the library so many times that I finally broke down and bought it a couple years back. I checked the book out again from the library. The more I read, the more I knew I needed this book as a regular reference in my life. It's called the Home Grown Pantry by Barbara Pleasant. I was thinking that I need to reorder it again next month. It has so many growing tips, recipes, which variety of plant grows better in spring versus fall, preservation tips, everything. It also gives general info on how much of a plant to grow per person and yield. I love this book. It was really bothering me as to where the copy I bought had gone. I looked everywhere. I knew I had put it somewhere so I wouldn't accidentally return it with my library books. I looked in every bookshelf. I looked in project bins, behind desks, in drawers, everywhere. While I was winding yarn mindlessly, I wondered if it could have fallen behind the bookcase. I was pretty sure I'd looked. I remember taking out all the piano music books and reaching underneath to see if it was there. Since that time, we reorganized the entire dining room. There was just enough space for me to get my head next to the bookcase and actually look. I found my daughter's recipe book. I found the cookie magazine I bought for Christmas cookie recipes. I had to re-flatten all of these as the were a bit mangled. Just barely out of sight was something else. I reached further, as far as I could. Triumph at last! There was my book. Yes, it's kinda mangled. It's being pressed right now to straighten it out. The bookcase is no longer overflowing. Publications that had been on top of other books are what fell behind it. It's an open back, folding bookcase from merchanting. It wasn't robust enough for the job so I retired it. I am so happy! I can now look up each crop as they ripen and find out what I can do to preserve in a hurry. I think I'll be freezing rhubarb juice. It can be substituted for lemon juice in many recipes. There is also a recipe for candied rhubarb.