First Day of Summer

After a frenetic school year and a blog hiatus, it's summer! The last day of school was Friday. We made celebration cupcakes on Saturday.

And picked flowers on Sunday. Today is our first day at the pool.

Seed Swap Lunch

After a crazy-busy week and weekend, the payoff was a seed-trading lunch today with my high school friends Tom & Margaret. Margaret is my friend who lives near Boulder with her family and has a . . . a homestead? a farm? kind of a little of both. A big hobby garden along with chickens, goats, pet rats, and an adorable shaggy dog named Agnes who decidedly does not like Charlie. D says Charlie was "fresh," and I think Agnes is quite a lady. Charlie was dense about understanding Agnes' "enough" growls and barks, Agnes got madder, so Agnes went back out to wait in the car.

Tom lives in Denver and has the most picturesque easement garden I have ever seen. He is an artist, so he's a master of the small space and the visual impact and the clever solution.

I took hardly any pictures. I made a turkey mole that took forever and had a million steps, none of which I documented. A really pretty salad with avocados and citrus and strawberries and watercress. Gone now--never to be documented. Margaret brought deviled eggs from her own chickens, Tom brought homemade chocolate-covered salted caramels that made the world stand still when you ate one.

These kids are great friends from so far back. R insists that she remembers when they were babies together.

We divided up our seed envelopes and ended up with so much more variety than we would have had on our own. This is going to be a fun summer and growing season. They are both amazing gardeners and I can't wait to see what they do this year.

We tried this for the first time, a wooden tool that makes little seedling pots out of newspaper. I love it so far. I wonder if they will dry out as quickly as my egg carton seed pots--those were so frustrating, never again.

Old friends really are gold, just like the Girl Scout song says.

Winter Citrus

Tonight we had Italian sausage with caramelized onions and apples; toasted millet with scallions, spinach, cashews and red pepper; and windowsill greens. I like millet, but I can't get over the association with feeding my childhood parakeet, Blue Boy. There was always a feathery layer of chaff at the bottom of his cage after he extracted the insides.

There is so much wonderful winter citrus in the stores. We had a salad with blood oranges and navel oranges, greens, mint, Asian pears, strawberries and blueberries.

Winter Sun

It's good to have a best friend whose house is thirty seconds away. They had a fun Monday holiday together today.

They put on a puppet show.

And found some more feather treasures on their cemetery walk.


The sun is low in the sky these short winter days. It hits our windows at a brilliant angle in the late afternoon, and floods the house with gold.

Valentine's Day 2011

R helped me make and decorate these cookies for teachers and neighbors.


We packaged them up for delivery.

Her classroom party. They had a special Out of Uniform day.

Checking her loot.

After school, with two of her friends.


R and her Dad took off at the end of the day to deliver cookies to the neighbors, like they do every year.

Windowsill Seedlings

Mint, chives and thyme in the front window, along with some salad seedlings.

Valentine's Day Bento

R's favorite, roast beef, on whole wheat with spring greens. Cantaloupe and blueberries, carrots, apple hearts, and a cookie.