gardens & computers
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We planted pumpkins in our flower garden bed this year. The rabbits loved the blossoms. I fenced in a little bud and actually grew one pumpkin. The squash was much happier with more room to roam, a better source of water and sun.
kabocha squash and pumpkin
Every week of the summer I pick sunflowers at the Root Connection, the CSA where we get vegetables to eat all summer long. Ken picks basil and kale while I pick flowers.
Today was a good day. It was gorgeous and we kicked b*tt in the garden. Knowing that it is supposed to start raining again tomorrow, we wanted to get as much done today as possible. To start with, I planted 102 tulips and a super sak® of blue grape hyacinths from Brecks. I have a lot of details with pictures I will share later – including a, not so little, spider episode. There were many critters “helping” all day. While I was planting deluxe perennial tulips (which mostly means they are huge and have to be planted 9″ deep), Ken was filling a bed with our most recent purchases. It is a nice fall planting.
garden bed between the house, studio and driveway
I plan to make some sort of list of all the plants included – I can never remember their names. We did our homework, but one never knows what will happen with just the right light (or wrong light) and just the right nutrients (or wrong ones). The dogs can walk up the pathways on either side of this bed, so we are kind of worried they might want to dig in this bed. WE were digging so it makes sense. Hence, the fence! Ken calls it the tension fence. He wove these stakes together and by pushing them against each other, they are supposed to stay tight and keep the dogs out. Right. I hollered at Hugo that afternoon when I caught him digging up a few of the winter pansies. Big dog prints all through the garden. Helpful critter? I think not.
escallonia blossom
tension fence
The rest of our day was consumed with digging, moving and placing more plants. That evening, as we sat on the deck, we could really see the changes we made. Of course we came up with more ideas for future gorgeous days.
October is the month to plant garlic and today is another beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest.
killarney red
What an accomplishment – getting the garlic ordered – pulled apart (called popping) and then planted. Preparing the garden bed is no small task either. I’ve got 186 cloves planted which ideally (with no moles, cats or bad weather) will be the same number of bulbs harvested in July. Purple Italian, Premium Northern White, Killarney Red (I wanted Spanish Roja) and Silverwhite are the types that spoke to me in the catalog. Organic. The Premium cloves were HUGE. Garlic seems pricey to me in comparison to other seeds and starts ($16/pound plus shipping). I have yet to find a place to buy them that I could really recommend. You are supposed to plant only the larger cloves to get larger bulbs. Makes sense. With the little pieces left over, you can either cook them (duh) or plant them in a little spot in the garden and use them in the spring as little garlicky additions to your food. Yum.
Now that it is all planted, I’m ready for the rains. I know that harvesting in July will arrive quickly enough. Hopefully, the bulbs next year will be larger than they were from our hot, dry summer this year. It is the mystery that I enjoy about the garden.
bags of garlic cloves
garden tags
freshly planted garlic bed
14 pints, 3 cups and 8 little lunch sizes
This kind of work takes time and in the end you have to be an applesauce eater. In the middle of the apple cooking, Ken walks in and says “Whoa”. I know – every window was fogged up and we have a lot of windows. I used 12 pounds of honey crisp and 12 pounds of jonagold apples for my sauce. Organic. The hardest part is peeling and quartering the apples. Ken helped. In the first of two batches I cooked the different types of apples together. That was a mistake. Jonagolds cook WAY faster than honey crisp, they are actually pretty mushy. The honey crisp took more than twice as long – some of them were still somewhat “crisp”. HA! Cooking them in separate pots works best. I used about 1/2 inch of organic apple juice to cook/steam them. Stirred them frequently. One of the recipes said to puree the apples in a food processor. Yeah well, the first batch reminded me of baby food and I could not see any of my family powering down this stuff – including me. The pulse option worked better and by the very last batch I was using the potato masher. I like chunkier sauce. Before processing, I mixed all of the sauce together and added 1/4 cup organic lemon juice (per batch). No sugar. Yep it is a bit tart but the mixture of the two apples have a nice flavor. I’m wondering about all of the other varieties now. Processing the pints took 20 minutes and since my canner only holds 7 jars, no matter their size, I had to repeat this step four times.
I know that on a cold winter day, a jar of homemade applesauce will hit the spot! This kind of work feels good – now to wash the windows.
peeling apples
apples cooking
recipe: Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Lauren Devine
One of my favorite summer memories was the time my mom brought her friend to our house for a visit. Every aspect of it was lovely. She brought us some fancy pants chocolates from California, all different shapes and flavors. After dinner we carefully split maybe 2 or 3 chocolates into bite sized pieces so we could try each one. Add a few sips of red wine and you’ve got an inspired gift! Another moment was picking sunflowers at our local CSA farm. We took in Seattle’s Public Market and the Sculpture Park. After visiting Lopez Island for a day, we had a delicious dinner in Anacortes at Cafe Adrift (make reservations – 360-588-0653). Near the end of their visit we enjoyed a sculpture installation by an artist from Lopez island at the Bellevue Art Museum. They were stacks and carvings of madrona wood – just beautiful.
It was a delightful visit!
Here they are at Pike Place Market waiting for them to “throw the fish”. However, this was right after the controversy happened with the animal activists. We never saw them throw the fish.
I’ve spent way too much time learning this blog thing. I used the ‘Tarski’ theme because it fit me the best. However, I changed the header to a picture of my tulips from last spring, then I didn’t like the width, so I changed that. After that, I realized I didn’t like the line-spacing of the type and in fact I didn’t like the size of the type. Well, the size of the type doesn’t matter because every computer in my house showed my posts as a different size. I think I’d like to learn how to design my own blog theme. It would be called the pat orvidas theme – ha ha! Needless to say, I’m still figuring this whole thing out and now I’m more excited than frustrated. That’s a good thing!
snow crocus
For now I am just going to post stuff and try to get back to gardening. I have tulips to plant, daffodils to locate and sweet little crocus and hyacinth…not to mention a TON of garlic! Then there is the applesauce to can… get busy Pat!!
There are no lies in pictures of hands.
This is my favorite picture of Alex’s graduation. I am so proud of this guy. He worked hard.
Jessie took this picture – she can see so many things the rest of us do not see. Oh yeah, we all took other photos – ones with his sleepy grin. They are pretty good too. The one with his adviser/teacher was sweet – she yanked him through that program on the days he didn’t feel like it. Others with his sister, parents and grandma were all nice – it was obvious we were proud. Hands tell a lot about a person and yet they keep the secrets of the night before – unless your mom writes in her blog that you were celebrating until 4 AM!!!