Thistles and Bees

Thistles and Bees are just a few of my favorite things!

Plant ID

Whatever it is it wintered over, I'm not sure if it's mustard greens or not, ideas???

If you click on the images a larger image will pop up.

When I picked off a part of a leaf it smelled like lettuce or grass not peppery.

Dinner 112011

Dinner: florence potatoes (named after a woman named florence) home canned green beans, pickled beets, and honey orange marmalade ginger glazed smoked ham.  Here's the ham sitting atop my 1952 kenmore stove, even though we baked it out on the grill.

Painting Update 092411

Scraped and being primed.

And now some paint.  The scaffolding and ladder stages will have to be moved so that he can get the edges of the bump out section.

Ghost Garden

John says it looks like I'm getting ready for Halloween, NOT, I'm just trying to keep my cukes from freezing.

Tomato garden, under cover to protect my maters of course.

Under the fabric, gobs of green maters!!!

Porch Update - 091011

Closer and yet so far away, the new section of soffit is painted, the first coats have been applied to it and three of the porch columns.

The porch rail is my next project, well after I finish painting the south wall of the porch and the window trims.

I have the trims to paint on the tops and the bottoms of the columns, and then it'll be time for paint coat number two.  The roundish trims are a pain to paint around, two shades of the sagey greens and a copperpot stripe in between the rounded trims.

Hosta's 053011

This hosta is my favorite, love the white edges on the leaves.

Hosta

I suspect that I'm the only one here that likes Hosta's this much.

Front Porch

All I have to do now is wash the porch and the furniture later this evening, sometime this summer the ceiling will be scraped, sanded, and then painted sky blue.  Then I'll paint the south facing wall, the wall with the oval window, Copper Pot (Sherwin Williams) and then finally the porch floor. I'll paint the columns a ruby red color and the porch rails, after they are repaired, will be various shades of sage green.

It all sounds weird I know but when all is said and done the house will be about 16 different colors, it already has 12 colors on it, and will look like classic Painted Lady.

Pepper

aka Cookie Face, his eyes are very green today.

North Garden Planted

John tilled the north garden for the second time in 24 hours this morning, it is now two thirds planted.  I chose to plant mainly cold/cole crops in the north garden this year, later this spring I'll plant tomatoes in the remaining area.  So far I've planted rhutabega's, beets, carrots, purple and green kolrhabi, and red kale.  Can't wait for the greens to start popping up ;-)  We put up the fence, replacing parts of it that was damaged, and are now calling it a night.

Pickles

Wow it's been awhile since I've posted so to update

We've eaten two tomatoes out of our garden, they were very tasty and we are eagerly awaiting the arrival of more ripe tomatoes hopefully in the next week or so. First up on the list of canned tomato goods is salsa, it's been years since I've canned any because well it's been years since I've had any "real" tomatoes to speak of!!! We'll also make up and can our own spagetti sauce, pizza sauce, and if there are enough tomatoes ketchup and bbq sauce. I have plans, at the end of the season , to can green tomato slices for my fried green tomato cravings over the winter months.

I've been picking green beans, planted Top Crop, and cucumbers like crazy. So far we've put up 31 pints of green beans and have eaten several pickings of beans - they are best fresh what can I say!

The cucumbers, I planted a pickler varitety, are coming on strong, this year I plan to make lots of lime pickles as these were a hit here this past winter and I'm hoping to try my hand at my first ever batch of dill pickle relish!

I found out why my potatoes were size of peas, not enough water, turns out they need a half inch a week or so, soooooooo I've upped my watering routine. Turns out this is why ALL of my root crops are doing poorly, lack of water. I have some really pretty green tops though ;-)

John replanted Rhutabegas and Beets tonight there's still plenty of growing time in our season for the year yet. While he was weeding the garden he found two volunteer tomato plants, one looks to be a Rutgers the other some sort of cherry tomato. Barring any rain I'll plant Kale tomorrow and maybe some more chard and lettuce., in fact I think it's early enough to replant cucumbers and maybe even a zucchini plant or two.

Tomatoes and Rain

Well it's raining again... John came home at lunch and we tied up the tomatoes using a semi transparent nylon tomato tape. It's really easy to work with and I can see using this for rouge squash plants, cucumbers, etc. as well.

Hosta's

Garden Update

Well we are almost done with the garden fencing, one little bit left to be done tomorrow night - the kolrabi box at the base of our cherry tree. The green beans are popping up after the heavy rain we had last night. My lettuce looks like it'll be ready to pick in a week, can't wait!

Seedling Progress

Strawberries that are ready to go into the ground but we are supposed to have a blizzard tonight, wish John wasn't otherwise occupied or I'd be putting up the hoop houses right now, instead of sitting here blogging!!! The wind is blowing here around 30-35 mph constant and has been most of the day.

Purple Cabbages in sorry need of being transplanted into the 2.5 inch pots.

Looking pretty good, running out of places to put flats of veggies!!! A hoop garden is in my future, maybe two weeks???

Tomatoes (right) and Green Cabbages (left)

Cabbage Seedlings

Oregano, Cilantrao, Basil (sweet basil)

Roma Tomatoes

Purple Cabbages (above) and Green Cabbages (below)

I'm hoping they will all make it if so I'll have a bountiful garden this year!

Macaroni and Cheese with Tuna and Peas

Bring your macaroni noodles to a boil - as per directions on the box.

About two minutes before the noodles are fully cooked I added about a cups worth of frozen peas to the noodles. Yes I know this slows the cooking time down but I do it anyway - my bad. NOTE: If you are going to use canned peas add them to the noodles when you add the tuna otherwise they will be way mushy. ALSO if you are using canned peas you will want to drain them and rinse them well before adding to the noodles to reduce the salt content and that oh so special can flavor.

Drain noodles and peas, I use a collander to do this part so I don't burn myself.

Add drained tuna to the noodles and peas.

Add cheese and butter to the noodles, peas and tuna. Mix until butter is melted over low heat try not to scorch/burn you macaroni.

Add milk and stir well over low heat.

Add black pepper to taste and stir well.

All mixed up and cheese thoroughly blended with everything.

Ready to eat!

Lunch for two adults for less than a $1.50!!!

This weekends canning short list

First up can the remaining unsalted butter and then start in on the salted butter - in half pints.

I have five heads of green cabbage that need to be canned up as cole slaw and then if I have any time or energy left I'm going to try my hand at canning a batch of carmalized onions.

A picture of the neighbors crabapple tree, the squirrels like this tree better than ours, the neighbors crabapples are sweeter.

Chopping Green Beans

Dh's hand is next to the knife blade so you can see where it is at. The knife is longer than the width of the box. For the frozen beans a serrated bread knife works best.

End view of the box the box holds about 4 gallons of fresh beans.

To simplify this process we use a green bean board! We bought frozen beans for

our soup, they came unsnapped so dh chopped them into bite sized pieces.