It's Been A Long While

It's been a long while since I posted last. What has kept us so busy is that we plant gardens in the Spring. This year, it seems they occupied our time more than usual. The problem is weeds. Lots and lots of weeds. Here in SC, we can have no weeds one day and the next day they start shooting up. I come home from work and pull some. Hubby, who is retired, pulls some during the day when he's not doing a chore or two. It's constant and unforgiving work. However, the upside is that we get veggies and fruit. Yeah!

First, let me say that we had a really wet Spring. We got a late start on planting and we didn't do too bad considering we couldn't plant when we wanted to. Some of the veggies couldn't recoup from the water and some died. That was our luck this year.

Here are some pics of what we started with this past Spring. I have a cage that I made for sweet potatoes. I didn't plant any this year, but I put my daikon seeds and a couple of potatoes that were sprouting in the house. I got only one daikon. The heat came and the rest bolted quickly. No potatoes. They died.

Daikon and Lonely Potato

 My hubby called this the "Indian Burial Ground". The teepees in the foreground are for pole beans. The teepees in the background are for cucumbers. The story here is our weather was really weird this year. We go rain and the cukes drowned, except for two plants. Those two plants gave us a few really nice cukes this summer. The pole beans, green beans and carrots were mowed down by rabbits in one night. They were only about 6" high and they were gone. Them pesky wabbits!

Indian Burial Ground

 Some of the best tools I own! Hubby had a broken rake that he was going to throw away. I asked if he would make me a 4-prong rake on a stick so I can get between plants. One day, he cut and welded and made these two. Boy can they yank weeds out of the ground with little effort!!!

Hubby's Hand Rakes

 Radishes and more radishes. I didn't think I'd get any because we have moles. The moles must not like radishes. We were grateful for these.

Radishes

 Here is one of our strawberry patches. We did really well this year with them. We had some slugs, rabbits, squirrels and birds getting to them. We managed to get about a pint to a quart every night when they started bearing. They bore clear into July. These are Ozark Beauty everbearers. Love them!

Ozark Beauty Strawberries

 My herb patch / nursery. Foreground large green patch is oregano. I harvested, dried and froze a lot for this Winter. Garlic chives looks like hair. This stays pretty much just like this all year 'round down here. Back right corner is thyme. I didn't get anything much from this this year. I don't use much thyme.

Herb Garden

More Radishes

We planted tomatoes, lettuce, yellow squash and mild banana peppers. The tomatoes are being scorched by the heat and the stinkbugs are mating and sucking the juice from them. Yuck! That really ruins the tomatoes. We got very little lettuce because of the heat scorching the leaves. The squash did well. The peppers are still bearing.

That was our Spring and Summer in our food garden.

Take care.

Recently Made Foods

Here's a few food items I've made that may be interesting. First off is this...

Hubby's Birthday Cake

 Just as the caption says, it's Hubby's birthday cake. Made from scratch, including the icing. It's his once a year splurge. Mahogany Chiffon cake from a very old Betty Crocker cookbook that I picked up at a yard sale. The couple bucks I spent for that was really worth it. I use it a lot and the recipes are really good. Of course they're not all heart healthy. But, back when this was made, no one was dying much of cancer and heart attacks. So, in moderation, all is good!

Next is this baby.

Unstuffed Cabbage

That's what I call it. All of the ingredients you'd normally put into a stuffed cabbage you put into here. Fry up the meats, add the cabbage, kraut, onions, garlic powder, salt & pepper and tomato sauce. Simmer until it's done. Add a bit of pre-cooked rice. You're ready to eat! It takes only about an hour to get all of this done. So it's doable on a weeknight.

This one is a bit more complex.

Vegan Meal

Punjabi Chole (left) and Curried Potatoes right) served with tomatoes. YUM! I love Indian spices. I just mix what I have on hand in the proportions with what the online recipes call for and it turns out yummy. I don't have all of the Indian spices called for, so I just leave them out. There is usually enough spice in it anyway. I don't know the difference because I've never had the original. So I don't think I do too bad. At least, a former Indian co-worker said it smelled authentic.

That's about it for now.

Take care.

Rain

I don't know if any of you have kept up with the weather in the Southeast, but it's raining again here. So far this summer, it's been one rainy summer.

We have mosquitoes to the glory. Around here, we can't have any standing water. In 3 days you'll see mosquito larvae. That goes for any standing water. I've seen larvae in the dogs' indoor water fountain. We have one of those 1.75 gallon waterers. I only fill them half way so I can give them fresh water every couple of days. I was taking the lazy way out. I don't do that any more. That was just plain nasty. The girls get fresh water every day, even twice a day.

Another effect of the rainy weather is frogs. LOTS of frogs. We have tree frogs here and lots of them. They like to hang out around our porch light at night. I also keep a small container for the compost pile on the railing so I can put my coffee grounds and scraps in it every night. Then I empty it the following day. Well...sometimes a day or two after I should. The frogs find out that flies and gnats love to do their thing in the compost tin. They'll sit around it at night and snatch up the flies and gnats. Right now, we have frogs the size of pencil erasers coming around. You know the pencil...yellow #2. Yep. Frogs that little get around pretty well. They crawl up the siding and hang around the porch at night. They're fun to watch on the window. Last night, I watched one stalk a small fly of some kind. Frogs sure do have patience, don't they?! I hate to say this, but they pop when you step on them. Yuk! I didn't do it on purpose, mind you. It was a bigger frog a couple of years ago. I watch going out in bare feet now. Uh huh. Sure do!

Any how, every few days the frogs mate in the ditches. They sing so loudly for about 3 days until they get their stuff done. The noise is so deafening that you can't sit out and talk. Then you see little frogs everywhere. It's like magic.

Well. Because of all of this rain, we lost a lot of tomato plants. The tomatoes rotted on the vine and the vines are losing leaves and are growing spindly. It's time to plant winter crops, anyways.

The strawberry patch is holding on. The plants are losing leaves from the heat, but they're alright.

The elderberry plot has grown by leaps and bounds this year. We had two flowering stalks which were promptly eaten by birds or something. Next year should bring some good heads. I didn't gather wild ones this year, yet. I'll be hard pressed to find some still holding on to the stalk with all of this rain. What's funny is, everyone born down here thinks they're poisonous. I love to make jelly from them.

That's how things are going here in our piece of heaven.

Take care.

Tomatoes

Hubby and I took a walk back to gather strawberries when we stopped to check out our tomato garden, which is on the way. Last week I tied up the tomato plants and this week they need tied up again. They have grown so much with last week's rain! We also have some tomatoes on the vines. We counted about a dozen in various sizes. Some of them are bigger than golf balls right now. Whee! We're gonna have tomatoes soon! I can hardly wait to taste a bit of sunshine. Everything tastes so much better when we grow it ourselves. I hope some of the Black Krim tomatoes give fruit. They are a dark blackish tomato with a green halo around the stem part of the tomato. They are pretty but it's a little weird to think of eating a blackish tomato. Well, they're more like a purplish black.

Back to the strawberries...we got about a pint tonight. The second production has the nicest berries. They are hanging above the plant and aren't eaten so much by slugs. Now, the squirrels pick them and leave them laying around. It's annoying because they get the ripest ones and munch on them. At least they munch more than the birds do. Birds take a bite or two and go onto the next one. We lose less to the squirrels. The birds waste more.

We are supposed to get a bit more rain tonight and tomorrow. Just what we need...NOT. We need a bit of a break from rain. I'm sure we'll be begging for rain this summer during a drought.

By the way, the thermometer registered 99 degrees F when I got home tonight. It is hot and a bit humid. Sometimes a little breeze wafts through.

Take care.