Vegetable Gardening

5 Ways to Make February Fabulous

“In the coldest February, as in every other month in every other year, the best thing to hold on to is each other.” – Linda Ellerbee

So maybe I was a tad optimistic in that title. Perhaps I should have stuck with “fine” or “fair”. We are talking about February, after all. I often find this month a bit, well, challenging. All of the newness of the year – the parties, the resolutions, the bowls of black-eyed peas – too often give way to the realization that there are lots of cloudy days and long cold nights to go as my little corner of the earth rotates back toward the sun.

I love winter. It just has considerably more appeal in November, when sweaters, crackling fires, and root vegetables are still novelties. Apparently I’m not alone. A quick Google search turns up dozens of articles and blog posts entitled, “February Sucks,” lamenting everything from Valentine’s Day to midterms to sinus infections.

But this month, I decided I will not just quietly cope with my February malaise. I’m on a mission to pull February from its shadowy reputation – at least in our house. In August, as we’re sitting outside watching the sun set at nine and eating vine-ripened tomatoes, hopefully we’ll say, “This is nice, but remember February?”

Maybe you can use some February mood-lifters too? Here are five ways I’m hoping to rescue this poor wreck of a month:

1. Plan the Garden

What’s the next best thing to eating those first sweet, crunchy snap peas and juicy raspberries? Dreaming about them, of course. And what better way to do that then to sketch out some garden plans? Last year, planning was my key to gardening success, and I learned a lot from what worked and didn’t work. I’m looking forward to spending some February afternoons with a cup of tea, some gardening books, and my sketch pad.

If you don’t have space or desire for a garden, you could plan some containers for your deck, or a window box, or adopt a house plant. Just glimpsing plants has been found to speed the recovery of surgery patients and improve workers’ job satisfaction. Hopefully plants can help rescue February too, a month altogether wanting for more shrubbery.

2. Invite someone new over for dinner

We have new neighbors, who also happen to be old acquaintances, and we’ve been meaning to invite them over for awhile to welcome them to the neighborhood. February is calling for a break-up in the old routines. Why not invite someone new over to your house too? It’s the perfect excuse for a feast. Eat. Play some games. Discuss ways to spruce up February.

3. Create something every day

Around this time of year, after all of the baking and the making that comes with the holidays, I often find myself in a creativity lull. Dr. Kelly Lambert might say this explains why February is so challenging for me. She asserts that cooking, knitting, sewing, building, or repairing things with our hands and seeing tangible results from our efforts bathes our brains in feel-good chemicals. I know she’s right. I feel much better when I’m creative. “An art or craft everyday” is my new February motto.

4. Listen to music

Music – notably up-tempo music played in a major key – makes people happy. Research indicates that listening to music we enjoy triggers the release of the natural opiates known as endorphins. And in studies, music has been found to boost surgery patients’ immune systems, lower stress in pregnant women, and reduce complications from cardiac surgery. I know music makes everyone in my house happier, and yet I often simply forget to turn it on. I hereby proclaim February the month of music. We will listen, sing, play, and dance.

5. Start a new tradition

Okay, so I’ve come up with a few ways to improve the next couple of weeks, but what about next February and the February after? I mean, if I’m going to make this a legendary month, we need a tradition that we talk about all year. Should we make valentines? Or truffles? Go on a scavenger hunt? Take off for a weekend getaway? I haven’t decided yet … I’m hoping you’ll share your ideas.[clickToTweet tweet=”Do you dread February? Try these 5 ways to make it fabulous. #winter” quote=”Do you dread February? Try these 5 ways to make it fabulous.” theme=”style1″]

Do you love February, or at least like it? Do you have any fabulous February traditions? I’d love to hear from you.

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Check Out My Kickstarter!

By Abby Quillen

My husband and I are in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund for my dad’s new anthology. (I wrote about the project here.) For a brief summary, my dad, who passed away last June, was a columnist for the Denver Post for 26 years, and I’ve been compiling his best columns from 1999 to 2012 into an anthology. It will be released on November 1, and right now we’re raising funds for publication, distribution, and marketing. Come on over and check out our Kickstarter if you’re interested!

The last three weeks have been a whirl of running a Kickstarter, sending out press releases, talking to the media, and setting up events. It’s been a wonderful learning experience, and I can’t wait to share more with you about the process when it’s all over. The best part, hands down, has been the lovely notes I’ve received with stories about my dad and how he impacted different people.

In addition to our Kickstarter project, I’ve been editing one article and writing another. It feels great to be busy. I am constantly in awe of how much I can get done in a day with my husband at home for the summer fielding more of the parenting duties.

Of course, I also take lots of gardening breaks. And just when I thought my garden couldn’t make me any happier, the sunflowers bloomed.

I’ll be here next week with a post about Eugene’s annual car-free festivity. Then I have big plans for August including a writing conference, a family camping trip, and a revamp of New Urban Habitat, so things will likely be quiet around here if I can resist popping in to share pictures of squash and tomatoes. (Red tomatoes in July! Seriously, this is the best gardening season ever.)

What’s growing in your garden or life this summer? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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Lessons From the Garden

By Abby Quillen

“Can we plant the pumpkins this day?”

“Let’s go see if the peas are growing!”

“Mom, the chickens are in the garden again.”

Oh yes, those are the sounds of spring around here. It’s our fifth year growing vegetables in our backyard. It’s amazing how much easier it is than that first April, when seven months pregnant, I dragged my husband out to help me dig a garden bed in our brand-new backyard. I wish I’d heeded the wisdom of permaculturists, who recommend observing and analyzing a site for an entire year before planting a single seed … and also the wisdom of my body, which wasn’t happy about my grand gardening visions.

Those are just two of the hard-earned lessons I’ve learned from five years of gardening. Except for one summer of gardening in Colorado several years ago, my husband and I are gardening newbies. My dad planted a vegetable garden for one season when I was a kid, and it was one of the most thrilling summers of my life. I couldn’t wait to go outside every morning to see what was growing. I knew I would be a vegetable gardener someday, and during the many years my husband and I spent renting and moving around, I longed to get my hands in the soil.

I wasn’t a natural.

Those first few years, I labored over my garden plans for hours while studying Steve Solomon’s Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades. I’m thankful for all I’ve learned from that book, and from others. I still refer to books. But even for a word lover like me, gardening is one of those things you learn by doing. And, oh, how I’ve learned.

My first big lesson: I’m not really in charge.

Yes, I can plant at a certain time and mix the fertilizer. I can water or not water. I can fence the chickens away from the first tender sprouts. But I’m collaborating with the weather, the rain, the soil, the wildlife, bugs, insects, and bees. There’s a certain amount of surrender involved.

Over the years I’ve surrendered to stunted squash, wilted cabbage, and unripe tomatoes. To chickens shredding the lettuce, bugs eating the spinach, kids eating the cherry tomatoes.

I’ve learned to let go of perfection.

My next big lesson: gardens have healing powers.

For a couple of seasons, gardening became a chore. Work. I’d trudge out and dutifully plant the seeds and water. I’d mix my fertilizer and mindlessly sprinkle the soil with it.

I believed in growing my own food. I wanted to harvest vegetables from my back yard. But I’m not sure I loved the actual gardening part.

Last spring, overwhelmed with caring for a three-year-old and an infant, I wasn’t sure if I’d plant a garden at all.

“Maybe it’s a good year to let our plots lay fallow,” I announced in March.

But, at the end of April, I got a great deal on a bunch of starts and planted.

Then my dad died.

I spent much of June in Colorado. And when I came back, it was incredibly uplifting to see the peas twisting up their trellises and the lettuce, rainbow chard, spinach, carrots, and heirloom tomatoes crowding their beds, reaching for the sun.

I spent so many hours with those plants over the next few months, watering and weeding, watching and listening, sitting.

I was surprised a few weeks ago when I pulled out my gardening journal. Every season I meticulously record what I plant, what’s growing and what’s not, when I fertilize, etc. Last year, I didn’t jot down a single note after April 29.

And yet, I learned more from gardening than ever before.

The garden is the perfect place to grieve. Quiet, buzzing with bees, bursting with life. The plants have so much to tell us about life and death, about patience, about just being.

Now, as I embark on my fifth growing season, I feel no sense of duty. No obligation. I only feel grateful and excited.

What lessons have you learned from your garden? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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A Snapshot of Food in America

By Abby Quillen

Percentage of households in America that are “food insecure”:

14%

Percentage of food in the country that goes to waste:

50%

Amount the average American household spends on food each week per person:

$43.75

Amount companies spend advertising food, beverages, and candy in one year:

$7,459,000,000

Percentage of Americans who grow a vegetable garden:

38%

Percentage of food and beverage sales that are organic:

less than 3%

Percentage of 12-17 year olds who say they eat dinner with their families at least 5 times a week:

58%

Percentage of Americans who regularly watch TV while eating dinner:

66%

Average number of miles produce travels before it is sold:

1,500

Number of calories the average American eats per day:

3,774

Number of calories the average Guatemalen eats per day:

2,219

Adult obesity rate in 2008:

34%

Adult obesity rate in 1971:

14.5%

Percentage of school cafeterias that cook “less than half” of their food from scratch:

80%

Percentage of school cafeterias that serve restaurant-branded fast food:

33%
Click on hyperlinks to see sources for statistics. All other statistics from the 2009 World Almanac and Hungry Planet by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio

This is part of a New Urban Habitat series: Snapshots of America:

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Buy Less, Create More, and Transform Your Life

By Abby Quillen

When you type the phrase “American consumers” into Google, you get 976,000 results. That two-word phrase is mentioned 1,494 times in Google News stories just today. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of hearing about American consumers. I’m all for supporting farmers, booksellers, manufacturers, craftsmen, bakers, and artisans with my dollars – especially those doing business in a fair, sustainable way. I’m just convinced that this meme that Americans are essentially consumers is destructive, not just to the environment, but to our psyches.

Consumption is passive, bland, and boring. Consumption requires little of us. We humans are creative and innovative creatures. Our minds churn with thoughts, impressions, and opinions. We erupt with ideas. We produce symphonies, skyscrapers, bridges, frescoes, novels, poems, quilts, ocean liners, and airplanes. We’re not mindless buyers, purchasers, or consumers. We are producers, inventors … creators.

How can we buck this oppressive notion that our most important role in life is consuming? Easy. We can buy less and get creative. I’m all for art. Draw, paint, sew, knit, crochet, sing, and dance! But what I’m talking about is more accessible. It doesn’t require a paint brush, knitting needles, a sewing machine … or talent. All you have to do is bring imagination to the day-to-day.

Look at your shopping list; think outside the box, bottle, or container; and ask yourself, Can I make this? Sometimes the answer will be no … or the learning curve, labor, or time you’d spend make it a bad candidate for your efforts. But often you can make things.

It may be hard to shift your consciousness from buying to creating at first. Most of us have watched and listened to literally years of commercials selling everything from boxed rice, to jarred baby food, to taco seasoning, to deodorant. Corporations have convinced us we need loads of products. And the government and media have even conflated consuming with civic responsibility. So it may seem strange that a lot of the products and packaged food we buy are unnecessary. Some don’t even save us time; many are inferior to what we can make ourselves; and worse, many (and their packages) are destructive to our health and to the planet.

When you start thinking about what you can make and start practicing that first (and most ignored) part of the recycling mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle, your grocery bills will inevitably shrink. You’ll probably experience an incomparable glow of satisfaction when your creations taste fabulous or nail the job they’re intended for. You might also notice positive changes in your health. But the best part is you’ll begin to see yourself as the imaginative, resourceful, amazing creator that you are.

Four easy ways to start buying less and getting creative:

1. Grow food

Turn your lawn into an edible landscape, put a few containers of tomatoes on your balcony, plant a fruit tree, or just grow some herbs in your kitchen window. When you garden, you and nature become co-creators in a grand project. And fruit, veggies, and herbs are never again something you mindlessly buy at the supermarket year-round.

2. Cook from scratch

You can easily afford some good cookbooks with all the money you’ll save by ditching expensive, nutritionally-deficient, processed food. Cooking is easy. If you’re a newby, just follow the recipes closely. Of course, cooking with whole foods takes more time than heating up processed food or spinning through the drive through. But you’ll save buckets of cash, eat healthier, and the taste difference is nothing short of astounding. Some of my favorite cookbooks: Cooking for the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, and America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

3. Make bread

The authors of Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book insist there are “subtle, far-reaching, and distinctly positive changes that can take place when you begin to bake (bread) regularly.” They claim the process is therapeutic, creative, calming, and can transform a house into a home. I agree. I’ve been making my family’s bread for much of the past year, and I’m amazed by how much I look forward to bread-making day, not just because the house smells delectable and I get to eat slices of steaming hot bread fresh from the oven. There’s also something about the process. It leaves a lot of room for learning and growing. Bread-making undeniably takes time, but you can use a bread machine, stand-up mixer, or food processor to help with the kneading, and for most of the rest of the process, the dough simply rests and rises on the counter, leaving you free to kick back or attend to some other chore. Start with a basic loaf, and you might find yourself moving onto more complicated recipes, like desem or sourdough, before you know it.

4. Mix up green cleaners

Years ago my friend Beth told me she started looking forward to cleaning when she started making her own cleaners, but it took me years to heed her advice. It seemed complicated. It’s not. Trust me, you do not need to be a chemist for this. All you need is distilled white vinegar, baking soda, and liquid castile soap (Think: Dr. Bronner’s). And Beth’s right – homemade cleaners make housework more fun. You can mix up an all-purpose bathroom cleaner with 50/50 vinegar and water. Find more recipes for everything from furniture polish to mildew remover in The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen or Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck.

You don’t have to stop there. You can make herbal teas, tonics, tinctures, cosmetics, lotions, salves, yogurt, butter, ice cream, beer, wine, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, pickles, jams, and so much more. And for the more crafty – of course, you can sew clothes; crochet blankets; knit sweaters; create art for your walls; or build furniture. You may find that the more you create, the more creative you become.

(Originally posted on May 13, 2009.)

Are you already buying less and getting creative? I’d love to hear what you’re doing!

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News From the Garden

By Abby Quillen

Back in May, I wrote Notes From the Garden about my high hopes for our vegetable garden this year. In the three springs since we’ve moved into our house, we’ve set out with grand gardening visions each April. We’ve tilled and planted and watered … but we haven’t had much success. The first April I was seven months pregnant and vastly overestimated how much I would enjoy hovering over raised beds with a newborn in a sling. Then last spring the garden was doing great … until four ravenous chickens pecked it to shreds. So now our newborn’s grown into a toddler and we’ve built a chicken yard and I’ve charted and planned, and it just has to be our year, right?

Well, I’ve been feeling fairly optimistic about our progress. The chard didn’t do well, but we’ve been munching on peas for weeks, we just harvested garlic, the tomato plants are huge, the zucchini is threatening to take over the garden, and my husband’s hops are climbing their homemade trellises.

Then I glanced at those pictures I took in mid-May, and realized how much everything really has grown in just two months, and I couldn’t believe it. As my friend Rose said last year as she was harvesting bumper crops of peppers and tomatoes – “Gardening is thrilling!”