Rain!

It rained today! It's raining right now! Hooray! It hasn't really rained for weeks and everything was terribly dry.

We have been watering with the hose, which I find ridiculous because we have a well. We draw water up from underground, to sprinkle it back onto the ground almost directly over the well. Ridiculous.

The 6x10' garden shed is eventually going to be fitted with gutters and rain barrels, but for now I park the wheel barrows under the corners and collect what I can. There has been very little to collect.

and a pretty picture of what My Guy and I gave to each other for our 6th anniversary. The Cast Iron anniversary. Next year is copper and wool.

today we did...

painted tounge, before flowers

daisies, before flowers

planted and mulched

Look Ma! No Hands!

Just a little prettying up.

My Guy trimmed the dead out of our white pines, up to about 16 feet.

My Mom had sent me a little folding money for Mother's Day and I scurried off to the garden center to spend it all all all! I have been wanting to spruce up the front walk which is made up lovely slate, but tends to be a bit bare. I prefer perennials for getting my money's worth, but self seeding annuals are always fun. You never know where they will pop up! Any woody ornamentals are kind of out, because of all the snow and plowing and all, so no azaleas or lavender or any shrubby thing.

So, lovely perennial daisies head up the walk. I love yellow and white daisies for their lack of pretension and their ability to flower all summer. In the self-seeding annual category there are (wait for this name, it's so good) Salpiglossis sinuata, or painted tongue. They will be really pretty if they survive the stomping that this household can dole out.

For Jessica

This is what Chocolate Chocolate Sea Salt Fudgie Bites look like. Neener neener neeeener

Lily-of-the-Valley

Convallaria majalis, Ephemera, Our-Lady's-Tears, Liriconfancy

whatever you want to call it, I love Lily-of-the-Valley. When my family moved from Texas to Buffalo, there was a patch of it at our new house from an old farm. The farm had long gone over to suburban houses, but the flowers remained. After the hot and dry of Texas, LOTV was the most wonderful, delicate flower I had ever seen and it was just growing all on its ownsome! I fell in love with how it smelled and I promised myself that when I had my own home, there would be a Lily patch. I planted my first pips (pips!) this spring and have found it growing in the wood's edge at the neighbor's. Next year we will have flowers of our own to pick.

Weeds into booze

There are worse ways to spend a sunny morning than picking dandelions out of the neighbors yard

Dandelion Cordial recipe

1 lemon

1 1/2 c water

3 cups of dandelion blossoms, white and yellow parts only (it is a long and tedious process)

1 c sugar

3 c vodka

1. Zest lemon and set aside.

2. Bring water and blossom bits to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes.

3. Remove from heat and let stand 10 minutes

4. Strain blossoms from liquid, squeeze all the juice you can from the soggy pulpy mass of weeds you just cooked in your kitchen

5. Add sugar to broth and warm over low heat to dissolve sugar.

6. Remove from heat and add zest and vodka.

7. Let steep in the fridge for two weeks, shaking occasionally.

8. Serve cold.

Bubbling Away

My Guy has a home brewing hobby and i like to occasionally dabble in alcohol based recipes. My most recent experiment is dandelion cordial, which is basically a vodka infusion. Last year in blueberry season I made Officer's Jam from "Preserving Food without Canning or Freezing". Take in-season fruit, layer with sugar and covering with brandy as you go. Let it sit for at least 6 months (don't stir!!) then enjoy.

My Guy's brewing has become more elaborate as he learns more about the process. He has moved from kits to his own recipes to his own recipes made with whole grains that he crushes himself. Right now we have four fermenters percolating under our breakfast bar. Barley Wine, a balsam tip brown beer, dandelion wine and low-alcohol breakfast beer. The pine tip beer is a take on a historical recipe. Brewers would put all sorts of things in beer to give bitterness and body to beer, and pine tips were popular in colonial America. I have a sneaking suspicion it will taste the way pine sol smells, but I hope to be proven wrong. His beer is usually delicious!

Little signs of life

Detroit Red Beets, planted a little too close, so I will have an excuse to take thinnings for salads and roasted baby beets.

Picasso Shallots. Next year I will be smarter and divide the bulbs before planting them. I just put them in the ground as is, as though i was planting tulips. Learning, learning, learning...

A Mammoth Grey sunflower seedling and an Alderman shell pea. As the sunflowers grow to about 12' (TWELVE FEET!)tall, they will support the pea vines. They are planted all along our front deck to provide shade from the afternoon sun. Really I just wanted to plant giant flowers to amaze Miss Critterpants. The peas and the shade are happy coincidences.

Finally!

My Guy is adding a second level to the "Fortress"

Albino toad that blended very well into all the bluets in the yard

as of yet unnamed moth. If any of you know, I would love to hear. I've been calling them "Mint chocolate chip Moths" which is probably not it. (Update: it's a Comstock's Sallow moth. Thank you What's That Bug!)

bluets and an orchard bee

angry moth.

We finally have internet again after a long and horrible period that is culminating in finding a new provider.

Here are a few pictures taken in the last few weeks, plus two new backdated posts about spring and travel.

Black Flies

Black Flies are evil. That is all. Thank you.

In the dirt

I am currently unable to download pictures, so we must make do with words.

Spring has sprung and we have been outside as much as possible.

This past Friday was the Fedco Tree sale and I had ordered three things:

Chesnut Apple: apples the size of golfballs but sweet and delicious

Ashmead's Kernel: a multi-purpose apple for eating, keeping, and especially nice single varital hard cider. the apple are tart and complex in flavor but mellow in storage to be extra delicous in December. Disease resistant

Bluebell Grape: easy to grow and great for jelly and juice (i love love love grape juice)

We got to the sale and the Ashmead apple and the grape were both out of stock, so I had to go with my second choices for both. Esopus Spitzenburg apple, which is a delicious apple that Thomas Jefferson loved! it is also a good keeper and useful for hard cider, but is less hardy.

Valiant grape replaced the Bluebell. it is a purple grape good for juice and jelly, but can be suceptable to powdery mildew and black rot. However, the leaves can be used for dolmas, which is a big bonus in my mind.

Along with the fruit trees, I bought three pounds of Picasso shallots. They're pink tinged and mild. Fresh in salads or cooked into anything, or in our house, almost everything.

Fedco has a really interesting selection of books and it's always tempting to buy all of them, but I managed to show restraint and get only "The Backyard Orchardist" by Stella Otto.

Now off to the out-of-doors to plant the grape and feed the black flies!