All posts by Susie Middleton

Farm life, The Garden

Rosie the Ringleader and the Houdini Hens

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We had a lovely visit from Brooklyn-based food and lifestyle photographer Alexandra Grablewski this week. She took pictures of us and just about everything on the farm but she was particularly fascinated with the chickens. It’s hard not to be—they are totally entertaining. Especially when they get out of their yard and go on walk-abouts.

I usually know when one or more has escaped the chicken yard, because I hear Farmer whining. He gets terribly upset if I don’t go out and immediately pick them up and return them to the pen. But often this happens during the day when I’m working—plus I know it’s probably just Rosie. Rosie (pictured here) is the independent type and seems to like using her wings to fly over a tall fence every morning. Occasionally two, three, or four follow her, and I can generally round those gals up without help. Roy claims I am the worst chicken rounder-upper out there, and it may be true.

But a couple times in the past week there’s been a mass exodus, so we’ve both had to do our rounding-up best. Look, it’s not like they don’t have a huge yard and fresh grass to feed on. They shouldn’t feel the need to travel—it’s just that, well, chickens like to cross the road, or the yard, or anything. In both of those cases, the culprit has been an unlatched or partially latched door they’ve managed to push open. (Of course we have no idea who would leave the gate unlatched!) And herding 48 laying hens is nothing short of comical.

Usually if you get close to them they’ll squat and let you pick them up. But a few are flighty and will just fuss and squawk and ruffle their feathers and generally be obstinate about the whole returning home thing. These are the ones who wind up underneath the tractor, in a thicket of brambles and branches, or over in the perennial flowers. Rosie will be hanging out with them, you can just count on it.

Eventually, with a chicken (or two) under each arm, we get them all back in. And then there’s the whole going-to-bed problem. Forty-three of the chickens go inside the coop just like chickens are supposed to do when the sun goes down. But five of them have decided that the best roosting spot is on top of the water trough out in the yard. So they have to be picked up and stuck inside the coop one by one. (Roy does this every night.) And if you do it too soon, they’ll just start coming back out as you’re getting the last one in.

Perhaps there’s a reason man started eating chickens so many years ago. Might be easier than keeping laying hens. The eggs are pretty darn tasty though.

P.S. Alexandra’s photos of the farm and chickens are for a future project, so we won’t be able to share any of them for awhile–but promise it will happen when the time comes!

The Garden

Ten Things I Love About the September Garden

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1. Ripe Red Bell Peppers—finally!

2. Foggy mornings

3. Humongous nasturtiums

4. A fresh batch of carrots to harvest

5. The afternoon light

6. Butternut squash in every corner of the garden

7. Enough cosmos for me and the farm stand!

8. A fresh start–new beds, new bean plants

9. Eggs–lots of them, now that the “babies” are laying (well, not in the garden, but nearby!)

10. Overgrown anything mingling with everything else (there are nine varieties in this pic)

The Recipes

Labor Day Already? Five Things To Do With All Those Tomatoes

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How does it happen that it’s Labor Day weekend already? I don’t know where the hour, the day, the week, the month, the summer went. I just know I’m exhausted.

This week I spent two days recording 50 new 1-minute “recipe-lets” for WGBH Boston and Fine Cooking magazine. (You can listen—and giggle if you want—to one I recorded last spring here.) This time I recorded them at the lovely WCAI Cape and Islands NPR radio station in Woods Hole. That meant just a short hop on the ferry for me, without the drive to Boston added on. Nevertheless, those two days came and went in a blur, and then I jumped on some overdue recipe developing—and forgot completely about my blog this week!

Now here it is Friday and, already, the afternoon. Um, correction, evening. I tried to start writing this about six hours ago, but got a call to return to the clinic (waiting lines are long for doctors around here, especially in August, so you get on a list, they take your number, and call you back.) I have a nagging cough mixed with horrendous seasonal allergy. (As luck would  have it, I am allergic to my favorite place in the world—the outdoors—especially this time of year. And breathing is becoming an issue!)

It would have been smarter to get up early and make a beeline for the clinic, but of course I’m busy every morning harvesting and getting the farm stand set up. Probably I could do a much faster job of setting up if I didn’t stop to fuss over the veggies like I do—or run inside to get the camera to take pictures, like I did today. The farm stand looked so pretty this morning that I had to snap a few pics before putting the sign out. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a stream of cars came down the driveway (traffic is certainly up for the holiday weekend), and the flowers were gone and most of the green beans. I wish I had a magic hat from which to pull more green beans.

But there are still plenty of tomatoes, and I thought I’d better explain that our tomatoes were not a total disaster this year. My friend Eliza read last week’s blog and called me up, worried that the tomato problems were catastrophic. Really, with all the things that have befallen the plants, it’s amazing that we’re still harvesting a lot of fruit. I’m not sure what we’d have done with them all if we’d gotten a bigger yield. As it is I have two sheet trays of tomatoes on the kitchen table that aren’t sellable, but aren’t quite chicken food yet. I’ve been meaning to make and freeze marinara, but I need a clone or a kitchen assistant in order to get that done. (I’m kinda thinking, well, Libby’s ten now, maybe handling a sharp knife would be okay. Nah, I think not. Besides, she’s on egg patrol. Actually, she’s waiting for me to finish this so we can all go get lobster rolls for dinner up in Menemsha!)

I am thinking maybe there are more than a few of you out there with a glut (or just a bounty) of tomatoes on your hands this Labor Day, so I thought I’d pass along five of my favorite things to do with them. In short, they are Bruschetta, Bread Salad, Pasta, Veggie Gratin and Roasting. (And more roasting, of course.) I’d offer up more ideas (many favorites over at finecooking.com), but the sun is setting, August is almost over, and one last lobster roll is calling.

The Recipes

Humble Pie and Hot Dogs on the Farm

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Lest you think I am eternally positive and upbeat about all things farm-ish, I offer this report.

This morning we woke to find two flats of beefsteak tomatoes sampled by mice. Mrs. Mouse or her kin took a nibble out of nearly every tomato, then settled in for a feast on the few that were the fattest, the ripest, and the juiciest. She has good taste, I will give her that. But her days are numbered. Tossing those tomatoes to the chickens almost felt like crumpling up dollar bills and setting them on fire, except that at least the tomatoes will enrich the hens’ eggs.

If only Kitty hadn’t died, we might have better control over the varmints around here. Kitty (aka Sparkle, according to Roy, who attempted to befriend the stray with hot dogs and saucers of milk) showed up a few weeks back and poked her little orange baby face (so cute) out from under the wood pile or from under the front porch a couple times a day. She also visited our neighbors up and down the street but hadn’t settled in anywhere. We laid a blanket down in the barn (next to the hot dogs) and could tell she had slept there a night or two. But we hadn’t yet gotten her to come close to us.

This week she got hit by a car out on State Road and her short little kitty life was over. This is the way it goes sometimes on the farm.

We spent maybe ten minutes patting ourselves on the back for all the ribbons we won at the Fair—and then turned around and started pulling our hair out over all the weird plagues that have befallen our tomato plants. The leaves are black, the pests are thriving, the giant beefsteaks break off and fall down before ripening, the red cherry tomatoes have green shoulders, and on and on. We’ve always done a good job with our tomatoes, and our plants did set a lot of fruit this year, but they look hideous now and we have to learn from our mistakes. (Though there’s absolutely nothing we can do about weird weather patterns. One expert gardener friend said that the very dry soil from the drought followed by the rain and humidity caused some of the tomato problems. Also, our tomato plants are in a low spot in the garden this year, and the morning fog and dew hangs around extra long down there.)

It goes on like this all the time—up and down. Just when I think our farm stand traffic has come to a standstill, four cars come down the driveway at once. Just when I’m kicking myself that I don’t have more fall crops planted, we look around and see that one ridiculously huge butternut squash plant (a volunteer) and four others I planted have literally dozens and dozens of fat, ripening fruits on them.  Since they are planted amongst the beans, we think they are feeding off the nitrogen that beans fix in the soil. And they are on irrigation this year, too, so they’ve had plenty of water.  I also planted late cucumbers which are rioting with flowers and tiny fruits, and my cranberry beans germinated 100 percent and practically came up overnight.  The two rows of green beans that lost all their blossoms to a mysterious pest have all recovered and are yielding like crazy. The squash-vine borers have pretty much brought the zucchini down to its knees, but I somehow managed to get rid of the Colorado potato bugs that were destroying the eggplants and we’re harvesting plenty of those fruits.

Roy and a skunk had a disagreement over some garbage last night in the dark. (Roy had a stick, so he won, but not before the skunk left his parting statement.) During the day, Farmer and I have been rounding up fugitive chickens who manage to find ways to escape their new enclosure. “Not again!” I always think when I see them wandering around the yard. But on a good note, I’ve learned that Farmer seems to like cornering them, but not eating them. (They crouch, he sniffs, and I scoop them up.) Farmer of course is on a leash or a lede—I think we are a long ways away from designating him as chief chicken babysitter.

Seems like there’s a silver lining to just about every minor tragedy on the farm. Take all those damaged veggies coming out of the garden right now—the blemished ones that we can’t sell on the farm stand but that aren’t necessarily chicken food yet either. A lot of those are making their way into the kitchen (see salad above) or onto the grill. So we’re eating pretty well. Mostly. Except for the nights when we’re too busy harvesting or weeding to do much more than throw hot dogs on the grill. But please, don’t tell anyone the author of vegetable cookbooks eats hot dogs. Okay?

The Recipes

A New Chicken Villa — and Opening Day at the Fair

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Keeping focused is going to be nearly impossible for me today. I can smell sausages and burgers and funnel cakes and roast pig and French fries and egg rolls. I can hear loud speakers, crowd murmurs, thumping music, giddy children shouting, and rides cranking up. It’s the first day of the Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society Fair, and as I told you last year, we live RIGHT across the street from the fair grounds. This could be a problem if you weren’t in the right kind of spirit (our neighbors have left town!), but we are totally into it. In fact, we are Fair nerds.

We were up at the crack of dawn arranging all the veggies we are submitting to be judged in the “Hall” where hundreds of pies, preserves, photos, crafts, and of course, home grown veggies, will be displayed. (The theme of the Fair this year, is “Display with Pride.” I took that literally and entered the herb competition for the first time, which required an arrangement that I think I could be really proud of—if I were in sixth grade. But I’m not embarrassed. I totally had fun putting it together—at 11 o’clock last night since time evaporates in a whiff around here.) It’s all I can do not to get up from my desk to run over and see the ox pull and the pet show. But maybe we’ll get over to the Fair tonight in time to see the swimming pig races. Or the corn-husking competition.

But you can see I’m already distracted, off topic, and generally heading towards not getting any work done today (which really is not an option). I intended to write about Roy’s new chicken villa, so I must at least give you the quick scoop.

The “babies,” as we still call them at 4 months old, started laying eggs last week—a little earlier than we expected. So far we’re only getting a few a day (little brick-red eggs), but once all 49 start laying daily, we will be inundated. In anticipation, Roy has expanded their living quarters three-fold. (They need all the grassy pasture we can get them on to make those eggs yummy!)

First, he replaced the temporary outdoor pen next to the coop with a permanent structure (of full standing height). Much relief here as the temporary pen wasn’t tall enough for us to stand in. Now there’s even a door to the outdoor pen, where we can come and go to fill the groovy new water trough Roy built. He took two pieces of gutter and fit them into a hen-height structure that has a little roof over it so they can’t mess up their water as they love to do. (They roost on top of anything.) This beauty holds a lot of water, too, so we’re not constantly running down there to refill. Plus, all we have to do is plop the hose in it to fill it up. The standing chicken waterer had a whole cap-and-pressure system that made it impossible to refill without two hands and/or moving the whole thing. And it didn’t hold enough water for 49 chickens for a day! (Fun chicken fact of the day, as seen in photos at left: chickens can’t swallow unless they tilt their heads up!)

Next Roy moved the temporary pen to a nice shady area (connected to the permanent pen) so the girls can go hang out over there in the hottest parts of the day and dig dust baths. Lastly, he made another temporary pen on fresh grass (also connected) for excellent snacking. The temporary pens are movable so that we can put the hens on to fresh grass from time to time. (Daytime pens still have to be covered with netting to protect the birds from hawks, but they don’t require buried fencing, as predators like skunks and raccoons only do their stalking at night. Theoretically, all the hens should be inside the coop by nightfall, but one of our girls likes to stay out and enjoy the moonlight. So Roy always has to persuade her to go inside so that he can drop the door (lowered on a new slider he made) to lock them in.

The chicken villa still needs some finish work and a few more improvements, but you can already tell how happy the girls are to have all that room to run around in. They are fascinating to watch (Farmer can’t believe his eyes) and the “big girls” (our original flock of laying hens) look down the hill from their pen with obvious envy.

I’m excited, too, about all those eggs on the way. Just think, next year we’ll be able to enter eggs in the Fair, too. I can’t wait!

The Recipes

The Wait is Over—and Here’s a Recipe for Spaghetti with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes and Spicy Garlic Oil

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We wait and we wait and we wait and we wait for the tomatoes to ripen. Not just because, like everyone else, we want to eat them. But because we run a farm stand and every visitor to Martha’s Vineyard in August wants tomatoes, right off the vine (and right now!). Finally our Sungolds and Sweet 100s and Black Cherries are ripening by the hundreds so we can sell some and eat some too. (Of course I am eating a lot of droppers and splitters in the morning when we’re harvesting. Soon we’ll have to start feeding the splitters to the “baby” chickens who actually are now almost four months old and just started laying eggs!)

The farm stand customers are even more eager to get a hold of bigger tomatoes. Fortunately, we have lots of Early Girls ripening now, too, but alas they are not nearly as tasty as the beefsteaks and heirlooms that are still green. (The first Cherokee Purples are coloring up.) Still, I’m harvesting as many Early Girls as I can, often two or three times a day since the late morning and early afternoon sun does wonders. But when we run out, there are some disappointed looks on customers’ faces. Hopefully they are turning left out of the driveway and heading up to Mermaid Farm to get some of Caitlin Jones amazing tomatoes or on to Beetlebung Farm at the end of the road for more options.

In the meantime, since I will roast anything I can get my hands on, I am already making this delicious and easy recipe from The Fresh and Green Table that features roasted cherry tomatoes. Thought I’d pass it on to you in case you are similarly obsessed.

Spaghetti with Roasted Cherry Tomatoes & Spicy Garlic Oil for Two

Roasting cherry tomatoes intensifies their flavor (try using them in egg dishes or on crostini, too.) The other big flavor secret here is the infused oil. My Boston chef friend Tony Rosenfeld, who learned to cook great pasta dishes in Rome, taught me the flavor-boosting secret of infused oils. In this pasta (similar to the classic Spaghetti Aglio Olio), I simmer extra-virgin olive oil with garlic and crushed red pepper and use that as the “sauce” for the spaghetti. When I fold the cherry tomatoes in (which hold up surprisingly well after roasting), they add just enough of their residual juices to give the spaghetti a lovely color and extra flavor. Lots of fresh basil and a little Parmigiano, and dinner is served. Keep in mind this is a small-portion recipe—treat it as a starter or side if you’re feeding more than two. You can certainly double it, too, if you’ve got a couple pounds of cherry tomatoes. Bigger cherry tomatoes actually work a bit better in this recipe so pop the smaller ones in your mouth.

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5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, more for paper

1 pound ripe red cherry tomatoes (on the larger size), cut in half

kosher salt

6 ounces spaghetti

1 tablespoon minced fresh garlic

scant 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 tablespoons (or more to taste) thinly sliced fresh basil or mint leaves, or a combination

1/4 cup coarsely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

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Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Line a large heavy-duty rimmed sheet pan with a piece of parchment paper. Rub the parchment paper with some olive oil. Toss the cherry tomato halves very gently with 2 tablespoons of the oil and 1/4 teaspoon salt and spread in one layer, cut side-up, on the sheet pan. (Transfer only the tomatoes to the sheet pan—leave behind any juices in the bowl as they will tend to burn on the sheet pan.) Roast the tomatoes until they are browned around the edges and on the bottom and slightly puckered (they will collapse more out of the oven), about 25 minutes for smaller cherry tomatoes, 32 to 35 minutes for larger ones. (There will be some blackening on the sheet pan.) Let the tomatoes cool for a couple minutes on the sheet pan. To remove, gently peel them away from the paper. If they are sticking, lift the paper up and pop the tomatoes off by pressing the paper from behind.

In a small nonstick skillet, heat 3 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and the red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the garlic begins to simmer in the oil. Cook for just about 30 seconds more to infuse the oil. (Do not let the garlic brown.) Take the skillet off the heat and set aside (do not transfer the contents to a bowl).

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the spaghetti and cook it until al dente, according to the package instructions. Take the pasta pot off the heat, and before draining the pasta, pour a few tablespoons of the pasta water into a small cup or bowl. (Set a small cup or bowl in the sink next to the colander as a reminder.) Drain the pasta in a colander and return it to the pasta pot.

Gently reheat the infused oil if necessary.

Season the pasta with 1/4 teaspoon salt and drizzle and scrape all of the spicy garlic oil over it. Toss well. Add the roasted cherry tomatoes, the Parmigiano, and 1 to 2 tablespoons of the pasta water. Stir gently but thoroughly until the pasta turns a light pink color. (You don’t want to break up the tomatoes, just release a tiny bit of their juice.) Stir in most of the basil. Using tongs, portion the spaghetti and the roasted tomatoes into two shallow serving bowls. Garnish with the remaining basil and serve right away.

Serves 2

Farm life, Sustain, The Garden, The Recipes

A Picnic Table Changes Everything

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A few days before my birthday, a picnic table arrived in our yard, carted down the driveway in Roy’s truck. Roy held out for as long as he could, swearing he was not going to pay money for a picnic table when he could build one for much less, or better yet, build us a really lovely outdoor dining table. I know he was disappointed not to have the time to do it this summer, but at least he didn’t leave us without something to sit around for the birthday gathering.

We positioned the table under the shade of the giant maple, which just happens to be about halfway between the back door and the garden gate—the path we travel most often. We intended to move the table after the party, since it’s in the way of the rope swing. But it seems to be settling in, letting us know it’s happy where it is—and happy to do for us whatever we need. Oddly enough, it’s as if the table was always meant to be here, as if the backyard beckoned it to come complete our outdoor living room. (The grill is right nearby, too.)

And now we use the darn picnic table for everything. In the morning, I line up the harvest baskets on the benches and set out the scale and the scissors and the little green pint boxes and the jars of water for the basil and flowers on the table. After we’ve gathered zucchini and cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and what not, we sort it all out on the table and price it for the farm stand. Later in the day, I’ll perch at the end of one of the benches across from Roy, listening to him talk about his day at work while he sips his root beer.

Yesterday I procrastinated (I have two big deadlines looming!) by picking all different kinds of flowers from the garden (including one of the fragrant America rose blossoms from the rose bush Roy got me for my birthday) and arranging them in a row of jars and vases down the center of the picnic table. So beautiful! I got such a kick out of this activity (I’ve always enjoyed setting tables and arranging little flower bouquets), especially since we don’t have a big dining table inside, either. One of the quirks of our little old rustic farm house is no dining room—hence we eat on a tiny dropleaf table in the kitchen.

Of course, the best part about the picnic table is eating on it. There is something so relaxing about swinging your legs over the edge of a picnic bench (rather than pulling up a formal dining chair) that gets dinner off on the right foot. (Libby always requests dinner outside now). And since this is a big, long picnic table, there’s also room to serve dishes family-style. In fact, we put a cutting board down at one end, and anything from the grill comes straight there to be sliced up. Platters of veggies and salads mingle with the jars of flowers and glasses of lemonade, and we can all serve ourselves what we like.

Farmer prefers dinner outside, too. His outdoor lede stretches just far enough so that he can sit right under the picnic table, happily waiting for something to drop. (He doesn’t  have to wait long because he has Roy trained to slip him something every now and then.)

And if it seems like a treat to eat supper outside, it’s even more fun to eat breakfast on the picnic table. That’s my best friend Eliza and her husband Chip on the Sunday morning after my birthday in the photo here. With eggs from our hens, berries from our back yard, and a warm breeze through the trees, I’ll take this any day over a fancy champagne brunch!

Farm life, The Garden

August, All of a Sudden

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Just like that, July is winding down. And whoa, here comes August—the big month on the Vineyard. It’s exciting and a little scary all at the same time. Celebrity sightings. (Bill Murray! Ted Danson! Meg Ryan!) Fireworks. The Fair. And a whole lot of traffic. Business is heating up at the farm stand, but we also get a lot of “drive-thrus” who barely brake to see if we have any tomatoes before they move on to the next farm stand.

100,000 people come to the Vineyard in August. (That’s 80,000 more than live here year-round). There is every possible kind of event and activity to go to if you’re on vacation and have that lovely thing called leisure time: Shakespeare, concerts, film screenings, regattas, farmers’ markets, poetry readings, book signings, auctions, art shows, community sings, bonfires, yoga on the beach, flea markets, antique shows, wood-fired pizza night, wild-life walks, sea glass hunting, fishing, surfing, swimming, you name it. Even Roy and I took off our farm boots and gussied up for an art opening down at the Old Sculpin Gallery in Edgartown last Sunday. My friend Katie Hutchison’s evocative photographs were on show, and this year I treated myself to buying one for my office. And today, I put the high heels on again—this time to sign books down at Bunch of Grapes bookstore in Vineyard Haven as part of Tisbury’s Celebrate the Arts festival.

Back at the farm, it’s a strange time. Anticipating the August crowds and the ripening tomatoes is a little nerve-wracking—will the two come together to make the farm stand profitable this year? It’s hard not to think of August as an all-or-nothing-proposition, but in reality, we are still thinking ahead to September and October and planting more crops. September is a good month for the farm stand, and last year we stayed open all the way through November. So yesterday Roy planted two more rows of potatoes, and I tracked down my cranberry shell beans to plant for a fall harvest. With any luck, we’ll get another bed of carrots sowed soon, too. And before you know it, those 50 baby chickens (now nearly pullet-sized, growing their combs) will be laying eggs. This fall, we’ll finally have all those eggs everyone is always asking for.

In the kitchen, I’m taking advantage of the first sweet corn from Morning Glory Farm and making lots of corn sautés with our lovely skinny green and yellow beans added in. We made Backyard Berry Ice Cream this week, and we made three kinds of pesto with our lush basil. We made a batch of deviled eggs with some of the pesto, and we brown-braised our Red Gold potatoes with garlic, a couple garden Serranos, and a few leaves of chard wilted in at the end. And I am just like everyone else on this island—chomping at the bit for a juicy ripe red tomato. There’s one I’ve got my eye on in the garden. It might be ready tomorrow or the next day. But I think it’s taking its own sweet time just so it can show up on August 1.

Farm life, Sustain

Ants-in-My-Pants Excitement

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Roy got me the best birthday present any one could. He invited my best friend to come visit and help us celebrate. Eliza and her husband Chip arrived yesterday, hopping with their bikes on to the freight boat at the last minute after driving down from Maine. It’s almost embarrassing how excited I get about seeing Eliza, but honestly I hope I never lose that stomach-fluttering kid-like glee. (We’ve been friends since we were babies.)

This morning, I was thinking about this squirmy ants-in-my-pants excitement I get about special things. (It drove my Mom crazy when I was a kid—I never sat still!) I happened to be looking back at pictures from the farm this week—the beautiful yellow beans we’re growing for the first time and our very first strawberries and blueberries. These things just knock my socks off! How lucky I am to be surrounded by beauty and friends this weekend. So what if my heart sometimes skips a beat? It’s a small price to pay.

Farm life, publicity, Sustain, The Cookbooks, The Garden

A Radio Tour and One Very Special Garden

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This week I started my “radio tour” to promote The Fresh & Green Table. I do this from home, which is very cool because I do not need to dress up, put on makeup, cook tasting samples, or make ferry reservations.

In fact, except for the 15 to 20 minutes I’m on air (and the fact that I have to pay very careful attention to the special Google radio calendar the PR folks have set up for me so that I don’t miss a time switch), I can still forge ahead with all the projects I’ve got swirling around at home.

The biggest challenge so far is getting Farmer not to bark (usually when a farm stand customer comes down the driveway) or play with his squeaky toy while I’m recording. I have to sit in the living room with the land line and the book in my lap (no multi-tasking for those few minutes), but Farmer doesn’t quite understand that I haven’t plunked down on the couch to play with him. Most of the spots so far are in the morning so I try hard to not only get the harvesting and farm stand set-up done before hand, but to also get Farmer’s special field walk in, too.

Still, radio is fun—especially if the hosts are engaging—and I enjoy it. But we’ll see how I feel after a few weeks since I’m supposedly on the hook for 15 to 20 hours of this, which my friend Katie kindly pointed out adds up to between 60 and 80 radio spots! Yikes. I’ll post a partial schedule of spots on the home page here, as I will be on all over the country.

We are still madly trying to keep up with things in the garden—especially the tomato staking, turning beds over for second season crops, watering (rain is nonexistent), weeding, and pest warfare. But every time I let myself go out there (it’s so hard to concentrate on all my desk work and recipe deadlines when the garden is calling), I feel like I’m entering the Magic Kingdom. I continue to be fascinated and amazed by little seeds germinating, blossoms turning to fruit, berries ripening; how it all happens when you’re not looking is the essence of the magic show.

To that end, the very best thing I did all week was to help Libby plant her garden. At long last, we finally got every other bed and path laid out, shaped, planted, mulched, irrigated, etc. so that we could concentrate on her little plot. Since the new part of the garden tumbles down a gentle slope, we laid out the beds running across the slope, but with a big center path cutting through them down to the lower gate. We worked down one side of the slope, making beds as we went, and then came back up the other, which left us with the last bed actually right back at the center of the garden—where the hoses, the buckets, the tools, and our feet usually meet. There Libby’s garden came to rest. I am so glad of this, as originally it was planned for the bottom of the garden—a place that seems very far away now. I love the idea that her space is right in the thick of things, and that amidst all these business-like rows of market vegetables lies a comely patch of flowers and seedlings with a lovely little brick path right up the middle of it.

Libby laid the bricks and chose her garden stars from a stash of tomatoes I saved, from a trip to the nursery to look at flowers, and from some of the existing rows of veggies. From the beginning she’s had her eye on the Bright Lights Swiss Chard—especially the pink stalks–and in fact has been nursing a “sick” chard  in a small “plant hospital” she created several weeks ago. Despite the heat, we successfully transplanted that chard and another, as well as some cosmos for her flower row. She also picked out a pale pink primrose and a stunning candy-striped geranium at the nursery. We sowed carrot seeds (her favorites), several kinds of lettuce, and a few Ring of Fire sunflowers from a seed packet Dad picked up. She chose a Sun Gold and a Juliet plum tomato to plant (she’s hoping to bring her mom plum tomatoes later in the summer), and best of all, at the nursery we found one of those charming Alpine strawberry plants with the teeny tiny strawberries dangling off it. We gave that a place of honor right between the carrots and lettuce. The two chards flank the entrance, which is marked by a very cool glass-embedded cement stepping stone that she and I made from a kit her grandmother Peg (Roy’s mom) thoughtfully gave her last Christmas.

I wasn’t sure at first how excited Libby was going to be about having her own garden. She is, first and foremost, an animal and living-creature lover. (Dad got her a butterfly net last week and she trailed around with this all over the place.) I thought to myself that maybe I was just trying to hand the keys to the Magic Kingdom over to her for selfish reasons. But I watched her enthusiasm build as she realized the garden really and truly was all hers. I watched her run to the truck when Dad pulled into the driveway and drag him out to see the garden. I listened to her ask if we could go out and finish planting the second day. And I listened to her (a girl who holds her emotions close) say, “This is so awesome.” More than once.

While we were planting and chatting, she told me, out of the blue, that she plans to be the first woman president of the United States. But first she is going to be a veterinarian, she said. I had to smile, because only that morning I’d been giving her a little spiel (while we were playing Gardenopoly and she was raking in the money, as usual) about her future, how she should be sure and look after herself, develop special skills and a good career, work hard and save her money, etc. etc. I know, I know, she’s only nine.

But tomorrow she turns 10. And four days later I turn 50. And from where I sit, I see a very smart little girl with an entire world of possibilities and opportunities ahead of her. And while I know that I have Grace and luck to thank for many things, I’ve also pursued what I love with a passion and never shut the door on learning. I’ve had amazing teachers along the way who’ve taught me the thrill of planting the seed and watching it grow—no matter what kind of “garden.” It’s an honor to get to pass that thrill on.