After a weekend full of hiking and trips to the playground and ice cream cones, we are launching headfirst into a busy week.  The three older kids start swim lessons, my folks come to visit, and summer is in full swing.

For now, a few pictures from our weekend:

Ruth sorting a 25 cent bag of bias tape she picked up at the thrift store.

Making kraut.

I’ll be back later in the week for the Yarn Along.

Sourdough on blue cornmeal. Breakfast.

Joining Taryn of WoolyMossRoots for her Gratitude Sunday:

-Very glad to have a little free time to return to blogging, and catch up on some of my favorite blogs.

-And grateful to return to some much-beloved routines and habits (like baking bread nearly every day, knitting, reading aloud to the kids in the afternoon, making pickles).   -Grateful for the intense and much-needed rain this week, followed by a bolt of growth all over the gardens.

-Feeling very blessed to have such kind and thoughtful neighbors, who lavish such unconditional love on my kids.

George, almost two. On his push bike.

-Bittersweet to see my youngest, who is suddenly full of independence and strong opinions, outgrowing some of his baby-ness as he edges up to his second birthday.  However, it is exciting to see him take on new things and discover words and concepts every single day.

-And of course, on this Father’s Day weekend, grateful for Casey, who is a dedicated and loving father.  He reads the kids adventure stories every night, whittles bows and arrows for the girls, builds Lego monsters with Hal, and gives his kids a childhood full of rich, imaginative play.

Hope you have a peaceful and restorative Sunday and a good start to your new week.

Joining Amanda for “This Moment - A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week.”

A little early morning, bleary-eyed knitting with my early-riser.

He was up long before his siblings, so we snuggled in bed as he sifted through a jar of buttons (one of his favorite past-times), and I chugged coffee and finished a few inches on this little project:

Joining Ginny for her Yarn Along this morning, and Nicole for her KCCO.  I am in-between books at the moment, but have been a tad-bit obsessed with watching Wrapunzel’s tutorials while I knit.

Looking forward to visiting the other knitters in the Yarn Along after the kids are in bed tonight.

Garlic scapes!  Ever so many!  If you aren’t familiar with scapes – they are the twisty stalk and flower bud of alliums.  Removing them from the garlic (or shallots, etc) before they flower helps form a larger head of garlic.  But you needn’t compost them – they are edible and nutritious – a good source of manganese, selenium and vitamin B6.

Scapes will add a zippy garlicky bite to all sorts of dishes.  Folks on my FB page have suggested sauteing them with cracked black pepper and olive oil, or pickling them (definitely going to try that.  I bet they will make nice crisp lactofermented pickles).  My favorite way to utilize this early summer crop is in pesto.  So, here’s my recipe:

Garlic Scape Pesto

15-20 garlic scapes, washed

1 cup pine nuts (you can also use cashews, pistachios or hazelnuts if you prefer)

1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano, or other hard Italian cheese

large pinch of ground black pepper

2/3-1 cup extra virgin olive oil

salt to taste

Directions: Place first four ingredients in food processor, and pulse until well combined (scapes can be a little stringy, like asparagus, so you may wish to keep pulsing to finely process them into a smoother pesto).

With the processor running, drizzle in olive oil until desired consistency is reached.  Salt to taste.

Toss with pasta or sauteed veggies (pea shoots or wilted kale are a good choice.)

Enjoy!

Poppies in perfect bloom, nestled in the fairy garden

Spent a cool, cloudy morning helping volunteers harvest in the garden.  We picked 37 pounds of produce for Birch Community Services, and finished up some weeding and yard maintenance (and tended to herds of small children).  Looking forward to a few more ladies coming on Friday to help me pick more herbs and berries.

Culinary lavendar. I love harvesting it, with the bees buzzing all around.

Rhubarb, garlic scapes, artichokes

While today’s harvest may not seem that large, it is a good size for this early in the season (greens and herbs don’t weigh much).  The good gardening weather is finally here, and we are looking forward to the raspberries, beans and potatoes coming into production very soon.

Kale, oregano, strawberries

Tomorrow I’ll share my recipe for garlic scape pesto, and Wednesday I’ll be rejoining Ginnny’s Yarn Along.  Hope you’ll get a chance to stop by later in the week.

Oh, and speaking of being outside in the garden – be sure to check out Frontier Dreams‘ Butterbean sunscreen giveaway.

Once again, I have failed to be a consistent blogger.  What can I say?  Life is busy.   I have barely picked up my knitting needles in weeks and weeks.  My camera is forgotten on a regular basis.  My spinning wheel is dusty and the laundry table is covered in at least three loads of unfolded clothes.  House and writing projects have been set aside.  Our whole family has had a non-stop run of illness and maintenance of chronic health issues.  But the kids have my attention, and we have been connecting and learning and growing in many areas.  And life is good.

And now, it’s summer!  So, we’ll give blogging another go.

Some images from the last few weeks:

A portion of one morning’s harvest for Birch Community Services

Goumi berries. Ruth eats them all!

Almost two weeks going shampoo-free (Bea calls it no-sham instead of no-poo, and I much prefer her term!). Still in the “transition” phase, so I’ve been wearing a tichel most days.

Trying to nourish ourselves and heal from lots of illness. Been fermenting lots of good things lately (kraut, beer, a host of pickles, kombucha, sourdough), and getting back to making my own buttermilk and bread each week.

The backyard. Potatoes and poppies abound.

Picking strawberries and currants with George

Hope to be back later in the week.  (Unless the evenings continue to be too beautiful to deny ourselves a long after-dinner walk.  Summer in Portland never disappoints.)

Blessings on the start of a new week.

]]> http://www.larksongknits.com/2013/06/09/a-post/feed/ 7 http://www.larksongknits.com/2013/01/30/waiting-for-spring/ http://www.larksongknits.com/2013/01/30/waiting-for-spring/#comments Thu, 31 Jan 2013 02:27:55 +0000 Angela http://www.larksongknits.com/?p=5034 Continue reading →]]>

It has been a while since I’ve posted.  Life is tremendously hectic (I feel like I say that too frequently).  Friends having babies, and they need meals.  Kids sick with colds that become pneumonia and bronchitis.  Hours of garden work every single day.  House chores I cannot keep on top of.

The grey rainy days and too many hours inside being ill are starting to wear thin on everyone.  We are looking forward to spring.

During George’s nap today, Harold and I went outside to spread mulch (an unending chore when you are trying to build biomass and increase fertility in a garden with poor clay soils).  Much to my surprise, 5 of the 8 rhubarbs are beginning to wake from their winter slumber.  Oh, it made my heartbeat quicken for a moment – a sign of spring!

In the front yard, underneath the honeyberry bushes and prune plum trees, the first of the daffodils and crocus are beginning to emerge.   Here in Oregon there are many, many more weeks of grey and rain and chilly weather, but the end is in sight.  Winter is beginning to ebb at last.   We look forward to the rebirth of spring.

I spent a considerable amount of time in the garden this week thanks to temperatures in the high 30′s ad low 40′s.  We had planned on finishing the chicken run re-do this morning.  However, a bank of freezing fog moved in, and the children quickly got chilled, despite being well-bundled.

So, we headed inside, to make raspberry-swirl brownies.  While the brownies baked, little George and I sat in the dining nook – he played with toys and rosemary sprigs, and I tried to finish up some garden planning for the coming year.    The big kids sat warming cold fingers and toes by the heater (oh, how I wish we had a woodstove!).

I am working on a new map of the garden.  We did a basemap when we first started the gardens, and every year it gets updated.   I have added pears and plums and an apple tree, as well as many new currants.  Several beds got moved around and reshaped in the fall.  The new map will show all of the improvements for the coming year.

  Our Baker Creek order arrived earlier this week.  I save many of my own seeds, and also carefully store purchased seeds from previous years.  We start many more seedlings than we have room for, so that we can share with volunteers and BCS participants, and I do need to reorder some seeds every single year.  (It’s like Christmas in January!)

I am anxious to get the garden going.   Looking forward to having the front sunroom full of little green, growing seedlings very, very soon…

Life is so frantic lately, I almost didn’t make Nicole’s KCCO or  Ginny’s Yarn Along this week.  I am having trouble keeping my head above water some days.  It seems to be a constant problem – four kids, busy schedules, deadlines, nowhere to cut back and simplify.  When life gets like this, I’m going to drop a ball somewhere, I just don’t know where yet…

This week, I’m re-reading some of of my favorite permaculture books.  I am working on a research project, and while I thought most of my reading would take place late at night (thanks to chronic insomnia), the kids had other plans.

Ruth and Bea (ages 10 and 8) found the stack of 7or 8 permie books and asked if we could read through them together.  Ruth, ever the artist,  is fascinated with all the diagrams and base maps and sketches.  Bea, ever the idealist, enjoys thinking about designing for conservation of resources and regeneration of the land.  We all enjoy reading them together.

(Our favorite is Jenny Allen’s Australian book, Smart Permaculture Design.  Oh, if only we could grow mangoes and avocados!)

George is growing like a weed, and has outgrown some of the wool soakers I made him a while back.  Those that still fit take a while to dry on the line, so we’re a little short in the rotation.  Over the last few months, I’ve collected some cashmere and merino sweaters from the thrift store (for $1-$2/each), and today I hope to get them cut up for more longies and short soakers.   There should be enough to make four for George and two infant-sized ones for baby shower gifts.

In the late winter, I tend to be a little burned-out on knitting, and try to fill the void with spinning projects.  Last week some folks here and on the Facebook page commented on all the spindle spinning, and asked what I had going on the wheel.

(Apologies for the fading light – it’s so hard to photograph in Oregon in January.  The color on the bobbin below is more true than above.)  Almost three years ago, I purchased a lot of mill-end Brown Sheep roving at a ridiculously cheap price (less than $8/lb).  I have worked through most of it on drop spindles, but this full pound of  teal with blue and black streaks (85% wool 15% mohair) is on the wheel.

My beat-up Louet S10 came with only two bobbins (it was supposed to come with three…long story.  Buyer beware on Craigslist!), and both are currently holding this yarn.  Trying to fill this bobbin so I can hurry up and ply them.  My goal is to make matching vests for Harold and George (There should be ample yardage out of a full lb), which will be sized to fit them this coming fall (you have to really plan ahead when planning a project from a bag of roving!).

And now it’s back to school work with the kids:  Ruth is tackling addition and subtraction of mixed numbers with unlike denominators, and she needs me right there to work through the problems with her.  We are trying to wrap up school work early today, because Bea has an appointment to read to the therapy dog at the library this afternoon (such a great program for cautious and struggling readers!), and Ruth is desperate to pick up her book on hold (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix).

I will catch up on the other Yarn-Alongers later tonight.  Happy knitting and happy reading!