I grew some Purple Sprouting Broccoli last year, but, just as I feared, it never made any of its famed, delicious broccoli heads.  It did grow to be quite the plant.  So I took the greens for eating, chopped the stalk low to the ground and buried it in logs and snow.  Here it is after digging it out yesterday:

Thats enough for me to pretend like it is already Spring.  And here is an area where Puck and I walked to as the sun set.  The plants are mullein gone to seed:

If you know me well, you know I’m not into kitschy items or nicknacks… but I have been looking for mushroom statues for the garden for a long time now. Specifically, red-capped mushrooms. Everything I’ve found is either really small or kind of ugly.

I had a gift certificate to Pier 1 Imports, which used to be one of my favorite stores. I spent nearly an hour there a few weeks ago trying to spend the gift certificate, and the only thing I could find was a mirror. (Which Chris thinks is ugly, hah).

Last weekend we went to Sawatdee for dinner and passed a Pier 1 store. We stopped in, and just about left without purchasing anything – when I spotted these:

They each stand about a foot tall – not as big as I had originally wanted, but a nice size. I’m not sure I’ll ever find exactly what I had in mind, but these finished off the gift certificate, and I think they’ll look great in the herb garden!

We took advantage of the nice 25ºF weather last weekend and brought Puck out for a lot of long walks. Apparently, my legs aren’t used to that kind of exercise yet, and I now have a stress fracture in my right leg. There isn’t much that can be done about it, except for staying off of it and walking lightly for 4 weeks. Fortunately I spend 10 hours at a desk every day anyway, so that shouldn’t be too hard.

It was a chilly 10 below when I woke up this morning, with wind chills well below that. Bitter cold, but a heat wave compared to the -27ºF air temps we had a few weeks ago. The forecast is suggesting that we may see 40 by the weekend though! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to enjoy it with this silly new leg injury.

I wanted to share a couple of summer photos from our garden two summers ago. It always warms me up to look at pictures of sunflowers. Enjoy!

And our random two-headed Skyscraper sunflower, which was kind of neat:

I used up the last of our red cabbage and onions the other week. We still have nearly an entire crisper drawer in the fridge full of carrots, which are surprisingly still crispy – and delicious! We have a grocery bag of them in the garage too – since they are frozen they aren’t good for eating raw, but they do work well in soups. We need to figure out a better storage method for carrots this year. We do have a second refrigerator in the garage, but I don’t know if we’ll have enough extra food to justify turning it on.

We still have quite a few potatoes, but even keeping them covered in the cool crawl space didn’t prevent them from sprouting. Chris is planning on planting them this year, so they won’t be wasted.

A delicious way to enjoy fresh grown food in the winter: sprouts!

I received two of these 8×10 Sproutmaster Trays for Christmas this year. They are stackable, and each come with a divider – so with the two trays, we can sprout up to 4 different kinds of sprouts at once! Or you can stagger start dates and always have a fresh supply. They store really well in the refrigerator too.

This weekend, we stopped by Fresh & Natural Foods, and I saw these dried sprouted mung beans sold in the snack aisle. I think we’ll have to take out the dehydrator soon to give that a try!

I added vegarden to a new permaculture social networking site called: Worldwide Permaculture Network.  I’m not sure I need another social networking site in my life, but its another way to get traffic to our blog.

(image from http://permacultureglobal.com/)