Busy Time

The month of August always means it's time to get busy.  And I will stay busy now until after I get all my Christmas decorations put away - yes I meant Christmas.

From harvesting, to Halloween, to Christmas.  It's all a long busy train for me, jumping from one thing to the next.  Right now, I'm getting into what I will call "Phase I" - the depths of harvesting.

Ahhh!  Our first ripe tomato out of the greenhouse!  For some reason, the ones in the greenhouse are slow, but they are starting to come in.

I hope to be up to my ears in tomatoes by the end of this month, but we'll see...

This was my first year trying to grow green beans, and I have to say I am quite happy with my stash.  Now that I know how easy they are to grow, and so easy to harvest, I will probably grow them every year.  They are so tasty to snack on raw, right out of the garden.  They would make a great movie snack!  Move over, popcorn!

Here are some more zucchini pickles that I made. 

 Chuck didn't quite like the first batch I made.  He said they were too sweet, and there was something he didn't like about the flavor.  He asked me if there were cloves in it.  I used Pickling Spice in that batch, but didn't really look at what was in it.  When I read the ingredients, sure enough, it has cloves in it.  I don't know how he picked up on that, but if you don't like something I guess it's gonna stand out to you.  He doesn't like cloves.

So this time I used the individual spices that were called for in the recipe.  I don't know yet if they are gonna be acceptable to his liking.  We didn't open one up yet.  I am new to making pickles, so I told Chuck that he is going to have to accept the fact there are going to be a few failures while I figure this out.  In the end, when I finally get it right, it'll be worth it, especially at those times when I have a buttload of zucchini that I don't know what else to do with.

Something wandered into my yard the other day that had me kinda worried.

I was upstairs happily scrap booking, totally oblivious to the visitor that came for a free lunch.

It caught me by surprise when I came downstairs and saw it, as I am always caught by surprise whenever I see one.

She didn't seem too surprised to see me though.  I suppose moose are used to humans gaping at them and taking pictures.  This one was all alone and didn't look fully grown, so I didn't feel too threatened by it.  I was ready to start yelling at it if it got any disagreeable ideas on what to eat.

"What are you looking at?"

I watched it for a long time to see if it was gonna find my veggies.  She was apparently getting enough satisfaction from munching on my fireweed cuz she never came close to my garden beds.

Whew!  That was a close one!

Besides my veggies, I am not only up to ears in blueberries, but over my head in them.

We went to pick more blueberries on Saturday, and we are just amazed at how many there are this year!  It is so hard to stop picking when you can't stop finding them!  Here is how most of our dialogue went that day as we kept picking:

"Holy Cow!  Look at these!"

"Look at these over here!"

"Man, these are huge!"

"There's a whole cluster of them!"

"These look like grapes!"

"My berry picker is getting full."

"Oh, my achin' back!"

"Look!  Here's some more!"

"Mmmm, they taste just like they're from the store!"

"It's starting to rain again."

"Oh no, I just lost some.  What a dirty rotten shame!"

"There's a whole bunch over here."

We picked non-stop for almost 4 hours through two showers of rain (which didn't stop us) and this is what we got:

So now I am busy every morning and every night, getting them cleaned and sorted, one batch at a time, and into the freezer, so I can get the bins empty again for next week's picking.  I plan on going every weekend until they aren't good for picking anymore, which means, if you come over to my house, I will have some blueberries to give to you, because I know we will have more berries than I know what to do with.  But I want to keep picking them because I just hate to see them go to waste.  

In the midst of all this harvesting, my mind is already dwelling on "Phase II", which is Halloween.

I am making this Halloween quilt in my spare time.  I'm not done with it yet, but Bossy seems to think that I am.

For my Halloween theme this year, I am going to do a Scarecrow theme, with ravens, crows, and blackbirds to go with it as a "sub theme".  So I have already been looking for ideas on what to do with that.  There's so much to think about with decorations and menu items.  For one of my menu items, I think I want to have "Children of the Corn Chowder".  I've never made corn chowder before, so I will have to experiment with some recipes, but I found one in a Martha Stewart recipe book that looks good.  I will start with that one and go from there.  With this recipe, you're supposed to top it with white sharp cheddar cheese - and I have a few ideas I want to play with as far as that goes - to make it more Halloweenish.

I don't know what else I'm going to have on the menu yet, but I'm working on it.  I have a few ideas in the works that I might use ("if I only had a brain" said the scarecrow on his way to Oz)

Mmmmm..........brains..................

You will just have to wait and see what I come up with.

(great - now I have that stupid song in my head)

Back to the subject of sewing, here is something that I saw on Pinterest, and I wanted to try it.

"Who would've thought these used to be a bath towel?"

Some of our bath towels were getting old, but I hated to throw them away, so I got to looking for ideas for practical uses them.  There was an idea on Pinterest for making dish rags out of them.  I was on the verge of throwing out some of my dish rags, so I was excited to try this.  I have to say, I LOVE THESE!  I don't see any need to be buying any more dish rags in the future.  Not that dish rags are expensive, but I just like the idea of making something useful out of would-be garbage.  

Here is another highlight for this week:

This poor bird flew into our window and knocked itself senseless. It just lay there motionless on the deck in total shock.  Thankfully, Beanie was inside the house, otherwise she would've killed it, I'm quite sure of it.

But, just to make sure nothing else got to it, PW went out there and held it until it regained its senses and flew away.

Then we let Beanie out again.

"Where did that bird go?"

One of her favorite things to do is hunt for dragonflies.

She brings them into the house, lets them go, chases them all over the house, kills it, then leaves it there for me to dispose of.

We try to discourage this behavior and explain to her that dragonflies are our friends.  But she has no mercy on anything that has wings.  When we try to explain anything to her, all she hears is "wa-wa wa-WA", you know......like Charlie Brown's teacher.

To her, if it flies, it's a sport. And that's all she understands.

So those are my recent highlights.

Nothing that turns the world upside down, but at least I am kept entertained and occupied.

Busy, busy, busy!

Blueberries Abound!

Last weekend we finally got to go to the cabin and spend the night!

Last month when we were there, the blueberries were looking pretty good, but I didn't want to get too excited about them (yet), since I was left disappointed for the last two years.

But this time I brought along two Ziploc bins with me, just in case!

And to my delight, this is what we found in a little patch right next to the "driveway" that leads up to the cabin.

Oh my!  I just HAD to go check out our other two patches that we regularly pick from, and sure enough, they were all decorated with these little blue ornaments.

Well, I knew right away what I was gonna be doing the next morning after breakfast!!

Friday evening went kinda fast.  Chuck mowed the lawn while I heated up some water for some coffee and tea.

I have no idea why I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of our water kettle, but there ya go.  Now you know what it looks like.  It ain't very pretty, but it's practical, cheap, and efficient.  

After we ate our grilled hot dogs, we went traipsing through the woods to look for more blueberry patches.  We looked for the ones that we knew were there, and then looked for some that we didn't know about.  We found LOTS of patches, and tied some orange tape around the nearby trees so we could find them again later.

Check this out!  Can you believe all these berries??  We found this patch just off the edge of our property line. (Technically, it was on the other side of the property line.) This poor branch was so heavy with berries, it was screaming "Help me!"  I knew I was gonna be going back to that spot again the next morning.

  We kept walking around on our ten acres and kept finding more patches, some small and some really big, and tied up more orange tape whenever we came to another patch - all filled with berries!  We won't be able to pick them all this year!

And that is what happens when you pray for berries!!

So the next morning after cleaning up our breakfast mess, we began picking.  We started with that little patch next to the "driveway".  That patch wasn't very big, but there were so many berries in that one patch alone, we spent a long time there.  I kept thinking about those thick berries next to the property line and we finally went over there to fill up our bins.  Unfortunately I only brought along two bins.  Do you know how hard it is to stop picking when you keep seeing more beautiful blue berries every time you turn around?  But alas, our bins were full!  But we decided to keep picking until our berry pickers were full.  Soon those were full too, and we were forced to stop and leave all those other berries behind.

Chuck has this Friday off.  Can you guess where we will be and what we will be doing?

We got home Saturday late afternoon, so I plopped my berries on the kitchen counter and went outside to check the garden veggies.  I soon realized I was faced with a big job of harvesting, and I knew I was to spend the next 2 days in the kitchen.

  

Blueberries to sort, wash, and freeze; catnip to dry, flowering broccoli (can I still use it?); peas to shell.  And what to do with all that zucchini?

I was feeling a bit overwhelmed looking at it all, but decided to start with the catnip cuz that would only take a few minutes.  I tied them in bundles and hung them up to dry.

I let Beanie chew on one of the catnip leaves.

The broccoli was easy.  I just put it in the fridge for now to deal with later.

Chuck helped me shell the peas later that evening while we were watching a show on Netflix.

As for the blueberries, I have to deal with those in batches because I can only fit so many at a time in the freezer (they have to be frozen in a single layer on a sheet before I can put them in baggies.)  Because of that, it can take days to get them all in baggies, so it's probably better if I don't bring too many bins to the cabin with me (some of them might start to go bad before I get to them.)

Here is a little worm I found in the blueberries.

Don't worry, my berries are very carefully sorted through before they make it to the freezer.  First I soak them in salt water to find the worms, then I scoop them up in my hand and manually sort through them to get rid of all the ones that are mushy, scarred, misshapen, blemished, or just plain  "funny" looking.  All berries must pass my rigid inspection process!!!

A few minutes after I took this picture, the worm was gone!

I wonder where that little fella went?

Don't get grossed out by the worms.

It's not unusual to find one or two, and seeing as these are wild berries, I think only one or two worms is pretty good!

Now the zucchini.  Another year of picking zucchini quicker than I know what to do with it.  So this year I am trying something new that will use up a lot of zucchini.  

Zucchini Pickles

This is my first time making these, but they smelled good when I made them, so both me and Chuck are anxious to try them.  If they turn out good, then this will be a regular thing for me.  I want to open one tonight, but I don't know how long they have to sit in that brine before they are considered "done".  Does it take days?  Weeks?  Or are they ready right now?

We just might have to break one open and find out.

So, you can probably get a pretty good idea that I am going to be pretty busy now for the next few weeks as we are getting into the harvest season.

The Lord is truly blessing us this year!

A Visit from Karen

In my last post, I told you that my sister Karen was visiting me, and in another post a couple months ago, I mentioned that I was going to be working on a secret project.  Well, now we can connect the dots, and it is safe now for me tell you all about it.  

The main reason Karen came up to visit is because we came up with the idea to make a quilt to commemorate the 60th anniversary of our parents, and we wanted to work on it together.

Before she came, I sent out pre-cut quilt blocks to as many family members as I could, so they could sign them and send them back to me.  I had gotten most of them back by the time Karen got here.

So she got here on a Wednesday, and as soon as we left the airport, we got right to work!  Even before I brought her home that first day, we hit all 4 quilt shops in Anchorage.  And then another quilt shop in Palmer, and the last one here in Wasilla.  6 quilt shops all in one day.  Whew!  At first, we only wanted to just browse and see what they all had to offer so we could make a decision on which fabrics we wanted to buy.

On Thursday, we spent the whole day making the blocks for the people who wouldn't or couldn't make them.  And that took pretty much most of the day.  Karen made a really cute one for her coming grand-baby by tracing one of my stamp images.  Who would've thought you could combine a stamping hobby with quilting?

We didn't have our "filler blocks" yet, but I had a Charm Pack in neutral colors that we practiced with, and started playing around with the blocks, trying to come up with a good way to represent everyone on the quilt.

We tried several different ideas and finally came up with something that seemed to work.  We wanted to leave a space in the middle to make a panel.

On Friday, we had all of our necessary blocks made, so we went back to Anchorage and purchased the fabrics that we decided on.  We decided to go with blues.

After we got our blue filler blocks cut out, we went back to our layout design and replaced all the neutral ones with blue ones.  The further we worked on it, the more excited we became.

We had to make the middle panel twice cuz the first one wasn't quite the right size.

But we were excited when the 2nd one fit right.

After we got it all sewn together, we had to design the middle panel.

Neither of us were very experienced in doing applique, but with some tutoring from YouTube videos, we did an all-right job.

The words were traced on there.  We printed them out in large print from the computer, and then placed the fabric over it, and just traced it with a fabric pen.  Very easy.

Then we were finally ready for the quilting part.  We got it sandwiched and pinned together, and then I did all the quilting because Karen wasn't comfortable with that part.  I kinda wish she had done that part because she's really good at the sewing machine, and I'm sure she would've done a better job than I did.

After it was all quilted, Karen did all of the binding.

And here it is!  Ta-Daa!

10 kids

23 grandkids

24 great-grandkids

All represented on one quilt.

And then they needed a card to go with it, so we made them a card.

 Sorry I forgot to rotate this picture.

Here is the inside of the card:

And then we wrapped it up nice in wedding paper, slipped it in a Flat Rate box, and sent it on its way!

I was getting on the computer twice a day to track the package.  I wanted to know when it got there so we could call them after they got it.  They had no clue of any of this, so we were anxiously waiting the entire 4 days to call them.  We got up at 6:00 am on a Friday morning just to call them.  I'm glad that happened to be on a Friday cuz me and Karen felt really tired all day after that.  We're not used to getting up that early.

Anyhoo, it was really fun because I like surprising people with things like that.  And plus, it was just fun working on a project with Karen.  She was here for almost three weeks, and we did nothing but quilt the whole time she was here (she had another quilting project that she was working on), but we had a lot of fun just being together.

But before she went home, we decided to break away from the quilting and do something else, just for one day.  So on Saturday we took a drive through Hatcher Pass.

 And then we drove up to Talkeetna and spent most of the day there.  Here is one of the shops that we went in.  

We saw the quilts hanging there, and just had to go in!  You'd think we had had enough of quilts by then, but, I dunno, there's just something about quilts that draws us in.

Sunday was Karen's last day here, and guess what we did?  Yup! - we quilted!

Right up until the last couple hours, when she finally said, "well, I better pack".

I hope we can get together again soon.

Now here is some good news and bad news.

The good news is that my raspberry plants are starting to produce berries!

Not a whole lot, but just enough to give us a little taste every now and then.

And they are super yummy!

Now for the bad news.......

This used to be a cluster of plump red strawberries.  My strawberry patch was full of bright red juicy clusters just like it, and I was waiting for just the right time to pick a basket full of them.

I WAS SO CLOSE TO PICKING THEM!! But something else beat me to it.  Whatever it was picked off EVERY strawberry in my whole entire strawberry patch.

Every. Last. One.

(scream!)

I think I need to put Beanie out there to guard my strawberries.

And I know if she ever caught it, she would have no mercy.

Bossy is pretty much useless on a sunny day.  She prefers to find a shady spot and snooze.

Recent Visitors

I think I mentioned in a previous post that my sister Karen was coming up to visit me, so that is why I haven't been posting.  I've been too busy!

Here is a little bit of what we've been doing, but I'll talk more about that in a later post.

Here is another visitor that came to see me.

Or maybe just to see if the salad bar was ready yet...

And we finally got a visit from Stephanie and Charlie!

It took my poor cats 2 days to recover after they left!

Sorry this post is going to be short, with nothing to say, but I promise I will have more to say at another time!