fill the house with flowers

 last year at this time i was moving, cleaning, packing away--i started moving in to this house just over a year ago. it didn't leave much free time for my usual obsessive spring routines: seed starting, prepping the soil, trying to control the weather with my mind-powers. this year i'm settled and ready to experience ALL THE SPRINGS.

 the ladies are one year old at the end of this month!

 the other day i ran into an old friend of mine who i hadn't seen in six years. turns out we live just a few blocks away, work across the street from each other, and we both have chickens! (and we're both named emily...but that's always been the case.) similarities end there, though, we're pretty different people. she came over one night to catch up. talking to her was such a trip. familiar/unfamiliar.

 i added another pet...actually, a few hundred of them. a couple weeks ago i SUDDENLY, DESPERATELY *NEEDED* sea monkeys. like no one has ever needed sea monkeys before. i can't explain it, it just happened. so i called every store that might possibly sell sea monkeys and no one had them. instead i went to an aquarium store and bought a packet of brine shrimp. they've been living happily on wheat flour and nutritional yeast.

 my mouth is already watering for spring salads. i have a pot of mixed lettuces going, and four of the five dwarf tomato plants i started mid-january are growing baby tomatoes already.

 yummy herb pot, basil and parsley mix.

 doing lots of cooking lately...this is one of the best things i've ever made:

 egg pizza! homemade down to the crust. topped with vegan pesto (fresh basil, cashews, pistachios, nutritional yeast, garlic, olive oil, salt), basil-tofu ricotta (tofu, fresh basil, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, olive oil), sauteed mushrooms and zucchini, kalamata olives, eggs, and some seasonings.

 i'm making another one tonight, but this time with regular marinara sauce, just because i'm lazy. my mom's coming over--my parents are getting major renovation work done on their house so it's all torn up, and my dad is in maryland for a few days, so my mom's joining me for dinner and dropping off scout. i'll be pugglesitting until tuesday. three pups! madness!

 this is gyeran jjim (korean steamed eggs). i used olive brine in place of salt, topped with scallions, toasted sesame seeds, garlic and chili powder. the texture is a lot like silken tofu.

 basil-tofu ricotta stuffed manicotti, with sauteed asparagus and spaghetti squash, and spinach.

 spaghetti with vegan pesto, tomatoes, garlic bread, and a poached egg on top.

 hard boiled eggs marbled with beet juice. i didn't use enough beet juice so the coloring is pretty faint. i'll try again. the eggs peeled nicely though--i left them in the fridge for a couple weeks, because fresh eggs do not peel well at all.

 i made a fritatta-ish dish with tons of delicious veggies for crafting day with cam last week--she got a glass cutter, so we were cutting glass bottles and making drinking cups and self-watering planters, like this one:

 we made dozens, it was lots of fun. we had another fun time this weekend, involving much creative cooking and seed starting, and she informed me that "the internet needs to know about this"...and it will, but that'll have to wait for another post.

 this is happening! i am so excited! neutral milk hotel has been my favorite band for the better part of a decade. i never thought i'd get to see jeff mangum live. he's playing at the egyptian theatre:

 i was there wednesday night shooting photos at a reading (firoozeh dumas, author of "funny in farsi"). it's a fabulous venue.

custom egg carton, first tomato blossom, and seed swap goodies

 i spent a good portion of my president's day holiday making this custom egg carton label. i'm not selling the eggs, i just want special egg cartons for giving them away.

the ladies are each laying one almost every day now, so they're stacking up fast.

 i made a second label that isn't personalized, just in case anyone else raising chickens wants one for their eggs. most dozen-egg cartons are approx. 10" long, so if you set the print size to 8x10 it should fit.

 first tomato blossom of 2013 opened today! i have 5 little baby hahms gelbe plants growing...was planning on just 2, but thinning the seedlings turned into carefully dividing and repotting them.

 i also bought another aloe and divided it. i'm really into succulents right now! maybe just because it's winter and i'm starved for green growing things. i like that they don't grow very fast, so you can keep them in small containers.

 beautiful springlike weather this weekend. damn near 60 degrees on saturday. i went on a couple walks with the dogs and saw lots of bulbs popping up, and i found this little grub friend.

 my haul from the seedy saturday seed swap. it wasn't the best swap, not a lot of people brought seed and the venue was small and cramped. worth going though. i'm excited to try calypso beans (the yin yang looking ones) and jerusalem artichoke.

 my contribution to the swap was a ziplock bag full of forellenschluss ("freckles") lettuce that i saved last year. it's a romaine heirloom, green with brown speckles.

 last year i also saved a ton of golden sweet peas. it's the best variety of sugar snaps i've grown (see my post from last june for more info). unfortunately, a major garden fail happened, in the form of a bunch of little beetles that ate the heart out of nearly every pea i saved. luckily this seed was in its own sealed glass container so nothing else was infected. i found about two dozen peas that look like they might be ok, but i'm going to germinate them indoors just in case there's beetle larva inside. bummer. :(

 mardi gras cauliflower! i wish i didn't have such bad luck growing cauliflower, i'd try some of the purple.

 i spent mardi gras at a reading with my mom, one of my favorite authors (who happens to be local) read a couple of his essays at the egyptian. it was outrageously good, and it put me in a deeply happy, appreciative mood.

 potato wanted to add something: thanks for the new flappy, circus!

season

 a whole month since i last posted. time speeds by this time of year. especially this stretch between thanksgiving and xmas.

 i xmas-ified my house just in time for this strangely warm, non-xmasy weather. it's 10 at night right now and almost 60 degrees, i even have the windows open, with a nice cool breeze blowing through.

 i thrifted a pair of hand-knit stockings for the boys, and three mini stockings for the ladies (anyone have chicken stocking-stuffer ideas? i can't think of anything they'd want besides food.)

 i put up my tree last weekend. all the ornaments are handmade--i still need to figure out a tree topper.

 jason and cam came over for "white friday" craft night. jason spun dog fur into yarn while cam and i made xmas tree ornaments. i found a couple neat dough recipes on pinterest--a porcelain-looking one made out of corn starch, baking soda and water, and a gingerbread-colored one made out of apple sauce and cinnamon.

 i collected random objects to press into the dough, and cam brought a set of letter presses.

 the pups made paw print ornaments. i was going to attempt chicken footprint ones, but these were enough of a struggle.

 i made an egg-shaped ornament with their initials instead:

 the applesauce/cinnamon ornaments smell so damn good...

 ...and so do these clementine pomander balls.

 roasted brussels sprouts with homemade garlic aioli for white friday snack. i've made this twice in the last week, it's so yummy.

 a living xmas tree for my kitchen. it's an italian stone pine, supposed to produce edible pine nuts when it gets bigger.

 on thanksgiving the chickens enjoyed their own feast before the dogs and i headed over to my parents' for dinner. they scarfed down a bowl of warm oatmeal with homegrown tomatoes and a side of sprouted wheat berries. they contributed eggs to our thanksgiving dessert, bread pudding.

 i thrifted another ceramic egg crate like the one cam gave me, only this one holds a full dozen.

 this is the reason i can't leave chairs pushed in next to tables anywhere around the house. i worked from home last week, writing about TV tuner software. one afternoon i returned from the bathroom to find potato working in xmetal.

 my cute boys cuddling on the couch, fast asleep.

 potato wearing his warm sweater, shortly before i trimmed his hair. he was so shaggy.

 a flattering picture of scout, from election night. he was so excited about obama he almost passed out.

 potato kept stealing andy's bed, so i got him one of his own. at first he just wanted to play with it and carry it around the house. andy immediately recognized its comfyness potential, and totally disregarded the size limitations. he kept trying to scrunch his big snausage-dog body into this tiny cat bed, diving in and squirming until his front half was mostly in. eventually he quit trying. now potato understands what to do with it, but he still steals andy's bed sometimes.

 mid-november tomato harvest, can you believe it? i still have some left. these ripened indoors, but at my parents' house a few miles away they didn't get a frost until sometime in november. my mom was harvesting vine-ripened tomatoes up until about three weeks ago. boise's micro-climates are crazy.

 in september i made gallons of delicious end-of-the-garden salsa. lots of tomatillos, at least a dozen varieties of tomato and half a dozen varieties of pepper. very complex flavor. all fresh, nothing cooked, all homegrown (except for the fresh-squeezed lime juice and some seasonings).

 i gave away most of it and it was all gone in just a couple of weeks. i brought a 32oz jar and tortilla chips to my mom for her birthday, and she nommed half the jar in one sitting. she's a very light eater, i don't think i've ever seen her eat that much all at once.

 the first seed catalogue, from seed savers exchange, arrived in the mail a few days ago. that means it's officially garden-porn-swooning season, when everything's all excitement and fantasy and potential. it seems like summer just barely ended.