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.

As coincidence would have it, the photo of the little maple tree in my previous post turns out to be the last photo of it as it stood in my garden for many years—before the Seattle snow and then ice and then snow and then rain snapped one of the trunks.

One of the good things about having a garden blog, though, is that I took one last photo of the little maple tree during the storm, a photo that I probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise, not knowing it would become the last photo of what used to be.

I don’t really feel sad that one of the trunks snapped. I share my garden with Mother Nature, and she’s going to do what she’s going to do. For my part, I went out with a rake to relieve the aching branches of their snow and ice. But Mother had already done her part, and the trunk had already split. And so the garden goes on, slightly different.

Now, when I stare out at the little maple tree from the kitchen window while doing dishes, it catches my eye in a way it didn’t before. Its unfamiliar profile makes it an interesting stranger in my garden instead of the ubiquitous tree that I stared at for all of those years and could no longer see.

It’s finally snowing. Now I can have some sense of closure that it’s winter rather than just an ill-defined muddy season following fall. I really need winter closure in the garden this year. I need that peace when the garden is cut to the ground, all neat and tidy, and needs nothing from me. And now it’s freshly mulched with snow.

And I find myself thinking of it as “the” garden instead of as “my” garden, as if to further disassociate from it. Maybe that’s just a winter thing, or maybe I simply don’t have it in me this spring to pick up the shovel and make my annual vow that this will be the year I finally finish the garden to my satisfaction so I don’t long for the escape of winter.

Maybe all of that gardening time and effort would be better spent on other pursuits. I could read so many more books. Or learn to take better photos. Or volunteer with rescue dogs. Or become a ballerina or a cowboy. Or just sit on the back porch and truly relax instead of pretending to relax while scrutinizing the back flowerbed that’s run rampant with Obedient Plant so I don’t have to decide what else to put there.

I’m sure I won’t feel this way once spring is in the air and the sun slants across my veggie beds again. But for now, I need some winter closure.

It’s like I have to hack on my bangs every few years to remind myself why that’s never a good idea. It began as an innocent snip of a couple of stray hairs with Mr. Sorry’s nosehair clippers just to tide me over until I could get to my stylist. Then, like potato chips, one snip led to another and pretty soon the wrapping paper scissors were involved.

I was very cautious though and was admiring my fine job when that one snip went awry. So I had to snip a little more to straighten that up. Wetting my bangs made it easier. But, of course, they shrank up when they dried, like those rayon pants I have to give to Goodwill now. So there was my 45-year-old face staring back at me from the mirror with a 3-year-old’s haircut. I couldn’t in good conscience go out in public.

The upside is that this will dissuade me from cutting my own bangs again for a few years, until some day in my 50s when I grab the nosehair clippers and peer over my bifocals to snip a couple of stray hairs.

I’m redesigning my garden (yet again). I swore I wasn’t going to do it (yet again), and here I am doing it (yet again). This time, though, I’m planting it in alphabetical order. I’ve tried every other way in the last seven years, so I’m going alphabetical this time—the way garden books are organized. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before.

All of those years I’ve spent arranging my garden for proper sun and water and soil conditions while also creating pleasing color palettes and interesting height and foliage combinations. What a hassle. You have to know soooo much about gardening to do it that way. And yet I’ve had the alphabet whipped since kindergarten. If only I’d started alphabetical gardening when I was six, I’d have a garden paradise by now.

Yep, I’m definitely going alphabetical this time. What a relief to finally have a gardening plan that makes sense without all of those pesky decisions and subjective judgment calls. Just alphabetize and start digging.

Hmmm. Wonder if I should go by botanical name or common name? Better figure that out before I dig into that big bed of Achillea/Yarrow.

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.

Prairie Blue Eyes

The sunny weekend (ah, I remember it fondly) spurred the first of my daylilies to bloom, and I finally feel like I have a flower garden again.

A couple of years ago, I was determined to figure out the names of all my tagless daylilies, so I wandered the Internet and the farm where I bought most of them.

It didn’t take long to realize that what one person swears is daylily ‘Angelic Frilly Dreams’ looks an awful lot like what another person swears is ‘Angel’s Ruffly Dreams.’ Thus, I concluded that nearly all of the daylilies on the planet are probably misidentified and I’d just enjoy mine mostly nameless.

This was about the same time that I also concluded that the only truly accurate name for a purple Japanese iris is “purple Japanese iris.”

Prairie Blue Eyes & Cherry Crush Hybrid?

These are three of my favorite pinkish-orange daylilies. I’m fairly certain that the top and bottom photos really are Prairie Blue Eyes and Cherry Crush, but the center daylily is nameless, and it’s my absolute favorite. I even marked its tag with an asterisk so if we ever move I remember to take it with me. And trust me, not many of the plants in The Sorry Garden have an asterisk.

Cherry Crush

It wasn’t until I bundled these three photos together for this post that it occurred to me that maybe my lovely mystery daylily is a cross between Prairie Blue Eyes and Cherry Crush. Think I’m on to something?

P.S. If I emailed you that I can’t leave comments on your blog, the problem appears to be on my end after a software update.