Seed Catalogs!!!

Seeds are ordered!!! I got them online at a place called Solana Seeds out of Quebec. I have never seen so many kinds of tomatoes. I get the totally tomatoes catalog too, and they didn't have nearly as many varieties as this place did.

I don't know if I mentioned it, but there was a kind of tomato that I saw at the Cornell Plantations Heritage Garden last summer that was like unlike anything I've ever seen. It's a saggy pear shape, very convoluted, almost like a plastic bag full of water hanging from something. So, I contacted the Plantations and a very nice guy returned my email and told me it's a variety called Tlocolula, it's from Mexico. Anyway, this place happened to have those seeds. I got six or eight different kinds of tomatoes, plus a rare melon and some purple tomatillos. I got some "Speckled Roman" and "San Marzano" as paste tomatoes, a yellow and red striped one called "Striped Boar," a greek variety called "Thessalonika", some "Striped Turkish" and another "Micro" tomato like last year only these are yellow. I also got some dwarf ones to go in the window boxes on the deck. They are only supposed to get 8-12" high. I think there are a few more I'm forgetting at the moment.

There's something about the cold that just makes me obsess about seeds and gardening. I guess it stands to reason. It was only 33 Degrees here all day with a 25 mph wind. Coming home to a mailbox full of seed catalogs totally made my day.

Life Imitates Art

A striking likeness, no? Fatty Fatty Pingu captured in clay.

Too Soon?

So, we now have over 18" of snow on the ground here. What's the logical thing to do? Start obsessing about what kinds of tomatoes to grow next summer, of course! I contacted a guy at the Cornell plantations about a kind of tomato I had never seen before that they had at the heirloom vegetable garden last summer. They were so helpful! He gave me the name and even where to buy the seeds. Very cool. It's called Tlacolula. I'm sure I will be growing some in the near future.
On a side not, I delved into the pickles I started a few weeks ago in the basement and they are FABULOUS!!!! I think I'm definitely on to something with this whole lacto-fermentation bit. I've got to go get some sleep... plenty of snow to shovel tomorrow.

It's a snowday!

Well, when you're supposed to get 18" of snow, what better reason is there to dig up the last of the carrots? These purple ones are really sweet too. I realized that the dirt in my containers was totally frozen solid, so I poured warm water over it to get the carrots out. I dug up this one crazy looking carrot which I think looks kind of cool. It probably means I have nematodes or something in the soil.

Last night I made a really good Korean carrot salad of my own creation, using that Benriner mandoline shredder I got. (recommended by Ilex) I never really measure anything, so this is a rough recipe that you can adjust however you want.

Finely shed the carrots lengthwise into teeny matchsticks. Sauce: Rice wine vinegar, sesame seed oil, brown sugar and kosher salt. Mix until the sugar and salt dissolve. Add ginger (I used powdered, but minced fresh ginger is even better) and chili garlic sauce and pour over carrots, tossing to coat. Even better when you let them sit for a day or so.

Almost Christmas?

Good News! The paint we have been scraping for a week at the Church was tested and is not lead! Yay! Of course, this begs the question of why were we scraping anything without definitive proof from an independent lab that there wasn't lead in the paint, but that's another story. So that's good.

Not too much going on otherwise. I have been so scattered lately from work projects that I just feel stupid. I was staring to wonder if it was lead paint... now I know it's just garden variety stress. I haven't done one single thing for Christmas yet. We put up a tree, and then I sadly thought to myself that I really didn't have anything to put under it. Hopefully I can get some time to go shopping, although I can't spend much. I also prefer to shop online, but now it's too late to have anything shipped, so I have doomed myself to fending my way through crowded parking lots.

I resisted the urge to buy a bunch of tile the other night. I found some awesome stuff, I just refused to let myself buy $60 worth of miscellaneous tile without any plan as to what to do with it. Not right now. I am trying to focus on one piece and buy what I need to complete that, and stick to one at a time. Otherwise it just becomes a jumbled mess in the basement, much like most of my other projects.

New Work Project

So here are two images from the Church project we just started this week. It's First and Franklin Presbyterian Church in Baltimore and it is this crazy Gothic looking plaster ornament everywhere. You can see from teh second picture the condition it's in currently... the existing paint looks like someone went and glued potato chips to the walls. We're in for lots of scraping in the next few months!

Back From Florida!

I love Florida. I know it's an endless sprawling strip mall, but there are still parts that are beautiful. And it's warm. I had a great time at my mosaic workshop. I was learning to use the hammer and hardie (essentially a hammer and chisel) to cut the smalti pieces into tine bits to arrange on the board. Smalti is basically glass that is poured into "tortillas" (Mexican smalti) or "pizzas" (Italian smalti) and then cut into tiny rectangles which you can then cut even smaller. Because of the nature of the process, there is a great deal of variation in the color and texture of each piece, giving it a wonderful textural appeal and jewel tone colors. The idea with smalti (vs. glass traditional glass tile) is that you place the pieces very close together and then you don't really need to grout the piece, so you eliminate the distraction of the spacing. That combined with the fact that you can cut the pieces into tiny bits, allows for a lot more detail without having to make the pieces themselves huge, which was kind of the direction I had been heading in. It's nice to be able to work with a more manageable size and not compromise the detail and color tonality. I had a fantastic time. It was weird for me to be on my own for a week, but I loved it. I missed home of course, but it was like I was leading a secret life for a week. Nice. Of course, I had a bit of a cold during the week, and just when I thought I was getting better, BAM! I get the flu. I think I caught it on the plane coming home. Anyway, it laid me out for several days, and of course Marc got it. We were out of work Monday and Tuesday, but were back by Wednesday. So, now it's back to the grind so to speak. I did buy a hammer and hardie and some tile from Michele, so that should be shipping here soon. Something told me they might have a problem with bringing a carbide-tipped hammer in my carry on luggage.