Birds of Paradise

Jake, enjoying the weather and the dirt

The 4th of July has come and gone. The weather is picking up that it's summer and July, meaning the days are warm and humid. At night you can feel the moisture on the linoleum floors of the kitchen, collecting as the night tries to cool the evening air. The kids are just puddles on the floor during the worst of times. Otherwise, they're packed against the windows watching the wild birds that claim our neighborhood frolic in the yard.

I've seen and heard a plethora of the winged entertainment. The other day cardinals foraged in the yard with a female singing out our bathroom window for a good fifteen minutes. Little chickadees crowded the boxwood tree, an ironic backdrop of chirps to the book I was reading (Suzanne Collins 'Mockingjay') or house sparrows played around the old aluminum ladder we've yet to get rid of. Sputnik loves watching them all from his perch in the enclosed back porch. Funny thing, he sits atop an old kitty litter pail, that we've filled with wild bird seed. There's more - mourning doves, gold finches, house finches, red-winged black birds, robins, once we saw a blue jay. But the one bird we really want in the yard still eludes us: hummingbirds.

We try to plant with them and butterflies in mind. There are plenty of those - butterflies - in the yard too. A friend mentioned seeing a hummingbird last week. Makes me jealous and that much more resolved to attract them to my yard. It makes me wonder if there's some type of habitat (nesting area, water source) aside from our normal plant cultivation we can erect in our yard to meet their needs. Something, anything. Just another thing to add to the list of things to do to the yard, I guess.

Hell, a trip to the local you-pick strawberry field prompted plans to erect our own vertical strawberry planter. With my ingenious idea it would involve strawberries on one side and hanging potters with lettuce on the other. When I tried to describe this plan to my partner all I got was the blank stare. That is until I drew the damned thing. My verbal description of it's an inverted V actually turned out more like a swing set, but whatever. I owned up to the mistake of probably drawing it out first then trying to describe it.

The raised veg. garden exploding!

One thing at a time though. The raised bed we erected earlier this spring is overflowing with vegetables. The butternut squash probably wasn't the greatest thing to put in there but lesson learned. It needs it's own home next year. The okra is doing fabulous as well as the tomato plants which are taller than their cages. I'm excited for the harvest this year. The strawberries we picked became strawberry-margarita jam, pie and frozen nuggets for later use. So I'm sure you can only imagine what I'll turn my vegetables into when they're ready - pickled, canned, devoured!

Culinary Delights

Speaking of pie...I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie the other night. We picked the rhubarb up earlier in the season from our local farmer's market, which was bursting at the seams yesterday with over 7,000 people in the five hours it was open! I froze the rhubarb for later use because, honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do with it, but at $2 a bunch I couldn't pass it up.

The pie turned out wonderful (there's only 2 slices left), so good in fact the boy and I ate two pieces in one night. Not only was the filling good but the crust which was a coconut oil based experiment vs margarine, my typical choice. The crust still turned out flaky and wonderful. You can probably find any variation of this crust online and for the life of me can't remember where I pulled this one from but here it is:

mmm...pie....*drool*

Coconut Oil Pie Crust (makes a double crust)

1ts salt

2c flour

3tb coconut oil

6tb veg. oil

6tb cold, iced water

Directions 

1) mix the salt and flour together

2) add in the liquids and mix until well incorporated but not over mixed

3) wrap in saran wrap and chill for 1hr

4) divide into equal pieces and on lightly floured surface roll until desired thickness/diameter

What summertime treat/dessert do you look forward to the most? Is it berry based? Or do you prefer citrus?

Unruly Squash

     Hot damn! It's sticky outside! Summer took a while to reach us, but now that it has arrived there's no stopping the daily thunderstorms that rattle the house at all hours. At least for now, I don't have to water the plants. The sporadic downpours are doing that for me, thanks Mother Nature.

     The flower beds are a constant wave of color. The poppies already came and went but I managed to get a snapshot of the salmon colored blooms before a thunderstorm knocked them all away. The roses are thriving with blooms weighing down the branches and the boy keeps the small glass vase on my desk well stocked with new roses. The daylilies had to be thinned from the maple garden since they wanted to run amuck (hehe - amuck, amuck, amuck!), but they were choking the poor little goblin flower.

     In the new raised bed, the plants are thriving off this muggy and wet weather. The tomato plants are HUGE! Not to mention we are constantly having to move the tendrils of the squash and pumpkin onto their makeshift trellis so they don't overextend themselves into the rest of the garden. It's too bad that the carrot really didn't take this year. We have two, just two, baby carrots sprouting.

     Last week, we got the fence fully stained and we even put a gate on it. We had to take apart one of the panels, then put it back together, but I think it looks very nice. Considering that I'm the one that thought to put a curve along the top, I should think it looks very nice.

That's all on my end. I feel a game of naps coming on. Don't forget to keep yourself and your gardens hydrated!

They're cute when they're tiny!

Last week, DB and I got the chance to enjoy some nice weather and a trip to the Boerner Botanical Garden. We missed the tulips last year because of the unusually warm winter and that made me sad. Not this year! And with the help of a Groupon discount, we got to enjoy it at half price. The tulips were in full bloom and some of the irises as well. The one thing I want to go back for is the daylilies and roses. But there's a problem. A giant bumblebee claims the rose garden area as his own and makes it impossible for us to wander around that area. Stupid bee. Reminds me of the honey bees currently hanging around my cauliflower's container. They think they own the place. And I have a fear of bees getting into my hair because I had a bad experience once. A hornet got trapped in my ponytail and stung me when I went to fix it. Needless to say, when there are bees about, I scream like a little girl, flailing my arms as I go running.

The two nice days turned into chances of showers and thunderstorms taking the wind out of our sails for finishing the stain on the fence. To keep ourselves occupied we moved onto a different project: the raised garden bed that we've been talking about for years now. If you recall in a previous post (Hyacinths and breakfast sausage) we pulled up the old, busted driveway to make room for the new garden.

My SFG plan

Pulling together some semblance of a plan we got to work - between thunderstorms. The plan resulted in a raised cedar bed 8' x 4' x 1' along the lines of the one featured on Sunset's website. Using this concept, we wanted to try the square foot gardening (SFG) to get the most bang for our buck. This method, as authored by Mel Bartholomew, provides a practical means to grow an abundance of plants in limited space where the soil might not be the best, to reduce maintenance efforts, and increase yield, among other things. But it needs to keep in mind companion/foe plants considering the amount of space (i.e. carrots do well with lettuce but not celery). Any simple internet search will give you a plethora of results to help determine companion/foe planting for your own garden.

Starting the work on the raised bed

Spread out over a few days we got to work. The frame was easy enough - after we figured that flipping it from one side to the next would be the easiest in order to make sure the boards were level. Taking a concept from the book "I Garden: Urban Style" (2010, p 66), we used a 'lasagna' effect. Newspaper and cardboard on the bottom with garden fabric along the sides then layers of compost, peat moss, and garden soil until we filled up the bed (it took two trips to the hardware store to get all the 'dirt' mainly because we short-changed it the first time around, oops).

Full of dirt and segmented into square feet

After a trip to the local nursery, we picked up some of the transplants, while direct sowed some of the other stuff (i.e. pumpkin, carrot, bean). The nursery offers a great discount for flats of 4-cell veggies. Only needing a half-flat it still gave us extra plants. So we filled up the raised bed and put two each of hot peppers, bell pepper and eggplant in self-watering containers. Because, you know, you can never have enough peppers...but as an added precaution I made little paper bag collars for those plants. If you can recall, I had a problem with cutworms last year. I didn't bother putting the lettuce in the SFG and instead opted to use just a SW-container.

Little, baby veggies! ^_^

To say I'm excited about my vegetable garden is an understatement. I cannot wait until the plants grow and begin to fruit especially since we're trying our hands at 'classics' and new stuff (okra! beans!). Last year's drought worked well enough for my peppers but not for most other things, I'm hoping this year will do a little better. Otherwise, I'll be canning another batch of peppers and salsa, not that I mind but it would be nice to add other things to the pantry/freezer.

Final Thoughts

Most of your veggies and fruit should be outside by now so it should be all about maintenance. Keep the weeds back, stake the peppers and eggplants if needed, and watch out for garden pests - I'm looking at you squirrels. And now is the time to attract honey bees and other pollinators to your garden! Use spring blooming flowers to get their attention so by the time your veggies need them, they're there and ready to roll.

"Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get."

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Skeletons in the garden

North side tulips: white, purple & black

What a busy few days! The weather has been playing nice allowing us time to go outside and roll around in the dirt. New flowers and bushes are in their new homes while the existing beds got an update with new mulch. All of the tulips are up and blooming. But it's too bad that the tulips on the south side of the walk up to the house aren't as strong as the ones on the north side. Makes me wonder if our cocker spaniel, Jake and his winter habit of peeing right there, had something to do with it...ponders...

We keep our skeletons outside in the garden

A few days ago on Facebook, I made a post about zombie gnomes and how they'd go well with our skeleton flamingos. A friend commented and I had to take a photo of our skeletons that just chill with the orange tulips and (normally) mums. The flamingos aren't for a Halloween display, instead, we keep them outside year around. Kind of like the wall decals in the house of spiderwebs and spiders.

Doing my part to help

This weekend we also decided on a stain for our cedar fence. If you've been reading the blog then you remember the fence the boy and I built last year. After letting it weather for a bit, we decided to stain it. Using a semi-transparent, oil based stain we chose 'Burnt Hickory.' The picture doesn't do it justice, but the stain gives it a nice old, spooky vibe. We joked that we'd finally get to a project that we started but haven't finished. Now if we can get a ladder long enough to get to the peaks of the house to finish painting that.

On my own today, I decided to entertain myself by pulling dandelions from the yard. Filling two buckets that little side project took me almost two hours. I didn't get them all but I got 99% of them. I really don't like using chemicals on my lawn. Instead, I don't mind the manual labor of using a dandelion digger and bucket doing a quasi-duck waddle. I'm sure it's a hilarious sight for the neighbors, but I like the feeling of accomplishment.

Final Thoughts

Birds are great entertainment, not only for yourself but if you own cats. I know mine like to hang out in the enclosed back porch and watch their version of TV  Try to keep a variety of feeders and water/bath dishes throughout your yard. Most birds are territorial and don't like sharing, while different feeders accommodate the different feeding requirements of larger vs. smaller birds. And while you surely don't have to feed them everyday try to keep to a routine. Right now we have mourning doves, cardinals, golden finches, chickadees, house sparrows, and black birds that frequent our yard, sometimes we even get a blue jay. We're still holding out for hummingbirds and keep trying year after year.

Zone 5: Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants should be already hardened to the outside temperature, but make sure to keep on eye on the small plants. Keep sowing lettuce, carrot, and sweet corn for a rotation of harvest times.

Hyacinth and Breakfast Sausages

Who you callin' pansy?

What a week it has been already!  The local stores and garden centers are in full bloom with the various trees, shrubs, and plants on display.  Have you hit up your local garden center to check out the latest variety of fruit or vegetable this year?  I'm a little sad that the only place that I can get the black petunias at is a small drive away.  Even then, they're not the 'Black Cat' variety but 'Phantom' (yellow/black) or 'Pinstripe' (pink/black) since most are making way for this year's varietal of 'Blackberry Hybrid.' That's all well, but I want my black petunias!  Maybe there will be something at this years plant sale.

The nice void

Hey look! I made a mountain!

I'm looking forward to spring since we're working on expanding the vegetable gardens.  Container gardening is nice, but since we have the room we're going to try our hand at raised beds.  It's just a matter of clearing out the old driveway to make room for said beds.  So what did we do this weekend?  Took a sledgehammer to the old concrete.  We didn't get all of it out, but a good 8ft section.  It made a nice mountain in front of the fence.  There's a local place that accepts old concrete so it's just a matter of hauling it away.

While visiting the local centers this year, we found a new flower that we're in love with: hyacinth. The blooms have a sweet aroma with delicate looking flowers in a variety of colors.  Of course, I got a few.  Two purple, grape hyacinth and two pink.  In my zone they're perennials but above zone 8 they have a tendency to become annuals.  Arriving at the same time as daffodils and tulips, these bulbs can add a nice accent to the larger flowers.

Ms. Mouse's Thoughts on Food

I have made vegan breakfast sausage.  There, I said it, I am awesome.  Go ahead and ponder this thought for a little bit.  Now you may ask how I accomplished this wonderful feat of culinary genius?  Trial, error, and taking apart several other recipes to create a hybrid. Ready to try your own hand at these nummy little patties?  Then read on!

the work in progress

McSmee Early Risers - 12 patties

oil, for cooking
1/4c onion, sauteed
1c black beans, rinsed/drained
3/4c oatmeal
2tb flour
1/4-1/2ts fennel seed
1ts sage
1/4ts salt
1/4ts onion powder
1/4ts garlic powder

They look like sausages!!!

1/4ts cumin
dash cayenne
1ts maple syrup
+/- 1/4c water

Directions:

1) Chop & saute onion
2) Place all ingredients in a food processor until smooth
3) Use a melon baller or something similar to plop mixture into the skillet on med/med-lo heat (stove temps vary)
4) Let brown on each side (cooking roughly 3-4 minutes) and gently flip, repeat

As I said in an earlier post, recipes are like guidelines - unless of course it's a baking recipe then try to stick with that unless you can without uncertainty fiddle with the ingredients/ratio that most baking requires.  After testing these sausages out, I found the 1/2ts fennel seed to be a little much for my taste even with processing it into microscopic bits.  The maple syrup gives it a nice sweetness that can compliment any breakfast entree.  The next thing I need to figure out is how to do omelets without egg...that way I can make my own damn breakfast sammies.

Final Thoughts

Got your garden all planned out? Great you're one step ahead of me. If not, it's okay, it's not too late to get some idea of what you're planting this year, but don't wait too much longer! Soon the major planting time will have long gone and it will be time to focus on keeping those little buggers alive and producing!

Zone 5: pinch back strawberry blossoms, sow bush/pole beans, and start installing collars to protect seedlings from cutworms!

Hot Tamales, Tulips, and Fresh Wood

Early bloomers

     Technically it's Spring.  Someone please tell that to Mother Nature.  NOAA says it's after the frost dates (don't know your's? check it here) but my little piggies are freezing since I already busted out the flip-flops.  I got one day in the sun before the cold temperatures came back.  But that doesn't mean that things aren't going as planned in the gardens.  There's a bustle of activity in the beds and with the winter cover mainly removed, the plants are getting a fresh start at life.  Already the purple tulips are getting ready to bloom and the grape hyacinth is slowly making it's progress as well.

Not only that but the wood mulch gets a new start at life as well.  If you don't have beds and instead use containers for your gardens, still invest in mulch as it helps with moisture retention, enhances nutrient exchange, and a host of other good stuff!  Don't believe me? Check out this nifty article and this one too!

Laying down new mulch

If you notice in the picture to the left that the bed never had an original layer of mulch. Instead, this bed was prepared last year (2012) and had half a layer of newspaper as a means to control weeds. While it worked, the rest of the bed was left open to invasion. So case in point, put down mulch.  Or be left weeding excessively - something I'll be doing for the next few weeks.

While it's cold outside it's spicy up in this place.  Cinco de Mayo is around the corner and for most that means tacos, burritos, and ice cold Coronas.  In this house, not so much.  During the winter we love Aztec styled hot cocoa.  So why not make a chocolate cake out of it? The cake pan is not five minutes in the oven when the aroma of cayenne pepper wafts throughout the house, bringing with it that oh-so-familiar tingle to the sensory system of - SPICY!  The recipe comes from Real Simple but feel free to experiment - I mean recipes are just guidelines...Instead of water, I used 1c of coffee and a full 1/2ts of cayenne.  Don't be afraid to get fresh with the spices!

Final Thoughts:

If you're in a region like mine where this is the last week of the frost think about your cold crop (i.e. cucumbers, cabbage, cauliflower, etc).  Don't forget to sow sweet corn, lettuce, carrots, and start setting out transplants before the final transition to outdoor living!  But keep an eye on the weather because you never know if a freak storm will blow your way!  And finally, my baby Wicket ^_^

Wicket's impression of a dead baby seal, pretty good, eh?

Oatmeal cookies & tulips

Hot damn, it's been a minute since I last did a blog post.  Things are finally slowing down - which can be a good thing or bad depending on how bored I get....I've finished with school (hurray!) getting my Masters completed in under a year and to top it off got it with honors.  The poor Midwest got slammed by one winter storm after another and with the kooky names the Weather Channel has been handing out it's been stranger than usual.  Khan, Nemo, Q...you know.  The regular ilk of winter storms.

Our poor cocker spaniel looks like a raving maniac by the end of winter.  I say this as he's rolling amuck on the office floor the red hair a mop of sneezes, grunts and general happy.  The cats remain unimpressed.

What I'm impressed about is the fact that I bought 25lbs of flour for $9 at the local market!  I know...not the craziest thing to get all worked up about but as someone that easily goes through 5lbs in two weeks it means a lot.  And I'm picky about my flours.  Tuesdays/Wednesdays usually means fresh bread and I'm getting the art of tortilla and roti making down to encourage dreams of pitas.  Mmm...pitas...

The accumulation of such flour encouraged a batch of oatmeal cookies, they've barely lasted the night.  For some reason they keep defying gravity and land into my hand...only to be nom'd upon.  They should know better.  And while I'm not an original fan of oatmeal - I prefer chocolate chip - this recipe is damn fine in my opinion.  The mix didn't seem to hold together at first, but the brown sugar and apple syrup (I'm even pickier about syrups) coalesced into a nice chewy cookie.  DB has mentioned that when these are gone they shall need replacing.  You know, to fill in the 'void' in the cookie tub.

I'm watching you...just like I have to watch the cornbread pan....

Anybody plant bulbs this last fall?  Or even have any in the ground for more than one season?  As for us: the tulips are sprouting!  All about the yard, I see the tips of tulips breaking ground - even in places where I thought I retrieved them for relocation (makes a mental note to mark those for later removal).  So I'm expecting a wash of red, white, purple, and black this spring along with the multi-hued crocus as their delicate flowers are already blooming.  Overwintering in the back porch, the strawberries swear it's early summer with the new foliage peaking through as the lemon plant has three little baby lemons.  Overall, I'm ready for spring and summer.