Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!! Hope you and yours enjoy some Easter ham and celebrate the Risen Christ!

Joy to your World,

Elizabeth

A Tale of Loss & Growth

This past Wednesday was the Jewish holiday of Tu B’shevat. This day is a celebrate for the “Birthday of the Trees,” and is the specific day of the year that Jews celebrate and ideally plant trees. This year it occurred in February, but the date varies depending upon the Jewish Calendar. It so happened that in the same week of the celebration, Fred and I planted 4 new trees of our own in our yard.

I had a conversation with my friend Paige, a garden professional, about my pitiful fruit trees from last year. The fig, blueberry, raspberry plants that I had mail-ordered last year are the saddest examples I’ve ever seen. I asked her where I should get nice blueberries bushes and a good hardy fig tree to transplant into my yard, and she assured me that she could get me good plants and that now was the time to put them in the ground. P:aige brought me the trees on Friday, and this Saturday, Fred and I toiled in the yard, planting 4 beautiful new plants: 2 blueberry bushes, 1 fig tree, and 1 “Snowball” Viburnum bush.

I think my new Brown Turkey Fig Tree is the most lovely specimen ever. Compared with the twig of a fig I had before (thusly named “FigTwig,”) my new tree is magnificent. While planting my new tree, I actually accidentally stepped on the original “FigTwig” that I planted one year ago. It snapped to the ground, and when I pulled up little FigTwig’s broken single branch and compared it with the new plant, he was a pathetic thing not 1/10 the size of the new fig. I love the moss that covered him and how his arms seem to try to wrap up the sun in a loving embrace. He spindly nature offers an air of mystery and seem exotic to me.

The Snowball Viburnum was the largest plant we put it. It’s a lovely big bushy plant with large white “snowball” flowers, which look like the puffy flowers of a hydrangea. This bush is an excellent bush for chickens, as they adore to roost inside the bush on its their long horizontal branches.

The blueberries far exceed the plants I received through the mail-order catalogue. Currently, my blueberries from last year are probably about a8” high at this point. The plants Paige brought me were about 3 ft. and 4 ft. plants. One variety is “Premium,” the other wasn’t labeled. They need to be different types so they will cross pollinate and produce the fruit. We put them on the edge of an existing “natural area” in the yard. It’s my hope we can add bulbs and other shrubs to beautify these leaf ridden messes natural areas.

And all of these plantings were done amide the sad reality that it appears I have forever lost my engagement ring. I realized I couldn’t find it on Wednesday morning, and we’ve searched everywhere. It’s the most painful loss I think I’ve experienced – and that both humbles and shames me. I can’t really describe how it feels to lose such a sentimental treasure. Fred gave me the diamond ring when he asked me to be his wife, and he tried to wrap up his love for me in it’s token form, and to lose that token and physical reminder hurts the most. Also, realizing we’ve lost it’s tangible worth is difficult. It is humbling and wonderful though to realize that such materialistic things are fleeting; and these are not the things that life is about;  we are safe, and well and surrounded by amazing and loving family and friends; a ring is nothing compared to these things. God Willing, we will it, and if not, it’s perfectly okay. 

Joy to your World,

Elizabeth

Welcome to NoDu

     Welcome to NoDu. NoDu = No(rth)Du(rham), North Carolina. It’s nice here. It’s definitely not California, but we still have mild winters, with the occasional “cold winter” with a bit of snow. Typically, we’re a moderate climate with all four seasons. We’re in Zone 7 for gardening. My husband and I moved to the Northern part of Durham in June 2009. Durham has become increasingly well-known nationally for it’s fabulous offerings. This blog is a public diary of our life, as seen from our perspective living in NoDu.  Though Durham is an inspired city, my reach will oft extend beyond NoDu into Durham proper, Raleigh, and the Triangle and general region. 
     So, welcome, Gentle Reader. I hope you enjoy our slice of American pie. We are a couple in our late 20s. We both have real jobs: Fred is an engineer and I, Elizabeth, am a school administrator. We have two kittens: Milosh and Mila, and a turtle: Yertle. We also have 15 chickens: 14 hens and a rooster named George. We live on just over a half an acre in a modest home with a covered front porch with rockers and a swing. We aim to live simply, serve God, and be our best selves.
     I have blogged before about gardening and food on other sites. I’ve tried to consolidate my favorite recipes and stories here, but this blog is a new frontier. I hope to welcome you to my world and share with you vignettes from our life. Please feel free to look around and relax. It’s nice out here in the country.

Joy to your World,

Elizabeth

We are in the Mulch

I’m in love with my mulch. Fr and I harvested our compost recently, and I was astonished at how well it turned out. From the outside of the bin, it seemed to be stratified and not decomposing into a happy wormy compost-dreamland.  But, as the Lord does amaze, my mulch astonished me.

North Carolina has been enjoying a very temperate fall. These past few December days have seen highs into the 70s. We benefited by the nice temperatures and pulled out all the contents of the compost bin on to large tarp, tossed it around, and covered it up with the sides of the tarp and let it cure for two weeks. Finally, we brought the finished product out to mulch our front garden bed.

So dark. So moist. So dreamy. It’s amazing that 6 months of coffee grounds, paper towels, chicken shavings and miscellaneous vegetables peels would result in a finely aerated topsoil. I am already looking forward to Spring.