May 24, 2012 - From the Ugly to the Pretty

Yesterday I showed the "ugly" in my garden.  Today I'll show some of the "pretty".

 There must be a thousand buds on the yellow lilies this year.

Blossoms on the potato plants are always a welcome sight.  I felt around underneath this plant and found a potato the size of a hen's egg, so it won't be long now!

 Carrots, cabbage, celery, beans, peppers, peas, squash, radishes, cantaloupe, corn, basil, strawberries, raspberries, beets, spinach, onions, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, tomatoes, garlic, parsley, marigolds, allysum, Sweet Williams, zinnias, cone flowers, Shasta daisies, hollyhocks, lilies, Johnny Jump Ups, morning glory, sweet peas......there's a lot going on in the north garden!

 Another view of the north garden, from inside the kennel garden.

I never get tired of looking at the east garden, with its potatoes, onions, chives and flowers.  I reached over the fence and pulled the neighbor's 3' tall milkweeds today, then took scissors and cut the tops off of her 4' high grass that was going to seed.  I hope she notices.

May 23, 2012 - One of These Things....

.........is not like the other.

Yesterday they were twins.

The bush beans look fine.........

........but the pole beans are being eaten alive by leaf miners 

and insects.

I guess you win some and you lose some.

May 23, 2012 - Rotten Weather Ramblings

Unseasonably cold weather has hit us again this week.  It can't seem to make it above 65F, when we should be enjoying temperatures in the 80s.  It's also windy and rainy.  It sprinkles just enough to moisten the soil, then the wind blows 18-30 miles per hour and dries up all the moisture.  After the growth spurt the garden took last week, this week it's just in a state of suspended growth, so there really isn't anything for me to do....I can't even find a weed to pull.  Sad, huh?

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I'm happy to report the new clothesline is as sturdy and useful as the one it replaced.  Since we put it up, just over two weeks ago, I've only used the electric clothes dryer for a total of ten minutes.  That was to pre-soften and fluff up Mr. Granny's jeans and shirts before I hung them on the line to finish drying.  Mr. Granny does not like stiff, line dried jeans!  Yesterday I even managed to dry the sheets in between rain showers, thanks to the wind.

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I found the following, in an email newsletter from a seed company, rather humorous:

"Finding a good location in your yard is probably the most important step in creating a good pepper garden. Peppers are sun lovers and prefer a full sun to produce the best tasting tomatoes." 

Just think of all these years I've wasted, growing tomato plants for my tomatoes.

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A few weeks ago, I bought some pansies for my front porch planters.  Alicyn, my three year old granddaughter, was here visiting, so I let her "help" with the planting.  It seemed like a good time to give her the responsibility of caring for a plant of her own, so I found a pretty little pot and, with her help, we planted a pretty yellow pansy in it for her to take home.

She took the plant home, and put it in her play house, where it went without water until it died.  When she found it dead she carried it out to her Mother and said "Take it to Grandma. She has special plant medicine".

The next day, while Alicyn was at daycare, Amy brought the pot over to me.  I dug up one of my yellow pansies, which had grown quite a bit larger than the original, and potted it up.  I picked off all but one of the blossoms, to make it look a bit more like the one that had died, but I told Amy to tell Alicyn that my special plant medicine just fixed the plant so that it grew bigger this time.

When presented with the new healthy plant, Alicyn declared "This is the best day EVER! Grandma is the best fixer in the whole WORLD!"

That probably wasn't the best way to teach a child about gardening, but what can I say?  I'm easy.

May 21, 2012 - Harvest Monday

 Walla Walla sweet onion

 Chioggia beets (29 ounces of greens were not used, so not counted in the week's total)

Space spinach

Mixed lettuces, Minigold tomatoes and Walla Walla sweet onions

Tall Utah #527OR, Improved celery, Triple Curled parsley

Harvest for the week of 5/14 through 5/20 

Lettuce - 16.5 oz.

Radishes - 2 oz. 

Tomatoes - .7 oz. 

Spinach - 9.4 oz. 

Onions - 10.2 oz. 

Beets - 22.6 oz. (roots only, no greens)

Herbs - 1.4 oz. 

Celery - 4.7 oz. 

Total for week: 67.5 oz (4.22 lb.) 

Total for year: 231 oz (14.44 lb.) 

Daphne's Dandelions is the host for Harvest Monday, where everyone can share links to their harvest for the week. Please visit her blog and leave a link, so we can enjoy your harvest photos!

May 19, 2012 - The Thing II

The sugar snap peas have finally grown almost high enough to hide "The Thing".

It's not a pretty structure, but it is doing what it was meant to do.  The birds haven't touched a single leaf of lettuce.

So, what did I do?  Last night I built "The Thing II".

This one is covered with netting.  It will protect my existing spinach and beet greens from leaf miners.  In a week or two, or whenever the spinach bolts to seed, I'll plant some cabbage.  Then it can protect the cabbages from cabbage moths.  In the fall, after the cabbage is harvested, I can plant more spinach and beets. 

Elsewhere in the garden.......

The potato/onion patch is looking fantastic!   The first planting of corn, just barely visible at the bottom right of the picture, is about 4" high now, and the more recent planting, front center, is just now popping up.  The cucumbers in the pot are beginning to put on some growth, as are the nasturtiums in the two pots that are hidden by the cucumbers.

The potatoes are beginning to blossom.

 The shelling peas are showing multiple blooms.

 The Chinese cabbage is bolting already.  I guess I'll pull it out and try again in the fall.

The chive blossoms are so pretty, I hate to see them fade.

Tomato Alley is doing great, but the peppers haven't taken off yet.

The west garden tomatoes are just a little behind in growth.  The strawberries in this bed are blooming now.

Five more tomato plants next to the garden shed.  Lettuce seedlings are growing under the blue box, waiting to be transplanted into "The Thing I"

May 18, 2012 - Remembering May 18, 1980

At 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted.  Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. In a few moments this slab of rock and ice slammed into Spirit Lake, crossed a ridge 1,300 feet high, and roared 14 miles down the Toutle River. 

The avalanche rapidly released pressurized gases within the volcano. A tremendous lateral explosion ripped through the avalanche and developed into a turbulent, stone-filled wind that swept over ridges and toppled trees. Nearly 150 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing. 

At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. Wet, cement-like slurries of rock and mud scoured all sides of the volcano. Searing flows of pumice poured from the crater. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments. 

Fifty-seven people and thousands of animals were killed.   A vast, gray landscape lay where once the forested slopes of Mount St. Helens grew.

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Thirty-two years ago today, Mount St. Helens blew her top.  I remember it as though it were yesterday.

Saturday morning we packed up the motor home and headed for our favorite fishing spot.  We spent a lot of time at Badger Lake, up by Spokane.  We loved the campground, and the fishing was good.  Of course we took our three youngest children, but we left Barney the dog at home in the back yard.  One of my husband's employees had offered to check on him and make sure he had food and water.

We went out in the boat Sunday morning, just the two of us, and left the kids to play at the camp site with the oldest in charge.  We were enjoying a beautiful, warm day on the water when I noticed some very dark clouds forming in the west.  I told my husband it looked as though we were in for a really bad storm, so we'd better head back to the campground.  In the few minutes it took us to return, it got darker and darker, so by the time we reached the shore it was as black as night.  The children were waiting for us at the dock, wondering what was happening.....as were we.  We had no idea what was taking place.

We got everyone back to the motor home and turned on the radio.  That's when we discovered just what was happening to us.  We went back down to the boat and removed the battery to use at the motor home, so we could keep the radio on.  White flakes of ash had begun to fall from the sky.  It looked like it was snowing, but the air around us was stifling hot.  Trying to get some fresh air, I opened the windows in the motor home and hung wet towels over them to keep the ash from coming in.  We all settled in to listen to the radio, and to worry about whether we would survive through the night.

Survive we did.  We awoke to six inches of white ash covering everything.  There was nothing we could do but wait and wonder how we were going to get through this mess and back to our home, 120 miles away.

We had planned on only two days of fishing, so I hadn't brought a lot of supplies.  The small store at the lake didn't sell groceries, so we knew we had to at least get to nearby Williams Lake, where they had a fully equipped store.  It wasn't very far, maybe ten miles, but it took hours to get from one lake to the next.  We could only travel a mile or two at most before stopping to remove and try to shake the ash from the air filter on the motor home.  It was the longest ten miles I've ever travelled in my life.

We made it to Williams Lake on Monday afternoon, and purchased enough groceries to keep us eating for a few days.  I worried about the dog, and about our swimming pool that had just recently been opened for the summer.  According to the radio reports, our town had received a thick layer of the ash, a report I later found to be quite false.  We worried about our businesses.  We owned two service stations and a towing company, and the telephone lines were down, there was no way to reach our assistant manager or any of our employees.

Monday night was spent at Williams Lake, but on Tuesday morning we met up with another couple from our town.  They had found out the ash wasn't bad at all to the south of us, so we decided we would travel together and try to make it home.  We took off, still stopping every mile or two to clean out the air filters.  Our travel partners decided to take a secondary road south, while we felt staying on the main highway would be the safer option, so we parted company and we headed west toward Ritzville.  We arrived at Ritzville sometime Tuesday afternoon and made the turn south toward home.

We were still traveling in deep ash, and even though I still kept the windows open and wet towls hung over them, the ash inside the motor home was so thick I couldn't see the back of the coach from where I was sitting in the front.  It was so bad, I convinced my husband to turn around and go back to Ritzville.  I honestly felt the ash was going to suffocate my children.  We got the motor home turned around, which wasn't an easy feat on that highway, with nearly zero visibility.  We managed to jacknife the boat trailer into the rear of the motor home, causing some minor damage, and we headed back toward town.  As we approached the freeway overpass, the vehicle in front of us stopped.  We had to stop.....and the motor died.  It never ran again.

Our oldest daughter and I tied wet handkerchiefs around our nose and mouth and took off walking toward town.  We stopped at the very first motel, and as luck would have it a group of people had just vacated to try to make their way to their homes in Seattle.  We got not one but two rooms for our family of five, at a very nominal price.  The proprietor was charging only what it cost him to operate his business, rather than take advantage of the situation.  We would find out that there were many more fine citizens of that town who were willing to help wherever they could.  A local Ritzville farmer came to our aid.  He hooked up his truck to our motor home and towed it to a large pole building he owned near town.  He put the motor home and boat in the building for safe keeping as long as needed.  He taxied us from our motel, three times a day, to the local Lutheran Church where the church ladies were cooking and serving meals.  They fed a lot of stranded people, free of charge, out of the kindness of their hearts.  I'm sad to say our own Catholic Church's doors were closed and locked throughout this ordeal.  I'm happy to say we made a generous donation to the Ritzville Lutheran Church when the ordeal was over.

Phone service was finally restored, and we were happy to finally get in touch with people at home.  We found there was only a light dusting of the ash, the dog was fine, the swimming pool was clean, and the businesses were running as normal.

At midnight on Friday, five days after the eruption, we boarded a special train that was sent to Ritzville to bring "the refugees" home to the Tri-Cities.  We arrived in the wee hours of the morning, and rejoiced as we left the train and our feet hit the ground!  Home never looked so good.

It was several days before the tow truck was equipped with a special "snorkel" to keep the ash from clogging the filter, and it made the trip back to Ritzville to bring the motor home and boat home.  Our insurance paid for a new motor for the motor home.  It took forever to clean the ash from our boat (I later found out the kids sold some of it for $1 a bottle!).  It was definitely an experience of a lifetime, and one I never want to go through again.

May 17, 2012- Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard

The garden is beginning to produce quite a bit of food for us now.  It seems as though we have something every day, from fresh salads to soups to desserts!  

Fresh garden spinach and a Walla Walla sweet onion that weighed nearly 4 ounces made a delicious spinach salad with hot bacon dressing.  It was served with bread made in the bread machine, rather than the oven, due to the unseasonably hot day (94F).  

Freshly picked celery and parsley went into the pot with a chicken carcass for a lunch of chicken noodle soup, grilled cheese sandwiches and chips.

And best of all......

....was the pie, made with the first harvest of rhubarb from the garden!

Granny's Rhubarb Custard Pie with Thomas' Perfect Pie Crust

Thomas' Perfect Pie Crust 

(this is the best pie crust I've ever tasted! )

   2 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt (I used 3/4 tsp. regular salt)

2/3 stick of unsalted butter (chilled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes)

3/4 cup of vegetable shortening (chilled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes)

1/2 cup of ice water

In a large shallow bowl, mix the flour and salt together. Using a pastry cutter/fork, incorporate the butter and shortening until the mixture resembles a coarse meal (you should still have rather large bits of butter and shortening when you're done). Slowly drizzle in the ice water and mix with a wooden spoon. Transfer the dough onto a floured work surface, and fold it together using your hands. The dough should come together easily but should not feel overly sticky. Cut the dough in half and shape into balls. Wrap each in cellophane and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Rhubarb custard filling:

1-1/2  cups  sugar (we like our pies sweet, you may want to use less)

1/4 cup  all-purpose flour

4 cups  fresh sliced rhubarb (1/2" slices)

1  beaten egg

2 Tbsp. butter

In mixing bowl, combine sugar and flour. Add the rhubarb. Gently toss until coated.  Stir in beaten egg.  Let mixture sit for a few minutes while pastry is rolled out and fitted into a 9" pie plate.  

On a lightly floured surface, roll out half of the pastry and fit into a 9-inch pie plate. Trim to 1/2 inch beyond edge of pie plate for lattice top, or trim even with rim for a two-crust pie.

Stir the rhubarb again to completely incorporate the egg and sugar mixture.  Transfer to the pasty-lined pie plate.  Dot with butter.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out remaining dough  cut slits for steam to escape or cut into 1/2-inch-wide strips for lattice top. Place pastry over filling and weave strips over top for lattice. Press ends of strips into crust rim and fold bottom pastry over strips. For a two-crust pie, trim top crust to 1/2 inch beyond edge of pie plate; fold extra pastry under bottom pastry and flute edge. If you like, sprinkle top of crust with additional sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon .

To prevent overbrowning, cover edge of pie with foil. Bake in a 375 degree F oven for 25 minutes for fresh fruit (50 minutes for frozen). Remove foil. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes more or until top is golden. Cool on wire rack.

Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard is hosted by Robin at The Gardener of Eden.  Robin is on vacation this week, so Jody from Spring Garden Acre is the temporary host.

May 14, 2012 - Harvest Monday

They look like radishes, but they are Chioggia beets!  These are some I started indoors and transplanted into the garden.  I do think it was worth the trouble to start them indoors, as they were not only much earlier, but very delicious!

We ate both the greens and the roots, so they added 21.6 ounces to the week's total.  The greens were sauteed with bacon and onion.  The beet roots were peeled, quartered, tossed with a bit of olive oil, and roasted with store bought baby carrots.  I do believe they were the sweetest beets I've ever eaten.  I really wanted to wrestle Mr. Granny out of his half, but I didn't.

The 1.2 ounces of herbs included some young celery stalks and leaves, with two sprigs of parsley.  These were added to a chicken carcass to make broth for soup.

 The first harvest of rhubarb.

 17.7 ounces, cut up, gave me exactly four cups of rhubarb.  Just what I needed for a pie.  I must say, it was the best rhubarb pie I have ever tasted, but I'm saving that for Thursday's Kitchen Cupboard post.  Recipe will be included.

 The radishes really aren't as large as the beets.  They're in a very small bowl.

 My largest basket was filled with lettuce, a smaller basket with spinach.

 I wish you could see the varied and beautiful leaves of probably 20 varieties of lettuce.  I have Ed, of Tales From the Mountainside, to thank for sharing his many lettuce varieties with me. This is just the beginning, there are many, many more varieties yet to be planted!

The spinach is producing well, considering the small amount I planted.  I don't know why I underestimated how much we would use, but I could easily have used ten times as much.  Not that I didn't try, but when an entire 12 foot row of seedlings just up and disappears, it's beyond my control.

 More radishes.  It won't be long now until the radish harvests will end for the summer.  They have been very good this year, just ask the ants that have been feeding on them  :-(  

This is a sight I love.....the crisper filled with three big bags of fabulously fresh salad fixings.

Harvest for the week of 5/7 through 5/13

Lettuce 17.1 oz.

Radishes 9.3 oz.

Tomatoes 0.7 oz.

Spinach 12 oz.

Beets 21.6 oz.

Rhubarb 17.7 oz.

Herbs 1.2 oz.

Total for week: 79.6 oz   (4.98 lb.)

Total for year: 163.5 oz (10.22 lb.)

Daphne's Dandelions is the host for Harvest Monday, where everyone can share links to their harvest for the week. Please visit her blog and leave a link, so we can enjoy your harvest photos!