Self Sufficient Salad

 I made a beautiful salad this morning...

Arugula from the greenhouse, chives from the garden, sunflower sprouts from the window sill and eggs from the backyard flock. Awesome tasty....

I'd cut the greenhouse arugula yesterday and the sprouts had been growing on the kitchen window sill for the past week or so. I boiled the eggs last night, intending to eat them sometime today...So I went outside, got some chives, put it all together and sat down to eat, then said..."Wait a darn minute! This is amazing!!! I have to at least take a photo or two and just marvel at it all and give thanks. Thank you earth, chickens, rain, sun and birds and bees for all of the miracles in the food we eat.

 Life should never be taken for granted.

Creating Community with Kitchen Scraps

We made this little place for people to sit and rest while they're out walking.

I thought I'd see if people would drop in their kitchen scraps for the chickens....Why not I say!One of our neighbours, my new friend Jeanine left these jars of crushed eggshells for the garden this morning! She'd been saving them for years and they are so good for the soil.

Every day is like Christmas because I go outside and look in the bin to find kitchen scraps that people kindly leave when they walk by. My good friends all know they can bring me a load of scraps any time and I will grin from ear to ear! Look at the happy chickens. What I love most is how a little thing like the chicken scrap bin in it's own way helps to create community and a shared sense of doing something good for the planet. Because of the chickens and the scraps and the garden we know almost everyone on our street by name and that is a wonderful thing! 

Seattle Slug Salvation!

Thank you Starbucks for the coffee grounds that stopped the evil slug invasion and nourish my garden <3

Safe and happy romaine lettuce!

Look at my poor savoy cabbage baby..

I feel today that I have triumphed over evil! The evil slug that is....I've seen slugs before but never like these ones here in Seattle. I've gardened in some of the wettest and grayest places, like Quadra Island, battling deer, squirrels and bunnies and still, the slugs here are the most relentless predators I've ever come accross. A week ago I planted out tender, greenhouse raised savoy cabbage and romaine lettuce seedlings and they are decimated by slugs, despite the plastic collars I put up around them for protection. The slugs just slimed their way over the top and came inside for a midnight snack! The other day I tried cucumber slices put around on tin foil and the slugs loved that, but also my plants.

So, you can imagine my jubilation this morning at seeing the last two protected romaine seedlings standing there, unscathed, surrounded by a ring of STARBUCKS ESPRESSO GROUNDS! Yes, you heard it right. I am an inveterate scrounger and so when I go to Starbucks I always ask for their left over coffee grounds to put on my compost pile to add tilth and nitrogen. Waste not want not eh? But then I read on an obscure post online that coffee grounds are toxic to slugs and Voila! Slug problem gone! I'm stoked. Think I'll go have a Venti espresso and celebrate!

Greens and Happy Salad

This December I planted some arugula, rainbow chard and mustard greens in our little cold frame/greenhouse we'd just built. It took a while for things to come up and they looked pretty spindly with not much light and only the chicken manure planted under them to keep warm but slowly the green emerged, much to my delight! I watered just once in a while and used fish fertilizer, wanting to pamper the baby plants as much as possible. Once the sun started shining for days at a time, the leaves appeared, large and green and now look! The salad is a decadent mix of baby arugula and sunflower sprouts with a bit of carrot and olive garnish. Sinan made some sprouted chick pea humus and stir fried the mustard greens and chard with some garlic and ginger to put on rice. Heaven. It is my wish for everyone to grow a little something to eat. It connects us all.