Blue's Garden

Amongst a certain collection of people, in relation to Person of Interest, there has developed the catchphrase, "Hey, remember that time Harold panicked and stole a baby?!" Which has been on repeat in my brain because I've been feeling a certain kinship with Harold today, although my panic was considerably more vegetable related than infantile, and the reasons were 100% less life threatening. Ridiculous situations created by momentary panic, is the point. Mine would go more like, "Hey, remember that time Blue panicked and planted 492 tomato and pepper seeds?!"

The worst part is, having regained my senses, I still have every intention of starting more tomatoes tomorrow. Assuming I can get up to Toledo for different seed varieties than what was available locally (without Jack destroying anything from inside his crate while I'm gone*).

( No, there's a perfectly logical explanation why I would start more, stick with me. )

( The New Additions )

* Yes, the tray started out inside the crate, under the blanket and padding. The piece of mail shown and a few others were on top the quilt. He has been much better behaved than this on all other occasions - D had the seriously poor judgment to get a very well rested Jack very excited by letting him sniff a small rabbit, take him on a 5 minute amble outside, and then stick him in his crate for 2 hours. Blue was Not Pleased.

On the other hand, I went to town today and returned to find River running loose because I left the gate open to the outside pup's pen as well as the dog door. And that was on top of this morning, when I was trying to give Jack some fresh air by tying him out with his leash and harness, only to turn around 5 minutes later and discover he'd wriggled out of said harness and was off wandering around. YOU'D THINK WE WERE NEW AT THIS.

Calibra storage onions, Red Wing red onions, and pretty Rossa di Milano seeds (hopefully) germinating under the slight additional warmth of plant lights. With temporary labels because I forgot to dig mine out and it was raining when I actually put the seeds in.

Why isn't it summer yet? Grow faster! Wait, no, don't do that, the weather's ridiculous and the garden's a swamp. Argh.

A Bowl of Galas

( A few more images, including 170 pounds of apples on my kitchen table. )

Had my hair chopped off today. I thought it was going to be about 5 - 6 inches (12.7 - 15.4 cm) to take it from the middle of my shoulder blades to my hair/jaw line, but it ended up being 8 inches (20.3 cm). Yay short hair again!

Then I went and picked apples at a new-to-me orchard. Which I will probably elaborate on tomorrow, but I am wiped out at the moment. A while ago I was thinking that I should really go running, but man am I tired, and all I did was get my hair cut and pick apples, yeah? It was a longer drive, sure, but...

Then I weighed the apples I brought home.

Turns out there's 170 pounds (77.1 kg) of apples on my table, along with the 6 gallons of cider in the outside fridge and when you factor in the driving and the sun and, oh, that's why I'm tired. (To be fair, I only picked about 109 pounds - 49.4 kg - off the trees. The rest came pre-picked, but they all had to be moved to the car and then inside, in varying increments. Then there was a bag that had its handle break, so there was apple chasing, too.)

I've been pondering D's reaction when he arrives home to our latest fruit acquisition. I've concluded that I really shouldn't be allowed to go apple/peach/pear picking unsupervised and, if he doesn't know that by now, then he hasn't been paying any attention. So, obviously, this is his fault.

Jack: "I don't care if it's cleaning day. You can't have my pillow."

(He let me have it. Eventually. Now everything is clean, the laundry is all done, and the only thing left is dishes later this evening. Woot! \o/)

We picked for almost 3 1/2 hours today, which is crazy talk in this heat, but came home with 14 pounds or so of berries - about 1 1/2 flats and 2 pints. This is less than last year, and slower picking too, but it was hot. Also, humid. It's mostly black raspberries, but there were 2 pints of reds in there, which is the same as last year. There's already a batch bagged in the freezer, another layer freezing on a cookie sheet to go in to bag, and a batch on the stove in the steam juicer with a future in jelly. The leftovers from the juicing (pulp and seeds) will go into a gallon jar with plain white vinegar to steep for a few weeks, then be strained and bottled.

The 14 pounds really isn't going to be enough - we'll probably make a trip back next week for another 2 flats (full this time?) and more red raspberries. NOM NOM NOM. Of course, at the end of the week there's still cherry picking (and processing) to be accomplished with both sweet and sour available for U-pick at the orchard.

I ♥ Summer. :P

River's summer itches have kicked in and she's been sickly the last couple of days besides. Last night I discovered that she'd chewed a raw spot on her tail, so I doped her up on Benadryl. (We were just celebrating that she still has fur on her butt, too. *sigh*) She does seem to be feeling a bit better today, though, on both counts, so I haven't given her any more yet.

Meanwhile, there's a load of laundry drying on the line. I carted it out there at about 10am, only to stop short when confronted with half a dozen swallows, two of which were staring at me while the rest ignored me completely. I blinked. A couple preened their feathers. Finally, I said, "Okay, kids, I really do need to hang up the laundry." For a minute, I thought I was going to have to fight them for it. That or they were going to swoop in and start hanging it for me while singing "Cinderelly! Cinderelly!"

Earlier this morning, while the pups were yipping excitedly over a bunny trail, I discovered a female pumpkin flower having unsupervised relations with some bugs. Gasp! Normally, the night before, I tape closed any female flowers set to open the next morning. Early the next day, I carefully open them up, hand pollinate them with a couple of male flowers, then tape them closed again. Pumpkins crossbreed readily over long distances, so this ensures that the Baby Pam pumpkins are actually Baby Pam and that I can save the seeds for next year with no worries. I usually check over the plants in the evening for any female flowers, but, obviously, this one slipped by my notice. I think I caught it early enough, but once it starts to grow, I'll mark it and not save the seeds, just in case.

The empty space in the rest of the garden continues to mock me, but what's out there is mostly healthy. The tomatoes are chipperly setting a lot of fruit, the pepper plants are small but determined, the melons are due for their first attachment to the trellis, and the potatoes are looking good. I started some more melons and watermelons in the greenhouse and they're really enjoying the heat. Today I need to tie up and trim the tomatoes, particularly the cherry varieties that are making their usual bid for world domination. Also to be done in the garden: planting the last of the dry beans, planting more carrots and lettuce, and to start planning the fall planting.

Inside, I have a couple pounds of stew beef to use. I'm thinking beef for beef-and-noodles in the crock pot and then some beef stew for the freezer. Yesterday, I had some cooking apples that I needed to do something with, so 2 of the 3 went into whole wheat apple spice bread. The recipe calls for half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour, but I went for all whole wheat. This was the home ground stuff, though. I don't know that I'd try it with the store flour quite so readily. The batter was very thick and I had my doubts, but it turned out just fine. Yum! Now I need to go look up recipes for pesto to put all that basil growing in the garden to use.

Now if I just didn't feel like I was forgetting something...

*I don't have time to think up a title. Jack is entirely impatient. He's been giving me the puppy dog eyes and whining for at least 20 minutes to go outside. Never mind that he'll realize it's still too hot and end up bored in something like 5 minutes. :)

A few pics below the cut of Thing1 and Thing2. A couple from last Thursday, taken while running about the yard (until the mosquitoes threatened to eat me anyway), and a few from a walk in the woods. (As usual now days, you can click on the picture to get a larger version.)

( Beagles in the Wild )

(Now I suppose that I'd better go escort Jack outside.)

The Tony Awards: Possibly Too Much Awesome for One Stage
Neil Patrick Harris' opening number, Broadway, Not Just for Gays Anymore!, and Hugh Jackman & NPH's Dueling Hosts.

Blue: Kick-Ass, Obviously
I made two things today that I've not made before and I'll say tentatively that they seem to have turned out. The first was a small batch of strawberry vanilla jam - very small, as in I only used about 1 1/3 quarts of strawberries. I'm working on the concept that you do not actually need to go big or go home and that trying new recipes should be done on a smaller scale than, say, enough for the entire year. I used vanilla bean paste instead of actual beans, but that was my only change to the recipe at the link. The jars are still setting up, so the taste is pending.

The other thing was lemon curd. I have to have eaten it at some point, but I honestly couldn't tell you when or where, so it was a pretty new experience. Making it is essentially identical to the main concept of making a custard (tempering the egg yolks, then thickening), and a lot of ice cream recipes call for making a custard as the base, so this was an excellent stepping stone to getting over my utterly irrational mental block to using my ice cream maker. I amalgamated 3 recipes, so I'll just write it out here.

( Lemon Curd Recipe )
The lemon curd was so easy to make! Which I knew on one level, but I just needed to dive in and do it so that it lost that intimidation level. Next up: vanilla ice cream! Then I can try out other flavors.

All of this is also making me excited for the imminent black raspberry season. I checked the local raspberry farm's website today and it looks like they'll be ready about June 25th. Less than two weeks! D finished up the last of the black raspberry jam a couple of months ago, so he should be happy about it too. We'll be cutting way back on cherries and peaches this year, but definitely picking more raspberries. (I really want to try making a black raspberry and sage jam at some point.) NOM.

Not surprisingly, we went from very cold and rainy weather to really damn hot. I am the world's slowest gardener this week - so far only the tomatoes are in and the potatoes are planted. The tomatoes involve digging holes, putting down fabric weed barrier, actually putting the tomatoes in, and setting stakes. There's 6 of them I'd still like to put some square cages on, but said cages are not yet constructed so that remains theoretical, and they all still need actually tied to the stakes. The potatoes... I ended up using twice as much space as I planned on and that was with only a few inches of spacing between them. Whoops. I'm trying not to think too much about having to hill up that large a section over the next month to month and a half.

I've been setting the alarm for 7:00 AM in order to get up and get some work in before it's too hot, then taking a long siesta until evening when I can venture outside again. The heat index for today is 100+°F (37.78°C) and, at 4:30 PM, it's still pretty brutal out there with only the lightest sniff of a breeze from time to time. I'm going to have to move the alarm back to 6:00, or even 5:30, AM as 7 just isn't early enough once you figure in actual waking up, eating food, and becoming coherent! D's suggested setting up an outside light for working later into the evening and I might give that a go here soon just so I can make some progress.

The mosquito population apparently spent the entire month of May breeding as there are now 30 million of them for every square mile foot.

On a completely different note, we have hot water! Granted, at this point, we could probably just sit the kettles outside and they'd boil faster than on the stove (yes, I know I'm exaggerating *g*), but having it come out of the tap is a lot more convenient. For a while yesterday we had hot water but no water pressure, which was not an improvement, particularly since I needed to water the very thirsty tomato and greenhouse plants. That didn't happen until this morning, but last night I was able to take a bath! Without having to heat kettles and pots of water first - an awesome and sorely missed luxury.

The next thing to hopefully be up and running is the tractor, otherwise known as the oversized lawn mower. It's been one of those series of events where one thing is fixed and then they find something else broken, so it's been on the verge of being fixed for a week now. Meanwhile, parts of the 'yard' are up to my waist. On the one hand, I really don't care because grass does little for me and I'm perfectly happy with wildlife habitat. On the other hand, we keep losing the pups; being scent hounds, they think nothing of the fact that they can't see more than a few inches in front of their noses and chipperly plunge right on in. The heat being the way it is, they're only outside for 10 minutes at a time anyway, but the temperature is supposed to drop later this week and it's going to make keeping an eye on them considerably more complicated.

Speaking of wildlife habitat, ( look what mama robin had hatch this morning: )