The tasty tasty harvest

Yay for blueberries! Strawberries and snow peas are SO last month - gimme more blueberries!


I'll be honest - there wasn't more than a couple minutes between the first picture and the second, and here's all that was left of that first small harvest of blueberries in such a short bit of time.


And if you got back up to the top pic, you'll even see there were a couple wimpy raspberries in there. That MAY be all I get this year - the plants aren't doing well where they are right now - the bed wasn't prepared well at all. Per some advice from dad, I'm actually thinking of digging them up, potting them up or heeling them in elsewhere, and then redoing the bed and planting them this fall for next year?

Oh, and those blueberries? SOOOO tasty! I can't expect much from the bushes this year - but in another year or two they should be doing great! For now I'll be happy with a small handful each week...there ARE more berries just waiting to start ripening, and I managed to pic a few more today.

Lunch today was ramen. I know - not too exciting, and I didn't even have any leftover grilled meats to put in it. But I DID raid the garden this morning - check it out.


Some of the carrot thinnings, some of the snow peas, some of the broccoli "2nd attempts" (that's what a plant will put out after you chop off the main head), some of the bok choy, the green onion stalks, and both of those little squash went in for my lunch. YUM! Oh, and those two strawberries (with the slug damage cut off)? Appetizer! ;-)

And a few hours later for dessert, while Brett's out running errands? I whipped up a little something-something!


Granted, it's no black cherry chip or strawberry ice cream like Finny's, or cinnamon ice cream (YUM!) over at Peter's, but vanilla's a nice all American classic, and gee, with the couple mini strawberries and three (yes, count them) newly ripe blueberries I picked just a short bit ago, it made for a really nice combination! And the recipe couldn't have been simpler - AND I had the stuff on-hand. I wanted a no-egg recipe a) because we're actually out of eggs at the moment, and b) I haven't had the best luck with heating eggs for ice cream - I'm a very impatient boy, and often make scrambled eggs IN the custard, and you just can't strain that out and still make ice cream. Quite disgusting. Anyhow - it was 3 cups half-and-half, 3/4 cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and 1 tablespoon of this wonderful vanilla bean paste I don't use often enough! Whisked all that together, and dumped it into the ice cream maker. The good news is the bowl was thoroughly chilled, not having been used in, oh, gee, possibly a YEAR!?

I originally thought I'd find the ideal recipe quickly in the Ben & Jerry's book, but since I only had half-and-half and whole milk, no whipping cream, no eggs, etc...I lucked out in a web search and found this recipe, which was really simple. If you want to know what the recipe results were like, I'd say it's very much like a soft version (right now) of Breyer's "vanilla bean" vanilla - which I don't see listed on their site. Maybe it's just called natural vanilla these days? Anyhow - sorta like that flavor, and I'm sure once it's set in the freezer for an hour or two, it'll have more of that dense texture. Clean tasting and not eggy in any way.

Special delivery!! Where do you want this poo!?

I've given away all my spare veggie seedlings to friends and coworkers over the last few weeks. One coworker, Jen, said her mom would take whatever I was willing to give up - that she's wanting to put in a new garden and hadn't gotten any plants yet.

My response: "Tell her NOT to buy anything until AFTER I've hooked her up!"

Sounded like Jen's mom was quite happy with the wild variety of heirloom tomatoes, plus squashes and a pumpkin or two. Jen even said she was willing to hook me up with some horse manure - that they have horses, and Jen knew I was looking for more sources of manure for the compost. And the kinda source where IT comes to ME? Great!

So today was the day Jen's mom was to make the delivery. You'll notice I keep calling her "Jen's mom" - that's because I failed to get her name when she arrived (oops - it happens). I'm assuming I could safely call her Mrs Matheos (Jen's maiden name), but who knows...

We got along great - she's a neat lady who loves her horses, loves the country life and taking care of her animals, and has some farming background, so in addition to hooking me up with a massive pile'o'poo, she was giving me lots of tips to help out with the garden stuff - add some lime to the manure to help it break down since she beds her horses with sawdust and not straw, which affects the pH; thin the carrots out more or they won't get a decent size; put posts further out from the blueberry bushes and THEN put on the nets so the birds can't get them, etc.


Yup, I even got her to pose for a picture after we finished transferring it to the bin. You'll see the bin is fully loaded behind the trailer it came out of - who knew she'd bring so much!? LOL I've since piled on this evening's grass clippings. Oh, and what do you get someone to say when they're posing for this kind of picture? "Cheese"? Hell no! "Horse manure!" LOL

While she normally has people come get the manure from her if they want it, she was super kind to offer to bring it to me in exchange for all the plants I hooked her up with (plus knowing I don't have a pick-up truck). And here I felt I needed to repay her for all the good compost-fodder and tips, so I sent her home with a bag of today's strawberry and pea pickings... She's already volunteered to bring more manure in the fall for the spring 2009 garden - VERY kind of her!

Oh, and as a bonus, this is the lady who I bought two handmade scarves off've for my mom and sister-in-law for Christmas a year and a half ago (Jen mentioned her mom made/sold them) - and I didn't meet her until just now! So, thanks Jen's mom - here's to you, for all you do, and for your poo! ;-)

Beans and Peas

Aw crap, here comes another round of peas - LOTS of them from the looks of this one branch! Good thing Jen's mom and I picked all the good-sized ones for her to take home this afternoon - looks like there will be more where those came from any day now! Each of those little "open-hand" shaped spots on the vine will be another pod...I count at least five in just this small area.

And I'm really surprised at how slowly the purple castor beans are growing. They're poisonous plants, so it's not like I'm eager to harvest and snack on them. It's just that I've seen them really big and decorative in other gardens in previous years, and I thought maybe they'd shoot up really fast. Then again, many things planted in the ground here seem to be a little slow growing.

Here's a close up of a brand new leaf.


Four of the plants on the side of the house (there's more in one of the back landscaping beds).


Another one of the new leaves.

Garden Guardian

Noticed this little fell hanging from the underside of a pea leaf...



From the sluggish movements and only barely defensive motions, and zero attempt to escape, I'm wondering if it's molted or molting. Plus the legs just look kinda...odd.



Looking at the pictures up close, rather than the live critter out at twilight, I'm noticing the body colors are actually VERY vibrant too. I kinda think maybe this little guy/girl has recently molted...

Almost ready!?

OMG I can't wait!



Jen's mom suggested I do a better job of netting them - instead of having the nets ON the bushes, I might be better off putting posts around the bushes, and then draping the nets over that, with some distance between the nets and berries. I've been wondering about this recently anyhow, after seeing a bird or two sit on the shrubs. So far they've shown no interest in the berries - but I've a feeling that could change any day now!

Something you only ever cook once every few years...

And when you start you think "OMG this is gonna taste SO good!"



And then you're snacking on them as they cool on the pan afterwards, pretty much burning fingers, lips and tongue because they still weren't cool enough to resist. Dinner's not even ready yet, and already you've had three onion rings. Maybe four. But only small ones. Or large ones that are broken, so they don't count.



And then by the time the onion rings are all made, and the burgers are coming off the grill, the stove and surrounding counter is trashed, covered in a thin film of grease. The house also smells like grease (more like burned grease). And you've had a few more onion rings before the burgers were ready. And then of course you have some more with dinner. Plus Brett has some, and yet somehow the pile doesn't seem to have shrunk.

All these damn onion rings from ONE FRICKIN' ONION!? How the hell did that happen!?

Did I really cook ALL of these? We can't possibly eat them all - now I feel wasteful.

So let's try freezing some, and of course we'll try baking them up in a couple weeks to see how they recover.

(More than likely we'll be so disgusted with them in the freezer that we'll just pitch them)

When will the grease smell go away? And, ugh, my tummy hurts.

But DAMN they were tasty! ;-)

Outside, Looking In

Was outside after this afternoon's manure delivery, and had the camera with me. Brett and the cats were in the bedroom... How mischevious does he look here?!


"OMG LET US OUT WE NEED TO GO OUTSIDE NOW HELP US WE'RE TRAPPED IN HERE!"

So You Think You Can Dance

Testing something out here - iTunes let's you post an iMix to your blog apparently. Well, Brett and I are loving a lot of the songs from this season's So You Think You Can Dance, so if I post this here, will it continue to be updated as the author of the iMix makes edits/additions?

Who needs some sporn!?

I pre-ordered the latest Electronic Arts life-creator "game" Spore as soon as it was made available on Amazon - months ago! The game's been in development for years, and has had people on the edge of their seats waiting for it.

They released a component of the game last week - the Creature Creator - for free. Anyone can download it and have fun making creatures with it.

And then yesterday Brett told me word was getting out that people were mis-using the Creature Creator.

That they were making...diiiiirty pictures with it! Or more like dirty creatures! GASP!

To be honest, I feel left out - I tried installing the Creature Creator in a rush the other day, and it was missing some file, so I uninstalled, reinstalled along with the stupid extra plug in they wanted me to have, and it still didn't work. I haven't gone back to resolve this.

I'm wondering if all the idiots out there screwing around are going to have a negative affect on the game - if there's going to be new lock-downs on what you can and can't do all because some dorks thought it'd be fun to make boobie monsters or penis creatures. Idiots.

Heh heh - ok, maybe it's a little funny.

;-)

Bolt!

Peter recently asked me what bolting is all about in the garden. The picture above's what it looks like when bok choy bolts. And my radishes that are bolting look the same, only some have lilac or lavendar colored blooms. The birds were all over the blooms today - picking of bugs, or eating the flowers themselves?

Bolting is pretty much a bad thing for gardeners (unless it's cilantro and you want coriander). It usually happens when the weather gets warmer than the "ideal growing temperature" for a plant I guess... Cool weather plants like the lettuces, cabbages, spinaches, bok choy, broccoli and many other greens didn't like that heat wave we had recently. I planted three different varieties of bok choy this year - green, purple and white. The dwarf greens were the first to bolt - I never really even got to harvest any. The purple I got to enjoy a little bit of, but they also bolted early thanks to the high temperatures. The white-stemmed is holding out still.

When a plant "bolts", it basically seems to go from the stage where we humans think it's a tasty vegetable or herb, to something distasteful - and usually bitter I believe. When you see a radish or head of lettuce in the grocery store, you'd never realize they're capable of putting out a 3+ foot tall stalk from the center, and will grow flowers and then seedpods from that stalk. There's no way I'd consider eating these plants that have obviously bolted - I've tasted them too many times at the beginning stages of bolting, and it's not a good thing.

I look at it like this - plants live to reproduce (ok, that covers all life pretty much, right?). They have this stage of their life where they're building up their body mass, storing nutrients, etc. And then suddenly something triggers them (high heat, change in day length, trauma), and the plant says "oh shit!" and realizes it's days are numbered - at which point it switches gears, stops building up it's body, and puts all that yummy tasty energy into reproduction - setting out seed to create some heirs.

As I said - this is how *I* look at it, and is VERY oversimplified at that. It's been years since I've had any biology or botany classes, so don't hold me to this.

Oh, and when I have a scrawny little plant like a tomato I've started from seed, still trapped in it's Dixie cup, wondering why it never got potted up into a larger pot, or put in the ground, and it starts blooming and producing ugly, hard little tomatoes faster than ANY of the ones cranking out lush growth in the ground, I figure that's what's going on here as well. The plant says "clearly I'm not going to get an ideal life, so screw this - I better make some seeds before I die."

Again, I could be wrong...but that's my interpretation of bolting.

As for cilantro - it's great as a leafy herb in salsa, right? But coriander, what we call the seeds of the cilantro plant, are also very good in cooking! So hey, every few weeks, just plant some more cilantro seeds - over time you'll have some leafy and ready to be snipped and torn into your recipes, and you'll also have some that have gone to seed and are ready to dry for later use!

Chillin' outdoors

Who can't resist just chillin' outside on a beautiful day!?


Sometimes cats will catch a scent on the breeze that we just can't sense. I wonder what we're missing out on!? (Brett just says he looks evil in this picture)


One of Tucker's preferred shady spots, on the north side of the deck.


Simon off on an unapproved, unchaperoned mission/adventure.


Moxie RARELY ventures off into the grass, and even more rarely looks relaxed while out in the grass... Couldn't believe I got this picture of her!



Simon off on yet ANOTHER unapproved, unchaperoned mission/adventure, this time into the clover...


Relaxing by the broccoli and potatoes.


I forgot I had a small, petunia still in it's plastic 4-pack cell that got left by the broccoli and bok choy - I think it's trying to get my attention.


"Dude. I think the shade's shrinking..."

Pretty little princess

While the rest of us work for a living, have chores to take care of, etc, here's what Moxie's pretty good at doing...

In this picture, I caught her mid-stretch. Looks like her claws are loooong!


Cuuuute!

Confession: I have a small zucchini

See?


Actually, it was two small zucchini, neither as big as my index finger, plus one small yellow squash - the same size:


I couldn't resist! I know they'd turn into nice big veggies, but I was working from home today, planned to grill up some salmon for lunch, and wanted something different... So I grabbed some herbs, an onion, and yes, some more chard...


And followed a recipe (scaled down for one) from the new Serving Up The Harvest book, basically blanching chard, then sauteeing it with onion and garlic while boiling tortellini (the recipe called for shallots and ravioli, oh well), and then combining those. Over that I put a small piece of grilled salmon, along with those poor little summer squash that gave up their lives so I could have a tasty lunch.


All that with a drizzle of lemon juice and shaving of parm. Mmmmm!

Wait. What did you think I meant when I said I had a small zucchini!?

"It's like we have Snow White's backyard..."

That's what Brett said just minutes ago after I took the last few pictures you'll see in this post. He wasn't here this morning when I got some poor quality shots of the hummingbird through the screen...

I'd been seeing a hummingbird buzz through lately, and even perch on the teepee for the yard-long beans once, and figured it was worth a shot putting up the hummingbird feeder my brother's family got me a few years ago. Back at the condo all it attracted was yellow jackets. Within an hour of putting it up, the hummingbird was drinking from it, and has been back numerous times since - thanks Sean, Jesse, Emma and Sarah!


And then Brett pointed out there were a couple rabbits at the base of the low bird feeder a short while ago - this is the bird feeder the bluejays seem to prefer. Aw, how cute, the bunnies are eating the seeds knocked down by the birds!


And just a short while later - awwww, how NOT CUTE - there's a RABBIT IN MY GARDEN!!! We'll see how this plays out. I just planted more bean seeds over there yesterday. If it looks like they're gonna start chewing my sprouting beans, or anything else, I may have to put up a small fence or get a BB gun. So far I've seen no signs of them touching anything - especially not in the raised beds!



And here's the big doozy for the day - talk about exciting!

I'd never even HEARD of a rose-breasted grosbeak til Carolyn mentioned them last week. I guess she and Rick had seen them while out on their walks. Well, they're also seeing cedar waxwings, and I've never seen one of those, so I figured I just wouldn't have them here in the yard. And then there was a larger sparrow-like bird with some definite white markings around the eyebrows I was trying to identify. At first I hoped it was a female rose-breasted grosbeak, but figured instead it was probably a female red-wing blackbird that just happened to have brighter markings than the book showed.

Now THIS makes me think my first guess was right...check him out!


VEEEEEEEEEERY cool! Thanks Carolyn, for turning me on to a new bird to watch out for!

Working breakfast

Working from home today, and needed some breakfast. Here's a great way to use up a banana that's starting to get a bit ripe, all those spare strawberries I mentioned yesterday that aren't getting eaten fast enough (I'm eating them! I'm eating them!), plus get in a yogurt (blech) which is good for my digestive tract, some protein powder (good for the muscles) (well, at least if I'm working out), milk (good for the bones, or so they say), and some water/ice (hey, we're supposed to drink more water, right?). Mmmm - tasty!

I tell ya, using the homegrown strawberries that are extra extra red, compared to those I've gotten in grocery stores (you know, white and sometimes hollow on the inside, but picture perfect on the outside?), really has an influence on the overall color of the smoothie! I normally just use banana and not strawberries in it, but when I have added strawberries, the smoothies have NEVER been this vibrant!

Nessie Sighting

Here's someone I hadn't seen around in awhile. Simon and I were investigating the clover patch behind the yard (well, he was investigating, I was supervising), when I heard some rustling and tugging of plants across the pond. Saw Nessie grab some dead cat tails, drag 'em into the water, and then swim over to our end of the pond and then dive down. Must still be a nest down there - I was worried Nessie disappeared awhile back...

Bird Party!

CLEARLY someone forgot to invite the rest of us!


Seriously - what's going on here guys? I mean, there's no bird feeder out there. Were they looking for worms in the garden between storms?

More peas, more strawberries

Um. Ok. Getting a little tired of snow peas and strawberries now! ;-)