Someday, I’d like to spend a week or two doing yard and garden work for other people. To see what it would be like to be ‘the (wo)man who does the garden’. There’s nothing like feeling the hours slip by while you’re hard at work, physically, but I’m not naive enough to think it’s really like that day after day. So just a week or two.
My own garden has been hanging on through the stormy weather, glad for every hour of sun that comes its way. I made a sort of yogurt sauce today with radishes and herbs from the garden — and the yogurt is local too. Do you want to hear a yogurt-related tragedy? I had finally decided to buy a Salton YM9 yogurt maker, after months and months of should-I-shouldn’t-I. The price was right, I knew I would use it, and after months of thinking about it, I wasn’t worried about it being just a whim.
And now it’s discontinued! They still make their other model, which makes yogurt in individual cups, but I wanted the quart model. It was so much cheaper! I don’t want little cups! I am sad. S says this is a lesson to never put off impulse purchases. I wonder if that’s true. . . my latest material infatuation is this set of bike baskets, but those are way more expensive than a discontinued yogurt maker. I haven’t bought anything that wasn’t A) for my garden B) for my belly C) a book or D) from the thrift store for a couple of months now, so bike baskets suddenly seem like an extravagant purchase. Strange but true.
Anyway, radishes. And the garden, which is doing well. My broccoli plants have teeny tiny broccoli crowns starting! The snow peas have started flowering! My potato plants are up! Other things with exclamation marks!
I’ve also started digging up the side of my yard. It’s long and narrow, and half of it (running the long way) is shaded by the lilacs, but the the half against the house gets sun and more sun. Rain also runs off the roof (no gutters) and falls along that strip. So there’s been some shoring up to create a slight slope away from the house, and a dry ‘creek bed’ is in the works. Do you know how much free landscaping rock (thanks, craigslist) it takes to fill up even a small gully? More than you can load into your car in one trip.
So it’s a work in progress. A HARD work in progress. But apparently I enjoy that sort of thing.
I Like exclamation marks! They seem verry appropriate for things popping forth from the ground somehow.
What wonderful looking radishes.
A yogurt maker would be fun, but you can just make it in a bowl, which would be cheaper and mean one less gadget to store!
Hey Anna, I read your blog on a feed and really enjoy it. Rhonda @ down-to-earth has a bit of a tute on making yogurt with equipment you already have. http://down—to—earth.blogspot.com/2008/06/making-yoghurt-yogurt.html
Hope this helps the pocketbook.
Bonnie : )
I love radishes! Awesome.
Weird that they discontinued the Salton.
look on amazon or ebay, I bet there are a ton out there.
It’s easy to use, I have one, but I second the first Rachel, you can make it in a quart jar without the maker, as long as you have a decent heat source.