The weekend is almost here...6 hours away for me...so we're gearing up to finish the porch. Nothing like dragging along on a project that should've taken a day, 2 tops!....

Little Sugar Creek. May 2012

image by Nadine Ford,/td>

That's what I started blogging this past Friday and that's pretty much how everything is right now. Busy, fragmented and the minutes are just too short. To celebrate the madness, here are a few things keeping me busy:

The contest is still going on for a chance to win your very own copy of Little Paper Planes! Might I suggest you get 2 copies--one to play with and one to keep whole?

Little Sugar Creek. Early June 2012

image by Nadine Ford

Volunteering a little at the Tuesday Twilight Matthews Farmers Market.

Little Sugar Creek. Mid-June 2012

image by Nadine Ford

Growing food and constantly weeding at Little Sugar Creek Community Garden. (Enough with the weeding already!)

Mentally designing one of these.

Work Process

I thought I'd show a little bit of what goes into logo designing. This"logo" is a little different, because it's not an official logo, though. I volunteer at the Little Sugar Creek Community Garden and wanted to do a snazzy little something for it. It's on park and rec owned land, networked through Friendship Gardens, and is a teaching space for Char-Meck's Wipe Out Waste. We have 4 co-managers for the garden (I'm one), and we're all pretty laid back about how things go. That said, there wasn't as much back and forth discussion about the direction of this design as there is with other logo work.

The garden is perched inside a large fenced area beside Little Sugar Creek and the LSC Greenway. The greenway itself is part of the Carolina Thread Trail. I drew inspiration from the gate, pathway and creek to form the shape and lettering.

Currently the garden is swimming in marigolds, a natural garden pest repellent. I thought marigolds capture the essence of how we garden (organically).

I wasn't crazy about the marigolds solo, so I decided to try something else. One of the crops that sets us apart from other area gardens is the hops trellis. The hops, thanks to garden co-manager Daan, are going bonkers, so this image was in celebration of them. Then Kathy, another co-manager, suggested marigolds and hops together.

The result is a colorful abundance of marigolds and hops, a logo/banner I'm quite proud of.

Looking for a logo? See some other designs I've made here. If you're interested, I'm available!

Maintaining Interest

Chatting with Misti yesterday via email, she reminded me that I don't post about gardening much anymore. It's true but I have a good excuse: I garden mostly at the community garden and we work so hard there, by the time I catch up enough to take pictures I'm exhausted.

The home garden is much less demanding, and gets little attention anyway. All of that energy is spent on chasing around the little one, a full-blown hurricane of toddler energy, curiosity, and need for  attention.

Sometimes the two overlap and I get to tend the garden while she stays interested in the activities. Yesterday I pulled up some tomato plants and decided to pickle the remaining green tomatoes. Between those and the green cherry tomatoes I'd brought home from Little Sugar Creek garden, I filled 2 bowls with water and 16 cups of green tomatoes. Anything that involves water hypnotizes the little one, so she sat on her stool for close to 2 solid hours, moving water and tomatoes from one bowl to another then back again.

Another fun task? I sliced 3 1/2 pounds of eggplant into 1/2 inch medallions, laid them out on a baking sheet and gave M a basting brush and a small cup of oil. She had a blast painting the eggplant in oil so I could roast it in the oven.

If only I could get her so interested in pulling up weeds, then I might have a shot at getting back to snapping a few garden pictures and updating y'all on the progress!

A taste of Spring

A few weeks ago the wild violets were poking their pretty little faces up in the yard and I took the opportunity to try my hand at candied violets. Mabel and I brushed the delicate blooms with egg white, coated them with sugar, and set them aside to dry thoroughly.

They were so pretty I asked my baking expert friend Jude to make a special treat worthy of showing off the candied flowers. The cakes definitely upstaged the delicious violets, but not because the violets weren't amazing themselves. Other sweets were topped with sugars colored with wildflower petals. 

Candying violets will be added to our rites of spring. Interested in adding it to yours? We'll have wild violets available at our fundraising plant sale on Saturday, April 18, 2015. Come out to support Little Sugar Creek Community Garden (Charlotte), leave with a gorgeous array of interesting plants ready to inspire tasty treats!

We're gettin all crafty up in here

We're getting in the spirit of holidays around our house, and M and I have been crafting up a storm in the afternoons. It occurred to me that we're going to have an abundance of snowmen (a few were made for loved ones as little gifts to give to kick off the season at Thanksgiving), so I was brainstorming a way to use them.

It didn't take long (probably aided by that extra cup of coffee) to realize we could list them in the shop, sell them, and give the proceeds to Little Sugar Creek Community Garden! We need a shed, I have an abundance of quirky, festive snowmen, and you have an extra $10 to spare?  The sale of one ornament will buy us 2 2 x 4s with a little extra going into buying paint, exterior wood, and hardware.

Our grow/share garden is in dire need of a shed. Last year someone jumped the giant fence, stole nearly all of our tools, and tried to steal our picnic table (too heavy?). To describe the current building as a shed is generous. It's a plastic contraption with a roof over the top, but the doors have fallen off and lean propped up against the front. The plastic-ness prevents us from being able to replace hinges and get the doors back on. There's simply no way to secure the tools. 

Okay, so maybe you don't need a snowman? Well, we're hosting a workshop in December: Drafting ornaments from the garden. I made a few prototypes from materials from my own front yard to show what we will be making: pine cone Christmas trees, and tiny grapevine and rosemary wreaths  We'll have all sorts of festive, shimmery ways to decorate your ornament, as well as gardening chatter and all around merriment. The workshop is $8, and as soon as I have more details I'll fill you in!

Not in Charlotte? There are DIYs for similar ornaments all over the internet: pine cone trees, grapevine wreath, rosemary wreath.

Where I grow

Every once in a while I've mentioned a community garden here, but I don't think I've explained it yet. See, I like to volunteer my time as much as I can, and in the past I've volunteered with the Matthews Farmers Market. I love the market, the people and all that it stands for, but this year I've switched over to giving my time to the Little Sugar Creek Community Garden. It allows me to combine my love of gardening, creativity, giving to others, while giving me a little social time that has otherwise been pretty hard to find with a toddler. The real gem of a reason for working in this garden? Through it I can give quality food to those in need, all the while fulfilling some of my own needs. From the ACGA site:

This garden is an active Friendship Gardens network member, donating over 10% of its produce to Friendship Trays, the areas meals-on-wheels program. Because of this dedication to the public, LSCG is regularly recognized as "The People's Garden" by the USDA and Keep America Beautiful, Inc.

 

I'm considered a "garden coordinator", which I think just means I've opened my mouth one too many times. I actually just stand back and ask more questions while Nadine (the county liason in charge of compost education) and Katherine do the real coordinating.

There's a sign nearby makes me a little squeamish, but I'm more at ease knowing we don't use that crap to make things flourish; LSC lives off county compost and organic amendments.  Even with the history of working with corporate polluters, this garden feels far more radical than the typical community garden. It's not about growing for oneself, it's about growing for others and, in return, cultivating oneself.

That's one place where I really have room to grow. 

This year things are off to a slow start since we regularly have about 3 pairs of hands to weed, plant, and prettify. If you're in the Charlotte, NC area maybe you'd be interested in bringing a few friends out to help get things done?

Grower's Update: Watering

We have a group of teenage volunteers coming out to Little Sugar Creek today, so I've got the day off from the paying job to go boss 'em around for a couple hours.

On the home front, we've got summer toys all over the yard, so when M isn't interested in finding worms and helping me with garden projects she's got plenty of distractions so I can get my work done! Unfortunately Charlie isn't fully convinced the livestock tank is a good idea, so I bought him (read: actually for Mabel) a $30 inflatable pool that's pretty big. We fill it with water, play in the water a couple of days and then use a basement pump and garden hose to empty it, watering the gardens with the old pool water.

It's actually a kind of brilliant solution (I can call it that because it was Hi-C's idea) because it allows the water to de-gas before it goes to the veggie bed. I might be over-thinking it, but have been mulling over the complexity of bacteria in the soil and how it mimics the flora of our own gut. With the popularity of probiotics in food, we're all becoming more aware of replacing the beneficial bacteria in our gut, something depleted by what many suspect is the chlorine in water, used to treat stray bacteria from our drinking water. (See how this is all connected?) The chlorine is meant to kill off bacteria that can harm us, but it doesn't discriminate so it takes out all the bacteria...in our guts and in the soil. All of that blabbering is to say I'm interested in seeing if there's any difference in the garden with this new watering method.

Any hypothesis out there?

Party Hardy!

Little Sugar Creek, the community garden I help lead, is part of the Friendship Gardens network. Guess what!? Friendship Gardens is having a party this weekend! Part of the party is a silent auction, so I've donated 2 prints, printed on canvas and framed. I don't print on canvas very often, so it was a treat to see them on a different material, and all framed up they look pretty snazzy!  I wish I had actual photographs, maybe someone at the auction will get some?