Here’s the second batch of pictures from our shoot with Rosie.

That Rosie, she’s so hot right now!

I’ve known Rosie for a yearish. My cousin Karli is the events director at her mom’s shop in Highland, UT – Dear Lizzie and when we did Spark, they were a key player in the event. I’ve wanted to shoot her for a while now, cause she blows me away with her darling looks and independent style.

On Friday I finally got to shoot her (with my good friends, Mindy, Wynona and Crystalyn after a lovely dinner) and I have to admit, I can’t get enough of the pictures. And there are so many more than these. At the end of a long day, playing with these pictures is what I reward myself with.

I think I’ll say it aloud — I think I’ve found my muse.

Anyway – enjoy.

When it comes to watering the garden, we have a few ways we do it.

First we go the old fashioned way. The hose.

we divided and planted several golden raspberry bushes along the back fence. It’s crazy arid there and gets no water but what the rain sends our way and what David does with the hose. The raspberries have been loving it. Hopefully they’ll serve as a blockade against the grasshopper infested field we butt up against all along our back fence.

Method 2 : Drip Systems

D and I hate seeing water go to waste, especially in our arid part of the nation. A few years back he put a drip system in place for the beds, etc. It’s been remarkably efficient and flexible.

Each year we just modify the system to fit the plants’ needs and the layout of the beds and the plants.

David has them on a timer which hooks up directly out of the hose bib. So no really tricky technology needed here.

Then each bed has different water dispersion methods based on what they require. From drip lines like the ones you see above, to soaker hoses, to little mini sprinklers (which have a more technical name but I can’t think of it right now…)

micro sprinklers…

We also have a conventional sprinkler system for the rest of the yard. It’s handy but not nearly as efficient as the drip system.

Ok – I was asked a few questions about my previous garden post —

I’ll try to answer the questions here – but if you have others please ask me. I’ll be breaking it down into smaller subjects to post so I don’t feel so overwhelmed.

first is RAISED BEDS.

For the past many years we’ve gardened using a plot we dug in the ground in the back yard. Each year we’d rototill it and scrape out rocks and add nutrients like crazy and each year we’d end up with chubby fat little carrots and some seriously sore backs. A couple of years ago David built raised beds. I thought it was unnecessary, I mean we have dirt already right? Why pay more and take the time to build the boxes. Verdict is in. I was so wrong. The raised beds have been so much easier. David built them and then we bought a bunch of nice soil from a garden supply place and had it delivered in a truck – that way we weren’t hauling bags and bags of soil. And less waste right? They contain moisture nicely, the soil you put in which we brought in by a truckload, delivered from a local nursery supply company, has been REMARKABLY free from weeds and also, our mountain land problem of so many rocks in the soil. They’ve been worth it 100%. We usually just keep straw in between the beds and it works well. I have read that you can put down newspapers (soy based ink kinds – which is most I guess) and then put your straw over that and it does a nice job of biodegrading and keeping the weeds down (more than just the straw alone). But we’ve not needed to do this.

David built the boxes out of pressure treated lumber, 2×10 boards, each bed is 4 feet x 8 feet. The new pressure treated lumber doesn’t leach dangerous chemicals into the soil so they’re safe to use with vegetables.

More reading here at gardeners.com and a soil calculator.

And more here and here

I’ve decided I want to have a trophy wall in my house. The way some people go hunting and mount their best kills, I’ll be mounting my very best D.I., thrift store and yard sale finds.

This one will go right in the middle of the wall.

An old, retro Belgian Le Crueset pot with a lid in a butter yellow – for $2.00. It’s not labeled Le Crueset but in my searching I’ve learned I think it’s an oldie (30’s?). You tell me if you know.

Made my week let me tell you.

So we’ve been working our tails off to make a garden and a yard that’s productive and can sustain us. It felt like I got the lettuce in too late and the peas, (like it does every year) but they’re looking beautiful thanks to a mild spring.

So Asher and I went out yesterday in the drizzle and took way more pictures of things than I’m sure you wanted to see…but it really is beautiful to grow things that will grow you.

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the boy and his diggers … one a tonka and one a fiskars garden blade…. we roll his second-hand pants up at the waist cause they’re so big on him.

Tomatillos coming along nicely

His expression right before he stepped in the middle of the beans.

Asher acting like he’s going to down a potato plant

Heirloom Broccoli ‘Di Cicco’ – A very productive italian
variety. Produces copius amounts of small to medium sized heads well intosummer. Longer harvest period than most broccoli.

Lincoln peas

beets coming up

red lettuce

leafy green lettuce

Speckled butterhead lettuce – in the Slowfood Ark of Taste – http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/programs/ark_product_detail/speckled_lettuce/

all three lettuces

ground cherries http://www.tradewindsfruit.com/ground_cherry.htm –

first fruits of tomatoes – one of the only non-heirloom varieties in the garden, Lemon Boy – the one I MUST buy every year because it’s so delicious – http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/30940/

three of asher being mischievous

beans

edamame (soy beans)

the beds (i wish I lived in a bed)

digging with a teensy steam shovel

the iris are looking lovely…

the ducks are growing. and pooping. they have to be the messiest creatures.

mint and lambs ears.
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Ellery VAULTS – there’s a fantastic arena in Woodland Hills that is home to the Oak Hills Vaulters taught by the amazing Kylynn. Each week Ellery and I muck stalls in exchange for her lessons and she loves the mucking as much as she loves the riding.

It’s been wonderful.

Take a gander with me while I entertain a new romance.

Food. Sustainability. Homesteading.

I’ve been into these things for a while now. LOVED reading books like Little House On The Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and These Is My Words by Nancy Turner and more recently Gap Creek by Robert Morgan.

I came from pioneers, both Mormon and not. My ancestors (another passion of mine, but we’ll talk about that some other time) but we all came from people who had to live off and with the land and make it work.

I’ve felt much peace doing things like keeping hens (and falling into a trance just watching them scratch and peck at the ground), saving seeds and preserving heirloom plants, hanging laundry out to dry on a line. In a way it makes me feel closer to my dead grandmothers who all led lives, raised children and fed them every day, washed and clothed them and make it work.

I was into it for a long time in bits and pieces. When my dad got sick with cancer five years ago we watched him battle it the traditional way – stopping at Sloane-Kettering and getting frequent radiation treatment. We watched him fight it the new way – going to Mexico for alternative treatments. We watched him fight it the wholistic way – eating stuff like seaweed and changing his lifestyle. Getting treatments from Kathy Oddenino a neighbor of his and Roxanne, my parent’s friend who used raw foods and energy healing. I don’t know. He died anyway. But what I do know is he felt better and lived better and even healed better when he was eating well and taking good care of himself during that time.

But like I said, he died and things went back to normal. Eating organically and locally was expensive and frankly, my husband wasn’t behind it that much and I didn’t have any steam behind me to show it was all that different.

Then David got excited about the whole Urban Homesteading thing starting with Jack Spirko’s Survival Podcast. He started talking to me about conserving energy and building raised beds and buying plants that were not only ornamental but also had a use – often edible.

So Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution came on a few weeks ago. And I was a bit skeptical when I saw it. I thought “yes already with the food – must we villianize the food?” And I watched it and it was astonishing. In the fact that I knew so little. He cooked and piled up all the bad food one family ate for a week just to show them what it looked like all in one place at once – so they could see what they were consuming. It made me think what my family’s meals would look like if I dumped them all on the table one day. There’d be lots of cereal. Lots. And probably lots of hot dogs and nuggets. Have they ever eaten an eggplant? Doubt it. Could they name one if they saw it? Probably not. And yet we’re a pretty standard middle class family with lots of education and a house we own. We grow gardens and we can our tomatoes. But it’s not enough. Not nearly.

At the same time I picked up “Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year Of Food Life” Barbara Kingsolver on a discard book pile at the library. I started reading it (even though practical non fiction usually bores me – i like to escape) and was utterly enthralled. She takes her family and they have an experiment where they live off of what they can grow in their yard for a year).

And THEN at the same time, I was really blessed to begin doing a series of shoots for my sweet friend Melissa Chappell (also known as RawMelissa) a phenomenal chef and food maker and planner and raw food junkie with her sweet boyfriend Chris and her kids for their new blog (lucky ALL of us!) www.nicolasandcoraeat.com. I saw that a pantry CAN be relatively bare – it doesn’t need LOADS of stuff that is boxed and bagged and wrapped and the food you make CAN be delicious.

I’m still into it in bits and pieces but slowly those bits and pieces are coming together to form a more complete picture of what I love, what is peaceful and good to me.

So I’d like to invite you along as I meander around the web and Utah looking for good, local food and resources and helps. I have kids who will only eat PB&J and hot dogs. So I’m going to start with myself. I have horrible debilitating problems with light-headedness and fatigue. I want to see what happens to that as I change things around here.

Let’s start by this — SLOW FOOD is the opposite of “Fast Food” – I’d heard of slow food but it never really made sense what the big deal was and why I should care. “Slow food” is grown seasonally and locally. It involves varieties of plants that have not been genetically changed and patented to do specific things for us – it just feeds us the way it has for hundreds of years.

Slow Food Utah for those who live by me.

How to store all those veggies you’re supposed to be eating…..Storing Veg

And this year I’m going to be planting produce in the beds that I’ve been putting flowers in. Pretty in their own way and much more useful.

I adore Megan of the Sweet Tooth Fairy and recently she contacted me to commission some photos for the walls of her new store in Draper. Of course there would be Megan there and STF Cupcakes so I drove pretty fast to get there.

Anyway – I wanted to do something that was a bit dreamy and Meg wanted something a big vintage-y and I wanted them to look sweet too.