May Week 2 -- Time to get busy in the garden!
hazelinok
13 days ago
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This week's blooms, 2nd week of May
Comments (4)Plantmaven: a few hours and 2 cans of krylon and you can have a rainbarrel almost any color under the sun. I also use (for clients) a local company that paints their barrels slightly differently. They use a krylon primer but then paint the barrel - exactly matching the house and they make nifty custom risers for the barrels too. This works well for my clients in historic districts or those with HOA's. I wish I could get a nicer riser for mine. Even just the right size cement without mish-mashing a bunch of odd pieces. If they all looked flat and plain I could simply paint them out purple to match! Schoolhouse, there is some way you are supposed to crank (or whatever) the hinges on these gates to tighten them, however I have no tool or knowledge of how to do that (I guess I should google it!!!). The posts stayed up well, it's just the silly hardware....See MoreWeek 4, May 2017, General Garden Talk
Comments (102)I laughed so hard about you canning outdoors on the propane burners, Amy. Had to read that one to GDW. We both got a good laugh. Thank you! :) GDW says, "And the bottom line is, 'I DON"T WANT TO!;" I must say, the first two were enough to convince me I wouldn't be doing that. Maybe my mode of gardening is work really hard one day, do nothing the next, as I am exhausted tonight. I will be in bed by 12:30, which is a reasonable time for me. Up early for church. . . then into dirty jeans (I swear I could stand these jeans up at the end of every day and they'd stand on their own, and still, I insist on wearing them at LEAST two days of heavy yard work and sometimes 3). I feel like a bit of a degenerate cooking dinner in my filthy jeans and T shirts, but I do, honest, wash my face and hands and arms first. Just call me Pigpen. When GDW and I first reconnected 3 yrs ago in August, I looked just like this, as I was slaving all week in jeans moving my Mom into assisted living in Buffalo Wy. But the next time he saw me a month later, he visited me at my "contemporary" condo in Mpls, and I was in dress uniform, hair fixed, a minor bit of make-up, semi-dressy slacks and tops, nails done.. He must have been scared to death wondering who in the heck I was. My condo (that I had just moved into 4 months earlier) was a very cool contemporary eclectic mix, with off-white carpeting, and wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling paintings (of mine) ranging from small to large, mostly abstract. His jaw dropped, and I laughed pretty hard. . . I think at first he was pretty sure he'd made a terrible mistake. . . that I wasn't who he thought I was or who he remembered. (But I knew he was wrong, and have since proven it. LOL) Ahh. But I DID bring my wonderful bamboo floor lamp and Oriental writing desk and very cool custom couch (that I bought on Craigs list for $200) and wonderful large framed print sumi ink black stallion for my new home here, AND ALL my quilting fabric (which was one round trip for him before I moved, hauling back many boxes of fabric in the truck) AND all the painting supplies and classical music CDs! And the severely pruned collection of books. And now I'm Pigpen, and am quite comfortable and happy, happy as a pig rolling in mud. And he is mightily relieved, as you can imagine. I don't cost him much. No nails done, no expensive hair appointments, no clothes, prefer home cooking (and he prefers my home cooking). Work like a son-of-a-gun in the yard, don't ask him for help but if he offers I accept. I'm a cheap date and good bargain. And I'm even "kind of religious," to boot. He told me a couple months into our reunion, in the interest of full disclosure, "Umm, I have to tell you I'm kind of religious." I laughed, surprised and delighted, and said, "Ha! Well, I'll tell ya, I'm kinda religious, too." So now a friend just dumped 3 bags of sand plums on me at church this morning. And I've got to deal with those on Tuesday. Need to go to town to get some small jars. AGGHH. I really have no idea how you all do all the stuff you do! I love growing the stuff. But canning? OMG. Freezing, no prob. (I see a new freezer in our near future.) Onions, potatoes, good to go. Tomatoes, peppers, no problem. I can do those. Sauerkraut. . . okay. Pickles........... now sand plums, and GDW has visions of apple butter and pear stuff. The lady who brought me the sand plums has a bachelor/widowed? neighbor who is a jam and jelly, pickle-canning freak, and has all these wonderful exotic specialties. I told GDW tonight that he could do that; after all, he concocts the hummingbird nectar with great precision every 3-4 days. Know what? He didn't tell me I was crazy. He said well maybe he could do that if he didn't get the stuff cloudy.. . . .. . oh my gosh......... Gotta get the tomatoes staked up better tomorrow, finish clearing and enlarging this enormous southeast "bee balm/cleome/daisy/coreopsis" back bed, relocating many flowers and herbs that heretofore were IDKs or inappropriate for their locations, and do the laundry. . . and if time, to mulch mulch mulch. GDW is on a rock border mission. He confessed to me today that where our utility easement "alley" is, he'd long thought of digging up rocks there so he could mow it instead of tediously weed whip it. But it's hard work. . . . to state it mildly; and he didn't know what he'd do with any reasonably sized rocks he might run into, so he never did anything about it. But now he realized he could make rock borders around all my beds, so that's what he's tackling--and I'm here to tell you all it's a heroic mission. And I'm astonished at the difference it makes with the beds. It makes them look "finished," like they actually are a plan (which they never were!). I spent 5 hours today with my best loved new tool for decimating Bermuda grass, the hori-hori (tedious, yes, but ever so effective). digging it out of an area about 8x10 feet. Meanwhile, GDW had uncovered at least a dozen 20-60 lb rocks from his utility easement alley. And so it goes with our chores. I do all the little doo-dad stuff, while he's out performing miracles. I do laundry and vacuum, and meanwhile he has put in new shocks on the truck. It doesn't seem fair that I do all this little insignificant stuff (which to me is nothing) while he's performing miracles, but it's working out so NICE. Well I've rattled on far too long. . . and how little of it had to do with gardening. I was so overwhelmed with all the "little" things I have to do out in the gardens tonight that I told him just to take all the rocks away, plow it under and let it go to the weed lawn again. And we both laughed, knowing that's not gonna happen. Kim. . . thinking of you. . . my pioneer woman. BTW, found your friend on the internet, who does the pepper seeders. . . wonderful reading about her. Would love to get a couple pepper seeders and your sachets when you get them ready....See MoreFebruary 2019, Week 2, Planting Time Is So Close....And, Yet, So Far
Comments (60)Kim, Prayers for fast healing for you. Bon, Where would we be without our beloved OK Mesonet? It has all the most helpful info in so many different formats. I just love it. I'm glad Bill made it home in time to chop wood. Hopefully that wood will keep the stove fed and keep you all toasty warm. Maybe you coulda/woulda/shoulda been chopping wood, but we know that it wouldn't feed your soul the way that gardening does, so we totally get it. Your wind chill was bad and it was bad so much earlier than ours. The cold front didn't make it this far south until tonight, but we're plenty chilly now. Megan, If you need some time to just chill, then allow yourself to do that. I think when our bodies are telling us what it needs, we need to listen. With a three day weekend, you should have adequate time for chilling and seed starting. Enjoy your holiday weekend. dbarron, Maybe the cat and dog were just playing and neither is too much of a fraidy cat? I'm glad you got the car into the garage so you won't have to chisel ice off the windshield later. The plants don't seem as bothered by the cold as we do. I guess that's because they are out in it 24/7 and are somewhat better adapted to it perhaps. Rebecca, I hope the procedure went well and that you and your mom made it home just fine. Y'all, the models look like somebody is going to get some snow next week, but I do not necessarily think it will hit many of us unless something changes. We have an unexpected, last-minute bonus weekend with the older granddaughter this week as her dad is unavailable for his weekend with her. Well, his loss is our gain and we're going to enjoy having her here with us, though she might climb the walls a little bit without her little sis around to play with. Of course, we can do things we don't do when little sis is here, like maybe go to a more mature movie (something not G-rated) or to a restaurant that little sis doesn't like. Tomorrow will be just her day and she's already voiced her opinion on where we should eat lunch. : ) Before they called to see if she could come stay with us, I had thought I might do a little plant shopping or something tomorrow but I think instead we'll do something she'll enjoy. It still is pretty chilly to be buying plants, especially since the cold weather doesn't want to go away. I'm ready to do some gardening, but the weather isn't really right for it yet, especially with the persistently soggy soil. Dawn...See MoreMay 2020, Week 2
Comments (70)Kim, That is too funny. Our older granddaughter won't eat hot dogs at all (perhaps she correctly suspects they are mystery meat) but the 5-year-old loves them. Because I enjoy William Woys Weavers heirloom vegetable books so much, I read some of his books on historical PA cooking, and tried to gain an appreciation for the food of Tim's ancestors. I think I failed. Tim's great, great-grandfather came to America from County Cork , Ireland, in the 1800s. Since we know that the Irish ate lots of potatoes, that is the form of historical Irish cooking I'm good at---growing and cooking potatoes, and of course, eating them. I don't think Tim ever was a fan of traditional PA cooking. Luckily for him, because his parents both worked in the 1960s and beyond, they had a part-time housekeeper who at least started dinner most nights and had it either fully cooked or ready to pop into the oven when they got home from school (his mom was a teacher) and work, and Mrs. P. prepared a lot of ethnic food for them---mainly Polish and Italian, so that is the sort of stuff Tim likes to this day. Sadly, I don't cook Polish style food and don't even know how, though he has tried to explain to me some of the dishes he remembers, but he and I both prepare a lot of Italian food. I keep thinking I'll make him some of Mrs. P's 'pigs in blankets', also called something that sounds like halupki though I am unclear on the spelling, which are not the pigs in blankets (hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll dough and cooked) we grew up eating in Texas a few decades ago. They are some sort of meat and other stuff wrapped in and cooked in cabbage leaves. The main Mrs. P. recipe that Tim and his sisters taught me in the 1980s or 1990s was for homemade Stromboli. Hmmm. Just thinking about Mrs. P's Stromboli makes me want to make some. Perhaps I'll do that this weekend and teach the kids how to make it. They love learning to cook, especially the 5 year old. She takes great pride in helping with each meal, and loves making homemade pizza, so she probably would enjoy making and eating Stromboli, as long as we put pepperoni in it, which we always do. Last night's BLT sandwiches were a huge hit with the girls. They told me they already had had BLT sandwiches at home with Chris and Jana, using their own home-grown lettuce but with store-bought tomatoes. I assured them that BLTs are even tastier when made with home-grown tomatoes, and they seemed to agree. I tried to make the meal as traditionally southern as I could by serving southern peas with snaps and bacon, corn, fried apples and sweet tea. If I'd had more time and a can of creamed corn I would have made corn casserole instead of just regular canned corn. I think that this afternoon it will be too cold for swimming---roughly ten degrees cooler than the last two days, so we will need a project. After spending 4 hours per day in the pool the last two days, the girls may have swimming pool withdrawal today. I'm thinking we'll teach them how to make home-made ice cream the old-fashioned southern way from scratch. It will be too wet, obviously, to do any lawn or garden work, and there's more rain in the forecast for today. We were mostly missed by yesterday's storms, at least in the sense that nothing stalled over us and dropped several inches of rain or any hail either, so we just had a normal thunderstorm and are not suffering from flooding like so many people a couple of counties north of us. I understand that at one point Paul's Valley had a foot of water in the streets yesterday after receiving several inches of rain in a very short time frame. Tim had to run on two weather-related fire calls---a single-vehicle rollover on the interstate at the height of our heaviest rain, and then a lightning-caused fire a few hours later after we'd already gone to bed. Really, though, the rain was just a mild disruption here. The air feels so cool and inviting today outdoors compared to the higher heat and higher humidity we have had the last couple of days, and I'm hoping the rain maybe knocked down a lot of the pollen that was in the air. Jennifer, Ugh. Our mom made us eat liver when she made it. I thoroughly hated it and mostly chewed it endlessly as her liver was always incredibly tough (my mom overcooked all meat except for roast beef and fried chicken) and then discreetly buried the chewed liver in my paper napkin in my nap until I could convince her that I'd eaten enough of it to be allowed to leave the table. Walking to McD's wasn't an option for us as it was probably 5 miles away. Tim likes liver and onions and I prepared them once for him early in our marriage. He loved them and I told him that if he ever wanted to eat them again, he could prepare them himself because just looking at raw liver and cooking it turned my stomach. I haven't cooked liver and onions since, and I think he's only prepared it once or twice. My parents mostly used commercially canned vegetables too when I was a kid, and maybe that's why I don't like them. Once I was out on my own and could prepare fresh produce, or could use frozen produce, I really didn't buy and use many canned veggies, and I don't even like to can most of them. I prefer frozen-fresh-from-the-garden produce so much more when I am preserving and cooking produce we have grown. We do have quite a lot of commercially canned veggies right now because I stocked up on them when the corona virus was in China and I was preparing for possible supply chain disruptions. Costco sells several basic veggies by the case, so that was what I bought and what we have been eating. I just try to dress them up when I cook them. I remember that horrible chow mein from a can. My mom hated cooking, so tried to spend as little time as possible doing it, so we got all sorts of junk like that for meals. She was all into convenience meals that took as little time as possible to prepare. On the weekends my dad would cook, glorious southern home cooking every time, and we all pigged out on his meals on the weekends. My mom could have cooked that way because her mom certainly did, but she didn't like to cook so she didn't bother. She also didn't like sandwiches, so never made them for us. My dad made me a sandwich for my school lunch every day, but I don't remember mom ever making us one. I was shocked when I reached middle school age and realized how many of my friends ate sandwiches every single day, both at home and at school. Sandwiches were not something we kids in our family grew up eating, which now just seems weird to me. Ditto on meals using garden produce. My dad could harvest stuff from the garden and turn it into a meal in the blink of an eye. He'd chop up potatoes, onions, peppers and okra and pour them into cast iron skilled filled with bacon drippings. Then he'd drizzle corn meal right over the sop, add chopped-up raw bacon, nad stir-fry it all together and serve it hot. It was a delicious meal. He also fried okra the traditional way all the time. One thing he never did was stir together okra and tomatoes and cook them as a side dish. He had no love for slimey okra, and neither do I. I like to slice okra, drizzle it with oil and roast it, sprinkle a few herbs on it and then eat it fresh. We call this roasted okra okra chips. Beck's Big Buck okra is ideal for this because the pods are big and wide and fat. Nancy, We never ate casseroles growing up, so I didn't even know what they were until I became an adult and had a friend who used them a lot to stretch a little meat to go a long way while she was a young mom who still was a college student and had a family to feed on a tight budget. I liked her casseroles but they were like foreign food to me. Traditional southern cooking tends to be heavily flavored with spices and herbs, perhaps to make up for some of the cheap food that often comprises southern meals. I think the theory is that you just keep adding more flavor to it until you make it tasty. Just last night Lillie was talking about eating pickled pigs feet with her Great-Grandmother on her mom's side of the family. She liked them when she was little, she says, because she didn't know any better. Now she thinks the idea of pickling pigs feet and eating them is gross. I told her I could buy her some pickled pigs feet at the Fischer Meat Market in Muenster and she assured me that it was not necessary. Just remember that I offered to keep Grandma Ruth's tradition alive. Sadly they lost Grandma Ruth in December. With regard to shell beans and shell southern peas, I think the southern peas have an earthier flavor. I like shelled southern peas more than shelley snap beans in general, and usually harvest and prepare the snap beans as green beans. It seems to me that people like Tim who grew up in the northeast eat a lot more shelley snap beans than people who grow up in the south---maybe because our fresh green bean season is so short in the south. Amy, Your story about chitlins reminds me of high school. It was the late 1970s and our high school offered elective courses like "Black American History", "Mexican American History", etc. and a lot of us took them as juniors and seniors to fill our school day. For "Black American History" we drew group project assignments (for a team of two) from a hat and the assignment that my friend and I drew was to prepare and serve, to our class of about 15 people, a traditional soul food meal. We were in a panic because we really didn't know what soul food was. After doing research, I calmed down because it turned out I had grown up on a lot of white soul food that was not very different from black soul food. This was a revelation to me---but then I realized that if you came from a traditionally poor southern background, you were eating the same foods basically prepared the same way no matter the color of your skin. It was more of a new thing for my classmate whose family was more upwardly mobile and didn't eat what we then jokingly referred to as white trash southern cooking. We did make a dazzling soul food meal that our classmates enjoyed and we liked doing it and eating the meal. We did not, however, make chitlins. We did make crackin' corn bread and collards, among other things. A lot of historical southern food, whether prepared by slaves back in the day or by poor white southern subsistence farmers (aka as sharecroppers) like my dad's family were about the same thing, though I didn't realize that until I was in high school. It was all about using every single part of the animal or plant because you didn't have enough food to waste any part of it. My aunts on my dad's side could can anything and they did, including green weeds, and they did that because that canned poke sallet or canned lambsquarters might be the one thing you had that helped you survive the long winter's non-gardening season without going meal-less. They did grow greens and such in the winter as the weather allowed, but it was hard to raise enough in the Dust Bowl years to keep a large family fed and alive. I learned a lot from them, but never acquired my dad's family's fondness for pickling every single food item known to mankind and then eating it. Our family gatherings always seemed to include about 15 kinds of vegetable pickles of all kinds, which seemed excessive to us children of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. That's how they ate though because they always pickled so many veggies when they were relying 99% on the food they could grow. Our lives are so much simpler nowadays by comparison and we are so spoiled. I still try to grow and preserve as much of our food as possible, but I don't do it in hugely excessive amounts like I did 10 or 20 years ago. There is no reason to put up three years' worth of produce every single year, but it took me a long time to learn that. I need to get off the computer and get busy before the girls wake up. Dawn...See Moreslowpoke_gardener
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