I ignored our wilting tomato vines sitting in our raised garden bed (aka a water trough) for the last few months. I didn't want to acknowledge their existence and that they produced less than 10 tomatoes for us over the summer. Sydney just threw them in a bowl in our kitchen waiting for more to make a salad–but they never came. Today we turned the page on this dark chapter. I mustered up the courage to face the garden and clear out the tomato vines so we can try to flex our green thumb again and attempt to grow something else through the cooler months.
You can see that the vines had no problem growing. I'm at a loss why they barely produced any tomatoes. Here is the garden in its feral state. The white sticks are left over fence posts from when I built the chicken fence. You just sink them into the ground and clip wire/mesh into them. We used the sticks and tomato cages to try and keep it tidy.
So the first I removed the sticks and tomato cages.
Then I ripped out all of the tomato vines. Here's what the bed looked like after. The remaining plants are herbs. Basil is on the left hand side of the garden and thyme is on the right.
Here's a close up of the basil. It's actually nice to have on hand when it's healthy. We've used it for Caprese salads and pizza toppings when we use the Uni.
After I ripped out the tomato vines I cleared out all of the leaves that were covering the soil. A ton of acorns were among the leaves from squirrels. Not a fan of them. They dig up the plants to hide their acorns then forget them. They also get Bella, my GSP, riled up.
With the garden bed cleaned up now I can start planning on what I want to plant. I think my first step is to relocate the basil and thyme to separate pots so I can use all of the space in the trough for our next attempt. In contention for the garden is spinach, onions, or lettuce.
I found and brought home two books by Bunny Williams at Half Priced Books today during my lunch break. Ms. Williams is a renowned interior designer and gardener. I Originally went to the store looking for a Martha Stewart book on interior design after watching the Netflix documentary on Ms. Stewart last night. I liked the documentary and it was my first time really finding out what Martha accomplished in her career. All of this to say I was looking for more inspiration for our house that we will start building soon.
I picked up "An Affair with a House" and "Scrapbook for living." Both are easy to read and are full of practical wisdom and beautiful photos.
"Scrapbook for living" really stood out to me for Ms. William's advice on not just decorating a house but making it practical and optimizing it. She goes room by room offering suggestions on style, material, and practicality. One of her suggestions is building shelves in your closet where you can stack your shirts, sweaters, jeans, etc. I would have never thought of that. The book showcases many of her clients homes.
The second book focuses solely on Ms. Williams first home in the northeast. I'm now negotiating changes to the floor plan with Sydney after seeing the screened in porch featured in "An Affair with a House." I experienced the awesome potential they have when in Michigan this summer for work. I smoked a cigar outside unbothered by bugs or rain, loved it. The book covers her main home, a pool house, barn, guest house, and all of her gardens.
Both books also cover maintenance and entertaining. The latter I would like to do more of with friends and family.
Finally, Ms. Williams preaches patience when it comes to building out a home. She left her living room blank for four years while renovating the kitchen and master bedroom. It's nice to hear someone else say what you already know but won't follow. Especially in a world today where it's "buy everything now." I'm reminded of a line from Billy Joel's, "Vienna":
Slow down, you're doing fine,
You can't be everything you want to be before your time.
My cooking skills are limited to grilling, usually. Wanted to expand on it tonight so I tried Matt Hranek's roasted chicken from his cook book, "A Man and His Kitchen." I've tried this recipe before and botched it by placing the chicken with its back facing up towards the sky. The result was more of a boiled chicken then, not great.
But the world is full of underdogs and we tried again. The recipe was simple and only took 20-25 minutes to start from zero to getting the chicken in the oven. The longest part was waiting for the chicken to cook in the oven (60-90 minutes plus 20 minutes resting.)
Matt's instructions are to start the oven at 425 degrees then drop it to 375 after 20 minutes and let it run for an hour. I checked in with around 40 minutes left after I dropped the temperature and the skin wasn't getting dark fast enough for me so I bumped the temperature back up to 425 for the remainder of the cook. I'm pretty sure I saw a video of Martha Stewart saying to cook at 425 for an hour to get a crisp chicken, so I'm going off that.
This time I'm happy with the end result. It came out with a nice golden color on the breasts and when I carved the chicken (as Matt suggested in his book) I could see it was moist all around. I'm left with a lot of meat for lunch tomorrow and am thinking about using some of the breast meat to make enchiladas.