In the time since we bought all that cow poop, our garden has been planted, watered, and grown completely out of control. Recognizing that we are complete amateurs at the whole gardening thing, we bought a half-dozen books on the topic of growing your own vegetables. With lots of color pictures. All of them talked about creating a garden plan, and thinking through the order and timing of what you planted. Also, we spent time reading the packages of various seeds, looking at the climate, requirements and spacing of each crop, and the pretty temperature zone maps for each vegetable. And then we ignored them all, and put seeds in every spot of bare earth we could find. Um. Yeah. Turns out, there's a reason they tell you to space the zucchini (courgette) out a little. Because each plant grows to be approximately the size of a beluga whale. Just before we headed to England in June, we began harvesting the first couple of little radishes. Soon, we added a few leaves of lettuce. And then WHAM! One day, the entire garden came into fruit. Now we're harvesting zucchini blossoms to stuff with ricotta and fry, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, squash, kale, you name it. We got it. I'm giving it away to the neighbors, and planning on how much I can bring in to work for my colleagues. What I'd really like to do is start canning and preserving some of it for eating in the winter, but my freezers are already full as it is - I think I need to take some canning classes and figure out how to use our cellar like they did back in the day. OK, so I wouldn't have a clue to keep any of this long enough to last me through the winter like the settlers did, but man - we are enjoying the hell out of it while it's fresh. I don't even mind the weeding - I find it strangely therapeutic to spend time down in the dirt, pulling back the vegetable leaves and tearing up the little shoots of thieving weeds to make sure the garden spends all its energy on making more lovely food for our table. And we're already planning next year's crop, learning from this one (lesson #1, when they say put a foot or more between any member of the squash family, they're not kidding...)

What? I have a blog? Oh yeah. That thing where I used to periodically write stuff, or show pictures. Ok. So I've been a little slack lately. Well, more than slack. More like lazy. Or comatose. Or maybe a little bit dead. Except not really! See? I've posted new pictures of the chicken house. And there are pictures of road trip to Tennessee! 21 hours in the car, each way. With kids. Because we're into pain. But chasing cows all week made for one of the best holidays I've had in a while. Now we're prepping for the Critter's 7th birthday. Holy crap, where does the time go? Unlike previous years we won't be having the whole bluegrass band and roast pig. But we will be sticking with the bbq theme, and hoping that the weather cooperates. We're also prepping for our summer holiday back to England. Where they don't have summer. Because we miss they greyness. And I'll be working for most of the time I'm there. My planning sucks. But I do think I'll be able to write a bit more going forward. The things that have kept me otherwise engaged (work, chicken house, our really fantastic and ridiculously large vegetable garden, etc.) have settled back into the routine, rather than the exceptional. And I want to write more - I've been missing the outlet, I think. So if you're still there, stay tuned. I'll try and be better.

A recent email exchange between Grady household members:

Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:03 PM Subject: bernadette peters Bernadette Peters will be doing a book reading at the Barnes and Noble at Burlington Mall on Sunday Apr 5 at 2 - she'll be promoting her children's book "Broadway Barks." Don't know if you'd be interested.

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Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2009 2:16 PM Subject: RE: bernadette peters OHMYGOD. We are so there. You will have to forgive me if I'm sporting a boner the entire time.