Here are a few new photos-- trying not to replicate the plants I put on last time too much:






















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I'm not really sure how my cabbage is going to turn out. There are a few that look fabulous (like the ones below), but many of the others seem to suffer the most from the slugs' invasion, and quite a few of them are looking a little tattered... but I'm planning to make sauerkraut.



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The corn seems to be coming along. I've never been able to watch it grow from this close up and it's a pretty fascinating experience - the tassels happen up top, and then the pits start sprouting cornsilk and the stalk just starts bulging. Oh, I do so love corn; I hope I have bunches and bunches!


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I've got tons of spiders in the garden. We are very good pals these days. Maybe because I'm working on an artpiece about spiders, the Dalai Lama, facebook, and the universe.


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Finally the Kentucky Pole Beans are in! I've been dying to know how they grow, and now I know: profusely and big. I'm going to can a bunch tomorrow - I can't keep up with them, even though they're quite tasty to eat.





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And well, but I kind of wanted CC to be proud of my culinary experimentation (I wish she were around, so I could see how she would cook the stuff I would give her), and so I decided to take the harvest...,


And make something very delicious with it. I stayed simple with the beans & broccoli. But for the more complicated bit, I made a white cheese sauce and added the peas and basil (sounded like a strange combo - maybe disgusting, maybe perfect), which I then put over some whole-wheat noodles. The results were pretty good. Truthfully, the simple beans/broccoli was the best, but the basil and peas went together just fine!



I've also made my first batch of pesto, but didn't take pictures... next time.

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Other news is pretty spartan. It's been a weird week - house/dog- sitting for friends in F---dale. The house was dark, and I think I got a little depressed out there; I just holed up doing absolutely nothing but feeling dreary. I did hear from SSS, which was quite nice - the first extended conversation we've had in awhile, and some interesting gossip to go along with it! Hearing her voice cheered me up, but I was beyond tremendously glad that the friends came home a couple days early and I got to return to my humble home.

...It's going to be hard to convince myself to move someplace else when mom and cr's house and land is so lovely, and well, I get along so well with them. I think I was depressed in F---dale partially because I was lonely. Go figure... time to myself and I really didn't want it. Poor Herald was out of sorts too... he loves the dog that we were taking care of, but he just wanted to go back to his routine. Also, being out in F---dale, and trying to take care of two dogs, I didn't get to my studio and so felt panicked about my work. It's been so hard to get some kind of routine going, but I'm thinking I must have the starts of one because I kept wanting to be at the studio, plugging away on nothing of much consequence.

Speaking of which, I did the artwalk again, but this time nobody came. Hmmm... After an hour of nobody, I called mom and asked her to pop by so I wouldn't be so bored. She did for a few minutes, but then I finally gave up and left when one person wandered over from the gallery next door (which was packed... due of course to their advertising and networking, but I hoped some might wander the fifteen feet to my studio. Apparently a light, sign, and a pile of sock monkeys is not a visible enough draw to get anyone to wander in. Next time I'm going to have to advertise, although I was rather hoping to avoid expending my energy that way, instead just getting a few passersby. It's only a studio afterall, and not a gallery). But the one visitor I did get just walked quickly around for a few seconds, and then asked me how much I pay for studio rent. I'm pretty sure he was more interested in the space than in anything else, which irritated me, so I took off and wrote the experience off as a learning one. I wasn't done with the piece I'm working on anyway, and only had a draft up on the wall, along with older work, so...

Oh, and I've started teaching again - it's intense--a 12-week course packed into 5-weeks, so I'm back to the commenting mill.

Anyhow. I'm off to work again...

Labels: Garden 8-14-09