The first post

So this is my attempt to journal some of my favorite activities and hopefully to eventually learn from my mistakes. At the moment, these activities consist mostly of spending way too many hours in my garden and with my head in the oven (in a non-suicidal kind of way). Considering the heat we're having here in Davis, I'm trying my best not to sweat in my food.

I'm a total amateur at most of what I'm doing. I had a semi-successful winter garden, the lessons of which I hope are not too faint for me to record them before I give it another go this coming winter. And my current garden is doing great, despite quite a few mistakes on my part. Before I go further, I have to give a big thank-you to Loris, my watering guru. He waters my garden faithfully whenever I ask, and set up a sprinkler system for me as well (although I guess that benefits him as much as me, under the circumstances).

My garden is supposedly 18 by 20 feet (although I haven't actually measured it), and I've managed to grow an awful lot of vegetables in it. And herbs. No luck with the carrots or onions, really, and the peppers are suffering for reasons I'll have to write about in future posts, but the various squashes, tomatoes, eggplants, and cucumbers are doing fantastically. I'm certain that planting squash alone will solve the world's hunger problems (which I know, aren't as simple as all that). But this brings up the other subject I'm struggling with - how to cook and/or preserve all this extra food!