Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Out of the garden and into the kitchen

The gardening is pretty much done for the year - there are a couple late season tomatoes hanging out which need to be rescued from greedy chipmunks; maybe some cleanup of beds and mulching of leaves - but for the most part the hard work is all done for now.

This time of year, as the weather turns cooler, becomes the season of soups and stews.  Already I have in my mind that I will be making French onion soup, Yankee pot roast, and pasta sauce in the near future.  Chicken soup comes when I've got a decently sized bag of bones, and turkey soup follows Thanksgiving when I get at least one entire picked-over carcass.  Beef barley is another staple.  A batch of pea soup is usually shared with my mom and mother-in-law - Broccoli Boy won't eat it, and I can't make a tiny batch with a big bone from the Christmas ham. 

Unfortunately, none but maybe the pasta sauce will contain home-grown vegetables since all I grew was asparagus and tomatoes this year.

I hate wasting food - it's almost pathological the lengths to which I will go to use up every single bit of food before it goes bad.  I've got a bit of pumpkin and coconut milk left over from making a yummy garam masala-spiced winter squash soup with a kabocha and some canned pumpkin (the small kabocha I had only made 2 cups of roasted squash), so maybe I'll turn that into a quick pumpkin curry soup.  This BB will probably eat because he likes my brother's pumpkin curry soup.  I do have some heavy cream in the fridge too, so we'll see how that comes out.

I've also some shallots that started sprouting and need to be used, I think I'll just saute those up and serve with a steak.

Monday, October 27, 2014

from the mind's eye into the real world

We did some trance journeying this weekend while at Harvest Nights, and I wonder if I would be able to get the images out of my head onto canvas or paper.  I haven't done any 2D art in a long time and I don't know if it's something I can translate from brainwaves into some sort of media.

I would also be interested in finding out if Luke and Mel, who went journeying with me, were to do the same thing, would they have images that look like mine?

Here are some pictures I found on the interwebz that kinda look like what I was seeing on the journey:

 
 
 


 



 
 

Monday, October 20, 2014

Alliums-y!

Went outside to dig in the dirt, and didn't injure myself.

Near the daffodils & grape hyacinths that give early color, I wanted something that blooms a bit later since that bed looks a bit bare after the irises have finished their show by June.  So, I ordered some alliums that bloom in July-August.  It's a work in progress to get 3 seasons of blooms in there.  The fall-blooming "Autumn Daffodils" aren't doing as well as hoped.

Planted 50 Nodding Onions


and 25 Drumstick

Friday, October 17, 2014

Last shipment

My shipment of allium bulbs from John Scheepers came in yesterday.  I'll have to fight the still-twinging-but-healing ankle, and a rather sore shoulder (I apparently slept with my arm up over my head overnight) to get these babies in this weekend, but it's something I've got to do!

Monday, October 13, 2014

The klutz strikes again

No, it was not a bid to get Broccoli Boy to help me out in the garden... but he had to because I sprained my ankle stepping off the curb after weeding about 20 thistles out of the curbside bed...

...but not before I planted bulbs I had ordered from Brecks in a moment of weakness this summer

10 Decoy daffodil



12 Hardy gladiolus mixture


and a bunch of red & white poppy anemone in complementing colors (sorry, I don't have a picture or link of what those are supposed to look like).  I couldn't tell which way was up, so I planted them sideways.

Hubby also helped me (pre-injury) to move one of my red Drift roses out from under purple beautyberry shrubs that have gotten much bigger in maturity than I expected.  I decided we can't do more than one in day, it was TOUGH to move that sucker.  Two more to go.  I pruned off quite a bit of dead wood and re-buried it in the new spot I made for it about 2 feet forward of where it had been.  Hubby watered it in since I couldn't post-injury.  We're supposed to have rain for a couple days, so I have high hopes that the rose will survive having been shaded most of the year.

The beautyberry shrubs are lush and loaded with purple berries.  We were both shaking little purple spheres out of our rose gauntlets afterwards.  He also found one in his ear.

My ankle better be feeling better soon, because there's tender calla lilies and gladiolus to dig up, leaves to rake, and thistles to pull up before they get away with murder.