Spring has Sprung!

 

Seeds, seeds, seeds. It reminds me of when I was picking strawberries when I was 14 and when I closed my eyes at night, all I could see was strawberries.  Our local Facebook garden club was gifted two banker boxes full of seeds. They were in a total jumble, and four of us spent several hours sorting them over the past few days. Just when I thought we were totally done, as I had the original troche of seeds neatly sorted with the excess bagged in gallon ziplocs, Dale, our donator, stopped by with several more ziplocs of flower seeds. We plan to give them away at the plant sale, and then hope someone will be willing to take the balance to further distribute them.

I have five vendors signed up for the sale May 3 at the library in town. Somehow, I went from being mildly interested in selling some hanging baskets, to becoming the main organizer. I can commit to one day a year for my gardening buddies. Doing the Farmer's Market in town every Sunday is way beyond my ambition level.

So now, looking forward to our first 70 degree and sunny day this year, I have a treasure trove of seeds to spread around my world.

Happy Spring!!

At least winter waited to arrive until February. January was cold and clear with hardly any precipitation of any kind. Not a single flake of snow until February 1.

 

As it got colder and stayed cold every night, the lake began to freeze. The visiting swans looked like they were hibernating. Open water remained for part of the lake for our entire cold spell, so they are still hanging around. They're so huge, they dwarf the Canadian geese.

One of my favorite plants is Hellebore...here it is blooming in the snow. In winter, I need some color. Even though the snow is beautiful in many ways, it does tend to turn our world black and white.

The big maple tree was lovely for the first day. The snow quickly fell off as every day managed to get above freezing. 

Inside, I'm getting started on my garden, so my kitchen table is pretty much fully planted. I traded my friend Lisa a bucket of honey for a big heat mat, so hopefully this year I'll get a head start on the garden.

December 2024

 We are gratefully enjoying the last quarter of the year where winter hasn't arrived yet! It looks like we'll get through December without snow for the first time in a long time! My "memories of this day" on Facebook are all featuring snow and ice.  

The sunrises have been spectacular. The Trumpeter swans are back and hundreds of Canadian geese have stopped by for a day or two on their journey South. So far, none have opted to stay, so we're grateful for that also. The humming birds are going through a container of juice about every 3 or 4 days, and all the little tweety birds are going through a canister of birdseed every week too. 

I've been cooking - mostly cookies - but some interesting other things also. I remind myself of the mother in "Prince of Tides" trying all the exotic recipes on a meat and potatoes kind of husband. The spinach souffle was a definite "No" for Ron, and he wasn't very enthusiastic about the sausage filled dates either. 

So today, ham and scalloped potatoes and green beans for a more traditional kind of Christmas meal. Sending wishes for happiness and success for everyone in the new year and a warm and merry Christmas!

October/November 2024

 I seem to be fully into my cooking/baking season around here! Not much gardening left, and it's cooled off to where I can use the oven without worrying about not having A/C. So I've been spending my on line time with my mushroom identification groups, looking at recipes, and finding new books to read. It's a process...changing from my outdoor living program to indoor living.

First time making eclairs - and I've heard since that you can start with puff pastry....but no, I love doing things the hard way! This recipe starts with water, salt, and butter in a sauce pan, adding flour, making a dough that you knead eggs into.  The recipe called for piping this dough into 4" rectangles. I just put blobs on parchment paper, and they puffed up nicely. Then it called for piping whipped cream into them...I did pipe that in as there wasn't really a way to do otherwise. Then the chocolate mixture was to be piped on top.  I just spread this. They were truly delectable, but a royal pain to make.

Other culinary adventures - chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles, chicken pot pie using the last of the garden vegetables, and lasagne using homemade pasta, Soupa Toscana (copycat Olive Garden variety) and multiple types of cookies.

Then the outside chores began again as a "bomb cyclone" hit us hard. We were without power for 3 and a half days. A gust must have zeroed in on our lakeshore, because all three kayaks were swept off the bank and into the water. Even the big rowboat was moved several feet. 

All the deck chairs were thrown about, 

three roof panels were ripped off the greenhouse, 

and we have no fewer than a dozen trees all over our 10 acres that were uprooted. Many were quite large, but all managed to miss all our buildings! 

The night of the storm, we lay awake for hours listening to pine and fir cones (that sounded like boulders) hitting our metal roof and thumps and bumps that sounded like trees falling.  In the morning, in addition to the downed trees, branches and tree debris littered everything. We'll be cleaning up for a long time, but the happy news is our power is back, and we have about a year's worth of firewood on the ground.

We do have a generator, which made living through this power outage a lot more tolerable than in the past. And in retrieving the boats, I managed to get in a "polar plunge". Not on purpose, but not too cold either. It was such a nice day that I was already thinking I might take a plunge.

September 2024

Fall Crocus blooming kicks me into gear to harvest seeds, wind up hoses, dig dahlias, put tools away, and get used to the lovely days of fall, while trying not to think about winter coming. Especially when a "La Nina" winter is predicted.

The fall crocus blooms are mostly gone at the end of September, but I did manage to get a swim in on the last day of the month. The lake is cold enough now to qualify as "cold therapy" I think, but the sunshine still feels somewhat like summer.

The first real rain brought out an abundant crop of mushrooms. Lots of Chantrelle, and "new to me" edible Lobster mushroom. These first ones I found were identified for me by my mushroom group on Facebook, so I went back and found some fresh ones that were still edible.

We're still harvesting apples - this has been a bumper crop year for all the apple trees. I think we can leave the rest for the three not so little fawns. The mother deer has abandoned them. They no longer have spots and are wandering around the garden and orchard forlornly finishing off what they can reach. As big of a problem they are, we still get attached to them as we begin to recognize them. "Look, that one has tiny horns now" Ron said yesterday. So far we haven't named them...
 

August 2024

We had our family gathering on August 10. All of Ron's boys and their families came for the weekend, and most of the 23 cousins enjoyed playing in the lake, camping, hiking, playing badminton and volleyball, and more. 

Cash, home from ranger training in the Army resting and recuperating. 

Martin, the youngest grandchild loving the fairytale book.

It was a strange month weather-wise...beautiful - even hot for 10 days, then we had a big storm. Fierce wind took down one tree and left debris covering everything. Then unseasonable cold and relentless rain for a couple of days.

But with rain in summer, we sometimes get a bounty of Chantrelle mushrooms. And harvest begins in earnest.

Cabbage did well this year, so a crock of saurkraut is fermenting away. I realized that we don't actually use much applesauce, so I've been making apple butter for the past couple of years.  This year, I decided to make apples into something we really use: apples for smoothies. We make smoothies nearly every day, so why not cut the apples up and freeze them to be ready? If I get more fruit and berries ready for smoothies and dedicate a shelf in the freezer to them, it will be easy to send Ron out to the freezer for smoothy fruit without him having to look for it.

So now I have nectarines, cherries, berries, apples, and peaches ready in quart size bags. Organizing a freezer is much like everything else...life is easier when you know where things are!

It's also fig harvest time, so I have a dehydrator working on figs, and some fig preserves on the pantry shelf. 

 

Chili Relleno Casserole

 Well, I have to say they don't look like much - but my sister, Mona, says they are really yummy, and she's a great cook of all things Mexican, so I took her word for it and picked up a tray of the freshly roasted Hatch peppers at the local IGA.  It's Show n Shine weekend here in our little town, so IGA has a pepper roast outside the store. Mona assures me it's hard to find freshly roasted peppers, and I've not seen them before.

I forgot some of the details, so I'm stumbling along to make the chili relleno casserole. I do love chili rellenos, but hate deep frying anything, so the casserole sounded good. Wasn't sure if I was supposed to remove the seeds (I did). It's kind of a lasagna kind of approach - layering chilis with queso 

I understand that only the proper cheese will work 

I had enough peppers for the bottom layer and a smaller layer on top of the first layer of cheese.

Topped with 4 eggs slightly beaten with salt and pepper (I used Johnny's Seasoning). And a layer of shredded cheddar. Then, since it's going to be 90 degrees today and we don't have A/C, I covered it well and froze it to bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes on the first day we get a break in this heat. Off to look at land boats with my car obsessed husband. Update on the casserole later!