2017 was an interesting year. Saw accomplishments and failures... joys and happiness and sorrow and anger... Some significant life changes while life went on mostly as it does out here. A mixed bag of a year that I'm not happy or sad to see pass into yesteryear.
Growbox Hill saw an expansion of property this year, something we have been working on for a few years now. It's our dreams coming to fruition. This years big 2018 resolution is to take over the stable to work into gardening and harvest shed, and securing the immediate stableyard for the larger scale garden plot. Not sure what else comes yet now, some plans changed unexpectedly early this spring.
Lost mom and sis this year- that was unexpected. They are back in our home state now, tucked in for the winter. That was a bit of a dream shatter that I'm still reeling a bit from. Our boy moved out too, also fairly unexpected in the timing of it. Not quite as much of a shatter though, I always knew sooner or later he would figure stuff out and eventually move out. But all in all, quite the tailspin.
The gardens did well this year- but then it was kind of a take it easy on the growing in favor of getting beds in order kind of year. Glad I got that pretty much done, well worth it. A smaller resolution for 2018 is to try to remember not to grow so much, lol. I've already culled out about half my seedstock that I'm going to toss into the freezer to put on deep hold for a couple years while I get worked through the other half. The hopeful seed collection of yesteryears have now stabilized and hit the point of this rotation- a very good thing indeed, 2018 will mark Growbox Hills first seed vault year :)
Was bummed that I completely missed faire for the first time in over half my life. So many dear friends that I miss that I only get to see then. I'll need to get out that way once or twice in the coming year... Heh, need to unpack storage too in the coming year :)
Hurt myself good in July- the kind of hurt that as an adult you know is going to last a while. Been working on it- it's a slow going thing. 2018 resolution is don't make that shit worse, lol.
Gen-con was cool. Done it a couple times now so it was a bit old hat. I heard a rumor that it might be moving out of Indy in the future to somewhere bigger. Also heard they are contracted till at least 2021, so here's to going to more Gen-cons in the future.
My love's computers and printing have come together wonderfully, and I hope 2018 sees some sales starting to happen on the great gardening and surveillance tec he's been making over at KnowESys. The little ninja bots are adorable, and the harpoon a formidible and useful tool :) Ninja Smoke and Cyborgro
Got the opportunity to make a friend and get a sort of part time job this year. Went out to my favorite and only good local bead shop- that also happens to be a fave garden nursery, The Enchanted Bead The lady that runs the place is great. This spring we struck up a conversation, and now I'm working the occasional day here and there for her through the year. This summers first annual trunk show was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to next years.
My love of Fortune's Turning has been creeping back. Over the year I've slowly gathered together materials on the cheap and started getting into mini making over the last couple months. A lot of learning and relearning techniques. Getting pretty good with the changeouts between the three more common scales. If I keep this up, I think there's potential that my etsy shop might reopen next year with a line of Fortunes Turning Minis. Maybe.
Today I've baked this years last loaf of bread- wheat, packed the last of this years leftovers into the freezer- spicy sausage and orzo ragout. The sun is starting to slant over the snow and it's time to get ready for our New Years Eve dinner.
I hope we all see each other through the year to come, and well into many years to come. Happy New Years!
Welcome to Growbox Hill
Welcome to Growbox HIll!
Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Holiday. Show all posts
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Got a bit done..
9/9: Weather was lovely today. Cool and breezy at first, then fine for work out in the yard. Got the whole batch of hot peppers smoked up and into the dehydrator. The last batch of enchilada sauce done for this year- another round of regular pints. The tomatoes are winding down enough, I got another goodly batch on trays that need to go into the freezer- those will finally become a batch of salsa. And then just a few more working in for more regular eating again.
The early part of the day was mostly spent with a bit of cleaning, as usual. Then the afternoon was spent on working on those lasagna beds.
I tackled the western bed first. It's the smallest one, and the first one I knew I wanted fully planted in. I weeded everything out, cut back the bronze fennel.. And planted in a Agastache Foemiculum Blue Fortune, Baptista Lemon Meringue, Baptista Blueberry, A couple rosemary, a lavender, and a couple each of two different colors of mums. Not sure which colors, the buds aren't showing yet, but two different leaf types.
Then on to the middle bed. It wasn't so bad really. The couple bean towers came out, and the bronze fennel got cut back. Didn't plant in anything yet- I just have blue eyed grass planned in front, and I want to go back over that area for a second grass removal first- I don't want to confuse my good plants with the weeds.
I've got a handful of various bulbs that I'm going to be planting in in a few weeks when the time is right. These are ones I picked up on clearance in 2016 and grew out in pots this year- all of them divided well, and will be good for sowing in later this fall. Now I just need to keep those beds cleaned up a bit, water if needed, and mulch in and I should be good to go.
The eastern and biggest bed, ugh. I planted in some brassicas this year, then neglected the bed. A volunteer squash showed up, which saved me the trouble of planting in a trap squash there. Don't know what it is, looks like a white acorn of some sort, though it grew on a bush vine. First I cut back the grape vines yet again and pulled them out. And then yep, cut back the bronze fennel. The squash plant must have had every bug in the yard on it, yuck.
During cleanup, I sprayed a goodly gallon of Neem+ tea tree, peppermint, and rosemary oil all over the bed, surrounding area and fence, the plant I pulled out and laid on a tomato tower in the driveway.. everything. Little suckers didn't like that much, some of them appeared to be bleached out by the spray, and died. The bed isn't fully clear of weeds, I kind of pooped out by the time I was done spraying. But all of the brassicas are uncovered again, lol. And I can tell where the borages are springing up from. That bed is going to get finished clearing out entirely then a plastic cap laid over it to smother and solar kill the dickens out of it for as long as I can stretch it this fall for next year- I do have a rather nice and goodly round of asparagus rootlets that never made it out to the back 40 that I plan on setting in there next year to make that it's own permanent bed. Not a huge one, but plenty for fresh eating for two, while the rest of the pickling asparagus can continue on in the wild beds out back.
Making a couple pans of scalloped taters and ham for dinner tonight :) Decided to just split the batch between 2 pans so one could just be straight popped into the freezer.
9/12: First off Happy Birthday to my sister! This is a good holiday- weather was superb, and everyone was bustling. Sunday was spent on some family affairs, and Monday I was feeling wretched with a stomach bug or something that made the need to be close to a bathroom and bed was necessary. Today I got a bit of canning done, couldn't put it off and the weather was fine and likely to turn tomorrow. It was either stuff the freezer and wait till the weather cleared again, or just get it done. So I sucked it up, and skipped any gardening plans though the weather should be clearer later this week.
Making mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner tonight, sisters choice since it's her B-day :)
Kind of a random general weather note. This year the U.S. got gobsmacked by a couple hurricanes. Harvey, which landed in the gulf and almost drowned Houston, and Irma, which was a SUPER hurricane that shredded Cuba and the entire state of Florida, and is now storming over pretty much every state touching Florida. Our Labor Day cold snap was the tail end of Harvey, and we did actually hit the low 50's into high 40's overnight. Days have been mild, and nights chilly since- we have been closing the windows or keeping them closed. Today during the day we peaked out around 80- tomorrow we are supposed to be possibly getting evening rain from the push in of Irma. Crazy.
The early part of the day was mostly spent with a bit of cleaning, as usual. Then the afternoon was spent on working on those lasagna beds.
I tackled the western bed first. It's the smallest one, and the first one I knew I wanted fully planted in. I weeded everything out, cut back the bronze fennel.. And planted in a Agastache Foemiculum Blue Fortune, Baptista Lemon Meringue, Baptista Blueberry, A couple rosemary, a lavender, and a couple each of two different colors of mums. Not sure which colors, the buds aren't showing yet, but two different leaf types.
Then on to the middle bed. It wasn't so bad really. The couple bean towers came out, and the bronze fennel got cut back. Didn't plant in anything yet- I just have blue eyed grass planned in front, and I want to go back over that area for a second grass removal first- I don't want to confuse my good plants with the weeds.
I've got a handful of various bulbs that I'm going to be planting in in a few weeks when the time is right. These are ones I picked up on clearance in 2016 and grew out in pots this year- all of them divided well, and will be good for sowing in later this fall. Now I just need to keep those beds cleaned up a bit, water if needed, and mulch in and I should be good to go.
The eastern and biggest bed, ugh. I planted in some brassicas this year, then neglected the bed. A volunteer squash showed up, which saved me the trouble of planting in a trap squash there. Don't know what it is, looks like a white acorn of some sort, though it grew on a bush vine. First I cut back the grape vines yet again and pulled them out. And then yep, cut back the bronze fennel. The squash plant must have had every bug in the yard on it, yuck.
During cleanup, I sprayed a goodly gallon of Neem+ tea tree, peppermint, and rosemary oil all over the bed, surrounding area and fence, the plant I pulled out and laid on a tomato tower in the driveway.. everything. Little suckers didn't like that much, some of them appeared to be bleached out by the spray, and died. The bed isn't fully clear of weeds, I kind of pooped out by the time I was done spraying. But all of the brassicas are uncovered again, lol. And I can tell where the borages are springing up from. That bed is going to get finished clearing out entirely then a plastic cap laid over it to smother and solar kill the dickens out of it for as long as I can stretch it this fall for next year- I do have a rather nice and goodly round of asparagus rootlets that never made it out to the back 40 that I plan on setting in there next year to make that it's own permanent bed. Not a huge one, but plenty for fresh eating for two, while the rest of the pickling asparagus can continue on in the wild beds out back.
Making a couple pans of scalloped taters and ham for dinner tonight :) Decided to just split the batch between 2 pans so one could just be straight popped into the freezer.
9/12: First off Happy Birthday to my sister! This is a good holiday- weather was superb, and everyone was bustling. Sunday was spent on some family affairs, and Monday I was feeling wretched with a stomach bug or something that made the need to be close to a bathroom and bed was necessary. Today I got a bit of canning done, couldn't put it off and the weather was fine and likely to turn tomorrow. It was either stuff the freezer and wait till the weather cleared again, or just get it done. So I sucked it up, and skipped any gardening plans though the weather should be clearer later this week.
Making mac and cheese and broccoli for dinner tonight, sisters choice since it's her B-day :)
Kind of a random general weather note. This year the U.S. got gobsmacked by a couple hurricanes. Harvey, which landed in the gulf and almost drowned Houston, and Irma, which was a SUPER hurricane that shredded Cuba and the entire state of Florida, and is now storming over pretty much every state touching Florida. Our Labor Day cold snap was the tail end of Harvey, and we did actually hit the low 50's into high 40's overnight. Days have been mild, and nights chilly since- we have been closing the windows or keeping them closed. Today during the day we peaked out around 80- tomorrow we are supposed to be possibly getting evening rain from the push in of Irma. Crazy.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Seeds, and mousers, and rush time...
4/20- Happy Hemi Day!!!! And of course all the other holiday refrences, lol.
We are at the 3 week mark till last frost. Lots of shuffling of plants- just posted that one, lol, thought I had already posted it and it was still a draft.
All the tomatoes and peppers are repotted from their sproutlings at this point.
1 Pink Bumblebee cherry tomato
2 Speckled Roman tomato
3 Roman Candle tomato
8 Dwarf Wild Fred tomato
6 Urfa Beiber pepper
6 Albino Bullnose pepper
2 Aji Lemon pepper
2 Trinidad Pefume pepper
6 Tobago Seasoning pepper
8 Sweet Pickle pepper
Pricked out a bunch of lavenders and coleus as well. And started up a large round of various herbs and flower seeds. A 72 cell tray of mostly the Pinetree container flowers, cauliflower, and a giant red armanath in 9 cell packs. Another tray of 3x3 pots full of various herbs and a lot of zinnias. And a half tray of 6 cells 50/50 planted with dill and bronze fennel. We will eat the hell out of the dill, but everyone universally loathes fennel here. I use a bit of seed in some seasonings and picklings.. otherwise fennel is an awesome landscaping fern for annual action and is really beloved by beneficial insects. So even if we hate eating it, it's nasty black licorice action is really good for the garden and well worth planting.
And mousers.. my Nova boy. I spotted a wee mouse in the solarium, and called my sis over.. it was cute as hell, and we both said awwwwwww over it's wee cute goodness. Then immediately were saying, "Where's Nova?" Well, he was snoozing in mom's room. Sis scooped him up and we released him where the mouse was.. told him to earn his keep. Within two minutes he was at the kitchen window, meowing around a mouthful of wee mouse :) Of course I gushed and gave him catnip and treats.. and promptly swept up wee mouse and tossed his corpse outside, lol. And now the cats get wet food tonight too.... my good hunter tiggy.
Random house stuff... The power company stopped by yesterday. I went out to see what they were up to and turned out they were replacing the power pole behind the pole barn today, and clearing the line all the way up the fence to the barn in back. The power was out for about three hours this morning, but all is well now.
And though we set up with well guy.. it's kind of falling through. I set up appointment, and yesterday he contacted me and said he would send me email with pricing.. and stop out today or otherwise contact me today.. and nothing. Kind of bummed and unhappy about this.
4/22: a spectacular Saturday! Upper 50's and sunny- last below 40 night predicted tonight! Got outside and did a bit of a tour of the yard- the power guys left that branch- partly blocking the driveway.. and when they left, they drove around it and extra ganked the ganked spot in the driveway. Sai... Lopped off the branches enough to make the driveway clear, will need to go in with a bigger saw for the rest of it. And look into getting some asphalt patch- that spot is super dipped badly now. The new pole looks good though, lol.
Got the first weeding of the herb garden done- I will seriously need to trim back the Rue this year, it's getting pretty weedy. The oreganos overwintered well, and I got more to put into that area. The Marjoram kind of survived, and I got more of those to plant in as well. Savory is looking good and needs a trim, so do the sages. King Tarragon is already bushy and the thymes are looking nice under their leaf mulch. And cleaned up the kale bed, that didn't require much. I used one of the compost trash cans to dump all the weedy grassy leafy rooty crap in to cook for a bit- it's out by the kale garden for the moment. The other bin is going out to the lasagna bed area. Take in all those weedy scraps from that area. I'm not going to use these bins for food scraps at the moment, just the weedy bits.
Sprayed down the straw beds with a mix of neem oil and a few essential oils. Saw a bug while cleaning up that I wasn't sure if it was a squash or stink bug.. but that means I should start spraying now for a couple weeks while they are emerging. I'm being a bit pre-emptive about it this year. Neem is safe for food plants, and if I keep doing this every week or with the rains or so for the next few weeks before I start seriously planting in my beans and squashes... it should help. I'm also going to be covering the actual squash and bean bed at first while the bugs are out to help as well.
Made the plans to start moving raised bed frames up closer to the house. Will be starting out with the 4x6 box and move on from there. Need to lay out the smother bed surround for the new bed spot.. and figure out what I want to do with the space I'm vacating by pulling those boxes out....
It's time for another big cleanup of that area. No more compost, that's all cleared out. Since a lot of bulbs are already naturalizing in there.. I think I'm going to just keep continuing down the fence line where the current raised beds are. The area is kind of almost clean enough for it, and I would rather get in a bit more set it and forget action down there. And I do have several pots of various bulbs that have been overwintering and are flushing out right now
I also need to clean up the front border bed- I got a few pots of daffodils I want to put in down there now that the ones already there are blooming.
We are at the 3 week mark till last frost. Lots of shuffling of plants- just posted that one, lol, thought I had already posted it and it was still a draft.
All the tomatoes and peppers are repotted from their sproutlings at this point.
1 Pink Bumblebee cherry tomato
2 Speckled Roman tomato
3 Roman Candle tomato
8 Dwarf Wild Fred tomato
6 Urfa Beiber pepper
6 Albino Bullnose pepper
2 Aji Lemon pepper
2 Trinidad Pefume pepper
6 Tobago Seasoning pepper
8 Sweet Pickle pepper
Pricked out a bunch of lavenders and coleus as well. And started up a large round of various herbs and flower seeds. A 72 cell tray of mostly the Pinetree container flowers, cauliflower, and a giant red armanath in 9 cell packs. Another tray of 3x3 pots full of various herbs and a lot of zinnias. And a half tray of 6 cells 50/50 planted with dill and bronze fennel. We will eat the hell out of the dill, but everyone universally loathes fennel here. I use a bit of seed in some seasonings and picklings.. otherwise fennel is an awesome landscaping fern for annual action and is really beloved by beneficial insects. So even if we hate eating it, it's nasty black licorice action is really good for the garden and well worth planting.
And mousers.. my Nova boy. I spotted a wee mouse in the solarium, and called my sis over.. it was cute as hell, and we both said awwwwwww over it's wee cute goodness. Then immediately were saying, "Where's Nova?" Well, he was snoozing in mom's room. Sis scooped him up and we released him where the mouse was.. told him to earn his keep. Within two minutes he was at the kitchen window, meowing around a mouthful of wee mouse :) Of course I gushed and gave him catnip and treats.. and promptly swept up wee mouse and tossed his corpse outside, lol. And now the cats get wet food tonight too.... my good hunter tiggy.
Random house stuff... The power company stopped by yesterday. I went out to see what they were up to and turned out they were replacing the power pole behind the pole barn today, and clearing the line all the way up the fence to the barn in back. The power was out for about three hours this morning, but all is well now.
And though we set up with well guy.. it's kind of falling through. I set up appointment, and yesterday he contacted me and said he would send me email with pricing.. and stop out today or otherwise contact me today.. and nothing. Kind of bummed and unhappy about this.
4/22: a spectacular Saturday! Upper 50's and sunny- last below 40 night predicted tonight! Got outside and did a bit of a tour of the yard- the power guys left that branch- partly blocking the driveway.. and when they left, they drove around it and extra ganked the ganked spot in the driveway. Sai... Lopped off the branches enough to make the driveway clear, will need to go in with a bigger saw for the rest of it. And look into getting some asphalt patch- that spot is super dipped badly now. The new pole looks good though, lol.
Got the first weeding of the herb garden done- I will seriously need to trim back the Rue this year, it's getting pretty weedy. The oreganos overwintered well, and I got more to put into that area. The Marjoram kind of survived, and I got more of those to plant in as well. Savory is looking good and needs a trim, so do the sages. King Tarragon is already bushy and the thymes are looking nice under their leaf mulch. And cleaned up the kale bed, that didn't require much. I used one of the compost trash cans to dump all the weedy grassy leafy rooty crap in to cook for a bit- it's out by the kale garden for the moment. The other bin is going out to the lasagna bed area. Take in all those weedy scraps from that area. I'm not going to use these bins for food scraps at the moment, just the weedy bits.
Sprayed down the straw beds with a mix of neem oil and a few essential oils. Saw a bug while cleaning up that I wasn't sure if it was a squash or stink bug.. but that means I should start spraying now for a couple weeks while they are emerging. I'm being a bit pre-emptive about it this year. Neem is safe for food plants, and if I keep doing this every week or with the rains or so for the next few weeks before I start seriously planting in my beans and squashes... it should help. I'm also going to be covering the actual squash and bean bed at first while the bugs are out to help as well.
Made the plans to start moving raised bed frames up closer to the house. Will be starting out with the 4x6 box and move on from there. Need to lay out the smother bed surround for the new bed spot.. and figure out what I want to do with the space I'm vacating by pulling those boxes out....
It's time for another big cleanup of that area. No more compost, that's all cleared out. Since a lot of bulbs are already naturalizing in there.. I think I'm going to just keep continuing down the fence line where the current raised beds are. The area is kind of almost clean enough for it, and I would rather get in a bit more set it and forget action down there. And I do have several pots of various bulbs that have been overwintering and are flushing out right now
I also need to clean up the front border bed- I got a few pots of daffodils I want to put in down there now that the ones already there are blooming.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Freaking Awesome weekend!
I had a really great weekend! Went and worked at the faire this weekend, and I was a busy bee the whole time :)
Got to hang out with some really great friends. We were there on Friday to help out with the RESCU rally, and I wasn't needed so much, so I got to hang out with a friend at the bakery and sling some dough around. It was good to putter around the kitchen.
On Saturday and Sunday I got to hawk- and it was really fun! Made some sparkley to wear while out there, and it was rather grand. My bellows were probably the loudest unamplified sounds in that section in a while, lol. Every time a show broke up on the stage across from us, I would holler out. It felt rather good to do it too. And I'm happy I quit smoking at the beginning of March.
It was really cool to handle so much pewter out on the street too- I picked up and carried around some really cool pieces! Got to do parade on Saturday, I always enjoy doing that. My face is almost sore from smiling, and arms tired from super-waving, it's great. Like a super happy workout right in the middle of the day.
Got to make a bunch of new friends too- some of it is a blur I met so many! But a lot of faces and folks I look forward to seeing again :)
I received a pair of absolutely lovely earrings as a late birthday present. They are tiny delicate blue winged hummingbirds made of pulled glass. So absolutely lovely I was stunned at first- then immediately put them in my ears, woot!
I laughed a lot this weekend... A LOT!
I sort of got a commission for some jewelry this weekend. It's sort of an artwork for artwork barter sort of thing. One of the gents I work with is a stunning artist of the drawing kind. I asked him to draw a killer bee for me to hang in my living room. And he said yes, just because he's cool like that. Later on that night, he was able to get a beaded spider he absolutely loved- and I understood his happy because of my happy over beaded spiders. So I offered him to do a beaded pin mount for him in return for him drawing up my bee artwork.
So... on to Grobox Hill....
The whole garden has done wonderfully while I was gone! Apparently we got in a nice couple hour long gentle soaking rain early this morning. I checked all the plants. Radish and dill seed are popping up. Albino beet and Little Gem lettuce are not. Rainbow Lights swiss chard is regrowing back really well. Early Contender bean has most of the seed spots sprouting up really well. The peas not so much.
I have several ball squashes to pick, and a few Roughwood Golden Plum tomatoes.
In general, need to do a lot of picking, picking up, and such to do.
Unfortunately, while I was gone this weekend.. Someone came onto the back 40, and cut down many branches along our back corner. It created a full sized vehicle tunnel in our tree path. Not sure who it was, but we know who it likely is. So tomorrow my sis and I will get back there and stack up the cut down branches in the gate spot, and string up a no trespassing sign. And a sign that the new property is under new ownership, please contact us. I'm hoping that we can have a friendly conversation about it. I'm not too opposed to horses and four wheelers coming through. But full sized vehicle path is a no. And folks cutting down like that on my property without permission is a no as well.
The lawn needs a serious mowing as well. It was lovely to pull in and see all the little yellow flowers, but the yard is looking pretty shaggy as well. The first five hardy hibiscus plants are doing really well in their bigger pots. I'm looking forward to planting them in next spring, and starting new seeds for their plant in. I think I want to plant them in along the easement side of the street line. We still have my sisters lovely purple smoke tree to plant in, and I think I want to cultivate in that front corner quite a bit to go along with that. Depending on what we got going on for lilies in the bins, I would love to plant some of those around the smoke tree. I still haven't planted in the 5 two year lavenders, and those might switch back down to the trimmed cedar again. Set those in with another set of bin lillies.
Another day, another entry :)
It's Tuesday, weather is in the 60's and it's been drizzling on and off all day. A nice watering in sort of day for the plants. It stopped dripping for long enough to get out and pick some veggies that needed picking.
That's a big collendar full of squashes! The littlest ones are the size I'm supposed to pick the ball squash at. But I had a few grow like crazy while I was gone.
The first pickings of the Juane Flamme tomato. They are a lovely orange.
Not much for bean pickings yet- only 4 plants are producing. About a third of this is what I picked before I left for the weekend, the other two thirds I picked today. This batch is now in the fridge in a greenie bag.
I also set up five trays of the dehydrator with all four batches of banana peppers I've picked. I gotta say, I love the greenie bags, they really do store the veggies much longer than they would probably last otherwise.
Last week we smoked a bone in ham, it was about 10 pounds, at $1.29 a pound. I like to make every penny count if I can- and fortuantely I can use up every last scrap of the whole thing. We had a dinner for four the night we smoked the ham, and mom had a ham sandwich with it while I was gone. Today I broke down what was left.
On the left is three pounds of chunked ham. I will package it up in pound bags for later eating. On the right is the ham bone, it's a pound and a half. This will be getting made into pork stock tomorrow. I typically get three pints plus of pork stock out of a good ham bone. I'm glad I got dried celery on the shelf- I will for sure be using it to make stock tomorrow.
The is the fat scraps from two hams. I froze the scraps from the last ham I made, and I figured I had enough with two hams to render a nice batch of fat. This is raw, right at the beginning of cooking. I used about a cup or so of water in the bottom of the crock pot to help prevent sticking or burning till enough fat has rendered out so it self cooks. I started it around 2:00, and should take a few hours.at 5 PM, they were only half rendered down and really starting to burble up.
Made up a batch of chicken stock the other day. Today I peeled off the fat layer and dropped it into the chicken fat bin in the freezer. Ended up with seven 2 cup bags of stock for the freezer, yay! A packet of chicken meat from the roasted chicken ended up in the freezer too- this was after a dinner for four.
Since I had so many ball squash, I decided to try a freezer experiment. Seared summer squash packets. I sliced the balls about 3/4 of an inch thick, seasoned them with Italian herb mix, salt, and pepper, then seared them off in olive oil. Then they got laid on a drip rack to cool off. Sliced up an onion and a handful of banana peppers. Dotted the bottom of the stack with butter. Stacked together six slices, tucked the onion under and on the slices, then laid out the pepper bits on top. A goodly sprinkle of minced garlic on top. then folded up the packets. Now they are labeled and in the freezer, and in a bit we will pull them out and see how they cook up. They are kind of bulky as individual packets- but if they are good I will put them into the camping/cookout file- and then see if I get good results making a solid family sized packet.
Apparently I saved this entry instead of publishing it.. oops.... Publishing now :)
Got to hang out with some really great friends. We were there on Friday to help out with the RESCU rally, and I wasn't needed so much, so I got to hang out with a friend at the bakery and sling some dough around. It was good to putter around the kitchen.
On Saturday and Sunday I got to hawk- and it was really fun! Made some sparkley to wear while out there, and it was rather grand. My bellows were probably the loudest unamplified sounds in that section in a while, lol. Every time a show broke up on the stage across from us, I would holler out. It felt rather good to do it too. And I'm happy I quit smoking at the beginning of March.
It was really cool to handle so much pewter out on the street too- I picked up and carried around some really cool pieces! Got to do parade on Saturday, I always enjoy doing that. My face is almost sore from smiling, and arms tired from super-waving, it's great. Like a super happy workout right in the middle of the day.
Got to make a bunch of new friends too- some of it is a blur I met so many! But a lot of faces and folks I look forward to seeing again :)
I received a pair of absolutely lovely earrings as a late birthday present. They are tiny delicate blue winged hummingbirds made of pulled glass. So absolutely lovely I was stunned at first- then immediately put them in my ears, woot!
I laughed a lot this weekend... A LOT!
I sort of got a commission for some jewelry this weekend. It's sort of an artwork for artwork barter sort of thing. One of the gents I work with is a stunning artist of the drawing kind. I asked him to draw a killer bee for me to hang in my living room. And he said yes, just because he's cool like that. Later on that night, he was able to get a beaded spider he absolutely loved- and I understood his happy because of my happy over beaded spiders. So I offered him to do a beaded pin mount for him in return for him drawing up my bee artwork.
So... on to Grobox Hill....
The whole garden has done wonderfully while I was gone! Apparently we got in a nice couple hour long gentle soaking rain early this morning. I checked all the plants. Radish and dill seed are popping up. Albino beet and Little Gem lettuce are not. Rainbow Lights swiss chard is regrowing back really well. Early Contender bean has most of the seed spots sprouting up really well. The peas not so much.
I have several ball squashes to pick, and a few Roughwood Golden Plum tomatoes.
In general, need to do a lot of picking, picking up, and such to do.
Unfortunately, while I was gone this weekend.. Someone came onto the back 40, and cut down many branches along our back corner. It created a full sized vehicle tunnel in our tree path. Not sure who it was, but we know who it likely is. So tomorrow my sis and I will get back there and stack up the cut down branches in the gate spot, and string up a no trespassing sign. And a sign that the new property is under new ownership, please contact us. I'm hoping that we can have a friendly conversation about it. I'm not too opposed to horses and four wheelers coming through. But full sized vehicle path is a no. And folks cutting down like that on my property without permission is a no as well.
The lawn needs a serious mowing as well. It was lovely to pull in and see all the little yellow flowers, but the yard is looking pretty shaggy as well. The first five hardy hibiscus plants are doing really well in their bigger pots. I'm looking forward to planting them in next spring, and starting new seeds for their plant in. I think I want to plant them in along the easement side of the street line. We still have my sisters lovely purple smoke tree to plant in, and I think I want to cultivate in that front corner quite a bit to go along with that. Depending on what we got going on for lilies in the bins, I would love to plant some of those around the smoke tree. I still haven't planted in the 5 two year lavenders, and those might switch back down to the trimmed cedar again. Set those in with another set of bin lillies.
Another day, another entry :)
It's Tuesday, weather is in the 60's and it's been drizzling on and off all day. A nice watering in sort of day for the plants. It stopped dripping for long enough to get out and pick some veggies that needed picking.
I also set up five trays of the dehydrator with all four batches of banana peppers I've picked. I gotta say, I love the greenie bags, they really do store the veggies much longer than they would probably last otherwise.
Last week we smoked a bone in ham, it was about 10 pounds, at $1.29 a pound. I like to make every penny count if I can- and fortuantely I can use up every last scrap of the whole thing. We had a dinner for four the night we smoked the ham, and mom had a ham sandwich with it while I was gone. Today I broke down what was left.
Made up a batch of chicken stock the other day. Today I peeled off the fat layer and dropped it into the chicken fat bin in the freezer. Ended up with seven 2 cup bags of stock for the freezer, yay! A packet of chicken meat from the roasted chicken ended up in the freezer too- this was after a dinner for four.
Since I had so many ball squash, I decided to try a freezer experiment. Seared summer squash packets. I sliced the balls about 3/4 of an inch thick, seasoned them with Italian herb mix, salt, and pepper, then seared them off in olive oil. Then they got laid on a drip rack to cool off. Sliced up an onion and a handful of banana peppers. Dotted the bottom of the stack with butter. Stacked together six slices, tucked the onion under and on the slices, then laid out the pepper bits on top. A goodly sprinkle of minced garlic on top. then folded up the packets. Now they are labeled and in the freezer, and in a bit we will pull them out and see how they cook up. They are kind of bulky as individual packets- but if they are good I will put them into the camping/cookout file- and then see if I get good results making a solid family sized packet.
Apparently I saved this entry instead of publishing it.. oops.... Publishing now :)
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Spring cleaning and seeding
On the countdown to Spring Equinox this Thursday, friggin wooooottttt!! Hooray Spring!
Started in on some seriously needed spring cleaning upstairs today. I haven't done squat up there cept mess it up since pretty much Thanksgiving- too much snow and cold and too lazy to deal with winter, blech. And today is chilly, but the rest of the week is supposed to be pretty nice, so better upstairs today, and into the solarium for setup for a couple days.
So today was mostly putting stuff away, stuffing all the sprawl out back into the places they came from. And I decided to set up a couple grow lights upstairs to stick the tomatoes and peppers under. Gives me a damn fine reason to keep going upstairs every day or two and keep cleaning and doing stuff up there.
I really need to pick up the plumbing fixings for the kitchen sink and bathroom shower, and just call T&C to have them come out and set up those and make sure all is well with the toilet too. I'm tired of not having proper facilities upstairs. I'm betting I will be able to find a cheap sink at the Restore, and a couple fixtures after that is pthhht. New toilet seat probably too, that toilet is icky as hell.
Why do I feel the need to call in T&C to do it when it's all stuff that's probably easy enough for us to do ourselves? Because those pipes have been pretty much untouched for three years and if something is fucked up, I want the plumber on hand right then and there to take care of it. Just like that ick with the well filter- we couldn't deal with it for good reason, was happy to have T&C take care of it and fix the pipes after busting the stupid filter off.
Tomorrow I get to sort out some of my donation seed and send a few friends off some packets of goodness. I have a few small packages to send out too, so I want to just get all of them together at once so I can take them into town on Wed- it's a super sale day at the market, and I want to pick up a couple things, and I need to drop books off at the library.
Pretty soon I need to work in the kennel area. I want to move a fence panel around, and it's darn soon for early spring setting in and planting of early greens and peas to prep up trellising for this year.
Tuesday- totally rocking ass spring day, full of warm and sunny!! Got a lot done out in the solarium today- all three buckets of horseradish are replanted, plus an additional short and wide pot for all the little roots that will become next years big stock. Potted up the two gooseberries in litter buckets- those need to be topped off a smidge once they are moved outside. After pulling apart the horseradish buckets, I realized I kind of have to keep all that dirt together- little horsey hairs running through the stuff will likely cause weeding problems later if I just indiscriminately plant the stuff in all over the place. Good thing I picked up those two huge bags of soil mix to take care of the rest of planting.
Got the ornamental kale, Vates Blue Curled kale, and Red Russian kale starts set up- 18 of each, using TP tubes in recycled plastic containers from greens. The ornamental kale is for around a couple tree bases, the other two are to smother in the fenceline for the current chunk of garden being worked in. I also got 18 milk jugs set up, though I only planted in four of them.
Today was rainy and not too chilly, mostly a running around day. Woke up achy as hell, and that was after a long hot shower and a massage from my love last night. Heh, spring hell on the joints is here already. Had to get off to the post office and get stuff in the mail, hit Hardings for some Wild Wednesday sales, and the hardware store for some bird supplies. Then it was mostly prepping up stuff for the freezer- got hamburger for 2.19 a pound, max 12 pounds. So yep, I picked up the max. Beef is just getting out of hand expensive, and Hardings has good stuff they grind themselves. And since we don't have fresh beef in the house a lot, I decided to make an Italian meatloaf for dinner tonight, yum!
And squee!!!! Went to water the herb pots today, and we have tiny sprouts of lovage, horehound, lemon mind, valerian, and sorrel. WOOT!!
HAPPY EQUINOX!!!!! Been mostly a planting day out here. Got the horseradish pots and gooseberry buckets outside as well as all 18 milk jugs containing marigolds, tall marigolds, wildflower mix, black eye susan, and calendula. Started 24 pots of chamomile, 3 pots each of cherry and papaya cream mixed nasturtiums, and 6 pots of milkmaid nasturtiums.
We sat down and had a seriously long and nice chat with the neighbor today, hopefully that will yield some nice results this summer.
And in light of the holiday, I'm making eggs for dinner tonight :)
Friday, November 29, 2013
Thanksgiving snow...
Wow, we thought the early snow and the power snapping storm were icky..
Looks like we have our first snow in for Thanksgiving. Our plans were to head out in the morning with goodies in hand to bring to the feast... But woke up this morning and that sort of changed.
Wasn't so bad when we first got up. Wow, we got some snow everything is pretty and white, looks a bit like a snowglobe :) Then this kept up all day long. We did have a brief break around three that made me hopeful, but those hopes have been dashed by darkfall around 6.
Around oneish time- by the time the sun set, there was at least another two inches piled up.
A couple attempts to take pics of the snow gusts blowing around.
A bit fat dove alighting on the tree in hopes that I filled the feeder.
This is what it looked like up to the break around 3... After that we got in a couple more inches of stack up and swirl around by sunset.The spattering on the screen isn't from us- it's from the wind smacking a ton of snow around. I'll likely take more pics in the morning.
Yesterday I made from scratch wheat tortilla chips. Pan toasted them in bacon grease, cut them up, then toasted them to chips in a 300 degree oven. This was after I somehow completely screwed up a batch of pita bread- it proved to be a PITA, hahahhaha. Today I made up a party sized batch of hummus. Good thing hummus freezes exceptionally well.
Decided to make a scalloped butternut squash and ham casserole for dinner tonight- it was kind of a nice excuse to run the oven off and on all day, lol. And a good comfort food on a snowy day like this.
And we were officially snowed on on Thanksgiving. It was a total bummer not to see the family for the holiday :(
I did try to pull together a special dinner here though. Made duck, mushroom, and brown rice casserole, mashed sweet potatoes and butternut squash, and blueberry-raspberry crumbles for dessert. Plus the hummus and whole wheat tortilla chips I made :) We were well stuffed!
So belated Thanksgiving wishes everyone- hope the holiday was good and safe for you!
Looks like we have our first snow in for Thanksgiving. Our plans were to head out in the morning with goodies in hand to bring to the feast... But woke up this morning and that sort of changed.
Wasn't so bad when we first got up. Wow, we got some snow everything is pretty and white, looks a bit like a snowglobe :) Then this kept up all day long. We did have a brief break around three that made me hopeful, but those hopes have been dashed by darkfall around 6.
Yesterday I made from scratch wheat tortilla chips. Pan toasted them in bacon grease, cut them up, then toasted them to chips in a 300 degree oven. This was after I somehow completely screwed up a batch of pita bread- it proved to be a PITA, hahahhaha. Today I made up a party sized batch of hummus. Good thing hummus freezes exceptionally well.
Decided to make a scalloped butternut squash and ham casserole for dinner tonight- it was kind of a nice excuse to run the oven off and on all day, lol. And a good comfort food on a snowy day like this.
And we were officially snowed on on Thanksgiving. It was a total bummer not to see the family for the holiday :(
I did try to pull together a special dinner here though. Made duck, mushroom, and brown rice casserole, mashed sweet potatoes and butternut squash, and blueberry-raspberry crumbles for dessert. Plus the hummus and whole wheat tortilla chips I made :) We were well stuffed!
So belated Thanksgiving wishes everyone- hope the holiday was good and safe for you!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Getting it done...
I've gotten a couple things done over the last few days...
Weeded out the root crop area of the herb garden. And yes, I gave up to temptation and pulled up 4 white icicle radishes- they were ready to be picked :) Nothing else was, and I was good and left the rest alone. I think after I pull all of them I need to put down a load of horse poo and leaves this year to overwinter.
I also got the daffodils planted in, yay! Took a goodly bit of time, but here's the result.
I know, the edge is still scrappy as hell- that will get more properly trimmed out in the spring when the next set of bulbs go in. I left in a couple of the milkweeds too. I planted small patches at a time. You can sort of see where I started out along the wall line and worked my way around the bird bath going counter clockwise. I'm kind of hoping this will look nice and fill in decently. I wanted to work around the birdbath since I knew that's where the drip point off the corner of the roof is. The line closest to me is approximately where I want the slab to edge up to eventually. Next step before winter will be sinking in a line of recycled cans to finish out that line.
This whole area took a while because I went through with a hand trowel and dug out a lot of root bits and a bit of gravel. I wasn't meticulous about getting the gravel out, but I did pick out all the bigger rocks. Those got dumped at the top of the hill where I want a patch of gravel.
I'm hoping to be able to pick up a couple bags of grape hyacinth on clearance soon like I did last year, and cut in blocks in the spring like I did last year.
Monday, Monday..
Got the seed trades packed and ready to go, along with other mail.. Even drove it to the post office- then discovered it was a holiday today, Columbus day. Oops. Decided while out an about to hit up the local stores for their Halloween wares. See what my local shops had compared to when I was out visiting. Glad I did because that stuff was already being clearanced out.
I now have three buildings. A candy shop and a B&B from JoAnns, and a blood bar from Michaels. Rather happy about the blood bar, I snagged it from the display to get it. I also picked up a handful of smalls. All in all, making a rather tight gathering on the mantel at the moment. I have to clean up Gluggs tank and install his heater before I can do final arranging.
I hit the local places that carry bulbs too- everyone is currently in full selling mode, no clearances yet on bulbs.
I've added a couple new links to the right...
http://listeningtoleaves.blogspot.com/2012/11/kintsugi-art-of-repairing-teaware.html a blog posting about Kintsugi, the art of repairing ceramic with precious metals. Very informative. It's under Making Stuff.
http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/myclock.html earth's position relative to seasonal cusps. As in what on todays date is the real times for the eight holidays. Brings up some fun points :)
Or wedding this year was truly on Beltane eve. True Beltane struck at three AM on the 5th, and we celebrated from Friday to Sunday :)
Halloween this year is actually on the light side of midnight on November 7th.
This link is under Cool Links.
Tuesday is gloomy. Stayed indoors and did some cleaning. Set up the Halloween stuff in the living room.
I needed to clean Gluggs tank and set up the heater for him first. I decided to move the whole tank to the other side of the mantel closer to the power supply in the corner. I hope he's happy where he's at now, and feeling a bit better about having warmer water. Apparently betas like warmer water in the upper 70's. And leaving the light on does not heat the water enough, promotes algae too much, and sort of messes with the betas normally preferred light and dark cycle.
So after that I was able to set up my new Halloween village.
Starting on the outer corner is the big ghostie I made as a kid and the local candy shop. Chocolate eyeballs and poison apples are in stock right now :)
Next to the candy shop is the local B&B. Grim is hanging out having his morning coffee and doughnuts while other folks go about their daily business.
On through the pumpkin patch, where the Great Pumpkin reigns supreme.
And into the graveyard, overseen by Job... He is being backlit by Gluggs tank :)
And up the way on the first shelf is the local blood bar. All sorts of folks hang out here! There are many vintages on special today, and the ever running blood fountain for general refreshment.
I did have all the pieces on the mantle at first, and everything was just too squashed up. Gluggs tank seriously makes a footprint! Spreading it out to take up the first shelf makes it all look a tad sparse, but that's a good thing. I know I will end up collecting more- possibly more than I really have space for, lol.
And this is the little witch that tells me how many days till Halloween, she resides on my filing cabinet. Off to her left is her little box of pumpkin numbers, and I can change the numbers daily :)
Decided to look around at what all there is in the world of Halloween village, and my goodness there is a lot of really neat stuff out there.. and a ton of stuff I'm kind of meh about. A couple that have particularly struck my fancy..
The Grinning Goblin Brewery by Lemax
There are tons of smalls that strike my fancy as well. And I've realized that just with the houses, pumpkin, and tombstone to light up that using all plug in cords will not do. I want to instead use battery operated lights, preferably led and maybe on a timer if I get really lucky. Huh, wonder if that sort of thing is within the realm of a raspberry pi- that would be a neat thing for folks that like to run holiday villages. Just hook up all the much smaller led leads, and have a Rpi programed to run the lights.
I also need to "give back" the second Halloween decor bin. Those three buildings come in some large boxes, and you bet I will be packing them away in those boxes. Right now the second bin is holding a full bin of shredded paper that needs to go out to trace in the garlic bed. I'm going to use the paper as sort of a base marker mulch that hopefully will show up nicely under a leaf layer. It just started raining, so I don't have to water in the bed before I start spreading paper :)
I want to grind up another batch of paper or two to lay down over the area at the top of the hill that leads down to the sanctuary. I've put in a lot of dug up gravel from the herb garden and around the solarium, and now I want a tamping in layer. I might also want to layer in a bag of beer caps. I want to firm pack in this spot before I terrace out any further. And allow the other side of the opening to firm up with mints- the chocolate mint is bordering this area, and doing well. After a large die off of moving the pineapple mint as I did, we have firm areas of this mint taking off too where it's supposed to. And several starts of leftovers from where I removed it that can now go into the die off areas.
This first terrace area is taking a while to firm up, but it's worth it.
Back to indoor stuff.. Started rearranging the library over the weekend past. Had a couple of menfolk on hand to shuffle bookcases. Set up the beta globe on the top of one, and it makes for wonderful lighting in the area. Need to fill it with water and some reflecting filler. Thinking through the rearranging, I want to set up the hermit crab tank in the library too. But as a tank for living stones this time.
Weeded out the root crop area of the herb garden. And yes, I gave up to temptation and pulled up 4 white icicle radishes- they were ready to be picked :) Nothing else was, and I was good and left the rest alone. I think after I pull all of them I need to put down a load of horse poo and leaves this year to overwinter.
I also got the daffodils planted in, yay! Took a goodly bit of time, but here's the result.
This whole area took a while because I went through with a hand trowel and dug out a lot of root bits and a bit of gravel. I wasn't meticulous about getting the gravel out, but I did pick out all the bigger rocks. Those got dumped at the top of the hill where I want a patch of gravel.
I'm hoping to be able to pick up a couple bags of grape hyacinth on clearance soon like I did last year, and cut in blocks in the spring like I did last year.
Monday, Monday..
Got the seed trades packed and ready to go, along with other mail.. Even drove it to the post office- then discovered it was a holiday today, Columbus day. Oops. Decided while out an about to hit up the local stores for their Halloween wares. See what my local shops had compared to when I was out visiting. Glad I did because that stuff was already being clearanced out.
I now have three buildings. A candy shop and a B&B from JoAnns, and a blood bar from Michaels. Rather happy about the blood bar, I snagged it from the display to get it. I also picked up a handful of smalls. All in all, making a rather tight gathering on the mantel at the moment. I have to clean up Gluggs tank and install his heater before I can do final arranging.
I hit the local places that carry bulbs too- everyone is currently in full selling mode, no clearances yet on bulbs.
I've added a couple new links to the right...
http://listeningtoleaves.blogspot.com/2012/11/kintsugi-art-of-repairing-teaware.html a blog posting about Kintsugi, the art of repairing ceramic with precious metals. Very informative. It's under Making Stuff.
http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/myclock.html earth's position relative to seasonal cusps. As in what on todays date is the real times for the eight holidays. Brings up some fun points :)
Or wedding this year was truly on Beltane eve. True Beltane struck at three AM on the 5th, and we celebrated from Friday to Sunday :)
Halloween this year is actually on the light side of midnight on November 7th.
This link is under Cool Links.
Tuesday is gloomy. Stayed indoors and did some cleaning. Set up the Halloween stuff in the living room.
I needed to clean Gluggs tank and set up the heater for him first. I decided to move the whole tank to the other side of the mantel closer to the power supply in the corner. I hope he's happy where he's at now, and feeling a bit better about having warmer water. Apparently betas like warmer water in the upper 70's. And leaving the light on does not heat the water enough, promotes algae too much, and sort of messes with the betas normally preferred light and dark cycle.
So after that I was able to set up my new Halloween village.
I did have all the pieces on the mantle at first, and everything was just too squashed up. Gluggs tank seriously makes a footprint! Spreading it out to take up the first shelf makes it all look a tad sparse, but that's a good thing. I know I will end up collecting more- possibly more than I really have space for, lol.
Decided to look around at what all there is in the world of Halloween village, and my goodness there is a lot of really neat stuff out there.. and a ton of stuff I'm kind of meh about. A couple that have particularly struck my fancy..
The Retching Pumpkin by Dept 56
The Grinning Goblin Brewery by Lemax
There are tons of smalls that strike my fancy as well. And I've realized that just with the houses, pumpkin, and tombstone to light up that using all plug in cords will not do. I want to instead use battery operated lights, preferably led and maybe on a timer if I get really lucky. Huh, wonder if that sort of thing is within the realm of a raspberry pi- that would be a neat thing for folks that like to run holiday villages. Just hook up all the much smaller led leads, and have a Rpi programed to run the lights.
I also need to "give back" the second Halloween decor bin. Those three buildings come in some large boxes, and you bet I will be packing them away in those boxes. Right now the second bin is holding a full bin of shredded paper that needs to go out to trace in the garlic bed. I'm going to use the paper as sort of a base marker mulch that hopefully will show up nicely under a leaf layer. It just started raining, so I don't have to water in the bed before I start spreading paper :)
I want to grind up another batch of paper or two to lay down over the area at the top of the hill that leads down to the sanctuary. I've put in a lot of dug up gravel from the herb garden and around the solarium, and now I want a tamping in layer. I might also want to layer in a bag of beer caps. I want to firm pack in this spot before I terrace out any further. And allow the other side of the opening to firm up with mints- the chocolate mint is bordering this area, and doing well. After a large die off of moving the pineapple mint as I did, we have firm areas of this mint taking off too where it's supposed to. And several starts of leftovers from where I removed it that can now go into the die off areas.
This first terrace area is taking a while to firm up, but it's worth it.
Back to indoor stuff.. Started rearranging the library over the weekend past. Had a couple of menfolk on hand to shuffle bookcases. Set up the beta globe on the top of one, and it makes for wonderful lighting in the area. Need to fill it with water and some reflecting filler. Thinking through the rearranging, I want to set up the hermit crab tank in the library too. But as a tank for living stones this time.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Summer Solstice and Supermoon
Ok, haven't posted in a bit... We lost power last week into the weekend, lost several more tree limbs, particularly off the Chinese chestnut. Been casting more stones, started working on a set of the zodiac in the round knotwork mold. Things are just growing like they should, cept the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, :(
Anywho, today is a holiday, at least for my faith it is. The Summer Solstice, longest day of the year. After today, the days will start shortening again. Also known as mid-summer, Litha, Alban Hefin, Sun Blessing, Gathering Day, Feill-Sheathain, Whit Sunday, Whitsuntide, Vestalia, Thing-tide, and St. John's Day. Probably a bunch of other days too from all over the globe. In the southern hemisphere it's the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. Mama N is pretty neat like that.
It's a celebration of the sun, bounty of the fields starting to come to fruit. A time to celebrate life, both our own and that on the other side of the veil. Everything that is good about summer is to be enjoyed today.
Bonfires are a big tradition. Cutting or making divination rods and wands is well done on this day. Today is one of the days traditionally for handfasting and weddings.
Food of course is part of any holiday. Today is a day of bright citrius fruits, yellow and orange squashes, and other yellow or orange foods to represent the sun. Grilling to represent bonfires- and pork and chicken are best suited meats for the holiday. Ale, mead, fruit juices, and herbal teas are the drinks of the day.
Of course we will be having some celebrations going on here, but probably tomorrow. I have a lovely pork butt roast that we are going to smoke up all day tomorrow for dinner, yum! I picked up some portabellos on clearance and got them marinating with lime, soy, garlic, some white wine, sesame oil and seeds, parsley, onion, and pepper. Those will get tossed on the smoker some time. Some red bell peppers, yellow squash, and zuchinni to saute up for dinner. And Gonna make some crock pot scalloped potatoes. We feasting good tomorrow!
Picked up a bunch of fresh fruit for eating and more pitchers of lemonaid. If today is any indication, we will be drinking a lot of it!
And time to log off for the moment, we got a nasty storm coming in fast, and might lose power... Maybe no bonfire tonight after all!
Ok, now it's Saturday. We did get in some stormy rain- just enough to put a nix on any celebrating yesterday, shit. But no power outage or lost limbs, yay! We did get in a tiny smidge of solstice yesterday- picking a ton of mullberries :) Now today is really warm and humid, enough so that I was sweating bullets making up the next set of stones this morning. I made a ton of rainbow flash glass cabs yesterday to make a special hex stone- a seven pointed star with another seven pointed star in it, using 77 cabs in total. I set the stone today, keeping my fingers crossed that I did a good job.
I started out with my thin paper and pencil for the design, and realized, duh, when you put it onto a black plastic mold, the design completely disappears. So I made a second one using a copper sharpie, and that worked out quite well- even after matting down and greasing over it, I was able to still see the design clear as day- makes for much easier cab setting.
And ok, I know it's a pretty short post for not having posted in a while, but I guess I better publish this while the publishing is good and I let it sit for another few days...
Anywho, today is a holiday, at least for my faith it is. The Summer Solstice, longest day of the year. After today, the days will start shortening again. Also known as mid-summer, Litha, Alban Hefin, Sun Blessing, Gathering Day, Feill-Sheathain, Whit Sunday, Whitsuntide, Vestalia, Thing-tide, and St. John's Day. Probably a bunch of other days too from all over the globe. In the southern hemisphere it's the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. Mama N is pretty neat like that.
It's a celebration of the sun, bounty of the fields starting to come to fruit. A time to celebrate life, both our own and that on the other side of the veil. Everything that is good about summer is to be enjoyed today.
Bonfires are a big tradition. Cutting or making divination rods and wands is well done on this day. Today is one of the days traditionally for handfasting and weddings.
Food of course is part of any holiday. Today is a day of bright citrius fruits, yellow and orange squashes, and other yellow or orange foods to represent the sun. Grilling to represent bonfires- and pork and chicken are best suited meats for the holiday. Ale, mead, fruit juices, and herbal teas are the drinks of the day.
Of course we will be having some celebrations going on here, but probably tomorrow. I have a lovely pork butt roast that we are going to smoke up all day tomorrow for dinner, yum! I picked up some portabellos on clearance and got them marinating with lime, soy, garlic, some white wine, sesame oil and seeds, parsley, onion, and pepper. Those will get tossed on the smoker some time. Some red bell peppers, yellow squash, and zuchinni to saute up for dinner. And Gonna make some crock pot scalloped potatoes. We feasting good tomorrow!
Picked up a bunch of fresh fruit for eating and more pitchers of lemonaid. If today is any indication, we will be drinking a lot of it!
And time to log off for the moment, we got a nasty storm coming in fast, and might lose power... Maybe no bonfire tonight after all!
Ok, now it's Saturday. We did get in some stormy rain- just enough to put a nix on any celebrating yesterday, shit. But no power outage or lost limbs, yay! We did get in a tiny smidge of solstice yesterday- picking a ton of mullberries :) Now today is really warm and humid, enough so that I was sweating bullets making up the next set of stones this morning. I made a ton of rainbow flash glass cabs yesterday to make a special hex stone- a seven pointed star with another seven pointed star in it, using 77 cabs in total. I set the stone today, keeping my fingers crossed that I did a good job.
I started out with my thin paper and pencil for the design, and realized, duh, when you put it onto a black plastic mold, the design completely disappears. So I made a second one using a copper sharpie, and that worked out quite well- even after matting down and greasing over it, I was able to still see the design clear as day- makes for much easier cab setting.
And ok, I know it's a pretty short post for not having posted in a while, but I guess I better publish this while the publishing is good and I let it sit for another few days...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Happy Earth Day!
It's Monday.. Earth Day. Well, every day is Earth day, but still.
And what a beautiful day! Sunny and in the upper 60's :) This morning it looked like a McSwanum family reunion going on down by the pond. It looked like there were a half dozen of them, mostly lounging on the land bridge. The Mrs. was on her nest the whole time. And I think we had a Great Grey Heron visit this morning, walking in the water. Now it's just down to the two again.
So it was a day to get some outdoor work done, mostly on the south side of the house. The basil cans were doing so well I split them up into a dozen cans. Still not too thrilled with how leggy the parsley, dill, and cilantro look, sigh :(. Got three pots of nasturtiums seeded up, Empress of India, Fordhook mix, and Alaska mix. They were Burpee. Gasp, I know. But they were also from the local farm shop, and I'm pretty sure they are probably not tampered with. But I was wasteful and used a whole packet per pot. I do have some other packets of safe seed, one of those will go into the pots outside the great room door, Jewel mix from Lillie Meyer, another gasp, I know. I wanted to blow through my crap seed and see what happens. I tried good seed I really wanted to save last year without a trial, and it didn't work well. This time I'm using crap seed, hehe. I still have two kinds of seed that are likely going to be planted in with the hops testing project. Another Empress of India, and Whirleybird. Nice climbers to grow in with the luffas.
Since the grape hyacinths were going to be blown out by the day anyway, I decided to plant them in now while they look good. I had potted them all up a dozen each into recycled mushroom containers. It was easy to just dig up the holes where I wanted to drop them in, and pop the bulbs in- they were all just rootbound enough to come out cleanly. So now 8 blocks of hyacinths marking the edge, from grandmas poppy to where the ditch lillies start. I had to move one clump of daffodils, and there was a blank spot handy. I left the big hyacinths alone. And made sure I kept the marker for grandmas poppy, also scattered what seed I had from the one flowerhead I harvested last year in the area I want those to fill in. I marked off the whole edge with tall bamboo stakes- driving markers for mowing.
Got in as much of the glass bottle border around the herb garden as I'm going to for the moment. I ran out of materials. A couple years collecting went a long way, but not quite long enough. All the soaking buckets are empty now and ready to be cleaned out. Since the border did wrap all the way around the redbud tree, I went ahead with my plan to dump all the Chinese Chestnut hulls around it's base. The coons didn't crawl up it anymore after I twined it with raspberry brambles last year- their paws are sensitive like our hands and they don't like to cross prickly barriers apparently. But squirrels have been up it, so I'm hoping a heaping of prickly might help deter them too. I only collected a half a tub, I was hand picking instead of raking, and blech. But I decided to wear my heavy blue rubber gloves, and was able to grab them up without any prickles at all, hooray! And the nest of raspberry brambles from last year provided a perfect ring to start piling in.
Had my love help me out and hauled some wide boards from the rows and plank over a path across the trouble area. It's not permanent, but good enough for now. Blocked off the awkward end with the catnip pot, moved the horseradish pot outside, and moved a broken pot to fill in. Long staked in the "rails".
Discovered we can't hold off with solarium skylight repairs any longer. The few cracks and tiny holes in the original wavy plastic has now given away to a large section out- a rafter wide and a foot long. and serious deterioration. So hopefully soon after the wedding we will have the resources to pick up new wavy plastic to put into place outside, and fix the hole crap. Maybe a little diverting action around the area and across the East to South face of the solarium.
Got all the big coolers and black tubs out of the solarium. Now they are stacked in the garage awaiting cleaning on another nice day between now and when they are needed. With the icky water leftover from soaking labels off bottles, I watered in along the ponds edge. Enough of it had soaked in that I finally got about two thirds of the green cans in their basic set in. The rest was still too dry and hard to even start trying really. Just dug in a bit, and gave it another soaking.
Snagged a couple of knotwork edgers from outside for around the water valve area. I just have them laying there now, they need to be dug in. The one I was all aww crap, it broke turned out to have broken perfectly for setting in there, hehe. I want to clean up and edge in the water valve area.
I moved the irises off the bench and onto the front porch. I'm hoping they will be a little bit happier there, they weren't doing too well on the bench.
Got the rest of the mushrooms in the dehydrator this morning. And whirred up the magic dust seasoning into actual dust and in a container for a gift. The berry preserves I canned up yesterday morning are all showing solid seals so far. I read around about my hardwater problem and the jars being foggy, ick. The solution was to add a bit of white vinegar to the canning water. I remembered to shake up the jars a few times while they were cooling down, to make sure all of it was distributed nicely- last batch I didn't and it was fruit on top, jelly on the bottom.
It still needs to be tasted, but here's how I did it.
I used six 12 oz jars. Boiled up 8 to be on the safe side.
3 pounds fresh strawberries- they were on sale, two bucks each
12 ounce bag of frozen mixed berries, buck fifty on sale
4 cups sugar, had to get a fresh bag, but it was on sale too, two fifty for a 5 pound bag.
one pink box of pectin, not on sale, three bucks.
I use three pounds of berries cuz I always end up slicing and dicing bits off unless they are really in good season. And it tends to run a bit over two pounds anyway.
I cut up the first two pounds, and mash them up with a potato masher. Pulp them to however you want, but yes, doing this with a masher is the best way to get juice and nice pulpy chunks.
Then mash into the fresh strawberries the bag of fully defrosted mixed berries.
Measure it off and see if it yields six cups. If it does not, cut up some more fresh berries to make up the difference, pulp them, then mix in with the mash and measure off 6 cups. Don't go over or under.
From there I just follow the directions that come with the box for strawberry jam and process for 15 minutes.
Tonights dinner is testing out some stuff. Made sausage gravy from a pound of hot tube on sale and stowed in the freezer. A large handfull of dried mushrooms simmered up. A big handful of dried kale stewed up.. All wrapped in pastry gotten on sale. I used a pizza crust and a roll of rolls, still a bit much for stuffing. Some dinner tonight, some lunch over the next day or two.
I think I almost have the recipe down.
Set up a crockpot of beany soup goodness and a starter for some bean spread goodness to try out tomorrow.
Tossed the leftover liquids from soaking the mushrooms and kale into a bag to freeze up.
And what a beautiful day! Sunny and in the upper 60's :) This morning it looked like a McSwanum family reunion going on down by the pond. It looked like there were a half dozen of them, mostly lounging on the land bridge. The Mrs. was on her nest the whole time. And I think we had a Great Grey Heron visit this morning, walking in the water. Now it's just down to the two again.
So it was a day to get some outdoor work done, mostly on the south side of the house. The basil cans were doing so well I split them up into a dozen cans. Still not too thrilled with how leggy the parsley, dill, and cilantro look, sigh :(. Got three pots of nasturtiums seeded up, Empress of India, Fordhook mix, and Alaska mix. They were Burpee. Gasp, I know. But they were also from the local farm shop, and I'm pretty sure they are probably not tampered with. But I was wasteful and used a whole packet per pot. I do have some other packets of safe seed, one of those will go into the pots outside the great room door, Jewel mix from Lillie Meyer, another gasp, I know. I wanted to blow through my crap seed and see what happens. I tried good seed I really wanted to save last year without a trial, and it didn't work well. This time I'm using crap seed, hehe. I still have two kinds of seed that are likely going to be planted in with the hops testing project. Another Empress of India, and Whirleybird. Nice climbers to grow in with the luffas.
Since the grape hyacinths were going to be blown out by the day anyway, I decided to plant them in now while they look good. I had potted them all up a dozen each into recycled mushroom containers. It was easy to just dig up the holes where I wanted to drop them in, and pop the bulbs in- they were all just rootbound enough to come out cleanly. So now 8 blocks of hyacinths marking the edge, from grandmas poppy to where the ditch lillies start. I had to move one clump of daffodils, and there was a blank spot handy. I left the big hyacinths alone. And made sure I kept the marker for grandmas poppy, also scattered what seed I had from the one flowerhead I harvested last year in the area I want those to fill in. I marked off the whole edge with tall bamboo stakes- driving markers for mowing.
Got in as much of the glass bottle border around the herb garden as I'm going to for the moment. I ran out of materials. A couple years collecting went a long way, but not quite long enough. All the soaking buckets are empty now and ready to be cleaned out. Since the border did wrap all the way around the redbud tree, I went ahead with my plan to dump all the Chinese Chestnut hulls around it's base. The coons didn't crawl up it anymore after I twined it with raspberry brambles last year- their paws are sensitive like our hands and they don't like to cross prickly barriers apparently. But squirrels have been up it, so I'm hoping a heaping of prickly might help deter them too. I only collected a half a tub, I was hand picking instead of raking, and blech. But I decided to wear my heavy blue rubber gloves, and was able to grab them up without any prickles at all, hooray! And the nest of raspberry brambles from last year provided a perfect ring to start piling in.
Had my love help me out and hauled some wide boards from the rows and plank over a path across the trouble area. It's not permanent, but good enough for now. Blocked off the awkward end with the catnip pot, moved the horseradish pot outside, and moved a broken pot to fill in. Long staked in the "rails".
Discovered we can't hold off with solarium skylight repairs any longer. The few cracks and tiny holes in the original wavy plastic has now given away to a large section out- a rafter wide and a foot long. and serious deterioration. So hopefully soon after the wedding we will have the resources to pick up new wavy plastic to put into place outside, and fix the hole crap. Maybe a little diverting action around the area and across the East to South face of the solarium.
Got all the big coolers and black tubs out of the solarium. Now they are stacked in the garage awaiting cleaning on another nice day between now and when they are needed. With the icky water leftover from soaking labels off bottles, I watered in along the ponds edge. Enough of it had soaked in that I finally got about two thirds of the green cans in their basic set in. The rest was still too dry and hard to even start trying really. Just dug in a bit, and gave it another soaking.
Snagged a couple of knotwork edgers from outside for around the water valve area. I just have them laying there now, they need to be dug in. The one I was all aww crap, it broke turned out to have broken perfectly for setting in there, hehe. I want to clean up and edge in the water valve area.
I moved the irises off the bench and onto the front porch. I'm hoping they will be a little bit happier there, they weren't doing too well on the bench.
Got the rest of the mushrooms in the dehydrator this morning. And whirred up the magic dust seasoning into actual dust and in a container for a gift. The berry preserves I canned up yesterday morning are all showing solid seals so far. I read around about my hardwater problem and the jars being foggy, ick. The solution was to add a bit of white vinegar to the canning water. I remembered to shake up the jars a few times while they were cooling down, to make sure all of it was distributed nicely- last batch I didn't and it was fruit on top, jelly on the bottom.
It still needs to be tasted, but here's how I did it.
I used six 12 oz jars. Boiled up 8 to be on the safe side.
3 pounds fresh strawberries- they were on sale, two bucks each
12 ounce bag of frozen mixed berries, buck fifty on sale
4 cups sugar, had to get a fresh bag, but it was on sale too, two fifty for a 5 pound bag.
one pink box of pectin, not on sale, three bucks.
I use three pounds of berries cuz I always end up slicing and dicing bits off unless they are really in good season. And it tends to run a bit over two pounds anyway.
I cut up the first two pounds, and mash them up with a potato masher. Pulp them to however you want, but yes, doing this with a masher is the best way to get juice and nice pulpy chunks.
Then mash into the fresh strawberries the bag of fully defrosted mixed berries.
Measure it off and see if it yields six cups. If it does not, cut up some more fresh berries to make up the difference, pulp them, then mix in with the mash and measure off 6 cups. Don't go over or under.
From there I just follow the directions that come with the box for strawberry jam and process for 15 minutes.
Tonights dinner is testing out some stuff. Made sausage gravy from a pound of hot tube on sale and stowed in the freezer. A large handfull of dried mushrooms simmered up. A big handful of dried kale stewed up.. All wrapped in pastry gotten on sale. I used a pizza crust and a roll of rolls, still a bit much for stuffing. Some dinner tonight, some lunch over the next day or two.
I think I almost have the recipe down.
Set up a crockpot of beany soup goodness and a starter for some bean spread goodness to try out tomorrow.
Tossed the leftover liquids from soaking the mushrooms and kale into a bag to freeze up.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Gettin stuff done!
Well, over the last couple days, been getting stuff done.
Got all of the solar jars done. Got over 20 of them now, hopefully they will light up nicely on the day. I want to hang them from trees down the driveway and perhaps elsewhere- all depends on what the weather is like. I posted several entries back what they look like singly, but I'm really hoping they have a nice impact once they are all set out. Most of them are recycled cheese dip jars. They don't seal as well as canning jars do, but in effect they were free and I got better things to use canning jars for. Still need to figure out hangers for them- the rubber band idea didn't work out too well. But I got some tough yarn, I think I can figure out something, lol.
Got all of the corsages done for the wedding party, yay! Still need to figure out how to put my bouquet together. Got half of my armband done too, and I think I figured out my setup for my belt. Still need to figure out what I want to do about earrings and if I want to do a necklace or not. And something special for my loves buttonhole too.
Cleaned up the whole workshop. The storage room is neat and everything put away, the costume room, ditto. The main shop area is all cleaned up too. And once again, I realize I have about a billion little doodas like beads and thread and stacks of paper and cardstock... I looked around and was amazed all over again that I have room to work and I'm not locked away in the dark anymore. It was years that I had to make pretty stuff in the dark, having sunlight makes me a much happier and productive crafter :)
Today it was sunny and warm- I'm really really hoping it's this nice out on the day. So I got the front half of the yard cleaned up of all it's fallen branches, by the time I got done raking up the pinecones, it was such a sticky mess and I had already brought down a few wheelbarrows of debris to the firepit, I decided that was enough cleanup for one day and to do the back of the yard another day. That last wheelbarrow of pine branches and cones went right into the firepit- it should be a rather nice firestarter next time we light it up. So I sat down and peeled two buckets of recycled booze bottles, and got the last two buckets soaking. And I set in all the peeled bottles in the border of the herb garden. Not quite enough to finish the one side yet, but what I got in so far looks great. Or at least I think it looks great, hehehee. At least they all match, I've been putting aside the non-matching ones to put in somewhere else. Where I'm not sure yet, I might just have to suck it up and put them all along the other edge of the border.
And ohhhh, naughty weeds are already popping up in abundance, sigh. But yay, so are some of the spring flowers too, so I can't be too unhappy. I need to do some serious weeding around the pineapple mint to make sure it really is mint there and not the very similar looking weed next to it, heh. The sage and catnip are already showing green, but the rosemary still looks really dead, and where I marked off the other herbs still don't look to promising.
Cleaned out the firepit, that was three wheelbarrows full of ash. Takes us about a year to get one brick deep, so every spring it needs to be emptied out. I dump the ash over the leech field by the pond. I figure since it already leeches all year in the firepit, it probably isn't too harmful to dump it there.
Just need to take a moment to say thank goodness my love bought me a pair of wheelbarrows our first year here. Makes so many chores much much easier. I think I need to get some sports tape or something for the handles though, I tend to stick my workgloves on the handles, hehehe.
The veggie rows are looking sad as hell. I think this year I will be removing the cover entirely from the living fence stretch and just concentrate on the veggie box area. The raspberry bed needs another year of serious TLC too. Didn't do too badly last year, but I lost the nice raspberries I ordered in, I think that means more work is needed in the area. I know darn well I won't be working on anything serious in the living fence area, so it's easier to leave it open to mow. I have enough to do with getting the veggie box area and raspberry bed up to par. And ugh, kill off the weedy tree shit. I'm so done with that. I tried snipping down, tried spray painting the snipped bits. This year it is full on blackout smothering, after snipping, after painting. I can't use harsh means there because it's the corner of a lot of growing area. But that crap has got to go. I need to trim down the trees there too- they are way getting into reach of the power lines. I should do that soon before too much green grows in- that makes it harder to trim down for a noob like me.
The first year was figuring out the yard, last year was the first mark ins.. This year is understanding what my limitations are and planning for the years to come.
The willow starts I let be last year have now come up into a goodly thatch. This year will be cutting out what I don't want, and starting weaving together what I do want. In a few years, there will be a nice little natural gazebo in the sanctuary :) And where it is situated it blocks a bit of neighbor view, but none of mine. Need to make sure the fenceline is open too. There's roses growing on it, and tree bits that don't need to be.
A few more seeds have popped up, including some of the carrots :) I did most of the seed starts in recycled toilet paper tubes this year. Didn't have the time or patience for making my own paper pots this time. But that's ok, I still need to get the worm tubs set up and all that paper will make for nice bedding for the redworms.
A nice bit of south neighbor news for a startling change. The neighbors showed yesterday in a dark silver SUV. Today the little boy was out and I heard the adult kind of yell at him and tell him to stay on their driveway, and keep off the neighbors property. Meaning my property. It tickled me pink, at least some of that family has a bit of respect, or maybe fear, hehehe. But anywho, it was nice. A darker sedan showed up this afternoon, but no peeps so far, which is nice too.
The FOH garden is just going to be cleaned up and maintained this year. Holy crap some of the moss path I laid in last year held on and is there this year despite the drought. Tons of weeding to do, but it looks like so far the ditch lillies are behaving. The moss mother on the back balcony is flush with a bunch of spongy green too, will need to pull some clumps for the front again. And lift the whole thing and put the mother into a proper box. It's time to really clean that balcony before it really rots, lol. The FOH walkway is flushing in mossy between it's cracks too. It paid off to be patient and shove in moss all the time. You can hardly tell where I repaired the walk and set in the pavers.
As a random yay it's spring note... The wild chives are sprouting in. I think I need to mark those areas off for transplanting. I want to start in a heavy border along the east side of the pole barn and move on from there. And now is the time to mark off where those clumps are. I think the wild chives deter the voles, but even if they don't it will be wise to grow a border that will produce seed and edible goodness for years to come.
The currently potted tulips are for sure going in along the fenceline on the east side of the pole barn. Make it easy to mow, they naturalize, and will bring a wonderful pop of color there every spring. In a couple years patience, Growbox Hill will have bulbs for sharing, trading, and perhaps even selling. I just hope last years clearance buy of irises have some return too. I'm not hugely fond of tulips, but I love irises. The grape hyacinths will be nice for years to come too if what's popping in the pots now is any indication. The tulips and hyacinths are doing so well they are getting moved tomorrow to the ponds edge for their sun so the bench space is freed up for more seed action.
The Green Gauge Plum got potted up too, in a recycled kitty litter bucket. Used up the last of my bagged dirt, I hope I did a good job with it and the tree is living and happy- it's currently along the solarium pond edge.
The horseradish is doing well in it's pot too. In a week or two, Ill move it to the outside corner of the solarium so it can start to flourish- eventually I want to put in it's barrel there, and I want to see how well it does.
The parsley, cilantro, and dill cans for wedding favors are all leggy and weedy as hell. Need to start new cans. And basil too- the current cans are doing incredibly well, so I figure if I start some more now they will be good to go for the day. Even if other starts aren't doing so well. Heh, I can just keep icky ones and grow them here and hope for the best. And heck, I could probably split the current basil cans next week too. So even if none of the other herbs work out for wedding favors, basil will. Time to be kicking up the first of the catgrass cans too. I have a whole paper bag full of cat food cans for growing catgrass in- I figured that was appropriate. And I can do a ton of them for decor, hehe.
Right now scattered around in the tent, on tables.. bla bla bla.. Several pots of tulips and grape hyacinths that will stay here, lots of herbal cans for favors and will be marked so, lots of garden in a box seed boxes for folks to take home, a goodly handful of flameless candles to light up the tables.
Right now I'm not being terribly hopeful for nice enough weather for true backyard wedding. All the plans are going on under the tent right now. Even if it's nice the weekend of, I'm not too hopeful that it won't be soggy leading up to the date, and that kind of nixes some ideas.
Anywho, enough babbling... Been getting some stuff done, figured I better write it down while I'm thinking of it.
Got all of the solar jars done. Got over 20 of them now, hopefully they will light up nicely on the day. I want to hang them from trees down the driveway and perhaps elsewhere- all depends on what the weather is like. I posted several entries back what they look like singly, but I'm really hoping they have a nice impact once they are all set out. Most of them are recycled cheese dip jars. They don't seal as well as canning jars do, but in effect they were free and I got better things to use canning jars for. Still need to figure out hangers for them- the rubber band idea didn't work out too well. But I got some tough yarn, I think I can figure out something, lol.
Got all of the corsages done for the wedding party, yay! Still need to figure out how to put my bouquet together. Got half of my armband done too, and I think I figured out my setup for my belt. Still need to figure out what I want to do about earrings and if I want to do a necklace or not. And something special for my loves buttonhole too.
Cleaned up the whole workshop. The storage room is neat and everything put away, the costume room, ditto. The main shop area is all cleaned up too. And once again, I realize I have about a billion little doodas like beads and thread and stacks of paper and cardstock... I looked around and was amazed all over again that I have room to work and I'm not locked away in the dark anymore. It was years that I had to make pretty stuff in the dark, having sunlight makes me a much happier and productive crafter :)
Today it was sunny and warm- I'm really really hoping it's this nice out on the day. So I got the front half of the yard cleaned up of all it's fallen branches, by the time I got done raking up the pinecones, it was such a sticky mess and I had already brought down a few wheelbarrows of debris to the firepit, I decided that was enough cleanup for one day and to do the back of the yard another day. That last wheelbarrow of pine branches and cones went right into the firepit- it should be a rather nice firestarter next time we light it up. So I sat down and peeled two buckets of recycled booze bottles, and got the last two buckets soaking. And I set in all the peeled bottles in the border of the herb garden. Not quite enough to finish the one side yet, but what I got in so far looks great. Or at least I think it looks great, hehehee. At least they all match, I've been putting aside the non-matching ones to put in somewhere else. Where I'm not sure yet, I might just have to suck it up and put them all along the other edge of the border.
And ohhhh, naughty weeds are already popping up in abundance, sigh. But yay, so are some of the spring flowers too, so I can't be too unhappy. I need to do some serious weeding around the pineapple mint to make sure it really is mint there and not the very similar looking weed next to it, heh. The sage and catnip are already showing green, but the rosemary still looks really dead, and where I marked off the other herbs still don't look to promising.
Cleaned out the firepit, that was three wheelbarrows full of ash. Takes us about a year to get one brick deep, so every spring it needs to be emptied out. I dump the ash over the leech field by the pond. I figure since it already leeches all year in the firepit, it probably isn't too harmful to dump it there.
Just need to take a moment to say thank goodness my love bought me a pair of wheelbarrows our first year here. Makes so many chores much much easier. I think I need to get some sports tape or something for the handles though, I tend to stick my workgloves on the handles, hehehe.
The veggie rows are looking sad as hell. I think this year I will be removing the cover entirely from the living fence stretch and just concentrate on the veggie box area. The raspberry bed needs another year of serious TLC too. Didn't do too badly last year, but I lost the nice raspberries I ordered in, I think that means more work is needed in the area. I know darn well I won't be working on anything serious in the living fence area, so it's easier to leave it open to mow. I have enough to do with getting the veggie box area and raspberry bed up to par. And ugh, kill off the weedy tree shit. I'm so done with that. I tried snipping down, tried spray painting the snipped bits. This year it is full on blackout smothering, after snipping, after painting. I can't use harsh means there because it's the corner of a lot of growing area. But that crap has got to go. I need to trim down the trees there too- they are way getting into reach of the power lines. I should do that soon before too much green grows in- that makes it harder to trim down for a noob like me.
The first year was figuring out the yard, last year was the first mark ins.. This year is understanding what my limitations are and planning for the years to come.
The willow starts I let be last year have now come up into a goodly thatch. This year will be cutting out what I don't want, and starting weaving together what I do want. In a few years, there will be a nice little natural gazebo in the sanctuary :) And where it is situated it blocks a bit of neighbor view, but none of mine. Need to make sure the fenceline is open too. There's roses growing on it, and tree bits that don't need to be.
A few more seeds have popped up, including some of the carrots :) I did most of the seed starts in recycled toilet paper tubes this year. Didn't have the time or patience for making my own paper pots this time. But that's ok, I still need to get the worm tubs set up and all that paper will make for nice bedding for the redworms.
A nice bit of south neighbor news for a startling change. The neighbors showed yesterday in a dark silver SUV. Today the little boy was out and I heard the adult kind of yell at him and tell him to stay on their driveway, and keep off the neighbors property. Meaning my property. It tickled me pink, at least some of that family has a bit of respect, or maybe fear, hehehe. But anywho, it was nice. A darker sedan showed up this afternoon, but no peeps so far, which is nice too.
The FOH garden is just going to be cleaned up and maintained this year. Holy crap some of the moss path I laid in last year held on and is there this year despite the drought. Tons of weeding to do, but it looks like so far the ditch lillies are behaving. The moss mother on the back balcony is flush with a bunch of spongy green too, will need to pull some clumps for the front again. And lift the whole thing and put the mother into a proper box. It's time to really clean that balcony before it really rots, lol. The FOH walkway is flushing in mossy between it's cracks too. It paid off to be patient and shove in moss all the time. You can hardly tell where I repaired the walk and set in the pavers.
As a random yay it's spring note... The wild chives are sprouting in. I think I need to mark those areas off for transplanting. I want to start in a heavy border along the east side of the pole barn and move on from there. And now is the time to mark off where those clumps are. I think the wild chives deter the voles, but even if they don't it will be wise to grow a border that will produce seed and edible goodness for years to come.
The currently potted tulips are for sure going in along the fenceline on the east side of the pole barn. Make it easy to mow, they naturalize, and will bring a wonderful pop of color there every spring. In a couple years patience, Growbox Hill will have bulbs for sharing, trading, and perhaps even selling. I just hope last years clearance buy of irises have some return too. I'm not hugely fond of tulips, but I love irises. The grape hyacinths will be nice for years to come too if what's popping in the pots now is any indication. The tulips and hyacinths are doing so well they are getting moved tomorrow to the ponds edge for their sun so the bench space is freed up for more seed action.
The Green Gauge Plum got potted up too, in a recycled kitty litter bucket. Used up the last of my bagged dirt, I hope I did a good job with it and the tree is living and happy- it's currently along the solarium pond edge.
The horseradish is doing well in it's pot too. In a week or two, Ill move it to the outside corner of the solarium so it can start to flourish- eventually I want to put in it's barrel there, and I want to see how well it does.
The parsley, cilantro, and dill cans for wedding favors are all leggy and weedy as hell. Need to start new cans. And basil too- the current cans are doing incredibly well, so I figure if I start some more now they will be good to go for the day. Even if other starts aren't doing so well. Heh, I can just keep icky ones and grow them here and hope for the best. And heck, I could probably split the current basil cans next week too. So even if none of the other herbs work out for wedding favors, basil will. Time to be kicking up the first of the catgrass cans too. I have a whole paper bag full of cat food cans for growing catgrass in- I figured that was appropriate. And I can do a ton of them for decor, hehe.
Right now scattered around in the tent, on tables.. bla bla bla.. Several pots of tulips and grape hyacinths that will stay here, lots of herbal cans for favors and will be marked so, lots of garden in a box seed boxes for folks to take home, a goodly handful of flameless candles to light up the tables.
Right now I'm not being terribly hopeful for nice enough weather for true backyard wedding. All the plans are going on under the tent right now. Even if it's nice the weekend of, I'm not too hopeful that it won't be soggy leading up to the date, and that kind of nixes some ideas.
Anywho, enough babbling... Been getting some stuff done, figured I better write it down while I'm thinking of it.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
And T minus.....
So, back home from my trip to WI...
My wedding dress is totally fabu, exactly what I wanted it to be. Still needs a bit of tinkering, but not much. Need to come up with some of the finishing details. It's hanging in on my dummy in my workshop right now :) Thank you Bad Bear!
I will be taking pics and probably getting taken pics of in this awesome creation. Be patient, I will post them when they turn up.
Picked up the brew.. And whew, what a lot of brew! 10 cases, all sorts of different yummy goodness. I think when I load up the tubs I will have to set aside a bottle of each so I can make sure I sample them all if I don't get to on the wedding day. I have never tasted anything he made that wasn't worth drinking many many times... Thank you Brewer Chuck!
Here's a pic of Brewer Chuck having a well deserved sit and sip among the yummy brewing all boxed up and ready to go. Yes, that whole heap is being served at the wedding :)
Of course now that we are T minus, I'm in total panicking bride mode. Meh, I think that's to be expected. But totally freaking none the less, heheehe.
Started working on my jewelry- and after half a days work, realized I was screwing it up. It's damn hard sometimes because I can't read Japanese. So I had to tear the whole thing apart, and start over. I figured out where I went wrong. Also realized I only had half of the 6mm that I needed for the project, so I picked up some more on sale. Also picked up some 6mm on clearance I think I will like even better for the project. All of the leftovers from the project will do nicely for the rest of my sparkley.
Got 6 more solar lights painted up. Just need to jar them. Picked up 4 more to start too. I won't have as many as I would have wished for, but plenty enough to set out how I want them.
All of the tulips are popping up right fine- so I think I might actually get some blooms at the right time! Perhaps the grape hyacinths will be blown by then though. It turned chilly and rainy as hell, we might get snow Friday- so I'm kind of unwilling to put them outside to slow them down. But that's ok, I know where they are going in once they bloom :)
The irises aren't doing diddly, and I'm a tad concerned about that. Not for the wedding, but I want to plant them in the yard and would hate to lose them.
The little daffs and big hyacinths on the south side of the solarium are already in full bloom, so were the little irises by the raspberry patch. I need to mark them off now so I know where to dig and re-distribute later in the season.
About half the seed I started before I left is popping. All the brassicas, some of the herbs, some of the marigolds... None of the carrots :( But some of the mixed radishes and golden beets.
MY TOMATO SEEDS CAME IN!!!!! Offer off the Gardenweb. Someone getting rid of older seeds- that means 3+ years on that site, but still in right fine range for tomatoes. I sent off a SASBE for a buck with three forever stamps inside for the return.. and a load of seeds back! It snipped a few off my wish list, and a lot of colors!!!
Black Prince
Purple Russian
Old Ivory Egg
Yellow Perfection
Nyagous
Sunsugar
Brad's Black Heart
Great White
Gold Medal
Black Plum
Purple Calabash
Speckled Roman
Yellow Pear
Black Russian
Sungold
Snow White
Jubilee
Kelloggs Breakfast
Orange Queen
Black from Tula
Mirabelle
Dr. Wyche
White Wonder
Black Krim
Of course I still have to ton of tomatoes on my wish list. Now I get to go through and strike some of those off because I got in a lot of seed that covers it. I have my reds, yellows, and oranges covered. With a couple exceptions on the red and yellow. My blacks/purples are mostly covered too. I still have greens and browns out there, but meh, those are far down my list. Got an excellent hop on my whites too.
Of course I didn't start any of my own toms from seed this year- got too much going on. But I think next year is going to be a seed growing year. As many different tomatoes as I can to build a fresh seed stock from. Then the year after start really doing the rainbow effect for canning.
Hehheeee, my seed wish list. It currently has 350 kinds of seeds on it. This winter when all of my favorite seed catalogs came in, I marked and drooled and noted just like I always do. This time I noted all those seeds into a list. Some are novelty, or interest, some are wow, I really want to grow that. But it's every seed I think is neat.
And heh, I have about 180 kinds of seeds already.. I'm such a greedy little thing.
Ultimately I want Growbox Hill to have a 700 variety seedbank, maxing out at 1000 if needed. With careful storage, rotation, and growing, that can happen. Like I can have 50 kinds of tomatoes on storage, rotating through colors. Or some flowers like nasturtiums I want to grow every year several kinds or other wild flowers that will just be what it is. Or herb seed like dill and catnip :)
Our first year here was learning the lay of the land. Last year was a good learning attempt, and good planning preparation. This year is just a coasting year and building up for next year.
Cept for the luffas for the hops experiment. By golly that will work this year.
The Green Gauge Plum came in. I picked it up today bareroot, need to get it into some dirt tomorrow. 14 bucks, and if we treat it right, it will grow fruit for years :) Our wonderful brewer is also able to do blessings, and he will be doing a special blessing on the tree for our wedding :) Perhaps in a few years of loving care, we will be rewarded with yummy fruits to remind us of the happy day. Every time I go to Watervliet, I'm happier with them.
I took Gene's advice and potted up horseradish root from Meijer just before I left. Now there is green popping up from all three crowns I planted.
Made my first donation to the local library today. I like food mysteries. I owned the first two books in one volume of the Hemlock Falls series. My library had books after that, but not those. I figured why not, and called in about donation. I dropped it off today along with the others of the series I had checked out, and they were glad to have it :) I have a small pile of media for donating, think I might have to search their catalog and make a list of what I got that they might want. Otherwise, there is a media donation bin at the Meijer.
The Salvation Army picked up our donation while I was gone. I usually like to donate nicer stuff to Kirby's, our local thrift shop. But I had built up a pile of good and random I didn't feel like sorting out, and SA was willing to pick up all of it- one less fuss to town for me :) Used plastic garbage bags for it all. One big contractor bag of random house stuff, and four kitchen bags of clothes. Three bags that don't fit me or don't wear so much anymore, one bag of clothes the menfolk weeded out.
And ugh, trouble with the south neighbors.. again... Golly I can hardly wait till that fence is installed. Dave said it might go in by our wedding- and that would be the bestist kind of wedding present. But they got stuff going on too, so I understand that the fence is secondary concern.
Anywho, today.. My love pops up by me and says there is a white sedan in their drive.. I couldn't see it clearly at first, but then the headlights popped on, and they started backing away from the garage.. then grrr, proceeded to pull onto our easement, then looped back around the barn... by then I had tossed on my shoes and jacket and started out the door. By the time they crossed my path out the office, they were already past me and headed right on out. Turned on the blinker left, and drove off that way.. Few minutes later a very similar, perhaps the same car drove north on the road. It was a car full of older folks. Couldn't see the driver clear, but the front passenger was in an old man hat and colors, and the back seat had an older person too.
Made up a big pot of soup today.. the wet and rain just made me do so. Picked up potatoes on clearance, had pork stock in the freezer and dried corn on the shelf... The leeks weren't on sale, but made up a big ole kettle of potato chowder for dinner.. it's in it's final burblating now.
And off again, more for another day...
My wedding dress is totally fabu, exactly what I wanted it to be. Still needs a bit of tinkering, but not much. Need to come up with some of the finishing details. It's hanging in on my dummy in my workshop right now :) Thank you Bad Bear!
I will be taking pics and probably getting taken pics of in this awesome creation. Be patient, I will post them when they turn up.
Picked up the brew.. And whew, what a lot of brew! 10 cases, all sorts of different yummy goodness. I think when I load up the tubs I will have to set aside a bottle of each so I can make sure I sample them all if I don't get to on the wedding day. I have never tasted anything he made that wasn't worth drinking many many times... Thank you Brewer Chuck!
Of course now that we are T minus, I'm in total panicking bride mode. Meh, I think that's to be expected. But totally freaking none the less, heheehe.
Started working on my jewelry- and after half a days work, realized I was screwing it up. It's damn hard sometimes because I can't read Japanese. So I had to tear the whole thing apart, and start over. I figured out where I went wrong. Also realized I only had half of the 6mm that I needed for the project, so I picked up some more on sale. Also picked up some 6mm on clearance I think I will like even better for the project. All of the leftovers from the project will do nicely for the rest of my sparkley.
Got 6 more solar lights painted up. Just need to jar them. Picked up 4 more to start too. I won't have as many as I would have wished for, but plenty enough to set out how I want them.
All of the tulips are popping up right fine- so I think I might actually get some blooms at the right time! Perhaps the grape hyacinths will be blown by then though. It turned chilly and rainy as hell, we might get snow Friday- so I'm kind of unwilling to put them outside to slow them down. But that's ok, I know where they are going in once they bloom :)
The irises aren't doing diddly, and I'm a tad concerned about that. Not for the wedding, but I want to plant them in the yard and would hate to lose them.
The little daffs and big hyacinths on the south side of the solarium are already in full bloom, so were the little irises by the raspberry patch. I need to mark them off now so I know where to dig and re-distribute later in the season.
About half the seed I started before I left is popping. All the brassicas, some of the herbs, some of the marigolds... None of the carrots :( But some of the mixed radishes and golden beets.
MY TOMATO SEEDS CAME IN!!!!! Offer off the Gardenweb. Someone getting rid of older seeds- that means 3+ years on that site, but still in right fine range for tomatoes. I sent off a SASBE for a buck with three forever stamps inside for the return.. and a load of seeds back! It snipped a few off my wish list, and a lot of colors!!!
Black Prince
Purple Russian
Old Ivory Egg
Yellow Perfection
Nyagous
Sunsugar
Brad's Black Heart
Great White
Gold Medal
Black Plum
Purple Calabash
Speckled Roman
Yellow Pear
Black Russian
Sungold
Snow White
Jubilee
Kelloggs Breakfast
Orange Queen
Black from Tula
Mirabelle
Dr. Wyche
White Wonder
Black Krim
Of course I still have to ton of tomatoes on my wish list. Now I get to go through and strike some of those off because I got in a lot of seed that covers it. I have my reds, yellows, and oranges covered. With a couple exceptions on the red and yellow. My blacks/purples are mostly covered too. I still have greens and browns out there, but meh, those are far down my list. Got an excellent hop on my whites too.
Of course I didn't start any of my own toms from seed this year- got too much going on. But I think next year is going to be a seed growing year. As many different tomatoes as I can to build a fresh seed stock from. Then the year after start really doing the rainbow effect for canning.
Hehheeee, my seed wish list. It currently has 350 kinds of seeds on it. This winter when all of my favorite seed catalogs came in, I marked and drooled and noted just like I always do. This time I noted all those seeds into a list. Some are novelty, or interest, some are wow, I really want to grow that. But it's every seed I think is neat.
And heh, I have about 180 kinds of seeds already.. I'm such a greedy little thing.
Ultimately I want Growbox Hill to have a 700 variety seedbank, maxing out at 1000 if needed. With careful storage, rotation, and growing, that can happen. Like I can have 50 kinds of tomatoes on storage, rotating through colors. Or some flowers like nasturtiums I want to grow every year several kinds or other wild flowers that will just be what it is. Or herb seed like dill and catnip :)
Our first year here was learning the lay of the land. Last year was a good learning attempt, and good planning preparation. This year is just a coasting year and building up for next year.
Cept for the luffas for the hops experiment. By golly that will work this year.
The Green Gauge Plum came in. I picked it up today bareroot, need to get it into some dirt tomorrow. 14 bucks, and if we treat it right, it will grow fruit for years :) Our wonderful brewer is also able to do blessings, and he will be doing a special blessing on the tree for our wedding :) Perhaps in a few years of loving care, we will be rewarded with yummy fruits to remind us of the happy day. Every time I go to Watervliet, I'm happier with them.
I took Gene's advice and potted up horseradish root from Meijer just before I left. Now there is green popping up from all three crowns I planted.
Made my first donation to the local library today. I like food mysteries. I owned the first two books in one volume of the Hemlock Falls series. My library had books after that, but not those. I figured why not, and called in about donation. I dropped it off today along with the others of the series I had checked out, and they were glad to have it :) I have a small pile of media for donating, think I might have to search their catalog and make a list of what I got that they might want. Otherwise, there is a media donation bin at the Meijer.
The Salvation Army picked up our donation while I was gone. I usually like to donate nicer stuff to Kirby's, our local thrift shop. But I had built up a pile of good and random I didn't feel like sorting out, and SA was willing to pick up all of it- one less fuss to town for me :) Used plastic garbage bags for it all. One big contractor bag of random house stuff, and four kitchen bags of clothes. Three bags that don't fit me or don't wear so much anymore, one bag of clothes the menfolk weeded out.
And ugh, trouble with the south neighbors.. again... Golly I can hardly wait till that fence is installed. Dave said it might go in by our wedding- and that would be the bestist kind of wedding present. But they got stuff going on too, so I understand that the fence is secondary concern.
Anywho, today.. My love pops up by me and says there is a white sedan in their drive.. I couldn't see it clearly at first, but then the headlights popped on, and they started backing away from the garage.. then grrr, proceeded to pull onto our easement, then looped back around the barn... by then I had tossed on my shoes and jacket and started out the door. By the time they crossed my path out the office, they were already past me and headed right on out. Turned on the blinker left, and drove off that way.. Few minutes later a very similar, perhaps the same car drove north on the road. It was a car full of older folks. Couldn't see the driver clear, but the front passenger was in an old man hat and colors, and the back seat had an older person too.
Made up a big pot of soup today.. the wet and rain just made me do so. Picked up potatoes on clearance, had pork stock in the freezer and dried corn on the shelf... The leeks weren't on sale, but made up a big ole kettle of potato chowder for dinner.. it's in it's final burblating now.
And off again, more for another day...
Friday, December 28, 2012
And so it was Christmas...
Christmas didn't quite go as planned this year.
Didn't get any mailing done. I was traveling on Wed and Thurs... Got up Friday morning and about the time the coffee was done we lost power. Called in the power outage and they told me an estimate on Sunday night.
Well crap, that effectively canceled the holiday at our house. I hadn't done any of the cleanup, decorating including getting the tree, or the shopping for fresh foods to cook with. Fortunately, we were able to set up plans to go over to the folks house instead, so Christmas was saved :)
We did get our power up on Saturday afternoon, but by then I was totally unwilling to start preparations for Monday afternoon. I may be pretty good sometimes, but I ain't that good.
So it ended up being a rather quiet and boring Christmas at Growbox hill.
Now I have a whole heap of natural decorations to string up on the trees outside, lol.
And we got some damage to the windows on the workshop porch that I need to figure out how to repair.
The world didn't end, but it was kind of funny because we lost power and who knew if the world hadn't ended, hehehehe.
But as this year comes to a close, I am not sorry to see it go. 2012 was a bad year in a lot of ways, but it was a good year too in some ways. I'm looking forward to 2013.
Do I have new years resolutions? Of course I do. Everybody does, even those folks that claim they don't. If you have made plans into the next year, you have made resolutions to do something.
I'm going to make the second attempt at the veggie rows, work on improving what I already have plotted out. The black plastic was ok for the first year run. I want to at least upgrade to some proper path borders if I can lay my hands on some super cheap or free carpet.
I'm going to make the second attempt at the luffa growing project. I have enough seeds this time to guarantee a stand of growth if I don't completely screw up.
I'm going to try a second attempt at the marigold border for the firepit.
Oh, and a whole pile of other stuff too. I want to see my friends and family more, get all sorts of things done with the house... an endless array, hehe.
I hope the Farmers Almanac is right and we get in enough winter and early spring precipitation to tilt us back off the drought map. We are still considered abnormally dry and moderate drought is only a county away. Things are looking pretty good according to the drought monitor- it has backed off a lot in the last couple months.
And so it was Christmas... I hope everyone had a good year. I hope everyone has a good year to come as well :)
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Christmas thoughts.. and finally updated pics :)
Oh christmas tree, your fragrant branches spread so beautifully.
Oh so perfect for little meow paws to climb on.
Oh so many lovely ornaments to be swiped at by curious claws.
Oh yeah, we are decorating the tree differently this year. Why? Because even though all of the adult cats were very good about the tree last year- except the tinsel, but who can blame them for that?- we now have a very playful kitten in the house. I sorted through all the tree decor. I have a lot of ornaments that I would be bummed if they got broken or wrecked. And not really enough ornaments that are kitty survival pieces. Well crap.
Then this morning I checked the orange slices I'm dehydrating. They look like lovely bright orange stained glass windows, ohhhh. It hit me- we are going to do a wildlife tree this year. Didn't get my crap together in time for it last year, and if the kitten gets into mangling, no big deal.
About 3 dozen orange slices are now in their storage containers
About 4 dozen lemon slices are now in the big dehydrator
I may pick up a couple blood oranges, limes, or clementines if I see them for a good price. Waste not, want not- since I know after drying and all they won't be all that smelly in the rind, and critters don't really eat them- so I peeled the zest off and set it aside to dry for culinary use :)
The sliced lemons after peeling off the zest..
The dehydrator all loaded up...
This is what the fresh zest of 6 lemons looks like...
This is what the zest of 4 oranges looks like after it's counter dried, and ready to jar up...
This is a pretty orange slice, looks like glass :)
And this is what a lemon slice looks like..
Doing up a batch of apple slices for ornaments. I have a bit leftover on the shelf that needs using up, and I picked up a couple more that were on sale to do up.
Cranberries were on sale and keep for ages in the fridge, those might become garland or ornaments, not sure yet.
Picked up a generous pound of nuts in the shell- couple hours with ribbon and a glue gun, and there are now 8 dozen nut ornaments nestled away in recycled egg cartons. Locked into a big plastic storage tub- no need to incite the mice.
Got half a bag of almost stale big marshmallows- those will get loops for ornaments. Right now they are packed into their own egg cartons to separate and finish getting stale.
Got a couple bags of popcorn on the shelf, so popcorn garland for sure.
Whatever I end up with extras of after trimming the tree can just get tossed into bathroom baskets and such.
Picked up a nice little treeskirt on super clearance after last season. Still got lights, and those are less breakable little LED ones. Now I just need to get back to work on making presents, hehehee.
On a side note, got in some of my government seed today. Got 2 types of soybean, Enoki and Fifth Moon. And got in 2 packets of Sorghum bicolor, one from Kenya, one from Sudan. By the plant ID I chose, they are both called Dill, but, er, looks nothing like any dill seed I've ever seen! It really looks like wheat..
Got the three pots of celery stubs potted up. I put one upstairs to see how it does there, and the other two are currently on top of my filing cabinet. Been using the squirt gun so someone quits jumping up there. I don't think they will stay there though, not enough light I think.
Finally pulled out the camera and took some picks of stuff. I know just reading text is plain ole boring.
Oh so perfect for little meow paws to climb on.
Oh so many lovely ornaments to be swiped at by curious claws.
Oh yeah, we are decorating the tree differently this year. Why? Because even though all of the adult cats were very good about the tree last year- except the tinsel, but who can blame them for that?- we now have a very playful kitten in the house. I sorted through all the tree decor. I have a lot of ornaments that I would be bummed if they got broken or wrecked. And not really enough ornaments that are kitty survival pieces. Well crap.
Then this morning I checked the orange slices I'm dehydrating. They look like lovely bright orange stained glass windows, ohhhh. It hit me- we are going to do a wildlife tree this year. Didn't get my crap together in time for it last year, and if the kitten gets into mangling, no big deal.
About 3 dozen orange slices are now in their storage containers
About 4 dozen lemon slices are now in the big dehydrator
I may pick up a couple blood oranges, limes, or clementines if I see them for a good price. Waste not, want not- since I know after drying and all they won't be all that smelly in the rind, and critters don't really eat them- so I peeled the zest off and set it aside to dry for culinary use :)
The sliced lemons after peeling off the zest..
The dehydrator all loaded up...
This is what the fresh zest of 6 lemons looks like...
This is what the zest of 4 oranges looks like after it's counter dried, and ready to jar up...
This is a pretty orange slice, looks like glass :)
And this is what a lemon slice looks like..
Doing up a batch of apple slices for ornaments. I have a bit leftover on the shelf that needs using up, and I picked up a couple more that were on sale to do up.
Cranberries were on sale and keep for ages in the fridge, those might become garland or ornaments, not sure yet.
Picked up a generous pound of nuts in the shell- couple hours with ribbon and a glue gun, and there are now 8 dozen nut ornaments nestled away in recycled egg cartons. Locked into a big plastic storage tub- no need to incite the mice.
Got half a bag of almost stale big marshmallows- those will get loops for ornaments. Right now they are packed into their own egg cartons to separate and finish getting stale.
Got a couple bags of popcorn on the shelf, so popcorn garland for sure.
Whatever I end up with extras of after trimming the tree can just get tossed into bathroom baskets and such.
Picked up a nice little treeskirt on super clearance after last season. Still got lights, and those are less breakable little LED ones. Now I just need to get back to work on making presents, hehehee.
On a side note, got in some of my government seed today. Got 2 types of soybean, Enoki and Fifth Moon. And got in 2 packets of Sorghum bicolor, one from Kenya, one from Sudan. By the plant ID I chose, they are both called Dill, but, er, looks nothing like any dill seed I've ever seen! It really looks like wheat..
Got the three pots of celery stubs potted up. I put one upstairs to see how it does there, and the other two are currently on top of my filing cabinet. Been using the squirt gun so someone quits jumping up there. I don't think they will stay there though, not enough light I think.
Finally pulled out the camera and took some picks of stuff. I know just reading text is plain ole boring.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Halloween
It's Halloween, one of my favorite holidays :)
I just don't got the spirit this year though, I think it's the damp, drizzly, chilly, windy weather. Was really hoping to do a bonfire, but that's a no-go.
I realized this morning that I wouldn't be able to put out all of the jack-o-lantern trinkets my love and I made on the windows- new naughty Nova meow is just too frigging curious right now. I was going to blow some hours making paper ones to tape on the windows. Then I lucked out and spotted window clings at Hardings! Saved the day there. And they are reusable so long as I store them nicely. I may have to do up some more in windowglass paint stuff.
So where did all those trinkets go? All of them got used :) They filled the solarium windows- and I lined up lots of the salty ones in the workshop and around the fireplace.
Now the house is kittenproofed and all sealed up.
Using pretty much all flameless candles this year. We have enough of them to be able to be kitten safe there too.
Just doing a simple sipping of wine ceremony tonight. You bet there's going to be toasts to departed loved ones tonight..
A happy resurrected Halloween tradition... There's a Witchypoo on the table again tonight. It's one of our smallest gourds with a drawn in witchy face.. Decked out in a tiny felt witches cap. The cap comes from over a decade ago.. One year a buddy and I got some little gourds- he was willing to carve up a bunch with me so I could celebrate that year. We had an extra so I quick made a tiny black felt witches cap for it. So now this year I have homegrown gourd in a goodly dark green to grace the hat upon this year. Witchypoo is now hosting the wine glass that will be left out for the departed to partake from.
All the kitties got a double helping of canned food tonight.. One for them, one for Moon.
Since thin sliced sandwich steak was on managers clearance, I brought the package home and made rouladen. It's brazing in the oven right now next to a pot of greens and beans. Got the greens, spinach, onions, beans, beef, mustard, and bacon on sale. The pickles were regular price.
I have one more batch of dehydrating to go on the squashes and pumpkins. Then I will toast up all the leathers, bust them down, and mark off that container with the info.
Got the Berry Preserves I made up labeled and on the shelf.
Finished one of the geodesic ornaments- I decided to forego the Cinnamon filling. It just wasn't potent enough and worth the trouble of doing it for me.
Tested out the half sized boxes for seed favors. Too small. I will just stick with the full sized boxes. If I end up feeling like they aren't full enough, maybe I will include some origami seed envelopes, or perhaps a little basic book on how to grow all the stuff.I have the test model down, now I need to really get down and make up some really nice ones.
Got the flour and corn syrup for making up a batch or two of birdseed ornaments. I have some old dried apple, mullberry/blueberry mix, some refrigerated prunes that need something done with them, the tail end of the bag of macerated strawberries and some fresh oranges that need zesting that need drying. I think I'm going to bust up a bunch of fruity goodness addition to the ornaments. I'll fill up the jelly sheets tomorrow and fill up the rest with prunes and the macerated strawberry. Overfill can go into the first dehydrator. Dry them up as much as possible before adding them into the mix. I also want to add some powdered chicken shells to the mix- Good for birds, particularly at the time of year that these will be put out. I think I'm going to do them on big loops of florists wire. Help them stay hanging longer.
I think I will ask my love to print out a bunch of fruitspikes too- put those along with the birdseed ornaments.
I've decided to expand the plants as wedding favors. Catgrass for sure. I'm thinking of chives, dill, and parsley too. Perhaps some basil starts. That way I can do up a few cans of each and spread around table decor. I envision a scattering of table goodies, and illumination, and bird goodness.
I think my first plastic bag fusion bits are going into making ribbon ties for everything.
And the day after Halloween... Went around to all the stores hitting Halloween sales. Got some test tubes, a bunch of nail polish, some cool glitter, more jack o lantern window clings, a skull kitchen scrubber brush, and a set of killer blackened metal skeleton hand salad forks. Well, they will be used year round for salad and pasta action.
Took a ride up the road and discovered a rather nice olive oil shop. I picked up a couple bottles, black truffle and butter to try out. They have a nice program where you buy 10 bottles, you get one free. It will likely take me quite a while to get that many built up, but I think it's a nice bonus. I also discovered they are currently building a Meijer up there, so I will have to keep my eye out for when it's completed.
Halloween kind of sucked this year, but that's ok. Not every holiday can be rocking.
I just don't got the spirit this year though, I think it's the damp, drizzly, chilly, windy weather. Was really hoping to do a bonfire, but that's a no-go.
I realized this morning that I wouldn't be able to put out all of the jack-o-lantern trinkets my love and I made on the windows- new naughty Nova meow is just too frigging curious right now. I was going to blow some hours making paper ones to tape on the windows. Then I lucked out and spotted window clings at Hardings! Saved the day there. And they are reusable so long as I store them nicely. I may have to do up some more in windowglass paint stuff.
So where did all those trinkets go? All of them got used :) They filled the solarium windows- and I lined up lots of the salty ones in the workshop and around the fireplace.
Now the house is kittenproofed and all sealed up.
Using pretty much all flameless candles this year. We have enough of them to be able to be kitten safe there too.
Just doing a simple sipping of wine ceremony tonight. You bet there's going to be toasts to departed loved ones tonight..
A happy resurrected Halloween tradition... There's a Witchypoo on the table again tonight. It's one of our smallest gourds with a drawn in witchy face.. Decked out in a tiny felt witches cap. The cap comes from over a decade ago.. One year a buddy and I got some little gourds- he was willing to carve up a bunch with me so I could celebrate that year. We had an extra so I quick made a tiny black felt witches cap for it. So now this year I have homegrown gourd in a goodly dark green to grace the hat upon this year. Witchypoo is now hosting the wine glass that will be left out for the departed to partake from.
All the kitties got a double helping of canned food tonight.. One for them, one for Moon.
Since thin sliced sandwich steak was on managers clearance, I brought the package home and made rouladen. It's brazing in the oven right now next to a pot of greens and beans. Got the greens, spinach, onions, beans, beef, mustard, and bacon on sale. The pickles were regular price.
I have one more batch of dehydrating to go on the squashes and pumpkins. Then I will toast up all the leathers, bust them down, and mark off that container with the info.
Got the Berry Preserves I made up labeled and on the shelf.
Finished one of the geodesic ornaments- I decided to forego the Cinnamon filling. It just wasn't potent enough and worth the trouble of doing it for me.
Tested out the half sized boxes for seed favors. Too small. I will just stick with the full sized boxes. If I end up feeling like they aren't full enough, maybe I will include some origami seed envelopes, or perhaps a little basic book on how to grow all the stuff.I have the test model down, now I need to really get down and make up some really nice ones.
Got the flour and corn syrup for making up a batch or two of birdseed ornaments. I have some old dried apple, mullberry/blueberry mix, some refrigerated prunes that need something done with them, the tail end of the bag of macerated strawberries and some fresh oranges that need zesting that need drying. I think I'm going to bust up a bunch of fruity goodness addition to the ornaments. I'll fill up the jelly sheets tomorrow and fill up the rest with prunes and the macerated strawberry. Overfill can go into the first dehydrator. Dry them up as much as possible before adding them into the mix. I also want to add some powdered chicken shells to the mix- Good for birds, particularly at the time of year that these will be put out. I think I'm going to do them on big loops of florists wire. Help them stay hanging longer.
I think I will ask my love to print out a bunch of fruitspikes too- put those along with the birdseed ornaments.
I've decided to expand the plants as wedding favors. Catgrass for sure. I'm thinking of chives, dill, and parsley too. Perhaps some basil starts. That way I can do up a few cans of each and spread around table decor. I envision a scattering of table goodies, and illumination, and bird goodness.
I think my first plastic bag fusion bits are going into making ribbon ties for everything.
And the day after Halloween... Went around to all the stores hitting Halloween sales. Got some test tubes, a bunch of nail polish, some cool glitter, more jack o lantern window clings, a skull kitchen scrubber brush, and a set of killer blackened metal skeleton hand salad forks. Well, they will be used year round for salad and pasta action.
Took a ride up the road and discovered a rather nice olive oil shop. I picked up a couple bottles, black truffle and butter to try out. They have a nice program where you buy 10 bottles, you get one free. It will likely take me quite a while to get that many built up, but I think it's a nice bonus. I also discovered they are currently building a Meijer up there, so I will have to keep my eye out for when it's completed.
Halloween kind of sucked this year, but that's ok. Not every holiday can be rocking.
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