I Am Small Town Arkansas {Blogger of the Month}

Written by Miss May 2014, Talya Boerner

As the AWB calendar girl for May, I was told I could write about anything. Okay, probably not anything, but you know what I mean, right? Today I’ve decided to talk about something that’s been weighing on my mind—small town Arkansas.

As a kid I had big plans to escape the farm and Arkansas. I hid behind what I thought I wanted to be or was told I should become. It took me years to figure out I owe a debt of gratitude to the small towns that created me. We’ve all heard the saying you can take the girl out of the country… Well, it’s true. For me anyway.

I am small town Arkansas.

I wouldn’t be the same person had I not grown up in the Delta just down the road from Cottonwood Corner between the Keiser turnoff and Osceola. I just wouldn’t.

But here’s the reality. Throughout Arkansas and rural America, our small towns struggle to reinvent themselves. Towns that prospered and thrived fifty years ago, even twenty years ago, search for creative ways to attract industry and grow population. Historic downtowns sit partially empty and void of activity, vacant big box stores have fallen into disrepair in favor of newer, giant super centers near the interstate.

It’s our own fault. We worked ourselves into this depressing situation as the culture of our country evolved. The American dream changed.

Once upon a time, the world was smaller. Families raised children in and around these bucolic towns. Public schools provided solid educations. Kids played baseball together down at the field behind the gym, then sat side by side on hard wooden pews in church every Sunday morning. Yet after growing up as best friends, they left home for college or jobs in larger cities with more opportunity. Maybe in Arkansas. Maybe not.

Many never returned.

As a generation sought a future elsewhere, small towns began to suffer as the tax base diminished. Factories pulled out. Small business owners retired or passed away leaving no one to take their place. Schools deteriorated. Families moved in search of better education and higher paying jobs. The cycle repeated.

I am as guilty as the next person.

With the farm in my rearview window, I graduated from Rivercrest High School in Mississippi County, moved to Waco, Texas for college, and returned only for occasional visits. For almost thirty years I have lived in Dallas. Although I frequently return home to visit our family farm, I never intended to live or work or raise my children there.

Now I understand.

Our small southern towns need us. You and me. It’s our responsibility. These are the places most special to us, filled with folks who know us best, people who remember us as cheerleaders or math whizzes or simply Thomas Tate’s daughter. These towns helped make us who we are today.

Yes, the houses may seem small and tired, and the windows of the junior high are covered in plywood. The cotton gin, once the hub of town, was torn down years ago. But we remember what was once good and worth saving.

It wouldn’t take much for me to pack up and move home. My husband? He’s not so convinced. He has his own Arkansas town to remember. But even so, there are things we can do. Support local businesses. Visit. Spend money. Spread the word. Participate. Do something. Anything. Before these towns circle the drain.

The next time you plan a three day weekend, think about the special places in your own back yard before you spend time and money elsewhere. Arkansas is over-flowing with scenic spots and fascinating history. Pull off the beaten path. Stop at that diner or museum. Maybe you’ll discover something unusual about your town or county or state. Maybe you’ll learn something incredible about yourself.

May 18, 2014

Sunday Link-Up {May 18, 2014}

May 16, 2014

Janeal Yancey: Blueberry Burger {Foodie Friday}

By Janeal Yancey of Mom at the Meat Counter

Everyone loves hamburgers. They are easy to fix, tasty, kids love them, and they remind me of summer.

On the other hand, a good hamburger is usually high in fat. Everyone knows the best burgers are made from the fattest beef. They’re juicier, more tender, tastier… just better. So, if you are watching your weight, you indulge on fewer burgers.

We all know that we can buy very lean ground beef. Ground sirloin is 90% lean and some stores offer ground beef as lean as 96%. If you buy that lean of beef for burgers, they turn out dry and tough.

When I was working on my graduate degree, I found some really interesting articles where berries were mixed with lean ground beef to improve the flavor, juiciness, and texture of the burgers. It worked so well that one state was mixing berries in the lean ground beef used for school lunches.

Now that I’m a mom of an almost-6-year-old, I am trying to figure out new ways to make healthy foods that a picky little girl will actually eat. So, I decided to give the blueberry burgers a try.

Cooking with me is always a little bit of an experiment. My husband and I both have PhD’s in Meat Science, so we are always thinking of ways to try something new or use an ingredient in a novel way.

You can google ‘blueberry burgers’ and several recipes and articles come up. Basically, I just winged it based on my research in graduate school.

I decided to try my experimental cooking at work where I wouldn’t be interrupted by little helpers.

I bought some 93% lean ground beef and blueberries.

I bought exactly one pound of ground beef and the blueberries came in a 6 oz. package. I wanted to use about a 4:1 beef to berry ratio, so I very scientifically removed about 2/3 of the blueberries from the package to use. Then, I picked the stems off the berries and chopped them up until I was bored with chopping.

I added a little salt and pepper (not enough, I was later informed) and made 5 patties. The extra weight of the fruit extended my ground beef, so I could make an extra patty. They did look a little odd…

I cooked the patties on a little electric griddle set to 400° F. I turned the patties every two minutes and used a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. I made sure the patties reached 165° F, and removed them from the griddle. It only took about 8 minutes for them to cook.

When checking the temperature, you want to make sure you get to the center of the burger. I like to insert the thermometer from the side and check it twice. Ground beef needs to reach at least 160° F in the center to make sure it’s safe to eat. Checking the burger’s temperature also keeps you from overcooking your burgers and letting them dry out. You have to be careful with these lean patties, because the thermometer may cause them to crumble apart. It’s nothing a good piece of cheese can’t fix, though.

When I chopped the blueberries by hand, you could still see the pieces of blueberry in the cooked patty.

My finished product was tasty, tender, and juicy. I took a plate of hamburgers around my office and let people try them. Only one person said he didn’t like them, and he just doesn’t like blueberries. When I told them that my burgers were made with 93% lean beef, they were very surprised that they tasted so good.

I was pretty pleased with my little experiment, but I wasn’t sure that kids would eat them if they could still see the berry pieces, so I decided to try a follow-up experiment. I used the food processor to puree my blueberries before I added them to the ground beef.

This time the raw burgers turned out a little purple. The pureed berries also made the patties feel wetter when I was making them, but they cooked up about the same as the chopped version.

Even cooked, the berries made the beef just a little bit purple, especially on the inside, and some people said that they could taste the blueberry flavor, but they still liked them.

I made these on a Friday at my office, so we added cheese, cooked up some fries and had a little lunch. Everyone loved the blueberry burgers and were amazed at how good they tasted in spite of being so lean.

Using 93% lean ground beef rather than 80% lean reduces the calories in one cooked patty from 210 to 154. The blueberries also add fiber, vitamins, and antioxidants to the burger. So they are healthier!

The antioxidants in the blueberries should also help make the burger taste better if you keep them as leftovers. The offensive flavor that develops in leftover ground beef is caused by oxidation, and the blueberries prevent it from happening. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any leftover blueberry burgers to sample.

Blueberries aren’t the only fruit that would work in burgers. I’ve seen examples of people using cherries, raspberries, elderberries, and dried plums (also known as prunes). Just mix them in at about 20 to 25% of the ground beef. With drier fruits, like prunes, you may need to use less. Fruits in meat should work in other dishes, too, like meat loaf, sausage, even chili. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Janeal Yancey

grew up in the small town of Cross Plains, Texas and attended Texas Tech University. She became interested in meat science through FFA and collegiate meat judging teams and decided to go to graduate school in meat science at Kansas State University. At Kansas State, she received both her Masters and PhD in meat science. She is currently at the University of Arkansas where she conducts research on many aspects of meat quality, from beef tenderness and ground beef color to the textural properties of bacon.

In 2011, Janeal entered the world of blogging with her Mom at the Meat Counter Blog. From this platform, she writes about meat and the meat industry from her point of view. As a mom, she knows that all moms have lots of questions about what they feed their families and as a meat scientist; she can answer a lot of their questions. Her posts range from topics about food safety and meat handling to the beef product known in the media as ‘pink slime’ and antibiotics in the meat supply.

Janeal and her husband, Ed, also a meat scientist, live in Huntsville, AR where they raise two wild daughters, Vallie and Wyn, and gentle Simmental cattle.

May 15, 2014

Me vs. The Broccoli

by Georgiaberry Mobley

Broccoli. I want to be its friend. I don’t want to fight with it, but as my broccoli harvesting season comes to an end, I am battling with this stuff tooth and claw. I try to understand broccoli. What does it need? What does it want? What is its . . . motivation? Here is where the battle begins. Broccoli wants to make seeds. Its sole motivating purpose is to set a bunch of seeds in pointy pods on tall spindly stems that come shooting up from the middle of the plant. And this is the root of our conflict. Broccoli and I, we are at cross purposes. I want broccoli to STOP when it has formed its nice big head of flower buds, to stop there and not go on with the seed-making process, not go on to fulfill its destiny and bloom.

My own sole motivating purpose is to harvest a nice big heavy head of tightly packed broccoli flower buds. That is what we are eating when we eat broccoli – the tender, delicious flower bud. You see, I am growing a market garden. I provide veggies to nearby families who have subscribed to my “Sunshine for Dinner – The Farmer’s Market that comes to you.” service. Every other week, I show up on my customer’s doorstep with a big bag of homegrown veggies, and I want them to be delighted when they unpack that bag. In order for that to happen at this time of year, I need broccoli. In the summertime, it is all about tomatoes, but in the earliest months, broccoli is about the only wow-factor I can provide. The cool weather garden is full of leaves – lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, bok choy, mustard, turnip greens, collard greens, arugula. Delicious leaves, but leaves nonetheless. That can get a little boring. I need to provide my customers with something besides leaves in their veggie bag. Broccoli always makes them smile. Broccoli, however, has only one thing on its mind: making seeds. It does not care about my needs at all.

So, broccoli and I go head-to-head. Broccoli is tricky. I start out being nice to it. I try to gain its cooperation. I plant it in a comfy covered hoop house. I give it a nice bed to grow in, full of compost. I give it plenty of space – broccoli is BIG.

A plant can easily grow to four feet across. I water it and weed it. But this year, right from the start, it fought me. It started putting on heads when the plants were only about a foot tall. That tiny stalk and puny leaves could never support the lush heavy heads of broccoli that I need so my veggie-loving foodies will smile when they unpack their Sunshine for Dinner bag. Frown.

This is the tricky part. When what the plant wants (to make seeds) is the same as what we want (to harvest ripe fruit) then things are great. We work together to that end, because the seeds it wants to make are conveniently within the ripe fruit we want to harvest. The tomato. The apple. The blueberry. The eggplant. The pepper. Perfect. Or consider the leaves that I mentioned before. Lettuce. Chard. I fully support their leaf growing habits. I enable. I am in total peaceful accord with the easiest crops that just grow leaves. Like my dear friend, kale. It is happy to keep growing leaves for a year and a half before it wants to make any seeds. Eighteen long glorious months when I have no responsibilities besides starting a sprinkler every now and then when it doesn’t rain. I can just lay in a hammock while the kale grows, rousing myself once a week to pluck off leaves to bring the doors of my customers and fill the standing order at the health food store, so the people of Texarkana can buy kale to juice and make salads and add to green smoothies. Everybody’s happy! Alright, maybe the hammock thing is a bit of fiction, but it remains that we can join with these vegetable plants in common purpose. It’s easy! We help them achieve their goal. We revel, together, in the bounty of the summer garden. Leaves and luscious ripe fruit.

But not broccoli. Poor broccoli. We have an adversarial relationship. Just at the moment its buds are perfectly formed and it is ready to burst into glorious flower, BAM! Well, more like, WHACK! There I am with the knife. It worked so hard to make this huge (I hope it is huge, anyway) head of tight blossom buds, to create a thick sturdy stem for support, to grow a beautiful rosette of tremendous leaves for harvesting the sun’s energy, all to fuel this process – its purpose in life – to make its seeds. WHACK. Into my basket. I strike the first blow in our battle. For that one plant, in our first confrontation, I win this round. But behind me, 70 other plants are quietly growing.

At this point, the only thing I have on my side is the knife. Broccoli has all the tactical advantages. The weather is on its side. Longer days. More sun. Warmer soil. All sending messages to the plant – stretch! Don’t just sit there in a nice tight head anymore, the time is NOW! The pollinators are here! Do you hear them buzzing? Quick! Stretch! And a plant hormone starts to flow, telling the stems growing between the many tiny flower buds in its nice tight head to start to grow and lengthen. While I am not watching, the stems stretch and bloom and reach up. Broccoli never rests. It never sleeps. It never watches TV or cooks dinner or goes away from home to work. It is relentless. It keeps growing. Inside the buds, yellow flowers are forming.

I have a market garden – I sell broccoli, so I need it to be perfect on a certain day of the week. Monday is the delivery day for Sunshine for Dinner. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I am there with my knife. Even as I harvest, it is growing. I am almost afraid to turn my back on it. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, it is growing. Each head is changing as fast as it can into a giant bouquet of yellow flowers. Can I make it slow down?

I try. I cut the heads that are starting to stretch and not looking so pretty. The kind that would give my customers a puzzled expression instead of a smile. “What the heck is this? The tag said there would be broccoli in this bag. Where is it?” My family eats them, the culls. When I cut off a central head of broccoli, whether it is perfect or a little loose, the feedback system in the plant is interrupted. Whatever was telling it, “Our buds are formed and perfect, now STRETCH!” is abruptly gone. That head of buds is no longer sending its message, it is in my harvest basket. The plant, I hope, resets into “make buds” mode. Now we are in phase two of the battle.

On the left, the plant is still making buds. It is compact with large leaves. On the right, the plant has entered “seed mode.” It has smaller leaves and its buds have stretched up and bloomed.

The central head is gone, but the broccoli plant also makes buds all up and down the stem. Where each leaf is attached, a group of cells starts to grow in response to the “make buds!” order. I can get broccoli to produce a whole new set of smaller but still smile-producing heads. I watch the plants to see which ones have already beaten me by passing completely into seed mode. These plants are growing smaller leaves. They are not putting their energy into making more buds. They are DONE! It is seeds or nothing for them. Poor things, they don’t get the satisfaction of finally ripening their seeds – I pull them up and toss them to the chickens.

One by one, despite my efforts, the plants move into seed mode. It is inevitable. It happens around me, one day as I am hunting among the few big squat leafy plants still giving me some small buds, I find myself surrounded by fluttering spires of yellow flowers and buzzing bees. Time for broccoli to go. The dramatic pulling up of spent broccoli plants commences and the chickens feast on them and I think, I wish I had some pigs to feed this to. Sigh. The broccoli goes gentle into that good night.

Their space is needed in the garden. Things that bear fruit need to be planted. I have other smile-inducing produce to add to the bags for now. Under the leaves, my customers find new potatoes. Big smiles. They were tired of broccoli, anyway.

Georgiaberry Mobley grows broccoli and other veggies in her hometown, Fouke, Arkansas. Since 2007, she and her husband, Kandan, have been selling their locally grown food in the Texarkana area through their Sunshine for Dinner subscription veggie delivery service. It’s the farmer’s market that comes to you! In her spare time, she teaches their two kids at home, is an active La Leche League leader, and helps out with their landscape design/maintenance firm. Find out more about her market garden and farm life, and how to sign up for Sunshine for Dinner at http://www.SunshineForDinner.com. Join the conversation on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SunshineforDinner. You can also find Georgiaberry on pinterest at http://www.pinterest.com/georgiaberry/ and Instagram at http://instagram.com/georgiaberrym.

May 14, 2014

5 out of 6 Ain’t Bad {Wordless Wednesday}

By Paige Ray of Approaching Joy

Paige grew up in South Arkansas knowing that her mission in life was to help people and she’s spent the last ten years figuring out how to make that happen. She believes in the power of curiosity, kindness, creativity, and red lipstick. She blogs at approachingjoy.com and has a brand new site at paigemeredith.com. She’d love for you to come say hi.

May 13, 2014

Easy Photo Blogging with Google+

By Alison Chino

Photos are the first thing people see when people arrive at your website. Professional looking photos can set a blog a cut above the rest for sure, but I have to admit that I have come very slowly to the art of photography.

For the longest time, I said that I was a writer, not a photographer. I was afraid that if I spent more time on photos that I would have less time for writing. And to some extent, this has been true. However I have found a few time savers and shortcuts for those of us who want to have pretty pictures but are not ready to take the plunge as a serious photographer.

For the sake of this post, when I say “serious photographer,” I mean someone who has a very big camera, a Macbook and Photoshop. I’m not saying you can’t be serious without those things, but I am intimidated by the combination of those three because of the investment they would take from me, both in time and in money. Maybe. One. Day.

But for today, here’s what I am doing to create the best possible photos for my blog.

First, I take loads of pictures on my iPhone, which I edit with Snapseed and VSCOCam and then send straight to my blog via a WordPress App. (I wrote a guest post all about using IPhone photos for blogging that includes more detail about this.)

Back in December, I won a real camera. Seriously. I could not believe it. I submitted an Instagram photo to a real photo contest and actually managed to emerge with a new camera. Which I am still learning to use. But I am not ready for the plunge into Photoshop. So here’s what I am using:

Google+!

Here’s why:

1. Accessiblity

Uploading and storing my pictures on Google+ is super easy! I did not have to purchase or install anything new. I just open Google Chrome and get started from my Google+ Dashboard.

2. Easy Editing

I can edit photos within Google+ with Snapseed photo tools, so it’s already familiar to me from using Snapseed on my phone.

Snapseed Edit Options on the Right

HDR options

My favorite edits are these more subtle tuning options.

Image Tuning in Google+

3. Auto Awesome Photos

Google+ is smarter than me! Seriously, when I upload photos, Google+ immediately recognizes groups of pictures and creates Auto Awesome images for me without my telling it too. It combines scenery images to create panoramas, combines series of photos to create animated gifs and it even combines several family pictures to create the one that has the best set of smiles. When I first realized that Google was doing this with my pictures, my mind was blown. (Easily impressed, much?)

Google generated Panoramic Image of Ireland

Google generated Panorama in HDR

4. Easy Sharing, Easy Accessing

I can choose to share albums or keep them private. And unlike a Facebook album, I can then access those albums from anywhere. I can grab a photo from my phone through a Google+ app if I want to use it on Instagram or Twitter. I can access them for my blog through a Google+ Plugin that adds a little icon to my dashboard that brings up all my Google+ photos.

Google+ Album Access

Viewing Google+ Albums from within WordPress

When you click on that little icon, it brings up all your Google+ albums.

Set your image width in Options

On the options you can choose the size width at which to import them, and because Google+ is hosting the images, they load immediately on your page.

Select the photos you want to insert

I just select and insert them.

Your images are in code on your post

In your post on your dashboard, the photos are all in code, but when you preview your post, you can see your images.

Preview your post to see your images.

Yay! Beautiful pictures for your blog from Google+!

I would love to hear from you all what you use most to edit photos for your blog! Do you use your phone, a big DSLR or even stock images from other sites?

Do tell!

Do you have any Google+ questions I didn’t answer? Ask me on Twitter!

May 12, 2014

Taking Back My Crayons {Blogger of the Month}

Taking Back My Crayons
Written by Miss May 2014, Talya Boerner

As a creative kid, I was always coloring, doodling, or crafting something in the middle of the kitchen table while Momma cooked supper. I loved words and usually had my nose stuck in a book. The thought of writing a school paper made me downright giddy. I wrote my first autobiography at age nine. (A little boring but hey, I hadn’t done anything yet.)

At some point like most kids, I put away my crayons in favor of more “practical” endeavors like algebra and basketball. And when I headed for college Daddy said, “If I’m paying, you’ll get a business degree.”

So I did.

An economics degree wasn’t a stretch for me, after all, I grew up processing farm payroll EveryFridayNight for as long back as I can remember. To be clear, Momma was the one actually typing up checks and paying the farm hands. My little sister and I “helped” using old deposit slips and Monopoly money. Each week we took turns being the farmer and the banker. Both jobs were incredibly stressful.

Since I wanted to escape the farm, I chose the only other path clear to me. Banking. And I’m not knocking it. Banking offered a multitude of opportunities, yet after twenty plus years, I walked away.

To write.

I took back my crayons. And guess what? They still have that same sweet smell.

A month or so ago, I attended the Delta Symposium at Arkansas State University, a truly unique event encompassing the Arkansas Delta. My Delta. As I listened to discussions on William Faulkner and southern humor I thought about how my life had evolved in the ~~two~~ three (I’ve lost count) years since I left the bank. Not only the change in my day-to-day routine from making loans to writing stories, but in my new community.

Talk about growing your garden…stick with me for a moment while I get a bit abstract. My garden is now filled with people and experiences that never existed to me as a banker. Doing what I was truly meant to do has been life-altering. I have pushed myself, spread stronger roots, blossomed. Instead of working with black and white and debits and credits, I have 64 brilliant colors for drawing and blending and shading and creating. And there’s a sharpener in the back to keep everything fresh.

Arkansas Women Bloggers has been a key part in building new relationships and opening doors for me. So have the friends I’ve made at Hemingway-Pfeiffer and The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow where I attend retreats as often as possible. Writing is solitary work—most days it’s just me, my dogs and my MacBook. Having a community of like-minded friends has kept me motivated and focused, helped me tap back into my creative side.

Are you still reading? If so, I thank you and count you among my community. Now it’s back to creating and tending to my garden.

See ya next week!

May 11, 2014

Sunday Link-Up {Mother’s Day 2014}

May 9, 2014

Whitney Sutherland: Made for Mom {Foodie Friday)

By Whitney Sutherland of Running with Whit

Gloria and Whitney Sutherland… when it comes to recipes, this apple didn’t fall far from the tree!

It is a fair to say that I learned how to cook and appreciate food from my awesome Mom! Growing up, I remember looking through her worn selection of recipes in the shoe box sized recipe box that she kept. The recipes within were on all different types of index cards. Some were written out in my mom’s handwriting, while others were just torn out magazine recipes taped to a card. Without fail, most of the cards in this box had a short note handwritten on the card and then the month/year that my mom had first prepared the recipe.

Even though there were 100’s of recipes within her recipe box, I still as a grown adult crave a few of my mom’s most signature dishes. As a kid, the most special meal of the year was always your birthday dinner because my mom would let you select your menu… mine usually was fajitas or meat loaf. For mom though, her extra special day and meal should be on Mother’s Day! It’s her chance to be pampered and spoiled! While you are spoiling mom, why not do so with her with her favorite recipe! With my mom now living in Arizona it is a little hard to cook for her but just the same I’ll be preparing one of her signature and favorite recipes this weekend =Taco Salad with homemade French dressing.

My mom received this dressing recipe in the late 60’s before she and my father were married. Her future mother-in-law connected her with a woman named Margaret Simpson who was living in California near where myNavy father was stationed . My mom went to visit my father and stayed with Mrs. Simpson. She still recalls that Mrs. Simpson introduced her to artichokes and avocados during that spring break trip. She also served her meals on fine china which began my mom’s love of china and a well set table. It’s true…my mom loves to have a beautifully set table for family meals and always includes a floral Ikebana arrangement!

This recipe can still be found in my mom’s recipe box. It is on a yellowed and stained index card in Mrs. Simpson’s handwriting. But much to my surprise this is one recipe that my mom forgot to write the date on! I hope you have a chance to spoil the mom’s in your life this weekend with some of their favorite recipes because sometimes the recipe is just so much better when it is made for you!

Whitney Sutherland blogs at Running with Whit about the fun and adventure of an everyday athlete. Whitney works full time playing with numbers and products and unwinds by training for races. She loves triathlons and has completed two half ironman distance races. She completes many races each year and initially discovered blogs while researching different races. Whitney spends her free time with Sidney her runner dog and her family where she gets to be the cool aunt to three awesome kiddos.

ecipe Card

French Dressing

2014-05-06 20:20:34

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Ingredients

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon. salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 can tomato soup
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup salad oil

Instructions

Mix ingredients together until emulsified.

Notes

Definition: Emulsify means combining two liquids together which normally don't mix easily. The ingredients are usually oil or a fat like olive oil or egg yolks, and another liquid like water or broth. Acidic liquids like lemon juice help the process by changing the pH of the mixture. The liquids are combined very slowly, usually drop by drop, while beating vigorously, which suspends drops of liquid throughout each other. Bearnaise, hollandaise, and mayonnaise are examples of emulsified foods.
Pronunciation: ee MULL sih fi • (verb)
Also Known As: blend
Source: http://busycooks.about.com/library/glossary/bldefemulsify.htm

By Whitney Sutherland

Arkansas Women Bloggers https://arkansaswomenbloggers.com/

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May 8, 2014

Confessions of a Semi-successful Gardener

by Jeanetta Darley

“April showers bring May flowers.”

And yes, May flowers bring pilgrims but this time of year they also bring bees to the garden. And bees bring pollination. And pollination brings a bountiful harvest.

Well, that’s the theory of gardening anyway.

When that theory is proved right you feel so successful. You feel like the queen cultivator out to provide food for her family from the dirt of the earth. Crowned with your over-sized sun hat and your trusty trowel at your side. You envision an ever vigilant summer where weeds tremble at your hands, beetles and aphids have retreated in terror and the neighbor’s dog has banished any thought of digging in that fresh smelling dirt. You can and freeze and dehydrate. Fresh salads are fixed every night. And your kids no longer snub the dark green vegetables from days of yore because they have been enlightened and now know where their food comes from and will eat it happily.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the dream of gardening nirvana just doesn’t exist. Not even for professional farmers and gardeners. The reality is a garden, like anything worthwhile, is hard work. It’s dirty work during the hottest most humid times of the year. But don’t let the fear of failure or the harsh conditions stop you from pushing on.

I have only been gardening with minor success for maybe the past four years. I say minor success because each year I learn some things I need to stop doing and some things I need to start doing. So this is my garden confessional for this year.

Things to stop:

I’m a hopeless over-planter. I envision myself harvesting and washing and cooking and canning every evening during the summer when the reality is I’m lucky to give them a quick rinse and blanch and pop them in the freezer.
Don’t get angry at my family when they don’t share my gardening passion. I can get grumpy being the only one that ever waters or mulches or shells peas. Even if they do enjoy the eating.

Things to start:

Keep a better journal. I use a fantastic online journal with the website SmartGardener. It is very easy to use and helps with your garden floor plan and even sends email reminders.
Prune! I’m terrified to prune. So by mid summer my over-planted, over-grown raised beds resemble a small jungle.
Compost. It’s time I gathered all the chicken poop and tossed it in with the eggshells and other matter and get some composting bins started
Plan our meals around the harvest and give our abundance to food pantries.

I am always asked questions about starting a garden and when you’re supposed to do what when. The truth is I’m still learning all that too. I ask questions. I look things up and most importantly I just go ahead and do it. Start simple. Don’t get discouraged. Pay attention. And have fun. Happy gardening!

My Favorite Gardening Resources:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Karen Kingsolver

SmartGardener.com

P. Allen Smith’s Youtube Channel