Preserving

This summer has been fairly wet.  I haven't had to water my garden very much, and everything down there is looking very lush and green.  Despite all the rain and green-ness, very little of it is weeds this year...a fact of which I am quite proud.  The amazing pumpkin plants are taking up close to 1/4 of the garden and there are 2 enormous pumpkins, and several smaller ones.

This guy is at least 18" high and 12" across
...and still growing!

The second time that I planted flower seeds in the top tier of my strawberry bed, they came up.  They are just starting to bloom, and look wonderful!

Zinnias and Cosmos

I am harvesting so, so many veggies from the garden that our extra refrigerator has been full frequently and I feel quite overwhelmed some days just trying to keep up!

This week I froze green beans and rhubarb, made zucchini bread, and ate corn and cucumbers.  Yesterday I picked a 2-gallon bucket of tomatoes (our first) so JP and I had tomato sandwiches for dinner last night, and I made and froze a pot of pasta sauce today.  I also canned 3 pints of sliced jalapenos for JP's tacos today.

L brought home apples and baby carrots from the library last week.  The Summer Reading Program is finished for the year, and these were left over from the lunches that they provided for the children.  They were going to be thrown out, and having Mennonite blood coursing through her veins, L couldn't let that happen.  So, I froze 6 pints of carrots and made 10 half pints of apple butter this week as well!

Tonight I am down to a small bag of green beans and about a dozen cucumbers in the refrigerator, a couple of tomatoes, and about 5 or six yellow or zucchini squashes.  Sigh.  There is more to do!

It is raining again tonight.  A few days ago, I witnessed the sun shining and the rain coming down.  It was beautiful.  You can almost see it in this picture if you enlarge it:

You know it's summer when...

 The fireflies are twinkling at twilight.

The monarch caterpillars are munching.

The garden is green and abundant.

I am canning and freezing like crazy.

Pickled Beets

Sweet Relish and Green Beans

And finally for some projects:

I folded an origami pig in honor of Yellow Pig Day, July 17th 
(look it up)

JP and I repaired the chickens' shade
structure with metal from the old pool - 
the ultimate in recycling!

Gardening and Such

Everything is growing and growing!  We are getting a nice rain right now to cool things down after a week of blazing hot temperatures.

The flower beds keep surprising me with flowers that I haven't seen for a long time.

The garden is getting greener (and not from weeds this year!!)

Tomatoes, Peppers, Pumpkins, Chard, Cabbage,
and the Blueberries...

...Everything else

I've been harvesting plenty of stuff:

Blueberries and Rhubarb

Blueberries and Sugar Snap Peas

Two Varieties of Cukes

The Blueberries are finished for the year.  Usually I have more than I can use and I beg friends to come and pick.  This year I only got about 4 gallons, which sounds like a lot, but I also have been using a lot:

Blueberry Basil Lemonade

Blueberry Cheesecake

Luckily we finished the new pool last week in time to cool off on those sweltering days.  It is much smaller and has significantly easier upkeep.

And finally, we acquired some new mousers for Poplar Ridge, meet Zelda and Fitz:

They have been a lot of fun!

Keep cool and Happy 250th Americans!

Mother Earth

First an update on my dueling roosters...they have plenty of battle scars now!

We have finally had some warmer weather with sunshine and I have been reveling in getting dirty outside!  We took our annual trip to the nursery for Mother's Day.  I love visiting this place...it is remote, quiet (except for the peacocks) and nestled into the hillside surrounded by enormous trees.  We didn't see (but we heard) the peacocks this time, but L and I watched the frogs in the pond for awhile.

We came home with 2 flats of flowers, herbs, and veggies to plant around Poplar Ridge.

Fan flower in the cast iron kettle by the garage

I added sage and thyme to my herb garden - the oregano is
perennial, and I was able to over winter the parsley.

Some new additions to the big iron kettle by the front door
are curly grass and these gorgeous black velvet petunias.

The shasta daisies on the deck have over wintered in
the garage for years...this year they are looking
particularly robust!

I planted my 4 hanging planters, and also planted some flowers in a planter on my Mom's deck as my Mother's Day gift to her.  No new plants for my flower beds this year, but I did get a couple of pumpkins for the garden.

I did weed both flower beds for the second time this spring and put out all my pig statues for the first time in 2 years.  I noticed that the weeping cherry is starting to eat my fence!  It looks a little bit like Jabba the Hut, doesn't it?

I have been working down in the garden also.  The strawberries have started producing, and I have both beds weeded and covered against the birds.

I have done 3 runs with the broad fork, since we are still doing the no-till gardening method.  This is how it looks at first.

Then I go through and pick out the rocks - after almost 15 years of gardening in the same spot, I don't understand why I am still finding so many rocks!  This is just one of 6 piles that I picked out this year.  I also break up the clods before it is ready to plant.

Here it is after planting the first 7 rows of seeds:  sugar snap peas, carrots, parsnips, beets, radishes and lettuce.  I have plenty more to plant, but had to give my shoulders and hands a break for a couple of days!

Since I finally have chicken wire up around the entire garden, and it doesn't look like anymore freezing nights, I can start planting out my seedlings soon!

Happy Mother's Day and happy planting!

Boys Will Be Boys

I went out to check on the chickens a couple of days ago and noticed blood spattered on the feeder and water dispenser.  I quickly went in the pen to check everyone and discovered that the victims were my two roosters.

Apparently, they were fighting, even though I have never seen either of them pay the least bit of attention to the other.  Rusty has a torn wattle, and Barnaby's comb was still oozing blood from some insult that I couldn't get close enough to evaluate.

They look a mess, but seem to be doing ok otherwise.

Sheesh...boys...

Experiments

I've tried a couple of things lately that I've never done before.  After all, I might as well be creative while I wait for it to be safe to plant things in my garden, right?

A couple of years ago, when we were purchasing coffee beans at a roaster in Erie that we like, J and I picked up a couple of burlap coffee bean bags from a box that said "FREE."  When we returned home from vacation, I put mine on a pile and kinda forgot about it.  While I was cleaning house this week, I discovered it and decided to put it over the back of my desk chair like a cover.  Much to my surprise, a handful of green coffee beans fell out!

I wasn't sure it there was enough to do anything with or not, but I decided to try roasting them.  I watched a couple of YouTube videos and roasted them to what should have been a Light to Medium Roast.  I ground them, and JP and I tried a small cup of coffee the next day.

Unfortunately, we were not very impressed - I picked up earthiness with a hint of wet burlap.  Oh well, it was fun trying.

I came upon a recipe last year for a homemade lotion that is supposed to be good for very dry skin.  Working in health care and washing my hands umpteen times a day definitely dries them out, especially in the wintertime.  The mystery ingredient in this lotion is dandelion oil.  Luckily we have no shortage of dandelions in our yard.

I had to start by picking a bunch of dandelion flowers and drying them in the sun.

Then I simmered them in avocado oil for 2 hours.  After straining out the oil, I combined it with equal parts shea butter and honeycomb pastilles and melted it together in a double boiler.

I mixed in several drops of sandalwood essential oil and then poured the product into containers.

I found the lotion fairly oily, but I think it will work well if I put it on at bedtime and wear cotton gloves.  Time will tell.  I have 2 extra containers...any takers?

We had a couple of really cold nights last week (in the high 20's) with frost, so I haven't yet planted out my seedlings, but they are living in the portable greenhouse/cold frame outside right now.  I have been working on trying to rabbit proof the garden for the past several days.  I have gone around the outside of the deer fence twice, pulling weeds and removing debris, and have attached over 50 feet of chicken wire by folding over 6 inches or so, and using landscaped staples to secure them to the ground, and using wire to attach the top to the existing fencing.  I have another roll of chicken wire to go, plus I found some more in the barn.  Hopefully this year I can actually grow green beans!

The strawberries and blueberries are blooming, so I got the areas bird proofed and weeded.  I also dug up strawberry runners that escaped from the beds and planted them in empty areas in the beds.  I'm hoping for a good season of berries this year.

I also put out my hummingbird feeders over a week ago, and have seen the little guys several times already.

I guess spring is here really and truly!  Enjoy it!

Not Yet!

We had a nice heat wave after my last post, but the weather keeps flipping from winter to spring.  We got a couple of inches on snow on the 18th, and below freezing weather for several days, which turned my apricot tree blossoms into crispy critters.

We actually got a bit more snow the morning of March 28th - just a dusting though.  This weekend it was 85* out on Saturday, and I put all the screens back in the windows.  By Sunday, it only got in the 50's, and we had to start a fire in the woodstove!

Luckily the Hellebores (Lenten Roses) are hardy - they have been blooming since late February.

The crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths have been blooming as well, and the weeping cherries will open any day now.  We have had enough nice days, that I have done some outside work, such as deadheading and weeding in the flowerbeds; pruning the blueberries, butterfly bushes and clematis, and raking gravel out of the grass.

The wild violets have taken over in my largest flower bed.  At first, I tried to weed them out, but it was hopeless, so I decided to let them be.

This year, I thought I'd try something useful with them, and I made some violet jelly.  First I had to steep the flowers in boiling water for 4 hours, which turned it a bright blue.  Right before adding the sure jell and sugar, I added lemon juice, which turned it a bright purple.  After it was gelled, it was a bright pink color.  The recipe stated that the jelly has a "grapey and floral" taste.  All I noted was sweet with a bit of lemon.  Oh well.  I have still been enjoying it on toast!

L was assisting with the HS drama production again last week.  They did "Little Women - The Musical."  They needed a pair of ice skates for a prop at the last minute, so L and I stayed up late and built a pair out of some boots that she thrifted, cardboard, tin foil and hot glue.  They didn't turn out half bad!

I just started another fire in the woodstove, as it is forecast to be 30* overnight, and it is already starting to get a bit chilly in here.  I can't stand it! It's April 6th...where is SPRING??