Dogs, Gardens, and Memories

63°f/16.6°C, mostly clear. Yesterday aas glorious, never reached 80° but it will get hotter today.

Yesterday was National Dog Day, so here are my two sweet guys. Buddy on the left, is 5, and has eyes that are brown on top, blue on bottom, and after a hectic puppy hood of constantly running off, jumping at least 4 feet over the gate on the porch, and generally frenetic behavior, he has settled down to be the sweetest of boys. Pip, on the right, is a year and a half old and drives Buddy nuts trying to play. I am pretty sure Buddy will be most relieved when Pip finally grows up!

 

My sweet Buddy.

Yesterday I picked and strung my chili peppers after I finished weedeating that part of the garden. It looks so nice out there now. I put netting over plants I want to protect, so I think I can go to Colorado easier in my mind that something might survive until we get back. Worth a shot, anyway.

Ah, here's Pip! Being still for a change.

A table full of Fall. I like to grow Indian corn, nowadays called rainbow corn actually. We only got two pumpkins from our one hill we planted, but that's enough. Larry said there were more, but apparently something helped themselves 

The white corn in the photo above is Hickory King. It sprouted in the garden from a cob we threw out. I had had a basket of this corn saved around three years ago to make hominy. Never made the hominy so while doing Spring cleaning, we tossed that corn in the garden, thinking it was no good. Wrong! So I ended up with this random patch which grew like crazy. Now I have more of it. Should I make hominy this time? Save the seed? Do both?

Here it is in the garden, in completely not the place I would have chosen. Sorry for the blurriness! It's that taller corn and as you can see it had not fully tasteless yet, so ended up a bit taller.

And here is the original patch, in either 2022 or 2023, can't renember which. It was at least 10 feet tall!

Today I will get what apples we harvested, a little over a half bushel, made into sauce. It was a disappointing fruit year, as everything except one apple tree was frosted and bore no fruit.

A few zinnias brighten any day.

Now, some memories from this time of year. Here's Larry and I in 2017 in Ireland. Nine years sure changed ny hair color!

And 2015, atop King John's Castle in Limerick, Ireland. That trip was with my sister Theresa. We did it through Travelzoo, a deal that offered hotels, flights, some meals, and bus and train transport for less than $1000 per person for a week's stay. My entire trip cost less than $1700, and we had a blast.

Inside the castle:

In a nearby pub. I had to ask if poets really met there! Of course not, it's where the old guys met and talked. After a few drinks, the guys told us, they seemed to wax poetic!

On Inis Mor, the smallest of the Aran Islands, off the coast of Ireland in County Galway.

You can see more about these trips to the Aran Islands here and here. Clicking on surrounding posts will take you to more of the places we went on those trips.

Now, to work! Those apples won't can themselves, daggone it.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Still Catching Up

53°f/13.7°C, clear and dry. 

The last three days have been all about weeds---getting them cut, that is. Both of us have been at it for hours each day and I can finally feel like we are getting caught up. I guess the area we maintain is about 3 acres, and then another 5 acres or so that Larry brushhogs that used to be meadow and pasture. Without the riding mower, it means a lot more work, trimming edges the mower would have cut so that the rest can be done with the tractor. As you can imagine, Larry can't wait to get his mower back!

Then there are my gardens, which I prefer to trim myself because that way if something gets cut accidentally,  I have no one to blame but myself. I still have a little more to do in the vegetable garden. Most of the plants are done bearing, so I cut those down, then trimmed as well as I could around the ones I want to keep going. It was fun to find surprise tomatoes on the volunteer plants, and to see how the zucchini has rooted itself here and there, producing new plants that are going strong even though the original plant is pretty much dead. We still have kale, leeks, chard, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, a few tomatoes, butternut squash, pumpkins, basil and rainbow corn in the veggie garden, and lots of herbs still thriving in the herb garden.

I have more trimming and tidying up to do in the gardens tomorrow; today I put netting over some plants to protect them from deer, and I have a few more still to cover. In Fall, the deer just don't seem to care if they get shocked by the fence; they will still get in and eat whatever they can.

Yesterday afternoon I began getting out the fall totes  in preparation for taking them to the booths. While I was at it, I put a few decorations out on the porch.

This weird little guy was a thrift find last week. He's motion activated and says things in a creepy voice. Larry loves it! But me, not so much, so he will go to a booth.

I made another quiche yesterday since I had plenty of eggs on hand. This one has onions, peppers, yellow squash, kale, chard, tomato, and basil in it. I sautéed the onions, pepper, squash and basil, and cooked the chard and kale together, then drained well and squeezed out as much liquid as I could. I also put a quarter cup of oats in the bottom of the piecrust to absorb extra liquid, and it worked beautifully once again. I added about a cup of grated cheddar too, because what is quiche without cheese? It was so delicious. 

I had enough piecrust to make a dozen mincemeat tarts too, as I am still trying to use up as much mincemeat as I can. 

A friend and her boyfriend stopped by in the evening. Neither of them had ever had quiche or mincemeat, but they liked both, and took a jar of mincemeat home with them.

After our outside work this morning, we went into town to take the dinette set we sold to its new owner. Afterwards we stopped at Shari's for a late lunch/early supper and visited with our friend Bill for a bit. Then we went to the store to buy some clothes for our trip. I can't remember when we last went clothes shopping! It was kind of fun to see what's in style these days. I admit, I do not like buying clothes, and never try them on. I will find out tomorrow what fits and what has to go back. Larry tried on pants to be sure they fit, a wiser person than I am!

The world is mourning Dolly Parton this evening. She was much loved and leaves a fine legacy of music and generosity. I never liked her obsession with appearance, but her singing was unique and unmistakable, and her passing leaves a huge hole in the heart of country music.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

A Day Outside

57°f/about 14°C, beautiful day, and yesterday's predicted storms missed us! Thankful, as the ground is still saturated.

A whole day outside, y'all! For the first time since June, it was comfortable enough to be outside to do some things that have been on hold---like painting the patio furniture.  First, though, i enjoyed the cool morning by having my tea on the porch and watching my silly dogs play. What characters. They were never still enough to get a photo, but I did catch Pip for a second. He looks like he's been up to something,  doesn't he?

It took me 4 hours to get the furniture painted, and not a perfect job, but done. 

Then I spent a while pulling weeds and cutting a few things back, and helping Larry load that #$%* mower one more time. He use it about 15 minutes yesterday before it quit working. So we loaded it yesterday and he took it back. The guy tweaked something, Larry came back, we unloaded it, and guess what? Still didn't run. So this afternoon back it went. I'm here to tell you, that thing is heavy, and I am tired of pushing it! My back is not a bit happy this evening. I tried to get him to call a neighbor to help, but nope. If I didn't help, he was going to try to do it alone. Man has no common sense.

After that,  I took a long hot shower, then went back out to take a few photos of the flowers. 

Not much blooming in this big tub, but still green so there's hope.

The roses have had very small blooms this year. Perhaps because of all the rain? I will give them some fertilizer tomorrow.

The begonias, however, are huge.

And the vinca soldier on.

The blue lace hydrangea turns various shades of purple as they mature. Have I said how much I love this bush?

By the porch, the hostas are done but the new vinca, a peachy color,  are still blooming. 

The big flowerbed:

Look at that sky! The veggies garden is pretty much done, and I know the deer will finish it off while we are away next month.

Only 2 cannas survived the winter. Makes me so sad, because I had planted 10 or 12 last year, yellow, coral, orange and red.

Lantana, however, loves our environment.  Must plant more even if it is an annual.

The zinnias that survived are doing well.

More lantana. I love this stuff.

A roee I brought inside. So pretty!

And finally, firepit time, burning up branches that came down in last week's storms. (The flowers aee silk, just brought them home from a booth and stuck them here.)

That's about it. Still a few blooms, but I know deer will have a field day while we're in Colorado. That's okay, really. The season will pretty much be over by then, and I will get some mums in to tide us over til frost.