Lynda's Birthday

The picture of the antique school desk was Lynda's birthday present. We actually got it a couple months ago and very cleverly hid it in the cab of Kevin Jr's truck with the blown up engine. Yes, the same truck that was the subject of a blog post last year about taking the transmission out and living to tell the story. As you can see, a desk like this is a perfect fit in our house. The desk, much like the house, has a very high "cool factor" rating and because of that, it gets to be part of the craziness of our project. This blog post will give you an idea of what it's like to celebrate your birthday at the Farmville Reality Project. It's not for everyone but I do believe the birthday girl had a great day.

The pampering began very early that morning with me making sure she got to sleep in until almost 6:15 am. About that time, the cats were acting like they needed to be fed or they would simply kill and eat us, so we got the day started. A quick happy birthday card exchange, usual morning routine of coffee and tea, sort of healthy breakfast food stuff, and we were on our way to tile a bathroom floor. I know what you're thinking, this guy goes far beyond ridicules when it comes to helping people celebrate their birthday. I guess it's one of my strong suits.

Once we got to the house and gathered the tools, we did a quick huddle to make sure we knew what we were doing and what the final product would be. The final product would be an 8 foot by 8 foot floor of one inch white hex tiles. At very well thought out locations, there would be black hex tiles arranged in a snowflake pattern. The idea for the floor came from a blend of many different pictures we had looked at the past few months, actual places we went and visited, as well as what materials we could find in our price range. That led us to the tiles I posted pictures of and described in this post, http://thefarmvillerealityproject.blogspot.com/2011_07_01_archive.html. Through a strange twist of fate, today, Lynda's birthday was the day to get these installed.

As mentioned above, these are small, one inch hex shaped tiles and to get the snowflake pattern, it meant taking some of the black ones from some sheets to use in place of white ones on the sheets where a snowflake was to be. We did this prep work a few days prior so there were empty spots where each of the two different colors needed to be relocated to. The plan would be to install the sheets and put the relocated tiles in place as we moved across the floor.

Like all good plans, this one was little short of being realistic. We spread a section of thinset (you do remember that stuff, don't you?) and placed four sheets down. After a few minutes of over-the-top perfectionist type of adjustments, it was time to place the tiles to finish the pattern. This went fairly smooth except the thinset dried very fast in the heat, so we had to smear some more on each little tile before putting it in place. This made a bit of a mess that had to be cleaned because once thinset dries hard, it is literally like cement. Much easier to clean goopy excess up while it's still wet. Now onto the next four sheets. This is where things started going downhill. The small amount in between the tiles sticking out had dried and needed to be scraped up and new thinset troweled down so the new row of tiles would set correctly. About the only tool that worked right was my finger. A knife, screwdriver, or trowel tip were too awkward. If you misjudged and caught just a little bit of the edge of a tile already laid down, it would break its bond and cause it to pop up. The problem with using your finger is it is not as durable as the metal tools and it wears out over time from the abrasiveness of the surfaces being cleaned. Long story short, bloody finger tips that hurt really bad. That tends to slow things up. We kept plowing along though. We would spread thinset, place sheets of tile and then to the painstakingly, labor intensive process of filling in the snowflakes. As time went on, we seemed to go slower and slower. I asked her more than once if she was having a fun birthday and she always said yes every time. I hope she isn't hard at work planning something as equally torturous for my birthday next year.

As darkness forced us to scrounge up work lights, we did a survey and both of us agreed we needed to keep working and get the floor finished. By this time, some of the lay out lines were not lining up right and the thinset seemed to be drying almost instantly as it was troweled down. I could go on about how we kept our heads down and kept working but truth be told, only one of us did that. It was a she, if that helps solve which one us worked tirelessly without complaint. Don't misunderstand me, I kept working too. One thing every one who knows me will agree on, I never quit working until the job is finished. I just complained the whole time about how tired and sore I was. Somewhere pushing 10:00pm that night, the last tiles went down at the point where the doorway meets the hallway and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief. We had completely blown past the stage of being tired and were exhausted. I did what I do best at that point and grumbled about some of the places that got crooked and didn't line up right. Lynda looked at the floor and said it looked great to her and then we drove the long drive back to find refuge in a nice soft bed for our tired selves.










As you can see from the picture, the snowflakes turned out great and I have to admit, they were well worth the effort. The floor of our bathroom truly does give it a historical look and we both know it's durable enough to last a hundred years into the future. Hopefully someday, many years from now, folks will appreciate how a birthday was spent making such a beautiful floor in this old house. Happy Birthday!

Turning the Corner...Sort of

As you can see by the pictures with this post, some pretty good progress is being made in getting the bathroom ready to be functional. In fact the title of this post came to me while working on the subway tile walls. Being under a big time crunch to get this room finished so we can move in, my judgement can be a little bit to the left of that place everyone calls "good judgement". The excuse for my poor judgement is too many things to deal with and not enough resources to use in dealing with them. The biggest gaps in resources for this particular adventure were time, running water, and common sense. Time still seems to be an issue with most everything I do that involves completing a project. Then again, the common sense thing comes up more times than it should in this area too. But the running water part of this thing is solved. As you can see in two of these pictures, there is a brand new pump delivering water to our relocated Farmville Reality Project. Enough water, as a matter of fact, that we could probably run a hose out to the dry creek bed a little west of here and run enough water to get a few salmon interested in spawning. OK, maybe I exaggerate just a little.... It is nice to have this detail taken care of since the old pump was not working well enough to even get a small part of the Bermuda grass lawn green. The new set-up also has an outlet valve aimed right toward where the orchard/vineyard/garden/pasture will be in the future.
Now back to to topic of this post, turning the corner. My previous mention of being short on resources happened when I decided to tile the walls with subways tiles. I had already helped the pump guy get the humongous water tank out the building so he could use his boom-truck to swing it around and into its new location. That meant he could get busy pulling the old pump out of the well and put the new pump down in there. Using my superior math skills, it was determined I had a few hours to get started on something and tiling a wall in a subway pattern came up from a Google search, so that was what I went with. That's the part where common sense could have come in handy. Even though there was no running water, there was water in a couple 5 gallon jugs. I had already measured and scribed the layout lines on the wall, so I figured spreading tile adhesive (thinset to those who do this for a living) and sticking tiles on the wall would be a pretty easy way to spend my afternoon. With this thought in mind, I poured a generous amount of water in the bucket and poured almost the entire bag of dry thinset mix in there. This is when I discovered the first clue this might be a long afternoon. I couldn't find the big drill I use the mixing paddle on to use in stirring this stuff up. Looked high and low and still haven't found it. Since the other drills are too small and would burn their motors up if I tried to make them do this hard of a job, I mixed the thinset up the old fashioned way, by hand. After the second mixing and most of the lumps gone, I only paused a couple seconds to admire the Popeye-like muscles you develop by mixing this stuff up manually and went to work. The first couple rows went smooth with only some minor mishaps. That was about the time I noticed the thinset was getting very stiff and dry. When this happens, you need to stir it up but should not add any water to thin it out because that ultimately weakens its bonding ability. No problem. I'm a little tired and the afternoon heat has settled on that side of the house but if it needs to be stirred a couple minutes then so be it. It's actually good exercise for those that need a good workout. Think of stirring 50 pounds of bread dough with a big spoon to try and keep it from rolling up into a ball. Kind of like that. Then onto another couple more rows and it needs some more stirring. This time (and every time after that, but don't tell the tile police on me) I sprinkled some water in there to help get this goop back to a state where it could be spread and troweled onto the wall. Did I mention how tired I was at this point and how hot it was? Did I also mention how much would not stick to the wall if you didn't push the trowel with superhuman strength? The stuff that didn't stick would usually fall all over the rows that had just been set and cleaned. I could go on and on describing this but I think we've achieved some basic understanding that tile work is not fun, especially at the end of the day when you're already tired and the room you're tiling is like a sauna. Needless to say, by the time that wall was finished and the big bucket of thinset was all used up, I felt like I had been trampled by horses and tossed from the roof of a one story building. Oh well, at least the longest wall was finished and I had the next day to knock out the other two smaller walls. Of course, to be able to tile this wall in the too few of hours available before darkness set in, I had to skip the corners because every tile needed to be cut to fit. It seemed like a better idea to save that for the next day.

The next day came and that's when I settled into cutting all of the corner tiles. Still being worn out from the day before, this seemed to take a very long time. It really seemed like a lot of work and very little progress. That was up until I set the last one to finish the corners. Once that one was in place, it's funny how "complete" the walls now looked from just that one part being done. As I looked at the now finished corners, it seemed like the bathroom project as a whole was turning the corner from the torn up mess of demolition to now actually resembling what it is destined to become. It's funny how one small step can take you from a part of the journey that feels like no forward progress is being made to another part where the destination starts to come into focus. The focus for the hall bathroom is starting to get clearer and that is a very welcome sight for all of us.

Sidetracked, Just a Little...

The reason for the this title is to add context to the picture of the tomato field being irrigated with a quarter mile wheel line sprinkler system. Most of you that read this blog don't really know what I just described, but you have to have faith that I don't make these things up. That IS what it's called by those who bust their knuckles and sweat in the hot sun putting the pipe together to bring the magic of "rain" to thirsty crops in July. During the recent 4 day "surge" to get our house in a state to be able to live in (read functioning bathroom), I had to take one little mental health break. For some that might mean heavy drinking and going to Las Vegas, but for me, it means taking a drive through farm land. There will always be something about fields of crops that grounds me. The picture in this post shows tomatoes getting a much needed dose of water, but I drove past many other noteworthy fields. On this drive (Which only added about another 20 minutes, but I did have a a crazy beagle with me) I saw sunflowers, corn, cucumbers, squash, rice, honeydew melons, tomatoes, alfalfa, dry beans, walnuts, almonds, grapes, and many other crops that escape me at the moment. Since I have spent most of my life kicking dirt clods to make something grow, this break did me good.

On to the important stuff. Once again I am facing a deadline that is defined by information found on a calendar (mine happens to be hanging on the wall in the livingroom and was issued by the Pro Bull Riders Association, but this story already has enough things that don't make sense). This deadline is much like the last one where I need to have everything done in the bathroom so we can move in. I'm happy to report that the plumbing and electrical stuff is all finished. What's left is to pass a county inspection, get a water heater installed, have the propane company hook up its feeder pipes, tile the walls and floors, AND put the door back on! I think I can manage this is T-minus 12 days. The operative word here is "think". Wish me luck!!!!!

The pictures of the tiles are to give you a sense of how the bathroom will look once this whole thing is accomplished. We bought hex tiles with the flower pattern so we could "steal" the black tiles from some and use them to make snowflakes throughout the entire floor. Part of being able to do this is to visualize. That's why we we laid out the square footage of the bathroom in the diningroom. Now we can work on fine tuning where the snowflakes will be and doing the very labor intensive task of moving the tiles around to fit the pattern. I know this sounds like a bunch of work but everyone involved in this project feels like it's worth it to remodel in a way that's period appropriate. Snowflakes were very popular a hundred years ago. I think we are hoping to do justice to this fact and make this bathroom look like it existed a hundred years ago. Wish us luck!!!!

We Have Walls...Sort Of...

The reason I say "Sort of..." is it's just the corner of one room, but it is still reason to celebrate. Considering we have spent the past several weeks taking walls and floors apart in this project, it feels like progress when we start putting things back together. Before I dive too deep into this progress report, I do have to admit to not making the self imposed deadline laid out in the last post. It is almost the middle of July and the functioning bathroom needed to move in has not happened yet. The new target is the end of July for completion.

The first picture here is the new utility room. Remember that this was formerly a closet, so this is one big transformation. The second picture is what this looked like when it was a closet, so hopefully you can get a sense of what a change (for the better in our opinion) this space has gone through. The door you see in the middle of the back wall will let us come in and out from the outside without going through the main part of the house. The concept is to keep the dirt contained to this area since there will be a washer and dryer here. When kicking dirt clods and doing other equally important farm chores, your boots tend to get a bit dirty, so having this access should help. To the right of this room will another bathroom too. That way we can come in after a hard day of dirt clod kicking, throw our extremely dirty clothes in the washer, take a shower, and change into clean clothes without ever setting foot in the "fancy" part of the house. The reason the corner of this room had to have the walls sheet rocked is so a water heater can be installed in this corner. This water heater is necessary for the previously mentioned functioning bathroom, so we finished out enough of the corner to provide a place for it and our attention is now back to getting the hall bathroom finished.

The third picture shows where things are at right now. After gutting the walls and floor, we shored up the framing and also discovered some damage from water and insects. This led to taking the wall apart into the room next to the bathroom and tearing out the damaged wood. All the damaged framing was replaced and some new pieces were added to add strength so this bathroom can survive another hundred years. The foil you see on the wall insulation serves three very important purposes. The most important is it will keep moisture from migrating through the walls and damaging the framing. Bathrooms always generate a bunch of moist air that can condense on the back side of the exterior siding during the cold part of the year. Moisture behind the siding is always a bad thing. This insulation is installed so there is an air channel to help any moisture back there to dry out and the foil helps keep too much of it from getting there as well. The second thing it does is act a radiant heat barrier. Since this blog is not focused on providing physics-based explanations, we'll just say this helps it be a better insulator than without it. The third thing all this foil does is help keep aliens from outer space from practicing mind control experiments on us while we are in the bathroom. Foil does a good job deflecting their evil gamma-rays back at them.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for smooth sailing the next couple of weeks and maybe we'll see a post with a picture of a finished bathroom.

The Quest for a Bathroom

The title of this post is not referring to the situation where you may have super-sized your ice tea at lunch a couple of hours ago and now you're rolling along that stretch of I-5 in the San Joaquin valley where they have a sign just past the exit you decided to not use. The signs tell you how many miles to the next services (read bathrooms and gas) and you have decided in order to make record time getting to your destination, you can easily wait til then. That's probably about when it would make sense to fuel up anyway. It's funny how once that decision has been made and you see in plain English there is thirty-something miles to the next services, your bladder sends a message to your brain that it made a huge error by not making you take the last exit, AND, to top it off, the low fuel warning light comes on. If you're anything at all like me, your brain goes into overdrive trying to solve the one problem you never could get right back in algebra. You know the one where a car is traveling 80 mph with someone that has only fifteen minutes to live unless they can find a bathroom and you have less than two gallons of fuel in a car that can go 18.26 miles on a gallon of gas if the headwind is less than 3 knots but has to be factored down ten percent for every tenth of a knot over three? That was the one word problem I always missed and karma has made me play it out in real life the past forty years every time I go on a road trip.

OK, now that you know what this post is not about, let's get to the point that it is about. The "new" algebra problem to solve is this. We have about twenty or so days to move into our hundred year old farmhouse and a super scientific poll has indicated a fully functional bathroom is an absolute requirement. The bathroom we started with is being gutted for the most part. I call this the bathroom we started with instead of "original" because you can see from the picture, it was remodeled sometime back in the 1960s and the house was built in 1908. It would hardly be accurate to call it original.

I think the second picture pretty much captures my opinion of bathroom decor in the 1960s. I broke out the sledge hammer and wrecking bar to make some badly needed adjustments. These adjustments included removal of the tub surround, sink, toilet, vanity, and first layer of flooring. Once these were out of the way, closer inspection revealed some water damage to the sub-floor and lower wall areas. I'm a firm believer in not ignoring signs like that so most of the sub-floor and all of the lower half of the wall surface will be replaced. As you can see in the picture, this means cutting and removing quite a bit of material. One very important Law of Remodeling is this: That which is removed MUST be replaced. Being the law abiding person I am and have been for at least the past several days, I will obey this to the letter.

That leads us to the question of what will replace all of that mess? That has been the fun part of this quest. After demolishing the 1960s bathroom, we discovered clues underneath the layers of stuff that told a cool story. The way the toilet drain was constructed, the house was built with indoor plumbing back 1908. At that time in rural areas, that was not too common because of expense. Under the bathtub surround, the original linoleum was still stuck to the subfloor boards. This means there was a clawfoot tub in there too. Under the sheetrock is good quality 1x12 planking, but unfortunately it has had tile scraped off of it in the past, and is too damaged to refinish. Above this planking is a layer of cloth-backed wall paper. In those days, this type of wallpaper was hung and painted. It's almost as thick as canvas and appeared to be very durable. Given these discoveries, it only made sense to put this bathroom back to as much of a historically correct state as possible. It was very fun to research the fixtures and materials that would have been in a bathroom at the turn of the last century. You can lose yourself for hours looking at pictures and imagining what our humble little hall bathroom could look like.

Here is what we have settled on and hopefully this gives you a sense of what it will take to complete this quest. The bathtub will be a clawfoot with a tall gooseneck shower. It will sit where the original one would have sat. There will be a wrap around shower curtain hung from a rod that hangs from the ceiling to keep the overspray from going everywhere. The toilet will be the high tank type where the bowl (the business part) is separated from the tank. The tank will be mounted on the wall behind the bowl and connected by a tall pipe. I'm told these types of toilets work very well and hardly ever get plugged because of the increased water velocity from having the tank so high above. The sink will be an open console with two fancy front legs to sit on. It will be similar to a pedestal sink in that it's open under the sink deck, but will have the legs at each corner. All of these old style fixtures had their plumbing exposed for the world to see, so the new pipes and subsequent finish work is being planned very carefully. In those days, trades people took their time and fit everything together neatly because they had to. The fixtures were not designed to "hide" all of the pipes so you could just put them where ever it was easy and fast to do.

With all of this said, here is the recap of the bathroom quest we are on. In the next twenty days we need to have completely new supply and waste pipes installed under the house. It will also be very helpful to have the new electrical wiring run through the walls and connected to the light switches and outlets. Then the floor will be put back into place and prepared so that 2" white hex tiles can be laid down and grouted. Then the above mentioned fixtures will be installed and hooked up. At that point, I hope we can put up new wall planks and get them painted. We will also tile the walls behind the tub and toilet with 3"x6" subway tiles. After all of that is completed, then it gets pretty easy with painting the planks and installing some light fixtures. Finally, I will put the door back on its hinges and call the job finished. Somehow I think it's about at least a million times easier to take care of the bathroom quest of an over-taxed bladder in the middle of the San Joaquin valley stretch of I-5.... But that's not nearly as much fun.

The New Farmville Reality Project

The way things have unfolded in 2011, the Farmville Reality Project will not produce near the bounty of fruits and vegetables it did in 2010. As a matter a fact, the location of the project has moved to a place known as the "Buckle". The official name of our new hometown is Arbuckle. It's a sleepy little town along I-5. The main crop in this area are almonds. As you can see in the pictures, the new Farmville has almond trees. They have not been well tended the past several years and there are only so many almonds a crew can eat in a year, so these trees will be removed. In their place will be a multitude of trees, vines, and open garden. The new place is two acres total, and I'm willing to bet this soon-to-be-former orchard is about an acre. At this time, no real detailed plan has emerged on what will go where. Here is a list of things under discussion for various reasons.

• Boysenberries- Lynda has promised to make plenty of pies when the berries are plentiful.
  



• Winegrapes- No further explanation needed.




• Peaches, Plums, Nectarines- If you've ever had the opportunity to eat these fully tree-ripened, you too would make it your life's mission to have these very close to your back porch.




• Olives- Home cured olives are always great to have around. We also made some olive oil last year and it turned out pretty good.




• Mandarins- The absolute best mandarin is the Owari Satsuma. They have the perfect balance of acid and sugar, plus the skins almost peel themselves.




• Cherries- Although they can be a chore to pick because of how small they are, Bing cherries are a real treat.




• Apples- Since they are so versatile in the kitchen, there will be a few different varieties so we can cook with them and eat right off the tree.




• All of the same great things we grew in 2010, plus anything else that might come to mind.

How's that for maintaining maximum flexibility for the new location? I'm thinking with an acre to play with, future meals are going to be filled with ample fresh produce straight from the garden. As we get the old almond trees cleared and start planting new trees, I'm sure plenty of other things not listed above will get thrown into the mix.

For now though, the immediate chore was to cut the four foot tall weeds down so the fire department won't come out and taze me til my ears bleed. Because we tend to make things up as we go along, the rig used was the bobcat in the first picture with a hydraulic driven, front mounted mower. I called around to various rental places and this appears to be a popular time of the year to get weeds chopped down. Most tractors with traditional rear mounted mowers were already reserved. While talking to one outfit, they guy mentioned this rig and said it doesn't leave a finely mowed surface behind but it will chop down tall weeds in tight places like nobody's business. After getting the hang of driving this thing, I have to say he was spot on. I was able to turn on a dime and poke the mower between the trees, under low hanging branches and even within inches of the barns. The controls were a couple of levers that are pretty much like joysticks on a video game. The tractor moves according to if the levers are pushed or pulled and speed depends on how far forward or back they go. Same with steering. It turns left if the right lever is pushed and the left lever is pulled because the wheels on one side will move in the opposite direction than the other side. Since it is what is known as hydrostatic driven instead of direct drive, you can stop and reverse course instantly without shifting a transmission. The two foot pedals control the height and angle of the mower deck. After ten minutes of getting used to operating it (and a few broken branches), I was able to flat out slaughter my most despised enemy, the weeds. It was noisy, bouncy, dusty work. For a guy like me that actually likes operating machines instead of computer keypads, it was very satisfying.

I took a picture of one of the weed-infested areas before mowing and then the after shot so you can see what a mess this old orchard had become. It's exciting to imagine the possibilities for creating the perfect home orchard and vineyard. At this time, the olives will likely be trellised to make picking them easier but the grapes might not be so the canopy can better protect them from the scorching sun. I guess we have plenty of research and homework to do as we develop this new location. Sometimes, that is almost as much fun as enjoying the proverbial fruits of your labor.

Still Cooking with Stuff from the Garden

All right, I realize it's been awhile since the last post. The single biggest reason is this time of year is not the best for working out in the garden. However, that does not mean the garden doesn't provide great material to work with in creating good meals. The pictures with this post are of tonight's dinner. As you can see, it fit on one standard size dinner plate and in a soup bowl. Don't let this simplicity fool you into thinking we don't eat well around Farmville these days. Quite the opposite, actually. First let's describe what this meal was and then we'll describe the ingredients, and as usual, my two cents on how those ingredients found their way to my pan tonight.

The main dish, if you have to have one, was a variation of a San Francisco specialty called "Joe's Special". For those that have never had it, use Google to find out what it is. Nothing too fancy, but it hits the spot when you're hungry. Since I like to use what I have on hand, this was made up of Italian Sausage, mushrooms, onions, garlic, brown eggs, Swiss chard, and cheddar cheese. The soup in the bowl is a butternut, wild rice, and smoked sausage soup. The garnish you see on the plate is garlic chives and spearmint. We'll get into that later, if I remember.

For the Joe's Special knock-off, the tie-in to the garden and other things I tend to discuss in this blog are this. The brown eggs are symbolic of another time back in the 1970s when Lynda and I had the dubious honor off going out to collect the eggs from her dad's chickens. He got this batch of Rhode Island Reds with the belief they were all going to be laying hens. As time went on, this pretty much was the case with the glaring exception of this one rooster. Apparently, those that sorted this batch by gender made a slight error on one of them. As he got bigger, he did the usual rooster stuff and tried to kill anything he thought should be killed because he thought so. Since Lynda was the one that did most of the chores at that point in time, she had to face this crazy rooster everytime she went to gather eggs from the hens that were laying by that time. Being the crazy rooster he was, he would charge at her and attack with full rooster force. One day she told me about this situation and me, being the protective kind of guy I am, decided to go out and take care of the egg gathering myself. This rooster did his usual routine and attacked, but this time, the person he attacked had a 2 by 4 in his hands. Being a former baseball player in junior high school, let's just say I hit at least a triple that day. It didn't do much much good though, because that stupid rooster kept on doing his psycho attack routine way after I batted him into the outfield. OK, back to the eggs. Those eggs from the Rhode Island Red hens were the best I ever had. They would have free run of the garden to peck at things and Lynda and I would go to Florin Feed and get a feed mix that was formulated for laying hens. The eggs we would gather were very good. The yolks were so intensely yellow and the taste was very rich. In the years since then, I have never had comparable eggs and I look forward to being able to raise some hens again and have a steady supply of great tasting eggs.

The soup was made with Farmville butternut squash and highlights why winter squash should be in everyone's garden. What other vegetable can you harvest in November and still have around to cook with in March of the following year? All I did to make sure these would keep this long is made sure they were clean and stored in a basket with good air flow. I put this basket in the corner of the shed and have been using squash from it all winter long. The wild rice in the soup is from a farm up in Fall River. Fall River is in the northeast part of California and right in the middle of some of the best fly fishing anywhere. It was nice to use an ingredient from that area and think about next summer, chasing trout in some of my favorite creeks around there. The smoked sausage was plain old store bought, but in the future, the plan is to get back into sausage making. Who knows, once we are settled in the new place, maybe I'll raise a hog or two each year and make sausage from my own pork. I just have to keep Lynda from naming them.

OK, I did remember to go back and talk about the spearmint and garlic chives used as a plate garnish. I stumbled on both of them while I was getting the Swiss chard. Since the plan is to move later this spring, it didn't make much sense to plant anything after the fall garden wound down. This pretty much means the majority of the garden is a jungle of weeds. Under these weeds were very healthy clumps of spearmint and chives. I was feeling a bit lazy and decided to wash and use them for garnish rather than chop and sprinkle over the food. Both would have added some interesting flavors to the dishes. It did show just how hardy some herbs can be and they are definitely going to be included in the next garden project.