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Category Archives: garden
Storms Are Coming
We’ve had a record breaking dry streak. It’s hard to complain about no rain when 3 months ago I was weeping and beating my head against the concrete because it wouldn’t stop. Now that everything is all dried out I’m not heartbroken to hear the rains are coming back.
The weatherman says we’re in for a series of storms starting on Friday. I’m getting home late tomorrow and Thursday so tonight the minute I got home I dropped everything and put on my work clothes and ran outside. It’s amazing what you can get done quickly when you’re motivated.
I yanked a bunch of dead stuff out front to make room for the 150 bulbs project. Then I brought in all the tomatoes and ripped the plants out and yanked most of the sunflowers. The cucumbers are still out there, although they look dead. The garden is finished. I think there are carrots but that’s about it. Well, apples. When I tore out one of the sunflowers I thought I found another suntater and I was pretty excited but it turned out to be a rock.
The real purpose of this post is to tell you about Roasted Pepper Vinaigrette. That’s it in the squeeze bottle posing with the tomatoes I just brought in. I’ve had this recipe forever. I don’t recall the origins. I made a note that “goes good with lots of things” so must have been part of an article. I finally made it on Sunday and it is amazing. We’ve had it on corn and salad. I think it would taste great on just about any vegetable and also, a swirl on a piece of cheese would be good. Probably good on pasta. It’s way more delicious that this recipe would suggest.
1 roasted red pepper or drain it from a jar (that’s what I did, thank you Trader Joe’s)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T red wine vinegar
1 T chopped shallot (I never measure stuff like that. I used half a big one.)
1/2 t. salt
fresh ground black pepper
Whirl it all in the blender until smooth. Add more vinegar, salt and/or pepper if you think it needs it. Put in a squeeze bottle because you feel all fancy squeezing it on stuff.
Apple Land
Yesterday I cleaned out one of my vegetable beds. I yanked out a sunflower and look what was underneath!
I somehow invented the sunflower potato.
When I was flopping around last night at 2am unable to sleep, I tried to think of names for my new vegetable: potato flower (nah), sunspud, suntater, sun potato (eh), sun nugget. I’m leaning toward suntater but I’m still working on it.
Meanwhile, it is now documented so I get full credit for developing this agricultural game changer.
Also yesterday was round 1 of apple sauce. We are going to be consuming gallons of this stuff in the next month.
As you can see, the apples aren’t very pretty. But they make up for it in volume. This bowl represents a fraction of what’s out there.
Normally I rake the ones I don’t use into a pile and after I put the garden to bed I bury them in there to compost.
However, there are so many, I’ve already dug auxiliary trenches in another part of the yard and buried about 9 buckets worth.
I need some livestock.
I’m going to can some, or jar some, as some folks like to say, but I think I might still have a pint or two from last year.
I forget that it’s there and it gets shoved back behind the cans of chicken broth and pinto beans.
We both had apple sauce sprinkled with granola for breakfast and it was terrific.
Check It Out Now!
Look! I have tomatoes. All this many.
And there are at least that many more that are almost ready for picking.
Bob said, “Wow, those came on fast.”
I said, “It’s September 100th.”
For contrast here’s my kitchen on September 6 last year.
Did I ever write about my jeans shopping day? My favorite jeans are one year away from disintegrating and for my replacement jeans I accidentally bought saggy Mom jeans. I decided I was going to go out and find some fancy jeans that would make me look like a stylin’ lady.
I tried on at least 30 pairs, all different brands and styles.
Not one pair fit. Not even close. They were all tight in the butt and/or thighs and gaping at the waist. I finally gave up and figured I’d try again another time.
A couple weeks ago I said screw stylin’ and went to Eddie Bauer. I knew which size I needed but of course they’ve changed their sizing scheme.
All these stores have a complicated scheme of pants styles.
There’s another store I shop at and they now have 4 styles. It’s like: the Metropolitan- slim at the waist and thigh, firm through the hips; the Sassy – slender at the thigh, low at the waist and full through the hips; the Henrietta – higher in the waist than the Sassy but lower than the Metropolitan, straight through the hips; and the Flirty – slim at the waist, firm at the thigh and relaxed through the hips.
I wanted to send them a message that said: Fire your translator. Nobody knows what that means.
At Eddie Bauer I tried on the Sassy, the Curvy, the Rainier and the Bainbridge. And then I had to pick from classic blue, Puget blue, faded, ultra-faded and the ranchero fade. Not to mention skinny, boyfriend, bootcut, slender cut, relaxed cut, beefy cut and astronaut cut. Of course they didn’t have what I needed in the store but I could order it from a phone in the store to get free shipping, plus a coupon for trying on 15 pairs of pants plus a buy one get one for 50% deal.
They finally arrived. I love my new jeans.
My Delicate Things
I don’t think you can tell how heavy this apple tree is from the photo. I tried the photo from a few different angles plus some Photoshop tweaks but this is the best I can do. There are TONS of apples out there. I had the brilliant idea of trying to rent a cider press but apparently I should have reserved one months ago. We’ll have applesauce and compost.
Sloppy transition.
I bought a bunch of linen bags awhile back and it looks like these are magical linen bags. Every time I use them I carefully put my delicate piece of wash within, zip the bag closed and throw it in the wash. And every time I open the washer my delicate piece is tangled up with the regular riff-raff clothes and the linen bag is intact. I’ve checked the seams. The first few times it happened I assumed I was a moron and didn’t zip them shut. No, I’m sure I’ve been zipping them shut.
Maybe rather than magic these are self-(un)zipping linen bags. I still keep using them. My delicate things had better toughen up.
Posted in doing it wrong, garden
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Garden Update
Here’s the crazy neighbor cat. Running over the second I step outside. I was there to take photos of the flowers and garden stuff.
Demanding. She was all whiny and trying to climb up my leg.
“You don’t even live here,” I pointed out.
Later it punished me by ignoring me. Sure, ouch, dummy.
I love this white dahlia. So elegant.
More dahlias. They aren’t quite as pretty as last year. I’m not sure if it’s mild weather or my lazy watering.
Check out one of the prettiest pumpkins. I have a decent pumpkin crop although the fauna has made a gouge in almost every one.
Does this look close to ripe to you? Looks close to me. I think this is the first time in my history that I didn’t get a tomato before September. At this point I’ll settle for anything.
Also: I learned how to make animated gifs today: Bright Dike back flip!.
Pumpkin Patch
This is the pumpkin patch out front.
After a couple of disappointing years I have high hopes for this group.
There is something snacking on the leaves.
I don’t understand why the snails and/or slugs aren’t more discouraged. I’ve done nothing to make them feel welcome.
I think this year is going to be a dud for tomatoes. I’m thinking about wrapping the cages with plastic wrap to coax them along.
One of these days I’ll write a real post. Stay tuned.
Garden Report
Here’s the garden patch way back in the spring.
Here’s the garden patch once I finally got off my butt and threw a few things in there.
Here it is now although now means a couple of days ago. I picked all the peas in the lower right and yanked the plants.
Earlier I did a lot of tough love on the sunflowers but not tough enough. It’s so hard for me to pull stuff out. I like to give everything a chance. But between the apples and the sunflowers the tomatoes are awfully crowded.
A couple of the tomato plants are tall and have lots of yellow flowers but I don’t even see a tiny green tomato yet.
I’ve still got some greens although stuff is bolting. I have a volunteer squash of some kind. The raspberries have finally slowed down. I need to find my notebook and see if it’s time to start clearing out dead wood yet.
The potatoes are going like crazy. This represents only a partial harvest. I still have at least three other potato areas that need digging plus I think I spotted a plant hiding in the raspberries.
I love digging potatoes. It’s like magic. You pull up a tired looking green plant. You stick your shovel carefully into the dirt and turn it over. Magic: potatoes. I made a potato salad today and ate about a pound for lunch.
I started the lemon cucumbers on the windowsill. Yes, kind of late. My cucumbers have been sorry for the last three years so it’s just a formality at this point.
I planted these guys yesterday and now they’re wilting in the fairly mild heat. Toughen up my pretties!
I started pumpkins on the windowsill, too. They’ve been in the ground at least three weeks. I also have some volunteer pumpkins that are doing fantastic. This vine has three little yellow balls and it’s shooting across the yard.
Posted in garden
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The Berry Invasion Has Begun
Last Sunday I was all excited because I found a few berries and it looked like a few more would be getting ripe soon.
This weekend was another one where all the time got away from me and there I was doing my 30 minute gardener routine. I saw some berries out of the corner of my eye and I ran out there before dinner to see how many I could pick.
I quickly filled up my bowl and had to run back for the second container. That’s all from one week. There’s a ton more out there.
I need to start planning berry goodies.
Posted in garden
2 Comments
Walking in Place
Kira these are the raspberries. I found a few ripe ones today.
Since the beginning of the year I keep thinking I have one more big project to finish and then I’ll have a weekend where I can take it easy and catch up on all these loose ends that are getting looser by the minute.
This weekend didn’t work out with extra time either.
If I owe you a phone call or note or said I’d do something for you — maybe next weekend. I have one more big project to finish.
I haven’t even had time to watch all my soccer. One game a day is all I’ve managed to cram in. And none of the games I’ve seen so far has blown my socks off. Who should we root for in England v. France tomorrow?
Every time there’s a once in a lifetime astronomy event, I never pay much attention because it’s cloudy here 385 days a year. There was that venus across the sun thing happening and it was not cloudy so I went and did the homework to see how I could go about viewing it. The instructions said to go some place where they’re projecting it and watch it there.
I’m thinking: watch it projected or wait until tomorrow and look at it on the Internet, what’s the difference?
I also tried just looking at the sun even though the directions said not to. It just looked bright and hurt my eyes.
I baked another loaf of total fail bread. The crust is like crumpled concrete. The inside is dense and tasteless. I can’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I need to get out all my bread notes and see if I can troubleshoot it. Baking bread used to be my super power.
I can hardly keep my eyes open so I’m going to bed.
