planting time down at the farm

Tom and I have decided on a name for our urban homestead-in-progress.  It shall be called... Farmaway Downs, an homage to one of our favorite movies, Australia.

This past weekend we ran around town buying seeds, seedlings, cow poop, fish juice, and various other necessities for our garden.  It was exhausting, but our garden is finally in.  We think it's good luck that we planted on the spring equinox. 

  close-up of a Roma tomato

Here's a list of what we planted in each of our four 4' x 10' raised beds:

Box 1

Vine Tomatoes (Early Girls, Husky Cherry Reds, and a Sweet 100)

Bush Tomatoes (Romas)

Sweet Basil

Marigolds

Box 2

Peppers (Reds, Yellows, Gypsy, and Yummy)

Cucumbers (Burpless Hybrids and Pickling)

Green Beans (Bush Blue Lake)

Lettuce (Gourmet Mesclun Mix)

Box 3

Swiss Chard (Bright Lights)

Beets (Early Wonder)

Lettuce (Romaine)

Spinach (Double Choice Hybrid)

Carrots (Scarlet Nantes)

Radishes (Cherry Belle)

Box 4

Zucchini & Crookneck Squash

The four blackberry bushes we were gifted went in along our western wall (fingers crossed!), and we also planted some rosemary, spearmint, gardenias (my favorite flower), and daisies.  I have plans for chamomile, thyme, parsley, cosmos, alyssum, and various other herbs and flowers.  We also have four big strawberry plants waiting for a home.  Whew!  What makes this more impressive is that we took turns wearing our "fat cheeky bull" (Dolly) on our backs the whole time.  (Watch Australia if you don't get it!)     

Except for the Swiss Chard, Box 3 is entirely planted with seed.  Tom and I have little faith, but we shall see.  It seems impossible that tiny little seeds sitting in dirt can become vegetables.

Stay tuned for updates from Farmaway Downs!  If all goes well, we'll be giving vegetables away to all of you. 

the tomato trellis

Last year, our tomato plants took over our entire garden.  We used the cheap wire cages, and they were no match for our monstrous tomato plants.

Here's a pic of last year's tomatoes.  

Can you find the wire cages?  Neither could we. 

This year, we are going to tame the tomatoes with our homemade trellis.  I designed it with the help of The Garden Guy's book, Extreme Gardening, and Tom built it for me.  Indeterminate tomatoes (the vine kind that continuously produce fruit) can grow as tall as you want them to.  The plants can become very heavy, too, but this trellis should fare well.  

Tom built the trellis by first putting in 4x4x7 posts at each corner of one of our garden boxes, and then we attached a 2x4 along the top.  We hung concrete reinforcement wire along the frame, and we'll weave the tomatoes in the wire as they grow.

dirt don't hurt

Earlier this month we had 160 square feet of compost delivered to our driveway.  A nice man named Fabian shoveled it into our garden boxes for us...

We bought the compost from Singh Farms located right off the freeway on the NE corner of Thomas and the 101 in Scottsdale.  When Ken Singh purchased the land a decade or so ago, it was a dry, barren stretch of desert.  It's now a lush paradise.  It doesn't feel like Arizona at this place.  Ken is known for his compost, but there's also a nice farmer's market held there every Saturday morning.  Great place to take a stroll.  There are chickens, peacocks, lots of shady places to sit, and even a real tipi.

Below is a picture of Ken and his big white beard.  He's a real character.  Before we met him, Tom was trying to get some pricing details over the phone.  Ken finally said, "Don't ask me those questions!  Just come by the farm..."  Hilarious.  He'll talk your ear off once you get to the farm, but in a good way.   

 
We headed to Singh Farms again this past Saturday morning to buy another barrel-sized sack of compost, some seedlings, and a gallon jug of fish emulsion fertilizer.  While there, Tom started chatting it up with a gardener friend of Ken's named J.P. Morgan :)  I asked him some questions about blackberries and how to plant them, and he offered up four blackberry transplants that were sitting in his front yard!  Gardeners are the nicest people!  We picked up J.P.'s blackberry bushes on our way home.

Side note: For my friends and family who think I'm a germaphobe (organic, no plastic, blah blah blah), I'll have you know that I let my baby eat dirt at Singh Farms.  There ain't no blue-green pesticide poison being sprayed there, so she can eat all the compost she wants.  I am not a germaphobe!  I'm a chem-a-phobe.  The saying should go: "Chemical-free dirt don't hurt."

a delicious date... by ourselves!

my favorite dessert:
butterscotch pudding with whipped cream and nutmeg

Today, Tom and I spent 6 hours gorging ourselves on wine, lamb chops and spaetzle, butterscotch pudding, hazelnuts dusted with real gold, beef wellington with foie gras and black truffle, wine, wine, and lots of other gourmet fare at the Devour Phoenix Culinary Festival.  And... it was just the TWO of us.  Dolly stayed at home hanging out with her Aunt Andrea and Uncle Sal.  It was only the second time we've gone somewhere without her, and we definitely haven't been away from her for such a large chunk of time.  Much preparation was needed...

First of all, I spent the preceding week pumping breastmilk--not my favorite thing to do.  I pumped and I pumped and only managed to get 21 precious ounces.  Would that be enough?  Would she starve?  Umm, no, because how much did she actually drink?  Maybe ONE ounce.  At least I've got a tiny stash of the liquid gold now!

I also had to prepare copious instructions.  I trust Andrea completely, but I'm a listmaker, and it had to be done.  Click on the image below if you want to see how obsessive I can be...

I admit I called home a few times to bother Andrea for updates, but Dolly actually did very well without us.  She even took two short naps which I wasn't expecting her to do.

She was big smiles when we walked in the front door, and she was even happier when I presented her with her very own lamb chop.  I stashed one in my purse as we were leaving the festival!  I knew she'd love it, and I could never cook lamb chops so perfectly for her.  

Don't you love her Incredible Hulk t-shirt!?

dolly's first wedding

On Saturday, we attended the wedding of one of Tom's work colleagues.  It was Dolly's first wedding and our first wedding at the Desert Botanical Gardens.  Beautiful.

Dolly looked lovely dressed all in white.  The yellow flower we plucked on the way to the ceremony didn't last too long, but we managed to get this perfect picture of it...

We learned during the wedding that Dolly loves oranges.  They were a definite fuss fix.  They also added some nice spots of color to her white dress and Tom's white shirt...

We managed to get a few family pictures.  We don't have many of these...

Dolly crashed out on the drive home.  For the first time ever, I managed to get her out of her car seat and straight into bed without her waking up! 

the birth of my flower baby...

At around 8:30PM on Sunday, August 2nd, I began to feel some abdominal cramping. I was 41 weeks pregnant, a puffy beached whale of a woman, but still I chalked the cramping up to really bad gas pain. Tom was suspicious and began watching the clock. He eventually realized that the cramps were coming at regular intervals. (I then realized that the "really bad gas pains" I'd had while watching the new Harry Potter movie on July 18th were actually contractions!) At around 9:30PM contractions were roughly 8 minutes apart. Our doula, Rose, and midwife, Stephanie, were called and both told us to get some rest. Laying down made the contractions much more intense, and I was too excited anyway, so Tom and I putzed around the candlelit house listening to music and enjoying the adrenaline. Tom continued scribbling down the times of my contractions (we saved these pages of notepaper for Dolly's yet-to-be-started scrapbook) until he found an iPod application called Labor Mate to do it for him.

"Owie" was my word of the night. When I would feel a wave coming on, I would tell Tom: "I think it's an owie, Tom. I think it's an owie... YEP, it's an owie. OWIE. OWIEEEEE..." Afterwards I would giggle with excitement, but the giggling slowly lessened as the night progressed. Closer to dawn, there were no more giggles!

Rose arrived at around 6:30AM. Although I was very happy she was there, her arrival stalled my labor for about 20 minutes. Seeing as how someone as welcome and wanted as Rose could stall my labor, a hospital birth with nurses, a doctor, and whoever else they let wander into your room would have been horrific for me. When labor started back up, it quickly intensified. I remember starting to cry during a contraction. I think I tried to stifle it, but Rose made me feel it was okay and even helpful to let it out. The only position I liked during this entire time was to lean against a counter or a doorframe and stomp, stomp, STOMP my feet. I tried to get into the birth tub once, but I couldn’t stomp in there, so I got right back out :)

When the sun came up, I had that icky, sinking feeling you get (or I get, anyway) when you're leaving a loud club after drinking too much and you realize the dawn is breaking. I hate that feeling. I was exhausted and just wanted to curl up and sleep. I hope labor kicks off in the morning for the next kid!

Anyway, at around 8:30AM, I got into the birth tub for good. Stephanie and her assistant, Noelia, arrived at about 9:15AM. I was oblivious to what they were doing, but Tom tells me that as soon as Stephanie sat down on the couch to start knitting, she had to get right back up because I began to push. Transition and pushing were completely overwhelming and scary. I cried, moaned (with what was left of my ragged voice after moaning for most of the night), and ate spoonfuls of honey to soothe my throat. I very nearly bit Rose’s hand at one point but thankfully stopped myself in time and gnawed instead on Tom's hand. Rose was directly in front of me as I kneeled in the tub, and I just stared into her eyes and chanted her name over and over: "Rose, Rose, Rooooose..." I eventually switched my mantra to "open, open, open..." which is what Stephanie was instructing me to do. I'm pretty sure I looked and sounded insane, but they all tell me I was tame.

I pushed for about an hour. The crazy painful leg cramps I had in my hamstrings while actively pushing were the worst part. And I remember telling the baby to come out so we could just take a nap already! Stephanie told me to reach up inside and touch the baby’s head a few times. The amniotic sac had not broken yet, so her head felt soft and squishy. (The amniotic sac didn’t break until just before she was born, actually, and she came out holding the mucus plug!) I wasn’t too interested in touching her head, though, because I just wanted her out!  

When I could feel her head about to come out, I panicked and pushed with all my might. She shot out of me like a bullet at 10:54AM. Tom was supposed to catch her, but Stephanie ended up having to do it because it all happened so fast. She handed the baby to Tom, though, and he lifted her out of the water. Proof that I pushed like a champ? Her head was not molded at all! Because of this, I tore twice--one tear just inside my vagina and one small labial tear. Nothing serious. (Next time I'm letting the baby do more of the work, though!)

I’d like to say I had nobler feelings in those first few minutes after birth, but I kind of just felt senseless and spaced out and overwhelmed. It was surreal to see her as Tom handed her to me. She had rosy cheeks and a full head of black hair. And she was a big girl! 8lbs, 13oz and 21.75” long.

I had imagined the afterbirth would be quick and easy, but I was wrong. My placenta didn’t want to come out. Stephanie made me get out of the tub, holding the baby, and walk to the bedroom. I got halfway across the tiled living room floor before puddles of blood poured out of me. Stephanie made me lie down on the carpet before I reached my bed. She gently pulled on the cord to get it out, but that didn’t work. From what I understand, there was a sort of vacuum up there and the placenta was stuck just inside my cervix. Since the cord had stopped pulsing, I agreed to let Stephanie cut it so Tom could hold the baby for me. Still no placenta. Stephanie eventually stuck her finger just inside my cervix to break the seal and out the placenta came. All the blood that had been collecting behind it came out and Stephanie was scooping up clots of it with both hands. Tom was a nervous wreck, but he held up well! I was still just dazed and feeling like a drunken idiot. Stephanie had Pitocin on hand, but I’m glad she didn’t use it. All turned out fine in the end.

The hours and days afterward are a blur of my perfect, sweet-scented Dahlia, my amazing husband, Depends underpants (awesome for lochia), insatiable thirst, sore nipples, and turkey sandwiches...

…and so ends the story of Dahlia Bluebelle’s birth. They all lived happily ever after!

recipe: chocolate cupcakes & cream cheese frosting

As requested, here's my cupcake recipe.  It's a mixture of me, Emeril, and Ina Garten.  Tom and I ate countless dozens of these during the first few months of Dolly's life.  I highly recommend them for sleep deprivation.  Make sure you use baking soda instead of baking powder, though, or you'll end up with chocolate bricks.  And don't forget the sugar because you'll have to chuck those, too.  These are mistakes that happen when your baby eats your brain...    

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 cups flour (or use whole-wheat pastry flour for the "healthy" version)

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted

3/4 cup sugar (you can get away with even 1/2 cup, imo)

1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup, heaping, plain nonfat yogurt

1/2 cup hot coffee (or hot water), added last 

Directions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place rack in the center position.  Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper cups.  Combine all ingredients, adding the hot water or coffee last.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Frosting:

1 8-oz package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup powdered sugar (or less, to taste)

a few tbsp peanut butter (optional, but awesome)

Directions: Cream together the cream cheese and butter.  Mix in the vanilla, powdered sugar, (and optional peanut butter) until well combined.