On My Beat

Canning Tomatos

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:11:44 +0000

The garden is in full harvest mode, so what energy I have is going there.
Haven’t had time to work this site theme or any other Word Press projects right now.

We did harvest many of our tomatoes:

And we canned up 7 pints. We used the cold pack – 60 min water bath method.

Russel also made some fresh tomato sauce, which was so good, I am tempted to harvest and or buy more tomatos and can up some pints of that.

We have also eaten corn (so sweet and fresh), we have eggplant almost ready, and the peppers are really turning red. Cukes and squash are still producing, as is the salad bed. I love eating fresh organic food.. makes all the work worth it!

Upgraded to WP 3.0.1

admin — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 19:37:07 +0000

Doesn’t seem to have any problems that I have found yet.
I will need to do some major reconfiguring of content and php templates to use the new Twenty-10 theme, so that will be the next push.

Testing a upload photo now: Michael Franti

Caterpillars on the dill

admin — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 17:44:20 +0000

Today I went out to pick some dill head and leaf.. and found a least seven black swallowtail caterpillars on my dill plant! Guess they love dill, and I am mostly done with it so they can eat it. I hope they form their chrysalis close by so I can watch that transformation.
Next year I will plant more dill and some fennel to bring them into the garden.

Here’s another site with some good butterfly info: butterflies

I was picking the dill for another round of squash pickles, because we have just too much squash! I canned up 7 pints this time.

I have been making Pesto every couple of days, and freezing about 2 cups with each run. I figure I have at least 7 runs (6 cups packed leaf) left to do. And we figure we can eat pesto every week all winter and until harvest next year starts! What a treat that is.

Our tomato plants are 6 feet tall! Lots of just now starting to ripen toms. We will also be canning tomatoes, quartered & cold pack way I think. Russel will be helping me with that!

Blueberries started coming into the Farmers Market in the middle of July, I have been buying lots to eat as this is the only time of year we get them and I like to buy local. I also found a great new recipe for blueberry -zucchini bread that I like way better than the one I used to use with raisins. It’s been quite a hit with everyone.

Our garden is doing really great. We have watermelons (not harvested yet), and tons of winter squash on the vine. The lettuce is still producing and I just put in more starts. We have enough summer squash and cucumbers to eat all we want, the peppers are big and still green, I am waiting for them to turn red to pick. Lots of work, but worth it to eat good organic food that you grew.

Ter is Visiting!

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:34:49 +0000

I have an E-friend, Terry, who I met through my old friend from the Boulder days, TR, who now lives in Florida, he connected us years ago, (they are a couple) and we have been emailing and now Facebooking for almost 10 years! She was in Washington state, heading south, so I encouraged a visit.
It was wonderful having her here, meeting her was like greeting an old friend, which I guess we are, but we only talked on the phone once or twice in all that time and this was the first face to face.. it went so good. She is always welcome here.
She slept outside in the screen house / tent with her very old small dog.
It was also the first time anyone has stayed with us longer than over night. I felt like this has opened the door to that, especially if they are into camping. (no more dogs here though.. just doesn’t work for me).
The one room house doesn’t really afford anyone the amount of privacy they would want for any long term stay inside.
She stayed 6 days, it was hard to have her leave. We both got great massages the last couple of days she was here.
There was no lack of conversation, and I feel we barely scratched the surface and hope that she will put us on her list of ‘must visit’ folks when she is traveling.

See that jacket she is wearing? I went through a few containers of my Guatemalan clothes & tipica, she became the proud owner of several items. The same with my ‘too small for me to wear’ batik rayon dresses and some other clothes. It was good to pass some of this on to someone who really appreciates it. I just never got around to Ebay-ing the items, it just seems like too much work for the return.

Start Antibiotics

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:24:24 +0000

Whatever I had / have I don’t think it was any kind of allergy. I started on antibiotics July 31, after many really bad days of coughing day and night. I finally called the doctor and specifically asked for antibiotics and codeine cough syrup (which did not help at all).
Within 4 days of starting the antibiotics, the cough was almost gone, by a week into the antibiotics, it was gone and energy was returning because I was sleeping. It actually felt like life was starting again!
After 3 months of this thing dragging me down.

So now, August 15, I am 2 days off the antibiotics and have just a light cough occasionally.. has me a bit worried that I will fall back into what ever it was, but I am trying to get stuff done while I have some energy.
And no spring cleaning was done this year.. and if it didn’t have to happen for the last several months, it didn’t .. so I have a ton of stuff to do to catch up.

Speaking of getting stuff done. I tried my first pickle-canning July 26, using zucchini instead of cucumbers. We just opened a jar a few days ago and they are quite tasty!

Reggae on the River 2010

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:09:49 +0000

Even while I was still in the grips of the ‘cough’ we managed to go to Reggae on the River at Benbow, 2 day event put on by Mateel Community Center. It was in the 100s the first day and very hot the next. But we kept a slow pace and had a place for our big chairs under some shade trees. Met up with the usual reggae posse that we often sit by, some wonderful women from up north, it’s always fun to see them.

We also met up with old friends and new friends. And it was great to see ROR go to 2 days, sell out, and be irie!

I only had 2-3 coughing fits and didn’t feel any worse for being there, it was great to finally get out and about.