first efforts

Gardening at the White House and our house

The White House has been pretty stingy with the garden updates. After the initial planting frenzy we didn't get much news. Why no webcam where you can watch the lettuce grow, minute-by-minute? I would *pay* for that. Politico 44, get on it!

Here's what I know so far, culled from various sources:

as of mid-June more than 90 pounds of produce has been harvested;

it's a mix of lettuce, snap peas, beans, kale, collards, swiss chard, and herbs;

the garden hasn't been certified organic but it's chemical-free; and

the White House kitchen is using most of the food, but some has been donated to a local soup kitchen.

The photo above depicts the White House beekeeper collecting the first batch of honey from the Obama hives. Nice!

As for our house, there are no bees but we're doing pretty well too. We've worked through two plantings of radishes and lettuce and nearly polished off all the chard and spinach. Snap peas are on the vine and a few green beans have appeared, hidden well under the shade of their bushy leaves. The Early Girl tomatoes have fruited, though they still have quite a way to go before we eat them. And I'm pretty convinced that all four heads of broccoli will become the size of human heads before we arrive home from vacation; here's hoping they hold out so we can get in on the broccoli action.

image credit/caption (top): Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter as well as beekeeper, collects the first batch of honey from the beehives on the South Lawn of the White House, June 10, 2009. (Official White House Photographer Lawrence Jackson)

Dear mother robin,

Yes, I know our porch is lovely. And, to your tiny bird brain at least, it probably seems very safe and secure. Indeed, the covered roof provides us with much shade and protection during the hot summers here in central Illinois. And the ceiling fans really make it comfortable and pleasant. In fact, the porch may be my favorite place in the whole house.

However, our porch is not the best place to build your nest. To be even more specific, the ceiling fan is a very bad choice. First, as you have no doubt noticed repeatedly over the past week, the blades of the fan are very narrow and the straw and bits of nest-building material you put up there just fall back down again (onto our new porch furniture, which is unpleasant). Every single time you have put something up there, it falls down of its own accord. This should be your first clue that this spot is not good nest material. In addition, and I can't believe I actually have to tell you this, our ceiling fans move. When we turn them on, the blades spin around; this should be another clue that this is not the best place to build your nest, unless you like your eggs scrambled. We have tried to help you see the danger of the fans by leaving them on. Yet the minute we turn them off again, you return and begin again, undeterred. Instinct is a terrible thing.

But wait! you protest. My momma robin friend built her nest right near your porch, over there, and you didn't seem to mind. In fact, you seemed pretty interested in her progeny. True, but that momma robin didn't select the single dumbest place to build a nest, and you did. Frankly, we're beginning to doubt you're even qualified to be a parent.

In closing, mother robin, while we are pleased to be your neighbors and don't want to be rude, we here in this household are asking you kindly, one more time, to please take your little stringy bits of nest and assemble them elsewhere. Don't make us ask you again.

Hugs and kisses, Cara, John, dogs, and cat

Tweet!

A few weeks ago I blogged about our new neighbors on the back porch; here's the result of all their labor. Cute in a hideous, prehistoric way, no?

First harvest!

It's been 6 weeks since we planted the garden and here's the first teeny crop of greens, harvested this morning. This makes me ridiculously happy, and probably disproportionately so. Lots of people garden, of course, so it's no big deal. Except that this is OUR first crop of greens grown from OUR very own seeds in OUR very own dirt in OUR very own new vegetable garden, so I am very, very excited.

If you've seen my visual chronicle on Facebook this is probably old news, but we're using the Square Foot Gardening system (book here and cheesy YouTube videos here) and so far It. Is. Awesome.

 

You build boxes that are 4 by 4 feet square, hence 16 square feet total for each box. Then you divide each box into separate one square foot sections, and plant the appropriate number of plants/seeds in each. There are several advantages to this system. Because you are building a raised bed you can control the soil you use and the mix they recommend using has great drainage (nice given how rainy this spring has been). In addition, you can grow a lot in a very small space. We have devoted one box to herbs, and in the other two we were able to cram 4 kinds of greens, radishes, peppers, broccoli, cucumbers, strawberries, carrots, green beans, snap peas, and 2 kinds of onions. And get this: there's virtually no weeding. Everything is grown so intensively that whatever weeds pop up are tiny and swiftly yanked. Finally, you can rotate easily; when something's done, you can just start over in the square and plant something else. I'm looking forward to playing with multiple plantings and, later in the summer, planting cold-weather crops for fall and early winter.

But first: salad!

Nesting

Somehow we missed this construction project going on right outside our back door. A few weeks ago I started finding little organic stringy pieces on the back steps, then looked up and realized we're in trouble. There's definitely an egg (or more?) in there, because every time we open the back door and go out onto the porch the mom (or dad?) bird flaps away to distract us from the nest.

Last summer a bird nested in one of our hanging pots on the porch, and we had the same situation. We didn't think much of it - we figured we could all coexist happily. Except that after the babies were born, the mother didn't fly away when we came onto the porch. She dive-bombed our heads instead.

Spring drama

Seasonal confusion

Of organic gardens and locavore presidents

Swing sets, green fountains, and now this: a new vegetable garden. The NYT reports this morning on plans for the new White House organic garden. I went online to noodle around for historical photos of previous White House gardens and found instead this adorably informative video, which chronicles the locavore history of the White House:

All of this is good timing. I'm getting ready to put in my first real adult vegetable garden (read: not just tomatoes). And tomorrow my beloved and I are taking a short road trip to visit our favorite goat cheese farmers at Prairie Fruits Farm. We haven't been out there before, and I can't wait. We'll buy some cheese and eggs and also gawk at their new kids. FYI for you local folks, these "Farm Saturdays" run from 9 am to noon every Saturday until the Farmer's Market starts in May.

Traces

Early January is a good time to do little house projects; the holidays are over, but we're not full swing into the semester yet. This past week I tackled our downstairs half-bath, which came with some unfortunate wallpaper when we bought the house. One thing I want to note for the record? No matter how great the chemicals are, no matter that it's a very small room, stripping wallpaper stinks. It just does. Don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. We have another wallpapery bathroom to do, but I think it will take us a while to get up the gumption. Gotta let the pain of this one wear off first.

The room was papered in one layer - a, um, lovely pattern with a blue background and showy yellow and green flowers. Blech! Behind that was not-too-terrible baby blue paint. But as I wrestled off the paper behind the toilet, I made a little discovery: remnants of yet another layer of wallpaper that looks to have preceded the blue paint (sample above). Two things struck me. First, this older layer looks quite a lot like the newer layer I'm stripping off, which may say something about the cycles of wallpaper fashion. Second, we are the fourth owners of our house. The new paint we put on will be, as far as I can tell, the fourth different thing that has been on the walls. While I can't be certain, it's a pretty good bet that every single owner of the house has felt compelled to put their mark on that tiny half-bath. Too bad it had to be with wallpaper.

Sunset over my laptop