You are spared stories of garlic sprouts, and tomato seedlings, and onion starts. You are spared bad photos of little yellow cuke flowers, and more tomato seedlings, and leggy marigolds. You are spared endless talk of tomatoes. You are spared these things because this year, I will have no garden.

OH NOES!

No, really, it's all good. After almost 4 years, we left the City of Mill for the City of Portland. Traded in 1200 sq feet on 3/4 of an acre, for 1200 sq ft on the first floor with a pretty awesome porch and not one ounce of dirt. What I got in return was a 4 minute ride to the symphony and a brand fucking new kitchen. This was not a hard decision people!

Actually, I got one other thing in return, and that is access to some awesome grocery stores, produce markets, and farmers markets. I'll be honest - this will be the first time in about 8 years that I won't be growing some kind of food, so it's a little weird to not have seedling trays on my kitchen counter right now, and I do get a little bummed out every time I find a seed catalog in my mailbox. But last summer we started making weekly trips to the Corvallis farmers market, and I don't know, I guess I got variety envy. One week, I found these amazing yellow romas and thought about canning some until I remembered that I had some 300 tomatoes hanging off my own plants at home. I was already thinking about downsizing the garden when we made the decision to move, so the plan is to take the year off and spend more time thinking about what's in season than what's coming out of my garden and when. Which explains the turnips and asparagus we had this week...

And fear not, there will still be jam! Outside of the plums, which were on the property, all the fruit either came from farmers market or the grower, so nothing will change there. Except maybe the variety!