Category Archives: Food

Peppers

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Our first big harvest of peppers. It includes Chinese Five Color, Serrano and Jasmyn Rissie. They are all hot peppers. We also got a few sweet Jimmy Nardello and Doe Hill. They aren’t in the photo because I only canned the hot peppers.
New York Ironweed growing in our meadow down by the creek.
Jewelweed grows down there as well.
We had heavy rain again this past Saturday night. It wasn’t as bad as two weeks ago but some of the same places downtown flooded AGAIN!
This photo shows our creek much higher than normal.

Cabbage!

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Starting first with a foggy morning photo of the barn garden. The elderberries are blooming and the onions are ready for fresh picking. We’ll harvest all of them in about a month.
The cabbage is under the row cover in the kitchen garden. It protects them from the cabbage moths.
Making kraut from the two we harvested. Just cabbage, garlic scapes and salt.
This little Northern Red Oak was growing in an awkward spot so we moved it to the backyard. It doubled in size in about a month – a fast grower.

Cool Spring

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It’s been a beautiful, long, cool spring. While so many others have been bored during this stay at home spring due to COVID-19, I found myself busier than ever. It’s been nice being outside tending my garden with temperature mostly in the 50’s and 60’s during the day. I have a lot of photos to share.

March 31
a lone tulip among the Virginia bluebells
pear tree blossoms
We have since had a couple of frosts so I’m not sure we will have any fruit this year.
April 1
I made elderberry syrup from some elderberries I dried a couple of years ago. Hoping to regulate my immune system.
April 5
I’ve been making face masks for family, friends and Damian’s coworkers at FedEx. It takes me about one hour and 15 minutes to make two masks and I try to make two every evening. I also made my sister a couple of scrub caps because she has been involved in COVID testing at her hospital.
April 7
I guess most of my posts include a photo of Darcy and or Frida. They play though not in the way Darcy wants to. Basically, Frida stares at Darcy and twitches her tail and Darcy goes wild in a ‘why won’t you play with me’ kind of way.
April 8
Violets and dandelions – pretty weeds.
I don’t mind them in the grass – I just don’t want them in my flower beds because they take over.
Our redbuds and dogwood trees bloomed for about a month because of the cool weather. Usually, they bloom for a week or two and then we get a few days in the 80’s and the blooms quickly fade.
A wicked thunderstorm blew through our part of town early this morning. It snapped some of our pine trees.
April 16
We are trying bee keeping again. Not sure I mentioned last year that our two colonies failed. We have high hopes with this one because it seems so robust. It was nice of our friend, Sue, to give us a swarm from one of her colonies.
I’ve spent a lot of time in my potting shed this spring potting up marigolds, tomatoes, peppers and dill. These are my marigolds. Now, a month later, they are twice as big and blooming! I hope to get them in the ground this weekend when it looks like the weather will be in the 70’s and remain that way.
A cleaned up potting shed
April 24
The ferns are so pretty when they first sprout.
As are these heucheras sprouting from a mossy stump.
I thought having grow lights would be a good idea. I had stopped growing peppers and tomatoes from seeds because of moving them inside and out. Having the grow lights only meant that we had bigger and stronger plants to move. I know now that I started them too early.
May 4
I don’t often include a photo of myself.
I’m making hermit cookies to send to my mom for Mother’s Day.
May 8
I think I’ve mentioned before that I love columbine because it looks good from Spring to Fall. It’s really spreading itself around the garden – and patio – so much so that I’ve dug some up from between the brick and transplanted it along with some heuchera and woodland stonecrop into the front yard flower beds.
May 10
Mother’s Day cookout
May 14
Smokey Roo wanted to be included, too!
This rocker is on the top floor of the mudroom. There are two rockers up there and no one sits on them other than the cats.
May 15
A little painting I did in my Perpetual Nature Journal. According to the Humane Society “opossums can be beneficial for your garden, eating snails, slugs, insects and sometimes even small rodents. They’ll even clean up spilled garbage and fruit that has fallen off trees.”

Gardening During the Coronavirus Crisis

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Something new for us this year – growing seedlings under lights. So far it is going well. It definitely beats trying to do it just by a windowsill. This way the seedlings don’t get all leggy. And while you can’t see it, we got a warming mat to put under the pots to help the seeds sprout.
This is in the master bedroom.
These are Chinese Five Color hot peppers. They promise to be a beautiful plant and I plan to put a couple in pots near the house.
We also planted other peppers, tomatoes, dill, marjoram, cosmos and marigolds.
Last week we had some limbs trimmed off the elm tree in the backyard. It had a lot of large broken branches hanging from it from the bad ice storm we had in 2018.
A perk from this was the wood chips the arborists left behind. I used it to cover the cardboard I’d laid down in the kitchen garden a year ago. This is the path. I also finished putting leaf mulch there on the top left of the photo. I hope to put flowers and or native grass there. That area is under the eave so it has to be something that doesn’t mind it dry.
The cardboard was there to kill the grass. I’m trying to reduce the grass, especially in areas where it is difficult to get the lawn mower.
This is a photo I took on February 26. It is the last of the onions we grew in 2019.
Besties

So far, social distancing because of the Coronavirus has been good for our garden. Last week we planted lettuce, carrot and spinach seed. Over the weekend, we planted onions and potatoes.

I should note here that our winter felt like a prolonged spring. Very strange. They say blooms are 3 weeks early this year.

First Snow

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We got a few inches of snow yesterday. It was a pretty snow fall, starting around 9:00 in the morning and tapering off mid afternoon. This is our hawthorn tree in the front yard.
the dogwood
Darcy enjoyed it. Instead of going to the park for a walk in the afternoon, we played with her in the field.
The rosemary loves this spot under the eaves.
It’s even blooming with the mild weather we’ve had the past couple of weeks.
I love how the snow sticks to the coneflower seed heads.
This is the first year one of our three redbud trees produced seed pods. A good sign.
I love how this snow stuck to some of the tree trunks.
Our little American Holly in the backyard has quite a weight to bare
Making nut rolls for my mom.
It was a pleasant snow day.

Making Corn Tortillas

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It probably wasn’t a good idea to make corn tortillas the night before Thanksgiving but we wanted to share it with our kids. I made the ropa vieja (shredded beef), salsa and refried beans ahead of time so that was good. We made the carnitas and rice and, of course, the tortillas that evening. Everyone helped in some way.
Luca and Dave share a dad joke.
When I bought this mixer I never thought I’d use it to grind corn we grew ourselves.
Using a tortilla press to flatten the ball of corn into a tortilla.
We had to nixtamalize the dried corn (bloody butcher, an heirloom variety) first. That involved heating and then soaking it in calcium hydroxide overnight.
Yum. They are very different from store bought tortillas. Heartier and more flavorful.
Dave ground some of the dry corn into cornmeal and I used it for the cornbread and sausage dressing to go with our Thanksgiving turkey.
Colleen and Sam
Frida and Darcy are checking each other out.
Here is a photo of the whole gang. We went to Gloria’s Pupuseria before going to Redbeards on Friday evening.
My sister and her two daughters visited us Saturday through Sunday AND NONE OF US TOOK A PHOTO!!! This is not the first time they’ve visited and I kicked myself afterward for not taking a photo. Ughhhh!!!
Catching up with some other November happenings – we finally planted the garlic. You plant a clove and get a head of garlic from each one. You have to keep the bed covered with some sort of mulch. Here we used leaves gathered along the sidewalk of Trinity Episcopal Church in town. Those leaves were destined for a plastic bag and I hate to collect leaves from our own property. Want to leave those for the bugs.
We also used those church leaves for the one crescent shaped bed in the front yard we cleared earlier this fall. This bed was so full of weeds that we decided to clear it of everything and start over. Not sure what we will plant here next spring. It may be all annuals so we can make sure we removed all the weeds – especially the tenacious wire grass.
This is the other crescent shaped bed. We didn’t get to this one. Maybe next year. So happy to have three volunteer trees in this bed – two oaks and I think the other is a crabapple.
I just had to take this photo of a pumpkin patch on route 340 in Stuarts Draft.

Where Have I Been?!?!

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Well, it’s been a busy summer with four sets of visitors over a five week period. I have been taking photos so I’ll finally share them here. These first several are from mid July.

We stopped mowing a wet section of the field (on the left) last summer. The section on the right we stopped mowing this summer. It is interesting to see the difference.

By the front porch. The lone daylily looks pretty with the beebalm.

In front of the sun room.

We noticed a volunteer sassafras tree under the mahonia last year. The japanese beetles have been hard on it but it’s hanging in there.

Zinnias from the garden. I love this little vase our daughter made for us last year. I told her I wanted it to mimic tree bark and she delivered.

The orange coneflowers in our native garden started blooming in mid July and the flowers still look beautiful six weeks later. These photos are from July.

Dave bringing in the onion harvest on July 21.

These bitter melon are ridiculous. We could pick this many each week. I still have some in the freezer from last year. I gave some of these away. Dave took another large basket full to a coworker last week. I’ve frozen some and might freeze more. We learned from our daughter that you can take some of the bitter taste out by blanching them in water with a tablespoon of salt and baking soda.

These photos are from July 27.

I went to Polyface Farm on July 28 to purchase some meat and took the above and below photos on my way home. Polyface is in Swoope – just west of us..

Poor Len. He was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. I hope we are keeping him comfortable with meds.

The only photo we got of our visitors. I’m on the right with my sister Melissa and my niece Mary.

Such a pleasant surprise to find these volunteers on August 11 at the base of the spruce tree between the house and the shed – an impatiens and a coleus.

I harvested these peppers on August 14.

I think it was back in July when I took some bricks and defined the beds around the plants in front of the shed. I think it turned out pretty nice.

Joe Pye Weed in the native garden on the morning of August 15.

Making our yummy tomato sauce on August 19.

I’m so sad that we have to take down this beautiful ash tree (on the right). The emerald ash borer has gotten to it so it can’t be saved.

$3000 poorer and down one beautiful shade tree. I will probably spend most of the day they take it down elsewhere.

Don’t like ending on a sad note, but here we are. I hope I keep up my posts with my photos as we enter the fall. It has been a very wet spring and summer. A little on the cool side, too. I’m hoping the valley will have some spectacular color this fall. Hard to believe it is almost September!

Christmas

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We put up the Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. Samantha and Luca were here to help.

The weather was mild which was nice for putting up the outside lights.

Damian helped, too.

Making cookies the Saturday before Christmas.

Erin (aka Soupy) was here for computer help and was happy to roll up her sleeves (and don an apron) to help with the baking.

A special Christmas Eve

A Little Harvesting

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Yesterday morning was absolutely gorgeous. We did some much needed harvesting.

We grew purple pole beans thinking the purple beans would be easier to see. Not the case since the vine is also purple. Though aren’t they beautiful!

Our July felt more like August and now August is feeling more like September. The temperature was in the 50’s Saturday night. Lovely sleeping weather but the tomatoes don’t like it. We are seeing a lot of die back in one of our plants so we harvested the tomatoes to send up to my mom. Hopefully, they will finish ripening for her. So she doesn’t have to wait, we also bought some ripe tomatoes from the Farmers Market on Saturday. Dave took up quite the load of tomatoes for her this morning (on his way to work) which might last her the two weeks until next time.

We have a lot of bitter melon on our vines. It too has slowed down in ripening. I was hoping to let these get a little fatter but we are expecting cool weather this week – 70’s mostly – so I just went ahead and picked them.

Frieda came over to investigate

and pose.

Oregano, thyme and rosemary

I stuffed the bitter melon with ground lamb seasoned with the fresh herbs, sea salt and onion. I then baked it for 40 minutes at 375 degrees. I thought it was very good. Damian thought it was too bitter and Dave wouldn’t try it.

We’ve had so little rain this summer that this was a very welcome sight this morning. We had at least 3 hours of steady rain. Hallelujah!