2023 Garden

It is interesting to learn how to garden in a new gardening zone and with new garden soil.  So far our best results have been on the deck garden.

Today I harvested this little zucchini but did not get to eat it.

It is somewhat disfigured but will taste good I am sure.  Tomorrow I will slice it and toss it into the cast iron frying along with a large sliced sweet onion.  Will add a little vegetable broth in case the vegetables begin to "stick" which is another way of saying "burn on the bottom".  It will be a great breakfast if I get up in time to eat.  If not it will be a great lunch!

Last week I happened upon a crazy article which said that basil is good for diabetics and cholesterol or blood pressure if I remember right.  Well, I started eating some of at least three kinds of basil in the Green Stalk garden.  Each morning after eating basil the day before my blood sugar was better.  

Here is regular basil and purple basil.  I have eaten a fair amount of the regular but none of the purple basil yet.

This is what I call "fluffy basil". I have used this, too.  The first time I ate the basil I made a sandwich and used the basil as lettuce. The second time that first day I chopped it and added it to chopped carrots, chopped onions, chopped celery, and cottage cheese.  It was pretty good.  The next time I used basil leaves I used them to pick up small pieces of leftover  General Tso's Tofu and popped them in my mouth. VERY GOOD!

So far when I mention the above use of basil people always say why not make pesto.  Well, I would but pesto recipes that I have seen are filled with oil.  Oil hurts my belly and adds to my weight...so plain basil is good for now unless someone suggests something else.

Anyone who has other suggested uses of basil, please fill me it!

Found It!!

 Well, I found one of the two items I reported as misplaced yesterday:

So very grateful to find this kit. Today during our Handwork Chat Group at the Relief Society Room I wound the white and dark brown yarn into balls to join the other two balls I had wound while on our vacation in January.

Tonight I began the Swaddle Bunny:

Here is the beginning of that bunny.  The pattern starts at the bottom of the body. In this case I have knit as far as the first "Knit 7 rounds" instruction. 

So far, so good.  I need to finish in the next week BUT I have a mammoth project on the horizon.  Heck, in the absolute immediate future!  

Our housing complex is having a yard sale tomorrow.  I wanted to remove the plastic shelving unit from the workroom and replace it with a heavy-duty and larger metal shelving unit.  I found the replacement unit at Sam's Club last week but it was too big to put in the shopping cart and I did not have life enough to go back in with the flatbed cart.  Since then I have learned that I can order it, pay for it, pick it up, and the nice people at Sam's Club will actually load it for me.  Win win win! 

So around 5:00 PM today I unloaded the plastic shelves, moving the "stuff" to a variety of places including the guest room that I had almost completely prepared to be a guest room again, but now is not at all ready!  I pulled the shelves out of the room and started down the stairs but had to shout to Dear One to help from the bottom of the stairs.  Which he kindly did.  I stuck the uprights back together and carried the unit out to the front line of our driveway.  I had written a FREE sign to put on it but it did not print so I went back upstairs to my computer to reset the printer, re-printed the document, went downstairs to pick it up and went to the front door.  I opened the door and started to step outside and discovered I did not need the FREE sign after all!  Fifteen minutes and it was gone. Hallelujah!

Now the idea is to see how much other stuff...probably mostly paper...I can dispose of in the next week so there can be further decreases in the number of boxes, barrels and bins needed to be put on the new shelves...which I will need help putting together. For this reason there will be very little knitting most likely.

Also...I am really really hoping the all this clean out will help the passport to turn up!

PS. As I was proofreading the above somehow it reminded me of Proust's writing (À la recherche du temps perdu -a book we had to study while I was in France for school in 1993)...in that he created VERY LONG sentences...paragraphs and pages long.  Don't ask me word one about that book. All I remember is how long the sentences were which were very taxing for a pitiful French student.

That Is Just About It!!

Two things today...

We have a new great grandchild arriving in a month.  Monday night I woke up with a start...all of a sudden I realized that the baby was a month away.  I have two smallish knitting projects to do for the baby and had not started.

The good news:  I started on Tuesday knitting like a fiend in between other needed activities and now, Thursday night just before bed, well, I should already BE in bed...I just finished the first project.  SO of course immediately I started looking for the second project.  It is a kit from Barrett Yarn Company and comes in a lovely little cloth bag.

The bag is nowhere to be found.  The disorganization that has plagued my life forever has got to stop now!  And I mean now!

The second thing is sort of the same thing: disorganization BUT the missing item is much more serious--my passport has gone a runner.  I have had it in one place since we arrived here nearly four years ago.  Some time ago I must have gotten it out for some reason that escapes  me(possibly my mind has gone a runner, too...which is NOT good news).  It is now not on that shelf. I might give it one more check before crawling into bed tonight.  Just in case...

Anyway, time to make a difference around here.  On both levels of the house and in all rooms.  Dear One would be absolutely thrilled.  He is so kind-hearted and helpful but I know he would appreciate it if I would stop messing up things faster than he can clean up after me.

And a big PLUS:  plus the children are coming to visit soon and I want them to think I have turned over a new leaf since we last were physically together...

Here is one mess of yarn I checked for that Barrett Wool Company kit.  No luck.  Now it is too late tonight...time to hit the hay.

May I suggest to anyone who has problems keeping things together, today is a good day to start changing.

On that subject, last week one day I watched a YouTube on how to declutter your house.  There were some good suggestions...such as IMMEDIATELY after use, take care of things.  Also - keep your kitchen tidy every day.  We have an island in our kitchen.  For almost a week it was empty AND spotless.  Then came yesterday when we were at the temple and when we came home I had a podiatry appointment to get fitted for new orthotics.  WELL that did not go well.  The orthotics guy was not there!  I had waited three months for the appointment just dying to help my poor benighted feet (neuropathy, and tendonitis) AND HE WAS NOT THERE!  And they could not give me another appointment until the end of August here in our town. The next closest town--40 miles away---where he works had an appointment on 3 July. I took it.  Of course, that town has many tempting establishments in it. I may need to take Dear One with me to keep me on the straight and narrow.

So back to the kitchen island topic: after the doctor fiasco I went to several stores and came home with an armload of stuff, completely exhausted, and piled them on the island, and went to bed.  Today I had another very busy "out" day and came in with more stuff.  R-r-r-r!  Also tired so only put the cold things away.  Then the doorbell rang!  If you can believe it.  Nobody comes to our house unless it is planned....so these nice sisters got to see the real me after a couple of days on a mad dash.  

Well, maybe tomorrow.  School is out so getting into the YMCA pool is more of a challenge than usually so I won't be going there first thing in the morning. I like peace at the pool but not a chance with all the groups of squealing kids...

Dear One has already called it a day.  My turn now.  Tomorrow will be more productive.  I hope.  Pray for me.

Old News (And not that interesting) But...

On the morning of 1 June 2023 I stepped to the front door, unlocked all the locks, and opened the door.  

There on the doormat was this:

One guess what it is...

Yes, you are correct!  It is a dead June bug.  I don't think I have seen a June bug, dead or alive,  in the almost four years we have lived here.  I can honestly say that I was very happy that it was a deceased June bug.  I really do not like those creatures at all!  They probably have a function but in Vermont there were many many of them and they gave me the creeps.  I hope this is not the start of a new trend!

Knitting Today: Red White and Blue

 We have had our Christmas wreath on our front door since November.  It seemed like a good idea to finally make a change.  Because Memorial Day, Flag Day, and the Fourth of July were coming up I purchased three skeins of yarn (I Love This Yarn acrylic) at Hobby Lobby.

Finally just before Memorial Day I sat down at the Brother KX350 knitting machine and started working.

The cast on was 40 stitches.

Each of the red and white stripes was 20 rows.

The blue quadrant was 80 rows.

At our daughter's suggestion I went back to Hobby Lobby and found the star buttons and installed them.

We already had the metal wreath form so I used that and stitched the strip of knitting together behind the form.

This is smallish wreath but I am pleased with the way it came out.

I did find some star fabric and made a bow but it was not an improvement!  Verified by our daughter...!

Garden Today: Greenstalk Vertical Garden Progress

 Just before Mother's Day Dear One purchased a Greenstalk Vertical Garden at my direct request. I was thrilled.  I have a little trepidation about using the "raised beds" on the lawn between the house and the pond. Aquatic reptiles are unnerving to me. 

 I have heard them singing a little too often recently.

This is the Greenstalk that was put together about four days previously.  It shows the wax beans peeking through the soil.

This is after two weeks...

This third photo is today after not quite a month!  We have harvested basil and need to harvest kale. We  will soon.

Because this is a container garden, it needs watering every day.  And today I watered twice....

So far I can say that I love this gardening method.  We will see how it goes through the heat of the summer.

Whoopie Pies!

 For a long time I have been wanting to make Whoopie Pies.  An occasion offered itself and I finally made them!  (An Elders' Quorum/Relief Society Council meeting...) 

To prepare I had purchased a quart bottle of buttermilk.  It amazes me how easy it is to find buttermilk in the grocery stores here in the South. When we were back in Vermont buttermilk was only "easy" to acquire  by making butter from your own cow and saving the buttermilk. Which we did pretty often for the seventeen years we had family cows.

Whoopie Pies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt
• 1/2 cup butter at room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment. Set aside.

In  the bowl of a KitchenAid mixer, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well.

 Stop to scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed.

With a 2-Tablespoon cookie scoop, plop piles on the baking sheets, 12 to each sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the tops are puffed and a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

Filling

1/2 cup room temperature butter (here I would have preferred shortening but did not have any since generally I do not use that stuff)

2 cups marshmallow creme/fluff

2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla (in this case homemade vanilla from my sister. I have a richness of homemade vanilla in our cupboard  because a sweet friend gave us two bottles at Christmas time.  So happy.  So sad that I am not baking very often lately.)

Mix all together in a clean KitchenAid bowl and whip until very smooth and fluffy.

Spoon filling onto half of the whoopie pies then top with a second whoopie pie.

These were pretty good.  Sadly I ate one at 9:00 PM along with a glass of milk ( sadly because eating after supper is something I am trying to avoid like the plague BUT  after the Council attendees were kind enough to take whoopie pies home to their families and there were only two to take home myself, well, Dear One only ate one so...I ate the other.) and in the morning had a very unpleasant surprise when I checked blood sugar...

If I were actually to make these again, I would at least quadruple the filling so they would more closely resemble the whoopie pies I remember from the Quechee Mobil station in Vermont!