A Garden Update

A week into summer, our balcony garden is ever-so-slowly plugging along. A very cool and rainy spring coupled with a slow planter (me) means things are still pretty small, but I'm hoping for the best.

We've got radishes:


The soft yellow potential for a cucumber, the previous of which (last year) was eaten by a squirrel:I'm pretty sure the squirrels just sit in the trees and laugh at me all summer, swooping down later in the season after I lock the door at night to snatch whatever fruits and vegetables aren't firmly rooted in the ground. No, I'm not paranoid. Why do you ask?

Here is the biggest of our tiny romaine lettuce plants. In addition to perhaps not having enough sun, they were also overcrowded. The chicks and I pulled out every other plant last night and washed them, dipping their buttery, tender leaves in vinaigrette as some makeshift crudites. They were utterly delicious, and both girls begged for more. I have hope, still, for the lettuce:
Here's the mint plant we scavenged from the community garden. We brought home, squished in my backpack, a single, wilted stalk of a mint plant. I thought it surely wouldn't make it, but apparently mint's reputation is correct; this thing came back with a vengeance. The chicks have late summer plans for mint ice cream, and their mama has the vision of a mojito or two.
This 2$ bell pepper plant is the only plant I bought for the garden:
Ninna's preschool teacher gave her a sunflower seedling at the end of the year. Despite its small pot and insufficient sun, it was doing great until the ants started eating it. All within two days, the ants moved in and started eating anything leafy and green. We sprayed today with a cayenne pepper/cinnamon/castile soap concoction developed by mashing together several suggestions found on google. We'll see if that gets rid of those ants.
This year is our first for carrots. I don't know if they'll produce, but they've started to grow carrot-y looking greens:
The potato plant, grown for no other reason than the fact that I didn't feel like composting the leggy potato from the pantry:

A flower seedling whose name I've now forgotten, accompanied by a pill bug, or roly poly, or whatever he's called in your neck of the woods:
The strangely wrinkled seedling of the morning glory, playing host to a tiny bug. Is that an aphid? And is my google source right in telling me that the ants have moved in to eat the aphids, massacring our green leaves along with them?
Rows of peas trained to climb up suspended strings, a trick I learned at the community garden:

I love tendrils, both the word and the thing:Among the other plants still standing are a large number of basil seedlings and a few other random flowers.

What's going on in your garden today?

Happy Summer Solstice!

We started off our solstice morning with what has become our annual Summer Solstice Tea Party. The kids (and moms) dined on fruit, peppers and guacamole, a cheese tray with crackers, and lemon mint tea. I sadly neglected to take a single photo of the tea part, but I did manage to snap a couple of photos of the kids doing an art project--solstice crowns.

These were simple to set up--I just took long, thin strips of cardstock that we happened to have from a bag of hand-me-downs from a friend (thanks, Jessica!) and cut different crown shapes on one of the long sides. The kids decorated them with markers and crayons and then, using glue sticks, applied "jewels" and feathers. Finally, we measured them around each child's head and stapled them, cutting off any excess.

I had intended to photograph Ninna and Bojey wearing theirs this evening, but Bojey may or may not have crumpled up Ninna's and flushed it down the toilet. Hopefully next week I'm not posting about the fun and educational visit from the plumber.

For dinner, we feasted on a ridiculously delicious homemade quartet of goodness--cumin-y beans, guacamole, salsa, and tortillas (served also with less-exciting plain rice, cheese, and lemon water):This is the sort of thing that makes me very happy--a stack of imperfect (and slightly burnt) tortillas clearly not made in a factory:
This is the first time we've made homemade tortillas. I got up the courage after having dinner at a friend's house recently; she made them and they were so delicious. I followed her lead and used the basic flour tortilla recipe from Joy of Cooking, substituting butter for the lard/shortening since I don't buy lard and find shortening disturbing.

This was actually a really simple meal. Thanks to all the wonderful reader suggestions for make-ahead food made in response to my granola post, we had beans all ready to go in the freezer. The salsa and guacamole take no more than 5-10 minutes each, and the tortillas are actually really simple too, especially since I used the stand mixer.

For the first time, I cooked something that really, truly brought me back to all the yummy Mexican food I ate living in California. This could easily have been served to me at one of the myriad Mexican restaurants I came to know. That, I must say, was one very satisfying cooking experience.

And what about you--how did you spend the solstice? Do you have any traditions to share with us for inspiration?

Unplugged Sundays: A Fun New Project

Last November, I wrote about the night our power went out and I scurried around like a madwoman trying to find a working flashlight. As I mentioned then, the evening was a smashing success, and I decided we'd try to have a weekly no-electricity night.

We had one more happy no-power evening, and then the project went to the wayside. I got distracted, the winter holidays came barreling at us, and the next thing I knew I was looking back on that post months later wondering whatever happened to that grand ambition.

Then this spring, Heather at Beauty that Moves wrote about her family's decision to keep a weekly Unplugged Sunday, a day when they turn off the TV and computers and focus on cooking, creating, being outside, and being together. I started to feel motivated and planned to try it again. In May, Heather informed her readers that she and her husband were starting a new website devoted to Unplugged Sundays, promoting the idea and sharing stories and suggestions for those interested in unplugging.


So here we are on the eve of summer, and it turns out I'm now a writer for Unplugged Sundays! I'm so, so very excited about this project. Heather and her husband, Adam, have gathered a diverse group of contributors. We share many similar goals, in terms of simplicity, creativity, and experiencing nature. In other ways, however, we're all living very different lives and I think we'll have a really nice mixture of ideas to share. I'll be playing the role of the expat single mom (every group needs one ;).

Because they're fun like that, Heather and Adam have decided to debut the site on Summer Solstice, so you'll be able to start reading about Unplugged Sundays on Tuesday, June 21st (just five days away!) My first post will go up in the beginning of July, and then I'll post every so often after that, and I'll always announce my posts here.

This means, of course, that I'm now being held accountable and am fully committed to Unplugged Sundays. I'm putting the finishing touches on our summer weekly rhythm, with Sundays reserved for this exciting purpose. Later, I'll share how we'll be interpreting this tradition in our family.

If you're interested, join along! And if you're already doing this, I'd love to hear about it.

The Fresh Air Fund

The outreach coordinator at The Fresh Air Fund recently emailed me asking if I might be interested in writing about their program on my blog to help them find volunteers. I'm going to be perfectly honest and say that I had never heard of it. Have you?

I liked the sound of it, so I clicked through the website, and I have to say--it sounds absolutely wonderful.

Here's a basic description from the host information site:

"Fresh Air children are boys and girls, six to 18 years old, who live in New York City. Children on first-time visits are six to 12 years old and stay for either one or two weeks. Youngsters who are re-invited by the same family may continue with The Fund through age 18, and many enjoy longer summertime visits, year after year. A visit to the home of a warm and loving volunteer host family can make all the difference in the world to an inner-city child. All it takes to create lifelong memories is laughing in the sunshine and making new friends."

Essentially, the fund sends inner-city children, most of whom have never spent time outside of the city, to stay with volunteer host families who can offer them the chance to really experience a summer vacation in nature, time to play in the wide open air, camp, collect fireflies, and all those things that many of us consider essential components of childhood.

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Living in the city with children is an ongoing challenge for me. I appreciate what city life has to offer, but I miss, always, what it lacks--wide open space, forests, lakes, farms, and all the other things I took for granted growing up. Yes, we go to parks. We go to the community garden. We plant our own garden. I go to great lengths to make sure we experience the natural world to the best of our abilities in the city.

But a city park is a city park. Even the massive park in the middle of our city doesn't offer that in-the-middle-of-nowhere feel. You can see and hear the city around you. Luckily for my kids, even with our limited means, they make yearly trips to Michigan and upstate New York, and the occasional rural Quebec excursion.

It truly breaks my heart to think of an eight year old who has never once been out of the city. It's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea, to be perfectly honest. If I lived in a rural, suburban, or small town area, I'd volunteer for this in a heartbeat. If you live in the Northeastern US (or southern Ontario), please consider volunteering with The Fresh Air Fund.

The organization has been around since the late 19th century (wow!). When I mentioned it to my friend who spends her summers in upstate New York, she told me that her family has taken part in the program for ages, bringing the same kids back for many years. She had only positive things to say about the experience.

If you'd like more information, click here or on any of the links in this post. And if you found out about the program here and end up volunteering, I'd be thrilled to hear about it!

Nerdy Happy Spring Things on my Camera

Here are some things that I love right now, beginning with flowers in a mason jar--even better when they're free wildflowers from the backyard, and doubly better when delivered, table-ready, by our neighbor. We're so well taken care of:
Tiny green things poking through the dirt: I don't care what they are; if they're making their way up to the light, and I planted them from seed, I'm absurdly excited. When we're home, I must walk out onto the balcony ten times a day to look at the planters, just in case some new seedlings are up.
New growth on old plants--in this case, a geranium I've kept in a pot for almost three years, ever since my neighbor gave me a geranium cutting to stick in the ground:
New growth on old food--OK, this is kind of a weird one. But aren't you excited by the fact that if you accidentally let a potato get too old and leggy, you can plant it?
It gets weirder: this tiny housefly held still long enough for me to take a series of photos highlighting his giant orange eyes and furry muppet mouth:
What are you excited about this late spring (which, if you live in Montreal, is more like early spring)?

Why are There TVs Everywhere I Go?

[I must warn you: this is going to be a bit of a rant. I don't even have a photo; I just need to get this off my chest. Perhaps by writing this and engaging with readers, I'll be able to come to terms with it and rationalize it, or maybe you will agree with me, and we can all advocate for public spaces without TVs...]

I'm starting to feel as if there are TVs everywhere the chicks and I go. Is this happening where you live? I'm not talking about people's houses; many of the houses we frequent either don't have TVs or have a TV in a subtle place, always off when visitors are in the home.

No, I'm talking about public places. I recently got into the habit of grabbing something quick and cheap for the chicks' dinner on the way home from a late swimming lesson (bad, I know.) Most of the places we went had TVs. Our dinners at home are admittedly not always riveting in their conversation given that we have one adult and two (tired by that time of day) small children. But at least we have some conversation. When the chicks sit down to eat in a cafe, and there's a TV on the wall, they can't help but stare. Of course--this is why the TV is there, right?

I just can't bear to sit across from my two children and have dinner while they are zombified. Even Ninna, at just-barely-turned-five, knows this is weird. She laughs about how she can't move her eyes away from the screen, and she has recently asked me, more than once, why there are TVs in all these places.

I remember, before our car-free days began, that there were even TVs at some of the gas stations. Can we really not pump gas for five minutes without a TV? I'm assuming this is entirely ad-driven and not consumer-driven. When we're pumping gas, there's nowhere to go but right in that spot...next to the TV. We're the perfect captive audience.

I've been bothered by this for awhile, but I finally came to a point of exasperation the other day when the chicks and I walked into the Y for Ninna's swimming lesson, and lo and behold...they had installed a huge flat-screen TV in the formerly peaceful lobby/cafe area--and it was on, of course. I momentarily felt vindicated when the man next to me asked the receptionist why they had added a TV. It's exciting to hear some sanity once in awhile. But my brain exploded when she responded with "well, it's because that area is a cafe!" That's the answer? If we're sitting at tables with each other eating a muffin and drinking tea, we must therefore be in the presence of a TV? I don't understand.

Days after Osama Bin Laden was killed, we stopped in at one of those by-the-slice pizza places after swimming lessons. It was a tiny little place, with just a few tables, and we were the only patrons. The requisite TV was on the wall, blaring the newscaster's commentary about Bin Laden's life and death.

My not-quite-three year old and just-turned-five year old don't need a play-by-play of Bin Laden's death, with thorough details. And when the time comes that I do think they are ready for this kind of information, they won't be getting it from corporate news, I can tell you that. So I did what apparently no one has ever done before in this establishment; I asked the owner if we could turn off the TV. He looked shocked, laughed when I told him why, and then, thankfully, turned it off.

I'm not trying to demonize TV as a whole. I know many wonderful people with TVs in their homes (I guess that would be almost everyone I know, right?) What we do or don't do with TV in the privacy of our homes is no one's business. And I'm not even suggesting that there are no uses whatsoever for TVs outside of the home; sports bars come to mind immediately. I loved watching Michigan State basketball games at a sports bar full of Spartans. But why is TV forced on my children every time we leave the house? Even in museums, you see video loops running on TVs about this subject or that. No one really ever sits down and watches them, but they are there, in our (public) space.

So tell me, dear readers, am I crazy? Does this bother anyone else? Will TV in public spaces one day go the way of smoking in restaurants, or are we headed for an Orwellian screen-in-every-room scenario? Or neither, and I'm just a little dramatic?

[Edited to add: I knew I was forgetting some more scenarios. I've already written about the movie forced on Bojey at the children's hair salon. And there are also walls full of flat-screen TVs in some of the metro stations here. Descending the escalator, you see throngs of people, each of whom is staring at the wall, blankly, watching the TVs. And you can include my children among these throngs, as well.]