Good Spring for Flowers

 I have always been a flower lover. I think I inherited it from my ancestors. Both of my grandmothers were flower lovers. My mother is also a flower lover. So, I guess I just inherited their green thumb.

I can remember visiting my Granny and she would take us on a walk around her yard and point out different flowers and plants and tell us little stories about them. "This one is called Artemisia and that was my (some relative)'s name...This one is a shade lover...This one is a ground cover and the color and texture really makes the flowers around it look prettier...Geraniums do well in this pot because it drains well and they don't like wet feet..."

So, I sort of think of my ancestors when I am selecting, planting, and tending to my flowers. This year I stumbled across some beautiful geraniums with a deep crimson bloom. So, I decided that they would be the base for my back porch plantings. 

I selected some that had only a bloom or two but lots of buds. They have been beautiful!

I added a deep blue/purple petunia and a white trailing plant that I think is called Bacopa. I also have some sort of plant that grows tall and has blooms along the stalk of it that is just now coming along and getting ready to bloom.

The rainy conditions we have experienced has made flower growing simple. I've only had to hand-water them a few times because we have gotten downpours almost daily. 

In the smaller pots, I added purple petunias and a variegated Lantana. It has yellow, orange, hot pink, and red in the bloom. 

I spend a while each morning wandering round sipping tea, plucking off spent blooms, and just enjoying the beauty of these flowers! 

It's Canning and Freezing Season!

Monday was the day for freezing squash.  We cut it up into slices and I cooked us up a batch to eat.  While dinner was on the stove, we cut up some more, dipped it into milk, dipped it into a dry batter of corn meal, flour, and spices, and laid it out on wax paper on cookie sheets to freeze.

Tuesday was the day for freezing okra.  Again, we cut it up into slices and dipped it into milk, dipped it into the dry batter, and laid it out on wax paper for freezing.  We turned out two quart freezer bags filled really full at a time.  That makes enough for a meal with company or for the two of us and leftovers for lunches.

Wednesday I froze three quarts of blanched squash in freezer bags for casseroles.  I simply sliced it into pieces, dropped it into boiling water for three minutes, plunged it into ice water, drained it, and bagged it for the freezer.

Thursday afternoon we picked squash, okra, and tomatoes.  We gave most of that afternoon's squash and okra away, saving only enough for dinner.  I washed off all the tomatoes and laid them out to dry.  The kitchen counters were full of tomatoes - all of them!  There  was a total of about three five-gallon buckets full of tomatoes.  I didn't make a photo but it was much like this bounty:

This afternoon was tomato canning day.  First, I dipped the tomatoes into boiling water for 30-60 seconds.  Then, plunged them into cold water.  Next I slipped the peeling off and cut them into chunks.  From there, I put them into the juicer for squeezing and straining out the seeds and large pieces of pulp.  I used this mechanism that belongs to Mama.

It worked beautifully.  I simmered the juice at 190 degrees for five minutes.  Poured it into jars, added a teaspoon of sugar and two tablespoons of lemon juice.  This made nine quarts of tomato juice that I processed in a boiling water bath.

I took the left-over pulp and pureed it.  Then, I cooked it for five minutes at 190 degrees.  Next, I dipped it out of the pot and poured it into jars before processing them in a boiling water bath as well.  I wound up with three quarts and a pint of pureed tomatoes.  Plus, there was about a half-pint that I just poured into a zip-top bag and froze.

We love soups, chili, spaghetti, lasagna, and such.  So, this winter, we will have home-grown tomatoes in our bowls!

I felt so good because I cleared the counters off and only had this few tomatoes left for salads, sandwiches, and just plain slices for the week.

Then, Mike came in from his afternoon of cutting grass, feeding calves, and gardening.

Tomorrow looks like another canning or freezing day!

What to do with all these tomatoes?

I mean, we have them covering the kitchen counter...

...the counter on both sides of the sink.

There are more on the cutting board beside the dishwasher as well.

Beautiful, red, ripe tomatoes.  We have eaten them sliced.  We have eaten them chunked with Chicken Salad or Pimento Cheese.  We have eaten them on burgers, ham sandwiches, turkey sandwiches, and chicken sandwiches.  We have eaten them as bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches.  We have eaten them with sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit.  We have also given a multitude away!  They have been fabulous.  But, the plants keep producing and the fruits have gotten ahead of our consuming.

So, yesterday, we made Salsa!  Yep.  Yummy Salsa.

First, I had a great volunteer to help me peel and dice tomatoes.  Then, I prepped the mixture and filled the  jars and processed them in a boiling water bath.  There were nine pints of salsa when we finished.  (Hop over to my recipe blog for info on how we made the salsa.)

Well, there was also a small sample bowl of salsa as well.  I thought it turned out yummy.

 My volunteer tomato peeler and dicer must have thought it turned out pretty well, too!

Now, what are we going to do with the other half of the ripened tomatoes?

Today is spaghetti sauce day!

The Garden is Coming In!

Well, actually, the garden isn't coming in.

Well, maybe it is actually coming in.  We seem to track pieces and parts of it in almost every day.  I cannot keep up with the sweeping or the mopping the floor needs, it seems!  I haven't given up as yet, though.

Actually, what I really mean is that the vegetables are maturing and we are enjoying the bounty of Mike's garden.  It seems that every day I have a kitchen counter with vegetables setting there waiting to become dinner.  Love it!  We started out with a planting of twenty-plus tomato plants, a couple of hills of cucumbers, and a handful of hills of squash.  There were a few tomato plants which were just not sturdy enough for transplanting from pots to the ground at that time.  So, after a bit of a panic, we wound up setting a handful more tomatoes.  Then, a week or so ago, we set out the last few plants that needed a bit of time to mature.  They may not mature enough to make juice or salsa but we hope to at least get a batch or two of fried green tomatoes.

We have For dinner we had fresh squash, boiled with some onions, and fried okra and a sliced tomato alongside some home-made meatloaf and it was delicious!  Mike also ate a few of one of his favorites, Cucumber and Onion Salad.

The other day I cooked us some squash for dinner and in a pot right beside it, I boiled more squash for a few minutes, plunged it into ice water, and bagged it up for the freezer.

We had a few ears of corn shared with us and we ate some and froze some.  Mike cut it off the cob and I did the blanching and freezing duties.  He also cut up some more squash and I blanched and froze it as well.

Those first few pieces from the garden always taste the best!  Now, I'm sure that as the work days grow longer and the energy grows shorter, I might not have as much enthusiasm for storing up the veggies for later use.  But I know that as the temperatures dip and the daylight hours grow shorter, I will appreciate the ready food supply tucked away in jars and the freezer.

Mike had a new addition to his gardening repertoire this year in an unintentional way.  He thought he was getting Cayenne pepper plants but when they began to bear, he realized that these peppers were way too big for that.  We have since identified them as Cowhorn peppers.  They are excellent for adding spice when cooking.  I am trying my hand at drying them for later use.

I used a similar technique to what I had done with the Cayenne's a couple of years ago.  I just strung them onto some strong, unflavored dental floss and hung them from the end of the cabinet.  For these, I strung them similarly and just looped the floss over the hinge of my newly cleaned cabinets.  I thought I should watch them pretty closely since I'm not certain they will dry as well.  So far, so good!

Today I'm battering and freezing a bit of okra and stirring up some granola.  We are going to have a few yummy days ahead anyway!

Garden Update!

A week or so ago we were in a state of panic!  Mike's tomatoes had been diagnosed with a disease.  He was frantic!

Now that he has treated them a couple of times with a copper sulfate spray, the initial distress has calmed.

Then, as luck would have it, we had a bit of a wind-storm later that week.  Sometimes we feel like that old Hee Haw song, "If it weren't for bad luck, we'd have no luck at all..."  The wind-storm blew over almost all of the little fence-tower-thingies that Mike had positioned around the tomato plants to support them.

Now the fear was that the plants were pulled out of the soil with roots exposed or were broken up and fruits knocked off the vine.

The two of us spent a bit of time uprighting (Is that a verb?) the plants and fence-tower-thingies.  Mike also drove some stakes in the ground and wired the fencing to the stake to support and hold them steady.  (Notice the deep ruts from our feet to the left of the plants in the photo above.)

It was not a pretty sight!  We were in mud up to our ankle bones setting the plants and fencing aright.  There were some mumblings and rumblings and some outright cursings in the garden that afternoon - no rambling that afternoon.  All the plants were saved and we only found a couple of ping-pong ball sized fruits were knocked off the vine, thank goodness!

At this point, many of the plants have climbed up through the fencing towers and are reaching out the top.  They are still blooming and we even noticed a pink fruit yesterday with much excitement.  This is a first year attempt at having a garden in this particular spot.  So, we are fighting Johnson Grass weeds and spend a bit of time pulling them and picking up rocks almost every afternoon.  We are mildly frustrated at the thought that we have a fungus in the soil that impacts Mike's precious tomatoes but I think this might be the best garden spot of all we have attempted here.

It is nice and flat.  The soil worked up beautifully.  We have a water spigot nearby.  The barn is nearby for storing gardening tools.  There is a nice shade tree.  Mike has started a mulch and composting pile in hopes of having a reserve to help prevent damage from the fungus next year.  You can see the wood shreds and chips piled up in the far-ground of the photo above.

In other gardening news, my purplish lilies have been blooming prolifically and are beautiful!

My hydrangea is also blooming beautifully.

My Aunt Mae lily has also been gorgeous.  She has bloomed - not just once...

...not just twice, but is on her third set of blooms!

Having plenty of rain and unseasonably low humidity and heat days has been such a blessing during these early summer days!

And finally, the children really were generous with this guy for Father's Day and he has enjoyed the bounty while embroiled in all his grass-cutting.  Stephen and his crew gave Mike this canopy to shade him while mowing.  Although not seen in this photo, the new grey T-shirt with the patriotic Tennessee T from Bryan and his crew is also a favorite.  Since I installed a radio app on his phone so he can stream his tunes, the headset that rests on his neck and has ear-buds attached from Bridgette and her crew has become a regular piece of his attire, too.  I think it might have been charging on this particular day - but now it is routinely set to charge each evening when Mike comes in so it will be ready for the next day.

So, when the gardener is happy, everybody is happier!

Well, honestly, I hope that by the time you are reading this, a ripe tomato is on my plate making me happier.  Yum!

Clean Up Work Day

Saturday was a family clean up day.

Bryan, Jessica, and Bridgette gathered at my Mom's house and dug in and cleaned the weeds out of the flower beds.

This one was the most dreaded one.  It had flowers blooming - Lenten Roses.  It also had lots and lots of weeds mingled in with some other perennials.

The girls attacked one side of the tree and Bryan attacked the other.  They stationed the little red wagon betwixt them and filled it full as they pulled bermuda grass and other pesky weeds.  Then, they would dump it into the back of the ATV and move on to the next spot.  I don't know how many times the ATV was dumped into a ditch there on the farm but I know that the greater part of the afternoon was spent pulling those weeds out of the flower beds which circle Mom's house.

There were a couple of lilies, a miniature rose, and a Gerbera daisy which had been given to Mom to brighten up the house.  So, Bridgette and Lillie asked Mom where she would like them to be planted and space around the bird bath was selected but that is another story for another day.

After all the weed removal, Bridgette's husband, Corey, pulled in the driveway and asked what needed to be done next.  So, we pointed him to a strip of grass along the driveway that had not been cut this week and off he went to do some mowing.

Since Corey took the mowing, Bryan sprinkled a bit of pre-emerge weed preventative to help keep their clean-out effective for a longer period of time.

This crew needed to be clear of the area so that the wrap up could be done.  So, they loaded up and headed to the creek - well, the bridge across the creek, but that is another story for another day.

The interesting thing is that the afternoon's work is simply a jump-start toward having beautiful flower gardens and landscaping for the rest of the summer.  Plans were discussed for adding more mulch and there was discussion about fertilizer for the roses and the list goes on and on.  The best part of it all is that it was truly a team effort and there were smiles all around.

Little Farmer

Learning where food comes from is one of the most important things children learn.  Learning to grow their food is even more effective.  I guess one of the grands' school must have realized this.

Every third grader was given a plant to grow.  They are to care for it and at the end of a measured time, the children will measure the plant's growth.

I think this little farmer is off to a good start, don't you?

Pass-Along-Plants

Over the years when I have moved from one house to another, I try to take some of my favorite perinniels with me to my next home.

It is rather comforting to see the same plants and sort of makes the new house feel more like home because old plant friends are there through different seasons.  

I have moved lilies, iris, day lilies, boxwoods, hostas, and such with great success.

I've also moved this grey, barn-shaped mailbox a couple of times because I like to keep my gardening gloves and tools hidden inside and handy for use.

At my last house, I had Baptisia australis, or false indigo that I had purchased in a pot because I liked the looks and color of the bloom.

When we sold that house, I dug up some of the other plants mentioned quite easily and moved them to their new location.

Digging up a root of the false indigo to move it was another story.  I dug and tugged and strained until I finally got a piece of a root.  I didn't really think it would grow, but I put it in the ground beside this mailbox post anyway.

At my last house, it grew to be about three feet tall as described in this article.

I am just now learning that it is a difficult plant to move because it doesn't like its roots disturbed.  So, I guess I should be grateful that it survived and thrived near the steps of the back porch.

I was thinking the other day that maybe I should move it because it is as tall as me and tends to flop over onto the path leading up to the steps requiring that I tie it up to the mailbox post.

Not only does it provide beautiful blue blooms early in the summer, but it also provides interest with these pea-looking pods after the blooms have faded.  They start off a beautiful green color like the leaves.

Then, they slowly turn to become a deep, dark, navy blue color that is almost black.

I learned that the blooms were used to create a blue dye at one time and that is how the plant got the common name of false indigo.

Since I was lucky and the transplanted root grew well for me after the last move, I guess I will follow the advice of the article mentioned previously and take some of the seed to plant in a different location rather than moving the plant I have and risk loosing it altogether.

Maybe I'll also start some little plants to pass along to the daughters and daughters-in-law like my Granny, my great aunt, and my mother have done for me.