We got a little bit of rain today, enough to do the garden some good. Supposed to get more tomorrow.
Since it was too wet to work in the garden this afternoon, I was at home to hear the phone ring when my son called, wanting to know if we'd babysit Granddaughter #4. Of course I said yes!
She is adorable. And spoiled rotten, just as a baby should be. :)
Once a year - and it seems like they always pick the hottest day possible - the local credit unions take their employees out to a baseball game at Autozone Park. The park reserves a section for us near third base, and there's food and booze. It's not free - the credit unions pay for it, and guests of the employees (spouses and children and such) cough up $50 apiece.
Last night was the night.
We parked at a pay lot about a block away from the park. Parking was $25.00, plus tax, for 4 hours. There was no attendant (that we saw); to pay the fee, one must figure out how to operate the self-pay station. There was a bar code to scan, and/or a code that could be texted, and a credit card slot. You should've seen us old people trying to work the thing. At some point, the system asked for a license plate number. You should've seen the number of people walking back to their cars to take picture of the plate number and come back to re-start the process. It took everyone several minutes just to pay.
With the fee paid, we walked to the ballpark, tickets in hand. At the gate, young people with cardboard squares compared the squares to the size of people's purses. If the purse was bigger than the square, it wasn't coming in. My purse, barely big enough to hold a cell phone and a pair of sunglasses, was about 1" larger than the square. Back to the parking lot we went. As I stuffed the purse under the car seat, I said to The Husband, "If a thief steals this, I'm counting on you to shut off my debit card!"
Back to the ballpark.
By this time, sweat is dripping into my ear canals. We wait patiently while our tickets and bodies are scanned. Twice. Finally, we enter the stadium.
Having had no lunch, I'm starving. We head straight for the food line. Barbeque and fixings await.
There is no server at the food line. We pick up our plastic plates and a packet containing a thin napkin and a plastic knife, fork, and spoon. There's a basket of hot dog and hamburger buns, still in bags. Everybody ahead of us has run their hands into the bag. Somebody ahead of me had probably touched my hot dog bun before I did. Everybody ahead of us has picked up the tongs and spoons in the serving dishes. I tear open my plastic-ware bag and use my own fork to dish up my food.
There are four or five picnic tables on the deck overlooking the field. They are packed with people, elbow to elbow. The Husband and I opted to take our plates to our seats rather than squeeze in at a table. We balanced them on our knees, trying hard to not drip barbeque sauce down our shirt fronts. The food was mediocre, at best.
Finally, the game started. At the bottom of the first inning, something went wrong on the pitcher's mound, and the game was delayed for 20 minutes while the problem was fixed. We sat through several innings, then went back up to the deck to socialize a bit. The home team was losing fairly badly, and it was getting late, so we decided to leave. On the way out, we stopped by the rest rooms. There was a sign on the door ordering us to wear masks while in the rest room for sanitary reasons.
REALLY?
I went back to the garden yesterday about 4 p.m. simply because I had nothing else I wanted to do. Over the weekend, while digging around in the freezer, I found a zip-lock bag full of seed packets that I'd ordered last year - brussels sprouts, broccoli, butternut squash, peas, carrots, lettuce - and wanted to plant a couple of hills of butternut squash. Weeded the butterbean rows. Turned the compost pile. Pruned the squash plants. While pruning, I found squash bugs, so I picked all the squash, got out the sprayer, and nixed the destructive little monsters.
While I was working, Nanny's driveway started to fill up with cars. It was her 80th birthday, and we were going to celebrate with a cookout and birthday cake.
Earlier in the day, The Husband had gone out to buy food for the cookout and to look for a birthday present for Nanny. He came home with a putter, an indoor putting green, and a box of golf balls.
As far as I know, Nanny had never even held a golf club, but she loves to watch golf on television. (This is something I do not understand; I'd sooner watch paint dry, but to each his own, I reckon.)
We wrapped the putting green, stuck the golf balls in a gift bag, and then tried to figure out how to disguise the golf club. The Husband stuck the wrapping paper tube over the handle of the club, and put an empty toilet paper roll over the head of the club. I tied a huge bow, which we used to hide the toilet paper roll. When the wrapping was finished, the golf club looked like a giant scepter. Before she opened it, she used it to "dub" everybody in the room with love. :)
I spent an hour or two both mornings this weekend just piddling around in the vegetable garden. Added a few more cardboard boxes, and rearranged some of the old ones. The cardboard has reduced our weeding by more than half. Of course, grass/weeds sprout from both sides of the cardboard. I've been chopping/pulling it out by hand, and throwing what I pull up onto the cardboard to help hold the cardboard down and kill the roots of what I've just pulled up. Once it has dried up, I move it to the compost heap.
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| Butterbeans coming along. They sprouted HUGE. |
The tomatoes are holding their own (knock on wood). A sprayer full of peroxide-water and one full of liquid copper fungicide and liquid Seven sit near the rows, ready to douse anything that shows up. I believe that the peroxide-water spray is helping to keep fungus down. If a plant seems infected, I spray both of its neighbors, too, even if they're not showing signs of infection.
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| Those fungi and bugs better stay away, if they know what's good for 'em. Cucumbers producing enough that we'll be making relish soon. |
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| The oldest green beans are beginning to bloom. The new ones at the other end of the row are coming along nicely. Squash plants are producing about all the squash we want, with a little to give away. The picture doesn't show it, but I raked up more pine needles this morning and used it to pave the middle between the squash and the green beans. Okra (between the beans and the tomatoes) is starting to grow. |
I feel like I reached a culinary milestone this afternoon.
I made caramel frosting, from scratch, with granulated sugar. Without a candy thermometer.
This may not sound like a big deal to you, but to one who has never achieved a "soft ball stage," it's monumental.
Back when I was in my early 20s, I had a craving for old-fashioned fudge - the kind you cook to "soft ball stage," not the marshmallow creme stuff. For years, I'd been trying to make fudge. It never properly set. Sometimes, it would come out a bit like taffy, sometimes a bit firmer. But always you could cut out a little square (or maybe dip it out) and go back to the pan an hour later, and the square hole had closed up, like you'd never taken a piece. I never achieved that firm yet crumbly texture I wanted.
So one night, I decided, This time I'm going to cook it long enough.
I cooked it.
The recipe said to set the pan aside to cool, then come back and beat it until it lost its gloss.
I set it aside to cool.
Made the mistake of leaving the metal spoon in the pan. BROKE THE SPOON OFF trying to get it out of the fudge.
The pan sat, full of water, overnight and all the next day, but the candy did not budge. Tried to warm it on the stove. Nope. We ended up setting the pan outside with the candy still in it. It never did come out. The pan went to the dump.
I never attempted fudge - or any type of candy - again.
But Granddaughter #1 is due a birthday cake this weekend. She asked for a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. I found a from-scratch recipe for a delicious-looking dark chocolate cake, and another recipe for chocolate buttercream frosting. It seemed to me that a layer of caramel frosting in the middle might be yummy.
I almost backed out of the caramel frosting when I saw that one part of it had to be cooked to a "soft ball stage."
If there had been such a thing as YouTube when I was in my 20s, my life might have turned out differently. Today, I saw what "soft ball stage" is supposed to look like. And achieved it!
Into the soft-ball-stage mixture (milk and sugar) goes hot, caramelized sugar. The thing about making caramelized sugar is that there is about a 5-second difference between not caramel-y enough, perfectly caramelized, and burnt. I somehow got that right, too. Beat it with an electric mixer for 5 minutes, and got it on the cake before it set up too thick. The cake is now in the refrigerator, ready to be frosted tomorrow.
Now, if I can manage not to screw up the chocolate buttercream.
In case you're interested, here are the recipes:
Dark Chocolate Cake II Recipe | Allrecipes (has coffee in it; made two nice, tall, dark layers)
Perfect Chocolate Buttercream Frosting Recipe | Allrecipes - we'll see how this turns out tomorrow
Caramel Frosting Using Granulated Sugar - Recipe | Cooks.com - totally yummy
When my sons and their friends were teenagers, and full of themselves, one of the friends drove up in his pickup truck and unloaded a tiny aluminum pontoon boat. The boys took it to the small pond on our property and put it in the water. Presumably, they poled around on it a little bit, then dragged it onto the bank of the pond, where it has sat for the past 20 years or so.
This past weekend, Son #1 fired up the tractor and bush-hogged around the pond. The pontoon was in the way, so he tied it to the tractor and dragged it to the edge of our yard . . .
. . . where Cousin Roger spied it.
Roger called over to our house the next day, wanting to know if he could have it, said he wants it for a "project" if we don't want it. We told him that it's not ours, that it probably leaks, and to call Son #1 to find out who actually owns it and if it can be given away.
Yesterday, Roger came over on his lawnmower to get the boat, said he'd talked to our son and had permission to get it. The boat had been sitting, right-side-up, under some trees all these years. It was full of dirt, saplings, and poison ivy. He needed help moving it.
I put on some shoes and followed him to where the boat was. There was an old rope tied to it. I tied the rope to the hitch-hole on the back of his lawnmower, and Roger proceeded to drag it up the hill. When he got to a steep spot, the lawnmower lost traction, and I had to push the boat to get it on up the hill. Roger dragged the boat across our yard to the edge of the woods, where we took hold of one side of the boat and dumped it over to empty it of the dirt and leaves.
Roger wanted to know how the boat was originally out-fitted, what kind of floor it had, etc. I had no idea and did not want to stand around discussing it, as the mosquitoes were feasting on me. "I'm going back to the house!" I told him, and ran for the porch.
The boat made an awful noise as Roger dragged it up the road to his house. It is now propped on its side outside his workshop.
It'll be interesting to see what he does with it. I should have taken a "before" picture.
I just got back from the garden a few minutes ago. Went down there to bury the stuff in my slop jar. I put it in the north end of the garden, in the low spot. Vegetable peelings, egg shells, coffee grounds and filters. Something will probably dig it up tonight. If it can get past the smell, it'll have to deal with the dirt if it wants to eat anything.
The blight/leaf spot is back on some of the tomatoes. I was afraid that would happen when I watered them. Watered with a soaker hose, but still . . . fungus likes water.
So I got out the peroxide/water sprayer and went through the routine - remove affected leaves, spray. I sprayed the plants to the left and right of the affected plants, thinking the plants probably spread the fungus to their neighbors when the wind blows.
This spraying would be so much easier if my sprayers would work right. :\
