It's pepper time!

Yet another nasty and snow filled super snap of cold moving through. Single digits and goodly winds make for a ton of brrrrrrr!!!!! My sister has been kicking ass with keeping the drive clear. I only have helped out a little since I kind of hurt myself doing it by myself last Sunday morning and now I'm being cautious.

So of course it's a day to plant in some heat loving seed! On the first I started a couple pots of 7-pot pepper, and on the 6th I started fatali, devils tongue, hot lemon, and McMahns Texas bird peppers- these are "chinese" cultivars and take longer than "annuum" peppers do. Today was the day to start the rest of the peppers- after last year, I figured I needed to give them a couple more weeks, and since last year was mid-march, this year it's the tail end of February. So today I planted..

2 georgescu chocolate, a sweet
2 Jommy Narvellos, a sweet
2 alma paprika, a sweet
2 tequila sunrise, a sweet
4 greek pepperonchini, hot
and one each of these hots-
black hungarian
cascabel
martins carrot
costeno amerillo
fish
bulgarian carrot

I'm a little concerned about germination rates since I have more recently learned pepper seed does best in the first two years, and starts to decline a bit after that- and most of my seed is from 2010-2013. So I heavily oversowed the pots- I figure since I'll end up repotting anyway, it's all good and whatever extra I got will end up on the end of the yard for sale. And better to have too many plants than to have zippo for plants, right? And I figure after about 10 days, whatever pots haven't popped at all, I'll just choose more seed to try starting, just in case.

And thought it would be smart to share a few pics of some seedlings!

These are some of the asparagus seeds I started on the first... I thought I was only going to end up with a half dozen tubes, and optimistically up to 15 of them. I had to be patient apparently, because a lot of them have been coming up in the past two days- and now the tally is currently over 20! Not awesome considering I planted in 54 tubes, but not too bad either considering some the disparaging things I have read about starting asparagus from seed. If I end up with a 50% rate, I'll be pleased as punch. Still not enough to make me really think I should rip up a whole bed out front just yet, but for sure to confirm ripping up a bed out back!
And notice those nifty tube pots- those are recycled toilet paper tubes. Excellent for a lot of seed starting purpouses:)

Another happy pic, this time of basil-

I started this seed on the ninth, and a mere four days later they were popping up! This is a pic from today, and they are well on their way. Darn things will probably be a veritable jungle needing much more room well before I can start planting them out. That's ok, we like to use it fresh, I need to restock the pesto in the freezer, and our dried supply is running low enough that I will enjoy dehydrating a ton sooner rather than later. This is just regular basil, I still have oooober tons of time to start up the other flavors- those will come later because I plan on having them outside rather than being a seriously needed stab at some indoor green to lighten up the winter gloom. Spring is indeed on it's way damit.
And the bunching onions have started popping- wasn't too sure about those since onion seed is only supposed to be good for a year, and this was packaged in 2012. And my pot of flat leaf parsley is starting to pop too. Wait, more parsley Bee? Why yes, more parsley. The fenceline bed is establishing in well, but it's a biennial, not a perennial, and it's not that established yet for my tastes. And it never hurts to have a couple more pots of it for overwintering.
I brought in my poor pot of overwintered thyme from the solarium. Darn thing is almost dead, not too sure it will survive till spring planting. But the patio tomatoes down in the library are doing so well I'm starting to think I will need to repot them and not leave them in the big pot I originally put them in. 
I also brought in the pot that the yellow roses and white alba roses seeds were stratifying in from the solarium. And the white soul and yellow wonder strawberries that were stratifying.

With all the horrid weather, it's hard to think a month from now I will be out and about doing spring gardening chores. But I will. I have had a good time looking back over the last couple years worth of entries and I'm feeling pretty good about that. I potted up the eight recycled mushroom tubs worth of mixed color grape hyacinths to plug into the solarium border the other day too. Those will stay in the solarium till it's time to plug them into the ground, but several of the bulbs had little green leafy sproutlings, despite the fact they have been chilling out there in their original bags since I picked them up on sale last fall.

So today with all the chill I figured I would make some hearty favorite foods. Tuna loaf.. and winter squash puree. So not as icky as that sounds, lol. My mom hates tuna, but loves my tuna loaf. And the squash puree is just the pulp I usually use to make soup, only I won't be adding all the stock to make it liquidy. My tuna loaf is a take on a Kosher recipe- and uses tuna in oil, which is extra good for you. It ends up being almost a crabcake kind of consistency by the time it's done being baked, and I use small loaf shaped ramekins so everyone gets their own loaf, and it cooks nice and even all they way through- no dry edges with a gooky center. So the entire loaf is nice and moist with just a little bit of outside crust.

Tuna loaf- makes 4 personal sized loaves

2-5 oz cans of tuna in oil, undrained
2-5 oz cans of tuna in water, drained
1/2 cup minced onion
2 medium carrots, minced or shredded- I use a food processor, it's about 1/2 cup once it's chopped up
3 eggs
3/4 cup matzo meal- I bet you could use other crushed cracker, but I never have
2 t old bay seasoning
1 T parsley
1/2 t each salt and pepper
1 t oregano
1 t thyme
2 t minced garlic

Grease your ramekins/loaf pans. I use butter flavored crisco, but you could use regular shortening. I haven't tried with butter, but shortening does not have a water content, and butter does, which might make the loaves stick- and they should pop right out of their pans when done baking.
Mix all your ingredients together. I tend to dump out my tuna whole chunk, then just keep mixing till all the tuna is broken up and it's a homogenous mass.
Pack your tuna mixture evenly between your greased pans- this is pretty easy, but make sure you get it smushed all the way down and don't leave pockets in the corners.
Put your pans onto a cookie sheet- makes them easier to handle than individually.
Bake in a preheated oven for 45 minutes, then kill the heat and let them rest 10 minutes. Pull them out and pop them out of their pans, and serve up hot.

Note: I have made this on one loaf pan before, and adjusted the heat down to 325 and upped the time to an hour. But it turns out better if you use four smaller pans than one big one.

I make homemade tartar sauce to go with all my fish. Was utterly pissed off today when I managed to break homemade mayo twice, ugh. But in general, a basic tartar is just mayo, chopped pickle with a little juice (or pickle relish if you keep it in the house), and lemon juice. I also add in some chopped capers and juice, dill, old bay seasoning, and a bit of salt and pepper. And I tend to use some of the true lemon powdered lemon at first, then adjust with lemon juice as needed. Makes for a less runny tartar than using all lemon juice to get to that nice lemony level.

For the squash.. Well, a while back I realized all my squash were getting frozen in the solarium, and I had to prep them up quick for real freezing. So I baked, pulped, strained, and froze off a few quarts of pulp. Today I'm using a couple quarts for tonights side dish. Just carmelizing some onion in bacon grease, pulp, and some sage and thyme really. Cooked up nice and hot.

And more done..

Happy Tuesday!

Went out to see if I had any wild carrot seed heads ready yet- I don't :(

However, while wandering down by the tulip border, I noticed that not only had the cilantro grown- it has already started setting seed :) This is what happens when you plant in the spring and then ignore till the end of summer, lol. Of course I collected the seed that was ready to be picked, there is still tons of them green on the plants :)

So I weeded out the entire tulip bed, gack. It was pretty easy going since I had just dug it all up this spring, but some of the weeds were HUGE! Also discovered a goodly amount of the parsley still chugging along- hopefully it will survive the winter so it can set seed next fall. Haven't a clue if any of the tulips survived or are still there, I will find that out next spring. But if the cilantro and parsley do well down there, I might sow in a patch of dill too.

Picked a few pounds of red apples and juiced them up- I now have the stuff sitting in the fridge for a day or two to separate. These aren't the best of apples- most are pretty bug pocked or small, that's why I'm juicing them instead of properly preserving them. I figure if I get a gallon of juice off these, I might just try my hand at making a batch of apple cider or wine. Apparently the first ciders were often made with the apples unsuitable for good eats, so I figure why not?

Picked a couple more pounds of green beans. I realized I didn't have any on the pantry shelf yet, so these got cut up into 1 inch pieces, blanched and shocked, and are now dried.

 Here's what a tray of freshly picked, shocked, and blanched beans look like.

Here's what those beans look like after dehydrating at 145 for 10 hours.

Here's what I picked- using my wonderfully huge colander I got as a present a couple christmases ago. It's 18"wx6"d so that's a lot of space for picking and rinsing!

 

Summer-riffic Wednesday!

Today has been wonderfully summery just like August is supposed to be, yay! Made me not want to be out in the yard busting butt in the sun too much, but I have caught up on a lot of computer stuff I haven't been to up on lately.

Off the Gardenweb, I have adopted two more newbies for my seed exchange offerings, and adopted my first milkweed newbie, yay!

I started going through all my old OG's last night. Tagging off pages, seeing what I have already highlighted- Winter months this year is going to get some dedicated time into transcribing those into electronic format. Making a GrowboxHill Bible.
Also discovered I really am zone 6- explains a lot about most of the gardening difficulties I've had. I grew up in zone 5, west pushing east over the lake. Now I'm east getting west push over the lake, apparently it really does make a huge difference.
I also started making my next batch of recycled plastic bag twine last night. This time I'm also using a recycled spool from my loves 3D printing plastic- much nicer to wind up on. Making twine is EASY!!! And a wonderful way to give another life to what otherwise often ends up in landfills. And so far, it's holding up much better under gardening stress than standard garden twine is.

On the left is regular twine, the right plastic twine. You can see some lovely yellow blooms of more luffas that probably will come out. In the lower left corner is the one tomato plant that grew well this year, and it's a monster.

The first luffa I caught growing now looks like this:

If no other luffas do well, I really extra hope this one does. One luffa of seed is priceless.

I also made a batch of fruit leather today, it's on the dehydrator now at 145. I had three yellow peaches, two white peaches, and about 15 Manyel plums sitting in the fridge. Looking a bit too withered for fresh eating. I sort of peeled the peaches, and cut out the bruised spots, peeled the plums. Of course I removed the pits, duh. In a couple of batches in the blender, with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, I pureed the pulp. All together it made one blender pitcher, or one liter of puree. Poured it out into the jelly trays and it took up all 6 with filling them to about 1/4 inch deep on each tray.

This is what the puree looks like when first spread out. Pretty unimpressive. The dark flecks are bits of peach skin.

This is what it looks like after the leather is dry. It's flexible, tearable, and surprisingly... it's tasty.


I started a big germination test today. 8 kinds of seeds-
cilantro, gathered from the garden-25
wild onion, gathered from the yard-25
allium of some sort? gathered from the corner of the solarium-10
banana peppers- yellow an young from watervliet-25
banana peppers2- from an orange mature from waterfliet-10
serrano pepper- from the mexican produce place in BH-10
purple bell pepper- from watervliet-10
orange sweet pepper- from the produce place on Berrien Center-10

The banana peppers 1 are currently undergoing a germination test in a smaller dish for the last few days, and nada. The seeds didn't look like they dried right either. So I'm giving them a second shot, but not too hopeful.

It's super easy to do a germination test.
2 plates, as in food plates
couple paper towels
sharpie marker
seeds
water

Put your first plate down. Mark it with sharpie your seed information and germ start date.
Get paper towel a bit wet
lay out your seeds
place second paper towel on top- wet again
place second plant upside down over first plate to make a "sandwich".
Place your sandwich in the warmest place in your house, usually the kitchen.
Let sit for a couple days, then check daily to see if you have sprouts.

Use 10 or more seeds, and use numbers that make an easy 100% like 10 or 25 at most. Don't do a 50 test, that's just wasting seed.
If I'm doing a dish of just a couple seeds, I let them sprout at will. If I'm doing a lot of different ones on one dish, I remove sprouted seeds when they happen, and then count up unsprouted seeds later. Sprouted seeds can really get invasive to the test.
If it's a seed I really want to keep, I can transplant it to somewhere else.


Lovely Thursday...

We got in some pretty decent rain during the night. Which is nice because that means I don't have to water the containers today :) It also rained enough to show up the "pour spots" off the solarium roof.
So I was able to get the east side of the solarium planted in before the rain comes back for the rest of the afternoon.

Fie rose bushes all in a nice row along the whole strip, and a few dozen irises replanted in. I grabbed the pots of irises that have been sitting in the container area all year and planted them in closest to me in this pic- I used bamboo skewers to mark where they are so I know what to look for in the future out of them. I know it does not look like much, but next spring the whole area should really take off and start growing in plush... I hope.

Then I got over to the container area and finally did some weeding that was seriously needed. Heh, when isn't weeding seriously needed, I'm the laziest gardener on the planet. So I pulled up a ton of weeds and left them on the concrete to die for a day or few before tossing them onto the heap.
The Bloomsdale spinach seed I sowed in with the dying Mr. Stripey tom a week or two ago appeared to be doing nothing. So I ripped out the whole plant and tossed it on the heap, added in a bit of dirt to the pot that I had leftover from planting in the irises, and sowed in a new round of spinach, this time a spinach mix from Pinetree seeds. I really do hope we get some greens in before the end of the season. Nicely enough the Green Arrow peas I planted up a bit back mostly seem to be sprouting and growing up.. And there are now even more blooms on the luffa and it's starting to eat the container structure, yay!

But now it sounds like the goodly rain is coming in, so it's time to sign off for now...

I hate ditch lilies

Another lovely day here at Growbox Hill.. A bit cool for this time of year though. But I guess I shouldn't complain, because when it's hot like normal I don't want to be outside working my butt off.

Got a bit more work done down at bee corner by the raspberry bed. Man that's some rough going. Pulled a barrow of tall weeds and trimmed down yet another pile of weedy tree crap. And pulled a bunch of weeds grown too big along the fenceline. Took me forever, but on the bright side, I have now started our second compost pile- this one down in the veggie row. Still need to pull a bunch more weeds before covering it with a goodly layer of poo, and maybe a nice layer of autumn leaves- then I will black plastic the whole pile over after fall rains but before the ground freezes to really cook the hell out of it by the time I uncap it late next spring.

Still can't get the weed wacker to start. Not too surprising since I haven't used it since early last spring. Need to figure out what's wrong, fix it, and use it.

Started digging up the ditch lilies on the solarium corner too. Gack. Took a large armful out to the side 40 and dumped them, pulled another large armful that didn't get hauled yet, pulled up several pounds of just roots, tubers, and crowns. And I only cleared about a third of the area. It's nice because the dirt there is easy sandy loam- but it's also filled with gravel so that makes it a bit harder. I haven't been picking every rock out, but I did toss a whole bunch of them onto the other side of the door slab. Sooner or later I'm going to have to dig in around that slab area so I can pour a slab extension- make a better parking spot for when we use the generator. Anywho, I did feel fairly accomplished after a couple hours of digging and swearing to have cleared as much area as I have. Once I get the whole area done in it's preliminary clean out, then I get to go back through and double dig it before I can set my daffodil bulbs in. And I will have one less area of those loathsome ditch lillies in the yard, hooray! I do have to be a bit careful though- there is a milkweed in pod I need to avoid hurting till after the pods are ripe, and on one side there is one of grandma's poppies that I don't want to hurt.
Don't get me wrong, I love all sorts of other lilies. Eventually I will have a bunch of others on the property. It's just that we have ditch lillies along the side of the office drive, in the lower FOH garden in the front ditch, a huge patch around the maple on the north side of the house, more along the other side of the solarium... Just ugh. I spose I could dump them in the ditch where the last block went, but that would require me to do digging work in the ditch that I just don't feel like doing for ditch lilies. 

Anywho, here's a pick of two and a half hours of forking, and pulling, sifting, and pulling....

The dirt area is really about a 3x4' area. All that rooty mass on the right on the edge is a pile of lily bits of plantables, the mess on the left is all the scrappy greens I just tossed aside for the compost pile. And that whole left hand edge looks ganked up because I'm pulling any roots I find in the area up- and there was a something that just yanked up the grass for a couple feet before I finally tore it up. All that stuff in the back is more ditch lilies to tear up.
On a holy crap awesome note about the ditch lilies. My mum in law said she was interested in taking a ton of them! Yay for being able to pass them on instead of just tossing them aside :) I also put then up on Gardenweb.

Picked another pound or so of green beans today- Top Crop is really putting out the beans! Which is a good thing considering how much trouble I've had with all the other veggie plants this year. Sometimes it feels like I will never be able to grow a proper garden :( But the one Lemon Boy tomato I put in the ground is a monster- too bad it has very little blooms and fruit on it.

Yep, I for sure need to get more flowers in the yard. I got fruit blossoms in the spring, ditch lillies, irises, and various weeds and some herbs. Not nearly enough to make a year round enticing yard for pollinators. And none of the neighbors really have anything going on, so everyone is relying on the wild blossoms right now. I've been paying so much attention to our eating plants that I have been neglecting all the bugs needs.

Did a lot of work on wintersowing planning today too. Again with the flowers- I'm going to wintersow lots of flowers. I've been rather frustrated collecting information. Everyone tells ya how to do it, how easy it is- start sowing to celebrate Yule!.. And really rather little information about what needs to be wintersowed when, turns out lots of seed does way better wintersown in later months through to Ostra. So I'm starting to gather together a database of whatever I can find for zone 5. And of course will be keeping my own notes as well.

Happy Friday, cheers to the weekend!
Had to run to Hardings today to get a few things in the house for the boys. Wasn't till I got home that I realized we were almost out of bread for sandwiches, oh no! So what's a girl to do? Make a couple loaves of bread of course. I busted out and made a pair of English Muffin Loaf breads, super yum!
I also made up a batch of tomato sauce- not sure if we are going to have burgers on the grill or Italian meatloaf for dinner tomorrow, but I figure if we go with burgers I can toss the sauce in the freezer :)

Yay Saturday!!

Beautiful and lovely day, time to tear up the rest of those ditch lilies. It took another three hours, but at last the preliminary forking is done!

The reused bag was once holding a bunch of dirt, and now is for sitting on while I hand pick out stones and weeds- way nicer to use than a little kneeler pad because it's big enough to really sit around on. And the pot on the bag- I decided it was easier to toss stones in a container than pitching them to the other side, lol. One lone milkweed is left standing off to the left, the one that has seed pods on it. Kind of broke my heart to tear the other ones out, but it needed to be done. Once those pods are ripe and picked, that plant will go as well. Now I get to go back through a second time with the fork and pull up more roots, any lily bits I missed the first time around, more stones too though I know I won't get them all, lol. This will happen over the course of a couple weeks- it won't be daffodil planting time till next month. The edge still needs to be seriously cleaned up, and I need to set in a line to mark off where the new cement pad will go. Of course our awesome neighbor offered to help me when it came time to actually pour the slab- I went to ask his advice on how to do it, and sure enough he offered help.
There is one spot in the middle of the area that will end up getting some sort of stone or other decorative feature- I noticed while digging around there is a drip spot right where the corner of the roof is, and nothing really grows there, so I will make sure I put something else nice there, perhaps a birdbath would look lovely. 
The edge to the right lines up with the corner of the solarium- and it goes right up to where the smaller of grandmas poppies resides. Mature poppies very very much do not do well with being transplanted, so yea, it will be left right where it is, and I will be extra careful when working around it.
When I go to put in all those daffodil bulbs, I will be using a bunch of recycled cans too. Why? Because they make awesome markers for future plantings. If I have stray daffs next spring transplanting I want to put into the bed, I can just lift off the can and drop in the bulb without hurting anything else. Or if I want to mix in other bulbs for year round blooming, I can get them and plant them in at will without disturbing the existing bed. I can put in other plants too, just by using fatter cans to denote digging space. Great recycling, those cans will at least get a second life before going to the trash bin.

Just how many lilies did I dig up today? This is a 18"w x 21"l x 15"d box, the top flaps folded down to the outside, all lined with a large black contractor garbage bag.

The bottom third of the box is filled with just tubers that have no leaves, the top filled with plants with leaves. There is probably enough lily material here to start in a 20 foot border at least. I'm so happy that the mum in law wanted them- I kind of felt bad just tossing them off to the side 40, but ugh, I am so not planting them in anywhere if I can possibly help it. In the background you can see the patches of moss I snagged while out on my walk the other day that will eventually go into the upper FOH garden.

So, why have I been forking these out instead of shoveling them out? Forking is way easier because the soil is light but full of gravel and roots. The fork helps separate everything out. It's the way to keep as much soil in place as you can too. That box is heavy and full of just lilies, and very little dirt.

Happy Sunday!
It was a day to finish getting the area around the solarium cleaned up. Went through and pulled everything out of the south side. I hadn't touched the area since this spring when I planted in some bulbs. Pulled 2 barrows of weeds, yipes!

Then I decided heck, why not start working on the east side of the solarium? I've been putting that off forever.
This is what it looked like when I started today..

This is what it looked like after I got done with the preliminary digup..

That whole pile off to the right is another big box worth of ditch lilies. Along the way I took out several other plants that were among the lilies..

There's two large pots of many irises, and five rose bushes that were being smothered by the lilies. I made sure to pot them up so that they don't die off while I finish prepping the bed. They will get planted back in the bed when I'm ready.

So whew, it was a weekend!

Canning tomatoes

Tis the season for some more canning.. Fa la la la, for winter cooking...

Picked up 10 pounds of tomatoes the other day- had to let them sit a couple days to ensure they were all perfectly ripe. Now they are 7 pint and a half jars, and 5 half pint jars of canned tomatoes. I could have probably done a 6th half pint, but I didn't throw the extra jar in for sanitizing, oops.

Equipment:
10 pounds ripe tomatoes
Bottle of lemon juice
Salt- optional
Jars- 7 pint and a half, 6 half pint. 
Biggest stockpot for big jars
Smaller stockpot for cooking tomatoes and to can the half pint jars
Smallest stockpot for blanching- wash out and reuse for keeping heat on tomatoes for second round
1 large bowl for icebath
1 large bowl to hold the tomatoes after shocking
1 small pot for heating lids in water
cutting board and knife
jar lifter, cap magnet, something to disturb air bubbles out
damp towel, to wipe your jars with
large dishtowel, to lay like a tablecloth on your counter to work on- there's lots of water splashing about.
White vinegar- helps keep mineral deposits from sticking to the jars if you have hard water, this goes into the bathwater.

Instructions:

Prepare your tomatoes. Get boiling water going in the smallest stockpot, and set up a big bowl with icewater. Have the second large bowl empty and ready too. Have your canner prepped with the big jars at well, but don't put it on the stove yet, it will just get in your way.
Score the bottoms of your tomatoes with a sharp knife in an X- this helps slip the skins.
Plunge the tomatoes a few at a time into the pot, and let sit for 30-60 seconds, just until the skins start to crack. Then plunge into the icewater to let them chill out for a moment.
As you are rotating in your tomatoes and icebathing them- pull the cooled ones out of the icebath and into that empty bowl. Once you are done, dump the icewater- you will be using this bowl again.
After you have blanched and shocked all your tomatoes, time to prep them for canning.
First, slip off all the skins- toss the tomatoes into the bowl that held the icewater. Trust me on this, it's way easier to slip the skins and get them all off before you start chopping into the tomatoes than it is to do it while chopping.
Second, after you have slipped all the skins, proceed to knifework. Core, quarter, and cross quarter the tomatoes. If there are any icky spots, now is the time to cut them out. As you chop them up, toss them into smaller stockpot- it will get filled! After several tomatoes, you can turn the heat on to medium low to get the tomatoes started, and mash them a bit with a potato masher. Keep chopping a few and mashing in a little till all the tomatoes are cut up. Remove the pot from the handy front burner spot to the back burner, and keep the tomatoes steaming but not quite burbling, stirring with the masher.
Now put your canner onto the stove and hit it with high heat. It will take a while for it to really get going and sanitize the jars, and the tomatoes take a while too to start softening and breaking down.
When your pot with the jars hits boiling, turn up the heat a bit under the tomatoes to really get them burbling good and hot for canning up. 
Once your jars are sanitized, remove them from the water and allow to air dry for the couple moments it takes. Then place 2 Tablespoons lemon juice into each jar. Add 1 teaspoon salt, optional.
Now fill, debubble, wipe, and lid jars in standard canning fashion.
Once they are all filled, drop them into your big pot, and set the timer for 45 minutes. This is the time given to quarts.
On to half pints...
Scoop out all the rest of the tomatoes into your smallest stockpot to keep it on heat till you are ready to use. Scrub out your smaller stockpot right quick and set up your half pint jars in it, and sanitize.
Pull your jars, let air dry.. Then 2 teaspoons of lemon juice into each. 1/2 teaspoon salt, optional.
Fill just like the big jars.
Place into the pot, and set the timer for 40 minutes. This is the time for pint jars.

Doing jars in the pots in rotation means you can keep going, and don't have to wait around for the big pot to be free.

Don't forget- when using off sized jars, or smaller jars than suggested- Use the next step up in time. For example, use pint time for half pint jars, quart time for pint and a half jars. DO NOT step up jars and add time for this. Better to over time with this than guess and be under time.

Lemon juice is a critical ingredient here. Tomatoes are one of the higher acid foods, yep. But not quite high enough on it's own to be completely safe without the addition of lemon juice. Botulism kills folks. If the tomatoes are too acidic when being used, add a bit of sweetener when cooking up- I generally use either plain white sugar or molasses depending on what I'm cooking.

This is what 10 pounds of tomatoes looks like all canned up and cooling. The box in the background is the box I picked up the tomatoes in. This was taken while still hot, I've taken off the rings for them to cool overnight. In the morning, they will get wiped down, labeled, and the rings loosely screwed back on for the pantry shelf. Why am I putting the rings back on this time? Because on the bottom shelf they are more likely to get banged, and the rings will protect from damage or accidental seal popping that way. Loosely screwed so that if the seal does break, the ring does not hold in a possible re-seal. And if a jar gets knocked over and unseals, less chance of total dumping in the pantry, lol.

As a side note, I now have enough pint and a half jars on the bottom shelf that I have found it necessary to use the boxes the jars came in for storage. And I now have empty boxes that need filling.

Other diddlydo's today...
Last night I put the last two zucchini shredded up onto the dehydrator. It only took up 2 trays, so I chopped up the tail end of the celery before it went ick, and yep, trying once again the celery growing thing- I forgot to water the last one and it died, lol. I also sliced up three big onions while they were still good and filled the last three trays with them. So a bit more for the pantry instead of the compost pile, yay!
I cleaned out the crunchy corner of the pantry today- We had a handful of boxes crackers- a little bit in each, and all stale. None of them bad, but kind of past fresh cracker eating action. So I spread them all out over a couple lipped cookie sheets, toasted them in a 350 oven for 15 minutes or so to toast and unstale them, swapping them out halfway through, then ground them up in my mini-processor to crumbs. The result smells wonderful! I used a recycled coffee can to store them in the pantry.

What will I use these for, and why didn't I just toss them for the birds? Reading up a lot lately has led me to knowing processed starch bits humans consume in general isn't very good for wildlife. A nice little junk food sometimes. And I figured stale bread makes good bread crumbs, so why not cracker crumbs? Yep, it's a little chunky- if I want the grind finer later I can always grind some more. And cracker crumbs can be used for most other crumb applications in cooking.

As a total aside in yard stuff.. I dumped out and cleaned out the counter bucket for the compost pile recently. When I dug in a hole in the newly dumped pile of horse poo in the compost area.. I noticed heat and steam coming out of the pile!
And I seriously need to weed down that area- the new infusion of plant food has really driven the plants crazy. I will have a mound of holy shit come springtime. And now I'm really getting a decent feel for what we do in kitchen scraps for feeding worms. And sheesh, now I know I do need insulation on the worm boxes to proceed.
I need to do a bunch of cleanup in the yard actually. To the firepit and the compost heap. Now that the goodly neighbor has offered up a fixed tractor wagon for me to use, I think some cleanup will go faster. We still need to save up and get one ourselves, but this makes some yard stuff much easier. Several barrows is great exercise, but still..

Summer stuff

Ok, so I realize I pretty much suck with doing entries... Either I don't for days and then lost track, or say too much daily, heh.

Guess too much is probably better than too little.

So, what did I do today, which is Monday? Stuff :) Just kidding.

Busted up and hauled wood down to the firepit. We have a few decent logs for the fire and a lot of scrap branches for kindling now. About a half dozen wheelbarrows total of hauling. I took a couple barrows over to the neighbors burn pile since they keep offering it, and since it was closer and I was feeling lazy.. But holy shit their scrap pile is so big right now, I was afeared of tossing anything else on. And we blew through quite a bit of wood wedding weekend, so it was time to stock back up.
Cut down the dead fruit tree flush to the ground. Felt bad about it too, poor thing. But it did make it kind of easier to mow the orchard. And cut up the fallen maple branch- man, that hand saw works great- kind of wish for a chainsaw, but it's sort of overkill on limbs that size, and I shouldn't be lazy, and it's good for my muscles to hand saw.
Mowed the front half of the yard. Still need to do the tune up to the mower, so I don't like to do a full mow all at once. Had to clear out barrows of wood and do some sawing in the back, and by the time I was done, it was to frigging hot and sweaty to deal with. I must face the reality that my pasty white skin needs to start getting into shorts and tanks to be outside working.
While hauling wood out back, realized the neighbors have some mighty fine tree chunks sitting- think I might ask them if we can snag a couple to replace the firepit stools the other neighbors stole and burned up last year.
One of our nice neighbors saw that we were out today and pulled up for a chat. She is so damn sweet and cool. Just wanted to see how we are doing since we hadn't chatted in a while. Looks like we might be getting our fence in this summer between the easement drive and the shitty neighbors, hooray! Our other out of towner neighbors have had a crew in for a week building a big ole pool and deck, so it looks like maybe those folks will be around more often- they are loud when around, but keep out of our yard, so no biggie.

And woah- trucks been coming around the last few weeks dinking with the road- it's now been patched and new gravel laid down. Makes for kind of slower driving because of the gravel, but much, much smoother than the potholes and dips it has been since we moved in.

We got our second car up and running again finally. I suggested we jump it, and yep, the jump took- till the car was shut off again. So my love replaced the battery.

Turned out the most recent set of stepping stones. The star stone turned out lovely, though not as flashtacular as I hoped with the work I did on the cabs. But meh, it's ok, it still looks great. But now I'm out of crete again, time to pick up a couple more bags.

Most of the garden looks good- I seriously need to start picking some herbs before the sage and tarragon become monsters, and all the lavenders are doing well. No blooms on the chamomile yet which is a bummer. No blooms on the nasturtiums yet either, I keep telling myself to be patient. All the potted irises are looking great. Of the veggies, the Long Island Cheese had totally puked out, as has the peas :(. The beans are all in bloom, which pisses me off a little considering how much time I took to make sure I chose ones that claimed to have different maturation days to help prevent cross pollination. And of the three serious vineing ones I planted, only one has actually vined. Only three luffas have survived, and they are small.. sigh...

So it's Wednesday already, time flies. Thought it might be a good thing to talk about recycling and such.

As any of my readers may know, we recycle here, a lot. We happen to live in a state where bottle and can returns get you cash- I really wish all states did this, it would probably save a ton of glass and aluminum resources. But beyond that, what about the space it takes up, what to do with all that crap?
Well, start off with recycling things that can be taken to a recycling center or that you actually will use- kind of pointless to save a billion sour cream cartons if you have no intention on using them, or setting aside all those newspapers if you have no intention of turning them in, right?
So. Paper goods. We recycle them all. I usually get paper bags at the store, they are great for projects and make handy garbage cans for all the paper goods like mailbox stuff and empty cartons. We use a bag or two every time we start a bonfire. The mailbox newspaper flyers get stacked up and used to make paper pots for seed starting, or shredding for worms or composting. Yep, you can compost paper. Toilet paper and paper towel tubes get saved for starting seeds too- and honestly, they are less time consuming than making pots. If you are feeling crafty, you can take your shredded paper, make it a pulp, and make your own seed paper or bombs.
Glass jars and bottles. Those are excellent for multiple kinds of storage from foodstuffs to soaps, and remember grandpas knack of nailing the lids to a board in the garage to hold all those little bits?
Plastic jars- I don't save them all, but big ones are just as handy as glass jars. Jars with shaker lids are great for homemade spice mixes, seed shakers, or chemical powder shakers- like fill one with baking soda to evenly sprinkle your carpets before vacuuming, or your washing powders in the laundry room to help prevent clumping in the box and it's easier to pour a bit in a controlled manner to your washer.
Food cans. These can be reused as pots, set into the yard to mark off borders, used by the crafty to make projects.
Egg cartons. Makes great little seed starters, containers to safely store small christmas ornaments, the cardboard ones can get filled with charcoal for perfect firestarting and grilling.
Plastic bags. You can laminate them with heat by several layers to make plastic fabric, or cut them up and braid them together to make plastic twine. The stuff is surprisingly sturdy.
Food and food scraps- great compost! Just leave the meat out or you will get maggots. You can recycle spent coffee and tea right with the paper. And eggshells are great for compost, and also good to grind fine for birds grit and calcium for their eggs, and also good to lay around slug prone plants to help deter those slimy critters. Some food can even be recycled into new plants like celery, ginger, horseradish..
Some food can also be recycled for seeds depending on what it is. Not every supermarket produce will have viable seed, but a lot of homegrown roadside produce is great. That wonderful heirloom tomato you got can be seeded and you can grow that yum for years to come!
We have never really been huge garbage producers, but just recycling all of that has cut what goes out to the can by at least half.

Yay, it's May!

After busting butt for a couple days, it was time for some time off.
Yesterday was all chilly and gloomy- thought it would be perfect weather for the grunt task of busting up the tulip bed- but there was also mist off and on, and the breeze was actually cold. And I was just feeling creaky. So I cleaned up the workshop and a little putter cleaning... Mostly just wanted to be around my love and settled in on the futon down by him and really started busting into a recycling task.
We save our shopping bags, paper and plastic. I do have plans for experimenting with ironing plastic still, however... Poking around in the pole barn I realized I was out of yard twine for stringing up the luffa run. But got lots of bags :) So I sat down and started braiding plastic twine. Just cut bags about an inch wide strips to make big loops, and start braiding, locking on a new loop when you run out of braiding material. Goes pretty fast, already have several yards done up. And kind of nice is it is something to do with your hands while watching TV- you don't really have to watch what you are braiding.

Woke up this morning to find that the seedlings are still hanging in there. We will have to pull all the coolers into the solarium for the weekend- it's dipping down into the 30's overnight, and with wind-chill will feel like freezing temps. No frost advisory yet, but better safe than sorry, right?
So since it was such a craptacular kind of day, I went up to the workshop and worked on the Rosepetal Pavilion. Figured out roof strut action I think, now I'm just mulling on it for a few days. 

So HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!! Mama N decided to be cold for the holiday, heh. We moved the coolers into the solarium yesterday evening- I was thinking of just dropping them into the coolers to ride it out, but nope, solarium is safer. Darn glad I did, we are under a FREEZE warning tonight. Fortunately most of the fruit trees are merely in leaf and not really blossoming yet.
It was a crappy weather day, fine for some shopping. I got to pick out a dishwasher today- I know I've been a good kid about handwashing, but yipes, it will be nice not to have to do so. And erp, it's got sanitation- as in I can sanitize my canning jars in the dishwasher, boo-yah!
While out and about, picked up three more kinds of nasturtium seed, Papaya Cream Mix, Cherry, and Milkmaid. Rather pleased to get Milkmaid back in the collection- the blooms were so lovely last year I was totally bummed that I didn't get any seed :( Since they are a vine variety, I'm going to try to get them to grow in over the arch barrier. The Cherry seeds are HUGE, and since they are shorter, 12-15 inches, I think those will go into the great room pots this year.
While out and about I decided to hit Watervliet and see what they had going on for tomatoes and peppers. They had the toms in singles or quads, I picked up a Black Krim, a Mr. Stripey, a fourpack of Lemon Boy, and a four pack of Patio. I held off on the peppers, they were looking good, but I wasn't positive what I wanted to do.. And my hands were full of tomatoes and freezing, heh.

Tomorrow it starts climbing into warmer weather again, and looks like it might just stay that way for the season :) Which is good, cuz I got a ton of stuff to do!

So tonight I really had to bite the bullet and really cook again, hehehe. I have way too much sour cream on my hands after last weekend, so starting to use that up was priority. Well, I did have one tub of veggie dip I had made on Thurs day, sooo... Did my version on chicken casserole with what was on hand. Turned out pretty good, rich and full of veggies cuz I tossed in a bunch of dried veggie action :)

Monday.... Still pretty chilly, with the promise of sunny and warm to come. Did some errand running, and sat down with some planning of a lot of projects coming up.  I've got bins to fill and growing area to string up. And need to start seriously trim in at least and start weaving up the willows in the sanctuary. Need to plant in all of the tulips along the fenceline.

And yeppers, I've been slagging butt on thank you's after the wedding. There's been a lot to do and some recovery time required. I figure most folks get a week or two of honeymoon time after the wedding, it shouldn't matter that we are living our honeymoon here. We are deeply grateful to everyone coming out, and all the goodly gifts, especially the culinary ones :) A deep and dear treasure to me always will be that everyone was well fed for the whole weekend of our celebration, and we had a whole honeymoon week of awesome food and beverage service in the luxury of our own home :)

Happy Tuesday :)
The sun was shining, it was in the low 70's, with a rather nice breeze. Time to get back out into the yard. Hair up, suit up, and spray down. Heh, I need to make sure I put on some sunblock tomorrow, got some goodly sun on my face and back of my neck today. Dress my hair with clove and lemon to cook up a bit in the sun tomorrow too.
First up was getting some of the tulip border done. After busting up 12 feet of fenceline I decided it would be wiser to break this project up over two to three days, otherwise I will kill myself. Put in the first four cultivars-
White Emperor
Mistress
Washington
Shirley
I decided to throw all the cilantro into the area- might make for a decent cover crop that isn't too competitive with the tulips, might self sow to establish a bed... And it isn't one of my fave herbs, so having a good bunch and possibly some seed is rather nice, but I don't need boatloads of the stuff- if it dies back and tulips prevail, I won't cry over the loss. I'm not using up quite as many recycled cans as I originally planned- the sections worked out better being just a bit shorter, closer to three feet each. Next section up will be the two kinds of mixed tulips- they were 40 each instead of the 14 the rest of them were, so these two beds will be 6 feet each. Sprinkled with curly leaf parsley.
Second up on the list was doing some pruning in the Sanctuary. Snipped out all the unwanted willow starts, but left a few in the gazebo spot. As I was doing this, I was kind of left not too convinced I wanted to do the willow gazebo project, just wasn't feeling it. So I left a nice trimmed clump of starts in the right spot, they can still make nice bird perches for now anyway. Cleaned up the fenceline too- now there is room for the roses down there to grow again, and a nice wide aisle along that line. While I was at it, the far south neighbor popped by to say hello. Startled the dickens out of me to have someone pop up from the pond side to say hi. He is the sweetest little old thing, wanted to say hi and see how we are enjoying living here, getting out for some spring excercise. Good neighbors are a joy :)
After cleaning up the sanctuary, was walking along the easement drive back towards the pull barn and it struck me that the easement drive line had a lot of little tree bit action that needed to be pruned down too. So I did. Why not since I was wandering that way. Looks much nicer now. I didn't fully clean out the corner, but I trimmed it back a bunch. Still need to bust up some other brush first.
Task three: start filling those kitty litter buckets! We got some excellent seedling action going on, time to pot those puppies up! I lifted over 500 pounds of matured horse poo today. Yeah, seriously. Five 35 pound litter buckets, filled to the top. Lifted once by shovel, once as full bucket into wheelbarrow, once more to unload into the luffa run. Whew, that was a lot! It smelled like good mucky mud, and not any poo or stable or horsey smell at all, so here's hoping it really is mature enough to be planting in. If not, I'm currently frying out the peas and squash.. So, what got put into buckets today.
Little Marvel Pea
Dwarf Grey Sugar Pea
Oneball Summer Squash
Cueball Summer Squash
Small Wonder Spaghetti squash
All three of the vining beans are almost ready to be planted in along fenceposts- Gold Marie, Hutterite Soup, and White Marrowfat.. Top Crop bush is almost ready for planting too- Need to be digging up some more aged manure off the back pile to spread around and mat those leaves in real good.
Finally have seen a stirring bud out of the Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, hooray! I was really really hoping this one might have a viable seed or two for me to grow out. Surprisingly, the Minnesota Midget Melon is also popping. Neither of the cukes and the Tigger melon have done squat- but that's ok, if they don't rather soon, I'll drop in a couple tomatoes I bought into them instead- I picked up Patio, and it only came in a four pack, so this year could be perfect trial run with those if a couple other pots don't work out.
I still have 6 more buckets to go, but those will be split up into three's cuz pushing five across the back lawn was a PITA, I am so not going for 6 right now.

In the herb garden.. This year's catnip pot is looking lush. Past time for me to scatter seed into it's wildspot- I think somewhere along the Fonatno fenceline would be nice. Kind of off to the side, yet still dies back yearly so good to establish where I don't want other stuff growing in forever. The pot of horseradish already looks big enough that I am thinking perhaps it would be wise to transfer it into a bigger container soon. And yep, looks like it's entirely possible that the clearance irises of last fall might still be growing. Now that I have freed up a couple bigger pots from tulips, I can transplant the irises into bigger pots. If it's possible, I want to pot grow them till they bloom so I know what they are before planting them out. Yeah, looks like that may mean till next year, but hey, that's ok.

Tippy and friends: so the kind neighbor shared with me that my assumption that both the swans being on the far pond meant that the babies had hatched! He reported six wee cygnets floating along. Later on in the day I saw at least a couple of them along with the folks on our side. HOORAY for six new baby swans! I'm hopeful that since last year it seems a few survived, that maybe this year a few more will.

So dinner tonight is pretty lazy- I pulled a couple bags of potato leek soup and the last bag of spinach zuppa toscana out of the freezer to heat up and baked up some biacuits for the side. Gonna toss some cheese onto the plate too, yum :)

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.

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...

SOUP- it's what's for dinner :)

I started this post off a few days ago, so sorry if it seems time strange. I'm finding myself doing that lately, running a draft or two for a bit, then finally pulling it together for one posting.

The other night, I'm really cooking, Made a chowder, dunno what to call it.. But it uses a lot of stuff that I've dried for the pantry and stock I made. Maybe Porky dried veggie potato chowder?

Pound of bulk Italian sausage
1 quart of frozen pork stock concentrate- add to that 2 quarts water
1/3 cup of dried from fresh celery
1/3 cup dried from fresh carrot
3/4 cup dried from frozen corn
3/4 cup dried from fresh corn
1/3 cup dried from fresh shredded sweet potato
1/3 cup dried from fresh kale flake
1/4 cup parsley flake
1 tablespoon dried chopped garlic
1/2 tablespoon dried tarragon
1/2 tablespoon dill
3 golf ball sized yellow onions, diced
2 pounds russet potatoes, skin on, 1/4-1/2 inch thick slice
3 cups whole milk

To the frozen stock and water I added the dried celery, carrot, and dried from frozen corn and set it to defrost/heat up on medium heat till it came to a rolling simmer, then I turned down the heat to a low, barely disturbed burble, and let that go for a while. All this under cover.

While this is going on, in a separate pan brown up your sausage. Make sure you break it up and completely cook it now because it does not finish cooking in to the soup. Once your sausage is starting to brown up and has rendered fat, toss in your onions, and continue to cook till the onions are slightly translucent. Stir in the parsley, garlic, tarragon, and dill, cover, and set aside off heat.

So, back to the stock pot. Check to make sure that the dehydrated veggies are fully rehydrated. The celery should be stuctured but not hard, the carrots should be not tough... The corn should be cooked. If all this isn't going on, keep checking.. The kitchen should smell like you have been burbling up stock for a while. And if the dried are veggies are at that point? Kick the heat back up to medium high and once it's rolling, stir in the sliced potatoes. Let it come up to a boil, covered... then go down to a gentle medium heat. Then stir often and the potatoes will just start breaking up, at the first sign of this- turn it down to very low.  You are going to stir a few more times at intervals till they really start breaking up. You are kind of making your own creamy starch base during this, so low and slow.
After the potatoes really start bustin up.. 
Add in your dried from fresh corn, sweet potato, and kale, and stir in well. Add in your set aside sausage bits, and stir in. Add 3 cups milk and keep on low, but bring up to full steaming heat. Now stir every 3-5 min or so on low to warm heat till everything really becomes a whole soup.
Let sit at least 10 minutes covered stirring 2-3 times before serving.

Notice that I didn't mention salt or pepper through all of this? That was on purpose. After killing the heat on the soup, TASTE it before adding anything. Add in one Tablespoon each of salt and pepper if you feel it needs it. Let it rest then add in more if you think it's needed. I used one salt, two pepper making this, and the pepper is too much, but the salt is good. I would even say lower it all down to half T each of salt and pepper for people sensitive, and it still tasted pretty good.
In retrospect, I would have added another two cups of water at the beginning. I had enough liquid to cover the taters when added, but I think having enough water to cover it by an inch would have worked better.

But the chowder came out thick and creamy. Almost like a really runny mashed potatoes with all sorts of chunks of veggie and sausage goodness. 

We had it for dinner one night, and again a couple nights later. The last of it is now in a container awaiting freezing if I don't eat it up tomorrow :)

I've got enough scrap built up again that I need to make another batch of pork stock. Man, that bone in ham I got for super cheap sale really went a long way. Enough meat for 4-5 dinners from the fridge, and another couple of dinners worth frozen up- and a ton of yummy boned and fatty goodness to cook up, hooray! The stock from roasting the ham turned out so well and gelatinous, that got tossed into a quart bag and into the freezer :)

I gotta say, if I had to choose only one kind of meat to eat, pork would be it. I could give up beef and water critters, it would be hard to give up chicken but... Yeah, I would have to choose pork.

Nifty recycling... A while back the store had those little dry pasta one person meals on sale, so I picked up a couple to try. They were ok, not really work keeping on the shelf IMO. However, the packaging was pretty neat and I figured I could reuse them.
Today I cleaned out the fridge and wanted to put in some baking soda, but I never have the little boxes- I always use so much of it I always get the big box. So, looking around I spied these containers and thought rock on, perfect. It had a fill line, the lid snaps on tight and has lots of holes for venting. It's clear so I can see that it's just baking soda sitting at the back of the fridge.

I have currently called a halt on the tin can recycling. I am having a pileup that really needs to get sorted out and put into their places before I do anything else. A bunch of the big ones and such I will be starting up with seeds soon, and I think I might know what I might want to do with a bunch of the rest. But right now, I don't have a clear plan on what else to do with them. A lot of other stuff is piling up too and needs to be sorted out. I got piles of bottles that need to go down to the pole barn for gardenworking. And a couple piles that need to go to recycling- once the shittier weather hit, I stopped with the regular turn ins. My love is being great about keeping up with the current stuff, I just need some nicer days for me to chase bottles in.

And holy fuckatooie, we are getting married in two months. Super yippie, but pttht planning stuff, lol. Right now the Farmers Almanac is saying the end of April is going to be very unsettled, so now I'm starting to worry more about bad weather for the wedding.

Nova is going into the vet on Monday to get his balls snipped. I have to say, it's been a little odd seeing a cat running around with little furry jinglers. Last time was when Pooks was a kitten, and I took him in young and over a decade ago. Nova is now on 10 months old- so I am not too sure how much of his behavior is because of this or not. Haven't seen him spraying, caught him peeing twice, fairly recently, and parts of the house are starting to get male stinky. Since he just recently started doing this, we are rather hopeful snipping Monday will correct the behavior.
But the poor little bugger, this is gonna suck for him. He's been cozy here since October, and it's a late snipping. And hes my shadowmeeps- he is going to be bummed not to see me for a couple days.
We drop him off Monday, he gets fixed Tuesday, we bring him home Wednesday.

In the meantime, I'm starting to tackle the odor ick. Lots of natural advice says cats are less likely to do that when baking soda and white vinegar are used. So I mixed up a batch of natural deodorizing spray and started spraying all the non-washable fabrics. I will be going through the house next week while Nova is gone and doing a serious baking soda and vacuum on the house.
I stirred up this recipe today. I squirted it all over in the library, some in the great room, and all over the recliner in the living room and all the kitchen chairs. I also sprayed the living room couch with fabreeze.
So far, the library smells good, but not too much like I did anything to make it smell good, just kind of fresher. I have seen the cats on the recliner and kitchen chairs since I sprayed too.

So.. I used a 22 oz squirt bottle for this.... 
1 cup hot water
1 cup white vinegar
2 T baking soda
several drops to a teaspoon of whatever scent you like, though this can be omitted, I used a nice green tea and cucumber scent. You can use pure oils to soap and candle scents, just stuff that comes in small bottles with droppers, don't use stuff in big jugs that you pour it out of. Use drops if you are using potent oils, you can use up to a teaspoon if you are using thinner scents.

Mix the baking soda with the hot water and dissolve. Slowly and carefully pour in the vinegar- this will foam up fast. Drop in your scent if using. LOOSELY cap the bottle, enough so that shaking it won't really leak, but air can escape- and shake well. Set aside and let the bottle sit till no more bubbles perk up, then tightly cap and start spraying.

Through my own, heh... I didn't wait long enough before tightly capping, and started up the spray in my kitchen sink to get the bottle going. Glad I did, after several pumps, suddenly the liquid jetted out and wouldn't stop till I loosened the cap.


So, onto more soup..
I did a nice pot of herbed potatoes between chowder nights. Served up up with some smoked sausage and corn.
I diced up about a pound of taters- filled up my vintage pyrex dish
Added in a palmful of parsley
couple tablespoons dried minced garlic
a tablespoonish of rosemary- dried from my garden
one teaspoon of kosher salt
two teaspoons of black pepper.
a goodly drizzle of butter oil. That's from our local http://olivecart.com/ They take olive oil and infuse it with butter flavor.. and they are fucking awesome.
two golf ball sized onions, chopped up
Cover and bake at 400 for 45-1 hr- till you can start smelling it. Then turn down to 300 for 30 minutes. Then kill oven and let sit for at least 15 minutes and pulling out to serve.

Got upstairs and did some cleaning... Been so blech since we lost power before Christmas everything has just been.. blech. No creative nothin, didn't even want to face the short jaunt upstairs. 
So today I finally hauled the new fake christmas tree I got on super clearance after the holiday upstairs. It just kind of sat in a corner of the great room forever.
And shit, faced the workshop music. Put away a bunch of stuff, cleared off the workbench and..

Inspiration struck. Creativity started flowing.
First I tinkered around with my great Japanese beading books for a bit... Figured out the ingredient list and how to make a really frigging sweet armband. I really wish I knew how to read Japanese, or at least knew what font my craft books are written in. That would help a lot in my very slow figuring out basic stuff.
Anywho.... I think I might have a nice idea of whats going on in that project now that I figured out what the eff the symbols meant fishing line.
And then I pulled out a nice handful of lovely bits that could work into it.

Then it just went on... I was poking around bead boxes, and pulling out bits and pieces of stuff. I was thinking about wedding pulling of this and that...

Ended up making a bracelet of old gold filled in with aqua green glass. Cheered me up, had two beads left over and thought about earrings.
And rummaging around, thought about stringing up a neat pile of glass beads that are colored and striped, very much in reminding of bees, but not bees. It came out as a high choker, not sure if I like that or will end up restringing it a smidge.
Played around a crapton with notions of other oomms and hmms, mostly for other folks.
Came across three strand of these awesome glass beads I picked up for super cheap sale. The were kind of reminding me of bees and leaves, clear yellow with black pinstripe along the edges, in a swirly leaf shape. Those got strung up into a necklace and earrings with silver findings.
Got back to those two gold and green beads, those ended up becoming pendants suspended from delicate chains off barely there gold wires.

Ended up making ( will insert pics here soon!)
Bracelet and earrrings in gold and green
Choker necklace with gold findings.
Swirly yellow necklace with silver findings. 

Oh, and I lined a new cigar box for my new pile of sparkley. Used a scrap bit of thin microseude in chocolate brown. Clings great to the wood and the sparkley looks great on it.

So, time to post up and tune out :)

Cool stuff...

I think I might want to set up a worm bin or two in the solarium to take care of indoor scraps.

http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm

http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/442/442-005/442-005.html

We get enough newspaperish and indoor plant stuff to make bedding, and kitchen scraps to make food supplies. Including all of our coffee and tea stuff, and goodly amounts of eggshell grindings. I'm pretty sure that the solarium stays warm enough during the winter to keep active bins going. Some notes read being able to put them in unheated garages and they do fine.
And yep, I'm horribly lazy about hauling the kitchen scraps out to the main pile. So having a weekly dump spot out in the solarium might just be the ticket for helping me keep up with that. Now I just have to figure out how to get the worms at this time of year to populate the bins with. And pick up a new 2 gallon bucket- I need to start over with figuring out just how much scrap we make in a week.

Also stumbled across this site... http://www.riverparkfarm.com/Riverparkfarm/farm.htm Very, VERY inspirational. Holy crap milkcrates and great dirt.. Makes me kind of rethink some of my square foot gardening ideas..

Got the 3 bunches of celery all dried up and in its jar :) The ends have seen 48 hours in water now, so it will be time to pot them up in the morning. I wanted to give them an extra good soaking before potting this time.
And the last batch of slaw mix I should need for a while- though now I'm kicking around uses for the stuff. Like dip mixes, veggie salt.. hmmm :)

Got the final done on the squash powder too.
2 medium carving pumpkins,
1 large delecata,
1 large dumpling,
5 small to medium buttercups,
1 large green and 2 small golden acorn squashes,
1 medium large (filled the pan in it's own roasting) and 1 small butternut squash.
I think that made around 9-10 quarts of pulp. All that roasted and steamed, drained, dehydrated on jelly trays that took 4 loads of drying. Toasted the leathers in a warm oven to make them crispy dry. Powdered them in a spice mill.
Final yield- 3 3/4 cups of dried product. I already tested, and it's a 1:2 ratio of powder to water to make a rehydrated paste, a 1:3 ratio makes it more of it's fresh puree form. It's potent, and very roasted, maybe just a smidge too much so. I already knew that would be the case since I over dehydrated a round of squash in the first place. And it's a very deep rusty orange instead of bright fresh pulp orange, again, due to a tad bit of over dehydration. But that's ok, the stuff is great otherwise! It has a really robust and squashy taste.

Here's my new helping hands keeping the oven cracked while the squash toasted :)

I zested the oranges that needed taking care of, sliced them up, and now they are in the dehydrator. They are drying out quite nicely so far, but I think I will run it on low overnight just to be sure. The zest is air drying by the dehydrator.
Next up I need to grate up the carrots I picked up on sale and dehydrate those up. I want grated and sliced carrots because they will have different applications.
Then I'm going to experiment with making tomato powder. In reorganizing the pantry, I realized I have kind of an overstock on canned tomato paste. I want to try out a few cans and make some powder- see how that turns out :)

And tee-hee.... I have two little limes growing on my mini lime tree!!!

I've noticed that the cats don't seem to want to chomp on the leaves of the citrus plants. Not sure if that's because they had the tasty celery to maul to death and the lemon verbena to mess with. So now the celery pots are going elsewhere, and I moved the verbena to a still bright and warm kitty free spot. Now it's just the citrus on the table, so we shall see if those plant develop bite marks or not. I hope not, I want to start having more plants around the house.

Got the first batch of solar light jars done- they are now charging for testing on the windowsills of the workshop. Was able to put together 7 double high spikes to plug into the herb garden. That will make it easier for me to locate my herbs come springtime :) And used up all the stakes leftover from making solar light jars.

Tried out a new baking product today because it was on sale.. Fleishmann's Simply Homemade bread. I think perhaps I really should have stirred it with a spoon instead of using the mixer- oops. I was kind of underwhelmed with the yeast bloom and rising, but that might just be because of the kitchen being a bit chilly. And I think it would probably bake off nicer in a loaf pan instead of free-form. Even though I lubed my sheet real well it still stuck to the sheet. Perhaps some corn meal or something to help line the pan with. It tasted pretty good. I picked up two of them, so I will be able to try another mix and see what happens.

Also found out my yeast is still good, so I can do some of my own from scratch baking. It had a best by date of this February 2012, but it hadn't been opened yet. So I tested it, and it's still good- and in the freezer now :)

And easy test for yeast:
1/2 cup warm water- between 105-115, don't go over 120
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons yeast
 Give it all a stir and let it sit for a while. It should start foaming within 10 minutes, max. By the time it's done foaming, you should have visually just as much liquid in the measuring cup as you do foam. 

I think maybe I will make up a batch of English Muffin Loaves soon- I need to get back into the habit of making that, it's pretty darn yummy. And I have some preserves for sharing around and eating up to go with it :)

Got the last of the reshuffling done upstairs. Now it's time for cleanup on individual areas and rooms. Sorted out the kitten friendly from the stuff I don't dare put out this year in the christmas decorations. I got a bunch of christmas stuff that sucks a lot of space for really not being much, hehehe. I think if I reshuffle a couple full bins into currently empty ones I could already have the containers I need for worm composting.