Win Copies of My Two Favorite Gardening Books!

I've decided to spread my love of gardening by conducting a giveaway of two of my favorite books:

All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew

and

The Organic Lawn Care Manual by Paul Tukey

Here's how the giveaway will work:

1. Leave a brief comment on this post that expresses why you love gardening (or why you want to learn).  Each comment will be assigned a number.  US and Canada residents only, please. 
2. At the end of one week, I will randomly select one number (using www.random.org), announce the winner and then contact that person to get their shipping information.  Make sure you don't comment as "Anonymous" or I won't know how to contact you.
3. I will then ship the books out to the winner.

Pretty easy.  To the lucky winner - I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!

Daily Photo: A Sad Discovery

 

Early yesterday morning, there was a lot of hysterical chirping outside of my younger son's window.  Later, we found that the wind had knocked a nest from the tree there.  There were several broken eggs scattered amidst the flowers.  Very sad.

Quick, Healthy and Filling Food

I overheard a woman say today that she doesn't have time to eat healthfully.  Respectfully, I must say that that's utter nonsense.   You just have to think outside the box.  Healthy food can also be "fast food."

Here's one example of a super quick, healthy and filling breakfast or lunch:

1 cup of lowfat organic strawberry yogurt (I love Stonyfield)
1 cup of GoLean Crunch! cereal (by Kashi)
1 cup of  raw blueberries

Nutritional content:
480 calories
7.5 grams of fat
19 grams of protein
12 grams of fiber
35% the US RDA of calcium

Yum!

What are your favorite healthy, fast meals?

An Organic Square Foot Garden, Part 2

Previous Related Posts:
An Organic Square Foot Garden (Part 1)
The Basics of Composting

***

Spring has sprung here in North Texas!

After what seemed like FOREVER (to my toddler), our seedlings sprouted...

... and then eventually grew strong enough to be transplanted into the square foot garden boxes, where they endured one last freeze (grr).  Sadly, the watermelon and cantaloupe seedlings did not survive that and we had to start them over, but the others fared pretty well.

Things have warmed up a bit and the days are mostly gorgeous...

The garden now looks like this.  The Bermuda grass should emerge from hibernation soon.  Note the compost bin in the foreground - we are well underway with filling that up.  It only got stinky once before I realized I needed to add more grass clippings to dry it out a bit.  I also planted two apple trees along the slope beyond the boxes - one Granny Smith (pies!) and one Golden Delicious.  When planting apple trees, you typically need to plant two or more different varieties so that cross pollination can occur.  Otherwise the trees don't bear much fruit.

Our Golden Delicious apple tree produced its first blossom, which is very exciting!

I also decided to plant some strawberries.  Since I did this after I started the square foot garden, I just put them into separate planters and gave them plenty of room to sprawl, which they like to do.  Shortly thereafter, we had our first strawberry!

Here is what the individual "crops" look like now.  Our radishes are growing very quickly.  I'm really optimistic about the bok choy (can't wait for that stir fry!) and the spinach.  My onions are doing well.  The tomato and bean pole plants are taking their time.

The lavender and broccoli are also showing promise...

The carrots took a bit longer to emerge but are doing very well.  You can see here that they need a bit of selective pruning so they won't choke one another.  I've had to prune every crop a bit so that I didn't have too many plants growing in each square foot. 

And here is my romaine lettuce.  This also needs to be thinned a bit.

I can't wrap up my post about Spring without also including a few photos of the lovely blooms that are brightening the garden these days...

So lovely!  Have a happy day!

Tiny Art Director

A while ago, a friend forwarded to me the link to the really great blog, Tiny Art Director, written by graphic artist Bill Zeman.  The blog documents several years of "commissions" by his daughter, starting when she was two years old.  She requested specific works of art and he fulfilled the requests as best he could.  She is a tough customer and he documents her reactions along the way.  Hysterical.   Well, now Bill has published a book of this work.  Check it out.

Bill also has a website where you can buy the prints.  When I came across one particular print, I simply could not resist buying it for my then three and a half year old son.  At that age, pretty much every discussion with him somehow led back to the subject, so I knew he'd enjoy it.  His friends think it is awesome, too.  In fact, I challenge you to find ANY boy who wouldn't love it.

Strawberry Banana Nut Muffins

Mid-morning and I looked at my son and said, "muffins?"  "Yes!" he replied.  So I went to see what odds and ends I could throw in.  Turns out I had one browning banana and a handful of slightly over the hill strawberries in the refrigerator that would otherwise have been headed for the composter.  Perfect! 

I decided to use my zucchini bread recipe as the backdrop - the ingredients just seemed right.  But I then discovered that I only had one cup of brown sugar.  No problem - I just substituted regular organic granular sugar for the required balance.  Oops.  I only had two large eggs, not three.  Again, no problem.  I just substituted a 1/4 cup of water for the missing egg.  Lesson: go with the flow.

My son had a warm muffin with a touch of vanilla ice cream for dessert after lunch.  My husband ate his warm with a touch of butter.  I had mine plain. Scrumptious!

Ingredients/Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Mix the following until completely blended (I use a stand mixer):
2 large eggs
1/4 cup water
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granular sugar
1 cup canola oil
1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

2. Fold in:
1 cup mashed banana
1 cup finely chopped strawberries

3. Add the following and mix well:
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
2 cups flour

4. Fold in:
1 cup chopped walnuts

5. Bake in a muffin tin using liners or small loaf pans until springy on top.  Do not overcook!  My muffins took about 15-20 minutes.  This recipe made 12 muffins and one small loaf.