Coming back from a visit to Germany where I grew up and lived until I was 27, to me feels like a time of transition, and a good point to re-assess, think things over, and find ways to make adjustments.

One of my resolutions is to take myself more seriously professionally, and in that vein, I did my best to finish an assignment as soon as I had started up my computer.

And then there is summer. With the heat and the humidity came the bounty, and I am finally back to Pickles & Jams. However, after the jamming and jellying and by the time I have cleaned up my kitchen I am too exhausted to blog.

I will try to keep up in bits and pieces, and not always in chronological order. I am learning and documenting my failures and successes is part of the process.

So far I have made mulberry jelly and jam (I am not sure if it set enough, I may have to reprocess), cherry vanilla jam last night which came out great, pesto from the basil on my roof (this will be an ongoing project all summer long). Tonight I want to make some apple jelly from some "real" apples I picked up at the farmer's market. I need to look around for crabapples. I have a feeling there must be some apple trees on the campus of a nearby college.

I am off to deal with some paperwork on my desk. Hopefully I will be back later, writing about mulberries or cherries.  1:20:24 PM    

We came back Tuesday night. The trip was good. We had quality time with friends and family. I will report more later.

Culinary highlight: elderberry blossom "champagne." I never made anything like that before. It turned out great!

Yesterday I went to the grocery store and on the way home I discovered a mulberry tree - with ripe berries that I could actually reach! I went back today and picked some, and later today clambered around in various parks with dog-owners. It turns out dog-owners know their parks! Now the juice is draining from the berries and hopefully tomorrow I will make jelly. I have no experience whatsoever with mulberries, but foraging for them is a lot of fun.

My "garden" is growing wild. I have lots of tomatoes ripening, basil, eggplants etc. I have to spend some time with tidying up and growth control.

I have to go to sleep now. I am exhausted. Jet-lag and mulberries.  11:10:45 PM    

This blog will be on hiatus again (well, when is it not?); this time for three weeks as we will visit my family in Germany. I will not even attempt to sum up the goings-on of the past week. Instead I will post a few pictures from my "gardens," before they burst into bloom and hopefully fruit. Hey, if we had a webcam, we could watch things grow from afar.

One thing I would like to say though is, that my fast was the best thing I did for myself since I had my children. I feel rejuvenated, both physically and mentally. I am back to eating normal now, although more thoughfully and in smaller portions. I will definitely go back and fast again. I had some major detoxification happening on day six and I am not sure I got rid of all the nasty stuff since I broke the fast on day seven. I hope to talk more about it when I get back.

The windowboxes have filled in nicely.

In my backyard the lilies are just about ready to start blooming.

And here is my little rooftop farm:

  9:41:24 PM    

I somehow can't believe it. I am not hungry, have no headaches and lots of energy. I had a bad headache two days before I started when I ate only raw stuff, and a slight headache the next day.

I had a wonderful day yesterday. In the morning my had a kids' event in Midtown and it turned out much more fun than I anticipated. I was supposed to take my 6-year-old to a birthday party in Park Slope and since we had some time to kill I thought I get her some lunch and we go to Bryant Park. We discovered that the NY Public Library has a "Reading room" in the Park. How cool is that? It is just an area with a couple of tables and chairs and a few carts with book, magazines, newspapers and children's books. Perfect. I think we will go there a lot in the summer.

The birthday party was drop-off. I had one and a half hour to wander about by myself in Park Slope. I had so much fun. Lots of fun little shops, stoop sales and thrift shops. I didn't actually buy anything, except for a loaf of bread for my family. There were some interesting food shops too but I did not investigate those. And I did not look at any kids' stuff at all, although there was lots of that at the stoop sales.

I had such a great day yesterday. I think I had the hunger endorphins kick in. Of course the tasty vegetable juice I treated myself to helped as well. And walking around outside in great weather.

Today is ok, not great. Weather has been hot and muggy with storm in the evening. And another storm right now. Lots of rain coming down. Good thing I watered everything today. (Sorry no time to edit.)  10:30:57 PM    

Next week my little one will go to her center for two days since my husband has to be at school anyway. I will be able to get my work done, although just barely. And I will finish the culinary post eventually. I will start eating again, don't worry.  9:13:48 PM    

Speaking of culinary (or rather the absence thereof), I have decided to go on a fast. There were just too many little aches and pains, nothing "serious" but I felt my system needed a good cleaning. I had done a fast, a long long time ago, when I was in my 20s, and it was great. I did it for 12 days. This time I am only aiming at 5. This is my first day, I did two days of easing into it, eating only fresh vegetables and fruit. So far I feel great. It will be interesting since I still have to deal with food preparation. However, I can see the benefits already: today at breakfast, since I wasn't eating anything, I could use the time to read the paper!  10:17:57 AM    

I am in between visits from in-laws. Visit was good, I think. It is good for grandparents to spend time with their grandchildren, especially in view of health problems.

I focused the last week on my garden(s) (what am I talking about??? I have a postage stamp and three window boxes ...). In the back, I put the Japanese Maple in. It looks gorgeous. I still need to thin out the canopy a bit. I put in Sweet Autumn Clematis to keep the other Clematis company. They can mingle and we will have some nice bloom in the fall. General cleaning-up, put in some Impatients to brighten things up a bit. And I moved the Bleeding heart that had gotten so enormous it was crowding everything else.
I took the pansies and primrose out of the window boxes and planted them under the blueberry bushes. You never know, we might still get some mileage out of them. For me geraniums are the quintessential window box flower but since they don't get enough sun here, they actually never look really good. So this year I did something drastically different (and ironically, this was the first year I managed to overwinter my Geraniums). I assembled some houseplants that can't stop multiplying and added some colorful coleus. (I will post a picture once they have filled in a bit). Basically, there is Sweet Potatoe Vine and Wandering Jew trailing down the front, two different types of coleus and a polka-dot plant in the middle, along with a white Impatients (some flowers, I figured), and in the back there is a spider plant and a fern. It looks pretty good with unusual contrast of foilage.
I put my tomatoes and peppers on the roof and a few herbs and other things. Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, I worked for five hours climbing up and down that ladder with my backpack loaded up with plants and compost. I thought my back would break. The potting soil I had used last year had not drained very well so I really needed to refresh the pots with lots of Perlite and compost.

And speaking of compost, I had to move that around too, because my bins were full. Again. I wish I had room for a third bin.

So much for was my gardening craziness. I also repotted most of the houseplants and put the geraniums in pots on the steps. I will post pictures eventually. The bizarre thing is that while I dig around in the little dirt I have, all around me neighbors are putting in paving and building walls and covering up that last bit of dirt as if it were the evil enemy. Oh well.

I still have to do the tree-pit in the front. That's the toughest habitat. Dogs, people, cars, salt in the winter. Whenever I have an extra plant that looks tough I put it in there. Last fall I put in a hosta and it came up this spring. Then someone actually dug it up and took off with it. I hope it found a good home.

Culinary Stuff

I delegated most of the cooking this week to my spouse. Being cooked for is nice. I could get used to it. We went out once to Little Giant again. I had wild asparagus for the first time. It was amazing. Pencil-thin with relatively large tips. Very green and fresh tasting. Apparently some guy from Vermont drives around and sells it to people in the know. I don't think he will be coming by my house, though. The other noteworthy thing I had there was a Mojito with rum they had spiced themselves. I managed to coax the ingredients out of the waitress. Speaking of drinks we were at a BBQ today and I had excellent home-made beer. It was seriously good beer. Almost makes we want to start brewing. But my neighbor said he had been tinkering around for four years and pouring a lot down the drain. Hmm, maybe I can trade some canned goods? Or some spiced rum?  11:05:17 PM