House of Roses

The ox gives way to the tiger

Or in our case, the buffalo is pounced on by the tiger.

A little late, or maybe a little early, but at any rate, Happy New Year!

Winter Veggie Storage

Something I always have questions about: an explanation of how to store different types of winter vegetables, via Gretta Anderson. Awesome.

Bento, House of Roses style

I’m Not Gregor Mendel

but I planted seeds on Sunday (March 22) and I’ve got seedlings popping their heads above the divets in the nursery. Mostly spinach, chives, tatsoi, and lettuce, ’tis true, but there’s a watermelon or two in there as well.

Here’s the scoop on this round of babies:

Pictures of actual green things coming this weekend!

Couldn’t Wait for Spring

So I planted seedlings:

Buying Seed

You’d think, after that nice long entry I wrote a while back, that copying and pasting stuff into the appropriate websites and paying for things would be easy.

Er.

The Seeds of Change website could be better set-up. For example, when I click on an item, you really should default the number to purchase to 1 rather than 0. That way, at least some percentage of the time, your user won’t have to change a damned thing. This way, everyone has to change it everytime which is pretty frustrating, given the number of things I want to buy.

Second, once I’ve clicked the button that says “add to cart” add the damn item to the cart. Don’t show me a table that indicates you have and then have the item disappear when I enter another value in the search box because I didn’t click “continue shopping”. That’s frustrating.

A different level of frustration is the number of seeds they appear to be out of, which is entirely my fault. I should have realized that everyone else starts sowing about a month before I can so they’ll also be ordering a month earlier. Aie.

So, stuff on the waiting list: tomatillos, orange chard, nira chives, leeks. Argh.

Shumway’s, by contrast, had a nifty little shopping cart sidebar so I could see exactly what was in my cart at all times. Hmm.

Park, also by contrast, required me to click “continue shopping” but did not include the search box on the cart page so I was not tempted to try something that would result in me losing items. Hmm.

I still need to get parsnips. Where-o-where?

Weekly Specials

We’ve really been enjoying the winter produce share from Enterprise Farm (November-ish to March-ish).

Each week we get an onion or two, a handful of potatoes (but not enough sweets), maybe a pepper or two, a head of lettuce, root veggies if we’re lucky, a handful of apples, carrots or parsnips, and a good green like chard or kale.

Each week there’s also something a little unexpected. (Not the lettuce, though, that’s come to be expected. It’s come to be a joke. Who eats lettuce in January in the nothern hemisphere? Especially when it’s bitter?)

Around Thanksgiving there were 4 cups of local cranberries and 4 cups of pecans.

There was a jar of local (well, Massachusetts) sour dill pickles a few weeks ago.

For a while, we got oranges and tangerines each week (although that’s petered out).

We’ve gotten both yellow crookneck and zucchini (but on different weeks). Could we have some winter squash please?

Twice we’ve gotten Florida avocados; the guacamole has been good enough to silence all my concerns about freakish warm vegetables in the winter. (But not my comments about the lettuce.)

Twice we’ve gotten kolhrabi, which we found out is entirely perfect shredded in the food processor, sauteed on the stove, and mixed with butter and parmesan. Perfect.

I wonder what will come today?

Out of Season

The Christmas cactus gets more joyful every year:

The rat gives way to the ox

Or, in our case, the mice give way to the buffalo.

Happy new year!

City PSA

To the folks across the street, diagonally:

It’s pretty damn discourteous to park your honkin’ huge car smack dab in the middle of a 2-car long space.

I’m not even sure SmartCars could fit on either side of your car. And I know you folks have lived in the city for a long time; why is it that you’re so unneighborly, uncharitable?

Or is it just that you’re not smart enough to think about other folks? But haven’t you lived here long enough to know that you have to be kind to your neighbors?

As soon as I can figure out some way to ask you to park smartly, I will. At the moment though, having spent so many years listening to you scream at your children and your spouses, I think I’ll wait until I’m fast enough that you won’t deck me.