Farewell to Superman

Over seven years ago, while Ben was gone to the National Boy Scout Jamboree, I painted his room.  After tons of research which included the purchase of several official Superman comic books, I picked the perfect Superman blue and painted the walls.

Along with some awesome posters sent by Grandma Brooks, I found a great deal on a show stopping Alex Ross super hero montage.  In short, it was a really great room for a teenage boy.  However, seven years later, it's showing its age.  The paint makes the room seem darker and smaller.  In short, time for a change!

I was totally willing to paint the whole shebang while Ben was enjoying the South Pacific on his mission, but I was advised by a wise previously returned-missionary son that most missionaries like to return to at least something familiar.  Since I'd already repainted (and carpeted) much of the house, I waited for Ben's return.

We had a few discussions about color and quickly realized that Ben is ready to be gone.  His recent move to Provo for school and work is not a temporary thing.  It's the first step to being on his own.  So, I picked a paint that will work for a soon-to-be guest room, too.

So, here's the process...

Going...

...going...

...gone!

I'm afraid the picture doesn't really capture the color truly.  It's, yep, another shade from the Lifou lagoon palette.  This one is greener than the one I used in the family room.  And it has that reflective quality that I love.  The walls seem to glow from within.  Another view...

So, now the painting is all done, but I'm far from finished.  I 'have' to make a new quilt for the bed!  The trusty red and blue pineapple quilt that Ben loves so much is just not going to cut it any more.  I'm thinking some tropical Bali batiks would be nice.

And, so far, Ben hasn't seen the change.  Hee hee!  The men in this family are going to learn eventually that it is always risky to go off and leave me to entertain myself!

A New Quilt

In the middle of all the canning, weeding, gardening and other fall outdoor activities, I finally managed to finish the quilt for the tv room.

The pattern is 'Two Block Hop'.  Pattern and fabric all came from Connecting Threads.  Love that place!

I'm still learning the free-form quilting technique.  I think I need to make a quilt a week so that I have lots of practice.  lol.  That's not going to happen.

In (And Out of) The Garden -- September 29

Although there is still much growing and going on in the garden this time of year, the real focus, for me, has been bringing it all in and processing it for future use. The truth? I'm getting pretty tired of chopping, canning and freezing, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be happy I did it all come January.

I've been so happy with the carrot crop this year! The variety of color has been so much fun and the taste is absolutely delightful. I've sliced, shredded and/or cooked over 25 pounds of carrot this year. The truly amazing part is...

..not how huge some of the carrots are, but that they are still so tasty even when they are  huge.  I am not a fan of enormous vegetables generally (ask Senor Gringo what happens to oversized zucchini around here), but these huge carrots are every bit as good as their skinny counterparts.  And the carrots were not the only veggie to get enormous in the garden this year.

The 'Big Bertha' peppers have really out done themselves this year.  I had planted them in the new garden bed along the fence.  I was worried that they might not get enough sun there, but it looks like they got everything that they needed.  lol.  There are still dozens of peppers left on the plants that we may have to pick still green if they don't hurry up!

Another big success this year has been the 'Pink Chintz' time that I planted last year between the stepping stones just off the patio.

Each plant has close to two square feet of ground coverage.  Pretty good spread for a plant with leaves less than 1/4 inch long.  I was so happy with the ones I planted last year that I added three more this fall.

Love that fall sale at Willard Bay Gardens!  I also found some ruffly new pansies that I'll get planted when it cools off a bit.

In The Garden - September 15

Although I've spent most of my time lately in the kitchen canning, the garden is still growing like crazy. I haven't had a lot of time to work out there, but I have taken a few pictures to remember what's going on this time of year.

I planted 'Only The Lonely' nicotiana again this year.  I only plant it every few years as it takes a long time to get growing, but I love how it looks!  This photo was taken as the first stalk began to bloom.

A close up of the flowers shows how long and tubular that they are.  Perfect, of course, for hummingbirds to visit.  We've had lots and lots of them in the yard lately.

Now there are many stalks, many blooms and much fragrance!

'Betty Boop' has looked extraordinarily lovely this year.  For several years after I first planted it, it only bloomed in the fall.  Then, for a couple of years, it bloomed in the spring and then again in the fall.  This year, it has bloomed all year.  Started in the spring, bloomed right through the heat of summer and now it's sparkling in the fall garden.  Love it!

The 'Sweet Autumn' clematis is stunning this year.  And it's humming, too.  No, really.  There are so many bees in there that the whole plant hums and vibrates.  lol. 

A close-up of the clematis flowers.  They smell lovely, too!

Class Quilt 2012

It's finished.  I've finished this year's Free Block Class quilt.  This year's theme was all things Japanese.  Although I've loved the colors since the beginning, I wasn't really fond of some of the blocks.  Due to their really strong geometric shapes, the blocks were hard to put together into a pleasing arrangement.  I finally came up with something fun...half the blocks had pale blue borders added, half had white borders with navy cornerstones.  Setting them all on point made room for the navy print.

I did run into difficulty while machine quilting.  This is the largest quilt that I have free-motion quilted in one piece.  Some times, I felt like I was wrestling a bear.  I need a LOT more practice with the free-motion technique, too. 

Next week we'll be starting 'Dusty Trails' blocks in class, Southwestern themed blocks and colors. Can't wait!

Life's a Peach

Whew!  I'm so glad that's over.  It all started with this...

This is the harvest from our big peach tree.  I even weighed them - over 200 pounds.  Pretty unbelievable, isn't it???  Factor in the fact that I thinned over 50 percent of the peaches off the tree when they were about the size of an olive.  One branch on the tree was completely unreachable, even with a ladder, so it didn't get thinned and yep, it broke under the weight of the peaches.  Oh, and I harvested about 30 additional pounds from the baby peach tree.  Yikes!  After convincing my children that they needed to eat some, I started processing.

Remember the empty freezer?  It's not so empty any more.  I sliced thirty oversize quarts worth of peaches to go into the formerly empty cavern.  (I usually process peaches into 5 cup 'quarts' as after the juice is drained, there's just enough peaches for most recipes.)

Then I fired up the canner.  First day, I made 'sploosh' for Ben...

He was a bit disappointed with the flavor, thought it was a bit weak compared to the apricot sploosh that he'd been drinking from past years.  So, I tweaked the recipe a bit.  On the next canning day, I went all out...

Ten quarts of sploosh and seven quarts of peach halves in extra light syrup.  Whew!  What a day!  Makes for a pretty picture, though, I think.  I hadn't canned peach halves in a long time, so I thought it was time to refresh my skills. 

I also made three peach pies, but forgot to get a picture before we ate one and put two into the freezer.  In addition, I've sliced up about three gallons of peaches that have gone into the fridge and then mysteriously disappeared.  Apparently Yehudi likes peaches.

After I rest a bit, I'll post about all the other goodies I've made lately.

My Favorite Chore ... Said No One Ever

I'm a little late getting this done this year.  Took me a while to talk myself into it, to be honest.  So here we are, a couple of hours later, bruised (literally), stiff and really glad it's done.

Cleaning out the freezer is one of those thankless chores where I spend hours working away, but when I'm done, it's hard to tell that I've done much of anything at all.  So, here's a picture of the clean, empty freezer.  See, I don't really sit around and eat bon bons and watch soap operas all day.

The real difficulty in defrosting this freezer isn't the amount of work.  It's my height.  I'm short enough that I can't reach the bottom of the freezer without hanging from the front side.  I've got bruises on the front of both hips now.  (No, absolutely no pictures of that as proof!)  Try as I might, I've never figured out another way to get the job done.  

 Here's the newly restarted, refilled freezer.  I got rid of some past date stuff, organized the rest and now there's room for...

the couple of bushels of apples that you see here as well as the couple of bushels of peaches that you can't see.

Busy, Busy, Busy

Canning season is now in full swing.  I processed goodies three days in a row this week and will be cooking something up most every day for the foreseeable future.  I've put together a long to-do list for this year.  And FTR, I do really enjoy canning.  Makes me so happy to hear the lids pop as they seal and love looking at row after row of bottles on the shelf.  But it is a lot of work and I get so tired after a day of chopping, stirring and steaming.  lol.

An hour's worth of picking yielded this bounty of lovelies.

First round...seven quarts of crushed tomatoes.  I was so happy with the ones that I bottled last year that more of these were high on the to-do list this year.  So far, I'm pretty happy with the 'Rutgers' tomato variety that I grew this year.  This batch included a lot of very small tomatoes due, I think, to the high night time temperatures we've been having.  Hopefully, once the temps cool a bit, more of the tomatoes will be of the large size.  At any size, they are very tasty both fresh and cooked.  And, I have to admit, it gives me a little thrill that I started these tomatoes out from seed back in January. 

Seven pints of tomatillo salsa.  This year's batch is awesome!  Last year's was pretty good, this one is really tasty.  I've eaten most of the approximate one cup left over after bottling.  I'm planning on a couple more batches as, not only is it very tasty, but this picking was less than one third of the tomatillo crop currently ripe.  I've also been researching chili verde recipes to make and freeze.  Can't wait to try those!

Two pints 'pickle' relish from a new recipe.  With only about a tablespoon overage in this batch, we didn't get much of a taste yet, but what we had was yummy.  Mike was home when I processed these and he approves of the finished product, too.  We sat down and figured out that the two of us would need at least 10 pints of relish total to get us through a year.  Yeah.  That's a lot!  We both like it on hot dogs, in tuna salad and my potato salad recipe uses up to a cup per batch.  I'll be making much more of this during this canning season.

I also made a couple of discoveries about canning this week.  First, I can't possible grow enough cilantro to keep up with demand.  I have a real love-hate relationship with cilantro.  I think it smells and tastes like old sweat socks.  I've tried substituting other herbs for it in recipes, but the plain truth is, Mexican salsas don't taste like they should without cilantro.  So, I keep trying to grow it, but it's always already bolted by the time I need it.  I guess I should be planting a few plants every week to keep a fresh supply on hand, but I just don't have room in the garden for that.  I'll just have to keep running to the store for cilantro every time I make salsa.

Also, we're going to have way more apples and peaches than we can eat this year.  Turns out, too many peaches isn't going to be much of a problem as Ben has rediscovered 'sploosh' and is willing to drink as much of it as I can bottle.  Apples, on the other hand, are going to be trickier to deal with.  I've been researching apple pie filling and applesauce recipes and will probably be trying out some new ones this year.

Last, I really just might be losing my mind.  I was down in our food storage room grabbing yet another box of pint jars to fill, when I had the thought 'wouldn't it be fun to fill every jar with somthing yummy this year?' flash through my head.  I put the craziness down to boiling vinegar brain-damage, but it does keep coming back.  I think it would be cool to fill all the jars and maybe even have to buy a few more.  Hopefully, that's just my overachieving OCD self talking and not some kind of divine inspiration about how high food prices are going to be this winter. 

In The Garden - August 9

Everything is changing quickly in the garden now!  I can see changes from the time I check the beds in the morning until I check in the evening.  I don't even want to talk about how fast the zucchinis are growing!

The apple crop is huge this year, which may not be a good thing.  Not only do we have more apples than we need, but we may have more apples than the little tree can sustain without damage.  However, I'm not the gardener in charge of thinning them, so I guess we'll just see how this all ends up.

On our larger peach tree, the peaches are beginning to blush a bit.  The peaches are still a bit small, but seem to get larger every time I water the tree.  Ben is looking forward to a fresh batch of 'sploosh' this year.  Looks like we'll have plenty for that as well as pie!

This hibiscus is such a show off.  Never content to unfurl one bloom at a time, it opens a whole party of the lovely fancy-dress blooms at a time.

Each bloom is about 10 inches in diameter and such a beautiful pink.  I'm so glad that I found this variety!

The Rudbekia 'Goldsturm' is especially floriferous.  And so bright in color!  I'd like to have some more clumps of this in the yard, but I'm not sure if all 'Goldsturm' is this amazing.  I may just need to wait until these are ready to divide rather than risk being disappointed.

Pumpkin Watch 2012

Whoa!  It's pumpkin season again.  I planted 'Rouge Vif  D'Etampes' (the Cinderella pumpkin) and 'Jarradale' pumpkins this year.  The vines have been huge for a couple of months, but suddenly, the pumpkins are getting big, too.  And some of these guys are starting to scare me a bit!

This one is actually ripening in the asparagus bed (that's the ferny stuff that you can see) about 10 feet away from where the plant is actually rooted.

 This is actually the darkest orange pumpkin in the patch.  It's not quite a foot in diameter.

This is 'Big Mama'!  This one is nearly twenty feet away from the first one pictured, actually at the end of the bed and almost to the fence.  It's also, so far, the biggest of all, about 15 inches in diameter and still growing. By Halloween, this one might actually be big enough to make Cinderella a coach from without any magic required.

This is one of the 'Jarradale' pumpkins looking not quite so festive.  They are still quite green, but will eventually turn grey blue.  This type is supposed to be a better long-term storage pumpkin which will be quite a feat as the Cinderella pumpkins usually stay good into February in my experience.

Just a note to my little pumpkin-loving buddies: No matter how many pumpkins Granny grows, we still have a date for the pumpkin patch this fall. That is one of the highlights of the harvest season! lol.

Catching Up Again

Last year's catsup project was a smashing success.  The finished product was delicious on everything that we tried it on.  We even went through a tater tot jag as they were extra, extra yummy with the homemade goodness on them.  So, when I planted tomatoes this year, I planned for plenty of tomatoes to make a new batch.  I began with 24 pound of tomatoes...

added 3 pounds of onions...

After blending them all up together, I had over two gallons of tomato smoothie...

which I cooked down to about 7 pints of catsup-y goodness.

I ended up with an extra half cup or so that we'll try with our burgers tomorrow.  Eight hours total effort.  I know...but it's worth it, I think.

A Noteworthy Day

No rain for weeks. Wildfires all over the state of Utah. And now, this...

Starting raining about three hours ago and it's still coming down.

I was working in the yard, pulling weeds and putting down mulch, when the rain began.  I'd be totally happy to have to call a halt to yard work until tomorrow if I have to.  Love, love, love the rain!

In The Garden - June 28

The garden is growing like a, well, weed. Thought I'd post an overview picture to show just how grand this gardening season is.

The chili pepper plants are still a bit wussy even though I've been giving them the every-other-week Miracle-Gro treatment.  There are, however, a few tiny peppers, so I will be making something a bit spicy soon!

This is not a pic of some lovely new perennial flower, although I do have a few of those, too.  This is my potato patch.  I've grown these 'Carola' potatoes before, but they have never, ever looked like this before.  I'm just hoping that the potatoes under the ground look as good as the vines and flowers are looking above the ground.

This picture doesn't really begin to portray the size and scope of the the pumpkin/corn patch this year.  Those pumpkin leaves are about a foot across.  Every morning, I spend some time heading the pumpkin vines back into the bed.  Pretty soon, they'll be all over the whole garden at this rate!

This is one of the lovely 'Moulin Rouge' sunflowers that I have planted every year for the last several years.  Last year, the volunteer sunflowers were just a bit red with lots of yellow as they had crossed with the native sunflowers.  I was very dedicated in removing the volunteers this year, so thus far, the sunflowers are all very red.  However, they are also incredibly early.  The main reason that I plant this type is that they seem to attract some small orioles that are traveling south every year in September.  I'm worried that the flowers will be completely done with blooming and will have dropped all their seeds long before the little yellow visitors get here this year.

A new perennial, planted last fall.  I really love yarrow, but often have a hard time keeping the colored flower forms alive.  They quickly revert to white-only flowers.  We'll see how this one does long term.

A brand-new conflower (purchased from Willard Bay Gardens and planted yesterday).  Called 'Secret Romance' it is very double and very pink.  I love coneflowers and have several types:  tall ones, short ones, pink and other colors, big-flowered, small-flowered and now double flowered.  I love these for many reasons, not the least of which is their ability to attract butterflies and hummingbirds.  This new lovely is going to live in the bed near the deck, so I hope that it will attract many visitors to the yard.