DEFY MONDAY: Summer Solstice

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This may be the most important DEFY MONDAY yet as it is the Looooongest Monday of the year! Today is Summer Solstice, the FIRST day of summer and an astronomical phenomena. (A fitting way to start the season, don't you think?) Today we are the closest to the sun we are every going to get, which makes today the day with the longest period of sunlight!

How are you going to spend it?

With some summer solstice music,

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or maybe with some other fun group activities?

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Or is today a spiritual day for you?

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Whatever you choose, I must confess, my summer solstice will be spent stuck at this desk. But if I could have it my way, this would be my ideal summer solstice,

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But don't fret! What we will be able to do this summer solstice: thawing in the fridge as we speak, some delicious tuna steaks to throw on the grill when we get home tonight. A banging dinner to eat out on the back patio while we fashion some DIY style garden trellis for our rapidly growing vine plants, so that they can stop depending on our chain link fence and stray propane tank. Cucumbers, we are coming to save you!

For some great DIY Garden Trellis guides, check out here and here.

Also, another great for today and all those hot summer days in general,

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Deer Tick

And they're coming here: to our own Johnny Brenda's, in Philadelphia on July 20th! You can check out their music here and here, and reserve your tickets to the show here. We saw them last June in Philly, opening up for Jenny Lewis. And I can say it, without a doubt - it was the best rock show I've ever seen.

But in the meantime: Hope you all get a chance to get out and enjoy that summer sun! (Don't forget your sunscreen!)

Get Growing: Cilantro!

So, its my first season doing my own growing - and like most things I do for the first time, I am mucking it up. Hence, a lot of back-pedaling, doing a lot of research I probably should've already done.

The advantage? I am going to share it here with you! As I learn things, you'll learn them too, and maybe you won't muck up anything at all when you go to start your own plot in the backyard.

Today's lesson: Cilantro!

Yum with black beans and spices! Yum with chicken sausage and feta cheese! Yum in fresh home made salsa! Yum on garden fresh egg sandwiches!

What you need to know - that I didn't... don't let it flower!

Most herbs are this way. Where a flower signals the coming of fruits and vegetables on plants like tomato, and cucumber... flowers on the tops of plants like cilantro and basil, mean the plant will give more nutrients and energy to those flowering buds, than it will to the production of leaves = no more cilantro.

The solution: pluck them off before the buds mature to put the plants attention back on the production of new leaves, OR let them mature and resow themselves back into your garden, you'll have a new cilantro crop in a few weeks.

I really messed up this one because...not only did I not pluck off those flower heads before they matured, neither did I let them resow! I cut them for a nice fragarant bouquet for our kitchen island. They look beautiful and smell great, but I guess we will be getting the rest of our summer's cilantro elsewhere.

My defense: we got a pot of cilantro when we made our trip to Laurel Hill Gardens. The pot we got already had a few stalks that were thicker and more stick like - those on their way to flower. Those leaves closest to the flower, don't look like cilantro. We got some dill too and planted that next to our cilantro in our herb pot. I couldn't figure out if the flowering stalks of cilantro were tall stalks of dill ... did you know? Coriander used for seasoning are the seeds of the cilantro plant?

Always learning.

The silver lining: Our tomatoes are coming!

We learned (before planting) by talking with someone from our neighboorhood farm, Greensgrow, in order to prevent blossom rot , a common ailment of tomato plants both home-grown and commercial, smash up some egg shells in your tomato soil before planting your starter plants. The result - the egg shells will provide the plant with the extra calcium it needs to prevent blosson rot = beautiful, delicious fruit!

It looks like we're well on our way!

This Weekend!

So this weekend we are looking to make our current backyard from a 'before' into an 'after'!

Have you heard about Philadelphia's Groupon? Its a great web-based service that presents its members (membership is free) with daily area coupons.

We were lucky enough to snag coupons for Laurel Hill Gardens, $100 worth of gardening tools and supplies for only $50! And this weekend we plan on cashing them in!

We're not quite sure what we want to grow yet. I know grape tomatoes and a nice selection of herbs is at the top of my list. We may pick some out some nice annuals as well.

I got a little ambitious with the yard in the 'after' - we will never have green green grass, and I don't know where we would find a fence like that.
But if I could have everything I wanted, wouldn't it be great to have a private city getaway like this one in the picture below?

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Maybe some day. Also on the list of things to-do this weekend are the annual Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby, followed by the Trenton Ave. Arts Festival, both which are sure to be a blast.

And did you hear? Its Making Time's ten-year anniversary, sure to be a good party if you are looking for something to do later on.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

DEFY MONDAY: Ithaca, NY. Road Trip!

For you it may be the idea of Atlantis,


I was always drawn to the idea of the Amazon woman,

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Whatever it is out there that gives you a sense escape, I am here to tell you now - you need look no futher! Better than fantasy - the beautiful future already exists! You need only to head North (or South) on Rt. 81 and get off in Ithaca, NY.

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Today for DEFY MONDAY- we say MOVE! Or at least visit this beautiful Upstate NY retreat.

The people! The food! The parks! The COFFEE! I will talk about it all, now, in no particular order.

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We were brought to this fabulous weekend destination in order to attend AWESOME Amy's AWESOME Graduation Party, which was being held at Taughannock State Park. Have you heard the phrase "Ithaca Is Gorges"?

Well, let me tell you, not only are there state parks: Taughannok, Treman and Buttermilk (all sporting their own special waterfall attractions), there is also the Wildflower Preserve at Six Mile Creek, the East Hill Reacreation Way, the Cascadilla Creek Gorge, Ithaca Falls, and the network of Finer Lakes Trails - ALL in Ithaca! The best part, many of these are a stone's throw away (okay, like a two or three block walk) from some of the best coffe on the planet! These trail heads are RIGHT IN TOWN.

THE COFFEE!

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Okay, so we are going to handle this one like this:

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See that Rhino there? We're going to call that "Gimme!". And those Egyption Plovers perched on his back, one's named "The Shop", and another "Manndible Cafe". The primo source for coffee in Ithaca is Gimme! Coffee. Gimmee! Coffee, The Shop, and Manndible Cafe exist in a symbiotic relationship, in the same way these Plovers and Rhino do! These birds eat the insects off of the backs of buffaloes, giraffes, and rhinos. They have even been observed taking the leeches from the open mouths of crocodiles! (brave!) The Plovers sustain themselves on these bugs from the Rhino, while in turn providing the Rhino with better health. So, you get it? The Gimme!, The Shop, Manndible Cafe thing? Gimme! not only brews coffee, it also roasts, so in addition to its own shops around town, Gimme! supplies beans to The Shop and Manndible Cafe.

And,

drum roll please,

this leads us to The People!

Because who is the roaster at Gimme! Coffee? Why Colleen is of course!

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Gimme! is great because not only do they take an "obsessive approach to sourcing, roasting and preparing artisan coffee", they also put a lot of their energy towards community-building, historic preservation, and sustainability.

They are sending Colleen to South American later this month for bean research and to visit the farms from which they buy their own beans.

They do email orders! Yum.

And who owns The Shop? Why, its Phoebe Aceto and Jon Proton!

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The Shop is new in town, working to serve not only great coffee and teas, but also to provide a space for art shows and live music perfomances. Plus they do tattoos! You heard me right! This is a fully functional coffee shop and tattoo parlor! Get Phoebe to make you a kick-ass single-cup, get Phoebe to give you a kick-ass tattoo? It's true, while you're here you can do both.

Another connection - Phoebe used to work for Gimme! You can read more about that, here.

What's left? the Manndible Cafe,

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managed by my most wonderfully creative friend: Aniela!

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Manndible Cafe is located across the way from Mann Library on Cornell University's campus. This cade has all the old innards of the now closed Juna's Cafe located on the Ithaca Commons, where owners Kathleen and Pam were nice enough to give me my first (and best) coffee job. Not only did I have my first espresso and first tofu sandwhich, its where I first met Aniela and Colleen. A golden age indeed.

The Manndible Cafe, the only one of the three with both a breakfast and a lunch menu, on top of a comprehensive coffee and smoothie list, is a great choice for fresh food and pretty smiles. DO try their tofu scramble wrap!

So its all about the coffee then? Yeah, I guess so - but look what all this caffeine created: a great network, of wonderful people, in a beautiful city - a great place to go to a graduation party with a drink Ithaca Beer. (yes, there is local beer too!)

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All this, and I didn't even get started on the arts! I'll give you this link anyway, to Comet Skateboards, a sustainable skateboard company, for which my friend Kaya has just started doing their screen-printing, even rocking a few of his own board designs.

Ithaca - gorgeous indeed! Inside and out. So DEFY MONDAY - get in your car, and drive.

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****And on a side note: while at the graduation party, we met Sean and Adam, of Hamlet Organic Garden, a CSA located in Long Island. They invited us to their Strawberry Festival/Summer Solstice Celebration coming up in June! Stay tuned for the post!

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Now we wanna know - where are you going to escape to this summer?