Season on!

Ah, it's that time of year.. Halloween time :)

There are several new additions to Nightvale, my Halloween village. A zombie eatery, coffin factory, ghostly haunted house, bat aviary, some witches flying around and stirring up potions, a couple streetlights, and a few more denizens. So now the vals sprawls across the mantle, the shelves, the stereo, and the square table in the living room.
The pumpkin patch is chock full of pumpkiny goodness, the vamps and zombies hang out on main street, the witches have their own hangout on high... Grim is hanging out with the skeletons having coffee, the workers at the coffin factory can stop for a terror dog or a couple bags of blood to go, and the haunted house gets to get a little batty.
Yes, I am kind of obsessed with my Halloween village. Some folks get Christmas village nutty, I go for Halloween. There's still a small handful of buildings I want, and a whole heap of oddbits and oddfellows. In a year or two, I will build landscape for all of it, lol. At this point when I pack it all up, it will take up more space than my Christmas decor, and I like it like that.
A bunch of the buildings are on timers, so the whole vale gets active or goes to sleep at different times of dark, which is fun in and of itself.
My love printed me off an incredible Cerberus to guard the gargoyle towers and gate I have set up, and there will be a ton more printing that will go into the vale- some buildings are just too frigging expensive for what they are, so I'm going to make my own. Same goes for stuff like gravestones- why pay someone else several bucks for them when I can make them or have my hubby print some off? There are some outstanding scans out there of real gravemarkers that are just wonderful, from when they still make them look like treestumps and books and such. Then it's just a matter of painting them up nice and putting them in place. The graveyard definitely needs more markers, it's pretty darn small right now for a Halloween village.

In other news... Got a couple of moms cabinets hung up in her room, they look real nice. And finally hung the barn painting up in the stairwell. It's not fine art, something mom picked up eons ago. But it's something that speaks to all of us of home somehow.

Exciting stuff- finally ripped out and replaced the solarium skylight today!!!! Holy shit it looks so much better now. The corrugated plastic is clear, and lets in so much light it looks like there are artificial lights on out there. And with no more gaping hole acting as a chimney, there is already a noticeable difference in the temp out there- and I'm hoping with just a little more weatherproofing and a bit of a heater, I might actually be able to use my solarium as my workshop year round :) Squee with joy! If nothing else, it will be really good for the plants.

And ugh, started the painful process of sorting out my seeds. Logging what I got, deciding what I want to keep or put into the trade list bin.. Then comes coming up with the trade list. Of course there are a lot of things I want on my wish list, but then that too needs to be cleaned up- only so many beans or tomatoes one can have and be realistic about using the seed. And heritage grower that I am, I've been taking down dates on the seeds as I can, and I have discovered that some of my oldest cultivars are about 400 years old! As in early 1600's, or at least that's when they are logged as being in the U.S.. A couple of those are even older, but I don't know how much because I'm not tracking back that far in European or Native American records at this time.

What have I been doing with myself?

Not posting on my blog, that's for sure. And why not? Been busy busy busy.

Since my last post, I've canned up many, many gallons ( I think it's around 25 gallons) of various goodies, and dehydrated many many pounds ( I think around 20 pounds) of various produce. Seriously- I actually broke the front burner on my stove with all the processing I've been doing, and I have no idea if it's even reparable or not. So now I'm down to three burners for cooking. I've been keeping a running tally of everything so far, and that will be it's own post.

Had myself a seriously wonderful time out at Holly for a weekend with some good friends. And squee with joy over some adorable beaded trees- they are so tiny and cute! I now own one of each kind, and plan on using those as models to make more because they are awesome. I had forgotten how nice Holly is, and how muddy it can be. But it was extra nice because I got to wear garb that I didn't have the opportunity to at Bristol.

Been working on some beading projects- and I think I might have found a local retailer that I can rent out some space in to see if I can't sell some of the stuff I've been making. Kind of exciting that.

Had a glorious weekend of burning for the fall equinox. All nice and legal too. Did a couple serious days of day burning, cleared out a huge amount of brush that was piling up around the firepit. And we got all the rest of what's there sorted out and organized. Now the area is clear, no longer a fire hazard in itself, and all set up nice for more burning later this year. And I think the keyhole is going to become a needle to the pond- I want to mow open a bit more space down there for easier navagating, and hopefully soon I will be able to start the cleanup on the ponds edge itself to eventually drop in a small floating dock. We actually filled the pit with ash, and had to slow burn the last of the paper products and brush. A goodly bit of that ash went to the new raised beds to sweeten the pine needles, and a smidge went to the driveway to see if it would really kill the weeds with lye leeching or not. Still need to clean the rest of the ash out, and re-configure the pit- I want to make it three bricks high instead of two, and shorten it just a little to make sure it's within legal parameters.

Built two new raised beds for garlic... and guess what? I made them all by myself! Yes, I did use the power saw and drill, and didn't ask for someone else to do it. Considering my fear of handling power tools, I consider it a victory. So now there's a 3x6 and a 4x6 bed sitting next to the first bed. I got them mostly filled, but still need to drop more mature manure on top and top off with soil. I was heartily glad that I had all that spoiled straw left from the potato bags because they pine needles and leaves just haven't really started dropping yet. But I really wanted to get started on getting those boxes filled so they would be settled by the time I planted in garlic in a couple weeks. Hopefully by harvest time next year, I will have increased yield from 72 heads to 240 heads- maaaybe enough to keep us in garlic through at least some of the winter, lol. Guess that would depend on how much gets used up next year for canning, and I sure do use a ton of garlic in canning.

The orange tomatoes this year have been a resounding success! About damn time I got those going on. Now the next challenge will be figuring out what color to grow next year, lol. I liked the Juan Flamme so much that I put the seed onto my wish list again- I was super lame and didn't do any seed preserving measures this year.
Pulled 11 spaghetti squash out of the garden, and still have a couple buttercups and 5 Long Island Cheese squash on the vine. Pulled who knows how many pounds of ball squash and zucchini out of the garden, enough that I had to come up with a couple new recipes to use them all! Two have become instant successes with the family- southern squash casserole and caviar, AKA citrus zucchini marmalade. You would think zucchini jelly stuff would be gross, but it's good as hell. We love it particularly with biscuits with dinner, yum.
The peppers have been in overdrive- I pickled rings and whole peppers, dried peppers, cooked peppers, and fresh eaten peppers- all of us have. Another bout time.
Eye of the goat bean did so well we will actually be able to eat some, have seed stock, and maybe even have a bit for trade. The dwarf taylor bush I had to container grow to save it from the critters has produced enough for seed stock, and the histada shield bean produced for seed stock.
The nasturtiums have been beyond wonderful. Darn things have eaten one whole slot on the dog run, but I got enough seed for stock, to try some as a black pepper subsitute, pickled up a jar for poor mans capers, got a quart jar stuffed with dried leaves, and still so much I need to harvest a ton of blooms for drying, leaves for pesto for the freezer, and enough seeds for another batch of poor mans capers- and the things have dropped enough seed that I realize I accidentally created a nasturtium bed. My milkmaids produced enough seed for stock- I assume chipmunks ate most of whatever else dropped. And my couple containers by the great room produced seed stock like crazy too. Now I want to fill out my palette with a couple more varieties.
The green beans were a low point- but boy oh boy did the few top crops crank em out- and the early contenders I planted late are producing like crazy so it looks like green beans might just get redeemed before the end of the season.
The herb garden is doing pretty well, but the parsley patch down on the fenceline is really growing in all it's glory- shaping up exactly as I hoped. I'm thinking next year I will finally be able to do a final sowing and pull all the recycled soup cans currently serving as a border.
Dill did really well too- I pulled a whole crop for seed, and started a second crop which is almost ready for harvest.
The mint border is filling in completely. Almost better than I had hoped for when I scrapped them into place last year. By this time next year, it will be complete and plush. I'm still on the hunt for apple mint. The toothache plant did exceptionally well in that area, I will have a serious amount of seed for next year. The lemon mint didn't do all that great, I will have to put it into a different area next year.
The lilies- sigh, some of them survived, some did not. Now it's a matter of figuring out where the survivors need to go. Some will for sure be going into the new garden area we are planning on in the front yard, focusing around that wonderful smoke tree. The four hardy hibiscus are now repotted and in the solarium for overwintering, and I picked up eight mums half in bronze and half in yellow to work into the hibiscus border. That's going to go along with the smoke tree garden. By the end of next year, that whole little area of the yard should be coming along right nice.

The solarium is already getting full of containers to overwinter, and I still have a ton of them to pull in. Nope, the roof still isn't fixed, I'm dearly hoping to get that done very soon before it gets too cold to do so. I wish I could just have someone else do it, but my luck ain't like that, heh.

But now I need to hop along and figure out what to do for dinner... 

Plans and plans..

It's the 21st. Been rather nice the last couple days, and we have been getting in some rain during the night hours, so I haven't had to water and the garden is coming along right fine to boot!

While out gardening the other day, my sister discovered one lonely cucumber growing in amongst all the squash. I'm not sure what it is, I have to trace the vine back. But it's large and lovely. And since it's the only one it's pretty likely it's pure seed. Yay!

Did another round of pruning. This time under the cedars right outside my office. I started out by cutting in the second year round for the chocolate mint and pineapple mint. And then it just kept going on from there, heh. To my delight the toothache plant seems right happy where I planted it so next year I will fill in that area of the bed with more of them.

Been taking pics over the last few days, decided it was time to post a bunch of them up.

This is what the giant collendar looked like a few days ago- made stuffed squash and squash casserole since then. A lot less squash in it now, and a ton more tomatoes.

The pickens from the other day when I cleaned out the potato bags. Every day it's a handful or two of pickings :)

This weirdness is something I cut out of the grapevines while cutting back growth on the north side of the property. Those crazy looking pod things are called galls- usually due to bugs or injury. Who knew, right?

The tomato jungle. Next year, more support considered prior to planting, lol.

The little squash bed. The zukes are putting out just the right amount of squash for the household. And enough that I'm planning on making another batch of ginger citrus zuke marmalade- it's been renamed ginger citrus caviar, lol. The stuff is crazy ass good. The buttercup squashes are finally producing a couple squashes that didn't abort early- must be because of all the good rain. But also means I should be watering more when it isn't raining.

The dog run, all agrown with various veggies and looking great!

The north stall has now been cleaned up of debris and the nasturtiums corralled by buckets of glads. I am pretty sure those are too small this year for blooms :( But once they start blooming they should look great!! At the far end you can almost not see the little histada shield bean.

The center run where the potato bags used to be. For sure need to do potatoes in bins next year. it was a huge mess for what we got out of it. More glad buckets for penning in the nasturtiums.

Got one of the huge spaghetti squashes growing into the center stall and just tucked straw up under it for support. Heaped up all the floor straw into the end for now till it's time to build the next raised bed. Then all that spoilt straw will be lovely to use.

The hops are not doing too well, I think I'm underwatering those too. But in the right corner you can just see yet another huge spaghetti squash being supported on a while bucket. The monster vine on the left is my Long Island Cheese squash- I have three growing and signs of more blooms! Eye of the goat is the vertical grower.

Don't look to bad considering what a lazy gardener I am. Right in the center is one of those Long Island Cheese squashed growing away nicely.

Cleaning out the area outside my office.

Almost looks like it's supposed to be something now- going to be planting in some lilies on this side.

The beds look neater. Chocolate mint on the far right, then pineapple mint. A large grouping of toothache plant in the center, though it's hard to tell. This area will start looking nicely plush next summer. And the mints at least will be in their final growth area, just needing trimming and a little weeding. They are already being very effective at choaking out weeds.

Cutting up like this will help with air flow under the trees. And man, I cut out tons of kudzu, wild grape, and wild raspberry vines.

Cut out a whole heap of branches that are destined for the firepit too.

The keyhole looks neat. But the scrap is building up. Time to get a burn permit!

And the freshly cut out alley on the north line of the property. A good bit of this was super overgrown, but now we just need to keep it mowed open.

So now I'm off to get more things done :) 

Great yard days

the 14th...

It was an absolutely lovely day today.Sunny and cool in the upper 60's. I got out around 11 and mowed up the whole front yard. I offered my sister mowing the rest of the yard. While she was mowing I went around the yard and did a lot of trimming.. a few truckloads worth. All the little tree bits and such that have gotten out of hand over the last season or three and I seriously needed to attend to.
The entire white fenceline is cleaned up except for the compost/bee corner. That's it's own project, lol. 
The wild grapevine choked tree in the front corner is now cleared of vines and pruned a bit back. Opened up and cleaned up around the traffic sign.
The raspberry bed around the utiltiy pole- whew. That was a mess of old canes and unruly new ones. Got all the old canes trimmed out and all the new ones woven in contained behind the mooring lines.
Extra mowed down the arch drive and cut down all that tall stuff around the trunk where the arch drive meets the easement drive. That was a thing- but now the area looks so much better! I think I want to go ahead with some sort of light setup on that stump and plan in a serious bed of nasturtiums in that area starting next year.
A new mowing keyhole down by the pond was made today, as well as a little drive through path on the north side where we dump our non-composting weeds.

Tomorrow we need to walk out around the back 40 and see how truck driveable or not the trek is. I would like to drop todays trimmings in the way back corner. Want to walk out the north fenceline to see what needs to be done to get a footpath in order. I think eventually we will need to figure out a whole pondside path too, lol.

It's the 17th, and man we have been busy as hell out in the yard! Lots of pruning and cutting. Got the veggie beds attended to- to tomatoes now have been cleaned up and re-supported as necessary.
The whole potato aisle of the dog run is cleared out and cleaned out- we even got a couple pounds of potatoes out of those sloppy bags! Enough encouragement to do it again, only using hard sides containers like garbage cans. Those would be mobile and sturdy. Got the whole mess of nasturtiums dealt with in the other bay of the dog run. Picked the very first of my Histada Shield beans and those are shelled and set to cure. There's enough otherwise on the vine that I'm pretty sure I now have a crop batch amount of seed maturing.
Cut in a whole new path on the north side of the yard and combated a grave vine overgrown rose tree to do it. My sister attended to the long overdue lilac, and I think it will be much healthier for the cutback. One of the darker lilies will get planted in there, and will need to attend to the violet patch more between the lilacs and the pine too. And now we have a full mowing lane back there again, discreetly tucked back. That's our general dumping ground for weedy crap that can't go into the compost area. Eventually we will just keep going right down the fenceline entirely I think.
We will end up running a whole walking patch all the way to the back corner- it was widely groomed at one time so a bit of effort should see at least a footpath cut back in again.

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 :)