forest park | kimberly ah

Aug 27 2014

adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, some stuff about me

Back To School

My Japanese class starts tonight! I am very excited and a little bit nervous. I’m nervous mainly because I don’t know what to expect, so hopefully the nerves will go away after the first class–this is supposed to be fun after all. I promise to report back soon.

The sweet chopstick rests pictured above are a gift from my friend Mollie. She picked them up during her recent trip to Disney World. We don’t have any chopstick rests around here (nor do we have proper chopsticks!) so these were a perfect present! (Plus, she got one for Presley–how sweet is that?!)

Tagged adventures, forest park, I *heart* Japan

Aug 14 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, in my library, In My Neighborhood

In My Neighborhood: Little Free Library

I’ve been reading about Little Free Libraries popping up in cities all across the country. It’s an intriguing idea–build a tiny library, fill it with a few books and let people give and take on the honor system. It’s so community-driven and idealist…two things I love.

Imagine my surprise when Little Free Library recently popped up in front of a tiny house in my own neighborhood!

This house is only a block north of me, and one that I walk by almost every day on my way to get a coffee or go to work. It’s in a neighborhood of both houses and apartments a couple of blocks away from the train station. If you ask me, it’s a perfect neighborhood for something like this. People can pick up and drop off books on their way to their morning trains. Hopefully some of the neighborhood kids can find some titles in there eventually. The little library house is surrounded by solar-operated twinkle lights, but I haven’t seen it all lit up at night yet. I don’t see any titles inside that I want to borrow yet (I am a huge user of our public library), but I have a few good classics on my shelf that I’m going to drop off later this week. Do you have a Little Free Library in your neighborhood? There’s a giant list of them here and a map here.

Speaking of reading…I’m going to go outside now and finish my book for book group this weekend. We’re reading Two Years Before the Mast. What an adventure!

Tagged books, forest park

Aug 11 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, summer manifesto

Plot #6: Brandywines are Back!

And the tomatoes are coming!! Last night in our latest check of our neglected community garden plot #6, we found a bounty of tomatoes! Three nice Brandywines, a couple more Juliets and a couple dozen Yellow Pears all made it safely into the harvesting bucket and ready for Hasegawa Happy Hour tomorrow night. I found a new salad recipe that I’d like to try with the yellow guys and I think panzanella will be the perfect plan for the Brandywines. Most of today will be spent searching for a cocktail recipe that will complement the tomato feast. Look at our loofah! We have several of these little guys running along the mess of vines. Thanks to Mr. Brownthumb for helping us spot them and for hand modeling. Now we just need to hope that they don’t get eaten by mice before they are big enough to eat or dry out for bath time. (I’m still not sure I’m brave enough to eat one!)Even though my careless flower plantings took up way more space than I had anticipated, seeing those crazy orange and blue blooms in our plot makes me ridiculously happy. I promise there are plenty of tomatoes behind that mess of flowers!And speaking of flowers, I can’t resist sharing this way-taller-than-me sunflower in a neighboring community garden plot. I feel like I should do a community garden tour for you in the coming weeks. So many plots are overgrown and overflowing with amazing produce. It’s fun to be learning and sharing this hobby with so many others.

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening, summer

Aug 04 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, homemaking, summer manifesto

Plot #6: The Season’s First Tomatoes

We discovered three really ripe Juliet tomatoes in the garden yesterday!! They probably could have been picked a little sooner, but I didn’t get over there much last week.

Now’s the time though…now’s the time for going to the garden every day or so to check for little red gems on the vines.

Our four Juliet plants are all dripping with green tomatoes. It’s going to be another bumper crop this year. What you see above is just one branch of one part of a plant! It seems so weird that three random tomatoes were red and all the others look so very green…but that’s the way it was last year, too. All of the Brandywines and yellow pear tomatoes are still green, too. We are going to have to wait a little longer for those. Just like last year, we have some blight happening. We’ve tried to cut off most of the yellowed leaves, but I need to go again this week and do a deeper cleaning of everything. Have you had this problem with your tomatoes? Peggy suggested adding eggshells to our soil when we plant our tomatoes next year. Thankfully, the fruits are undamaged so far and most of the plants are still looking healthy otherwise. Remember how I randomly planted a few flowers from the seed bank in our community garden shed? Well, the flowers–cosmos and bachelor buttons–have grown as tall as the tomatoes and have taken over their little corner of the garden. I’ve been cutting a few for our kitchen counter and leaving some of the floppy ones for the butterflies. And speaking of flowers, my first Morning Glory appeared yesterday morning! I planted five types of climbers in June and they are all finally starting to vine. The Morning Glories and Moonflowers are the furthest along and the Cardinal Climbers and Cypress Vines are close behind. I’m nursing the single Black-Eyed Susan vine along. It’s struggling. And, I’m finally getting more blooms on my Trader Joe’s hibiscus. It’s so cheerful, isn’t it?

Tagged forest park, garden, gardening, home, homemaking, summer

Jul 28 2014

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adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, some stuff about me

Japanese Class

On a complete whim, I signed up for a beginner Japanese class this fall. I’m taking it at the Oak Park River Forest High School through Triton College’s adult continuing education program.

As an adult, I feel like a total language dummy. I confidently took four years of French in high school…I was pretty good. There were only two of us in French 4 (Stacey D & me!) and I could converse and write well. I had a French pen pal, too. We lost touch in college, unfortunately, and by then I was writing her in English anyway because I stupidly did not take French in college. (Regrets…I have a few.)

But when it comes to Japanese, I’m convinced I will never learn. Someone said I’d probably know the most in our class, but I seriously doubt it. Naoto has tried to teach me phrases and either I cannot pronounce them correctly to save my life OR I forget them within moments of learning. Maybe I’m too old…or maybe (hopefully!) I just need a structured class to help make things stick.

So I dug out my old (children’s) Japanese vocabulary book for the occasion. I’ve had it for years, long before I even traveled to Japan. I think the next logical step is to make some flashcards.

Whether I catch on or not, I’m really excited to take the class. It was only $140 and it goes from the end of August through the middle of November, and it will be a good opportunity for me to meet some new people and to hopefully learn some basics for our trip next spring.

I’m really hoping we can devote a whole session to donut flavors and ordering at Mister Donut, but maybe that’s wishful thinking?

Tagged adventures, books, forest park, I *heart* Japan, Japan

Jul 17 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, summer manifesto

Plot #6: The Garden is a Forest (Again)

I’ve been sick and Naoto has been working like a dog (every day since he’s returned home from Japan) so the garden has been a bit neglected. I finally went yesterday afternoon. Boy, was it a perfect day for gardening! Our weather has been unseasonably cool, getting down to the 50s at night and into the 70s during the day. It’s the perfect weather to me.

When I saw our little Plot #6, I couldn’t believe how overgrown it had gotten in just over a week! Even the smallest tomatoes were huge, growing into their neighboring tomatoes. And, as you can maybe see from the top picture, the tomatoes are again spilling out into the walkway. I’m going to have to fix that this weekend to make sure none of my tomatoes get stepped on. Both Brandywines have some fruit on them. And all of the Juliets and the Yellow Pear are producing too…no red (or yellow) ones yet though…I can hardly wait! I harvested almost all of the peas, which is a good thing because that will open some space for this guy. The loofah is growing out of control. (This is not a surprise…yet it was still surprising.) I had to unwind it from a tomato and from some of the peas. I think we *may* have waited too long to lasso that crazy grower!

Now that I’m feeling better and Naoto (hopefully) is going back to working normal hours, I’m hoping we can spend time fixing up the garden together this weekend.

Tagged forest park, garden, gardening, summer

Jul 11 2014

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gardening, summer manifesto

Plot #6: Peas & Tomatoes

This is our first tiny harvest of sugar snap peas for 2014. It may not look like much, but there are plenty more in the garden almost ready to be picked! I’m thinking stir fry this weekend! Once these are all harvested, I will plant some more for another harvest later in the season. Only one of our Juliets and one of our Brandywines have tomatoes on them so far. But every plant has blossoms, so I’m still hopeful for a tomato explosion. We’ve been pretty diligent about picking off the yellowed leaves. And we’ve been trying to keep up with staking and tying wayward branches…a difficult task with the wild Juliets!

This week was rough because I was sick and Naoto was busy. These pictures are from Sunday and Naoto made a watering run at dusk on Wednesday night. He said everything is looking good and I’m looking forward to seeing for myself later this afternoon.

Cheers to a good weekend!

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening, summer

Jun 26 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening

Plot #6: Rapid Rain, Rapid Growth

Naoto and I went to the garden last night for the first time in a week. It’s been raining every day here since my last visit and while I should have popped over between rain storms, I didn’t. I’m kind of glad I waited though…I almost didn’t recognize the garden when I saw it! The peas, which were only about three inches tall last week, are now at least a foot tall. I couldn’t believe it! There are plenty of flowers but no pods yet…soon! I “built” my pea teepee and untangled the pea patch. Hopefully the bamboo stakes will promote better growth and less of a pea jungle. Remember the lima seeds I carelessly stuck in the ground last Tuesday? I think most of them came up and they are about three inches tall now. They are kind of…rough looking…something is eating them. We had a similar problem last year, but we still had limas so I’m hopeful for this season’s crop, too. The loofah are really taking off, too. This is causing some anxiety. What to do with those crazy vines? Our tomato plants are kind of hit or miss. The ones we planted right away are all looking good and have flowers or tiny tomatoes on them like the baby Brandywine above. And our Juliet has a lot of blossoms and tiny tomatoes growing as well. But the two Juliets we planted last are looking pretty weak. The rain and wind seemed to beat them down. We caged them and tied up the other plants to the big bamboo stakes and are hoping they all come through in the end.

But maybe I won’t have to open a roadside stand after all.

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening, summer

Jun 20 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening

Plot #6: Let There Be Loofah

We neglected the garden last weekend because of false rain predictions and unexpected schedule changes. I thought by the time I visited Plot #6 on Tuesday that everything would be dead. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Some of the tomatoes were a bit droopy, but nothing a little shot of water couldn’t fix. And our peas and flowers looked great. But who cares about all that… WE HAVE LOOFAH!!! I wasn’t expecting to find anything on the loofah mound and I yelped with delight when I saw these. Then I yelled “LOOOOOFAHHHHH!” in the middle of the empty community garden. We’ve never gotten to the plant portion of loofah growth before! It seems that allllll of the loofah seeds I soaked and planted came up…which means I might have to thin them a bit. But I’m really excited. And worried. We didn’t think anything would happen, so I’m not really sure we left enough room for an actual vining plant. Details, details…I’m just going to bask in the loofah celebration for a little longer and worry about building a loofah trellis when Naoto gets home. (Oh and any loofah advice you may have is completely welcome!) Our crazy pea patch is growing nicely. I planned to build our pea teepee on Monday, but I forgot the twine at home. Instead of building, I found some leftover lima bean seeds in the bottom of my gardening bag and planted them next to the peas. I might regret that decision later. Maybe I’ll just name this gardening season Planting on a Whim.

Tagged food, forest park, garden, gardening, summer

Jun 12 2014

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Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening

Plot #6 Progress

Our garden is growing! On Sunday we went down to the garden to plant our last two tomato plants. (My dad gave us four Juliet plants and we couldn’t find anyone to take the extra two, so now we have four Juliets. If they all live and all produce as many tomatoes as our last single Juliet plant did, I will be opening a road side stand this summer.) I need to go buy some more bamboo stakes. Our peas (shown above) are growing nicely, and soon I will need to build my little pea teepee so they don’t grow into a big jungle like they did last year. I also soaked some extra loofah seeds overnight and planted them on National Donut Day…still nothing. I’m sure that the cool days and nights we’ve had recently didn’t contribute to the poor loofah’s growth either since they tend to like hot weather. I’m still holding out hope that we will see a little sprout soon. On Sunday, we met our friends Laura and Scott at the garden for the first time this season. Laura planted some delicious radishes last month and we tried her harvest…it made us regret not planting any radishes. So, maybe I’m going today to buy a seed packet or two…