the garden: planting tomatoes

Check out how much greenery there is in my garden, compared to just a couple of weeks ago!

Tony and I got back from a trip to see our families in Ohio about a week ago. My dad had started a bunch of veggies for his garden under a grow light this spring, and he planted some for my garden, too. Which took up pretty much the whole back seat of our car on the drive back:

There are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, flowers, and all kinds of herbs in that box.

I thought I would write a blog post about how to plant tomatoes. This is the technique my dad taught me right after Tony and I moved into our house. My parents came down to D.C. for moving weekend, and right after the truck was unloaded, one of the first places we went was Frager's, where I bought some veggies to plant in pots, including a tomato plant. (I was really, really excited to have outdoor space.)

My dad recommends against just digging a hole in the ground and putting the tomato in. Instead, his method involves cutting off the bottom leaves, planting the roots and part of the stem in a trench, and bending the stem 90 degrees to make it grow upright. I had strong tomato plants that first year, presumably with big, healthy root bases, so I planted my tomatoes his way again last year and this year.

Here are some photos I took a few weeks ago with the Early Girl tomatoes I bought at Home Depot. (Even though my dad grew a lot of different kind of tomatoes for me this year, I wanted to make sure I had Early Girls in my garden, which is why I made the Home Depot purchase. Early Girls did really, really well for me last year, so I definitely wanted to have them in my garden.)

I took the plant out of the pot and teased the roots. Then I snipped off the bottom three leaves. That part of the plant is going to be buried, and new roots will grow from the spots that were snipped off. Here's a photo of that process, although this admittedly is not a great picture:

Next I dug a trench, instead of a hole. The root ball lays at one end of the trench. And to make this work, you have to bury the snipped-off parts of the stem, then gently shape the stem upwards 90 degrees.

As you can see, we can call her "Eileen" because while a tomato plant is relatively flexible, she's not quite standing up straight yet.

 But here she is last weekend, standing pretty straight and tall. And hopefully with a wide and strong root system, thanks to dad's planting advice.

Oh, and here is another picture from last weekend. (I also have a couple of tomatoes and a pepper plant growing in pots.) Tomato blossoms abound! And on Tuesday, I was investigating those blossoms a bit more closely and found a itty bitty green tomato peeking out!

Yay, summer!

the garden: flowers blooming

So it appears we got exactly two days of spring. It's been cold and wintery for months, and then we had a beautiful spring weekend, but this work week has been hot! And the forecast for today ... 94?!

Jessi is not so pleased with Mother Nature. But Jessi's flowers? They're loving it.

Last fall, I planted some pansies in the front yard. In our climate, they're supposed to be beautiful during the fall, die back a bit in the winter, then bounce back to life with the warm spring temps. And they've done just that in the past few days.

In the tree lawn in front of our house, this was my plan:

• Crocus would come up first. (Check. They were here by mid-February.)
• Daffodils would come up next. (Well ... they came up. But I messed them up somehow because no flowers came out of the greenery. I'll have to ask my mom what I can feed them in the fall to give them some extra energy over the winter.)
• Then tulips would come up. (And they're here! The warm weather has prodded them along nicely. Those flowers should bloom any day now. And my medicated foot powder technique appears to have successfully warded off squirrel enemies.)
• And finally, five giant hostas would emerge from the ground, covering all of the decaying bulb leaves and filling up the garden bed with beautiful greenery all summer and fall. (All five hostas, which my parents divided from their own plants, are coming up, doing just fine, and seem to be loving the warm weather, too.)

Here's a shot from yesterday evening that shows an about-to-bloom tulip in the foreground with a hosta sprouting behind it. And lots of daffodil and crocus greenery all around.

The only other flower I have at my house so far is this sweet alyssum, which I bought over Easter weekend at Frager's. It smells awesome. I put it in a big pot by the front door, so hopefully it'll grow to fill the pot and smell great every time we walk past it. Here's a picture of the alyssum, which includes a bonus cameo of Francois, who came over to visit last night while Tony and I were working in the front yard:

Actually, Tony was doing the work, and I was taking photos. He sprinked some Holly-tone plant food around the evergreen plans in the front yard. I don't know what, exactly, Holly-tone is or does. I just know that my dad delivered a bag of it to us last fall with instructions to feed the evergreen plants twice a year. Yes, sir.

And I've been seeing all of these beautiful photos from the Tidal Basin of all the cherry blossoms. Seems our tree is a little cherry tree is a liiiiitle slow in blooming this year.

My herbs also have made a big resurgence in the past week or so.

Thyme and tarragon with my celery in the middle:

More tarragon and oregano with some strawberries in the background.

I thought the chives were dead all winter, but they're baaack!

I also have a great big rosemary plant, but that didn't die back at all during the winter.

And now that the garden bed is in the backyard, I've finally been able to plant my cool-season crops. Last night I spied some turnips, radishes, spinach, romaine and arugula coming up! Hopefully the hot weather backs off a bit, so the cool-season crops survive for at least a little while! And tonight I looked at the notes I made to myself when I planted my garden last spring and realized that I already had my tomatoes and peppers in the ground by mid-April ... so I gotta get on that. Maybe this weekend?

dining out: dc-3

When my parents came to visit earlier this month, they got in around dinnertime Friday. They'd been in the car for six hours, so we decided to get dinner somewhere quick and casual. I suggested DC-3, the hot dog place on Barracks Row, and they loved it.

The restaurant's name and decor are based on 1940s commercial air travel. Airplanes made traveling across the country easier, and the restaurant links all of those cities via their hot dogs. Like a New York coney dog or a Cincinnati chili dog.

Tony, always the adventurous eater, ordered the bulgogi and kimchi dog. Couldn't stop raving about it, particularly the buttered roll.

And the man ordered fried pickles. He and my dad devoured them.

This place is vegetarian-friendly. I ordered a veggie dog with veggie chili. (And a random pickle just because.) Really happy with it. I've had the falafel dog on a previous trip - also tasty.

We were there right before Lent started, so my dad ordered a Mardi Gras-themed dog.

And my mom went with the Cincinnati coney dog, easy on the onions.

DC-3 is a crowd pleaser, and a good dining option if you're looking for food quickly.

home improvement: drafty outlets

When my parents were in D.C. earlier this month to help put up crown molding, my dad mentioned that he felt a draft from our outlets and that we might want to insulate them. It had not occurred to me that (a) outlets can be drafty or that (b) they can be insulated. But now I know.

So the next time Tony and I were at Home Depot, we picked up a couple of packages of these outlet sealers. We used one piece for each light switch and outlet on the front and back walls of the house. (Rowhouse living perk - no need to insulate on the sides of the house because they're up against the neighbors' houses.)

The process started with removing the outlet covers.

Here's one of our drafty outlets:

The material on the insulation is perforated, so you just have to poke through the shapes to fit the light switch or outlet.

Like so:

Here's Tony placing the foam over the outlet.

And that's about it. Screw the outlet cover back on. The capital investment for this project was about $4 for two packages of insulation, so hopefully we recoup that cash in the form of lower utility bills over time. No more drafty outlets.

home improvement: crown molding

It was a big home improvement weekend in our house, guys. Crown molding went up downstairs!

The project is 90 percent finished -- all we need to do is paint it. But I couldn't wait to write about this project.

I knew that the house would look better with crown molding, but I didn't realize how much better until it was on the walls. The room looks tied together and finished, and I love it so, so much.

My dad has put up crown molding in pretty much every room in his house, so he's an expert, and he said he'd come down to help with the project. The thing about putting up crown molding is that the molding and supplies aren't that expensive -- we paid less than $100 for all of the materials -- but the labor can be the expensive part. So we're lucky to have an expert in the family who was willing to help us out.

When Tony and I were in Ohio for Christmas, I went to the local hardware store with my dad, and I picked out the molding I wanted. Our ceilings are 9 feet downstairs, so I wanted large molding. I went with the 5 1/4-inch size. I decided against solid wood and went with MDF particleboard. MDF is straighter than solid wood and easier to work with. You need solid wood for baseboards and other trim that could get banged up, but nothing is going to damage molding on the ceiling.

Here's a shot from Saturday morning, as the pieces started to go up!

Tony and my dad used a nail gun with an air compressor to attach the molding. A row of nails in the drywall and a row of nails in the ceiling.

(Victor, by the way, was not impressed with the presence of the air compressor. It would rev up randomly and loudly, which means Victor spent much of Saturday under our bed. Here he is on Sunday afternoon, still looking unimpressed with the whole project, haha.)

(And here he is sitting on the spiral staircase, keeping an eye on Tony as he does some finishing touches - wiping down the spackling. The cat loves this staircase, by the way. He gets a birdseye view of the entire house. Also, when he's laying on the steps, he refuses to move out of the way for a person walking up the steps. It's kind of funny.)

Anyway, enough about the cat. Here's a picture of Tony being manly with the compound miter saw.

Here's an in-progress shot. You can see the slight variances in the ceiling height. Ceilings in houses (especially old houses) aren't exactly even. See the shadow between the molding and the ceiling where the molding doesn't quite reach the ceiling?

At this point, my mom and I left to go shopping. Because putting up crown molding is really a two-man job, and there were two extra people in the small space.

So I'm not sure what Tony and my dad did over the next few hours, but this is what our patio table looked like when my mom and I came back Saturday afternoon:

And this is how the inside of the house was looking:

Here's a before photo:

The gap between the ceiling and the molding disappeared. My dad used a tube of caulking to fill in those gaps.

And Tony filled all of the nail holes with lightweight spackling.

Here's a before shot of part of the room:

And some after pictures:

Before:

After:

And as a bonus, there was just enough molding left over to put it up in the half bath downstairs. So now the entire first floor is done. Which leaves us with just two bedrooms, the full bath and the upstairs hallway that are un-crown molded. Maybe down the line.

Oh and here's what one of the walls in the bathroom looks like right now. Someone is planning a makeover! I'm leaning toward the grays ... but that's a project for another day.

home improvement: new cabinet door

When you come into our house through the front door, the downstairs is all one open space. The living room, spiral staircase, dining room and kitchen. On the end of the kitchen counter are display shelves, which you can see as soon as you walk into the house. They're probably intended for cookbooks and whatnot, but storage space is at a premium around here, folks, and I've always found these shelves to be a missed opportunity. But this problem was not insurmountable.

I didn't take a "before" photo, so, uh, just pretend there's no door in this photo. (Spoiler alert! We added a door!)

Here is how I created the door in four easy steps.

1. Call Dad.

2. Ask Dad to make a door for you.

3. Allow a few months to pass.

4. Install your door!

Haha! Didn't he do a great job? When my parents were in D.C. last fall, he took one of our other cabinet doors home with him, and he modeled the new door off of it. It's really impressive. He even matched the stain. Tony and I picked it up when we were in Ohio for Christmas and installed it when we got back.

So now the booze is behind a closed door, and I have room to store all of those extra pantry items that don't fit in our cabinets and previously were housed on top of the cabinets. So much better.

Problem, you've been surmounted.