Our sweet city garden is giving us lettuce (collards and berries are next!)
The lettuce, the dirt, the grass…it all smells really good right now.
We are spending our evenings in the back yard (or the parent version of evening…Asher is an early to bed type) feeding the neighbor’s pig and poking at our lettuce and dreaming big about what we want to grow this summer and some day. “Some day” is a big topic of conversation amongst novice gardeners. Or at least these two novice gardeners.
Collards!!
One of last year’s tomatillo husks still floating around:
(I want to grow these again just to have the husks blow around our yard, they’re such gorgeous little lanterns.)
And our broccoli starting to peek out:
Once inside we toss together our favorite spring dinner, Shrimp on salad:
(those eggs up there are from the recent visit to my aunt and uncle’s farm in NC)
We typically marinate the shrimp briefly in a little olive oil with lime juice and some salt and pepper. (Never overlook the value of just tossing your shrimp etc in a bag with whatever non-creamy salad dressing you have on hand though, so easy, and very good!) Then we toss the shrimp in the hot pan for a few minutes, cut up whatever veggeis we have on hand and top the whole mess with some shredded hard cheese (I think this is Asiago?) and a little cracked pepper and some dressing. BA (that’s Before Asher) I used to make our vinaigrette most nights, but these days we’re quick to reach for the bottle. The salad dressing bottle that is, lest you think that making a salad drives me to drinking.
I love love love this time of year, love seeing everything emerging and growing, love seeing what everyone is eating and planting, love walking barefoot to the back yard and nightly ritual of standing with the hose while The Young Sir toddles around. I love shyly hiding my hands because there’s a little dirt under my nails and talking with my mom about what we’re planting where, and dreaming about the Saturday morning market run. It’s good to get growing.
***ALSO: Asher’s Birth Story is being featured today on Spearmint Baby, please consider jumping over to show them some love, and thank you Shari for sharing our stories! If you’re visiting from Spearmint baby, heya! Thanks for checking things out!***
Flux Capacitating 
Small world! So I’m at work, and click on my friend’s blog who lives in Kansas City. I’m avoiding work, so I click on a link on her blog to find another blog in KC. From there, I click on another link and find the Spearmint baby blog. I read Asher’s birth story and thought it was interesting you had a midwife named Donna and delivered on the 4th floor – I’m in Charlottesville! LOL! Many of my friends have delivered babies with Donna and I personally gave birth on the 4th floor of Martha Jefferson. Had to leave you a comment, and say “SMALL WORLD.” Love your blog – it’s beautiful 😉
That is so funny! I love that the vastness of the internet is ultimately no match for how small the world really is! I also cracked up at your avoiding work comment…what did people do before the internet? 😉 Thanks for checking it out, I hope to run into you at some point!
Amelia, I’m not sure how I missed it before, but I just clicked over to read Asher’s story. And post-Mother’s Day, how appropriate to have his birth memorialized in such a beautiful way. Your writing about not wanting to sound like you have an agenda when it comes to the birth of your child(ren) brought to mind a line Ann Voskamp wrote that resonated deeply with me, and I’m paraphrasing here: “This is my story, it is descriptive of my life, not prescriptive for anyone else’s.” I love that because too often the fear of judgment or some actual judging gets in the way of learning from another’s experience. Love you.