Gardening
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Panic Gardening
Apparently I’m not alone in feeling a special urgency about gardening this year. Toilet paper isn’t the only thing people are hoarding; seeds are also flying off the shelves. All of a sudden, everyone is a gardener. Fortunately, like the… Continue reading
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Planning for Abundance
We migrated back to the Eden of Garden three weeks later than usual this year. This typically would not be a big deal to me — May in the UP sucks. May in the UP is like going back in… Continue reading
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Put your butt in the seat and eat
“This food is the gift of the whole universe – the earth, the sky, and much hard work. May we live in a way that makes us worthy to receive it.” – Thich Nhat Hanh We have a big problem around here:… Continue reading
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Willy-nilly
Willy-nilliness will absolutely not be tolerated in the Eden of Garden. And this is a source of many a tense moment between the Boss and me. He is a carpenter and a builder with the mind of an engineer and… Continue reading
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A Eulogy for the Butterboy
The garden is officially winding down. The boss man harvested all the green tomatoes off our wilting plants and pulled the last of the corn — oh Butter Boy you served us well, time to put you away until next… Continue reading
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The Tomato Parade
The tomato parade has begun and soon tomatoes in various stages of red will be covering every surface of our kitchen.Tomatoes are the heart of summer, the fruit of hot and humid days that get even hotter when you spend… Continue reading
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The Garlic Harvest
140 pounds of garlic harvested! Now the squash, which is towering above four-feet tall, has room to breathe. This is the deal with harvesting homegrown garlic: The most important thing you need to know about harvesting fresh garlic is: Eat… Continue reading
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Garlic Scapes and Walleye Cheeks
The Upper Peninsula is always a bit behind the times compared to the rest of the country. Just turn on the radio or walk into one of the restaurants along Highway 2 and you’ll think you stepped back into the… Continue reading
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Varmints
“I’m going to have to go Mr McGregor on the rabbits that took out my beets,” a gardener friend recently told me. (In the UP, it is probably more like Elmer Fudd, but I digress.) When I asked him if… Continue reading
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The “F” Word
The possibility of frost strikes fear in gardeners all the way to the tips of their green thumbs. Frost warnings are serious shit. Like tornado warnings for your plants. Batten down the the hatches or risk death. Our head… Continue reading
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Garlic and Dilligence
If you grow garlic, it should be kicking ass about now. And you are probably thinking, When is this stuff going to be ready? (I am not a mind reader, I get this question regularly from our friends/family who’ve started… Continue reading
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Austere Times in the Eden of Garden
Six months ago we packed up the truck with loads of home-grown veggies and canned goods and headed West. A week ago we traveled back across the highline loaded with cases of empty mason jars and crates filled with goodies… Continue reading
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Our Cash Crop
Garlic is our cash crop (not the typical cash crop the Garden Peninsula is known for). It didn’t start out that way. But when the public started getting a hold of our garlic and then coming back for more and… Continue reading
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String Bean Theory
I was going to write about our incredible garlic harvest, but the beans are stressing me out. They tend to overwhelm. Just when I had things under control — peas, broccoli and lettuce — the beans start to appear. If… Continue reading
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Tomato Luv
The first bunches of green tomatoes are starting to appear in our garden, which triggered an immediate Pavlovian response (a la Homer Simpson) — mmmmm, tomatoes. mouthwatering, drool, drool. Then a tinge of fear struck me, what if we get… Continue reading
Eden of Garden 