visions and sights around the corner

If you read the post on my other blog about needing to get out of my yard sometimes, you'll catch the irony that I just returned from a vacation across the mountains and am happy to begin work in my yard. Then again, the whole point of vacation is to help you return  ready to tackle your normal life with renewed vigor, right?

At least for the first week+ back, we've all felt the extra umpf to work out in the yard we bought last year, which is just around the corner from our back yard. Iz in particular only wants to "work outside" all day, every day. Walk to friends? No, thanks. I want to work in the yard. Eden is happy picking raspberries to share with the neighbors all day long.

You see, we've had this plan. We drew it up months ago on the site growveg.com. It makes me happy to sit and just look at it. We won't get the plan done in one year, for sure. I've been calling it a 5-10 year plan. But the awesome thing is how much of it we've been able to get done in the last month!

There it is! THE PLAN. You can map out your yard (our house is along most of the bottom of this drawing, with the kids' playhouse in our regular back yard at the bottom right and the front of the property on the far left) and fill in whatever plants you want! It automatically fills in the suggested spacing for each plant and will even give you a graph showing when to plant and harvest each crop! Genius! So here's how it's going:

The weekend before vacation, we rented a bobcat to pull as much gravel as possible out of the yard. I think the yard was about 40% gravel, at least a foot deep. Maybe more. An epic 2 driveways and an improved alley later (you're welcome, Muncie...), our yard looked slightly different than it had before the three days of work. We're gradually pushing the wild brush and random stuff back to the edges, at least.

 

At this point, neighbors started coming over to ask what we're doing. One next-street-over neighbor we did not know previously came and operated the bobcat one hot afternoon, just because he has a lot of experience doing it and wanted to be kind. Another just came to check it out and give advice. Others say we are absolute angels for working so hard. (I have yet to figure out how those two things are related. Working on my own yard feels just a bit selfish, though I hope to host people in it eventually...or now.) Some let Eden give them raspberries to eat. Kids see us digging and come over to help. It feels like the way things should be.

We didn't get as much done with the bobcat as we'd hoped, so we have been and will be leveling and smoothing the land by rake and shovel from here on out. It sounded horrible to me, but we were able to level the whole garden area in just four evenings of work. Ta-da! (The garden level we did by hand is at the far end of this picture.)

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This is not in our yard...yet.

The PLAN is to dig a trench pond like the one I saw at the Indy Zoo/White River Gardens. It had these frogs shooting water into it and that seemed really fun to me. (That's the blue in the drawing.) It is so much fun to me to be an adult who is able to see something like that and realize I could put it in my own yard for very little money. (I think. We're not done, yet!) We were going to have it just be a semi-circle near the house, but then we went to Williamsburg and saw the cute bridge over such a feature and thought, Why not? We have lots of extra wood to build one. So I think we'll give it a shot. Not that we know about building bridges. Maybe our neighbors do.

the little bridge at Williamsburg
It will go to the right of the left-hand tree in the picture below.

 

After we got the basic garden shape dug and leveled, we got a bunch of old cedar boards (like 50 years old!) that had been the stands at the fairgrounds in town. We've heard a rumor that John Dillinger's butt may have been on one of these very boards.... :) In one day, with the help of a dear middle school student, we built, filled, and planted nine beds! (We have to leave open space for future construction for now.) To my astonishment, we have not 2 beds of tomatoes, but more than four! 50 TOMATO PLANTS!!! Oops! I kept thinking we didn't really have many. I will have to become well-seasoned at canning this fall.

 

as close as I can get to an aerial view of the yard to show how the overall plan is coming along

So there it is for now. It was long past its due date, but I'm proud of it like it's a new baby or something. But this time of year, everyone's inviting each other over to come check out their gardens. It's what we do. Hope you enjoyed the virtual tour. Come over whenever you want and I'll hand you a shovel as I expound upon this brief history! Holler down the street or send me a link and I'll come check out your garden, too!

learning about the passover

This evening (a day late, I know...) we celebrated Passover with our family. (Well, some extended family and an alien among us, if you want to get technical.) It was our first attempt at a full Seder, with much reading and the four cups and all. It was an adventure having Israel and Eden along for our first attempt. I think in future years, we will be able to re-write some to make it more easily-understood by preschoolers. And, even though my paired-down version was still long, the meal was a success, I'd say. If you're interested in learning about it and have about an hour, you can check out http://www.cresourcei.org/haggadah.html for a step-by-step on how to conduct the Christian Seder.

Highlights of our evening included:
- the kids finding the moldy bread I hid around the dining room. (It's supposed to just be "leavened bread," but I figured the gross factor would help the kids understand how we are to obey God and get rid of all things that are displeasing to Him.) Turns out, Eden found it early and someone caught her munching on it before dinner. EW!
- Eden exclaiming her love of her "special drink" (a.k.a. full-strength grape juice): "It's good! I like coffee, Mommy!"
- Israel's first response to eating the parsley dipped in salt water. The shutter missed it, but it was photo-worthy.
- having three generations at the table.
- Grandma Terry reading the story of the first Passover over dinner.
- sending the kids to go look for Elijah and Eden screaming, over and over: "I found him! I found him!" (I guess she anticipated the point that we aren't waiting for him anymore, but that He and the Messiah have both come. Smart girl.)
- Israel preferring the vegetables to the lamb.
- Israel finding the afikomen (the broken bread representing Christ and His redemption that is found at the end of the meal) and proudly holding it up.
- following a tradition that is millenia old, that was originally commanded to be taught to children. I'm not sure what was learned this go-around, but it was a joy to be together and go through this process.

Here are a few pictures we will remember the evening by.

those in our house


Pat's mom reading the story of the first Passover


Israel bravely trying the salt-water parsley a second time


yup. That herb is still bitter!


the lamb that spilled its blood


Israel proudly displaying the afikomen....


...before getting a little crazy while Pat was finishing up the reading.

dinner nativity

This will be our first Christmas with the four of us at home. Israel is at a really fun age where expectation can be built and meaningful things understood. Eden also is demonstrating that she understands stories and gets excited over simple things. It's fun times around the holidays.

I feel this great freedom in being home to start our own traditions and to focus on Jesus during this time (all things about it not being his actual birthday aside). We didn't do as well as I would have liked with Advent this year, but I love the whole season of waiting for Jesus' light to come into the world. And now is the time to celebrate that light. But how to communicate that to the kids? I wanted to have a special meal with them, but I don't think great adult food communicates a celebration to a 1 and 3 year old. I searched the internet for ideas for a way to tell the Christmas Story through a dinner. There wasn't anything. So we made up our own. There were good ideas given to be over facebook, too, but I didn't have the ingredients on hand for those. So we made do with what we had, and I think it turned out well. We made the different foods, set them out on the table, and put them on plates as we told the story. So here is the story of the nativity as told through a candlelit dinner.


One night, a long time ago, in a land across the ocean, a star appeared in the sky. It was a bright star. (Let's paint our star really bright.)
Do you know what the star was telling people?
- Stars don't talk, mom.
You're right. Do you know why the star was there? Someone was born. Who was born?
- A Savior.
And what does a Savior do?
- Rescues the people.
That's right!

That same time, there were shepherds out in the fields, watching their sheep. Let's make our field.... And suddenly an angel came to the field! And the angel said, "Don't be afraid! I have good news for you! Our Savior has been born in a stable. You'll find him lying on some hay in a manger." And then a whole bunch of angels (putting them all on the field...) came and started singing and celebrating!


The shepherds ran off and sure enough, there was the manger. Who was in the manger?
- Baby Jesus!
Right! Here's some hay for a manger and can you put baby Jesus on the hay? There! The shepherds went to go see baby Jesus!


Of course, Eden had already been eating the heads off the angels and had eaten baby Jesus too, and kept asking where baby Jesus went. The obvious answer: Jesus is inside you! :)

If you want to know what the various things on the plate are, aside from their symbolism, here's the role call:

The part of the star was played by your favorite crab or tuna cake recipe, formed in a star cookie cutter and carefully fried. It was made to shine by a mustard, mayo, yogurt sauce.

The field was played by sauteed green beans and the angels were played by potato slices, cut, salted, and sprinkled with pepper, paprika, or coriander.

The hay was played by chopped apples mixed with honey and a little vinegar and cinnamon.

Baby Jesus was played by two marshmallows and a golden raisin on a toothpick with melted chocolate dots for eyes.

Lezlie's veggie balls

(These really need a better name.) You may have seen my ecstatic facebook post when I invented these today. I'm sure someone somewhere has done something similar, but I hate research. So I dove in, chasing after this taste I had in my head. (Ever get a hankering for something you've never had?) Here's the recipe. It was a total success with everyone in my family and had me singing happy nonsense songs the rest of the evening.

Makes about 36 1-1/2 in. veggie balls

Step 1: Start cooking the lentils.
I made about 1-1/2 to 2 cups of dry lentils. Boil them in plenty of water, as they absorb A LOT. I added a bit of bouillon to mine -- "Better Than Bouillion" Vegetable Stock, if you want to know exactly. I start out with an extra inch or so of water and keep adding water if they dry out before they're soft.

Step 2: While the lentils are cooking, saute in a bit of olive (or other) oil:
- 1/2 an onion, minced
- 2 carrots, minced
- (I'd have thrown in bell peppers if I had them, and maybe garlic)
- handful of peanuts, chopped
- salt to taste

Step 3: Make the balls
Mix the cooked lentils and the sauted veggies with the following to form something like a meatloaf mixture:
- crushed saltine crackers, about 1/2 a package
- oatmeal, maybe 1/2 to 1 cup
- 2 eggs
- (whatever other spices you want. I think I would add some barbecue sauce next time.)
Keep adding the crackers and/or oatmeal until the mixture can be easily formed into balls without being really sticky.

Step 4: Fry
Fry, not saute. Deep frying is probably the fastest, but I hate using that much oil at once. I just kept turning them until the entire outside was crispy and wonderful. The point of this was to make sure they didn't fall into mush when cooked in the sauce. It worked. So fry however you want and set aside to drain. When you're done, they look like this:

(I didn't know I wanted step-by-step pictures until I saw this success.)

Step 5: Make the sauce. Easy. Take 2 cans of diced tomatoes and 1/2 a bottle of your favorite barbecue sauce and cook it over medium heat.
NOTE: This is only enough sauce for 1/2 of the "vegetaballs." And 1/2 of the recipe is plenty for 4 people. I tucked the rest away in the fridge for a replay later in the week.

Step 6: Add the veggie balls to the sauce. Cook for a little while. I cooked it for something like 10 minutes, but I'd imagine it's even better when cooked longer. I'd just watch to make sure they don't turn to mush. This is the goodness that was in my pot:



I served these on bread as an open-faced sub sandwich...that I ate most of with a fork...but serving it over bread seems best. That last soppy bite of bread with the saucy goodness is the BEST! I wish I would've taken a better picture, but I really didn't want to take the time away from eating.