no more kale!!!

 Finally spring has come. Yesterday was just right for playing in the soil. I planted a row of peas. Spread some lime. Pulled up the few plants that I had not gotten to last fall. Tried to plan the garden for this year. Where do the tomatoes go? The green beans? The cukes?

Now for me, you must understand that my garden is a hobby--where I play before I go to the studio. On summer evenings after I come home from work.  I don't preserve the food for winter--well, I did make three jars of brandied peaches last year. Yummy!!! Sometimes I freeze a few tomatoes. But for the most part, I cook with what I grow in the summer and that's it. I am a quilt maker--and in the end, even this blog post will be about quilts--please bear with me.

So although my garden is large enough, space is at a premium. Now I dearly love flowers--Siberian iris, Japanese iris, echinacea, and especially daylilies. I love my daylilies. Probably have a couple hundred. I am even a member of the American Hemerocallis Society and in July the colors in my garden are wonderful reds and oranges, yellows and plums which inspired this quilt--the colors of summer.

See it really is "the garden formerly known as the vegetable garden." The veggies are tucked into the corners. Always a challenge to find new places to grow the tomatoes. Rotate the crops.

So I read with interest Pat Leuchtman's blog post recently in The Greenfield Recorder--my local paper. This is her blog site here although the article has not been posted yet. She was writing about gardening in small spaces. A vegetable garden only needs 100 square feet of space she said. Oh I like this. One common mistake people make is to grow things that are easy to grow--such as kale--but which they then don't eat.

That is my problem. Sure I love kale in soup. Portuguese bean soup with spicy sausage and kale. An occasional meal. But no matter how good it is for me--let's face it--I don't eat that much. Think of the space I will have if I just plant the veggies that I know I want--the basil and lettuce, the hot peppers--love having them in the garden, the zukes--yes, they are so good when they are tiny, parsley. Celery--that was such a treat last year. I used it over and over again. What else?

And isn't that the secret to making quilts also. (See, this really is a blog about making quilts after all.) Why make the things that don't sell? Or the items that I dread creating--yes, there is such a thing?  Isn't life supposed to be fun? Why not clean out the fabrics that I haven't used in years? Certainly they could find a good home?

I no longer make baby quilts--haven't for years. No more pieced quilts. They don't interest me. If I have added the new purses and pillows, the eyeglass cases that I posted on my web site--what can I discontinue? And you what is your "kale"?  How do you prioritize? And what does your garden look like?