Planting a Cutting Garden

Take thy plastic spade,
It is thy pencil; take thy seeds, thy plants,
They are thy colours.
~William Mason, The English Garden, 1782

This year I am planting a cutting garden, I wanted to make sure the seeds were in before I left for my trip. I planted The Bee's Knees Sunflowers, Double Click Cosmos, Carnations, Dahlias, Salmon Queen Scabiosa, Ace of Spades Scabiosa, and Black and White Minstrel Dianthus. I love planning a garden, deciding what colors will look good together and when and how it will all bloom. The perennial garden is magical with iris coming up next to poppies and daises nestled up to chocolate mint, so beautiful and calming.

Lovingly,
The Writing Nag

Key Ingredient Makes Posting Recipes Easy

As part of my semester work I had to work in a science and what better science for a chef than the study of gastronomy. One of the ways I'm discussing the science of food is through lost recipes. So when I found this site that makes it really easy to add your Food Recipe I was excited. For food and recipe bloggers it has it all built in, I could have added a picture of this delicious pear and cranberry chutney and also added more descriptive copy. You can choose to make your recipe public or just share it will friends and family. Maybe this could be the start of a multi-generation family cookbook.

Although this is usually a holiday chutney it would also go great with summertime grilled chicken, turkey and pork tenderloin. I'm looking forward to enhancing my recipes with Key Ingredient. And also looking at the other cooks delicious family recipes. I'm working on adding my childhood neighbors Molasses Chews, of course I'll have to bake a batch first, photograph them, do a little taste tasting with a cold glass of milk and then I'll post it here.

Save 300-700 Plastic Bags a Year

I keep forgetting to post about the ChicoBag, thanks to my sister for sending me one. According to the ChicoBag literature using reusable bage will save 3-7 gallons of crude oil per American a year. I bought green bags for the supermarket but this one is really handy because it folds up into its own bag that can be thrown in your car or kept in your purse so you're never without your own reusable bag. It's the small steps...

Another Great Mark Twain Quote

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. ~Mark Twain

In less than one week I'll be in Listowel, Ireland. My tickets are purchased, my passport has been found and my suitcase is ready to be packed. I'm hoping when I get there I'll have some sort of Internet access so I can check in kind of regularly. If not I'll be gone from my blog for a good 10 days. There are a million little loose ends I need to tie up before I leave...I had forgotten how much time going back to school takes, all weekend I was tied to the computer getting in my 2nd packet of work. And now that that's in and critiqued I am diligently working on the 3rd packet which takes me about half way through my first semester. Luckily a big part of my 3rd packet is the poetry workshop I'm taking with Listowel poet,John McAuliffe. I'm very excited about that and the fact that my uncle is taking the workshop with me is a bonus.

Lovingly,
The Writing Nag

Catching the Changes of Your Mind

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. ~Vita Sackville-West

What Is A Friend?

Spring in the High Plains Desert

For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unploughed ground.

Lyndon Johnson