Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Garden Pictures

Just a few shots from this morning.

Finished Things

I finally found the perfect buttons for my sofa cushion.

I knitted a few more of these (if you are friend or family you might just find one in your mailbox some day).

And today I finished the latest three afghans for Victory Junction.

From the Garden

Behold - Our first Tomato!!! (Some gardener I am. I had totally forgotten that one of the tomato plants is a Golden Jubilee and is supposed to produce yellow tomatoes. No wonder this one did not want to turn red.)

These are the pickings from the past few days. We have oodles of zucchini and cucumbers. The beans have grown into a jungle and it is fun to go bean hunting in it. ;) The peppers seem to have recovered from all the rain and are just now beginning to produce blooms and little tiny peppers.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Saturday

Ever since reading this post on Anna's beautiful blog I have been searching for Pyrex cups and today I finally found some at the Salvation Army thrift store (the green vase just had to come along too).

We have lots of zucchini growing, some cucumbers, carrots and beans. There are also tons of tomatoes on the plants but for some reason none of them show any signs of reddening, I hope they change their mind soon, I want fresh tomatoes! This morning it looked like someone or something had stomped through the tomato plants but I think they might have just fallen over because they are getting heavy and it was windy, the sticks we use for them are obviously too weak. We plan to invest in some tomato cages next year.

I used two of my cucumbers to make bread and butter pickles using this recipe. The neighbors were probably wondering why somebody would drag a jar of pickles into the porch and then take a picture of it. ;)

For some reason a lot of my meals for next week contain zucchini, I wonder why? Right now I have a zucchini bread in the oven and it smells heavenly already. It is very hot here today and we are taking it easy for the rest of the day and probably tomorrow as well.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

More of the Same

Seems like that is all I have time for these days.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Goodies

From the garden

and from the kitchen.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Glimpses of My Week

It was a rainy week and there was lots of baking and knitting and some gardening after the rain stopped.
I baked Garlic Flat Bread to go with the Grilled Shrimp Caesar Salad on Saturday (I found a recipe for the dressing that does not use raw egg and it tasted pretty good).

I also baked some regular bread and an English Muffin Loaf that did not quite turn out like on the picture in the cook book but tasted pretty good anyway.

Del baked some scones.

And later in the week there were some Dark Chocolate Strawberry Brownies (should be Cherry but I don't usually have cherry preserve at hand).

I finished two of my knitting projects. The purple shrug looks a lot better in the picture than it does on me, it will probably be frogged and the yarn used for something else.

The white cotton sweater turned out okay and it got the Kitty Seal of Approval.
Then I found a pattern for a really cute little makeup bag and had to try it.

I continued with my sprucing up the living room project and added some decorative hoops. I am currently working on a new mantle quilt, a table runner and some new cushion covers.

Tuesday night, just after we had gone to bed I heard some strange noises and went to check if the cats were fighting. I discovered a rather large raccoon in our front yard, happily munching away on the cat food. There were also three cats outside and everybody was keeping a respectful distance of each other. The cats did not mess with the raccoon and it stayed out of the cats's way.
Earlier I had stepped on Miss Kitty in the dark and she defended herself by scratching both my ankles, ouch! She did, however, forgive me after I gave her a handful of treats.

On Thursday it finally stopped raining and I could pick whatever was ready in the garden. Some of the zucchinis are rotting on the plant because of all the rain and a few of the tomato plants have yellow leaves from too much water. The pepper plants are suffering from something too but overall the rain makes everything grow like crazy. What used to be my kitchen garden is now a mosquito infested swamp. :) I am currently testing the Clip-on from Off! and it seems to be working. I get bad reactions to mosquito bites sometimes and really need to protect myself and I am not a big fan of sticky spray-on stuff.

And as usual, there are cats in the garden, this is the resident garden lion. Why pay for a silly stone statue when you can have a real one? ;)

The weekend is supposed to get really hot and I hope we get some garden work done before it gets too much. I need to get rid of the bolted spinach plants, turn the soil and cover it with more straw and of course there is a lot of mowing to be done.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

WOOHOO!

Guess what?

"My" Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley Cup!!!

About 3 years ago somebody was making fun of me for being a Penguins fan, saying that "they are not good", last night I was sorely tempted to give him a call in the middle of the night and ask him who is not good now. (But being the good girl that I am I did not ;) ).