Whew! The Veggie Seeds Are In The Ground!

After dodging rain off and on for the last two weeks, I've finally finished the planting the veggie garden. Two varieties of peas, green, yellow was and kidney beans are in along with zucchini, summer squash, butternut squash, carrots (2 varieties) and beets. Also bell peppers, Amish paste tomatoes and Brandywine tomatoes.

You can see the garlic that was planted last Fall in the back row. The tomatoes are up front. I grew these tomatoes from seed and they sulked when I put them out every day to harden off. I bet you didn't know that tomatoes sulked. Well, these were like little children. No matter what the weather was like, warm, cold or rainy, these plants kept bending over pouting. But persistence is the key. The day after I planted them, it rained heavily and I thought 'Oh no, not good'. However, they took to the abuse and are looking better now. Perhaps I will even get some tomatoes this year.

The garlic is going to be awesome this year. Look how big and lush it is.

Next I turn to my 'fruit and herb' garden. I have strawberry plants, a raspberry bush, a gooseberry bush and two varieties of rhubarb. In the raised bed I have chives, oregano, sage, tarragon, silver thyme and lavender.

In the right bottom corner barely shows where the asparagus will be planted. You can tell how much rain we've had in the last 2 days because of the puddle in the corner.

This raised bed is 4 by 4 feet. Can you believe how big my chive plant with the purple blossoms is this year. Hope this means a bumper crop for my garden this summer.

What you don't see is most of the corner of this little garden that is yet unprepared for a raised bed of asparagus. That will go in next week if the rain stops long enough.

Sage ready to be hung and dried.

Did You Miss Me?

Okay. I admit it. I've been neglectful of my blogging. While I've been posting on our quilt guild blog  twilightstitchers92.blogspot.com on a regular basis and I've been reading the blogs I follow, I've been doing everything else imaginable...well almost. So, you ask, what else have I been doing?

The veggie garden came first. We had drought conditions this summer so the weeds didn't get ahead of me. My DH hooked up the hose and I watered the veggies every day. Still, the tomatoes weren't very good. I didn't get many useable for the second year in a row. My beans weren't as good as last year. I didn't have enough to can at one time but I did add what I harvested to the freezer. There wasn't as much summer squash and zucchini as last year but I did get enough to make a batch each of pickles and relish. The one veggie that did well was the carrots. Most of them had the diameter of tennis balls! And tasty...oh, yes! I canned 14 pints and had some leftover. Also I canned 19 quarts total of spaghetti sauce, tomatoes and tomato soup base.

Canned tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, patchwork and sketching.

Zucchini pickles and zucchini relish.

One day I went picking tomatoes with a friend. We were charged only $12 a bushel.

Next year I'm growing mostly pear tomatoes. They make great sauce. My sauce cooked for two days in the crockpot. Yum!

There is nothing as good as soup made from the veggies you grow yourself!

This summer's quilting projects:

I made two of these hot mats for a guild project. Then I got to keep them for my own kitchen.

The pineapple block. Another guild project.

Our block exchange this year. This week was red and black.

 

 

I went walking with my youngest daughter a number of times. Sometimes we walk around the neighborhood and sometimes at the park by the local lake.

Next time I post, which won't be as long as last time, I have a wonderful treat to share. One of my fellow quilt guild members and I went to a quilt show at The Old Forge Art Center, about a 2 hour drive from where we live. Lots of wonderful quilts to share with you!

Now off I go to run errands and get the weeks groceries.  Next week is forecast to be wet and stormy so I'll have plenty of  'inside' time to blog. Ta-ta for now.

Happy Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day. Both of my daughters came to visit me this morning. My youngest one brought me a lovely plant and the older one brought me earrings she had made. Hubby put them to work helping us set a new fence around the vegetable garden. the extra two pairs of hands made the work easy. Thanks girls! Afterwards a trip to the garden store to get peat moss, top soil and fertilizer. Then back to the garden where I finished wiring the trellis for the tomatoes, amending the soil and finally got those tomatoes in. I'm exhausted and I won't have trouble getting to sleep tonight.

This was part of our veggie garden last year. The tomato plants became so heavy that they pulled the wooden stakes almost to the ground. This year we sunk fence posts across the row and I wired them with chicken wire to tie the plants to.  We'll keep trying until we find what works for us. Tomorrow I'll be back out dodging raindrops to get my peppers, onions and broccoli in the ground. Then there's the raspberry bushes to plant and the list goes on.

The online art class I was taking has finished just in the nick of time. The only time I won't be in the garden is when it rains. So not much time for quilting or art for a while.

Oh, and one little last treat for Mother's Day was given to me by the way of the sweet melody of an oriole in the tree in our back yard. I am blessed.

What A Life

I haven't posted in two weeks. My excuse? Too many distractions. First I backed into someone else's car. No damage to my car but major distraction to my rattled brain. Then there was the return of the two woodchucks. Major destruction under our house. Trap came today. Sorry for you animal lovers but these animals are of the unclean sort and it's either them or our house. We opt to keep the house. And the bank will probably appreciate that there is something left to pay the mortgage on. Then last night there was a propane leak in the furnace (hubby was at work and miles from home) and I had to call the repair service. $$$ later and a dent in the income tax return. Sigh! And I'm a few hours behind on my sleep from last night.However, the veggie garden was tilled this weekend and ready to plant as soon as the woodchucks have met their fate.

No new quilting to share this time. I have finished the blocks for the Underground Railroad quilt that our quilt guild members are working on and I think I have decided to set the blocks with muslin sashing to make them stand out more. For the time being I think I'm quilted out. Maybe it's the anticipation of being outside gardening again. That's a good kind of distraction.

I've been taking more online art classes. I've got a whole lot of sketching going on! Check out my art page and see what I've been doing. It's not too fancy, just a chance to get the old art muscle back in shape. And don't forget to look at my garden page. My tomato seedlings have gone nuclear!

Here are a couple of pictures of my old garden before it got too old.

Wednesday Alert

Yes, it's Wednesday. What would we do without it? Well, we would have one day less to our work week. And we wouldn't have One Flower Wednesday. A sad thought. Just kidding. I've got another flower to show you that I completed this week. And I'm including the muslin hexies that I've started to use for the pathway in my garden.

As for my real garden, I'm still working on it. I usually work in the veggie garden for an hour or two early in the morning before it gets hot. It was a cool day today but, since it rained hard yesterday, it was a little to damp to work. I admit I spent too much time on the computer this morning instead. I've got to get a gripe and deny myself so much computer time. But I was a semi-good girl. I finished cleaning out under the vanity in the spare bathroom. Now what do I do with these plastic plant pots that were there? Hmmmm? LOL!

I'm excitingly expecting my new fun pad that is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. You ask 'what is a fun pad'? Basically it's a computer compatible drawing pad. Lots of goodies are on it already like Photoshop Elements and Corel Paint. I really love mixed media and this will be a hoot to play with. And..I will have more to post on my blog. What fun!

Oh, yeah. Last Friday was DH's birthday so I wanted to bake him a chocolate cake from scratch. I was having a hard time finding a recipe that used cocoa powder (all the chocolate I had in the cupboard). I looked in all my recipe books to no avail. I hadn't tried the internet yet when I looked on the back of the cocoa box. Viola! Saved by the box!

New Post For Wednesday

Hi Everybody! No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth. I didn't get around to posting last week all due to the fault  of the veggie garden. I finally got everything in but the carrots and the beets. The beans are all up and today the cantaloupe broke through. I have an area yet to plant that I think will be planted with more zucchini. You can't have too much zucchini to make into pickles. My adult daughters have been begging for my zucchini pickles so zucchini pickles they'll get. LOL! 

My DH is on vacation this week and yesterday we lay pavers for a small patio to put our BBQ grill on. DH's honey-do list has one more thing checked off.  Last night we had our first barbequed burgers of the season. Yum!

And here's my flower for this week's One Flower Wednesday. I really love the color of this one!

This is a small art quilt I made a while ago. I love mixing bits and pieces together like I did on this one.

I'm glad you came to visit and I promise I won't take too long to blog again.  Toodles!

It's a HOT Wednesday

You'd think it was August with the temperature here at 94 degrees today. Air conditioning is my favorite creature comfort and I don't mind admitting to it. Today we have two window air conditioners going along with 3 ceiling fans and 3 table fans. I'm putting off going up the driveway to get my mail until just before dark tonight just to avoid the humidity. I said it before and I'll say it again-I'm a WUSS when it comes to the heat. Growing up in a air conditioner-less house didn't bother me. But now different story. I'm just so glad we don't live in a desert!

I'm still working on getting the veggie garden planted. The last two mornings I was in the garden before 8 and finally got my tomatoes and peppers planted and mulched and the waxed beans in. Today and tomorrow will be too hot to garden but it's looking good for Friday. I'll get my pole beans in and some more of the garden ready for other plantings. I hope to get enough extra harvest this year to do some canning for winter.

The week has passed before I realized and it's One Flower Wednesday already. I've only finished one new flower this week and started adding garden path patches to the others.

This is an exciting week for me. I've started taking an online workshop for marketing. I have lots of ideas and this will help me decided what direction to take them in. Along with the marketing workshop there are many interesting mixed media workshops at Traci Bautista's website:
http://creativityunleashed.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network

I Won!

Look at what I won over at jensfunlittlethings.blogspot.com  It just came today. Isn't she just a sweetheart?  Thank you Jen.  I can't wait to try them all these great recipes.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on the veggie garden. I haven't felt those muscles since high school. LOL Who needs a gym membership? Think of it this way: my muscles think they're getting toned, I'm getting a tan and I'm saving money on groceries. And I'll try to remember those things when my muscles rebel next time I'm in the garden. Haha!