Tag: blueberry

Garden

Gallivanting in my garden

Jessica Smith

I am loving this spring — the weather has been amazing and we are enjoying it tremendously!

It’s that time of year again when my nails are always caked in dirt from playing in my gardennnnnnn. I spent days in April enlarging my garden, like I do every year. I have two main areas that I plant in every year, plus my berries! This year, I expanded both of my beds and it didn’t take long to fill the extra space — I already don’t know how I got by without it last year. Annnnnd, no surprise, I already have plans to make next years larger, too. I have a real problem!

This year, I planted tomatoes, eggplant, squash, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, potatoes (sweet, white & blue), onions, peppers (bell & spicy), cantaloupe, watermelon and a few more strawberry plants. I’m probably forgetting a few things, too!

Brian and I also lined all of the beds with new landscape timbers and mulched the berry beds. It’s been a lot of work, but so worth it.

Now I just have to be patient and wait for everything to grow. That’s the hard part of gardening — patience!

In other news, I chopped off all of my hair 🙂

It’s a different sort of before & after for my blog, but here ya go!

Before:

Long-Hair

And 10-inches later….

After:

Short-Hair

I’m donating my long locks to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. My new hair feels so much better — and just in time for the warm weather!

Garden

Gardengardengardengarden gardennnnnn

Jessica Smith

Imagine me singing the title of this blog post.

I got back from New York on Friday — four days away from my garden! … and my husband and my dog. But who cares about them (just kidding!). They don’t change much in four days, but a garden sure does. I came back to lettuce that was almost past its prime, cukes ready to be picked, my first two ripe tomatoes, squash, onions and a few cherry tomatoes! Oh, and a whole cup of blueberries! A WHOLE CUP!

My raspberry plants are growing by the minute and my strawberries are giving us a few berries each day still.

I’m so pleased! I spent yesterday clearing out all of he lettuce and onions, so now I need to figure out if I can plant something else in their spot or if it is too late. I think it might be too late.

I also need to figure out if my blueberries need to be moved around a bit. I have one bush that doesn’t doesn’t seem to be doing so well. I might move it into a sunnier spot, but that means I’ll need to transplant two raspberry bushes, too. It might be worth it if it will get those blueberries more sun.

Garden, Graphic Design, Life

Farmers Markets — Eat local!

Jessica Smith

This post is going to ramble a bit. Consider yourself warned.

I am not a huge fan of summer weather. Maryland summers are humid, hot, sticky, stormy… I am more of a spring and fall weather kinda girl. That being said, summer really is the best season ever. The days are longer, schedules free up, activities are more active… and my favorite… the food! My garden has been doing really well this year. And just like last year, I want to really expand my planting area in the future. I only did a little expansion this year, mainly because I didn’t want to fork over too much cash money.

I’ve got 10 tomato plants, peas, strawberries, green beans, lettuce, peppers… all sorts of goodies. And what I don’t grow in my garden, I have been really enjoying shopping for at local farmers markets! It’s great to eat local foods and to support small businesses and farmers.

I am so lucky that we have a farmers market ON CAMPUS at the University of Maryland. Every Wednesday I walk over and buy delicious, fresh goodies. This week I bought blueberries, raspberries and tomatoes. Did I mention we also have a sustainable food truck!?! I bought a lamb sandwich and fresh lemonade. It was AMAZING. The vendors sell so much yummy stuff (hormone-free meats, fresh-baked pastries, dipping sauces, fresh eggs…). You name it, you can probably find it there — well, as long as it is in season.

As if that wasn’t awesome enough, Howard County offers a traveling farmers market. I’ve only gone once at the beginning of the season, but it too was a great experience. I bought fresh eggs and some yummy greens. Fresh eggs are amazing. I want my own chickens… too bad my dog would probably play with them to death.

I’ve really gotten into eating fresh, organic produce lately so I am going to interrupt my own post to share some awesome blogs I’ve stumbled upon recently and I love. If you are interested at all in eating organic or less processed foods, check out these three awesome blogs: Food Babe, 100 Days of Real Food & Deliciously Organic. I’ve got a whole organic chicken in our crockpot cooking for dinner tonight using a recipe from 100 Days of Real Food. My step sister also has an impressive blog about eating healthy: Fuel My Family. They are all awesome — check ’em out.

Also, don’t worry. I’m not about to turn this into a health food blog. Just figured I’d share since I started rambling about vegetables today 🙂

OK, back to farmers markets.

The real reason I wanted to write this post was to talk about how Dana, my bff, has started selling her baked goods at a farmers market in Laurel! That’s right, Little King’s Confections will be at the Main Street Farmers Market EVERY THURSDAY! I am so proud of her 🙂

Little Kings

Little Kings Farmers Market

Little Kings Confections

Little Kings Confections Market

OK, ramble almost over. See that logo on Dana’s booth? Yup, I designed it. It was really simple to do in Adobe Illustrator. I used the fonts Lavenderia for “Little King’s” and Code Light for “Confections.” The crown was a free clip art that I swapped from black to white. It is adorable 🙂

 

Little Kings Confections logoo

Happy ramblings & happy Friday!