RECIPE OF THE WEEK: TZATZIKI ~ TRAGEDY IN THE GARDEN ~ ADDING TO MY ADDICTION ~ TRIP TO DMV ~ PARTING SHOT

RECIPE OF THE WEEK: TZATZIKI

One of the things I have grown to love since we moved to Yakima is lamb. I don't think I had ever had lamb before we moved here and I am not even sure it was readily available back in Lumberton. But not too long after we arrived in Yakima, we went out to eat at a nearby Indian restaurant, the Taj Palace. I got a meat sampler platter and on it was something I could not for the life of me identify. Linda tasted it and told me it was lamb. I was hooked! Now I like to have it whenever I can, but the only kind of lamb I have actually tried to cook is ground lamb. I went online and found a recipe for Lamb Kofta with Tzatziki. What a wonderful dish this is! The tzatziki really makes it, so I decided to make that my recipe of the week. The main reason I am growing dill and mint is so I can make this recipe. The recipe I use is from the Kitchn and you can make this using either lamb or beef (click here for the recipe). Below is a picture of the ingredients used in making the tzatziki and what the finished product looks like. I'm not sure if I like the way tzatziki tastes as much as I just like saying the name.

Ingredients for Tzatziki

Tzatziki

TRAGEDY IN THE GARDEN

I was a day late getting my blog posted this week, and there is a story behind the reason why. Sunday morning  when I went out to check on the garden, I found that my little Zavory Habanero plant was half-eaten up and something had nibbled on all of the marigolds I planted around in the garden. Now, the Zavory Habanero plant was one I grew from seed and it was my baby. I was so excited to be able to have this "less-heat" Habanero in my garden this year. In addition to the little Habanero being munched on, a Tequila Sunrise pepper and a Delicata Squash plant were also severely eaten. I never seem to know what varmint is doing this when it happens, but I guess I should have known better than to put such tiny plants out in the garden. I did the only thing I could think of and that was to put some organic slug & earwig bait around all the peppers and squashes. On Monday morning, the little Habanero & Tequila Sunrise were eaten down to one leaf each, and one squash plant was entirely gone. I didn't know what else to do since I do not use any chemicals in my garden, so I just hoped that whatever was doing it would stop. WRONG! Tuesday morning dawned with the little Habanero and Tequila Sunrise plants COMPLETELY gone as well as all nine of the marigolds, plus part of a second squash plant with bites out of the leaves. So, that afternoon I made a natural, organic bug spray concoction to use. It is made from water, onion, garlic and cayenne powder, and let me tell you, it forevermore stinks! It stunk up the entire house! We had all the windows open and fans going, but finally we both gave up and decided to sit outside! That night I stayed up until dark-thirty (which around here is 10:30 this time of year). I went out with a flashlight and crawled around on all fours to check out each pepper plant, but all I saw was one lonely earwig. I made him pay the price for my little Hab and Tequila by spraying him. I also sprayed all of the pepper and squash plants really good. No need to spray the marigolds as there were only stems left of them. By the way, this spray is not harmful to the beneficial insects if you use it at night when they aren't flying around. All of the aforementioned activity put me going to bed after 11:00, which is unusually late for me. And to top it off, at 3:30 I awoke from a nightmare that ALL my pepper plants shriveled up and died because I had sprayed them! It took me forever to get back to sleep. I got up around 6:30 Wednesday morning and went out to check on things, fully expecting my peppers to be a mass of dead plants. To my relief all the peppers were still there (except the Hab & Tequila, which didn't miraculously reappear). They and the squashes didn't look any worse than the night before, but I'm sure I did. I was so tired from not sleeping well that I pretty much vegged all day on Wednesday. So that is why my blog was late this week. I did have a backup Zavory Habanero plant that is now in a pot, on top of a chair, in the garden. I don't think I will plant it in the ground.

The foul bug-killer concoction

The hapless little Hab plant before its demise

The backup Zavory Habanero plant

ADDING TO MY ADDICTION

Last Friday, before all the drama with the bugs, I went to the Farm & Garden Center to get some Impatiens to plant in a pot for our front porch. Of course I couldn't help myself so I came home with four more pepper plants. These were California Gold Bell peppers, which I have grown for several years and they really produce well. Besides, Linda loves them so that was reason enough for me to get them. I had to plant them over near the tomatillo since I didn't have room near the other peppers. So far, they haven't been eaten up, but I'm keeping my eye on them.


TRIP TO DMV

This morning I got to spend some quality time with the people at the DMV Licensing Office. Since my birthday is next week, I had to renew my license before then. This year I am getting the new Enhanced Drivers License so it will pass muster when going through security at any airport. I certainly don't plan on flying any time soon, but you never know. Although the whole process took an hour, it was not a bad experience and everyone there was courteous and helpful. Just as an FYI to any Washingtonians reading this blog, you will need to upgrade to the new Enhanced License before January 18, 2018 (the current deadline), as the regular Washington license will not be acceptable for airplane travel after then.


PARTING SHOT

Whenever I'm out in the garden, Summer Girl is usually there to help me.  Here is a picture of her "helping" me this past week.

That's all for this week. Here's hoping there is less drama in the coming week. During the summer, I may be a day or so late getting the blog posted due to so much going on, so be sure and check back later if you don't see it at the usual time.

ANOTHER RETIREMENT ~ VISITORS ~ GARDEN UPDATE ~ ROSES ~ PARTING SHOT

ANOTHER RETIREMENT

Last Thursday, Linda retired from being a teacher's assistant at Montessori School of Yakima. She had been working there for the past 10 years, ever since we moved out here. It was a bittersweet day, for sure, but it is nice that we are both retired now. We are looking forward to getting out and about more in this state. When we first moved to Yakima, we did quite a bit of exploring around this area before either one of us had a job. But now we need to go to some of the areas away from Yakima. There is a lot this state has to offer in the way of scenic beauty, recreational areas, wildlife refuges, hiking trails, etc. So, I am hoping that we will have some exciting adventures for me to report on in future blogs.

VISITORS

Linda's daughter Emily and her husband John visited us this past weekend and helped us celebrate Linda's retirement. I am happy to report that the cherry-infused vodka was a success for cocktails on Friday night. Although I really couldn't taste much cherry flavor, it made for a pretty drink. On Saturday afternoon, we went to another movie. Seeing two movies in the space of a couple of weeks is unprecedented for us! Linda's daughter really wanted to see Wonder Woman, so we gave it a shot. I wasn't sure how much I would like it since super-hero movies are not my usual style. But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I really did enjoy it. The lead actress, Gal Gadot, did a fabulous job as the princess of the Amazons, and Chris Pine was his usual witty, likeable self. If you want to see a movie filled with a lot of action and a bit of comedy, then this is the one. After the movie we went to Cowiche Canyon Kitchen & Icehouse restaurant in downtown Yakima. While we were waiting on our meal (and sipping on beers), someone noticed a lot of old cars going up and down the street. It turns out that there was a car show in Yakima, so we sat and watched old Corvettes, Mustangs, GTOs, and various other cars from our youth, dragging the "Ave" (Yakima Avenue). Took me back to being a teenager and "dragging 2nd street" in Lumberton. A movie and dinner, plus a car show...it was quite a day!

Celebrating Linda's Retirement

On Sunday, we all went to the Yakima Farmers Market to see what they had to offer. Even though it is pretty early in the season here, there was still a lot of veggies to choose from. Local asparagus is always a favorite, and the spring garlic was just too beautiful for us to pass up! It was a busy weekend but we had a really good time and thoroughly enjoyed their visit with us.

GARDEN UPDATE

It is inevitable that I talk about my garden in this blog. In case you hadn't already figured that out, it will be the main topic of discussion this entire summer. The reason is because the garden will be occupying most of my time and energy. This week I finally got my soaker hoses situated so that everything is covered. I had to re-position some of them the other day after we had a very windy day with winds up to 35 mph. Yesterday I got some of the straw put down around the plants but I still have to put down straw everywhere.  Here's how it looks right now.

I also planted my tiny Zavory Habanero pepper plant. It is so small that I am not sure it will have time to produce any peppers, so I bought a regular Habanero pepper plant to put right beside the Zavory. I want to make sure I get some Habanero peppers this year, even if they will be scorching hot. Hopefully the less-heat Zavory will come through. Here's a picture of it with a quarter for size comparison.

The tiny Zavory Habanero

In addition, I planted some Marigold plants in various spots in the garden where the hose is just running across bare ground. At least something will benefit from the water coming out of that part of the hose, and I have been told that Marigold flowers are a great bee attractant.

My Cherokee Carbon tomato plant has a tomato on it! I noticed it a couple of days ago. This is the only tomato plant I have this year that isn't a salad-sized tomato, so I am hoping that it produces well. Hello, tomato sandwich with mayo on white bread!

I finally have almost all of the spurge weeds pulled up from the garden area. There are still a few pockets around the garden that I need to get up, but at least I have all the ones I could see from the area where I will be spreading the straw. For those who are wondering, here is what a spurge weed looks like. It kind of looks like an umbrella with a ridiculously long root attached to it.

Spurge Weed

ROSES

I took a picture of one of my rose bushes a couple of days ago because it was just gorgeous. Since then we have had a lot of wind and some rain, so the roses are pretty beaten up now. We named this bush the Mary Rose, because it comes from a cutting taken from one of my mother's roses. We have a lot of rose bushes in our yard and all of them have names. I will try to highlight some of the other ones in future blogs.

Mary Rose

PARTING SHOT

I went in search of Summer just now to get a picture for the blog and this is what I found.

Guess it's a really good book to read like that...

That's all for this week, hope to see you back next week!

TODAY'S POST DELAYED

I'm sorry, but today's post has been postponed until tomorrow. I've been out in the garden working all day and my back is hurting too much to sit in that dinky little chair at the computer desk. That's what happens when you are old, LOL! I will be taking tomorrow off from yard work as it is supposed to be quite windy, and I promise I will ge it up then. So, check back tomorrow, please! Thank you!!

JUNE 01, 1967 ~ RECIPE OF THE WEEK ~ MOVIE & DINNER ~ FIRST HARVEST ~ GARDEN HAPPENINGS ~ PARTING SHOT

JUNE 01, 1967

Baby Boomers hit another milestone this past week. "It was 50 years ago today, Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play." June 01, 1967 was the day the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album was released. And now, 50 years later, almost anyone who grew up in those days would agree it was a turning point in the evolution of the Beatles. It's hard to believe it has been that long ago. I must honestly say that this is my favorite Beatles album, and my favorite track is A Day In The Life. I can remember sitting in our den with headphones on, listening to that album over and over, and reading the lyrics that were printed on the cover...not to mention looking at the album cover, which was a work of art. I had the regular album that was released on that day, but I also got this one below.

Sgt. Pepper's Picture Disc

It's a picture disc, which means it's a vinyl album with the picture embedded into the vinyl. I still have it, in the original wrapping, and it's never been played. The price tag is still on it, which was $11.95. On June 1st, there was a lot of hoopla surrounding this 50-year anniversary. Linda and I watched a special program on PBS last night, "Sgt. Pepper's Musical Revolution", which explained just how innovative this album was. I knew it was very progressive for the times, but I didn't realize how much so until I watched this program. If you want to see this program, check your local PBS station online to see when it is replaying in your area. I highly recommend it.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK - INFUSED VODKA

For the recipe of the week, I decided to try something different this time. I have always wanted to try infusing some type of liquor with a flavor. Since fresh cherries are showing up in the grocery store now, I figured this was a good time to give it a try. Also, we are having company this weekend so that would be an extra treat to have for cocktail hour. Once again, I visited my favorite food blog, the Kitchn, and found a post for "How to Make Fruit Vodkas" (link here). This was perfect! I got it started on Friday and by Tuesday it was done. Doesn't it look yummy? I haven't tried it yet, so tune in next week to find out how it was.

Infusing Vodka

MOVIE & DINNER

Going to the movies is something that Linda and I don't do very often, but when a good science fiction movie comes out, then we just have to go. We decided not too long ago that we would turn it into a "Movie & Dinner" thing. We always like to go to the matinees, so we go to the showing that gets out close to dinner time, then we swing by Chipotle Mexican Grill and pick up a burrito. Last week we decided to go see "Alien: Covenant." There is much debate online about the Alien movies, but I have always liked all of them, although some more so than others. I recall when I first saw the movie "Alien." It was the scariest movie I had ever seen because I thought, "this could really happen." I mean, if humans ever get to traveling among the stars, something like that could happen. You never know. This newest entry into the Alien universe follows along the same path. There is a lot of action, as well as blood, guts and gore. This is not a movie for the squeamish. I put it right up there with my other favorites in the franchise, and I will be adding it to my wish list once the DVD comes out!

FIRST HARVEST

Every year I take a picture of the first produce that comes out of the garden. This year, as in most years, the first harvest was lettuce. Despite the fact that some kind of critter really loves it, the lettuce is producing well and I was able to pick enough for us to have a salad the other night. The second batch of seeds I planted are coming up nicely, so it appears that we will have lettuce for quite a while now. It's too bad the tomatoes and cucumbers will not be ready to harvest for a month or so. About time we get them, then the lettuce will be gone. But that's the way it goes!

First Harvest!

GARDEN HAPPENINGS

It never ceases to amaze me how fast some seeds can germinate here in Yakima. I planted 3 zucchini and 3 yellow squash seeds on Memorial Day. I just went out to the garden to check on things and lo and behold, there is one zucchini plant poking up, and two yellow squash plants. All this happened overnight because they were not poking up yesterday! The sunflower seeds I planted on 5/26 and 5/29 are already up as well. I have everything planted in the garden now, and I have pulled up all the spurge weeds from the garden proper. Everything is ready for me to put down my straw so it will discourage the growth of new weeds and also help the soil retain moisture. Here are a few pictures of how things are looking.

Zucchini (top) & Yellow Squash (bottom)

Autumn Beauty Sunflowers

 

 

It's always fun to look back on years past to see how the flower garden and the vegetable garden have grown over the years. I had a "memory" pop up on Facebook this week with some pictures of both gardens from 2010. Take a look below.

Flower garden 2010 (top) and 2017 (bottom)

Vegetable garden 2017 (top) and 2010 (bottom)

 

 

While watering the back flower garden the other day, I happened to notice this Praying Mantis egg case on one of our Golden Currant bushes. It looks like the babies have already hatched. Hmm, reminds a little bit of Alien...

Praying Mantis Egg Case

PARTING SHOT

It's hard to get a picture of Summer Girl during the summer months doing anything other than what she does best. Well, at least I tried.

Summer Girl Chilling

That's it for now, hope to see you back next week!

BAKING WIN ~ PLANTING THE GARDEN ~ BUTTERFLY ~ BIRDS & BEES ~ PARTING SHOT

BAKING WIN - RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Last week after my disastrous baking fail with the focaccia, I was determined to redeem myself with a total baking win. I decided to make one of our favorite breads. When Linda and I first met, we were obsessed with the Great Harvest Bread Company bread. The only problem was that we didn't have a Great Harvest store in Lumberton. There was one in Fayetteville, however, so every time we went there we had to go to Great Harvest and get a loaf of Dakota bread. Fast forward to when we moved to Yakima and discovered there isn't a Great Harvest store here, either. If we wanted Dakota bread, we would have to make our own. The other day I found a recipe here on the Cup of Sugar Pinch of Salt website. Although it took me almost an entire afternoon to make (there was a lot of rising time), it was well worth it! Linda and I can both testify that if you make this bread, you will eat the entire loaf in less than a week...we did. And it is a huge, 10-inch round loaf. It really wasn't all that hard to make, except for the fact that I had to hand knead it for 10 minutes. That is not an easy thing to do for a person of my age. But I persevered and was amply rewarded. I really need (knead?) to get a stand mixer! Anyway, here is a picture below of my loaf of Dakota bread. Needless to say, it was totally delicious. Hmm, this looks almost exactly the same as the picture on the website, but I swear this is my loaf!

Yummy Dakota bread

PLANTING THE GARDEN

Since this past week was Memorial Day weekend, I started planting my garden. In Yakima, we have to wait until there is absolutely no chance of frost before planting. We have found from experience that Memorial Day is a pretty safe time. This year the high temperatures during this weekend were in the mid 90's, so it was very hot. Every year it seems to be a bigger challenge to get everything planted then. Of course, there is nothing saying I have to get everything in on that particular weekend, but it's what I like to do. However, this past weekend I wasn't able to quite get it all planted. The reason may be that we had 20 seed potatoes to plant and about 100 onions. On Friday I decided to get a head start on things by planting my Butterfly Bush and also some of my August Beauty Sunflower seeds. I also moved the volunteer Tomatillo plant from the middle of the garden over to the edge by the fence.

"Buzz Purple" Butterfly Bush

Tomatilla Verde

 
On Saturday, I planted the large patch of onions and one row of the potatoes, as well as the Cherokee Carbon tomato. It takes considerable time to plant seed potatoes because you have to dig an eight-inch deep hole for each potato. Two more smaller patches of onions and two rows of potatoes went into the ground on Sunday. Linda was a huge help in making all this happen because she dug up a large area of weeds that were encroaching on the garden. This enabled me to plant the seeds for our Yellow Crookneck Squash, Black Beauty Zucchini Squash, and Honey Boat Delicata Squash. It definitely takes two of us to get this done. Monday, I planted the pepper plants and put the Sun Sugar tomato plant I had bought into a large pot. There may be a Sun Sugar volunteer out in the garden, but we will have to wait and see. Both of us worked on getting the Basil plants into pots on Monday as well. Below are a couple of short videos showing what the garden looks like right now. The second video shows a planting area that is outside of the garden proper.

Sun Sugar Tomato

Take into account that about 10:00 it starts to get blazing hot out in the sun. When that sun starts blaring down on you, then you know you only have about an hour left to work before it will to too hot. So now all I have left to plant is a Black Vernissage Cherry Tomato into a pot, the Zavory Habanero out in the garden when it gets big enough, and another pepper (I haven't decided which one) into a pot. Oh, and I almost forgot the six cucumber plants that will go out into the garden. Then, after everything is planted, I will place my soaker hoses around and then cover all the ground with straw. Hopefully I can get all that done before I write my next blog.

BUTTERFLY

I saw a butterfly while I was sitting under the tree in my lounge chair, taking a break from garden work. It was a Western Tiger Swallowtail. This butterfly is the one we usually see going to our butterfly bush. This year he will not have one to go to unless the bush I just planted gets bigger pretty soon. Our other butterfly bush died this past winter. Butterfly bushes usually only last about two years here in Yakima and then they die during the winter. We have planted about 5 or 6 butterfly bushes since we moved here and they all died. The bees just love them and so do the hummingbirds. Below is a picture of a Western Tiger Swallowtail that I took a couple years ago. I didn't have my camera with me on Friday when I was sitting outside, but the one I saw looked just like this one below.

Western Tiger Swallowtail

BIRDS & BEES

I was glad to see the return of our beautiful American Goldfinches. They are here in our area pretty much year round, but they only have their gorgeous breeding colors during the spring. I had my finch seed sock hung out for a week or so before I saw any of the brilliant yellow male Goldfinches come to it. It doesn't take them long to empty the little sock feeder, so I need to get a bag of seed to go into our Goldfinch feeder. The American Goldfinch is the state bird of Washington.

American Goldfinch

 

 

Linda and I were sitting outside under the tree the other day when all of a sudden I heard this loud buzzing sound. I looked up towards the sky and saw a huge swarm of bees flying over our house. It looked like they might have been following the queen bee. They converged on the large Catalpa tree next door. There used to be a nest of bees in that tree a few years ago, but the man that owned the house at the time killed the entire colony by spraying expanding foam into the hole where they had their nest. We just couldn't believe he did that! You can see the foam in the video below, it looks like a large orange mass. Now it seems they may have come back. Linda and I do everything we can to support bees because we need them to pollinate our flowers and vegetable crops. We plant bee-friendly flowers in our yard and we do not use any chemical pesticides or herbicides of any kind in our yard. When I saw the bees I ran into the house and grabbed my camcorder and shot this video below out of our office window.

PARTING SHOT

We've reached the end of this week's blog, so that means you get to see what the Summer Girl has been up to. I snapped this picture of her working hard while Linda and I were busy planting the garden. That's all for now, see you next week!

Summer Girl doing what she does best

10-YEAR PICNIC ~ BAKING FAIL ~ ASPARAGUS PATCH ~ PLOTTING THE GARDEN ~ PARTING SHOT

10-YEAR PICNIC

This past week Linda and I have spent a lot of time reminiscing about our move to Yakima 10 years ago. Saturday we had a picnic at Gilbert Park here in Yakima to commemorate a part of that move. We were doing the exact same thing at the exact same place 10 years ago. It was on May 20th, 2007 that we drove over to Yakima from Tacoma to find a house. We had intended to go to the Greenway to have a picnic, but not knowing much about Yakima, we couldn't find it. So we stopped at Gilbert Park, which was near the realtor's office. At that time, the Allied Arts Building was also on the park grounds, and we ate our lunch sitting in the car parked in front of it. However, this building was torn down in 2015 due to being structurally unsound. The original building was a fruit warehouse that was built in the 1930's. The park is now a wide expanse of grass dotted with large evergreen trees and picnic tables. The weather last Saturday was sunny and warm, but with a cool breeze blowing. We had a nice picnic under the trees and then walked around the park a bit.

Site of our picnic

We left a painted rock at the base of a sculpture in park. This is not a rock that I painted, but one that I got from a memorial rock garden swap site where we stopped on our way to the park. The name of the sculpture seemed to fit the rock perfectly.

"Spiraling Upwards"

This week's recipe was incorporated into our picnic. One of my favorite things for lunch is a simple sandwich. But even a simple sandwich requires some thought to make it memorable, which is what I was going for on this 10-year celebration. So, I went to my absolute favorite chef, Vivian Howard, for inspiration. Chef Vivian has a wonderful show on PBS called A Chef's Life. If you haven't seen this show yet, please check it out, especially if you are from the South. She is one of the rising stars of Southern cuisine these days. Chef Vivian contends that there are three things that go into making a great sandwich. The sandwich must have the following: 1) something creamy; 2) something crunchy; 3) something tangy. You can certainly add other elements to your sandwich, but these are the three essentials. Click on this link here from ABC News Digital to watch Chef Vivian show you how a simple sandwich can become great. My sandwich started with Franz Organic Good Seed Bread to which I added a slather of homemade hummus (the creamy element). On top of that I layered thin slices of Fuji apple (the crunchy element), a slice of cheese, a couple slices of Applegate Organic Roasted Turkey, and finished it off with a slather of homemade honey mustard (the tangy element). It was perfect. Along with my sandwich I also took a thermal cup filled with Decaf Cold Brewed Ice Tea (recipe here) which I saw on one of my favorite food blogs, Simple Bites. It only took a few minutes to prepare all this (the cold brew was done the day before but still only took a few minutes). And it was memorable. (And Linda just had peanut butter.)

BAKING FAIL

This past week also gave me my first baking fail in a long time. I've been pretty successful with my baking endeavors so far, which never ceases to amaze me. But I had a rude awakening over this one. I decided to make a Blitz Focaccia (recipe here from King Arthur Flour) to use in making sandwiches for Friday night's supper. I gathered all my ingredients together and measured everything out into containers. I like to do this so I can focus on the recipe while I'm actually mixing it up. So, I had everything mixed up and had already placed the dough in the pan to stretch it out when Linda walked up and said, "What's the yeast for?" I was so focused on my recipe that I neglected to add in the yeast, which was sitting on the counter in its little container about 5 inches away from my elbow! I couldn't believe I had done that. After a few choice words I removed the dough from the baking pan, put it back in the bowl and proceeded to try and mix in the yeast. This is not as easy to do as it sounds, and I wasn't sure it was going to work but at that point I had no choice. Sure enough, after the rise time the dough did not seem to have risen any. I went ahead and baked it anyway. When it came out of the oven it was decidedly flatter than the previous focaccias I had made. And when I sliced it crosswise there were large blotches of what looked like uncooked dough. We used it for our sandwiches but I believe it was the densest sandwich bread I have ever had. The taste was okay, but the texture was a complete fail. You will notice there are no pictures of this disaster. That is because, according to the Internet, if there are no pictures, it didn't happen!

ASPARAGUS PATCH

I finally got the rest of my asparagus plants in the ground last Saturday. If all of the plants that I have right now survive through to next spring, we will have a nice patch of asparagus. My goal is to be able to harvest our own asparagus and not have to buy it, as it is somewhat pricey. I should have done this 10 years ago, but that's hindsight for you. The weather here has at last warmed up and after a couple of days of spring-like weather, we went directly into summer! We actually had to switch our HVAC system over from Heat to Cool. Monday the high temperature was 88 degrees and it felt like 150. The high yesterday was 93 degrees but felt cooler because it was quite windy. Today the high is supposed to be 72 degrees. This morning I went outside in my shorts and T-shirt to hopefully do some planting and I was freezing (it was about 58 degrees). So I'm waiting for it to warm up this afternoon. After this brief respite today, the temps are going back up and will most likely stay there. Here's a short video showing the asparagus patch. I'm sorry if it's a bit shaky, but it was hard to see where to point the camera. The fence is around it to keep out you-know-who.

PLOTTING THE GARDEN

I like to draw the layout for my garden on a piece of paper each year. That way I can use it to reference exactly what is planted where. Sometimes you can't tell which tomato or cucumber is planted in a particular spot until they start bearing fruit. So the garden layout drawing comes in handy. Also, I can reference last year's drawing to see where I planted things, so I don't plant the same vegetables in the same spot this year. Right now, I am struggling to find a spot to put everything. As usual, I went a bit overboard buying plants, and now I have to try and fit them into the available space. Also, I grew a lot of peppers from seed so that adds into the mix. I think I have it figured out, but you never know for sure until it's all in the ground.

2017 Garden Plot

Of course, this isn't set in stone. I may have to move things around at some point to get it all in. Every year I tell myself, "This year the garden is going to be smaller." And every year Linda rolls her eyes because she knows that just isn't going to happen! True to form, this year the garden looks like it is going to be bigger than ever! I think the reason I want to grow absolutely EVERYTHING is because by the time April rolls around, I am so done with winter that I just can't seem to limit myself. But it will all work out in the long run and we will have some totally awesome veggies to cook and put in the freezer. Oh, and I am going to be doing the dehydrating thing this year, so there's that, too.

PARTING SHOT

Last, but certainly not least (so she tells me), we have our Parting Shot for this week. I happened to be outside grilling supper and Summer Girl came up and was rolling around in the grass. I asked her to pose for a picture to go on the blog, and she obliged.

Summer says "Hi"

That's all for this week, I hope to see you back here next week! Have a good one!!

WEATHER REPORT ~~ RECIPE OF THE WEEK ~~ PEPPERS ~~ WEEDS ~~ VOLUNTEERS ~~ PARTING SHOT

WEATHER REPORT

It never ceases to amaze me how the weather is so unpredictable around here this time of year. I guess it's because it was so predictable when we lived in North Carolina. There, you could always count on Spring coming about the same time each year, and once it came, it usually stayed. Not so here in the Northwest! We had a couple of really nice days with 80-degree high temperatures during the first week of May, and we thought Spring might be here. But it has fooled us like this before. Sure enough, after those couple of days the highs went back down to the 50's & 60's. And of course, we had quite a few dreary days with drizzle and no sun. It is for this reason that Linda and I have learned not to put our electric blankets and throws away until Memorial Day. Just as an illustration of how the temperatures can swing around here, below is a picture of Snoqualmie Pass this week. (Photo from Washington DOT website).

Surprise Spring Snow

For those of you wondering, Snoqualmie Pass is the main way to get from Eastern Washington (where we live) over the Cascade mountain range to the Western side of the state (where Seattle is located). Fortunately, we had not planned to go over the Pass, but a lot of people did and had to contend with this surprise snowfall. I checked back in my journal, and on May 17, 2007 when Linda and I came out to Yakima to go house-hunting, I noted in my journal that there was still snow by the roadside on Snoqualmie Pass. So while it isn't necessarily unusual for there to be snow on the ground during this time of the year, it is unusual for it to be covering up the roadway and creating havoc.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Last week I mentioned that I was going to make pizzas using a new type of flour. I am happy to report that I may have found my favorite thin-crust pizza dough! Of course, the dough recipe is from my favorite baking site, King Arthur Flour, and can be found by clicking the link here. I found the 00 Italian flour at Walmart and it wasn't too expensive, so I decided to try it.

Italian 00 Flour

The wonderful thing about using this flour is that the dough does not snap back the way other dough does when you try to shape it. So it was very easy to shape the dough into two pizzas. As toppings for the pizzas, I decided to try something different. I wanted to duplicate my all-time favorite, the Taco Pizza from Godfather's Pizza in Lumberton,  so I followed this blog post here (also from King Arthur Flour). However, for some crazy reason I thought I would use tempeh crumbles instead of taco meat, and shredded cabbage instead of lettuce. It was different, alright, but still good. The main thing is that the crust was exactly as I anticipated, thin and crispy around the edges but chewy in the middle. I believe I will be doing this dough recipe again, but using traditional pizza toppings.

Taco Pizza

PEPPERS

This past weekend I was starting to get concerned about my Zavory Habanero seeds. Almost all of my other pepper seeds had already sprouted and were a couple of inches high already, but I had no Habanero sprouts. However, one day I saw a tiny bit of green starting to poke up. Apparently these seeds take much longer to germinate than the Shishito Pepper and Tam Jalapeno Pepper seeds. As of right now, out of the 15 Habanero seeds I planted, I have 4 of them sprouted. The sprouts are so very tiny compared to the other peppers that are already up, but at least they are finally up.

Habanero sprouts on the right, Tam Jalapeno on the left

Once these guys get bigger I will transfer them to bigger pots and then put them outside on the garden cart so the plants can harden-off. All the rest of my plants are already on the garden cart. I roll them out into the sun each day and then back onto the porch at night. We had a low of 35 degrees one night this week and a few of the plants were not too happy!

WEEDS 

Our unusually wet (with snow) winter has left us with a bumper crop of weeds. Linda and I were able to get outside on a somewhat warm day this week and pull most of the weeds from our back pathway. However, there are still an abundance of them out in the garden, as evidenced by the picture below.

Weeds out in the vegetable garden

The back flower garden looks like a jungle right now because everything is so green. I can't wait for the flowers to bloom as I think it is going to be stunning!

Back flower bed with almost weed-free pathway

VOLUNTEERS

Every year I have volunteer plants come up in my garden. These are plants that have sprouted from seeds that were dropped the summer before. About the only volunteers I get are tomato plants and tomatillo plants. But I am happy for anything that comes up on its own. I spent some time the other morning pulling weeds out of the garden, and at the same time I pulled up probably several hundred tomatillo plants. I bought one tomatillo plant from the Master Gardeners Sale a few years ago. Every year after that I have not had to buy one because I have a bazillion come up as volunteers! I usually leave the biggest one or two plants and then pull up the rest. In addition, there are a lot of tomato plants that come up on their own. I try to leave a few of those, but I have to guess as to which type of tomato they are. Each summer I mark on a chart where each plant is planted in the garden. That way I know what variety is planted where, and I can reference this chart the next year to determine the variety of the volunteers. So far, the volunteers I think I have are the following: Yellow Pear Tomato and Big Cherry Tomato. I am hoping I see a volunteer come up in the vicinity of where the Black Krim Tomato was last summer. I also have staked out a couple of Tomatillo plants as well.

Possible Yellow Pear Tomato at top, Tomatillo at bottom

PARTING SHOT

While I was out in the garden just now taking pictures of the volunteers, I happened to check out Summer Girl's favorite hiding spot, and there she was. She likes to get underneath this huge variegated Euonymus shrub we have. She sometimes stays in there for hours! That's all for this week, I hope you check back next week to see what's happening around here.

Summer Girl in hiding

MEMORIAL ROCK ~~ MASTER GARDENERS' SALE ~~ SEEDS ~~ REFINISHING WINDOWSILL ~~ GARLIC & LETTUCE ~~ PARTING SHOT

MEMORIAL ROCK

I've been pretty busy this past week, but did manage to get a few rocks painted and hidden around Yakima. My favorite rock that I have painted so far is one that I call my Peeber Rock. I painted it in memory of our sweet little Precious Baby (AKA Peeber). I have it sitting on the table right in front of the urn that holds her ashes. I think I did a pretty good job on this one, but I am by no means an artist!

Peeber Rock

As a side note to this, Linda & I also took apart the cat tree that we built for Precious when we first got her. When we built it, Linda wrote a little note on the bottom piece of wood. We are keeping that part of it, and I have put it up in our garage so we can see it when we drive in and out.

The Peeber Plaque

MASTER GARDENERS' SALE

Last Friday our local chapter of the Master Gardeners Organization held their annual plant sale. We have gone to this sale almost every year since we moved here. Since I am now retired, I was able to go earlier than usual. The sale starts at 8:00. I wanted to go early so I could be sure and get the plants that I wanted, because in years past they would be sold out of some things by the afternoon. So anyway, I got there at 8:30 and the place was packed! Everyone was having to park along the street for blocks around the sale. I immediately headed straight for the vegetable plants, which was no mean feat since it was wall-to-wall people. The main thing I wanted to get was basil plants so I could make pesto for Linda all summer long, and put some up in the freezer for winter. Fortunately, I was able to get some really nice basil plants. I also got a few pepper plants, cucumbers, and of course I had to get at least one tomato plant. I grabbed a dill plant and a mint plant to round out the herb garden, then headed for the checkout. But first had to get in this long line to wait to get my plants counted and receive a ticket. Then I went on to the pay station. It really didn't take too long, but I determined that I would go back with Linda that afternoon to get a few more things. We did just that, and it was a much more pleasant experience. Below is a picture of the plants that we bought (plus a couple I already had). The main reason to go to the Master Gardeners' sale (apart from supporting the organization) is that their plants are very reasonably priced.

Plants we got at the sale (plus a couple more)

SEEDS

The seeds I planted on 4/22 are finally coming up! All of the Jimmy Nardello Shishito pepper seeds came up except one, and most of the Tam Jalapeno seeds have come up, too. I saw a couple of Tam Jalapenos just starting to poke up this morning, so those are still coming up. So far, NONE of the Zavory Habanero seeds have sprouted. I will be so disappointed if none of them sprout as this is the one plant that I so much wanted to try this year. I have had Red Habanero plants for the past few years, but those peppers are so dang hot I can't figure out what to do with them. Besides putting them in hot sauce or BBQ sauce, I really don't know what else I can make because you have to add a lot of other things to bring the heat down to a tolerable level. If any of my Zavory Habanero seeds do come up and the plant actually bears fruit, then I would be able to grill them or make poppers out of them. Here is how all of the peppers I am planning to grow stack up on the Scoville scale, which is a scale that measures the heat of peppers.

Peppers I am growing this year:
King of the North Bell = 0
Jimmy Nardello Shishito = 0
Tequila Sunrise = 0
Zavory Habanero = 100
Sweet Banana = 900
Tam Jalapeno = 1,500
Anaheim = 2,500
Regular Jalapeno = 10,000

I am not growing these peppers below, but I thought I would include them for comparison:
Red Habanero =  400,000
Carolina Reaper (hottest pepper in the world) = 2,200,000

Here is the link to Pepperheads For Life website, where I got the above information. Below is a picture showing the progress of my seeds.

The two empty rows are the Zavory Habanero

REFINISHING WINDOWSILL

My big project for this week, which I haven't quite finished yet, is refinishing the windowsill above our kitchen sink. I have been meaning to do this for years but never got around to it. Now, since I have the time, I couldn't procrastinate any longer. It really hasn't been a hard job so far, basically just a matter of gathering the right supplies and tools. The actual sanding only took a few minutes, and I finally got to use my Ryobi Corner Cat Sander that my sister gave me for Christmas a few years ago. The waiting around for the stain and polyurethane to dry is the hardest part! Here is how it looks right now, too bad I didn't take a "before" picture.

Windowsill after 2nd coat of Polyurethane

GARLIC & LETTUCE

Here is a picture to give you a quick update on how the garlic and lettuce plants are doing. I cannot wait until we have fresh lettuce for salads!

Top: Garlic   Bottom: Lettuce

PARTING SHOT

Wow, it has been a busy week! I don't have a Recipe of the Week this time because I really didn't have a chance to do a new recipe. But, I am making a new pizza dough recipe tonight with my Italian Antimo Caputo 00 Flour, so I will have that for next week's recipe. Of course, you know when you see the Summer Girl, you are at the end of my blog post. This is Summer Girl relaxing in one of her favorite spots in the garden. I am sure once I get everything planted, she will have many more favorite spots. I hope everyone has a good rest-of-the-week and an outstanding weekend! Join me again next Wednesday for more exciting pictures of plants (heehee)!!

Chillaxing!

MYSTERY BIRD ~ ROCK PAINTING UPDATE ~ UPDATE ON SEEDS ~ RECIPE OF THE WEEK ~ SUMMER UPDATE

MYSTERY BIRD

 

I'm going to start the blog off today with another mystery bird. This little guy in the pictures below has recently been visiting the Golden Currant bushes outside our living room window. At first I thought he was a Golden-Crowned Kinglet because he is so small. But now I'm thinking he is something else because he doesn't have the reddish-yellow topknot on his head. So, I decided to post a picture here and see if anyone can help me identify him. This bird is about the same size as a Chickadee. I have a guess as to what it might be, but I want to see if anyone else has any ideas.

What bird is this?

 

ROCK PAINTING UPDATE

I thought it might be a good idea to give an update on how my rock painting and hiding is going. So far, I have had 2 of my rocks found and posted on our Facebook rock group. One posted was a rock that Linda hid over in Tacoma when she went there a couple of weekends ago. The other one was a rock I hid yesterday outside the grocery store. Also, I have painted several rocks that were given to the teaching staff at the Montessori school where Linda works. I have several more rocks that I hid in various places, but those either have not been found yet or else they were found but not posted on Facebook. At any rate, I am still working on my rock painting skills. My favorite rock that I have painted so far is my Mount Rainier rock.

My rendition of Mount Rainier

This is my favorite rock because Mount Rainier is very special to us. When Linda & I flew to Tacoma in 2005 to visit her sister, we took a trip up to Sunrise. Sunrise is one of the visitor centers on Mount Rainier (click here for more info). Having come from the swamplands of North Carolina, I had never seen anything quite so beautiful. We hiked on one of the meadow trails, and at one point Linda and I stood on one of the lookouts gazing out at the Emmons Glacier. I thought to myself, "This is so beautiful, we need to live here." And so was planted the seed for us to move to the Northwest. Over the course of the next two years, Linda and I made plans to move, and in 2007 we did just that. Although we did not move in the near vicinity of Mount Rainier, it is only an hour and a half away from us, and we still go there about once a year to visit. If it is a clear day, you can see the top of the mountain poking above the hills around Yakima.

Top: Emmons Glacier, 2005    Bottom: Mount Rainier, 2015

UPDATE ON SEEDS

Some of the Savory Herb seeds that I planted in my seed starter have sprouted. To me, they look like alfalfa sprouts that you put on your salad. The Tam Jalapeno, Zavory Habanero, and Shishito pepper seeds have not sprouted yet, but I am still hopeful that they will. Right now, it looks like I have a good crop of popsicle sticks.

Are you sure you planted seeds?

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

I am always on the lookout for a good BBQ sauce recipe. Linda can attest to this fact as there are usually several jars of various kinds of BBQ sauce in the freezer or fridge. Last week I came across this recipe for Blueberry Chipotle BBQ Sauce on the Edible Communities website. I decided to give it a try with some chicken wings on the grill. I am here to tell you that they were absolutely fabulous! This is actually two different recipes...at the bottome is a basic, mild BBQ sauce recipe, and then the recipe at the top is what you add into the basic recipe to make the spicy Blueberry Chipotle BBQ sauce. Neither one is hard to make, and I think you will be happy with the results. If you do not want a spicy (hot) sauce, then I suggest you omit the chipotle pepper and adobo sauce. When I made this, I made the full recipe of the Tomato "Q" Sauce, and then I used only half of the ingredients in the recipe for the Blueberry Chipotle BBQ Sauce. I didn't want to make the full blueberry sauce recipe just in case I didn't like it. Now I kind of wish I had gone ahead and made the full recipe. It was that good.

SUMMER UPDATE

I am happy to report that the little Summer Girl has fully integrated into being our resident part-time indoor kitty. But now that warmer weather is upon us, she has decided that she wants to spend more time outside. I figured that would be the case when the weather got better since she just loves running around outside, sleeping in the sun, chasing away birds, and just being lazy (see below). Although we thoroughly enjoyed having her inside most of the day when it was cold, now that it's warm we are content with her coming in only when she wants to. As the weather gets better and better, we will be outside in her realm more often.

That's all for now. Be sure to check back with the blog next week to find out what's happening in our part of the woods!