For absolutely no discernable reason, for five days last week I had Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls intermittently stuck in my head. How this happened, I have no idea. I hadn’t heard it recently. I wasn’t thinking about anything that could trigger such a thing. I had not been on any slides and I hadn’t watched any slideshows and I hadn’t thought I’ll just let that slide. The source remains a mystery. Then on Friday, after five days of singing I wanna wake up where you are, I took a Peloton ride and near the end was the song Slide, the familiar tune coordinating with my already-there earworm.
The universe works in strange ways.
My own little universe has been very green lately as I have been sliding into homegrown salad season. We’ve had quite a bit of rain over the past month or so, and temperatures have been in the mid-to-high teens, which is ideal growing weather for green leafy vegetables. I had my first harvest of kale and arugula last week, which was celebrated by making a giant salad for dinner.
I harvested on Wednesday, and by late in the day Thursday I could barely see where I cut from. The greens are growing before my very eyes! A key lesson I took from last year is to stagger the plantings so that I’m not completely overwhelmed, and even so, even so I currently have an astonishing amount of spinach, kale, and arugula. Well, I like smoothies and I like salads, and I really don’t mind this problem at all.
Another key lesson from last year was to only plant one zucchini. I confess that I did plant more than one zucchini seed, and until last week I had two pretty healthy looking, sizable plants. My husband, upon learning this, grabbed a spade and dug one up. My baby! Murderer! After a short period of mourning for the zucchini that never was, I had to concede that it was for the best. I still, despite best efforts, have nine cups of grated zucchini in the freezer from last year’s bumper crop. I also still have friends, although those relationships may become strained if I tried to force zucchini on them like I did last year. I’m leaving these here, no take backs! I actually said at a girl’s movie afternoon last September. I was only steps away from leaving zucchini on people’s doorsteps before Nicki Nicki Nine Dooring myself out of there.
Maybe that could be a thing, but call it Nicole Nicole Nine Door, where a person answers a door only to find a pile of zucchini.
I’m getting ahead of myself, however, as it will be a few months before The Great Zucchini Season begins. In the meantime, my cilantro is coming up strong, which I am also stagger-planting, as I am the only person who eats it. I harvested a little last week to have on my stir-fry, and it was absolutely delicious.
In other garden news, the perennial garden is popping, the irises are irising, and in general everything is very fresh and green right now.
On one of our walk routes is a tree that is hung with dozens of handmade birdhouses, which is truly delightful. I have yet to see a bird in any of those birdhouses, or even in the vicinity of the tree, but no matter. It’s lovely to look at, even birdless. I don’t know the who, why, or how of it, but I enjoy it.
Weekly Reading
This Motherless Land. As mentioned last week, I reread Mansfield Park in preparation for This Motherless Land, as the plot of the latter is taken from the former, and I highly recommend doing that for a really interesting reading experience. This Motherless Land deals with two cousins, one in Nigeria and one in England, who due to tragic circumstances start living together, before another set of tragic circumstances separate them. It’s a story of finding home and belonging, and it contains a few of the most abhorrent, atrocious characters you ever did read. Fortunately for us readers, it all wraps up in a very neat bow, with a series of satisfying coincidences. Where Mansfield Park explores the British class system of the early 1800s, this book explores straight-up racism, which is pretty breathtaking, and not in a good way. It was a solidly satisfying read; I did not love it, but I liked it well enough, which is a lot coming from a person who has a strong tendency to dislike modern retellings of classic books.
Blue Sisters. What I am about to say is absolutely a Me Problem, not a Book Problem. The thing is, I have a very hard time reading about addiction, particularly hard-core drug addiction and alcoholism. I have a very hard time with the details about benders, physical effects, and the psychological behaviours and impacts. I blame Trainspotting for scarring me, back in the Nineties. Anyway, I know this about myself and yet I picked up this book that is about addiction, and wow, it was not for me. I almost DNFed it several times, but pushed on because I have so many friends who have read and loved it. But it was just too much for me. That said, it is well-written and contains a lot of other interesting themes, particularly about pain and how people cope with it, along with trauma, inter-generational and otherwise. So this book might be perfect for you! But it was just awful for me.
On that kind of downer of a note, I hope you all have a beautiful week ahead of you. Maybe with some homegrown salads? Or flowers? Take care of yourselves, friends. xo
I’m laughing- your husband dug up one of the zucchini plants? That really shows how immense the problem was last year. All of your greens look LOVELY, and you’re inspiring me. I’m about to start a Salad Phase, although sadly it won’t be home grown.
I think Blue Sister would also be too much for me. This Motherless Land sounds good though! I like the idea of doing a Mansfield Park reread first.
Enjoy your salads!
Well of course you have to plant more than one zucchini seed to get one zucchini plant! I am amazed that the growing season has already started for you.
I gave up on the Blue Sisters early on, but for different reasons. I couldn’t keep the characters straight and just was’t getting the traction to care about any of the characters. Plus I’d just read another good sister/bad sister book and what I really wanted was another version of that book, which the Blue Sisters was not.
I finished Caroline yesterday! What a good book!
You know I have been LOVING salads lately and I really wish you could leave little parcels of greens (and zucchini) on my doorstep! I would receive them with open arms. Our neighbours across the street put out a little basket of their overflow produce each summer and I love it. How cool to send the kids a few steps away to grab a fresh-from-the-garden cucumber that I didn’t have a hand if planting.
I think I will have a garden in a few years. It’s simply too much right now and we’re gone a big chunk of the summer, but I think I see vegetable gardening as part of my retirement plan 🙂
Your gardens and your salads are so beautiful. I laughed at the zucchini saga and your husband digging up the second plant. BC is so gorgeous – what a contrast to Calgary. Btw I got a Donna Ashworth book of poetry from the library and am loving it! Coincidentally I also discovered Josie Balka this past weekend and am exploring her work on her IG account. (Push-ups happening as well).
Your garden was the talk of our family’s brunch conversation yesterday- she has lettuce! And is eating salad from her garden already! Her flowers are everywhere! Andy 15 year old asked ‘why do we live here then?’ It’s a good question. Also I love those irises, I’ve never seen that colour before…
OK I could so get down with a homegrown salad everyday, but I don’t want to garden! My grandfather was a gardener as his job in Ireland, but the gardening skills are not genetically passed down I am sad to say. Maybe I’ll have a friend one day who brings me lettuce and says no take backs 🙂
Such gorgeous pictures, Nicole. Love the progression from the empty bowl to the colorful salad bowl. (I think we have the same/similar salad tongs!)
This Motherless Land sounds very intriguing, I’d love to take a look!
“Nicole Nicole Nine Door” Hahaha!
LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE GROWN! I love this so much.
I wish I had a friend nearby with a salad garden—I’m manifesting it. 🥗✨
Yikes, everything is so green where you live? Our trees have only just unfurled their leaves for the 2 weeks of spring we have here, in Quebec City. And salad season? I am so envious you can grow stuff already. And I love the tree with all the pretty birdhouses. How sweet is that?
I will have to visit Cap Rouge here where there is somewhere similar, and take photos.
Wow!!! Look at your garden go! Look at all your flowers! That’s it, I’m moving to Kelowna right now! I love the idea of leaving a pile of zucchini on someone’s doorstep. I wish you could leave some on my doorstep! You look very happy in your garden and seeing your photos made me happy, too!
I’m glad you didn’t dislike This Motherless Land despite it being an adaptation of a beloved author’s work! And I can see why Blue Sisters was an issue for you with the prominence of addiction in the storyline. I loved it but I can read about addiction. I mostly liked it because of the sister storyline which was very relatable as a person with 2 sisters. I hope you have a great book ahead of you to make up for the lackluster week of reading! I’m reading Heartwood right now which is about a woman that gets lost on the Appalachian trail. It’s really good! I will finish it on this work trip.
YOUR GARDEN!! OMG! I wish I could take some of those greens off your hands. I love salads so so so much. That big salad you made looks delicious. I also made the mistake of planting 2 zucchini plants one year… Our community garden had a cooler to put excess produce in that they would take to a food shelf. Let me tell you, a lot of zucchini was put in that cooler… I made a lot of zucchini bread that summer as well as a rice dish that you put something like 2 cups of shredded zucchini in, along with parmesan cheese. It was a good way to use up lots of zucchini.
I have certain story lines that I just cant do. so I get that about the books.
Your garden… my goodness – that is GARDEN GOALS> I tried doing a few container garden items last year. Utter FAIL
I’m beginning to think I read too much. I read Blue Sisters probably two months ago and I would not have remembered any of it until I read what you wrote. I guess the book didn’t leave much of an impression on me?
I love that so much stuff is blooming where we both live. Somehow, we managed to escape the deer mowing down our irises this year. I wish we had the zucchini problem, but ours never seem to take off. We’ll get 2 or 3 the whole season! The plants grown and have flowers, but then seem to rot once the fruit starts growing. Same issue with the yellow squash. We quit growing lettuce because to be honest, I HATE washing it.
We have 3 birdhouses and they are always occupied every summer. It’s wrens, I believe.
I dnf Blue Sisters – it was just a couple of months ago and now I can’t even remember why I didn’t like it… Your garden! Wow! We still had low temps last week and have planted nothing yet. We have a short growing season here. Until my husband built a chicken wire fence around my raised beds the deer ate pretty much everything. But they never touch my irises 🙂