A couple of weeks ago I was reading a blog when they mentioned Taproot Magazine, a new publication partly founded by Soule Mama. I used to read her blog often but haven’t much in the last few years so I went to the magazine’s website and to her website to read more about it. Instantly I was enamored and I had to have it. So I subscribed as a founding subscriber for a discounted rate and between doing that and reading more blogs with photos of the magazine, I’ve been wondering where mine was. Well, yesterday I opened the mailbox at lunch to see it sitting there. I was so…

The Ones We Bought In an effort to jump start the season of tomatoes we decided to buy a few plants already started at our local nursery. I’m not big on hybrids but Chris’ mom loves Early Girl and so we decided to give her a try. I’ve wanted to try Cherokee Purple for years but it has never made it into our garden. I have seeds, in storage. We’ll see how she performs for us. I ended up with two Cherokee Purple’s because when I went to grab this one, I broke the tomato. Guilty, I had to get a second one and pay for both. I decided to…

We had two, mostly straight, days of rain last weekend. During the breaks in the rain we spent a little time in the garden getting seeds in the ground and transplanting tomato seedlings. I took all of these last Sunday evening after the rain has finally stopped and the blue sky came out. The photo above shows the sugar snap pea trellis but on this side of it will be some long beans. We planted salvia out front to entice the butterflies and hummingbirds. The sugar snap peas from below. The front half of this plot is spinach and flat leaf parsley. Chris was able to start sweet basil seeds…

I popped into a Dollar General on the way home from visiting Chris at his field hotel two weekends ago to grab a few goodie package items to send to my niece and nephew. The seed display was promptly placed in the middle of the aisle near the cash register and I could not continue on, I had to stop. No, the seeds weren’t organic and who knows where they were from, but I was so enticed by the super cheap price, somewhere less than $0.50 each for most packets, that I grabbed up a few packages of sunflower seeds, ageratum, celosia and zinnia. I can’t wait for the celosia,…

It seems like nature has switched ‘on’ and the plants are ready for spring. Overnight, blooms are coming out of seemingly nowhere. Sugar daddy snap pea bud Sugar daddy snap pea blossom The Brussels sprouts have not done that great. Unfortunately we have a row of beds that gets a lot of shade in the winter. The shade comes from a rodeo shelter that blocks a lot of sunlight from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, thus some of the plants in this section are stunted. I think the sprouts would have matured more had they had access to more light. I’ve been eyeing their leaves to add into my morning green smoothies,…

We pulled all of the Golden Ball Turnips last weekend in an effort to make room for a spring crop of cucumbers. Some of the turnips were gigantic, including some that I had thinned and transplanted in a spot that we’d just harvested radishes several months ago. We took the turnips home and made two batches of mashed turnips and froze them for future eating. I love having all of this food, but I can’t wait to get a deep freezer and more storage space for keeping food for throughout the year.

January has been unseasonably warm and I have nothing bad to say about that. Flip flops in January? Yes! The warmth has tinges of Florida in it and it makes me happy. December and part of November were so dark, dreary and rainy that it was really depressing for me. January has turned beautiful, with a few cold mornings here and there, the sun seems to shine its warmth and heat the day up. The light is changing too. The sun is moving northward again. I know because it had hidden itself behind the curtain in front of my desk at work and has now worked itself into blinding me…