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!

an early spring

 i hope phil is right. this winter's been kicking my ass. worst january weather i can remember--nearly three weeks of temperatures in the single digits OR BELOW. only a handful of above-freezing temperatures. one day we had an ice storm, something that hasn't happened here since before i was born. i woke up to a quarter inch of slippery ice covering everything, encasing my car, it took 45 minutes of running the heat before i could scrape my windshield.

it's too early to start seeds, but i started a few anyway. i thrifted an aerogarden, and instead of using it for hydroponics i'm using it as a grow light. meyer lemon seeds sprouting in a coffee mug:

 they won't live very long in this container and i won't be able to transplant them, but for now they're wonderful. i also started a few micro tomatoes, hahms gelbe variety:

 there's nothing like the smell of tomato leaves in late january when it's 2 degrees and snowing out.

 the lemon leaves smell wonderful too. very sweet and fruity.

 my fire ranch aloe plant had five pups, so i separated them out into different containers and gave them to friends.

 minnie is the energizer bunny of egg laying. she's the only one who barely slowed down all winter. prinnie molted last fall and didn't lay at all until about a week ago--also her comb shrank down to almost nothing, then popped back up almost overnight.

the last few days have been relatively warm and most of the snow melted, so the ladies are happy to get outside. they wouldn't leave their coop at all when the snow was deep.

deep freeze