Dill, rhubarb, and peas... gardening update

The garden has been coming into production.

After only three weeks since the last picking!
All this is from one rhubarb plant.

The rhubarb started in late May already, once the flowering waned. I learned that the flowers have to be pulled out by the base or they hinder stalk production. The plant I kept after pulling out two others a couple of years ago is like a weed, and, unfortunately, the aphids and grasshoppers love it when I don't thin it often enough. Every three weeks is too long between pickings for this thing. I'm the only one in the house that likes rhubarb treats, so one is enough. Even with this plant, I'm often sharing with people I know who like it. I hate to waste too much and already toss out many thin stalks just to thin this monstrous plant.

The peas are slowing production, nearing the end of their cycle. I've picked and shelled over 20 cups worth that have been packed and frozen in single-serve snack bags (since I'm the only one in our house that likes peas). Never mind what I've eaten over the past week. I'm pea'd out. You can get sick of fresh-from-the-garden peas.

Never mind the dill. As long as I keep the bindweed off that, it flourishes. I picked and cut two stalks this morning and, from those alone, have way more dill for a friend than she could possibly use. There's still more than we need for pickles growing. And the dill is starting to seed, so that'll reseed for spring.

Green onions I had planted last summer in the raised bed from seeds never grew sufficiently then but came back this year as full onions and have also gone to seed, so I've been collecting those seeds for next year. It would seem green onions (and probably all onions) require two years for full development from seeds, but I could be wrong. That's just my experience with onions.

Hubby's pepper plants are starting to produce. A couple plants started early, but the rest are blooming now also.

Cucumbers have started producing. Only one plant came up this year, so I don't know if we'll have enough to give away like we usually do.

And the corn is tassled out. The ears should be ready for picking by early September. We'll cook and freeze like we usually do, after enjoying some corn on the cob.

I can't leave out the grapes! We'll have more grapes this year than we could possibly eat. It's unfortunate that they're so small and the seeds take up so much of the fruit. Otherwise, I'd probably have enough to make jelly/jam (need to learn how). We just have to watch for the sphinx moth larva--big ugly things that would destroy the plants.

I'm updating all this because this morning, before the heat wave of the day sets in, I came home from mass (church) and went right to the garden to pick dill, rhubarb, and peas. The rhubarb is cleaned and drying before I cut and freeze it all; and the peas picked this morning are next, to be shelled and frozen with the rest. It's only been a week since I picked the first peas, and the plants are already slowing production.

It's already been a productive year for our garden, but our pumpkin plant appears to not want to grow this year. Not much we can do about it now. We'll be all right, though. We still have pureed pumpkin from last year in the freezer.

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Last of all, Book 24 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds has just the few short scenes left outside the main characters, about one chapter's worth of writing. I will finish in the next week and then start editing Book 22. 

God bless!

Corn and more corn

The corn harvest is done!

Hubby and I started this morning picking the corn from the garden and cutting down the stalks. We shucked corn and ended up with this:

We used the electric knives to cut the corn off the cobs and estimate that we ended up with 84 cups of raw corn. Then we cook it with a recipe from hubby's grandma:

Then we leave it to cool in trays on the counter:

The taller container here was raw corn waiting
to be cooked. The other pans were the cooling pans.
You can also see a couple bags of corn in one
of the Rubbermaid containers.

We then measure it out and bag it. This year, we bought some Rubbermaid containers to keep the freezer bags of corn organized, and they stack nice in the freezer and don't slide all over. We ended up with around 68 cups of cooked corn, so it does reduce in cooking a bit.

It's amazing how much corn you get off of one cob, so we don't have to plant a lot in the garden to get all this. We lost all of our previous cooked and frozen corn last year when the upright freezer was left open overnight by mistake, but this more than makes up for it.

It's a delicious recipe, but the corn we've been planting is so sweet that we have to reduce the sugar of the original recipe. The recipe also calls for butter and a little water and salt.

Now we're restocked on corn for a long time. It's been two years since we did this, and next year we won't plant as much corn.

In a month or so, it'll be time for pumpkins.

Now, it's time for some painting of oldest kid's room. THEN I can get back to edits. At least I'm on the last round, or expect that to be the case.

Life is interesting.

God bless!

progress on the projects

I am close to getting sick of fresh garden peas. Yes, even for those of us who love fresh peas, we can reach our saturation point.

Around a year ago, I had a lot of peas put away in our freezer, along with some other frozen foods from our garden... until the door of the upright freezer wasn't shut properly and stayed open overnight. Everything thawed. I discovered that mess the next morning when going into the garage to head to work. We lost a LOT of work and food last year, including all the peas I had picked and shelled and measured and bagged.

I've been waiting to restock that. This year, I planted different peas, but they're good and they are indeed mildew resistant. I had always been losing my 5-6 ft. peas (we give them fences to climb) by this time. I was low on those, so this year, I ordered new peas from Gurney's, and they were sold as mildew-resistant. They are. They're short, however, only 24-30" tall. But, boy, do they produce! Not as much as the other plants, but they haven't stopped, so I've been able to refill what was lost.

We also learned from that loss two things: 1) Don't put the kids' preferred foods in the upright freezer, and 2) put a lock/latch on the door to make sure it can't open. Hubby put a child safety lock on the upright, so it's not a locking lock but a safety lock to keep little kids out of a fridge. When we secure it each time we close the door, we can be sure that door will stay shut.

And, we learned that putting the bagged frozen garden produce into large, stackable Rubbermaid containers help us make a lot better use of the space in the upright freezer. The upright is great for being able to see everything and not have to dig around, but it does have that door-closing issue. Putting bags into bins really helps to keep it organized. AND, if it ever does have a great meltdown again, that will reduce the mess!

Writing Update

I've been editing Book 20 and it's going well. I overcame the whole extreme fatigue issue and really gained a good focus for editing again. It's going well and I still have two weeks until the end of this month. I won't say anything, because I always tend to have something go wrong that delays publication. I'll just keep my eye on the target while giving it the attention to detail that readers deserve.

And once this is published, I'll get into writing Book 23. I can't believe I'll be in the final three!

Other 

The other project is jumping ahead. The development is nearly done and all the little pieces are settling into place very well. There's still a refinement stage, but the major part is done. And I already see how this could expand and grow. It could turn into a full-time job, and it could also turn a profit; but for now, it will start small. I hope to make a public announcement by the end of September. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading!

Never question an internal command to pray...

Yesterday, near the end of the late afternoon mass at the church I attend on weekdays (because of my schedule and I like that they have a communion rail so I can accept Our Lord on my knees in humility and reverence), a darkness fell. It wasn't the lights. Rather, there are big sections of window, and the sun's light had been diminished.

I looked to the window and felt a catch in my chest.

Not again.

Ominous clouds loomed in the sky, blocking the sun. We've had nasty weather two other times already with tornadoes and it was a 100 F day yesterday (not unusual for July, when we usually get the nastiest weather). Seeing dark clouds concerned me.

After mass, I prayed that I made it home before any bad weather hit.

I made it with plenty of time. In fact, the radar showed nothing coming for us, yet I had a sense that I should be praying my Rosary.

I didn't.

I came to regret that.

A severe storm formed out of nowhere on the radar only about 15-20 miles away to the southwest and quickly headed right for us, but I hadn't checked in the time since before it formed to when it hit, so I didn't know it was there, much less barreling towards us. I was trying to write while ignoring that little voice that was nagging me about praying the Rosary. I wanted to do things my way.

I did that until the first "THUNK" hit on the house. And it was loud. A few more hit and I looked out the window to see large white balls of hail. Not the pea-sized we normally see. These were golf-ball sized (as seen in the sampling below with my hand, hail balls which had already melted down a bit).

When I realized what was happening with the hail, I ran upstairs and grabbed my Rosary. No sooner did I start than the hail turned to pea-sized and soon quit. However, there was more red on the radar. I continued through two sets of mysteries because there was another system to the north that refused to move and had been expanding towards us with a tornado watch included in that. The worst of it dissipated during my prayer.

After the storm from the southwest was passed but before the one from the north was known to be a threat, we went out to check the house and yard (between my praying a few decades of the Rosary). Fortunately, the golf balls were few and far between and our garden, trees, and my new roses were all untouched. Unfortunately, they were enough to leave holes in a few pieces of siding on one wall and likely the roof, as well as a couple nice dents to the youngest kid's car roof, but I'm not worried about her vehicle because it's old (2009) and had some cosmetic damage when we bought it two years ago and also because all the windows were fine. After all the nasty storms we've had in the last month, insurance adjusters are busy; they'll get to us when they can.

The picture above was taken after the rain was no more than a few drops here and there but the clouds still loomed over us with a clear sky to the western horizon. I went out and took pictures of the hail and the perfect shot of my first rose blossom. This is now my iPhone wallpaper, minus the watermark:

My first rose blossom of the three rose bushes
I planted less than a month ago!

After I had finished the Rosary prayers, the storm passed and merged with the north storm, but they grew along the western edge and dropped more pea-sized hail on us. No sooner did I start praying a single Hail Mary to ask her intercession to keep any large hail from hitting than the hail stopped altogether and only rain fell.

The moral of the story is to listen to that nagging voice when it's telling you to pray... To put it simply, when you're told to pray, obey. It was likely my guardian angel, and I am humbled by the consequences of not having listened when I should have.

Next time, I won't hesitate to grab my Rosary. I won't question any message from the Lord (who speaks through others, like our guardian angels, who are always with us). I will listen. It reminds me of Moses having to keep his arms up for the success of the battle of the Israelites in Exodus.

God bless!

the next gardening challenge

I finally have asparagus! It seems to be hard to start from seeds, so this year, I bought crowns from Gurney's and nine out of the ten are growing in my garden. (Strawberries are growing like weeds this year. I'm getting a handful of fresh strawberries every day now! I don't even want to mention the rhubarb; those plants are like weeds too. I need to harvest again already (3 weeks and probably a week overdue) before we get aphids like last year.)

Since I managed that, I chose my next challenge (after watching a talk by Monsignor Rossetti, whose mention of the Blessed Virgin Mary being shown with roses (hence, the Rosary) inspired me).... ROSES! In my devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary and because it's perfect for an area near the house that gets lots of sun and has been an eyesore of nothing, I decided to try growing roses as my next project.

Now, we live in zone 4 for growing, so finding the right plants can sometimes limit us, but I found a beautiful variety from Heirloom Roses called Prairie Harvest. It's a faintly yellow color that would look perfect next to our green siding. This shrub rose is supposed to endure winter, so I hope the money I spent and the time that we'll put into establishing them will be worth it.

This is a new challenge, but I'm up to it. I only hope the plants are too, because a full bloom of rose bushes would look beautiful near the house where there is nothing else to see on that side, which faces the road when you approach our house. So, it needed something more than the trellis with the grapes, which is about twenty feet away.

I'll post a separate update on the writing.

God bless!

Back into the swing of things

Two viruses in a row, back-to-back is an awful way to be sick. Just as I was recovering from one, including my sleep, I had the second to contend with. Now, that's passing by, at last. On a good note, I'll have immunity for those illnesses at least through the winter. I'm glad to get those out of the way now, because winter is always very busy for me.

Writing

And this winter, I expect to publish Book 18 and write Book 21 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds, so I want to be able to get that done. I have just a few hundred words left of Book 20 to finish a scene, although I could add another if I want, but I'm not sure if that's needed. It will end up right around 41,000 words, at least in the first draft.

I also have the reading project of my previous books in this series.

Gardening

And now that fall is here, we're coming to the end of the growing season. Since I've been feeling better, it's been time to catch up on a few items. One of those was the rhubarb. It was getting out of control again. It's been 4-5 weeks since I last harvested. The stalks were pretty thick, but there were still a lot of them. I left a good 1/4-1/3 on the plants to keep them viable through winter. We're not expecting a hard freeze this week, but the lows are getting close to that first freeze or frost of the season. Below is the final harvest of rhubarb cleaned and drying on the kitchen counter. This is about the amount I end up harvesting each time from the two plants. It should fill 4 or 5 gallon freezer bags (left as stalks) about 2/3-3/4 full each. That's about the right amount for a good rhubarb crisp. Since I'm the only one in my house who likes rhubarb, some of this will go to friends.

I don't have pics of the peppers and cucumbers. Those have been pretty steady for the last month and plenty of them. Hubby's been putting them away, at least the bell peppers. He's kept some of the chilis but he has so many serranos that we're giving those to friends too. And there's lots more to come before they freeze off for the season. To extend that, we have some plant blankets, so on the cold nights, we'll cover those and the tomato plant.

I also had one final little handful of strawberries from my growing strawberry patch. The garden spider has moved off, thankfully. (I almost ended up with him on my arm a few weeks ago before I noticed him there.) The strawberry patch has been growing and producing all summer. I just have to keep the birds away with a fence. It's going to be bigger next year as they spread out even more; and I haven't seen any bugs eating on the plants, although I found a caterpillar on them this afternoon. I've provided plenty of room for expansion so I can get a good strawberry patch in that section of the garden. And they're super sweet. 😋 Once I start getting enough, I'll be able to make strawberry-rhubarb deserts. There's a method to this madness. 😉

Last of all, the grapes are done. The birds took some of those, but we had a good amount of grapes this year from the one plant and were able to enjoy our fair share. Since the newer plant grew eight feet this year, I expect it to produce plenty next year, so double the grapes. Both plants reached the top of the trellis and I look forward to them reaching over it next year; the newer plant already is somewhat. With all the leaves, they're a pretty decoration even without fruit.

Back to the rest of life

Soon, I'll get back to my horse. It's been a month, because I've been too sick to get out. Today was a gardening day, however. There's only so much one can get done in a day. And it's a warm day with lots of boxelder bugs and wasps around buildings, so not sure I want to contend with that at the barn.

At least I could get back to church this morning. That was much-needed. And I wasn't the only one recovering from being sick. A few Saturday mass-goers were clearing throats and coughing once in a while like me. I was worried about standing out, but I fit right in.

This crud is making its way through the local community. When my daughter said all her friends were sick and she probably got it from them, I had thought she meant the cough that hubby and I started out with, not the crud she actually gave to the rest of us (with a fever, fatigue, and sinus congestion) after we were recovering from the cough. At least that's all done now.

Anyway, it's good to get back my health and into the swing of things again. I get cabin fever too easily and don't like TV anymore. There's only so much I can tolerate.

Now, time to get back to work on the stories. I have been writing, but now that I'm finishing Book 20 this weekend, it'll be time for editing.

Thanks for reading!

Spring is in full swing!

Spring is finally here to stay... although the weather can surprise us in ND.

After calling 811 for utility locating, we used the
flags to mark the lilacs for mowing.

We've planted some fruit trees and a row of lilacs after finally remembering the deadline for the soil conservation district and ordering them a few months ago. One doesn't think of planting in the arctic weather of January, but that's when orders have to be made to have trees for May pick-up. 

And we had a nice wet couple of weeks here. Everything is green!

The rhubarb and strawberries woke up before the last of the freezing nights were done. This morning I counted over half a dozen blossoms on my growing strawberry patch already and pulled one blossom stalk off the rhubarb (after ripping out one of the three plants to make more room for the strawberry patch to expand and because I get way more rhubarb than I need from the other two plants). And the raspberries are all leafed out now too, so blossoms should be starting on those soon.

Grapes are budding out--both survived the winter. Woohoo! 🥳  However, it appears that the vines have to be a certain thickness to survive and wake up. The smaller plant is only budding at the base, although there might be a small bud further up. The bigger plant (two years old) has clear buds about three feet up on the main vine, and that's the plant that gave us a few small grapes last year already. I'll prune dead vines and lesser vines after I see a few main trunks. I just added fertilizer to those today for the year.

This morning was pretty calm for wind, so we burned the debris in our garden from last year. Most of it burned but some was too wet, so we tossed that into the compost bin after it cooled and then soaked it down again because compost needs to be kept wet. Other years it's been too dry to burn so hubby mowed the cornstalks to chop them up instead. We didn't plant as much corn last year because no one else is really eating it. This year we're skipping corn entirely.

Hubby is tilling the garden today. We'll let that settle probably until next week and plan the layout before then. The perennials have their own section now, so that doesn't change. Hubby will have his section for his peppers (bells, seranos, and jalapeños), which are being hardened before transplanting, along with two tomato plants. He likes making his own salsa, so he's planned that out. I just need my winter onions to grow big enough to share. I love cooking with onions, so I go through a lot. 

Also, without corn taking up room in the garden, I'm planning on putting in four rows of peas instead of two. Legumes are a great rotation crop, and these sweet peas are delicious, even thawed after freezing. I put away a lot last year. This year I'm sure I'll get sick of them but will have more to share with family and friends. Other than that, it'll be a couple of cucumber plants, some of which we'll turn into homemade pickles but mostly give away to family and friends. This year I also bought holy basil seeds. I love holy basil as a seasoning and the flowers are beautiful and attract insects.

And then there's the usual pumpkin patch. We gut some for seeds, then cook and puree the flesh that we want to share with family and friends and the rest get gutted for seeds and turned into decorations. We put in the pumpkins well outside the garden because one plant can take over the garden.

So, gardening season is finally here!

It's also riding season. I'm hoping to have enough good days to give Buddy more of my time.

_____________

Other than that, writing is going well. Book 19 of Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds is over 32,500 words and will have another 10-15K words on it before it's finished. It kind of turned into a mini Game of Thrones but without the debauchery and complete lack of ethics. How can I do that? Trust me, I can create a power play without sex, gore, and killing a bunch of characters. If you focus on an actual story instead of sensationalism, there's plenty you can do, especially when you still have the science fiction side of the series to consider. And there are dragons; not fire-breathing, but a type of dragon that is more plausible to the world. I hope to finish ALL THE KING'S MEN by June 1. Then I'll edit HOMECOMING and get that out... hopefully by the end of June.

Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!

updates - books, indoor garden, and cats

I don't have much of a writing update today. I'm still working on edits of Book 16. It's going more slowly than I hoped, which is why I've at least temporarily deactivated my X account (and maybe permanently). So, I thought I'd add something different about what's been happening lately.

First, I've just uploaded a revision of A NEW BEGINNING. It now includes a note about the [ ] and { } indicators of alien languages. That was the only update to the file. I wanted to make sure new readers understand. Most SFF readers should have some familiarity with using such devices for dialogue translations of fictional other languages, if they've read anything from around the 80's. I saw this in books growing up, which is what gave me the idea to use those to encapsulate translations of fictional languages being spoken by characters where I want the reader to understand it.

Second, I have updated the series description on Amazon. I've tweaked it a couple of times now. It had defaulted to the description of the first book and I left that for a long time. Now, I've given it a brief overview of the series, as well as a note about... Well, why not just let you read it. Here's what it now says:

The truth behind the warrior disciples of an ancient religion is no myth. To stop the ancient evil from being released to destroy the universe, a group of strangers joins together to find the scattered Starfire shards, the only weapon known to defeat the creature. 

Take off with Nya and the strangers who will become her friends on a quest across a galaxy of forgotten worlds where the Starfire shards have been hidden for such a time as this. In the course of their adventures, they will discover secrets that her ancestors left behind and revelations that could shatter the lives of many. 

These books are short novels intended to be read in order. Each book is a complete story but leads into the next. Like chapters in an individual book, each book of this series is a "chapter" in the larger series arc of 25 books.

Note: Although there is some romance in the series, there are no sex scenes. Also, no foul language is used.

I wanted those looking for hard science fiction to realize that this probably isn't what they want. It isn't a porno/swearing fest like so much fiction is these days. It's also not all shoot 'em up war/fighting, and it's not full of broken characters. Sure, each character has their traumas, but they don't dwell on them all the time. I like likable characters and action that's balanced between drama and fighting (or pew pew! as some call it 🙃).

idoo hydroponic garden,
available from Amazon

The series was always written with the intent of going back to the 80's and 90's style SF series, when entertainment didn't punch one in the face with an agenda or sex but, rather, focused on telling stories and the sex was fade-to-black or mentioned in passing so that you knew it was there but not front and center. I've learned there's a name coined for stories without an agenda other than telling a good yarn--ironage. It's not because it's medieval or anything but because of the ironage of storytelling, before the woke agenda ruined entertainment by focusing on pushing a narrative instead of focusing on telling a good story.

(Also, in this description, I'm hinting the title of the final book in the series, Book 25 - FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS. I already know that works for what I have outlined. 😉)

Third, I've had to do some pulling of old lettuce and reseeding in my indoor hydroponics garden. I started the lettuce but haven't had an interest in eating many salads, although it is nice to have our own lettuce instead of store-bought with who knows how many chemicals sprayed on it.

I pulled up two of my larger plants that were looking pretty shredded and not fitting under the light anymore and have new sprouts growing. I'll pull up those last two large plants once the new sprouts take off with enough leaves to start using for salads.

The picture is blurry because it was before the sun rose
and zoomed in from a ways back from the glass deck door
so as not to frighten her. She's pretty skittish.

Fourth, we feed feral cats that come around. Last winter, we had Lenny, but he disappeared come summer. We like to keep outdoor cats around as hunters to keep the mice, gophers, and volls under control. Hubby had made a suitable shelter out of a Rubbermaid container, but I think the latest feral, Remy, felt entrapped in it, so I bought this off Etsy for her. It may not be as cozy warm, but she can eat while sheltered on windy, snowy, or rainy days. While she was reluctant to use hubby's shelter, she was in this within two days of us putting it out for her.

It's a small shelter and the roof is hinged like a lid. If you're interested, here's the link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/226068063/all-season-ark-workshop-medium-outdoor?ref=yr_purchases

Fifth, pay attention to your health. My eyes were giving me problems lately and I hadn't thought to connect it to headaches and tiredness. I made an appointment and, just over a year since my last pair of glasses, ended up needing new glasses again. My eyes are healthy, although the psoriasis around them causes minor issues (easily kept under control with Aquaphor); but my vision has changed dramatically. I wear bifocals, and my old close-up prescription is better for distances now. That's how much my vision has changed. I can't wait to get the new glasses, but that's going to be a big adjustment!

Last, Wednesday, February 14th (Valentine's Day), is Ash Wednesday. For those who honor Our Lord during this season with extra mortification, I pray you achieve the change this season is intended to inspire. I've also been adding to my faith resources page and hope you can find some support there for your faith journey. God bless!

Thanks for reading!

Pumpkin processing day

I posted this as a thread on X but wanted to write it out in full for anyone interested.

It's that time of year. I've posted in past years about our pumpkin processing from our garden pumpkins. We had a great harvest this year with 11 pumpkins total before the freeze killed the plant, although one didn't ripen on the plant, and the plant was dying before the freeze but still alive in some ways. That was weird.

Note: Pumpkins that ripen on the plant are sweet and delicious for use. Pumpkins picked while still green and ripened off the plant remain bitter. We discovered this a few years ago and will only process pumpkins that ripened to orange on the plant.

The gap had a pumpkin in it, but the pic was taken
after that one was cleaned and put in the oven.

We're only going to cook 2-3 pumpkins this year, but that will still provide a few gallons worth of puree, especially when the rinds are 1.5-2 inches thick and pumpkins are about 18-24 inches in diameter as shown in the next pic.

Half of the first pumpkin to be processed for
seeds and puree.

Here's the process for anyone wanting to know:

1. Remove innards
2. Cut fruit in half
3. Bake @ 350 F for about 2 hrs (until rinds are soft enough to press in/maybe browning and even collapsing, which is when the skin peels off after it cools a little)
4. Let cool (and bake the next half pumpkin)
5. Scoop out rind and puree
6. Measure puree into freezer bags (we put 2 cups per quart freezer bag) and press out as much air as possible before zipping shut. Lay these flat on pan, and when the pan is full, put it in the freezer.

It really is that easy, but it is a long day and a long process. This year, we decided to buy a new Ninja with a larger blender container (72 oz) for this. We had been using a small Ninja with the largest (24 oz) cup, which took forever. This year, with the larger blender, it should go a bit faster, at least on pureeing and packaging side.

The seeds of all the pumpkins will be cleaned and baked also. For that, they need to be separated from the pith, then the prep begins:

1. Wash seeds in clean water only (nothing else).
2. Lay seeds out to dry on a pan or cookie sheet.
3. Once dry, put seeds in a large bowl and pour on just enough olive oil to coat them without soaking them. Start out light and mix the seeds. If not enough oil, you can always add more a little at a time. (The oil will help salt or seasonings stick.)
4. Add salt to taste (or other seasonings) and mix seeds to evenly distribute.
5. Put parchment paper on cookie sheet.
6. Spread seeds out one layer thick on cookie sheet.
7. Bake at 350 F until they start browning. Do not overcook!
8. Set out to cool, then pour into bowl.
9. Repeat steps 5-8 until all seeds are cooked.
10. Put seeds away (do not need to be refrigerated) and enjoy.

What pumpkins we don't bake gets turned into jack o'lanterns/decorations for Halloween.

Happy autumn!

ps--We ended up with 4 gallons (32 freezer bags with 2 cups per bag) of puree put away in our freezer for this year, from only two pumpkins. That's plenty, especially since most will be given away to family.

2023 garden status

It's been a few weeks since we planted the garden and we had to reseed some of the corn, but everything is coming up beautifully. Of course, the rhubarb, dill, and strawberries are perennials and were already waking up by the end of April. I had a couple of strawberries disappear as soon as they started to ripen, so I put a cage around them last weekend to keep the birds away.

Grapes

The biggest surprise is that we already have grapes! That big bush of a grape plant was just a tiny twig when we planted it last year with only a few leaves that were halved when one of our cats chewed them off while the plant was inside, but it sure took once planted in its permanent home. This spring it roared out of dormancy with a vengeance and more than doubled in size. Plus, you can see the cluster of grapes growing on it. They've doubled in size in the last week alone. I wasn't expecting grapes for another year or two.

The back grape plant in the pic was a new one this year, It was already bigger than the first one when we ordered it to replace one that had died.

The main garden

Cucumbers love to climb, so we always plant those near the corn. This year, we also put in some panels to encourage the two plants to climb something else instead of becoming a ground bush hiding all the fruit. It does that in the corn too, but more often than not, they will wrap upwards on the cornstalks naturally. It doesn't harm the corn. Those stalks are strong.

Last year, hubby and I built the trellis for the grapes together, then he spent much of the summer building the 2-ft garden fence. You may not see it in the pics, but there is chicken wire on the inside of the white lattice. The white lattice is for looks. The chicken wire is what we used all the years prior to keep the ground critters out.

The tall fence in the middle is a temporary fence that we always put up for the peas to climb. That does require some attention. I regularly help the peas by taking their vines that curl in seeking something to latch onto and gently wrapping them around the fence wire. I'll do that as they need it, and they will climb to the top of that four-foot fence.

This year, we cut back on the amount of corn, since no one is really eating it (and I can't anymore) but we still like having some to give away to family. We also needed the room since we have the perennials on one end and my husband has a LOT of peppers (three types of hot peppers and three different colors of bell peppers). I also have one tomato plant in this and the two rows of peas.

We also have our raspberry patch near the house, and if the birds don't get them, I'll be eating them by the handfuls soon! The branches are thick with raspberries almost ready to turn.

And we'll have our pumpkins again. Those are planted outside the garden about twenty feet away and getting bigger by the day. We learned early that if we planted pumpkins in the main garden, we only had a pumpkin patch, so we started planting those well away from the main garden. Pumpkin vines grow like weeds, once they really get going, sometimes a foot or more overnight! Cucumbers and squash can be the same way, but they are all in the same general family of fruits. Cukes are just a bit easier to control because they can climb without being too much of a burden when full of fruits. These pumpkins are HUGE and sweet, good for puree or jack-o-lanterns.

One other trick we learned is to keep the ground moist until things sprout a few inches, then cut back the frequency of watering to encourage roots to grow deeper.

Gardening is rewarding but a lot of work. We don't use pesticides on our garden, although we do use herbicide around the fence to control the weeds there. Rather, we do the work of weeding.

We'll see how it looks in another month.

Welcome 2021!

It could get worse than 2020 but I'm an optimist and look forward to a 2021 that will be better than the past year.

I woke up to heavy fog this morning, which has, as of these pictures at 11 am, lightened enough to see more than a few feet away.

The crystalline glow of hoarfrost is always a beautiful remnant of winter fog. Once the fog lifts, that hoarfrost will sparkle and glisten, creating a magical surrealism over the world... until it melts off. It's a beautiful start to the new year!

I'm also glad we finally have snow on the ground. The second half of 2020 was drought for my area. Water tables have lowered and water dugouts for livestock are nearly depleted.  We finally received this snow a few days ago. While it's not enough, we'll take it. It was enough for the kids to have some sledding fun.

And inside, I have been growing this over the past month:

Two tomato plants starting to bud.

I had to put plastic around it because one of our kitties took to chewing off the leaves and killed one sprout and nearly two others. Those two, with regular watering quickly shot up to over three feet tall from the soil surface to the top and continues. I think these tomatoes love their mini-greenhouse made of that heavy-duty plastic. At least, they love not having a cat chew on them, and so do I.

Tomato greens can be toxic to cats, but Jack, being Jack, never showed signs of discomfort that we could see. He's our dog-cat. He eats everything, so we have to be careful. We did plant some kitty grass for him in a little potter after he went after the young tomato plants, and he LOVED that! Unfortunately, he also pooped out grass, which doesn't digest and caused him to have poop hanging from his butt. 🙁

Jack with his special cat grass (wheat, rye, barley mix)

Such is life here. We should have fresh tomatoes by the end of the month and will soon start some more indoor veggies. I hope Jack doesn't chew on those... cauliflower, radishes, and spearmint. I may even plant a head or two of lettuce if I have enough room in front of the the deck doors.

So, we're keeping an indoor garden. In one of the pictures above, you can see our regular garden plot. We've been taking out food waste to compost this spring. We have a pail under the sink to dump egg shells, banana peels, and other plant waste to take out and dump to add to our compost, although it appears that something is coming around to eat on some of that, which is fine too. We have wildlife in our rural neighborhood.

As I get older, I appreciate growing my own food more and more. It's a hobby with fruitful results. 😉