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??

On the Cusp...

We are on the cusp of Spring.  I don't smell it yet in the air, but my flowers are starting to tentatively show their tips.  The lenten roses have many buds on them right now, not quite blooming in time for the first day of Lent on Friday.

Last weekend I made about 70 newspaper cups and planted seeds for the garden once things are sunny and warm.  Thery are already coming up!

These are cabbages and kale

We had sunshine and weather in the 60's on Friday, so I worked in the garden for a couple of hours and got the blueberry bushes pruned.  Yesterday it was sunny and in the 50's.  JP and I cleared the pile of blueberry bush trimmings and the junk from last fall out of the garden.  We also tried to deer-proof my flower bed by putting in more posts around it and stringing electric fencing wire.  We still need to connect it to a solar battery to electrify it.

Today it is snowing on and off - hard to believe we were working in the sunshine in light jackets just 24 hours ago!   Sigh...we are down to a month of days before the "legal" beginning of Spring!

Falling

Once again, it's been awhile since I last posted.

I have cleaned all the plants out of the garden.  We still need to put leaves and then straw on for the winter.  I pickled the jalapenos, made some enchilada sauce out of the last of the tomatoes, and made a bunch of pesto out of the basil (I freeze this in ice cube trays and add them to hot pasta for a quick meal.)  JP ran out of his favorite sweet relish, and we were almost out of applesauce, but I had to buy produce to make those.

J came home from the city for a day in early October, so we used the tiny pumpkins that we grew in the garden to make mini Jack-o-Lanterns.

I also made a lego Jack-o-Lantern, complete with lights!

We have done some dressing up as well.  J won a costume contest dressed as "2D" from the band "Gorillaz."  I dressed as a Hockey Player to take my mom for testing at the hospital on Halloween day.  L and I dressed as "Lord Gray" for a "Clue" themed Murder Mystery Tea at the Tea Shoppe.

In the meantime, JP has finished working at the location that he has been for the past 7 or 8 years (I can't keep up!)  He will start his new position (which does not require the 45 min commute) in Dec.  My parents have just returned from a week long trip to TX to visit my brother.  They travelled separately - my mother by plane, and my dad by train...it's a long story!  My mother recently had an MRI of her brain as part of a dementia work up, and may have an aneurysm, she has another test scheduled this coming week to confirm.

It's almost Thanksgiving and I'm trying not to fall apart!

Making Music

 Well, it's been an eventful couple of weeks!

I'm done harvesting blueberries, so I opened up the enclosure to the birds so that the remaining berries won't go to waste.  I picked enough rhubarb yesterday to make a rhubarb crisp for dessert last night - it is doing extremely well in its new area!  L planted some sunflowers, which were striking even as buds.

The deer have become extremely bold as of last year.  So far this summer, they have eaten off my mint and potted sweet potato vine, which is RIGHT BESIDE THE FRONT DOOR!!  They are also munching on my weeping cherries and hydrangea bush, as well as the balloon flowers and gladiolus in my flower bed.  JP and I made use of an old VCR tape to put up some moving hindrances, which isn't especially attractive.  My flower bed is not especially attractive anymore either, especially since the deer ate off most of the gladiolus buds.  I thought it was working to keep the deer out for about a week, until I saw that they have further decimated my hydrangea.  There have been a set of twin fawns sleeping out in the yard for the past couple of weeks as well.  HUMPH.  I purchased hunting licenses for all 3 of us on Monday...revenge will be MINE!

I spent some time recently taking care of indoor plants as well.  I had several that needed re-potting, as did my mother.  She also lost her spider plant while she was in the hospital as I didn't think about watering her plants, neither did my dad.  L had a lovely spider baby that I potted for her in a little pot that J made.  Isn't it sweet?

L recently spent a few days at the beach with some friends.  As she was packing to leave, she discovered that the case of the accordion that my mother gifted to her last summer, was moldy, and had transferred to the fabric covered trunk that she used at college.  We ended up throwing away the case, since it was moldy inside and out, but I cleaned up the accordion.  I had to bleach the heck out of the trunk before it stopped smelling musty, but despite leaving the accordion opened up out in the sun for several days, I was unable to rid it of the musty odor.  After a couple of YouTube videos, I figured out how to take the instrument apart.  I also found a tip that suggested using carpet cleaning foam on the bellows to help take away musty odors.  What do you know?  It really worked!  I would say that it is about 85% improved.  Thanks, reddit folks!

This morning, I went out to tackle the chicken yard, which had waist high weeds growing in it.  I weed eated everything down, then took the electric fence down section by section to mow underneath it. (I LOVE my little battery powered weed eater - it is so light and easy to use!  I also put these on it instead of string so that it is able to cut small bushes as well.)  After that was finished, I put up some more fencing to create a small outside run for my pullets and cockerels.  They seemed to enjoy scratching around out there for the few minutes that I watched them.

Whew!  It's a hot one today, and after all of that weed eating, I regret not having the pool opened for a luxurious soak.  C'est la vie.

Even though I won't be floating in the pool, I will do a thorough tick check and get a shower.  Both JP and I have seen so many cases of Lyme Disease this summer.  The ticks that carry the offending bacteria are so teeny, that you have to do an extremely careful check to even see them.

I picked these off me last summer...

This classic "bull's eye" rash was
on a patient last week

In other good news, JP will be starting a new job in Nov, close to home - no more driving 45 minutes one way to work!

In other bad news, L had a minor accident in the Subaru the other day.  She is fine, but the car is totaled, I fear.

Growing

Well, it's been another month, and things are continuing to grow!

I finally overcame my fears and ventured into the garden.  Luckily the grass was growing in the STRAW, not in the GROUND, so came out fairly easily, although with SO MUCH of it, it was still time consuming to pull.  I decided to limit what I grow this year, and plant things in hills instead of rows so I didn't have to clear as much.  JP and I put cardboard and then landscape fabric down over the rest of the garden to try to kill anything else attempting to grow there.  Unfortunately, despite all this AND the liberal use of compost, my seeds are not germinating very well.  I do have everything growing that I planted indoors.

The asparagus did even poorer this year than last, so I transplanted the rhubarb out of the asparagus bed BACK into the garden (moved it from a raised bed in the garden into the asparagus bed several years ago.)  We mowed down the asparagus that had seeded and will flatten the bed and continue to mow it with the remainder of the grounds.  It was too intensive of a project to attempt to start it over (see this post about how we did it.)

Meanwhile, the strawberries have ended.  We had a really good harvest this year, although we ate the majority of them fresh.  I did get several pints frozen for later.  Now the blueberries have come on strong!  I already have 6 gallons frozen for later, and another gallon in the kitchen, waiting to be washed and picked through.

The peeps, who are now 6 weeks old, are fully feathered and look like miniature chickens.  Unfortunately, we seem to have hatched a LOT of roosters - at least 7 that I'm pretty sure of, and possibly a couple more!

This cute little hen was the one and only brown peep.

This little guy has the most unusual 
coloring out of anyone.

I'm pretty sure this one is a rooster, 
and possibly full blooded Buff
Orpington.

We ended up losing our young rooster a couple of days after the hen.  At least we had him long enough to get the fertilized eggs!  The hens really picked up their egg laying when the rooster arrived, and except for one super hot day last week, I am routinely getting 5-7 eggs daily.  I had a plethora of eggs last week - over 10 dozen in the fridge, so over the weekend I made a lot of eggy things.  I made 3 quiches on Friday, using 1 1/2 dozen eggs, plus hardboiled and pickled 1 dozen.  I also took an 18 egg carton to my parents.  On Saturday I made a batch of lemon curd, and also a batch of blueberry lemon curd (which disappointingly just tastes like purple lemon curd), using a dozen egg yolks altogether.  I then baked an angel food cake with the 12 egg whites.  I am down to 6 dozen in the fridge!

The grass has been growing like crazy as well, but we've had so many super hot and/or rainy days, that we haven't been able to get it mowed until this past weekend.  I tried to use the lawn sweeper to collect the clippings for on the garden, but it wasn't working right.  I think my Dad and I got it fixed this morning, so I am heading out to finish up that project before it rains again.

In the meantime, J and her friend headed up to Connecticut with some other potters for 10 days.  They participated in a wood fired kiln up there, camping on the farm where the kiln was on some of the hottest days of the year so far!  They were interviewed for the local public radio station while there.  They seemed to have a wonderful time.

L is getting ready to head to the beach with some buddies in a week, but is currently working full time with the summer work program (that she has been a part of for the past 6 years) at the library.

I need to get outside, it is beginning to look cloudy...

Belated Mother's Day

Since everyone in my immediate family was either working, sleeping, or moved out on Mother's Day, I spent most of the day alone.  I did go to the hospital and visit my own mother, who was admitted to our local hospital with significant breathing difficulties the day I posted last.  She was transferred north of here, to a larger hospital 3 days later, where she was seen by the lung specialist.  A week later, she was discharged and was supposed to be sent to a nursing home locally for rehab for a few days.  She was actually sent to one further North of here, but after MANY phone calls, I was able to facilitate a transfer to the local one.  She has been there ever since, and still on supplemental O2.

We decided to celebrate Mother's Day on the following weekend.  J was able to come home from the city, and we had a couple of delicious meals, and made our annual trek to the local nursery to buy plants for my planters, as well as herbs and a few veggies for the garden.  This place is like a little wonderland...besides the beautiful flowers and trees, and greenhouse after greenhouse full of tiny green plants, they have some fauna roaming around.

I have finally managed to get all my flowers and the herbs planted out, along with nursing home visits to see my mother, L's appointments and work.

That same weekend, the eggs that I have been incubating began to hatch!  I woke up to see little pips on a couple of eggs, but the first chick didn't fully hatch until early evening.  The incubator instructions said to leave the chicks inside until they are fully dry and fluffy, and by the time I went to bed, there were 5 peeps in various states of dryness.  I woke around 4 AM to find 11 chicks crowding the remaining eggs, so I took 6 dry ones out to the heat lamp in the barn.

The first egg pips

The first chick to hatch

Second chick on the way out

Starting to get fluffy!

By Monday evening, all the eggs but one had hatched and 15 peeps were all out in the barn.  We left the remaining egg for an additional day, before L did an autopsy.  From its development, it appears that it died about 3 days before the others hatched.  We have 15 very healthy and active chicks of a variety of colors:  black, black with light tummies/butts, yellow, orange, and brown.  This one is the most colorful - it is black with orange on its face, some white on its wings and a light underside.

Today, at a week of age, they are already getting tiny feathers in their wings!

We got these little guys just in time.  JP and I found one of our hens deceased yesterday when we were working in the chicken house.

Meanwhile, my flowers are blooming, including the peonies (and now the rose bush!) and the strawberries are ready in the garden.  I have managed to avoid working in the garden for the most part because I am overwhelmed by all the grass growing in there.  The straw that we use for fertilizer actually seeded the garden. 😢

So cheers to all you hardworking mothers (better late than never!)