White Beans - July 11, 2023

I'd planned to cook squash for supper last night, but when I opened the vegetable drawer in the refrigerator, there were no squash in it.  I was puzzled - we'd picked squash the prior evening - until I recalled seeing The Husband carrying a plastic bag when he went to work.  He'd taken the squash to give to co-workers.  

No big deal, I'd just go pick more.  I jumped in the car and went to the garden.  

There was ONE squash in the garden big enough to pick.  I got it, and also cut a few small okra pods (we'd picked those, too, the day before).  While moving around, I discovered that the Great Northern Beans ("white beans" in these parts) were ready.  

The ground was wet, and ants and mosquitoes were eating me up, and I wasn't about to squat down and start picking beans.  I decided, instead, to pull the plants up and pick the beans at home.  I pulled the big yard wagon to the garden and filled it to the brim with bean plants.  Tied it to the bumper of my car to get it home.  After dinner, we picked the beans and got a 5-gallon bucket full.  Some were not quite filled out and some were past ready, but there should be enough beans for a meal or two and some to give to Nanny or put in the freezer.

We'll be shelling beans after dinner tonight.

Garden Check - July 11, 2023

We went to the garden last evening, planning only to lay down some cardboard boxes we'd collected (we carpet the middles with them) and return the picking bucket to the shed.   

Oh, dear....the tomatoes....  Half of them are wilted.  Drooping.  I don't know if it's fusarium wilt or if they're simply drowning from all the rain we've had in the past week or two.  The garden soil is like soup, even under the cardboard.  

Oh, no...the okra....  It needed cutting again.  

And the squash needed picking.

The rows between those crops are pretty well carpeted, so The Husband waded in and cut the okra and picked the squash and a few cucumbers while I worked on the tomatoes.  I don't know what kind of tomatoes they are, but they are running like crazy.  We tie them to their posts with pantyhose strips, but it's a losing battle.  We have 5 or 6 tomatoes that never got staked, and they are beyond corralling at this point, so we've just carpeted the soil beneath the limbs and let them do their natural thing.  This will be easy pickings for the turtles.

The purple hull peas are making pods.  

We kept a few squash and some okra, and gave some to the relatives on the hill.  Cucumbers and onions are soaking in vinegar in the refrigerator.  

Birthday Doings - July 9, 2023

Another birthday weekend in the books.

Saturday was a fairly lovely day - a bit of sunshine, a bit of rain - and The Husband and I had nothing on our schedules.  To be honest, I was moving kind of slow Saturday morning, thanks to too much food and too many margaritas Friday night.  When we went out to dinner with the Sister- and Brother-in-Law, all I'd eaten all day was a piece of toast, and I was starving by dinnertime.  I probably ate a whole basket of tortilla chips by myself and drank two small frozen margaritas (2-for-1 special, you know).  At midnight, I woke up parched and got up and drank some water.  About two hours later, I woke up, lying flat on my stomach, with my gullet on fire and all that stuff trying to come back up.  Blech.  I got up, took some antacid, and sat up reading for an hour before going back to bed.  The coffee pot woke me up at 6.  When the sun came up, I came out to the porch to work on a little watercolor painting I'd started the day before.

I am loving watercolor.  It suits my constitution.  

I'll be brave and show you the picture I was working on:

Here's the photo I worked from:

These are Granddaughters 2 and 3, painting flowers on our compost bin.  

Here is the current view of the compost bin from where I sit on the back porch:

Makes me smile to see it.  

Anyway . . . . 

After I worked on the painting Saturday morning, I decided it was awful.  The bin is lop-sided - but it kind of is - and #3's butt is too big or too colorful, or something, and her shoulder is too high.  My plan was to let it dry again and work on it some more.  The shoulder probably couldn't be fixed at that point, but the butt could be toned down, and I wanted to add some pen & ink details in the foliage.  

But they were over here last night, and I got brave and showed it to them, and they both went, "Awwwwwh! in the way little girls do.  #3 said she wanted it (we did not discuss the big vibrant butt), so I tore it out of the sketchbook and gave it to her.  I guess we can call it "finished" now.  

That might be a milestone in my painting career.  ;)

First Okra - July 6, 2023

A friend wanted to come get some cucumbers this afternoon.  I said to The Husband at 7 this morning, "It ain't gonna get any cooler today," and went to the garden to pick.  Filled a 5-gallon bucket three-quarters full, then filled it the rest of the way with squash.  

While picking the squash, I noticed that the okra (which I noticed was blooming just last weekend) needed cutting.  Some pods - nearly half the haul - were already too big and tough.  There were enough right-sized ones for our supper and Nanny's supper.  

We had sauteed squash & onions, fried okra, and ham for dinner.  Mmmm....

All the plate lacked was a good, ripe tomato, but we're still a good way from that.

July 4, 2023

Happy Independence Day.  

Later today we will be going to Cousin Gus' house for barbeque.  He cooks the meat, the guests bring the sides and desserts.  Our contribution this year will be a chilled watermelon and a freezer of homemade strawberry ice cream and a box of waffle cones.  The ice cream is already made and "ripening." 

While I was scurrying around, collecting equipment and ingredients for the ice cream, I noticed that the "plant incubator" had some new sprouts in it.  

The big sprout is a pumpkin.  It has sprouted since yesterday.  The empty-looking pot has more pumpkin seeds of a different type.  I planted big jack-o-lantern pumpkin seeds in one pot and mini-pumpkin seeds in the other.  I'm not sure which one has already sprouted.  Though I to recall saying to myself, "Little pumpkins on the (L)eft," I also seem to recall looking at the one on the right while I said it.  So who knows?  Doesn't matter.  I'll figure it out as they grow.

The little pot in the back with the small seedling is mallow - the pink/white striped one.  A lady once gave me a few mallow seedlings from her garden, but they died.  If these do well, they'll go in the zinnia bed.  If not, I still have seeds and will plant them in the ground next spring.

The two plastic-wrap-covered containers have African violet seeds in them.  (The magnifying glass is for looking for tiny plants.)  I planted these seeds almost two months ago from seed pods that developed on two of my plants.  It seems they should have sprouted by now.  Internet searches said from one week to nine weeks, so who knows?  I will leave them alone for another month, then toss them if they haven't sprouted.  But I will be very disappointed to do that.

Rain! - July 3, 2023

We got a good soaking rain last night.  This ought to bring up those great northern beans we planted about a week ago and help everything else that didn't get watered deeply when we ran the sprinkler one night last week.  

It was so hot last week.  I moved my work station from the back porch to the kitchen table and spent very little time outside.  All around us there had been pop-up showers, and I had put off watering the flower beds in the hope that one would pop up over us.  By the time I poked my head out again, everything in the flower beds was drooping.  I watered the front beds and the zinna bed, but never made it to the phlox/hydrangea bed.  Yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the hydrangeas seriously needed water, but before I could get to it, someone came to get those 18 pounds of cucumbers I'd picked the day before, and I never gave the hydrangeas another thought.  Thank goodness Mother Nature did.

Speaking of the zinnia bed, it makes me so happy.  :)

When I was growing up, we almost always had zinnias, marigolds, and bachelors buttons in the flower bed in front of the house.  I did not like the marigolds because they were stinky, but I liked the colorful zinnias and the soft bachelors buttons.  Many times, all that stuff volunteered the next year.  Until this year, I haven't been able to grow either of those flowers - not enough sun - much less get volunteers.  I may not get any volunteers from these zinnias next year (they're on a hill, and the seeds may get washed down to the pond), but at least I got blooms!  

I planted big zinnias and little zinnias about two weeks apart.  The little zinnias all got washed to the back of the bed and came up thick as cat hair.  I moved some of those to the front bed and left the rest alone.  They are starting to bud and should begin to bloom before the big ones poop out.

There are also perennials in that bed.  Yarrow in the lower left corner, bee balm in the upper left.  Both have already bloomed.  Lavender in the middle.  A few other things whose name I can't remember.  

Here's the phlox/hydrangea bed.  It has been growing wild for years.  Last year, it got its first two hydrangeas when Nanny gave them to me for my birthday and I began to envision a whole bed full of hydrangeas.  Tried to start some cuttings from my old blue hydrangea, got one or two.  Bought two more at the greenhouse this year.  I've just been pulling up great clumps of phlox to make room.  Hopefully, the phlox and hydrangeas will share the space without a fight.

P.S. - Axel goes home today.  This makes me happy, too!  ;)

Sunday morning rambling - July 2, 2023

It's 7 a.m. Sunday morning.  I've been up for more than an hour.  The Husband and the great beast of a dog are still asleep (although the great beast of a dog did wake up long enough to gobble up a can of dogfood).  

Although this dog is not a huge amount of trouble, I will be glad when he goes home.  This morning when I got up, his big butt was stretched out on our couch, head on a pillow, snoring to beat the band.  I don't like animals in my house, and I especially don't like them on the furniture.  

It has been incredibly hot this week - temperatures near 100, dangerous heat alerts from the weather app on my phone.  What little gardening I've done has been in the early mornings or late afternoons.  So far, all we're getting is squash and cucumbers.  Loads of both.  Earlier in the week, I posted a "free cucumbers" message on my Facebook page and had a couple of takers for upcoming harvests.  Yesterday, I gathered nearly 18 pounds of cucumbers.  Someone is coming to get them today.  There'll be more in a day or two.  

I tried to make "cinnamon pickles" a couple of days ago.  The recipe called for "red hots" candy, but I could not find any (what's up with that?).  "Hot Tamales" candy seemed like a fair substitution, but it wasn't.  After the candy coating dissolved, gummy insides remained and had to be strained out.  My pickles turned out faintly pink and faintly cinnamon-y.  Good thing I only made three pints.  I probably shall not try the recipe again, even if "red hots" cross my path.  In fact, unless some wild bit of motivation hits me, I probably won't make pickles (or relish) at all this year, since we have some left from last year.  All but one or two of the cucumber vines may go on the compost pile soon.

* * * * * * * * 

I want to go somewhere, anywhere.  

Since we sold our camper a couple of years ago, we have not had a real vacation.  The Husband has had several work trips that seemed interesting enough for me to go along, but they have been short trips that did not turn out to be fun.  

Working from home has probably aggravated this mood.  I go for days without leaving the yard or speaking to anyone except The Husband and the relatives on the hill who happen to cross my path between here and the garden.  

Where would I go if I could go anywhere?