Good morning, and happy spring! Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.
It's Springtime in the Rockies — which means fast changes. On Wednesday it was 69°. On Thursday it was 65°. On Friday it snowed like hell.
The good news is that I was off work Wednesday, and spent the day finishing front yard cleanup, chopping garden debris, then mixing it all together with a winter's worth of kitchen scraps and loading it into the compost bin — which I had moved to the other side of the veggie patch. Whoo-hoo! Soon as it dries out, I'm ready to till, lay soaker hoses, and plant!
It shouldn't take too long to melt out; temperatures are forecast to return to the mid-60s by Monday, so I may be able to finish prepping the veggie patch next weekend.
Last week I promised a shopping edition of garden blogging, and I'm going to make good on that. I'll start with one of my favorite on-line sources of gardening gadgets and goodies: Lee Valley. I don't know how they do it, but Lee Valley comes up with an interest mix of items, at a large range of prices. I've found everything from the Therapik to take the itch out of bug bites, The World's Kindest Nail Brush (surgical brushes, which also make great vegetable brushes (buy a dozen — they're inexpensive and so very useful), to beautiful reproduction Victorian bird cage/plant hook. Make sure to check out the special offers and sale items, especially late in the growing season: I've gotten some fantastic deals. And if you have a woodworker in the house, the specialty tools are amazing. Every year at Christmas I go browsing through Lee Valley and pick up interesting tools for the Mister.
Lee Valley used to sell these wonderful green rubber garden tub/trugs — not beautiful, but the things wear like iron. I tried prettier ones — made of plastics of various types — but none of them lasted more than a year or two. The handles would break, or they'd get left on in a freeze and crack. Unfortunately, when I went to buy more from Lee Valley, they'd stopped carrying them. Luckily the Mister found an alternate source of the rubber tubs — which also come in pretty colors! U.S. Plastics Corp. carries Fortiflex Flexible Baskets in two sizes and a variety of colors — and they are rubber, not plastic.
Finally, one of my gardening indulgences (actually the only way I can keep garden gloves on my hands) are high-quality goat or deerskin gloves. It used to be that I could find them at my local nurseries; however, last year — having worn holes in the fingers of the gloves I'd bought years ago — I couldn’t find good, flexible leather gloves in small women's sizes. That's when I discovered an on-line source: Womans Work gardening gloves. Yes, they are expensive. And yes, they are worth it — I end up spending less getting a couple of pairs of very good gloves that stay on my hands so I don't lose them, than several pairs of shitty gloves that I rip off and leave lying out in the middle of the flower beds.
Because I was out baking compost on Wednesday, I didn't get a chance to bake the fresh coconut birthdays (51st natal; 25th sobriety) cake I'd promised myself. I'd also promised the SMGB After Hours crew the recipe, which come from an old Junior League cookbook from Monroe County, Louisiana. So here it is — and please note that I typed it quickly, so there may be typographical errors. Let me know if you see any.
Fresh Coconut Cake
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, separated
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 2/3 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup milk
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy. Beat in egg yolks one at a time. Add vanilla. Sift cake flour before measuring. Resift with baking powder and salt. Combine milk and coco-nut milk. Add the sifted ingredients to the butter mixture, in about 3 parts, alternately with the liquid mixture. Bear egg whites until stiff and fold in lightly by hand into the batter. Pour into 3 greased 9 inch layer pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350°. Remove layers from pans before completely cool.
ICING
2 egg whites
1 1/2 cups sugar
5 tbls. cold water
pinch of cream of tartar
1 1/2 tsp white Karo syrup
1 tsp. vanilla
Freshly grated coconut
Combine all ingredient except vanilla and grated coconut in top of double boiler. Blend well. Place over rapidly boiling water and beat constantly with electric or rotary beater for 6 minutes. Remove from fire an add vanilla. Spread between layers sparingly and sprinkle with freshly grated coconut. Secure layers with toothpicks. Ice whole cake and garnish with coconut.
(Mrs. Tim Allen; The Cotton Country Cookbook, Junior League of Monroe County, LA)
That's what's happening here. What's going on in your gardens?
Update [2010-3-20 9:14:59 by Frankenoid]:For whatever reason, kos decided it didn't like my open-in-new-tab code for the Lee Valley links. I hate it when that happens!