{"id":12957,"date":"2015-11-28T14:49:29","date_gmt":"2015-11-28T21:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=12957"},"modified":"2015-12-09T05:29:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T12:29:32","slug":"southern-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=12957","title":{"rendered":"Southern Problems."},"content":{"rendered":"

I know some of you already had snow.\u00a0 And I feel for you.\u00a0 I really do.<\/p>\n

But today, after ignoring my garden for weeks (months?), I decided to stop by and pay it a visit.\u00a0 Because after gorging ourselves on holiday food I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a few low-cal garden-fresh meals.<\/p>\n

So I headed down there with a plan to pick a pail of\u00a0 snaps peas to send in with the kids’ lunches this week.\u00a0 Also to gather a bunch of lettuce to make a nice dinner salad.\u00a0 Plus to dig up a few potatoes to have with parsley and chives from the herb bed.\u00a0 And broccoli for a simple steamed side dish.\u00a0 Voila!\u00a0 An easy and healthy dinner.<\/p>\n

We’ve had a few night time temperatures just below 30 degrees.\u00a0 But the sensitive lettuces were under row covers.\u00a0 The herb bed is in a sheltered spot that lets it thrive later than most other areas.\u00a0 And even though the tops of the potatoes died off, the spuds themselves can stay in the ground all winter and just be harvested as needed.\u00a0 The rest of the fall crops enjoy crisp temperatures and are sometimes even sweeter after a frost.<\/p>\n

But frost wasn’t actually the problem.<\/p>\n

Turns out the warm sunny days were too warm to counter the cooler nighttime temperatures.\u00a0 And several bunches of broccoli had already gone to flower.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I had to make many heavy sighs.\u00a0 Because I know some of you people are cold.\u00a0 But I have flowers<\/em> on my broccoli.\u00a0 Flowering broccoli is something you have to watch for in the spring garden.\u00a0 When everything is trying to bolt as summer approaches.\u00a0 But\u00a0 flowers in November<\/em>.\u00a0 These are the problems of a Southern gardener.<\/p>\n

I’m down in the garden.\u00a0 In my shorts and flip flops.\u00a0 Making an honest attempt to make a healthy low-cal garden-fresh meal.\u00a0 And the broccoli has already flowered.\u00a0 I was thinking that was a sign that I should just drown my sorrows in an open faced turkey sandwich topped with dressing (AKA stuffing) with extra gravy.<\/p>\n

By the time I got up to the house I was exhausted at the thought of having to pick off all those little flowers before I could make steamed broccoli for dinner.\u00a0 I was already picturing myself pulling out the leftovers.\u00a0 But with my last burst of energy I checked my garden resources (AKA The Internet) and discovered those flowers are edible<\/a>.\u00a0 Steamed along with the rest of the broccoli.\u00a0 Or sprinkled raw over salad.\u00a0 Or just the way they are.<\/p>\n

So today I am thankful for the fall garden.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

And living in the South.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know some of you already had snow.\u00a0 And I feel for you.\u00a0 I really do. But today, after ignoring my garden for weeks (months?), I decided to stop by and pay it a visit.\u00a0 Because after gorging ourselves on holiday food I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a few low-cal garden-fresh meals. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12957"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12994,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12957\/revisions\/12994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}