The Birds

Last Saturday morning I was lying in bed waiting for my alarm to go off and suddenly heard rain come pouring down. When it first started, I thought to myself, "Whoa! That was sudden; it must be pretty heavy out there!" So I got up and peeked through the blinds. Expecting to see cats and dogs falling from the sky, I was dumbfounded when I saw nothing; it actually looked relatively inviting for 7 a.m. on Saturday morning. Then I saw them, hundreds of black birds atop our surrounding neighbors' homes.

I stepped back from the window, listened again, trying to make out the small little bird feet scraping across our shingles, but it still sounded like rain so I went downstairs to investigate. Funny enough, when I pulled back our hideous vertical blinds, I saw a couple of neighbors also outside looking to the sky. So not being afraid of a few little birds, I walked out on our patio and looked at our roof.

There weren't many birds left on our room, but the flocks flying around had me back in the house quick. I didn't need live out a scene from The Birds; seeing it on the TV was enough.

It's about time!

After my griping about how my garden seemed to be dying and cursing those darn japanese beetles, I am actually harvesting mounds of produce from my vegetable wild bandit. Just a few days ago, I went out to check on my tomatoes and came back 30 minutes later with a bucket of tomatoes and green beans.

I'm crediting this sudden burst of fruit on the weather change we've experienced in the last couple weeks and boy am I grateful for it (in more ways than one). Look at this glorious pico-de-gallo salsa I made from half of our bucket of tomatoes. Doesn't it look delicious?

Take it from us, it is scrumptious and it will keep us snacking healthy for at least a week and a half. We even steamed a handful of those green beans and partnered them with a nice teriyaki glazed salmon last week, yum! Is anyone else reaping delicious rewards from their gardening efforts? Do share!

Garden Update: 3 Months

It's been about 3 months since I planted my garden and I can whole heartedly say that it has taken off like a wild bandit...literally. In fact, I almost titled my post Garden Havoc: 3 Months and you'll find out  why soon enough.

This year I planted a different green bean family and unfortunately, they are the climbing variety for which I have nothing for them to climb, except their neighboring tomato plants. The green beans are so aggressive that they are pulling the branches of my tomato plants down and because of this, I have had to keep trimming them back, which means that I am reaping very few beans for all my hard work—boo!

However, to repay me for my gentle care and protection, my tomatoes are thriving and boy are they delish! (Just ask Justin. He sliced one up for his BLT last night and it looked good!)

But of course, this joy cannot shine through the storm clouds of the japanese beetles that have been wreaking havoc on my plants. For those of you who aren't familiar with these lovely buggers, I researched them a bit to explain what they are and where they came from. Ahem...
Japanese beetles are insects native to (what do you guess) Japan and showed up in America in the early 1910s (supposedly on a shipment of tulip bulbs). The beetles are not entirely destructive to the vegetation in Japan because of natural predators, they can be highly dangerous to US crops and gardens (as you see in the photos of my garden below). For the most part, the only infested areas in the US start in the far northeast trickling down into the southeast and midwest. They are detrimental to plants because they skeletonize the foliage, eating the leaf between the veins. When plants no longer have the leaf material between the veins they cannot absorb the sun and grow, eventually dying.

I have noticed a large population of these beetles in my garden and since one positive reason to grow your own plants is to keep them pesticide free, I have done nothing to control them by ways of chemicals. As a result, about 30% of my garden looks like this.

Not too appealing, eh?

Fortunately, they seem to favor my green bean plants, which is fine by me since they are becoming a PITA (pain in the ass) anyways. Nonetheless, does anyone have suggestions for how to eradicate or at least decrease their numbers? I have heard that the best way is to fill a bowl or bucket with soapy water and knock them into it but I've been too lazy to do that yet. Any other chem-free ideas? I'm all ears!

Garden Update: 1 Month

It's only been a month since I planted our garden, but with the sunny-hot-humid-rainy days we've had the last couple weeks, our garden is flourishing.

Check out my onions!

The green beans are growing a life of their own.

The lettuce is thriving.

I even have 2, count 'em, 2 larger-than-a-golf-ball tomatoes!

It's going to be a summer full of great goodies from our garden and don't worry I'll keep you updated on all the freshness coming out of there.

Embracing Gravity

In May, we hosted a Mother's Day grill-out at our house with Justin's extended family. Can you believe it was their first time coming to our home? You all know that I'm not a mom (nor soon-to-be), so I didn't expect to receive anything that day, however, Justin's relatives showered us with house warming gifts. One of these said gifts was this odd-looking tomato tower garden station.

As you can kind of see from the packaging (above), it is a stand with a container on top that you can plant flowers, herbs, or other favorite foliage. The unique part about this contraption is that in the bottom of the container (pictured below on the right) there are openings where you can plant tomatoes so they hang upside down. How cool is that? I have always wanted to get a topsy-turvy tomato plant, but never had a spot to do so, until now!

Assembly was a breeze and after a few minutes, it was standing strong and I was ready to go shopping for my vegetation.

Before I could do so, I had to ensure it wouldn't fall over, so I filled the base's container with leftover landscaping rocks and sand; then I went shopping.

While at Home Depot trying to decide which tomatoes to plant, I talked with an associate who recommended planting strawberries or cherry tomatoes in the planter. He suggested planting something with small fruit because as large tomatoes grow they become so heavy that they fall off the vine when hung upside down, even the topsy-turvy planters. I had already planted roma tomatoes in my garden, so I picked out a couple strawberries to plant upside down—yum! To fill in the top of the basin, I decided to plant an herb garden and bought catnip, basil, cilantro, and oregano.

Back at home, I separated some of the strawberry plants and slid a single plant in each hole.

The planter came with these handy-dandy caps that I put on the hole, leaving a small gap where the plant hung down through.

After placing them all in and securing them with the caps, I filled the planter with dirt and gave it a refreshing drink of water.

To plant the herbs on top, I filled in some more dirt and planted them like any other vertical plant. I also used the same marker tags that I used in my garden to label the plants. Can you imagine wanting cilantro but grabbing catnip instead? (Blech!)

All in all, the planter turned out great. It is awesome having an herb garden a step out my back door and before leaving for work this morning, I checked my strawberries and saw some buddings of future fruit. I can't wait until those are grown and ripe.

Does anyone else have a planter like this? What did you plant in yours?

PS: Check back for an update on our garden, it's growing like weeds!

Biggest and Best in the Upper Midwest

Over Memorial Day weekend, Justin and I ventured North to visit some family and friends in Minnesota. My best friend Heidi, who is a Minneapolitan and whom we visited last fall, is always gushing about the goods she gets at too-good-to-be-true prices from the Minneapolis farmer's market, so when the rooster crowed Sunday morning, Justin and I met up with her and her boyfriend to wander around the self proclaimed largest open air market in the upper midwest (see photo).

After touring around the place, I must agree with the sign.

There were rows and rows of vendors selling all sorts of yumminess at buy-like-there's-no-tomorrow-prices. From local vegetables, freshly plucked from gardens...

to herbs that smelled so good they could almost induce an aroma coma...

to plump fruit and berries, just begging to be eaten.

You can even find interesting oddities such as this purple basil. (Well, at least I've never seen purple basil, have you?)

The insane part is that the majority of the items for sale are grown by local folks, which turns yummy-food-smiles into pat-myself-on-the-back-for-supporting-my-neighbors-smile. Not to mention, the beautiful way some vendors spruce up their packaging. Nothing says "hello sunshine" like some pansy faces, am I right?

But of course, flanking the end of the good-for-you fruits and veggies is another row of cooked food such as hot caramel corn, pulled pork, and mini donuts (yum-o!). Heidi is particularly fond of the fresh squeezed orange juice, which I must say is probably the best darn orange juice I have ever had.

The last, but certainly not least, row capping the end of the market is what I call gourmet alley. There you can sample olives, olive oil, nuts, spreads, bread, and even homemade soap.

Unfortunately, after perusing through all the goodies, all four of us left with empty hands. Surprising, no? Well, in our defense, we had a full day ahead of us and didn't think the produce would last in a hot and humid car all afternoon. But, now that I've experienced it, when I talk to Heidi and she is slurping down an orange juice, I'll be even more jealous. In fact, it sounds delicious right now.

Just a Couple Tree Huggers

Even though this story is a month old to us, it's never too late to hug er, plant a couple trees right? Well, that's exactly what Justin and I did the weekend after Earth Day this year (yes, I know about a month ago). I could say we planted them in celebration of Mother Earth, but that wouldn't be accurate because we planted them for purely selfish reasons: we want large lush trees in our backyard one day and I had a Home Depot Garden Club coupon to use (of course). And this coupon wasn't any old $10 off a $50 purchase—which we have scored many times in the past—oh no no no, this was a buy one tree get one tree free coupon. Yes, you read correctly, 2 trees for the price of one, who could go wrong with that? Not us! So, while out and about one day, we stopped at good 'ol HD and snatched up two of their largest trees in stock, one maple and one birch tree for (drum roll please) 100 smack-o-las. As we danced to our good fortune in the car on the way home, we talked strategy about where these big-daddies were going to go.

Unlike most other projects I tackle, I did not mock up the location of these guys, because moving them around the yard was a much faster way to get a sense of the space. We ended up choosing to plant them about 6 feet in from the back of our property, aligning them with the sides of our house and across from each other. We think they frame the yard nicely and dream of planting more friends around them in the fall. After determining the best spot for each tree, we were ready to start digging.

But before we started the actual tree-planting-process, the most important part of this project was making sure we did not hit any gas or electric lines when digging. To ensure we didn't, we called up the Illinois JULIE hotline (8-1-1) and submitted our request. JULIE is an extremely convenient resource for anyone planning any digging in their yard (trees, decks, additions, etc.). The hotline takes your information and contacts each utility company for you. Within three days later, our backyard was tagged and flagged. (JULIE was new to me for this project and when Justin told me he had to call Julie before we could plant the trees, I got all huffy and said, "Who's Julie!?" Now I know.)

Any who, back to the action. When planting a tree, the hole should be twice as wide as the ball and just as deep as the height of the ball.

Another important step (almost as important as JULIE), is straightening out the roots. As you can see, the roots of our tree molded to the container it had been sitting in for who knows how long and we needed to loosen these up so that they didn't continue to grow in a circle, but stretched out into the earth like arms, allowing the roots to grow out and suck up the nutrients in the native soil.

It's a little hard to see the ball here, but this is how it looked after we broke it up and shook the roots out a bit.

Next, we started filling the hole back up. To provide additional nutrients to our new babies, we mixed a bag of Miracle-Gro garden soil for trees and shrubs with the dirt we dug up. It is important to mix some sort of tree soil with the native soil so that the roots are fed and the transplanted tree isn't shocked by the new dirt environment.

We started by filling the hole only half full because we had to make sure the tree was straight from all directions. I won't stand for crooked trees in my yard!

Then, we stomped the dirt down, compressing it as much as we could to hold the tree in place...

...and topped it off with the rest of the dirt.

Once safely in the ground and straight up-and-down, we gave them a good dose of H2O and continued to water them every day for the next couple weeks. Trees soak up water at a slow rate, so no need to blast them with buckets of water, a slow stream will do the trick.

Since then, we've sat back and admired our work, secretly wishing we could fast forward five years and see how much bigger they'll be in the future.

Did anyone else tackle a planting project around Earth Day? There's no better time to give back to the earth than the present!

Bringing the isles to Illinois

Prior to going on our Hawaiian vacation earlier this year, which you can start reading about here, I daydreamed about the souvenirs I was going to bring home. Like the photos I took while we were in Italy on our honeymoon that are now matted, framed, and hanging in our family room, I wanted items I could scatter around our house as daily reminders of this trip. So, as we soaked up the sun, shopped, and did other vacation-related activities, I picked up some inexpensive (and free) curios to bring the island-flavor back to Illinois.

These $2-a-piece dried starfish were the first things I snagged from a nearby shop. I love their white, simple shapes, and every time I spritz myself with my chosen fragrance of the day, I admire their beautiful forms.

Oh, you saw that I threw in the word free did you? Well, that's no mistake. As we visited beaches around the islands, I gathered some large and small pieces of dried corral that had washed ashore and stowed them in my luggage. They didn't make my suitcase smell so hot, but once home, I rinsed the salt water and sand off and distributed them around our house.

Our souvenirs aren't large (like a carved wood mask that many vendors were peddling), but when I catch a glimpse of them, they make me smile and remind me of the wonderful time we had on the beautiful isles of Hawaii.