Rainy Days and Mondays...

A couple weeks ago we got hit with a really STRONG storm. I was working from home when I noticed the skies were darkening...then the IMs started coming in from friends at work in Kent - "Wow, it's getting windy" and "the rain is REALLY starting to come down." I was worried about the strong winds and our gazebo, which we hadn't yet bolted down to the deck....so I shut down the laptop as I looked outside, and the gusts were really starting. I didn't even have time to untie/retie my shoes to put them on - I just slipped them on as fast as I could and went out to start unhooking as much of the gazebo tarp as I could. The winds were picking up so much that it was rattling around, and I was really worried it would bang into the sliding patio doors and break them. A gazebo we could replace - yes. But I don't want to deal with a broken back door!


I actually had to stand on the framework of the gazebo to weigh it down as I undid all the little velcro tabs. That's when the lightning and thunder started getting REALLY close. I could see the lightning, and knew standing on a big gazebo-shaped-lightning-rod wasn't the smartest thing....but I needed to get the giant "wind sail" loosened up....

I finally unhooked all of the velcro around the edge so it could barely catch the wind just as the rain started. The thunder was getting louder, the lightning was all around, and I ran inside, wet. Doogie and Tucker were looking quite nervous by that time - I had to assure them things were ok, and nothing would happen to them. The power flickered a few times, the AC unit started making loud noises (I think just because it was getting messed up with all the offs and ons - it's fine now).

For some strange reason, Doogie felt he HAD to go to the bathroom - he was whining a bunch, even though I tried to point out how much rain was coming down. I finally caved in, let him out, and, well....


Now does that look like a happy dog? Really - it was his idea!!! I don't think he even went - he just stood out there a few minutes, decided it wasn't happening, and came back in to get wiped down.


What a cute face!

Chickeny Goodness!

We eat a lot of chicken, and during this time of year it's handy to just have some chunks of cooked chicken in the fridge, a container of cooked pasta of whatever shape also in the fridge, and then I can quickly throw together a quick dish with whatever I've got coming out of the garden - hot or cold, it's always tasty!

There was the night I made pesto for the first time this year, plus I grilled up some pounded/seasoned chicken breasts, and boiled some pasta. Just as all the parts were done, they got stirred together, and for my serving I tossed in some tomato chunks. My pesto often turns dark and ugly when I add it to stuff - I'm not sure if it's because I add it to a warm dish, or if it's because it's oxygenating (something pesto's known for doing anyhow). I believe you can add lemon juice or Vitamin C to it - so I should give one of those a try.


And then there was the day I mixed up a batch of cucumber and tomato chunks with some oil and lemon juice. That was good on it's own, and really tasty when tossed together with, you got it, chicken and tomatoes...plus a little dab of pesto and some freshly snipped parsley and basil.


I don't just cook chicken breasts.... Here's a more recent picture, but I'm not ready to type up the full story. Let's just say it's a chicken I either killed or beheaded, and it was taaaasty!

Fall is in the air...

Temps are dropping, the sun rises later and sets earlier, and the mum's are blooming...


They actually would've bloomed sooner if I'd let them! Sometime back in July I believe, they were starting to bud, so I whacked off all the buds, prompting them to get a bit more bushy - so more flowers - yay! I seem to only have any luck with this golden-yellow colored variety coming back each year, but that's ok because it's my favorite color of the mums. I'll probably pick up some more this fall (mixed colors), will tuck 'em in, and see if we get any returns next spring... I figure sooner or later they'll decide they're happy as my beds improve, and maybe I'll get more volunteers.

Ok, so this post isn't really about the mums... It's more about what's growing in the backyard - things with a fall theme, and things that I HOPE hurry up and finish ripening/curing in the next month!! Tuesday is September 1st, which means fall is REAL close - and that includes our huge annual Halloween party, and trick-or-treaters. Gotta have stuff to put out for decoration, and it looks like this year I won't be buying a single pumpkin or gourd!

I've never grown gourds before. On a whim I tucked some seeds in the raised bed where I had just planted my cucumber seedlings this spring...and WOW have they taken off. This might actually be a good way to plan to do them in the future - if I ever need more gourds. By the time the cucumbers were fizzling out, the gourds were really spreading into their territory. I planted seeds from a few "mixed varieties" packs (including some with wings, some without), plus I tried birdhouse gourds. Here you can see a bird house (light green) gourd and one of the other varieties. They're hanging behind the bluebird house.


These guys are cute - they were some of the first I noticed this summer. They're REALLY tiny...hard to tell from the picture.


Another birdhouse gourd. Neither of them are very big...but maybe I'll try turning them into birdhouses anyhow.


While the other picture made a gourd look bigger than it actually is, this next one is just the opposite. There's a few of these on the vine, and they're MUCH bigger than the pears they sort of look like. I'd say one would just fit inside of a football?


The gourd vines have actually spinned over into the grass - there's no controlling them! Luckily that doesn't seem to be causing any of them to rot!


Here's a new gourd just starting to form - I wonder which variety it'll be.


This bumpy one here is one of my favorites.


Whereas this ones much more simple, but with attractive coloring.


Here's the end of the bed that has the cuke/gourd trellis. You can see how the vines are just growing out of control. I've decided they've gotten about as far as I'm going to let them, and have started "trimming" them with the lawnmower...


As I mentioned above, gourds are the only thing growing for fall and Halloween! This has been my most successful year with pumpkins! While I haven't yet spotted a single Rumbo (my favorite, which has me really disappointed), these Howden Biggies are just that - I'm straddling this one here, and it's going to be quite hefty when it comes time to move it up to the front porch. I'm guessing 40-50lbs? I'll probably just use the garden cart to move 'em from the garden...


This Howden biggie had the vine grow through the tomato cages, and since the tomatoes were dying off I gave up on trying to control the vines. What's cool is that the pumpkin was clearly getting longer/taller as it grew - it was still "soft", and it's weight was stretching it down to the ground. It just hovered there for weeks as it grew, and then one day I went out and it had pulled the vines through the cages and it's sitting on the ground now. Check out how thick that stalk it - I wonder if that's because it was supporting the weight of the pumpkin for so long?


I'm also growing Lumina pumpkins this year. This one seems to have gotten scarred up a bit....not sure what happened to it.


And this little Lumina is pristine... These guys are small little pumpkins....nowhere near the size or weight of the Howden Biggies.


I don't remember what this variety is - I'll have to wait til I can get in there and find the tag where I planted the pumpkins. There's at least three that are what I'm assuming is "full size" (maybe 1.5-2 ft across?), and more are setting every week! This one looks to have a fairly smooth skin, while the first two that set have incredibly warty skins....scarred lumps all over them. I don't know what the final color of these guys will be - I'm thinking they might be one of the ones that turns a deep red-orange? I guess we'll just have to wait and find out, right?

Terraza

We recently decided to try a new restaurant that opened up near us, and after mentioning it to Sharon, I suggested she and Andy meet us for dinner. We love Mexican food, and there's nothing like getting a case of "chip-belly" (you know what it is - it's when you don't know when to say 'no, we don't need another bowl of chips before the meal arrives, thankyou'....) Sometimes short notice plans can be really fun!

Turns out there were a lot of crazy storms that afternoon, which resulted in some nice rainbows while we waited for Sharon and Andy to show up. Upon closer inspection, it was a double rainbow.


Here's a better view of the full picture.


And here's the front of the menu for the new Mexican joint. It's near the "new" Walmart and Lowes in Brimfield - and while all of this is about 15-20 minutes from us, it's actually one of the closest shopping centers worth visiting!


Once Sharon and Andy arrived, it was time to order. While waiting for the food, I figured I'd snap some pictures. Apparently I said something incredibly offensive amusing - I just don't remember what it was.


Here we go - that's more like it!


Finally the food arrived - and it was GOOD! A little higher class than most of the little Mexican joints around us... Andy got a chicken dish that was topped with bits of burnt (?!) sausage. I don't remember what Sharon had now.


There's Brett off to my side!


I got the carnitas - I tell ya, that was some seriously good pork! The rice and beans got a bit dried out on the super hot plate, but the rest of the food was really good!


Brett had a beef dish that was in a VERY rich chili-like sauce... And in the background there you can see the "salad" we each received - it seemed more like it would've been good piled on a taco, or for topping nachos. Their raw tomato salsa was SUPER good - very fresh, and you could taste the lime juice and see little minced bits of raw jalapeno. There was also guacamole, lettuce and sour cream. Again, odd for a salad....but tasty!


Would we go back again? Yeah, I think so!!

Sour Grapes

So when we were getting moved in a couple years ago, and I had the whole "blank slate" stress in the yard, I was buying and being gifted all sorts of things to work into the garden beds. One of those was a cheap green grape plant from WalMart if I remember correctly. I knew it would be quite awhile before it produced anything, and was unusually (for me) patient with it.

Well, this year it produced! There were four clusters of grapes on the low lying plant, and periodically I'd taste one and realize they were nowhere near ready to pick. This past week, it seemed like they were ready - some of the grapes were even turning a bit brown. I tasted one, and hey, not too bad! So in a panick (because of some going bad), I cut all the clusters from the plant.


Well, while they sure do LOOK good, they're a bit sour for my taste, AND it turns out they're seeded. Blech. These aren't nearly as big as the grapes you normally get at the grocery store - much smaller...but I think that's how they're supposed to be.


However, considering the tartness and tough skin, along with the seeds, I think I've decided I'm going to wait til the plant goes dormant this fall and gift it to a coworker/friend. I might go ahead and replace it with some nicer, seedless grapes, which I already have picked out in a catalog (Stark Bros is running at 20% discount right now!) And this time around, I'll be MUCH more aware of what I'm planting, and can have more control since there are so many offerings... Sure, it'll be a couple more years before there's anything to harvest, but that's alright...this stuff just takes patience.

You want it HOW hot?

One of the places I keep finding myself lingering in the garden is by the pepper plants. I tend to avoid the tomatoes - that's been such a disappointment this year that I don't even like looking at them much. Either the plants are dying or the weeds are crazy or the tomatoes seem like they won't ripen or they rot instead. Blah.

But the peppers! Oh the peppers!

The peppers are doing so well that the plants are getting bent over with the weight. I planted them sort of close to each other, reading quite some time back that they like to "touch shoulders" - I guess this is to shade the lower parts of the plants (or perhaps the peppers themselves?). Whatever the reasoning in, my plants are TOTALLY touching shoulders, and they've got marigolds interplanted with them, and they just keep cranking out more peppers and it's just amazing.

I know, I know, shut up about the peppers, right?

Sorry - not gonna happen!

I decided I wanted to do SOMETHING more with them than just pick off one here or there for a recipe....and so it was time to start harvesting and putting some away.... Since I don't want to take TOO much from the sweet peppers just yet, I decided to pick jalapenos, serrano and cayenne peppers (and some called Kung Pao, which I honestly believe are a variety of cayenne?). So I grabbed a mixing bowl, picked maybe 1/4 of the jalapenos from the plants, put an overgrown chard leaf to keep 'em separate from the serranos (which sometimes look like jalapenos on a diet to me), and then picked serranos (maybe 1/4 of what's on the plants) and cayenne (not EVEN 1/4 of what's on the plants!)

Turns out it was over 3lbs of peppers!!! It may not look like much, but trust me...it's alotta peppers!


Rather than make a mess or fume up the kitchen, I took a cutting board and knife out to the deck and got to work. I should've timed myself! Here's all the peppers, chopped up nicely. I love how just a few have turned red - what a beautiful contrast with the intense green!


Knowing there's no way we'll ever want more than just a little of the hot peppers at anyone time, and not wanting to deal with a big frozen block of hot peppers, I cut FoodSaver bags into smaller sizes (the 8" wide roll was getting cut into three strips), sealed the cut edges, filled 'em and sealed 'em. Thankfully Brett offered to help, and he volunteered for bag-making rather than dealing with touching the hot peppers.


There's a gallon bag filled with a BUNCH of little FoodSaver vaccu bags of peppers, with each bag containing maybe 2-3 peppers worth of just one variety. That used up maybe a third of all the peppers I chopped up, so I dumped the remaining chopped peppers into 1-gallon zip lock bags, each variety in their own bag, and frozen 'em as is. I need to break 'em up and make sure there's no big chunks of frozen peppers we won't be able to separate when needed.

If anyone has recommendations on how to better store peppers, please share! Right now we're using A LOT of plastic bags. I'm considering making chipotles this fall - wait til most of the jalapenos turn red, then smoke and dry them. To do this I'll want to look into getting a dehydrator probably.... I wonder if any of the other peppers benefit from smoking/drying, or just drying?

Hello Pretty

Well helloooooo there. You're new around here aren't you? I KNOW I haven't seen the likes of you here in the neighborhood....and yet there you are, right in my backyard.


What say I help you slip out of those clothes, and make you a little more comfortable. And, what's this? You brought a friend? Well, ok, sure - if that's how you like to play....but your friend seems a little shy...maybe they need to loosen up a little?


Yeeeeeah, that's more like it! Hm, I see that you two have some very distinct differences from each other...and yet you seem like you come from the same family.


You say your name is Mirai? That's a pretty name... What say I drop, er, help you in a nice hot sauna for a few minutes, and then we'll talk about dinner. Are you hungry? I sure am!


Ok, in all seriousness, these two luscious ears of corn were THE FIRST picked this year. These were the three year old seeds that I had little hope for, but then had nearly FIFTY of them sprout while wrapped in damp paper towel, as I tested to see if it was worth dedicating garden space to them. Great! Only then we had all that rain and cold weather after I planted them, and most rotted off in the ground. Thankfully about a dozen or so stalks survived, and it seems most should offer up one to two ears of corn. YUMMY!

Brett and I both agreed that these were SUPER tender! How could they not be - they were off the stalks MAYBE 15 minutes before getting tossed in the pot to steam. I suppose they could've been a LITTLE sweeter, but maybe they just wanted to stay on the stalk a little longer. Don't get me wrong - they were GOOD and they were sweet - just not SUPER sweet. Trust me - that's NOT a complaint!

I think we might be having corn again tonite! ;-)

This is what evil looks like...

Juvenile squash bugs in various stages of molting... Ugh, it gives me the creepy crawlies just seeing 'em.


I gently picked off the dying leaf, having only a few drop off in the garden, took it down to the pond, and THREW! Unfortunately the wind kept it "on shore" in the weeds, but I know I saw a few fling off into the water. Hopefully the fish snatched 'em right up. Looks like I might be using some Garden Dust this weekend...

Do you want to date my avatar?

Ahhhh...this makes me miss my days of WoW!

And just let me say - Felicia Day ROCKS!

Leftover pasta salad

After the big "semi-local foods" cookout, there was a fair mix of leftovers. I was getting tired of eating the same old thing just a day or so later, so I decided to try something different.

We had a bunch of the leftover grilled mixed veggies (bell pepper, hot pepper, eggplant, squash, onions).

We had some leftover caprese salad (mixed tomato slices, fresh mozzarella, basil leaves).

And we had leftover wonderfully blanched green beans - they were barely crisp, but still had their color.

So I boiled up some pasta and threw all the goodies together, then added just a little sugar, veggie oil and cider vinegar....yum! I think it looked - and tasted - pretty good!

LMAO!

Oh Martha - you need more fun stuff like this out there!

A quick visit

Some more pics from Peter and Conrad's recent visit. Unfortunately, I wasn't a very good photographer (I was a bit distracted for a variety of reasons), but we did manage to get a few pics.

Here's Sunday morning when they came over for their last visit. Look through the railing - that's me holding Doogie back. He was soooo excited to have visitors, and Peter and Conrad put up with his puppy-enthusiasm very well!


Saturday, before the cookout, we hit a variety of local places including Hilgerts, Chick-Fil-A, Kriegers and Viking Vineyards. Peter had never had whoopie pie before, and they had 'em for sale at Krieger's, so we HAD to pick up a pack of them. Trust me - they are NOT a healthy snack. I'm sure the filling is mostly Crisco.


Well Peter, what did you think?


Here's Doogie checking on Brett. It LOOKS like Doogie's assuming Brett sad because Peter and Conrad are leaving, but it's more likely that Brett's just sad he's outside, where the bugs live.


Peter was real enthusiastic about my gone-to-seed cilantro. I've decided to just let it go, and once it dries a bit more on the plant, I'll harvest the seeds for planting next year and/or cooking. I'm sure some will reseed themselves in place - and I'm totally ok with that!


See Conrad? Shove your face down in it - coriander! LOL Maybe I should send some of the seeds along to Peter for cooking?


Unfortunately, Peter and Conrad's visit was way too short, and had a lot of distractions (partly my own fault with the cookout and bug bite), but we sure had a lot of fun with them visiting. I know we look forward to having them visit again sometime soon!

His cup spilleth over

Brett recently provided a new kitty gift...something like this does NOT go unappreciated!


"Does holding my arm out like this make me look less crammed in here? (Ok, I'll be honest - there just wasn't room for the arm)"


You know when there's something coveted so much as a too-small box, more than one kitty WILL want it.


Doogie to Tucker: "Dude - yer fat! You've got a bad case of muffin top!"


Uh oh - is this the "I'm gonna throw up!! Hold my hair!!" look?


Oh thank goodness - just a yawn!