I’ve never bought (or grown) a butternut before, but autumn always makes me feel all Earth Mother, so I had grand plans to make a hearty fall soup … you know, way back when it was fall. But when I searched online recipes, I couldn’t help but notice that they all prefaced the actual recipe with daunting instructions (and often YouTube videos) for how to cut a butternut squash.

Now, I know I’ve mentioned a couple of recipes here lately, but the fact is that I’d rather do just about anything—taxes, root canal, bikini wax—other than be in the kitchen. I have a very short attention span when it comes to cooking, and if faced with any insurmountable obstacle, such as how to peel a vegetable, I can easily be persuaded to bag it and eat soup out of a can. I don’t need a YouTube video to operate the can opener.

The other reason I don’t like to cook is that I have such bad luck with knives that I’m basically a danger to myself in the kitchen. I especially have bad luck with The Really Sharp Knife that was clearly required to pierce a butternut. You know how in fantasy movies when the golden-haired hero beholds the wonder of the enchanted sword as forboding music swales in the background and the sword emits an evil glow? That’s pretty much how I regard The Really Sharp Knife: forboding music and evil glow. But then I’ve nearly sliced off the tip of my index finger with it (more than once) and needed stitches (also, more than once, although I refused to go to the ER for subsequent injuries because the needle for stitches emits its own forboding music and evil glow).

But the ax? I’m just fine with the ax. Because both of my fingers are way at the other end of the handle from the blade, and really all I need to worry about is chopping off a toe. And, since I’ve never chopped off a toe, it seems less painful than the known pain of slicing my finger yet again. Also, our ax is clearly very dull from lack of use. Fifteen years we’ve had that ax and the price tag is still on the head.

Anyway, if you were hoping to find real instructions about how to cut a butternut and you’ve followed this blog for any time at all, you should know better. And I invite you to browse YouTube.

If you’re wondering what I made with my butternut, I continued my obsession with Smitten Kitchen recipes and made this delicious butternut squash soup with croutons. It was so good that I shared half the vat with our neighbor. And I don’t usually distribute my cooking for public consumption. Really, you must make the croutons. In fact, just skip the butternut, the ax, and the soup and just make the croutons.

I finally pulled my parsnips and they’ve proven to be precisely the mid-winter pick-me-up I predicted I’d need when I planted them last spring—although I’m not sure what possessed me to pry up the entire patch; it was quite a passel of parsnips.

This is my first year to partake of parsnips, so I’m not positive if I should consider them a procrastinated 2011 harvest or my premier 2012 harvest. Either way, they were the perfect excuse to poke my palms in the pretty dirt in January.

Based on pervasive garden literature, I perceived parsnips to be particularly peevish to germinate. So I practically poured out the seeds and was so pleased when every last one of them proliferated that I couldn’t part with any of them at the point they needed thinning. So, they’re a little on the puny side. A passel of petite parsnips.

I do, however, pat myself on the posterior for predicting, practically a year ago, that perhaps I’d enjoy some parsnips this January and placing some in the peat. I like producing veggies in the garden, but I don’t much like preparing them in the kitchen. Kind of the way I like procuring flowers from the store but I don’t much like planting them in the ground. So I should’ve given some prior thought to how I planned to prepare the passel of petite parsnips before they were piled on my polished countertop.

Then, as if prescient of my predicament, two bloggers I started following only a week prior happened to post parsnip recipes. So I declared a dinner theme and—just before our power went Poof! from the powdery snow and pelting ice—Mr. Sorry pan-fried a pair of pork chops and I prepared these parsnip latkes and this yummy parsnip cake. I passionately recommend both should you perhaps find your pantry protruding with a passel of parsnips any time soon.

Miracle #1: I grew beets! After two years of failure, I grew beets! Just enough beets to remember that I don’t really like the taste of beets. I love the greens in salads, but the roots themselves not so much. This is exceedingly good to know given that I am pretty good at growing the foliage.

Miracle #2: A cluster of Sun Sugars is ripening, and there’s also a handful of Sun Golds ripening at the same time so I can taste compare them. I feared there wouldn’t be any tasting this year, let alone taste comparing.

Miracle #3: Royal Burgundy green beans are finally growing like weeds. It’s hard to believe I seeded these beans way back in early April and am just now getting beans from them.

Miracle #4: One full-size tomato is developing. But will it ripen before summer’s end? Only time will tell if it’s a true miracle.

This is my first year for kohlrabi. I was so surprised when Grandma said she used to plant it, that I decided to give it a go myself. Unfortunately, I fear that my kohlrabi harvest is pretty much on par with what you’d expect from the Sorry Garden. In other words, you’re looking at it.

The plants are over two feet tall, but the stalks haven’t fattened into bulbs and some are beginning to flower. I seeded them too close together (6 inches) because I wasn’t sure how well they’d germinate, and then I forgot to thin them to the recommended 9-12 inches. I’ll leave them in the ground a bit longer too see if they fatten up, but I’m pretty sure I have my whopping kohlrabi crop for the year.

On a brighter note, I’m getting quite a carrot crop this year. I’ve been pulling the yellows and oranges in onesies and twosies for lunch on the run in the garden, along with a handful of sugar snap peas, which I’m harvesting by the gallon bucket now.

The yellow carrots are a little on the woody side and would probably be better cooked. The red and purple carrots are still dragging along at a slug’s pace. Next year, I’m just growing orange carrots.

And … drumroll … there shall be zucchini this year after all.

My zucc and yellow squash plants are doing fantastic—and this plant alone already has four little zuccs. So I’ll be having A LOT of zuccini.

Finally, a summer vegetable! Oh, yeah. I also have a passel of tiny baby green beans coming on. Notice that I’m still not talking about the tomatoes.

After they fatten up for a couple more days, we’ll be eating our first peas. And good thing, too, because my trellis is a couple of feet too short and I’ve had to drape them over the top. Peas by the Fourth of July seems like a major achievement, given that these photos pretty accurately show how little sunlight my garden has gotten all gloomy spring.

The broccoli is huge and healthy but not heading up. The Brussels don’t have sprouts yet but are standing tall now that I staked them. And the garlic is just beginning to wind down and yellow. I snuck a peek and the heads look recognizably like garlic instead of the little white breath mints I grew last year.

In the All Roots Box, Mr. Sorry grilled a couple of small yellow onions the other night with steak. The second sowing of Cherry Belle radishes are nearly ready to eat. The yellow and orange carrots look promising, but the Atomic Red and Cosmic Purple didn’t germinate well (again this year). And the four varieties of beets that I sowed in March are just getting foliage. I struggled with beets last year too, so I’m not feeling very charitable toward beets.

In the Box of Much Promise, The kohlrabi that I seeded and haven’t grown before is lusciously healthy and pretty but not heading up yet. The parsnips are also a first this year. After reading that they were hard to germinate, I overplanted and then got 100% germination in our cool wet spring, so they’re probably packed in too tight. And I’m so proud of seeding my own collards this year that I haven’t had the heart to eat any of them yet. And then there’s the Swiss Chard, which I recently learned is an above-ground beet. After waiting and waiting for it to sprout, it was a bit disappointing to find that the colorful stems look a lot prettier than they taste. I’ve also had many yummy salad lunches out of this box and have just resown some spinach and several types of lettuce.

Over in the Still Holding Out Hope Box, the Royal Burgundy bush beans are just starting to blossom. And one of my Sungold tomatoes has set five fruits. I have little hope for the other tomato varieties at this point, but at least the foliage is lovely.

And the Maybe There’ll Be Squash Box? I’ll get back to you next summer.

I harvested my first head of broccoli last night, although it’s a little generous to call it a “head” since it was only as big as a piece you’d sneak from the relish tray while waiting for the Thanksgiving turkey to roast.

I should count my blessings that it grew at all in the perennial twilight that we’re calling spring, not to mention that I inadvertently planted it in the same spot as last year’s broccoli.

I hoped it would size up, but one of the florets was fast becoming a flower, and the side shoots were nearly as “big” as the center “head” so I “harvested” it. Just humor me regarding those words in quotes.

It’s a good thing Mr. Sorry was working late or we would’ve had to arm wrestle over the puny thing. Instead, I ate it in two bites, right there in the garden. If my other broccoli plants ever deliver the goods, Mr. Sorry and I can share a dinner-size portion—or at least an appetizer. I’ll make some dip, just in case.

The Pacific Northwest continues to break rainfall and cold temperature records as far back as 1947, and I’m still wearing my winter clothes and running the furnace. But, hey, my Super Sugar Snap Peas are finally blooming. The ones I bought as starts are nearly at the top of the 6ft trellis now.

The ones I direct sowed are half as tall but no blooms yet. Just as well because my staggered planting plan got thrown out of whack when the peas sown mid-April quickly caught up to the ones sown mid-March. So I’m going to have heaps of peas at once. Unless, of course, they don’t produce at all because I didn’t learn about inoculating the seeds with nitrogen until I’d already planted them.

But if I get only foliage, at least my Mason’s line trellis is holding up well (no pun intended). It’s still surprisingly taut and now I’m glad I went to the crazy-making effort to string it up. So if this veggie gardening thing falls through, maybe I’ll take up weaving.

Tomatoes in their Pacific Northwest Biosphere

I just hope the neighbors are well invested, because I decided to gamble on tomatoes, despite the especially cool and rainy Pacific Northwest spring that may be harbinger for the same kind of summer. Even our good summers are so short and relatively cool that tomatoes are a crapshoot.

It’s on my bucket list to grow a tomato from seed someday, but for now I buy my starts two feet tall (preferably with blooms). This year I’m also planting them in black bottomless pots to radiate maximum heat, and I’m babying them from the rain under plastic hoops. Since I’m usually a “keep it simple” girl, that much intervention creates a pretty skinny line between “growing” a tomato and “manufacturing” one. But summer wouldn’t be summer without a succulent “home-manufactured” Sungold. So I’m throwing down with two of those, a Yellow Plum, and, of course, a Brandywine. I also wanted to try a Green Zebra this year, and I still might. It would fit nicely in the spot where the basil is failing to germinate. That’s another plant I can only reliably grow from starts.

Royal Burgundy Green Beans

Overwintered Sparkler Radishes

Pak Choi Before it Became Dinner

Cherry Belle Radish

This is is the first time I’ve planted Cherry Belles, so I’m not entirely certain when to pluck them. Web wisdom says 1-2 inches in diameter, but they (and the foliage) sure seem tiny compared to the Sparklers that I planted last October and overwintered. And do that math: a mere 37 days vs. “back in October.” Hmm.

Sparkler Radish

Anyway, I think when it comes to future plantings of red radishes, I’ll go with Cherry Belles. But I guess I should see how they taste first. Or, rather, I guess I should let Mr. Sorry see how they taste since I planted them for him. He loves radishes, but they kind of give me heartburn.

But it’s exciting to have my first veggies that were seeded in 2011 nearly ready to harvest. I think I’ll give them another week. The sun is finally breaking through.

Hmm. It’s rather an unfortunate spring in the Pacific Northwest to have a garden blog. Given the copious rain and gloom, it’s like trying in vain to stretch posts through the long, dreary month of February, but without the diversion of spectacular convention center garden shows. Perhaps I should take up garden knitting. Yeah, maybe I’ll knit me some veggie cozies, just in case the sun never does emerge this year.

As I gripe about the weather, please enjoy the tulips. Notice that they have sun shining through them, which is entirely misleading. In fact, if you live in the Pacific Northwest, you know I could only have taken these photos on one of our three sunny days in the past month. And it wasn’t yesterday, although yesterday was lovely. I think we broke 60 degrees. On the local news last night, the weatherman actually said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you when we’ll next see a sunny day. Perhaps you should take up knitting.”

Given that my blooming trees still aren’t, I’m sure glad I planted so many tulips this year or I’d have bupkis. Also, I should mention that although my own tulips are stunning this year, most of these photos were taken in the Roozengaarde display gardens at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival because they plant half a million bulbs. And I don’t.

Bupkis is also exactly what I know about knitting. But how hard could it be to knit a zucchini cozy? Isn’t it basically just a sock? Maybe I shouldn’t even get started on the veggie garden, lest I work myself into a stew. The radishes that I planted over a month ago just got their first true leaves, and they were supposed to be edible in 21 days. Also, it’s hard to knit a cozy for a root veggie.

My sugar snap peas that I also planted a month ago are still only two inches tall, so we’ll be eating those well into July. Just in time to yank the spring vines and plant the fall crop. How long do you think it will take me to knit 90 long, thin scarves to twine around my pea plants to hustle things along?

And I’m beginning to wonder just how many times I can “cut and come again” before my overwintered lettuce is exhausted because my spring-sown is just barely germinated. I’m thinking modified toilet paper cozies with a nice tri-color orange yarn for the lettuces.

And in a pure fit of spite, I seeded my green beans and started my summer squash last week. But I am having serious doubts about even attempting tomatoes this year since they’re a crapshoot in even the best of Pacific Northwest summers. Hmm. Knit one, purl two.

As if this year’s lackluster Pacific Northwest spring isn’t bad enough—it’s currently snowing!—I’ve also spent the past few days feverish with flu. Perhaps you could tell from my posts.

When I was a kid, my fever dream was invariably a single seedling slowly unfolding and rising from its seed pod. I haven’t had that dream for a long time. As an adult, my tormented fever dreams are the same as my typical worry dreams: missed deadlines, public failure, and lost dogs.

But during the past few nights, I’ve tossed and turned and sweated and been trapped in fever dreams imagining my veggie seeds newly germinated and lined up neat and tidy in their perfectly spaced jig-planted rows. And, what do you know? While I’ve been down and out, my waterlogged and completely sunless radishes have sprouted.