Football Epilogue

I'm over 1/4th done with my time in work limbo and thought it would be a good time to check on and tweak the self-imposed "Honey-do" list from last time. Two days ago was more of an "action day" with plenty of time spent in the yard. Yesterday was more of an "out and about" day with a couple of appointments and a "farewell" happy hour to cap off the evening.  I think the biggest thing so far was getting my garden areas tilled and planted. First was my little flower display at the end of the driveway. Here I put the geraniums from my son's football fundraiser as well as a couple perennials. This year I added some lily to the middle and hope it comes out well and not too crowded. The next was the vegetable space up closer to the house. I planted a mix of seeds, home starts and store bought starts this year. It's definitely not much to look at yet, so I overlaid the planting map; partially for my own reference. I'd like to get more o...

Halloween has passed. The colder weather is officially here. In doing the outdoor winter preparations I took the tomato wires out of my garden. Upon stacking them upside-down they looked a lot like a Christmas tree to me. So instead of shrugging it off and continuing on with the winter prepping, I decided to try my luck at converting the wire into a lighted spiral tree. This was totally silly and totally a diversion from being actually productive, but hey, it was fun. Here's the route I took: Flip over tomato wire (t-wire) and tape the legs together.   I used blue painter's tape out of convenience. I may pay for that later. My tree frame in my kitchen. Please ignore the mess. Life is messy and so am I...to a point. Get rigid steel wire and spiral it around the tomato wire.   I used roughly one turn between each rung on the t-wire. I used zip ties to hold the skeleton together. Tape would also work, but the ties allowed me to adjust the wire to get th...

Some Strawberries from the garden, this is my sixth haul like this this year; not bad for a little two foot by four foot swath. Previous years haven't been nearly so fruitful. I guess it takes a couple years for things to really get going. There are more than can be eaten so I made a simple strawberry sauce taking hints from looking at a few recipes: 4 cups strawberries, stemmed and hulled 1/4 cup lime juice (lemon could work too, but was out) 1/2 cup sugar 1 tbsp cornstarch Mash strawberries lightly in saucepan and stir in other ingredients. Heat to dissolve sugar on low-med heat. Once more fluid heat to a boil on med-high. Turn down the heat and simmer, stirring frequently/continuously for 7-ish minutes. Allow to cool or serve warm on ice cream, pancakes, waffles, steak, hot dogs, sushi, kale or anything that could use a flavor improvement. :) Store or hot water can/jar for later. The sauce is definitely a "sometimes" food, but does preserve that tast...

Salsa from my garden anyone?  I loosely followed this recipe .

The first strawberries of the year from my garden are arriving. Right now I'm picking roughly a dozen per day from a 2 foot by 4 foot patch. They are a lot more varied in size, color and flavor than the grocery store pickings making them interesting. A few musings on this bunch: Strawberries don't yield well their first year planted. This is the second year of these plants. We only had maybe a dozen berries overall last summer. The plants do like to grow out and readily seed new plants. I'd love to grow my patch, but need to be weary of the property line. The suggestion for storage is to keep them refridgerated and unwashed in a shallow bowl. Rinse in cold water right before serving. Freeze them individually before bagging them.  Put them in everything! Here are a few links for more rigorous information: http://www.extension.umn.edu/garden/yard-garden/fruit/strawberries-for-the-home-garden/ http://localfoods.about.com/od/strawberries/qt/How-To-Store-Str...