So Far, So Good

This, the second day of 2014, was an okay day for me. Considering I had just gotten used to it being 2013 around about mid-October, this still doesn't quite feel real to me. Oh well, what can we do, right?

So the garden check today revealed that there is still a lot of diatomaceous earth out there on those plants, which I'm assuming is a good thing. The bad news? One of the tiny cukes was chomped. Good news? There are still five cucumbers out there of various sizes that are fine. Plus - Loads and loads of tomatoes on every plant but Seymour! And he's got loads of buds. So there's the possibility of a decent tomato crop still!

Otherwise, nothing much to report. I've had a few of those thoughts you're supposed to have this time of year, about life, improving it, letting go of the past and all. Thing is - that stuff is true every single day. Every time the sun actually lights up the Earth is another chance to change what you want or need to change. 

So January 1st is a fine date to start stuff. But so is February 11th, and June 13th, and September 27th. That's just something to keep in mind, regardless of what you're doing today or tomorrow. 

Like maybe planting some carrots... hehe.

:)

Happy New Year!

Expanded the garden yet again! Peas with trellis on the left. And Lily eating dirt, as usual...

What else was I going to put in the title? Ha ha

But catching up on is what this is more or less about today. Some nifty stuff is going on around the ol' faux homestead.

For example - in the spirit of this new adventure, I got some excellent garden-themed gifts for Christmas. Such as this handy sprayer:

If you notice, the top of the box is opened. I did that when I opened the present itself. In our family, you never know if whats *on* the box is actually *in* the box, ha ha! In this case, it was  :D  (Though I did receive a gift card wrapped in a marker box. I had to give back the marker box, lol).

I'm going to use this for my sister's super bug repellent recipe of hot pepper water mixed with dish soap and possibly some hot sauce. It worked before, but my spray bottle got clogged. This can be rinsed out, she said, if it does get clogged. Awesome!

And also got - diatomaceous earth! This should help with more of those creepy-crawlies trying to eat my plants! (For those who don't know what this is, it's more or less an organic pesticide, I think. Here's the Wikipedia page about it:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth )



Yesterday I decided to go with the diatomaceous earth. The directions say to use a "hand duster, power duster, or spray bottle" to apply it. Here is my handy-dandy "hand duster", ha ha!


(Sometime I will devote a blog post to the most awesomely useful thing ever - the Garibaldi's cup!)


Hit "Read More" to find out what happened, haha!

Party!

Okay, so I know it's a day early for most of us. However, tonight was a surprise party for Amazing Andy, since tomorrow is actually his birthday. It was quite fun, at least for me. Hopefully he was really surprised and had as much fun as the rest of us  :)

Which leaves me with the fact that now it's late, and today wasn't quite as productive as I thought it would be. Which means catching up and doing more (and posting more) tomorrow.

For those who've left comments (two that I know of...):  I am getting notices in email that you're leaving them, but they aren't showing up on the blog itself, and I don't know why. I will look into that, too. After all, it doesn't help if I answer them and no one of the other 4 people who read this don't know what I'm talking about, lol.

Hope to get it all sorted tomorrow. Story of my life, ha ha!

:)

Yumm!

Today had been slotted for work in the garden, using all my nifty garden oriented Christmas gifts. That didn't happen. 

However, on a related note - I did some more cooking! Yummy!

This was dinner last night: marinated chuck roast (prepared and frozen by my mom and me last year), fresh green beans (yes - from the garden!), rosemary potatoes (with fresh rosemary from one of my new rosemary trees - more tomorrow), and homemade applesauce (a la my mom from a couple years ago and canned). 

Another awesome gift received was a waffle iron! I've never had one of my own, though I remember one from my youth that wasn't used much. It was a big hassle, as I recall, and kinda messy. Thanks to technology it isn't so bad, and so I broke out that bad boy this morning for breakfast. With some sausage to go with it, I can tell you it was mighty tasty!

Tomorrow is Get-rid-of-garden-pests day. I have just the stuff to do it with, too! Things are still growing despite the best efforts of bugs and worms to eat them, so off they are gonna go! My sister's hot pepper/dish soap recipe is first up in the morning, and whether you want them or not, you will get all the details - tomorrow, lol.

For now, off to bed. Gotta stay warm, don't ya' know! Ha ha!

:)

Look How Her Garden Grows!

Yesterday I promised, and this morning, I'm delivering! Garden update! Things are just exploding around here on the ol' faux homestead and I'm very excited. Pictures galore!

First up - George's First Tomato!

You read that right. After long, long, long last, George has a tomato! This really is pushing the "late bloomer" thing a bit far, but I always hoped he had it in him. It's small but sturdy, and he has loads more blossoms. Let's hope this is the start of something awesome. Take a look:

 Not the best pic, but all I could do - the wind kept blowing George around  :)

Second - Basil!

If you recall, I used to have Frankenbasil (see post here:  http://hoemsteadwannabe.blogspot.com/2013/11/halloween-might-be-over.html )

My lovely mother, while she was here at Thanksgiving, did to the basil what I should have done, and repotted and replanted it. She even pulled up a couple of the little ones growing in the cracks and they are in tiny little pots of their own, soon to need to be moved to big pots of their own. So now - here it is! It's growing like crazy. I swear, this time I'm gonna cut it and get it chopped and frozen!

Third - Cukes!

Yep - you read that right, too! There are five, count 'em, *5* baby cucumbers on the plants in the garden. Keep your fingers crossed they all make it, but I'm super excited! It's amazing what a little thinning and fertilizer can do, I guess  :D  Take a look at tiny cukes:

Here - hit "Read More" to read more, and see more awesome pics!

The Important Thing to Remember

I keep telling myself that the important thing to remember is: everyone survived. And so far, are all fine.

Dawgs playin' 

What happened is that, yet again, a pet sitter did not do what I was going to pay them to do.

This is the second sitter in a row that just disregarded what they were instructed to do. 

I did a lot of pet sitting in college. It's a decent way to make money, especially if you like animals. You look in on pets every day or however often. Sometimes you stay the night if that's what they ask and they pay you to do. It's not necessarily difficult to do, though sometimes some pet owners are, well, kinda a little nutty, I'll admit.

But if someone left instructions that the cat food was to be heated, guess what I did? I heated the cat food! It wasn't up to me to decide how someone took care of their pets. So I did what was instructed to do.

Hit the "Read more" button to, well, read more... lol

See! It's Not Just Me!

Christmas!

Yep, the holiday was pretty awesome, if super awesomely COLD! Comin' from Miami to the frozen north of Atlanta, I haven't been warm since I've been here. Otherwise - all is good. Gonna get home tomorrow and make waffles with my new waffle iron! (I kid you not - I got one and I'm going to use it!!)

But in talking to my sister, who was trying to talk me into taking her chickens (she has five left, because they keep meeting early demises), she told me this story. And somehow I missed it on her blog. But see - it's not just me that has strangeness in her life on a daily basis.

I swear, I can't make this stuff up. Read it and see:

http://www.caleyskitchengarden.com/2013/11/drive-through-autopsies-for-chickens.html#more

So there you go. Hope everyone had a great holiday! More updates and all... later. After I'm home, have had a shower in my own shower, slept in my own bed - and enjoyed the warmth of Southern Florida once again.

:D

Name the Tomatoes!

My mother is the world's greatest bargain hunter. I probably don't do half as well as she does, but I do try, I really do.

So when she was here at Thanksgiving, we went shopping for garden stuff, go figure. I had one more basket I could use for another hanging tomato, so that was on the list. (If you recall, I posted a picture of Goldie not too long ago.)  

However, there were some pots with just one plant, a couple with two plants - and one pot with three tomato plants in it. That does happen more than you think, so for the bargain conscious out there, always check before you buy. They are the same price - it's based on the size of the pot, not number of plants.

Anyway - with no more hanging thingies for the tomatoes, we put them in regular pots. Eventually they will have to be staked, but they both already have loads of blossoms!

Problem? No names!

So I am asking for suggestions for the two 'mater plants that are currently nameless  :D

Here's UnNamed Tomato #1:

And UnNamed Tomato #2:

They are doing great even without names, but I know they would grown even more if they had them! So help a girl out with some names, pretty please?  

And while we're at it, apparently the two colors of peppers I'm supposed to get are yellow and orange - take a look at this bad boy turning orange, hehe:

And that will also do it for me now. Tomorrow - heading up to the frigid arctic region of Atlanta for the holiday. May or may not get some posting to this here blog while I'm up there. Just keep your fingers crossed that I Do Not Freeze. Brrrr...

:)

Frosting Fiasco!

So I wish I could say I've been super productive on the days I haven't posted here. And some days I have been. Others, not so much. Or rather, not as much as I would like.

But what I did manage to accomplish was making my yearly batch of Christmas cookies! I did that Tuesday afternoon so they could be decorated Wednesday.

Here's some decoratin' going on:

The pet sitter was drafted into helping. She claimed she enjoyed it...

The problem came, however, when the frosting didn't seem to want to work right. We had a ton of trouble getting the stuff to even stick to the cookies, let alone getting the decorations stuck to the frosting. 

Eventually, we just got the icing on as best we could, put a bunch of sprinkles and stuff on plates, and smashed the coolies into the decorations. 

Well - it worked, mostly. The problem was that the cookies... don't look all that great. Some are kind of... ugly in fact. They taste good! But let's just say, I'm going to call this my "Abstract Period". Ha ha.

Take a look:

So after all was said and done and my helper left (in reality, the pet sitter who came to get her key, lol), I realized that - when I was making the frosting, I forgot to put in milk. And that is why the frosting was hard like it had already set. *sigh* Sometimes it sucks getting old...

The finished product, such as it is...

Did I mention that they still taste good, though? Yummm...

:)

'Tis The Busy Season

Not only is it growing season here, it's just a busy time for most of us. Me included, ha ha. Will attempt to do a catch up later on today. And I just figured this was a good picture - for someone from South Florida (where it is sunny and 83 every day ;-)  )

:)