Today's Harvest

I have a few harvested items to show everyone today:
  First up is what we had for breakfast.  About a pound of Lambs Quarters, 3 squash flowers, some kale, and an onion.  This was all washed and I chopped up the onion, kale and squash flowers.  Had one of the kids run out and get me some fresh basil which got chopped too.

 I start with some sunflower oil (gods I LOVE this stuff) and I browned the onion then the rest goes into the pan and I stir fry them a couple minutes till they are fully wilted and a little dark.  I use a blueberry pomegranate dressing I found about 1/2 a cup while the pan is still on and I let it steam in the dressing for about a minute.  It made about 2 small servings of some wonderful greens.

 Here is something funny, at least to me.  I saw on listia.com the other day someone selling "organic Lambs Quarters" seeds.  I laughed at the idea, seeing as how my Lamb's Quarter is organic as it is growing in my garden... but I defiantly didn't put it there.  It came up on it's own, any place you "disturb" soil you will see Lambs Quarters growing.  If you want to eat them only go for the smallest leaves.  I tend to just take the tops off, and they will branch off; A LOT!  So don't worry about how much of the tops you remove.  It will keep growing.
  My lettuce is still growing, and I harvested a colanderful of them.  This is going to be lunch today, probably with some of our left over snow peas that are in the fridge; and some of the carrots from the farmer's market.

 While out I noticed my beans have tons of flowers on them. I think they are also the reason that the lettuce is still growing good as the beans are shading the lettuce.  I also picked some day lily buds, I think I got four of them; as they seem to go from no where near opening to open in a day.  They are suppose to be good as soup and stew thickeners, and because we don't have the solar dryer as yet I am freezing them.

 I have also noticed that the elderberry flowers have not yet opened, I am sooo waiting for those to open.  It seems all of my tomatoes are doing well in their new homes, and growing like... well.. like Lambs Quarters (most people would say weed).  I'm going to have to come up with supports for them soon I think.  They companion's the dill plants are also taking over, which is good.  Maybe I'll try to make Silver and the girls some pickles using the lemon cucumbers.  Hey, it might work once they produce.     That is one pint of black berries.  Yes, we are officially into the black berry picking season.  I expect we will get quite a few blackberries this year from the season if I got a pint this morning.  I also should be able to make a straight blueberry jam too as we seem to now have tons of wild blueberries now here.  My one plant has one berry on it, while the wild ones are loaded.

   I am going to hold off on making jams until we start getting rose hips from the wild roses.  Just so I can add the extra vitamin C to the batches.  Boy, it should be one heck of a day when I start doing my jams this year.  If my melons all grow and produce I should have quite a few of the cantulope jam too.  You know I was not sure if I'd like it, but I found I love it!  I will post the recipe when I make it.  I'm hoping to get another case of two of peaches again so we can, can some and try out the bourbon peach jam I found.

   I wonder if wintergreen berries would be good in any of it... I will have to find out.

 We got a piece of ply wood for the baker's rack, and now we are in the process of painting the wood then it'll go in the house... somewhere.  We are thinking the shelf under the TV will need to come out for the rack to come in.  Then we will be putting the computer on it for now.  The tomato by the chickens has some tomatoes on it, but they are still green so we'll see when they are done.  I think it might wind up being a paste tomato, but I'm not to sure.

 The kids are going to another "vacation bible school" this week, this one at my son's church.  So all this week we don't have to feed them dinner.  The girls are also going to be in the reading program at the library starting wednsday.  with next monday being a special evening event involving the "Hunger Games", the first prize is a boxed set of the books (hardbound).  Maybe one of the kids will win it.

 Well, I need to get back to my work; I got to plant some free irises a little while ago.

   Be Well, Be Safe, and Blessed Be...

I have Pictures!

Ok, I got the camera working finally... seems I had the batteries in the wrong way.  Figures right?  Then we tried downloading the correct software for the camera to this computer and it kept not working.  So I had to go dig out my computer to try and "work" on the pictures... so I've had some fun with it...  Anyway here are my pictures to fully update everyone:

First up is the van again.. and note this is the "after legal" picture:

I love the color I swear I do.. especially since the picture on Craigslist looked a tad brown.  I like this red shade, the interior carpet is a light blue and the "trim" is all done in wood.

Now I mentioned that my girls were fostering/training some hunting pups, here they are:

Aren't they cute?  The guy who owns them is selling them as they are now for $1500, when he first brought them over with no training they were wroth $900; and that is price a piece.

Now onto my plant pictures!

This one I took just to show how many blackberry canes are in our "clearing" right now... guess who's gonna have a lot of black berry jam this year?

This of course is some red cabbage, they are in the box that my tomatoes were in last year, this year when these "guys" are done the cucumbers will be planted here.  As you can see they are BIG, I always feel like they are going to reach out and grab me as I walk past.

This is one of the two Elderberries I planted last year, this is the more "bushy" one; all of the "branches" have about a 1/2 inch to 1 inch of growth on them.

So does it's twin:

I swear this one is going to be a monster when it gets to maturity!

This, if you can see it well; is most of my onions for this year.  All they are growing in is some of my "finished" compost, chicken manure/straw, and I think perlite.  On top of our clay-ey soil and we just kinda pushed the sets in.. I did transplant the onions I started inside and they are the first row on the right side.

This is my volunteer potato growing in the spot we had them last year that later became our compost pile.  I have another volunteer one growing out of this year's compost pile.  Also the seed potatoes I planted have not grown very big as yet and I wonder if they have too much sun as the ones last year were in partial to full shade.

This pretty little thing is the Rosemary that I transplanted last fall, it survived and has new growth on it.  I do hope it gets very big.  to the left, the light green leaves is I think coriander, and also near it is a tarragon and catmint from last year as well!

This here is my newest the Black Current I planted with Silver's help yesterday, it seems to be doing the "wilt after transplant" that I'm use to seeing.  I had bought two small ones of these last year and both got  trampled(?) or eaten(?) by the deer that graze here.  I am hoping to see flowers on this possibly this year.

This little thing is a Goji Berry, I ordered it as I wanted to see if it tastes good seeing as how for some time a lot of "health nuts" said that it's good for you.  Also I like to try new things and don't mind adding new flavors if they taste good.  If it doesn't I can always mix it into a jam or use it to feed our chickens.

this is one of my two Russian Tea trees, I am so happy to get some tea plants.  I also hope the flavor of this black tea is good.  The two little trees seem to be enjoying their new homes, I just need to go through and make sure the blackberry bramble doesn't crowd them out.

This is one of our four wintergreen plants, when they arrived from RainTree they still had some berries on them and I tried one.  It has a very nice mildly minty flavor.  So between leaves and the berries it should provide another nice tea.  Also I am hoping the berries dry well for a nice addition to winter stews.

..and of course this is one of the Rhubarb that we got from RainTree as well.  This happens to be our biggest "plant" right now, even though I know some of the other crowns were bigger.  This one just took off the fastest.  It is bigger than the leaves of the crown we planted last year that survived.  I will make this stament.. if you buy anything from RainTree... DEFIANTLY  get your Rhubarb crowns from them, they were huge when they showed up and they grew fast.  The reason they are growing at different rates is I planted each crown slightly differently in depth and how much cover they had so it's a matter of how much they had to "fight" to grow.  they are all growing and that is the important thing.

Well... I did not get my weeding done, I will be doing it tomorrow morning after the kids head off to school. I shall also be starting to harvest my lettuce before it takes over and I will take pictures of what's in that bed once I can show which plants I intended to be there.  Right now it's hard to tell where the intended plants are and not the Lambs Quarters are... oh well..  That's it for now...

Be Well Be Safe, and Blessed Be...