So what? Sew buttons!

I haven’t said too much about our farm share lately, suffice it to say our fridge is constantly full of greens and other stuff. We’ve gotten quite a few carrots and beets, which are delicious. Last week I tried a beet-potato pancake for dinner and it was great. Shredded beets and potatoes are simply seasoned with salt and pepper and smushed into a pan with melted butter in it. When it’s nice and browned you turn it over (carefully!) and let it cook another ten minutes. The color of the shredded beets was beautiful-a sort of clear magenta. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo. I had hoped to be able to can the beets and carrots, but they are a low acid food and not suitable for boiling water processing, which is all I’m up to attempting. I’m a bit overwhelmed by the eggplants, though. I did look back here and see what I made last year and made that (stuffed eggplant), which was good. I also made sage pesto for the freezer and carrot-leek soup for the freezer.

The other night I made a pavlova with fresh peaches and blueberries. It was heavenly. We had Mary Lynn to dinner and she described it as “oxygen for my stomach.” We kept eating and eating it because it is like air. And then we stood up and realized we ate too much. In fact, next time I make a pavlova I’m going to drastically cut the sugar in the meringue. The recipe calls for 1 1/4 c sugar, but I don’t think it needs to be that sweet. Oh, and I flavored mine with a few drops of almond extract. Here it is:

Here is the meringue going into the oven (I piled it onto a 9 inch circle of parchment paper to make it easy to make a nice circle.):

Now, on to the pickles. We got a lot of cucumber this week and I thought it was time I started canning. You’ll recall that last summer I made spaghetti sauce and canned it. Well, I’d like to try my hand this year at pickles, salsa, peach chutney, and other stuff. It seemed pretty straightforward and easy. Though I have now learned it takes forever for the water to boil in the giant canner so I should start that like a half hour ahead of time.

Preparing the pickle mixture was easy enough, it was just sliced cukes and onions salted, rinsed, drained, and then a mixture of vinegar, sugar, spices boiled and then you added the cukes to it. That mixture got put into hot jars and then they were processed. All of my jars did seal, so that’s good. I’m a little worried though about air bubbles. I followed instructions to press the air out of the stuff before I put the lid on, but later I saw a couple little bubbles rising up when I took them out of the canner. So will they spoil?? It says to let them cure for 4-6 weeks before even trying one. Now, I do not actually like pickles, so I probably won’t be the best judge of flavor (but maybe I’ll love my homemade bread and butter pickles??). If Paul deems them delicious we’ll keep a couple and then the rest will be lovely gifts for people. Here is the beautiful end product:

In case you didn’t know, New Jersey has incredible peaches, blueberries, tomatoes, and corn.  Right now blueberries and peaches are at their peak and we are buying lots of it.  The other day I made a blueberry-peach crisp, then I made the lemon blueberry muffins, and today I made homemade peach ice cream. (Next up? a pavlova).  It was a pretty standard recipe from my new ice cream cookbook.  I just ate a bowl of it sitting on the back patio looking at over the fields and drinking in how lovely it smells, beautiful the view is, and what a great summer evening it is.

Clark couldn’t wait to try it and ate his directly from the ice cream maker (when it is still fairly soft.)

A day late for bloom day I realized that we had this hydrangea blooming.  I’m thinking of attempting to transplant it because where it is it’s hidden by junky weeds and this is the first year I’ve ever seen these pretty colors.  I’d like it to stand out a bit more and figure we have very little to lose if it doesn’t work out.

It’s unfortunate that today is Garden Bloggers Bloom Day because I’m in a bit of a funk about our garden and yard. We simply have not had enough rain at all this summer and everything is hot and dried up. Everyone’s yards are just flat out brown and the grass is so crispy it hurts to walk on. The coneflowers which I see other people proclaiming as drought resistant are completely burnt up. We went to a friends house this weekend and their brand new garden was so ridiculously perfect it hurt to look at. Our raised beds, which Paul worked so hard on, are only just now yielding a few beans. I think we just didn’t water everything well enough.

My shasta daisies are a thing of beauty for approximately a week. I’ve been deadheading them and still they seem to turn all brown and burnt and when deadheaded nothing grows back. I stepped outside this morning and this is what I saw!What am I doing wrong!? I see everyone else’s yard with gorgeous clumps of daisies and coneflowers and I can’t seem to get it. Boooooo…. OK, enough being down on myself. Let’s see what we do have (and I’m doing fewer photos because I already posted a whole bunch of the black eyed susans).

Clematis is blooming again.

Here is one of apparently two seeds that grew from a giant container of wildflower seed mix. Two? Really? Yes, just this and it looks like one cosmo. And sadly, this in the mint area and there is not nearly as much mint as usual.

I’m really regretting not doing a big zinnia bed like I had last year. The pretty impatiens I put in its place are just too small and dainty for the area.

Another sad story. What’s with this coreopsis? I planted it two or three years ago and it’s just this lame little thing. I’m really thinking that we might have to turn to Miracle Gro and also our neighbor’s horse manure. At least I’ve been keeping up with weeding, but I’m really discouraged by how stunted and puny everything is.

This is not puny and is vibrant and lovely (it’s new).

The speedwell is doing well by the pond and in the front flower bed. In this pic it’s by the pond (which really has an astonishing amount of greenery around it. So far, though, only the one lily bloomed.)

A little chrysanthemum from autumns past is continuing to return (smaller and smaller each year.) Check out its lovely buds.

So, although I’m feeling pretty sad about my garden I think I need to end the pity party. We do have two big sunflowers which are going to be really cool when they bloom and we do have lovely outdoor space with every so many trees and our bluebird visits us every day (yesterday it hovered like a hummingbird causing much excitement in the kitchen) and we’ve been having fun in the river:

and there were all these tiny little toads hopping around on the ground. Here is one:

And then it got scared and pooped.

p.s. So it’s a few hours later and I’m feeling more optimistic about everything. I was just outside on the front porch having a popsicle with Clark and using my brand new clippers to deadhead the daisies. I was thrilled to see that in fact on stems where I’d earlier deadheaded there were some teeny tiny buds. So it looks like I will have some more!
And, then I admired my hanging basket of pink geraniums which I’ve been extremely conscientiously deadheading since I got it and I noticed that it is just so lush and full with lots of lovely foliage and incoming buds.

Blueberries are in ripe abundance right now (and New Jersey has great blueberries) and that means one thing to me: lemon blueberry muffins! There are certainly about a million recipes for this pretty common baked good, and I have tons of baking books and magazines, but my very favorite recipe is one I picked up at a very interesting event. Every other year a local operating dairy farm is open for tours and a big sort of festival spotlighting New Jersey’s dairy farmers (in June of course because June is Dairy Month). Our first summer here it was going on very nearby and so we headed off to it. I picked up this recipe card there and have used it ever since:

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 c sugar
1/2 t salt
1 t grated lemon zest
2 eggs
2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 c buttermilk
1 pint blueberries (or, as this card proclaims “Jersey Fresh blueberries”)
1/4 c sugar (I prefer a big coarse sugar for this part)

Cream together the butter, sugar, and salt. Add lemon zest. Beat in eggs, one at a time, mixing until smoother.

Stir together flour and b.p. Add 1/3 dry to the creamed mixture, mix on low speed, add 1/2 the buttermilk, and so on, ending with flour.

Stir the berries in by hand.

Spoon into 12 muffin tins, sprinkle the tops with the 1/4 c sugar, bake in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes until golden. Allow to cool.

These just always come out great. I freeze them, too.

I didn’t photograph it, but I did make a peach blueberry crisp the other night too, which was heavenly warm with vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have any oatmeal on hand, so I used some maple granola I found in the pantry. I’ve been slacking when it comes to writing about my baking, so I’ll try to be better. So, no pics of the crisp, but here’s a garden photo…

It was Clark’s third birthday this past weekend and we had (for the first time) his party on his actual birthday. Lots of friends came and a good time was had by all, despite us having to head inside before we ate due to rain.  Since we’d only been back from California for a couple of days I decided to go with fewer things on the menu in greater quantities. I was very worried about not having enough food and as a consequence made too much and have a vat of coleslaw in my fridge.

The menu: hot dogs, Paul’s hamburgers (Paul makes the best hamburgers), pulled pork bbq sandwiches (I used my crock pot to make the pulled pork and it could not have been easier), macaroni salad (a great recipe from Cooking Light with cream cheese, sour cream, dijon, and shallots in the dressing), coleslaw, and amber ale baked beans.  For dessert there were cookies shaped like a #3 and…..a train cake. In the hustle and the bustle I forgot to photograph the cake before it left the kitchen, but happily you can see it in these pictures.

It made me really happy to see that Clark was really excited about the cake and totally into it.

The coal car had crumbled oreos in it for coal and the cakes were both chocolate and yellow. I made one have a strawberry filling and the other just had the regular frosting (which was a plain buttercream.) They were pretty tasty too!

It was really a fun day-so great to see Clark getting into being the birthday boy, so fun to watch him open his gifts.  Because he got to stay up late he ended his birthday with an exciting event he’s been wanting to do–catch fireflies! Usually he’s asleep by the time they come out, so it was a nice little summer birthday night treat to go outside and see the little glowing lights and run around catching them.  Happy birthday to our sweet little boy!

After a week away it’s good to be home again.  All the grass is brown and dead from lack of rain, but our plants seem to be doing ok and so is the vegetable garden.  Our water lily has finally bloomed! Isn’t it so gorgeous?

The coneflower has many blooms on it (this is the driveway coneflower which mysteriously appeared) and the bees are nutty for it. Tiny bees-a special kind or babies? I like the thought of baby bees. You can see the pollen covering them.

The driveway is apparently very fertile for plants because look how good these look now. These also attracted many bees and butterflies.

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The speedwell is finally blooming, and I was quite taken with these two, curling towards each other and looking like a heart.

Overall, the pond is ridiculously lush. Sad to say that Big Green Froggie has not been seen in a really long time and we think he must be dead. In his place is a medium froggie who we are starting to see quite a bit.

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p.s. I’ve just learned about wordle.net for creating pretty word clouds. I tried it with this site and the biggest word was “blooming.” Go ahead and try it yourself with your own blog!

Many thanks to Paul for my lovely new banner. From left to right: Tabitha with her big open mouth, blooming spiderwort, my awesome husband Paul, looking up underneath our gorgeous Japanese maple tree, Clark being a daredevil, a blooming peony, and me in front of Lake Erie.

I just haven’t posting as much as I’d like to lately, in part because I’ve been caught up in getting ready for a conference next week, and also things are sort of status quo in the garden. That said, I’m delighted that my Shasta daisies are blooming. And now that I think about it, things have changed I just haven’t photographed it! I’m really putting some effort into planning my front perennial garden to make it like a nice full cottage garden.

I’m going to transplant this huge rudbeckia which I don’t recall planting and think must have occurred naturally. A close up:

Growing next to this is a nice looking big coneflower plant which is literally growing out of the driveway. Obviously I didn’t plant it here and am hoping to successfully transplant it to the front garden.

I made some strides last year and last week we added several more plants. I’ve been reading Ralph Snodsmith’s Tri State Gardener at night and making notes about perennials I’d like to add, as well as how to care for my plants a little better.  Between that and the other garden blogs I’ve been reading I’ve realized I need to much more aggressively deadhead everything, so I’ve been heading out every day doing that. I’m also weeding a lot more than I used to because it’s easy to do with Clark around. In fact, he even helps me and informed me “I love weeding!”.

A look back at last year’s photos shows that by now the lilies in the pond were blooming and they still haven’t this year. The pond plants overall look great, but who knows what’s going on in there. We haven’t seen big green froggie in weeks, yet the little froggie is now a medium froggie and we see him quite a bit.

I’ve transplanted a lambs ear type thing that came from my friend’s mom’s garden two years ago.  If it’s not a weed it’s very much like one because it spreads like crazy.  Although it looks dead right now I’m sure next year it will be doing very well in that front garden.  I wish I’d know how crazy big the Russian Sage was going to get-it’s front and center and large and sprawling and really should be toward the back.

Things are just super hectic here right now. The next post will likely be about making Clark’s birthday cake-a train!

*First, a Happy Father’s Day to Paul, the best dad two kids could ever wish for!

We had an incredible thunder-lightning-rainstorm last night which left the world very wet and humid this morning. I actually thought it would be great picture taking conditions since it’s pretty overcast. When I thought about what I’d photograph today I was surprised to realize I actually have a bit less blooming than I did a month ago-no more spring blooms, my same containers are still blooming, and it didn’t seem fair to count the perennials I just bought yesterday afternoon and plunked into the ground. My first stop was the pond, but I was shocked to find out that about 2/3 of the water in the pond was gone!! Our best theory is that the filter/fountain had tipped over and the gusts of wind were so strong last night that they just blew all the water from the fountain right out onto the ground. We’ve refilled and so far nothing looks too bad.

The day lilies (stella d’oro?) are such consistent bloomers. We’ll have these yellow blooms all summer long and in the fall I’ll divide them.

This spiderwort has really gotten large since we first planted it next to the pond a couple years ago. We actually planted it much too close to the edge and last year I hacked it apart and moved it and it has done just fine ever since. I’m astonished that these purple flowers are only open for a very short morning period.

The large hostas next to the pond have started to bloom. I’m actually not too crazy about the flowers that hosta produce.

This lovely little pale pink flower surprised me as I’d forgotten that I planted it at the end of last summer. Apparently it’s an evening primrose.

The Shasta daisies are starting to open up.

Here is a coneflower still a ways off from blooming, but it looks neat. I’m excited and puzzled about this because it is a large plant with many potential flowers and it is growing right next to the driveway, where I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have planted one. And yet, the one I know for sure we planted looks puny.

Beautiful white lilies

This petunia is in a container with other pretty plants. I’m liking it so much I wish I’d gotten more petunias!

And finally, here is a container that is planted with portulaca. It doesn’t look so great right now (I’m hoping the portulaca might drape down a bit more), but I’m ever so pleased I’ve finally got something in it. This funky little container is a souvenir of a trip my good friend and I took down south. It was a road trip of exploring and checking out new places (oh the things we ate!) and our ramblings took us into a little garden center somewhere in South Carolina. It was a charming store and this was a wonderful thing to buy for myself because not only is it a nice planter, but it is also a great reminder of our trip!

Hopefully I’ll have some new visitors to my blog today, so I’m going to throw this gardening question out there and perhaps someone can help me out: What do I do with the dead and ratty looking blooms on my iris and peonies? Can I safely cut the tops off of all of them? The limp wet brown petals are really unsightly.

Thanks for dropping by!

What a surprise-Paul’s work was cancelled today due to the high temps (97?) and broken air conditioning at work! It was an unexpected holiday for us all.  I’ve been feeling  like the heat has been beating us down and the garden doesn’t even have anything new blooming in it, so it was a nice surprise to see the lilies bloomed today.  The white ones were here when we moved in, and I guess we planted the orange tiger lilies (though really I don’t quite remember this, but they weren’t there last year so I guess we did.):

One of my favorite scents is honeysuckle. Right now it is blooming and fragrant and I can smell it the moment I step out my door.  As you can see it is really an invasive vine covering this poor pine tree.  I love the flowers so much though that I haven’t even considered attempting to remove it.

Paul got to work a little bit more on the …..chicken coop! I cannot wait until we get chickens and have lovely fresh eggs every day.  For people who don’t know me, my dad grew up on a chicken farm (in the 40s and 50s) and at my house we also kept chickens, but just for fun and 4H.  Since Paul and I bought this house we’ve talked about getting chickens and have finally decided to.

In the late afternoon we celebrated the hot summer even more by heading down to the river in town and going swimming! Both kids loved it, though it was a struggle to keep Tabitha from eating the river rocks.

I have ever so many projects still that I want to do, but I can predict right now the gardening and sewing and craft stuff is going to slow down even more than usual as I have some work demands that are picking up.  I know my garden plans are not all going to get done this summer, but that’s ok.  We plan to be here for many many years!

By the way, our summer day ended perfectly with a big thunder and lightning storm and rain! Recommended reading to go with these hot summer thoughts? Elizabeth Enright’s Thimble Summer and of course And Then There Were Five.

We grow a lot of mint at our house.  Our mint comes from a bunch taken from my mom’s house, which was taken from our old house, which was taken from my grandmother’s house.  Clearly mint is the world’s easiest thing to grow and, not coincidentally, hard to get rid of! Some might call it a weed, but I love it. I like it that if someone walks through it you can smell it, plus it’s pretty. Our mint is somewhat fuzzy.  We use our mint in all of our iced tea.  A special treat is mint sherbet.

It’s a weird little recipe:

Pour 1 c boiling water over 12 sprigs mint. (12 sprigs? what is that? mom and I cannot quite decide so interpret as you wish. I usually count 2-4 leaves as a “sprig”) Let it cool.  Boil 1 c cold water with 1 Tbsp cornstarch. Boil for 5 minutes, then let cool.

Beat 3  egg whites until stiff. Beat in 1 dc sugar.  Add 3 Tbsp lemon juice, then the cornstarch mixture and minty water. And don’t forget the green food dye to tint it a nice minty green!  Pour it into a shallow pan and freeze. Then beat it. Then freeze it again.

This batch turned out rather dry and crumbly, but still was great tasting.  Some might say it is an acquired taste, after all it’s not peppermint.  I think it’s very refreshing.  It’s also nice with strawberries.  Next time I make it I’m going to try pouring the mixture right into my ice cream maker.

Today the temperature was in the 90s and it was humid, but I didn’t want to miss out on our pick-your-own at the farm this week–1 quart of strawberries.  It was well worth it and Clark enjoyed picking them.  The berries were huge and when we got back in the car they smelled heavenly as they were so warm.  They tasted amazing, too, all warm and sweet.

We went right home and made strawberry popsicles. Yum!