Why I Love Where I Live - Part 1 of ?

I was at the Knox Farmers Market again today. There was no organ music (I was there right at the beginning so maybe the organist arrived later) but I still am calling it a success.

I came home with asparagus, an invitation to a Fairie Festival, two free! tomato plants one of which will ripen purple tomatoes and the other will make ripe green ones (and who can complain if their free tomato plant is a bit leggy), some rhubarb...and a 50cent tab with the rhubarb lady (who also sells beswax - none of which is mine....yet) :)

Also, more news regarding radishes: you can eat the greens!! I did not know this until I chatted up a lady selling hers. She suggested putting them in salads and looking online for a recipe for radish green pesto. I may have to do a second planting of radishes!

I love this place. Imagine what could happen if I went to the farmers market with more than $7 and some change.

About Radishes

Today i ate a tiny radish from my garden. it was about the size of a peanut M&M, it was spicy and i didn't really enjoy it.

In spite of the fact that I do not particularly like radishes, I continue to plant them in my garden every year. The reasons are two-fold. 

The main reason being that they grow in spite of me and the groundhogs. I have a tendency to get busy and distracted, let the garden get covered in weeds and then the groundhogs come and eat off all my peas and beans and i cry and give up and forget to water, weed, OR harvest anything but a few overripe tomatoes from the one or two overgrown plants that miraculously survived me and the groundhogs. BUT groundhogs do not like radishes. and they grow faster than the weeds. so i plant them and eat a few and feel good about myself and my gardening prowess. the overripe tomatoes do not have the fresh victory of the first spicy little radish. Whatever else happens in the garden, at least i had radishes.

Also, for whatever reason, radishes take me back to childhood visits to Gram and Pap's house and picnic lunches on the porch. a very vague and kind of unsettling, yet comforting all at the same time, feeling that radishes and my grandparents are linked. (I never claimed to be normal)

So i plant a square or two of radishes. In spite of deciding not to waste the space on something that i don't' like to eat, somehow i get my hands in the dirt and out come the radish seeds and a few weeks later the first harvest is little spicy red bites of success and nostalgia. 

totally unrelated, i found a recipe to lacto-ferment radishes and i'm gonna try it once they get a little bigger (http://www.culturesforhealth.com/lacto-fermented-radishes-recipe/)

About blogging

in case you haven't noticed. i have not posted here in quite some time. the reason is simply this:

I reached a point where i felt like I could either blog about my life or live it.

I could plant and weed and water my garden or i could blog about how overgrown it had become.

i could take hikes and enjoy lazy afternoons with my husband or i could spend the whole time writing about it in my head and then feeling like a failure when the posts never made it to the internet.

I could have great adventures living my life and savoring the weird stuff that happens (for instance, there was an ORGAN at the farmers market yesterday....playing Phantom of the Opera....complete with a soprano. they were selling CD's but the whole effect was surreal) or i could worry about getting a good photo or to post along with the experience (nothing could really capture my farmers market experience. nothing. come visit me some friday, maybe they'll do an encore). and then fight with the internet connection when i actually DID manage to get the perfect photo or video and it refused. to. upload. (Windstream lies by the way. Highspeed service has been coming to me "next quarter" for the past 3 years!)

So i gave myself permission to stop. i tweeted micro-posts to Facebook (facebook.com/stasigh) when the moment was just too good to keep to myself and savored the rest, or called my mom or my sister or my sister in law and told them the story that was too perfect not to share. I basically let go of feeling guilty about blogging. or NOT blogging as the case may be in my case. I am not and will probably never be a professional blogger (doesn't that sound like a sweet gig though?) so why let a hobby make me feel bad.

I may dip back into it, some events and musings must be recorded for future generations and 140 characters is not enough to capture some of my most bizare experiences and deepest ruminations. and i can post via e-mail. but no promises. no pressure. and no guarantee that there will be a photo, or one that has anyhing to do with the post. we'll see. it seems a shame to abandon a 9 year old blog. 9 years is a long time.

...besides, i have some thoughts to share about radishes.