Happy Garden Cards to Die For

I found a set of these cards in a high school classroom I was visiting and had to have them, so I searched Etsy, only finding partial sets until I spotted this one at Bright Wall Studios.  These awesome retro cards has plants and tips on growing them but the surprise is all of the gardening advice from canning, pickling, making terrariums, designing medicinal herb beds and Ready Made-style building projects from outdoor tables, benches, window boxes and kids garden projects. The indoor gardens section is a trip back in time to when folks filled their houses with plants and had stands with grow lights and incorporated plants into their interior designs. It's amazing how relevant the whole set is and how much more plant saturated people's lives were back in the day. I'm in OCD Garden heaven.

Screenprinting at Bartram's Gardens

I scored some great new t-shirts, hand printed by artists on the lawn at Bartram's Gardens this weekend. I heard about the Art in the Open program through the Print Center's email newsletters, and stopped by the Buffalo Exchange for some cheap t-shirts to print and decided to layer the designs over each other.

While I was there I wandered around and checked out the trees, flower gardens, some cool raised beds with pitcher plants and hand twisted vine trellises and the boardwalks to the waterfront.  They are having a membership sale for $25 till the end of June and you get all kinds of free passes and discounts.  I picked up some unusual tomatoes and peppers while I was there, they have on sale for $3 each, pretty good for good sized plants and varieties like Czech Black and Bishop's Hat you won't ever find at Home Depot.

Four Worlds Bakery and Coffee

I finally made it over to Four Worlds Bakery to grab a coffee and pastry on my way to Bartram's Gardens this weekend.  The new storefront is anchoring development on Woodland Ave. where the Tool Library, Woodland Lumber, University Green, a tea house, solar homes, a new child care center and soon a tacoria are reviving the street's business district. You can catch the 36 trolley right to the door at 47th and Woodland Ave. Like an old school bakery you want to get there early to get the good stuff!

Food from my Garden CONTEST

My garden has been supplying enough dino and red russian kale for three families a week and plenty of spicy radishes I finally figured out how to use, I've been slicing them up thin and putting them in quesadillas and omelets. I've been waiting and watching two broccoli heads develop and they are pretty close.  Any ideas of good recipes to use them in? Leave a comment with a recipe idea and get put in a drawing for a free 8 x 10 print from the garden!

Food from the Farms

After the great farm dinner I placed my order from Harvest Local Foods, selecting from a list of weekly offerings that has grown very large, including dry goods, fresh fruit and veggies, jams, jellies, chocolate, coffee, meats, prepared foods, cookbooks, milk, yogurt, and much more.

Here's my cooler of food delivered by Carly from Harvest Local Foods for the week:

Boylan's birch beer, Hillacres Pride Horseradish cheddar cheese, potatoes from an African-American growers alliance in North Carolina, scrapple from High View Farm (where the dinner was held), Shady Lane Farm eggs,  yellow squash, turnips, apples, carrots, cucumbers, Kauffman's apple snitz (dried apples snack), garlic scapes.

It's so nice to come home after work and have fresh local farm food food sitting in the

entryway of your house waiting for you!

I made omelets with the scapes, turnips, potatoes, apples this week.

Farm Dinner Today, Harvest Local Foods

Sunday June 5, 2011

I spent the day at High View Farm meeting all of the animals : guinea fowl, chickens, goats, sheep, horses, kittens, then feasting on great local foods and brews under the trees and hearing more about Harvest Local Foods, where I order lots of my local food from.

Pam and Mary Ann, the owners of HLF were nice enough to give me and a friend a ride to the farm dinner, a celebration of local food growers and their company's 5 year birthday.

Harvest Local Foods, buylocal@harvestlocalfoods.com, 484-461-7884

High View Farms,166 Monmouth Road, North Hanover, NJ 08562

Strawberry Rhubarb Muffins

What Are They Thinking?

Leave a comment with your take on what they might be thinking

and win a card with a funny animal picture!

Volunteer at your Local Urban Farm!



I visited Farm 51 for their workday today and fell in love with their space, a diverse mix of raised beds of vegetables, chicken coops, nice people and good food.

What Are They Thinking?

The caption contest is back!

Add a caption in your comment and win a free card with a funny animal picture!

I LOVE INDIE PA!

I am so excited about this new site IndiePA.com.  They contacted me last week about this new website they put together featuring artists, makers and musicians from all over the state, making it easy to find homegrown goodies wherever you go! 

Matt and Darice explain it this way: "As Pennsylvania residents, creatives and explorers, we have a special love for PA originals – and we wanted to share that love with the world. While traveling around our great state, we tend to collect arts related information. Slowly, our tiny collection became a stack, and eventually the stack became a mountain (not to mention the long list of bookmarked sites on our computer!) We decided something had to be done. That’s when the idea for IndiePA was born.*

I applied and now I see I'm on the front page!



New Room Painting in Progress

I'm not-so hard at work on a new painting

                                                  from a magazine image of a nice little room
                                                         with a big comfy chair and a desk.

Bike Art and Woods and Nature Photography at Fairmout Arts Crawl

The Arts Crawl in Fairmount is Sunday, April 17th, from 2-6 pm and I will be at 2014 and 2015 Fairmount Ave. with two shows: one of Philly Street Bikes at Fairmount Bicycles and the other, Walk into the Woods at Wellpoint Oriental Medicine. The whole exent is amazing with street performances, artist demos, bike rentals, free food and drinks, free Thai massage and Acupuncture demos. The whole hood is filled with art, over 70 artists and all the shops are open. It's a great neighborhood atmosphere.

Take the 33 bus from downtown and get off right at 20th and Fairmount or ride your bike over and get a tune-up while you are there!

Orange Bike and Shadow, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia

Greyhound Station, Chinatown, Philadelphia

Red and Blue Bikes, Chinatown, Philadelphia

Philadelphia Seed Swap

The Seed Swap at Earth Cup Cafe, 45th and Pine Streets

Yummy Squash, Bean and Eggplant Seeds

Sorting the seeds into catagories

Mira and Joel, Co-Coordinators of the Philly Seed Exchange Mira is also involved with the Blue Red Yellow project growing plants in the city to make natural dyes. She was featured in Grid Magazine and had a demo table at Swap O Rama Rama last year.

The Philadelphia Seed Savers are holding seed swaps across the city this spring so be sure to check out this link to see when the next ones will be held!