Leaves In My Hair: What does it mean?

It's been almost 3 and a half years since this blog began, and I only just realized that I never explained the blog's name.

I've come to associate a carefree state of mind with taking my hair down, and wild loose hair with gardening, and gardening with a connection to nature, and a connection to nature with a carefree state of mind.  It is pretty much a never-ending cycle of awesome.

Wild, loose, and carefree.  Watch out for those leaves, they'll getcha.

I spend most of the workday with my hair up in a bun, because let's face it, when you work in a fast-paced lab with hair down past your butt (or as I like to call it, "thumb length"), there is a very real risk of catching fire every time you pass a bunsen burner.  And it is not that fun to take home a wide variety of chemical residues or lab bacteria/spores after your tresses have brushed a surface.  I also typically have to keep it up on the packed-like-sardines train ride home, to avoid getting it caught in someone's luggage clasp or picking up lice or who knows what else from the cloth seats. 

Anyway, the first thing I do when I get home is breathe a sigh of relief and let my hair down.  It has ended up being symbolic of the release of the pent-up stresses and irritations of the day, and an entry into my safe zone where I can fully relax.

I practically always garden with my hair down, simply because gardening is a relaxing and enjoyable activity, and having my hair down is relaxing and enjoyable.  The same is true for reading, blogging, hiking, snuggling, and playing.

When I was young, I was quite the tomboy and would spend hours exploring nature on my parents' property (growing up in the country has its perks!).  And when I say exploring, I mean rolling around on the ground looking at bugs, climbing trees, painting my entire body with mud, fashioning burrows out of dry matted weeds, and pretending to be more than 1/64th Native American.

I was kind of oblivious to fashion and grooming at these times.  As a result, other kids nearby teased me about having leaves in my hair, and frequently asked if I was Pocahontas, and I didn't get the joke.  Heck yeah, I totally wanted to be Pocahontas.  I wore the leaves as a badge of honor.

Leaves!  Hair!  The best of both worlds.

2 decades later, my husband and I moved into a house together, with our first real garden.  We quickly realized that every time I would come in from the garden, he would have me hold still so that he could pick all the leaves out of my hair.  The deeper I got into the gardening, the more that I forgot my surroundings and focused on nurturing the plants and soil in a zen-like state, the more leaves would be found.

So to me, finding leaves in my hair represents losing myself to the joy of exploring nature and learning to garden.  Which is what this blog is all about.

May you always find leaves in your hair.

A New Path

In 2014, I am leaving the workforce to rehabilitate my health and take care of my family, home, and garden.  I'll be trying my hand at keeping our lifestyle comfortable, partially through growing as much of our own food as possible to keep costs down.

In my last post about leaving a year ago, I was on the verge of taking this same leap, but I was offered a possible dream job, so I stayed a bit longer to give it a chance.  I will write more on it later as the time for leaving nears, but long story short, the leap is now officially scheduled and there is nothing holding me back.

After working in the field of science for 11 years, I am not going to be able to stop the scientist within.  I am always experimenting, keeping records, and fine-tuning the mundane things in life, and gardening will be a perfect outlet for that energy.

A few people have asked what I will do, what I will be.  Housewife just doesn't have that special ring to it, and doesn't describe my ambitions very well.  What about gardener, chef, homemaker, handywoman, financial planner, bellydancer, brewmistress, barber, laundress, manager of family happiness, fledgeling athlete, healer, budding Etsy maven, zen master, aspiring domestic goddess?

Maybe no label is needed.

Me and my partner in life, headed down the path to something new.

I'm sure I'll discover a lot on this journey, and I'd like to share it here with you.  So stop by, settle down with a cup of tea, say hello, and share something.

(Posts may be a bit sporadic until I am no longer working 12-hour days, so feel free to subscribe via email at the top of the page if you don't want to miss anything.)

Veggie Garden: Blank-ish Slate in November

Here is a photo of the very back corner of the yard on the north side in November when we originally put an offer on the house.  We didn't move in until late April (that is the joke about short sales, they aren't so short!), but it was pretty much the same.

A quick rundown of all the plants, clockwise from bottom left:
- rosemary 
- pippin apple
- plum tree
- a rather trashy-looking cable dish that needs to go
- camelias against the house
- unknown citrus in wine barrel
- red japanese maple

Three of the raised beds are 8'x4', and the other is 4'x4', which gives a nice 112 square feet of garden space.  All are connected by soaker hoses, which I hadn't encountered before!  Theoretically according to the square foot gardening method, 50 square feet is enough for one person for fresh veggies, and 100 square feet is enough for one person's entire year's worth of food (including grains) if you stick to a very intensive gardening program. 

We have some major plans to renovate this area, but moving in at the end of April and then needing to get everything planted by May didn't leave much room for improvement.  So this year we are keeping this part of the yard as it is. 

I am pretty excited about the plum tree.  My grandparents' old house had an ancient plum tree, and I have great memories of eating perfectly ripe plums fresh from the tree there.  Grandma would make the most delicious plum jam.  They have since moved, and we no longer have access to a plum tree for all that jam... until now.  I may invest in a food dehydrator and a canning machine so that none of those plums go to waste.

So much to plan before spring, it boggles the mind.

The Adventure

Greetings Readers,  

!!BIG NEWS!!

My husband and I just bought our first house together, on 1/4th of an acre.  I spent the past few weeks frantically putting in a veggie garden before it became too late in the season for such an endeavor.  You know I am freaking out about having so much space for gardening, and about actually owning the land and being able to do whatever we want with it.  There is so much to love about the house... the solarium, the saltwater pool, the safer neighborhood, the green belt, and especially the 15-minute walk to get to the state park.  There are some things not to love, but we are methodically eliminating those and loving the home improvement process.

A wide-angle view of the east side of the house in fall, before the purchase

The gardening has begun!

So far I've planted 7 tomatoes, 3 peppers, 3 types of basil, 3 blueberry bushes, 3 huckleberry bushes, 2 blackberry vines, 4 zucchini, a sage, a chocolate peppermint.  Starting from seed are a melon, some lemon squash, 3 types of beans (red, green, purple), radishes... and a myriad of other seeds that did not survive the wrath of the neighborhood cats.  My worm compost bin is not currently up to snuff, so I used plenty of store-bought organic compost and fertilizer, and I removed about 2 cups of cutworms from the soil before planting.  Already I am noticing that there is actual SUNLIGHT here, and the tomatoes are growing with ridiculous speed in the heat.  The place already has some fruit trees: a pippin apple, a plum, and some sort of citrus (please be a Meyer lemon!), plus some volunteer oregano and a whole smorgasbord of flowers, and 2/3rds of it is on an automated drip system which is heavenly.  I've begun to fill the solarium as well, and the newest addition is a 3-year-old Buddha's Hand citron tree.

A life change hangs in the balance.

I'll be honest... time for blogging right now is extremely limited.  My commute + workday went from 12 hours to 11.5 hours with the move which is an improvement, but with all the work that needs to be done on the house I am bursting with blogging inspiration and drained of time.  But never fear!  As was planned a few years ago, in a few months I will quit my regular day job, and dive head-first into a new type of job:  home maintenance & repair, puppy-raising and family-starting, beer/mead-making, crafting and starting up an Etsy store, and getting hardcore about the garden.  Yes, in other words I'll be a housewife trying to make a few bucks on the side from her hobbies.

Wha?  Why??

I am aware that I will be switching from a low-pay very-high-stress job to a lower-pay possibly higher-stress job, but deep down it feels right.  Plus, in my current job, if I were to keep working with a baby, 100% of my take-home pay would go to commute/taxes/daycare (NOT cheap in the Bay Area), so it does not make financial sense to stay when we start a family.  Switching careers will mean living more frugally, cooking from scratch almost all of the time, and propagating my veggies and herbs rather than buying a bucket-load of seedlings and seeds every year... but hey, doesn't that sound like great blogging material?  I shall go from being a scientist in the lab to a scientist in the home, overdoing and over-thinking every single project for your amusement.

An example of home science!  I measured an ecuadorian hermit crab pet to determine its age: ~ 14 years old.  Science rules!!

And so...

There will be a plethora of topics covered between the two blogs, Leaves In My Hair (for gardening) and Leaves In My Cup (projects, recipes, everything else) in the nearish future.  I will attempt to get in a blog post here and there until I am able to focus on doing it more full-time... so perhaps once every week or two?  Please subscribe, and then you will be sure not to miss a sporadic post.  With the new house, there is so much for me to learn, and so many projects to tackle, and soooooo much potential!

Looking forward to the adventure,
- Kendra

Orders For Next Year's Garden

It's about to be a new year, and it's time for a fresh start!  I do so love fresh starts.  :)

Here's what I ordered from Baker Creek, and why...

• pepper:  caribbean red habanero
• why:  my husband requested it, he loves habaneros and this one is twice as hot as the regular orange type
• bean:  chinese red noodle  
• it has the longest most beautiful beans I've ever seen, and I am particularly excited about this one! These are more for stir-fries or steaming than for eating raw.
• cucumber:  dragon's egg
•  terribly adorable
• melon:  rich sweetness 132
• a high producer of small melons, produces throughout the whole season, and the melons have amazing red and orange stripes
• summer squash:  lemon
• supposed to be one of the highest squash producers out there, and I go through a lot of squash!  Has the best insect resistance for squash, which is great since the earwigs loved my zucchini.
• swiss chard:  perpetual spinach
• it is less chard-like in bitterness, more spinach-like... which is good because I would like to eat it raw, and I found that just 2 large leaves of raw chard at a time gave me a sore throat (probably from the oxalic acid).
• miner's lettuce
• this is something I nibble all the time at my parents' house where it grows wild... a taste of home!  If I'm lucky, I can get it to grow "wild" under most of the existing plants as a groundcover.
• herb:  chervil
•  we had it for the first time on our honeymoon (in Ireland, though the herb is french), have been looking for it ever since... it was delicious enough that I had to ask the chef what it was!
• lettuce mix:  siamese dragon
•  a mix of asian greens... I miss living right next to an asian market
• radish:  purple plum 
• has a milder bite, matures in just 4 weeks, and is purple
• tomato:  riesentraube
•  red, makes a ton of tomatoes, is smaller and good in hanging planters, has hearty flavor that is great as oven-dried tomatoes
• tomato:  black cherry
•  purple, delicious, "wildly" prolific in rainy cool or hot summers (our odd summer weather last year was responsible for everyone's bad tomato season, I hear)... so I'll be planting extras of these to make sure I actually get tomatoes this time around!
• tomato:  sungold
•  orange/red/yellow depending on the plant, very prolific, mild flavor... I tried a sungold hybrid last year, and it had the most potential, so I figured this time I'll try an heirloom sungold.
• tomato:  egg yolk
•  yellow, supposedly outproduces everything, and I hear rumors that it does very well in the Bay Area, plus it's cute as heck!

When I tallied up my original seed bill, it came out to over $50, and Baker Creek is cheap!  I opted to drop dragon's tongue beans, wild strawberries, zucchino, black prince snapdragon, bells of ireland, chocolate bell pepper, cilantro slo-bolt, moonlight nasturtium, oregon sugar pod pea, pepper cress, italiko dandelion, sleeping beauty melon, and 2 other larger purple tomatoes.  'Cause if I'm honest with myself, my garden is SMALL, can I even crowd it that much??  I am writing it here though, so that I will remember these for next year.  Zucchino rampicante had the best reviews I've ever seen for a vegetable... it was hard to let that one go, but there wouldn't truly be space for it!

I also ordered "Clyde's planner" from Baker Creek, since it came so highly recommended... it's like a quick cheat sheet for when to germinate, transplant, and harvest different types of plants, based on your particular frost dates.  A major mistake in last year's garden was not starting seeds indoors, and not starting early enough because we moved to the new house too late in the season.  This year I have the opportunity to do it by the book!  And/or by the planner, as the case may be.  I can also plan out some successive plantings.


The last thing to order is some codling moth traps from Territorial Seed, since I'm not willing to spray pesticides.  The codling moth worms just decimated the apples last year, but they plant eggs while the tree is flowering, so by the time I saw worms it was far too late to do anything about it.  The traps are sticky and filled with codling moth hormones to trap the males... hopefully it will allow me to have edible apples!  The tree did make a ton of apples last year, which were good to average in flavor.

Can't wait for my orders to arrive, for when the real planning will begin.  <3

May your new year of 2011 be full of joy, laughter, and gardeny growth!

Catching Up

Just a quick note... I added in all 15 of the missing "wordless wednesday" photos, from Sept 22nd 'till now.  Whew!

Bye Bye Bonsai