We lost two fruit trees during the two years we rented our house, so it was important to me to get new ones in the ground asap. Fruit trees often take three or more years after planting to produce fruit. And as the saying goes, the best time to plant a fruit tree was ten years ago.

I picked up an European Pear called Rescue that promises to be vigorous, productive and well-suited for the Pacific NW. The fruit will be yellow with a reddish-orange blush on it, which should stand out nicely in the garden. This replaced the pear tree we lost and will provide cross-pollination for the our other pear tree that survived. (Florence supervised the planting)

In the back corner of our homestead was a Goldenchain tree, initially planted to fix the nitrogen in our soil which would help the understory plants thrive. Unfortunately, the tree has never done well and I discovered recently that Portland lists this species as noxious! Often that is one step on the road to plants being considered invasive, so I decided to pull the tree and replace it with something more productive.

I planted a semi-dwarf apple tree called Enterprise in its place. The semi-dwarf size will be bigger than our other trees – probably around 15-16 feet at maturity. That should “anchor” the back northeastern corner of the garden and provide more fruit without shading any competing trees. Enterprise is a disease-resistant variety, good for fresh eating or baking, and claims to be easy to grow. It looks like a stick right now, but come springtime this apple tree will take off!

My most exciting new fruit tree is a Mirabelle Plum – a tree I have been obsessed with since discovering it four years ago during a One Green World fruit tasting. At the time, the nursery was unsure if they would cultivate them, but they got a great response from customers and now have it available for sale. Oh my goodness – one of the best plums I have ever tried!

Mirabelle Plums are an old French type of plum and this particular variety was golf ball-sized with a tiny, cherry-sized pit. So you can pop the whole thing in your mouth! The yellow fruit had a pink blush and sweet flavor. After four years of pining for that plum, finally we have one planted in our backyard! Plums are self-fertile, so just one tree should give us some tasty fruit in a few seasons.

These beloved trees were very carefully planted, which is no easy task at 39 weeks pregnant… It’s so important not to skimp on the planting process. I dug hole slightly larger than the root areas, carefully placed the trees, then covered with soil right to the soil line. Burying the trees too deep or too shallow will eventually kill them, so the right height is key. Don’t supplement the soil yet either – the trees need to get used to your soil type and babying them with lush soil could discourage them from stretching out their roots.

Gentle rains came later in the evening to soak them in. A month or two from now they will wake up from winter with blooms in their new home. It’s amazing how $60 bucks spent on trees can transform a garden and a gardener’s mood. If you are planning to add some new ones, now is the best time to plant so get growing!

In the wee hours I decided to bake up a teacake (or pound cake) – a little treat for the morning when I am feeling sleepy or maybe a tasty snack in the afternoon when I wake up from a nap. It uses lots of eggs for such a small cake and would be divine with some preserves served alongside. You can find the original recipe here from a website collection of Middle-Earth recipes (yes, I am a huge Tolkien nerd). My summarized recipe below:

• 1 c. sugar
• 3/4 c. unsalted butter
• zest and juice of one lemon
• 2 1/4 c. flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt

Cream together the sugar, butter, lemon zest and juice. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and stir until just combined. Pour into a buttered loaf dish and bake at 350 degrees for 35-45 minutes, or until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Rather than ice the cake, I dollop some of my strawberry-lemon marmalade onto each slice. It didn’t fully set when I cooked it up last fall, so it will make the perfect accompaniment to a sweet cake. A great way to incorporate some preserves and make use of these small windows of time.

Lettuce & Green Onions – this is a classic companion planting combination that looks great in the bed and enjoys the cool maritime spring. We eat salad at almost every meal, so we definitely need a good supply in the garden.

Potatoes – Perhaps the easiest of all easy vegetables to grow, potatoes get dug into the ground sometime around St. Patrick’s Day. Mine are going in a bit early, but should be fine. I bury them about 4-8″, wait for the greens to pop up, then keep mounding soil around them so just 4″ of greens are above ground.

Peas – These are said to be Thomas Jefferson’s favorite veggie and who can blame him? They say “plant your peas on President’s Day” – that’s this next week! I’m planning to trellis mine with smaller sticks in the raised beds and along the teepee I have out in the garden. By the time the peas wilt from the heat of June, beans will take their place.

Onions & Shallots – I am planting onion sets and shallots in the next week out in the garden, as there is always a small corner to fit these into. Once planted, I can walk away and ignore them until the hotter season when I will hand irrigate them.

These easy veggies should give me a start on the season without requiring much maintenance for the first few months of Spring. Some April/May, I am planning to “cheat” with plant starts from the nursery. It pains me not to have the variety choices that come with growing from seed, but I am also trying to be realistic (somewhat) about the challenges having a newborn will bring. I am optimistic that we’ll get the hang of baby duties by the time tomatoes go in the ground!

Last week I had the pleasure of shadowing a great local firm, GreenWorks, for the day. They do lots and lots of work with stormwater and green streets, as well as fun public projects like parks and the new MAX line. We visited a few sites around town and got the impression that they were a really positive, supportive firm.

In part that has spurred me to revamp my design portfolio and get feedback from some of my favorite designers in town before baby arrives. (If you want to kill some time looking at pretty pictures, take a look at the link above.) It’s hard to know how baby Bug will change my life, but I have always been very career driven. After being home with her this spring, I am expecting to want to get out into the job work and make my mark.

My posts have not come as frequently over the last couple weeks because I have been pouring over my portfolio and jamming on my thesis. Just like the process of gardening, I’m planting lots of seeds this month and hoping it leads to something exciting this summer.

This weekend Jay and I attacked Bug’s room – putting in shelves, unpacking gifts from family and friends, and all around “nesting”. My mother made this gorgeous quilt with some very un-baby fabrics I picked out – something to balance out the other very baby-ish things in the room.

Our Eugene pals set us up with her very own pair of rubber boots. I feel like she will surely NEVER be this big, but I hear it happens before you know it. It’s waiting for her next to a natural wood rattle and some brightly colored toys.

I have been planning to paint a wall mural in her room and just went for it free-hand on Sunday evening. I am so happy with it! I’m planning to add maybe 2-3 birds in red and an owl in turquoise to finish it off. My feet were super swollen from standing too long, but it was so worth it.

And finally I spent some time folding all those little clothes for little Bug. It’s time to pack my bag for the big day, which includes her first outfit: a labybug onesie with matching hat. Cute overload!

It’s getting really exciting around here. Still lots of prep work to do in the garden before Bug arrives and forces me to take a couple months off from projects. But we’re as ready as we should be for her to come and turn our lives upside down in the most fantastic way possible.

UPDATE: Mural is complete! I am really pleased with how it all turned out.

When I lived in Brooklyn, I unloaded our weekly groceries and took an inventory: kale, spinach, butter lettuce, figs, onions, dried fruit, eggs, etc. Now we typically have some form of all these things growing or available at home. We preserve the figs and other fruits to get through winter, but eggs and dark leafy greens get gobbled up year round in our garden.

Not sure when to start growing? Here are some of my favorite resources to help you figure out when to plant. Typically I review some combination of these, then make my own calendar based on what I want to grow that season.

Portland Nursery has an excellent planting calendar that I often print off and keep on my fridge. They also have a great pdf on companion planting, in case you can’t remember who likes who in the veggie patch.

YouGrowGirl has an awesomely nerdy “Lazy Gardener’s Seed Starting Chart” created as an Excel spreadsheet. It is really handy for whatever planting zone you live in. Just enter your frost date info and the chart tells you what date to plant various crops.

Oregon Tilth has another great planting calendar. I also recommend the skinny book Maritime Northwest Gardening by Seattle Tilth that gives you a month-by-month guide on what to be working on and planting outside. It’s a great read with lots of other goodies on beneficial insects, composting basics, etc.

Get your soil mixed and soil pots prepped! My flowering quinces are already hinting that Spring is coming.

When it comes to growing your own food, here is my short list of what to get busy working on over the next couple weeks:

• Finalize your planting plan
• Prune your fruit trees
• Cut and divide any perennials
• Organize a seed swap with pals
• Get your indoor seed growing operation ready
• Plant new trees (now while they are dormant)
• Build row covers to extend the growing season

If you are planning to start seeds indoors, check out my tutorials on making your own seed pots from newspaper. I even put up a YouTube video a year or two ago walking you through it.

Photo by Isaac Viel

When it comes to raising livestock, there are also several ways for you to get busy and prepare now for the critters:

• Research breeds
• Meet your neighbors
• Plan and construct housing

Even if livestock is legal in your city, knowing your neighbors and sharing your plans with them opens up a communication line before any potential problems crop up. If they are worried about the noise or smell, it’s better to have those conversations now and reassure them, rather than have them call the city. Periodically bringing over eggs or honey is a great way to check in with them later and give them a little perk from helping your homestead.

I’m not sure about you, but my to-do list is already getting pretty long and it’s only January! My plans for new fruit trees, honeybees and a packed veggie garden is going to be challenging with our other plans this spring (i.e. this baby in my belly). But getting some of the legwork done now means I may just be able to manage new additions better this Spring.

These kinds of events can fill you with so many great ideas that it can sometimes be overwhelming knowing where to begin. The goal of my talk is to help you plan and prioritize your homesteading projects. Here’s what I’m planning to touch on:

• My journey in modern homesteading
• Grow: understanding soil, what to grow, winter activities to get going
• Raise: understanding the responsibility of livestock, low-high maintenance livestock, winter activities to get going
• Create: preparing for the harvest, simplifying home care, building community

Let me know if there are any other topics you would love to hear about! I hope to see some new and old friendly faces at the event.

Howard settled into retirement easily. His world was now full of soft beds, gentle pets and long walks. We went on hikes through the gorge and walks up Mount Tabor. He was also more than content just snoozing all day, occasionally waking up to see that you were still there with him.

The logical part of my brain tells me how lucky we are – he had a full life, lived to a ripe old age, and the end came quickly for him. We were there when he took his last breaths as he slipped quietly off into eternal sleep.

But my heart is breaking too much to actually process anything logical right now. I miss my companion terribly. Jay has never seen me sob so much or so hard, but it’s some small tribute to just how cherished he was as a part of our family. He will be sorely missed and never forgotten.

Upon arrival into Oklahoma City, we headed to the stockyards – an old part of town where ranchers used to literally drive cattle in for sale or rest before continuing on north. This might be my favorite part of Oklahoma City because it has a rich, unique history. The old signs on the drug store, next to the saddle shop, next to the steak diner hint at that history.

After many trips to Oklahoma, I finally got to visit the memorial made for the Oklahoma City bombing victims. The quiet winter landscape of Oklahoma had a stark quality like the memorial. The large black tree in the background survived the bombing.

The chairs in this picture are for each of the people who died in the attacks, including smaller chairs for the children. I’m not a fan of the wreaths, personally. It takes away from the somber tone of what should be a somber installation.

On a less somber note, the ladies of the family took a late morning trip one day for some high tea in Oklahoma City. We talked about overseas traveling while we stuffed ourselves with tea sandwiches, creamy desserts and lemon curd. Lots of food and love around that table.

We had a rough flight back that required us to be up at 3am – yikes! So here is me and my pal Will Rodgers in the early morning hours at the airport. He used to say he never met a man he didn’t like. When someone asked him what he thought then about Hitler, he said “Well, I never met the man!”

My fondest memories of the trip don’t have pictures attached to them: spending time with family, sipping tea and smelling freshly baked cookies coming from the kitchen. Every year more of Jay’s family moves away to other parts of the country, but we were so grateful to have everyone gather from the four corners of the country to be together.