Life In Sugar Hollow

A Berry Season Must Have :: Sweet Almond Cake

2009-07-13T09:46:00.004-04:00

A while back, I posted a quick note on an old-fashioned Sweet Almond Cake recipe that I topped with rhubarb.

I received a flurry of responses and requests for the recipe (it is originally out of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook - my go-to resource for baking lately). I have finally found a copy of it on-line here.

It is meant, I believe, to be drizzled with your favorite July berries or berry sauces. So I'm hoping my delay in getting this out to you-all worked out in the best kind of way!

The Charlottesville Cooking School :: Canning Class!

2009-07-09T14:26:00.003-04:00

Learning how to can has been on my wish list for a very long time. The thought of winter pantry shelves stocked with rows of Ball mason jars makes my heart race.

On August 29th, I will be taking a class at The Charlottesville Cooking School with Leni Sorensen. Here's a description:

Learn the art of canning peaches and tomatoes at this fun and interactive class with Leni Sorensen. Leni is a culinary historian at Monticello. Each student will leave with one jar of tomatoes and one jar of peaches.

I especially love that it is interactive, as that is the only way I absorb anything these days.

Thinking I might treat myself to this, too. I hear that it is the bible of all-things-canning-slash-preserving.

Winner Of The Quince Print . . .

2009-07-09T09:17:00.003-04:00

. . . is Tiana.

Tiana - send me an email with your mailing address - sugarholler@hotmail.com.

These giveaways are so much fun!! Thanks so much to each of you for entering. I'll do another very soon, I promise . . .

xo T.

I've Got A Crush On Love-In-A-Mist

2009-07-08T10:28:00.007-04:00

I've wanted a little patch of these suckers for years. And now, I have that patch. It is the tiniest of patches. But it is mine. From what I understand, they self-seed like mad.

Here's hoping . . . !

Happy Fourth!

2009-07-04T13:12:00.001-04:00

Dill flower fireworks!

While I Was Away . . .

2009-07-03T08:43:00.000-04:00

A few things happened.

Quince Blossom Print Giveaway and Ciao!

2009-06-20T06:55:00.004-04:00

"Stretch Out and Wait"

Leave a comment - win this 8" X 8" print! And leave your email address!

I will draw a random number on July 7th.

Willa and I are getting ready to take a train ride to see grandparents this morning. LOTS of packing that I still need to do . . . so cheers and more gardening talk when I return . . . !

The Slower Side of Summer

2009-06-18T10:25:00.006-04:00

Drying lavender.

Eating calendula biscuits - with Foster's Seven Pepper Jelly (not pictured, but you get the idea).

Sand and sun at Mint Springs. Picnics with friends.

A Sunday supper with Uncle Chris out on our back deck.

Making the most of our CSA and our gardens. Willa has taken a liking to snap peas. Lucky her! Weeks 2 and 3 of the CSA involved many, many salads; bok choy with toasted sesame oil, red pepper flakes and garlic (Thanks, Sarah!); spinach pesto; and Red Russian kale wilted in our favorite Jacques Pepin sausage-potato-onion packet from Fast Food My Way.

I'm trying out this recipe tonight - to use more lettuce and spring onions.

Remembering that some of the best moments are the ones that lack focus. And that summer is best experienced in as many girly skirts as possible.

(This one is from anthropologie a few years back.)

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All of my spring work in the front (newish) garden is paying off and getting ready to burst. Butterfly bushes, rose-y coreopsis, nasturtiums, bachelor buttons, daylilies and echinacea.
I need to find some vintage garden chairs so I can watch the show.

We Have A Winner!

2009-06-16T11:56:00.003-04:00

Weeeee!

Leis of Gardening In Heels has won the photo giveaway. My print will be making the long journey to . . . Australia!

This was so much fun, I plan on doing another at the end of the week. Thanks a bunch to each of you that showed interest in my little old picture. BIG smiles all-around.

Savoring The Lull

2009-06-11T08:56:00.015-04:00

Good lord, did I need a break.

You know that thing that happens when you have been going a million miles an hour for a while, and then you rest and then you get sick because your body will finally let you?

Yeah, that. This time, I fully welcomed it. And it got me re-thinking the garden. About going lo-fi in the garden to keep things simpler and simpler.

Down in our raised beds, the bed that is the happiest and makes me happiest has perennial flowers and herbs in it. The bed that frustrates me the most is the high maintenance vegetable bed. Because it is far away from the house - it gets away from me constantly.

So, I'm hoping for one smallish vegetable bed much closer to the house (or just incorporating more veggies into our front yard landscape) and putting more lavender, perennials and berries down in the raised beds. So I can weed easily, mulch heavily and let it all be.

This lull has me stepping away from the computer and the camera (just for a spell!) and reading this, listening to this, watching a bit of this, eating piles of homemade potato salad (with bacon and homegrown dill) and swimming here (Mint Springs!) with Willa.

Ready :: Set :: Weekend!

2009-06-05T10:34:00.012-04:00

Here's hoping some salvia and nepeta make in into the Sugar Hollow landscape this weekend.

A busy month of fundraisers (I do graphic design and public relations for freelance weekend work), garden coaching, swim 'lessons' with Willa, testing out the Crozet Farmers' Market and refining my Etsy shop . . . is coming to close.

This weekend is deliciously free and simple. Just a grown-up night out on Saturday to see Steve Earle and celebrate his new album of Townes Van Zandt covers.

The timing of our rains lately have saved the vegetable and perennial gardens from severe neglect. Insane sprouting and growth spurts ensued. With me nary lifting a finger.

I have two more raised beds that I would like to uncover and plant up. One with perennials that also make great cutting flowers - Coreopsis, Black-Eyed Susans, Yarrow and Echinacea. The other, with a dwarf weeping mulberry.

I hope to get out and harvest some herbs for drying. Oregano, chamomile, lavender, sage.

The okra needs to be sown and the collards will follow after that.

This planting combination (photo above) has me thinking I can break our landscaping budget just a bit. Because I need (and can never have enough) blues and purples.

Don't forget about the Vintage-Viewfinder print give away! Drawing on June 15th!! Scroll down a bit . . .

Happy, soppy Friday!

The CSA and Our Garden :: Week One

2009-06-02T10:19:00.007-04:00

Chives from our garden were nice additions to CSA salad greens.

Last week, we picked up our first CSA package. My only worry about joining a CSA was that there would be wasteful behavior involved. I have taken a silent oath these days to use up everything we already have in the house (garden supplies, crafting supplies, pantry stock, etc.) in the constant pursuit of zero-dollar days and I wanted to carry that thrifty behavior through to our CSA. I also wanted to make sure I was pulling goodies from our garden and using them up, as well.

What we received from the CSA:

Salad mix
Red Russian Kale
Spinach
One dozen eggs

How it was put to use (with additions from our plot):

Salad Mix - Lots of dinner salads with toasted sunflower seeds, cranberries, dried blueberries, shredded carrots. One night, we had enough strawberries from our garden to put on top of a salad (Due props to Gradually Greener for the idea). I also took a salad for lunch with leftover salmon. Chopped up chives from our herb garden were also a nice addition to the salads.

Red Russian Kale - This was used immediately. My new favorite type of kale. I made the Hot and Sour Greens mentioned here.

Spinach and seven eggs became a spinach fritatta. Recipe out of the Sundays at Moosewood Cookbook.

Three more eggs were used in a Sweet Almond Cake from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook. I topped it with stewed rhubarb (from our garden). It is the closest thing to homemade marzipan that I have yet to experience.

This is both a good and a bad thing. I found I had to say out loud, "Step away from the Sweet Almond Cake" more than once this past weekend. Half the time I did, the other half, not so much.

Now if I could just summon that attitude with our insane bounty of salad greens.

Best Explanation of Sheet Mulching. Ever.

2009-05-28T10:53:00.004-04:00

And it is no surprise, as it was written by local permaculture dynamo Christine Gyovai for the Piedmont Garden Swap. Learn more about area permaculture events and opportunities at the Blue Ridge Permaculture Network site.

The part about the multitude of happy worms is what really got me. Read on.

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Hi all,

I've built several beds with sheet mulching - layering newspaper and cardboard (and compost, etc.) - with varying degrees of success.

My most recent beds have worked out wonderfully - we have about 450 sq. ft. of sheet mulched beds.

I removed all glossy colored sections from the newspapers, and removed all tape from cardboard. I think the Cville Weekly uses soy-based ink; would want to double check with them for sure.

I put the cardboard down first, overlapping the edges by 6 in, watered the layers well, put an inch of compost down, put down newspaper (about 6 sheets thick) again overlapping, watered well, and covered the whole bed with thick straw mulch. It takes a few seasons to break down, and you want to keep it as wet as a wrung out sponge. The worms go crazy (I've never seen so many worms). They come up and eat the sugars and starches in the newspaper and cardboard and aerate the soil, and you get their castings. Really remarkable. I've planted seeds and starts directly into the beds.

Here's a link to a project I worked on in Charlottesville for a class I co-taught. You can see pictures of building sheet mulch beds, as well as read a document Kathleen Maier wrote about the process:

The book Gaia's Garden by Toby Hemenway gives a great description of sheet mulching as well.

Hope that helps,

Christine

LISH Door Prize :: Viewfinder Fern Photo Giveaway!

2009-05-26T14:02:00.005-04:00

In honor of a recent Charlottesville visit from Elvis Perkins - I am giving away an 8" X 8" print that I named after one of his songs "I'll Be Arriving."

In case you haven't listened to him, you can't go wrong with either Ash Wednesday or Elvis Perkins in Dearland. Both are the soundtrack to our spring. Seeing him live with That Girl officially made him the bee's knees, in my book.

Please just leave a comment (and your email address) - I'll swirl the random number generator on June 15th!

G'luck!

The Pinks and Reds of Memorial Day

2009-05-25T15:47:00.005-04:00

Our Memorial Day celebrations were caught in bits and pieces.
In between naps and fret-filled calls to the pediatrician, house and garden projects and tired parents trying to catch a break here and there.

Living in Sugar Hollow doesn't leave us with much of an urge for going. Staying put more often than not is what makes us happiest.

From the top:
Rhubarb soda. Recipe here. And if you are lucky enough to have liquor in the house, you can make the Rhubarb Cosmopolitan.

Strawberries from Chiles Orchard in Crozet. They make and sell strawberry donuts, too. Just sayin'.

Peonies from a neighbor's garden.

And Sweet William from our cutting flower patch. Patch is a stretch. But garden would be even more of a stretch.

In Another Galaxy, These Would Be Considered Breakfast

2009-05-22T08:19:00.001-04:00

With strawberry and rhubarb season already here and peach-blackberry-blueberry-raspberry season on the horizon, I bring you Rustic Fruit Desserts : Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies and More by-way-of angrychicken.

I have no idea what a buckle or a pandowdy is, but I have a good feeling that I will wonder how I ever lived before without them. And I'll be spending more time hiking our foothills to negate this new-found love affair.

For a little balance to the butter-flour-sugar trinity, here's an awesome recipe for your spring greens. I swear, even the biggest scoffers will become converts.

And once they have finished their greens, they can be rewarded with a honkin' buckle. Or pandowdy. Or what-ever.

Happy Long Weekend! May it be filled with some gardening, fortified by some baking, followed by some napping.

To The Market We Went

2009-05-20T11:51:00.003-04:00

Saturday morning at the Crozet Farmers' Market was a hoot and being part of a farmers' market and the camaraderie was inspiring. So much so that, in getting caught up in the excitement, I spent every penny of my morning's earnings at the market - supporting other vendors! The way it should be, right?

Vendors to look out for over the next few weeks at the market :: The family selling divisions of unique daylilies ( I bought a 'Pandora's Box') to send their kids to camp this summer. The iris rhizome tent (ask him anything about irises). The lady who bakes the almond/cherry/chocolate icing cupcakes (I had to keep checking my face in the mirror, to wipe off icing smears). And heirloom tomato starter plants galore. Get up and out there early!

Peonies, The Market, The Weekend

2009-05-15T16:47:00.005-04:00

I am hoping to one day grow some peonies of my own. Until then, I rely on the green thumbs (and generosity) of others.

A surprise visit today, from Kris, included a very generous delivery of homegrown asparagus. I am taking her lead and making cream of asparagus soup this weekend.

Daylily donations and swaps from local gardeners will go in the ground - continuing my quest to stabilize a tricky slope.

And, I will be trying my hand at the Crozet Farmers' Market tomorrow morning - selling rhubarb, herbs, cutting flowers and my photos. Come on by!

Gardening With Children :: Light-Hearted Beginnings

2009-05-13T19:10:00.001-04:00

Zinnias can be started easily from seed and are great cutting flowers.

When my friend Katie wrote me, telling me that her little girl is itching to garden but needs more details on where to start, my heart jumped. So stinkin' sweet! Here are a few ideas.

Soil :: If you live where the soil is already dark and loamy, lucky you. (Katie, I have a feeling you have kick-ass soil where you are living.) If not, buy a bag or two of compost and work it into the soil (you can do this with a hoe pretty quickly).

Super shortcut for busy mamas :: Buy bags of organic topsoil. Place them where you want to start gardening, cut open the bag and start planting directly into the pile of soil (you can trim off the plastic flaps that are a result of cutting open the bag or mulch over them). Only do this with flowers.

Satisfyingly Simple Flowers, Herbs and Veggies :: Start these flowers from seed - sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, calendula, love-in-a-mist, bachelor's buttons, nasturtiums. Veggies - summer squash and pole beans. Buy tomatoes (cherry tomatoes are simplest to cultivate and most satisfying for children to harvest) as starter plants. Easy peasy, I promise!

Use terracotta pots as a base for your fencing. Feed bamboo stakes through and deep into the soil. Sometimes, I jam additional, smaller pieces of the bamboo in the opening of the terracotta pot, to really stabilize it.
For fencing: Thread some deer fencing in.
For trellis: Create horizontal supports with additional bamboo and florist wire wrapped around at meeting points.

Foil Unwanted Garden Guests :: I have been busy constructing very simple "fences" to foil our ever-so-cute, yet pesky border collie/basset hound Otis (see photo caption above). Buy a roll of deer netting and thread it around and through the bamboo stakes. This fencing can be made in less than five minutes, on the fly and on the cheap. Oh, yes. The winds howl through Sugar Hollow and these remain steadfast.

Give Them Something To Climb Up :: No, no, no - not your little ones. The beans and the tomatoes. Same theory/structure as my ad-hoc fences. But add a few horizontal pieces and secure with florist wire to create your trellis.

Watering :: Try to water in the evenings or the early morning (mid-day stresses the plants). This can be a fun time for you and your children to notice each and every new thing that is happening in the garden. Also, mulching around the plants with compost or bark mulch will keep things tidy and cut back on how much you need to water.

Feed Them :: If you can, offer your new plants compost tea or some organic fertilizer every two weeks or so.

Did I miss something? Questions, anyone?

Celebrating More Small Stuff

2009-05-12T09:57:00.003-04:00

Life In Sugar Hollow photos made the front page of Etsy twice over the last month. My fern in a teacup photo "I'll Be Arriving" is at the top - in the upper left hand corner. And there's my quince branch "Stretch Out and Wait" photo in the second screen shot.

What else can I say but "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Okay. So maybe not so small for me.

*New in the shop - 8" X 8" inch prints and metallic paper as a photo paper option. Oh, yes and gift certificates!

Happy Mother's Day (To, A-hem, Me)

2009-05-11T08:38:00.003-04:00

Because I couldn't possibly expect my family to know that I wanted this, I went ahead and treated myself during a mid-day visit with Sarah to a local cooking shop.

An old-fashioned tea strainer. It works beautifully for my strong Irish Breakfast morning tea, and for an afternoon cup of chamomile. Chamomile from our garden. Which returned gangbusters this spring. Smelling of honey and sweetness.

I now feel like a real lady for the fifteen minutes I spend with my tea each day. Gardening-induced dirt under the fingernails aside . . .

The Small Stuff

2009-05-10T08:23:00.002-04:00

Our gardens are producing on a small scale this year, but it seems to suit us. Salad greens for a salad most nights. A handful of radishes. Chives and one shiitake mushroom. And oregano that contributed to an outstanding Flounder Oreganata for Saturday supper. Transporting me back to New York and favorite Italian restaurants with each bite-ful.

I hope your hard work in your gardens is giving a little back to you this Mother's Day weekend!

In Which I Groove On Racemes

2009-05-08T16:50:00.004-04:00

I'm on the hunt for this over the weekend.

Virginia Sweetspire. Itea virginica. The ideal summer shrub. Drooping, deliciously fragrant racemes (those cylindrical flowers) lure pollen-drunk bees during the month of June.

Their bzzzzz's will go with the lazy summer-day zzzzz's I hope to catch on a blanket in our garden.

Oh, yes. And the Sweetspire's fall show is nothing to sniff at . . .

When I'm not searching high and low for Itea virginica, I will be out there weeding, weeding and weeding, as the days of rain have left us with a jungle on our hands.

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Photos from Wikimedia.

Foggy and Soggy

2009-05-05T15:44:00.003-04:00

Moody and rainy and misty in Sugar Hollow these days.

But nature has taken one of my garden chores, watering, off of my hands. Freeing them up to hold a beer and watch the spring show from the warmth and shelter of our home.

Readying myself for when the rain stops and the weeding begins!

Mother's Day :: Gift of a Garden Coach

2009-05-01T12:01:00.000-04:00

That's me!

Do you have a burgeoning gardener : mama : wife?

I've been having a blast coaching clients this season on all things - from garden reclamation : vegetable gardening : container gardening : weeds vs. plant identification : small-scale landscape design : native plantings.

Maybe the mama in your life has a little plot she would like to start working but needs a smidgen of get-up-and-go? OR maybe you are the mama and need to, um, spoon feed gift ideas to your loved ones?

You can email me at tcgerlach@gmail.com or call 953.5419.