Last spring, I started a new part time job, working as the admin assistant in a local real estate firm. I took a deep breath, put on my big girl pants and figured I was just going to juggle it into everything else I had going on, thinking that once I got through the end of May, I’d have more breathing room. Well, May became July. And then July became November and I began to realize I needed to make some permanent cuts to my activities, because at the rate I was going, that breathing room in November was going to get pushed back to who knows when – probably some February snowstorm that shut everything down for a few days. One should not have to have fantasies about winter snowstorms in order find breathing room and so I realized, I needed to make some changes. Continue reading
Last gasp.
For months now, life has been over scheduled. I realized we had a weekend with nothing planned, no one was working, so I grabbed it and scheduled a much needed beach weekend. Continue reading
Fun with peppers.
Thanks to the generosity of friends, my off-site garden is planted heavily in peppers. I bought a few plants, but then found myself being handed oodles of pepper plants from friends and neighbors and one anonymous donor* that had run out of room in their gardens for all the pepper plants they had started/bought. I seriously have about 40 pepper plants (having bought 6) down there, most of which are heirloom chile peppers, but there are a few sweet ones too.
Squashapooloza
Last week a friend asked me what we’d been having for dinner recently. “Squash” was my quick reply. Between what the garden has been putting out and what friends have shared with us, we’ve had squash in some form or another for at least one meal a day since some time in July. I keep snapping photos along the way, meaning to share recipes with you (and me, because I often use this blog as one of my many recipe storage sites), but I just haven’t gotten around to it, so here we are with one big squash post instead. Continue reading
Wanderings, with peaches.
Our friends Tim and Wanda moved out to the country a few years ago, to a fixer-upper with a spectacular view and a small grove of fruit trees. When we saw them at dinner last month, they invited me out to pick peaches, an invitation I took them up on last week.
So much for that plan.
This past Saturday started out without much of a plan besides the current house reorganization Pat and I have been working on. I slept gloriously, deliciously late (9 am!) and by the time I got up, got caffeinated and motivated, the morning was definitely slipping by. I thought twice about heading to the market that morning – Pat’s gone for the week, Edie’s still at camp, so it’s just me, which means I will only need a handful of tomatoes to eat in tomato sandwiches all week (and I just so happen to have them!). I did have a hankering for some corn though, so I got myself dressed and headed down to the city market. Continue reading
DIY Furniture Polish
Contraire to popular belief, I do actually clean my house, it just happens to be low on the to-do list, especially this time of year when I’m up to my elbows in produce (just had a bag of zucchini and another one of cucumbers dropped off as a matter of fact) that needs to be dealt with. I prefer to use as little chemicals as possible in cleaning my house – even when I’m not pickling everything in sight, I go through a substantial amount of vinegar on a regular basis. I use it to mop floors, in my laundry in lieu of bleach and fabric softener (and no, our clothes do not smell like vinegar as a result) as well as to spray down the showers after using them to help keep the funk at bay. Continue reading
So much produce.
My weekend can best be summed up as “produce dealing”. There was the bag of cucumbers Virginia dropped off that became bread & butter pickles, peppers from the garden that became pepper jelly, a round of watermelon rind pickles started thanks to Virginia trying to get to a watermelon before the little nibbling critters in our garden did, only to cut it open to discover it wasn’t quite ready for eating.
Late July in the Gardens.
I feel like it’s been too long since I did a garden post. The spring of two jobs and two gardens morphed into the summer of two jobs and two gardens plus assorted side projects and road trips, with the occasional looking after of neighbor’s gardens for three gardens and assorted responsibilities. I have moments where I strongly suspect I may have bitten off more than I can chew, followed by moments of uber frustration with nature but then I have those little moments of zen that make it all worth while.
Backyard jungle
Capturing gnats!
Dancing gnats in the sunlight
The tiniest spider spinning its web
Nasturtium
The tinest spider spinning its web
Peach Pesto Feta Salad
The inspiration for this salad came from what I find to be the best inspiration – having a bunch of stuff in the fridge that needed to go and finding a way to use it all up. I had two white peaches that were on the verge of being over-ripe, a little bit of homemade pesto and the smallest little bit of Caromont Farm’s Feta (our new favorite cheese). I wanted a salad for dinner and thought about Jennifer Jo’s bruschetta, but all the tomatoes I had on hand could stand another day or two of sitting to further ripen (the result of picking them before the squirrels got them), so I poured myself a glass of wine and just started playing around in the kitchen. Continue reading
Chicken Wire & Paper Flowers 