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12th day of Spring

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on April 01, 2008

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Concrete Block Raised Beds: A Love Story and Casual How-to

This is the story of how a lover of wild curvaceous vegetable gardens came to appreciate the value of a nice cement garden bed. Mostly it's the story of adapting to the space you have. Actually mostly it's just some pictures of what I did. Here we go. This is the main part of my garden, my backyard: At my old house, this was my garden: You can see earlier posts about that pretty thing here and here . Sigh, I miss it. But by the time I got to this house, I had a kid and a husband and we wanted to leave a bit of lawn and more seating and cooking space, and most important, I had to reckon with the fact that all the best sun was on the concrete and paver patio. I do have vegetable beds on the South side of the house too (these pics all face West). Some other time I'll tell the story of how I ruthlessly tore out scads of dreary ornamentals to make room for them, and how snow on the mountain and creeping bellflower are my relentless enemies. But for now the point is, there

Master of none, or, on how growing almost no tomatoes (again) in 2021 was kind of okay and also maybe a metaphor for life.

When my tomatoes didn't grow in 2020 I understood. I had theories, I had made mistakes, there was a lot else going on in my city and the world that deserved more of my attention. (I mean, as always, obviously, but moreso.) Some of my first, and only, fully ripe tomatoes of 2021 In 2021 I re-upped my committment to building my soil, did my usual bed rotation, took more care with my little tomato seedlings at transplant, and watched them grow strong and healthy, as they had for the 15 or so years of gardening previous to 2020, and set copious fruit. And there they hung, green and swollen, a few ripening here and there, one Black beauty with it's blue-black shoulders and rose red blushing belly, the first smattering of Sungolds, glowing like the nightly orb of the sun dipping below a wild-fire horizon, a few handfuls of basic, reliable red pear cherries, firm and crimson, a couple Opalka romas, one Black Krim. But when we left for a week in the Boundary Waters in mid-August, my

Stuffed Cabbage/ When life gives you cabbage that doesn't head up, roll with it.

Full disclosure before you listen to me about stuff (or stuffing stuff, as the case may be): In my life as a gardener, my cabbage has not-headed more often than it has headed. Therefore, I don't even try to grow cabbage very often. But I do have a hard time giving up on things, and therefore (therefore squared?) I am not about to give cabbage growing advice, but I am about to give cabbage stuffing advice. Because in my life as a cook and eater, I like stuffed cabbage/cabbage rolls and I prefer making it from an improperly headed cabbage. When making cabbage rolls from a tight little cabbage head, once you get past the outer leaves you have to kind of blanch as you go to get them off without tearing. But when you grow your own cabbage, you have LOTS of outer leaves, and if your cabbage doesn't head up, then you have ONLY outer leaves, and either way, you get to make stuffed cabbage more often than you used to, and you figure out what you like, and also what you don't. What

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