Firsts of the Season

We've had a few firsts of the growing season this week.

I ate the first tomato of the season on Thursday.  No picture as I pounced on it and gobbled it up before I even thought about taking a pic.  It was delicious, a little 'Sungold' cherry tomato from the plants in the barrel on the patio.

I also ate the first ripe apricot of the season on Thursday.  I've eaten about a dozen since.  They are very good this year and a good size, too.  I'm either going to need a ladder to pick some of them or need to find a tall boy to help.  Oh, Ben....

Jess brought over a large bag of very delicious sweet cherries this week, so we've eaten our first cherries of the year.  Thanks Jess for sharing!

Last, but definitely not least as this will last all year, I did the first canning of the year.  I made 7 jars of strawberry currant juice yesterday and another 7 bottles of straight currant juice today. 

Between the two batches, there was about a pint leftover that Mike made into strawberry currant lemonade.  He and Ben seemed to have enjoyed it, so I'm guessing that it's a good year for juice.

It is also an early year for juice.  I made juice about a month later last year and almost two weeks later the year before.  Our mild winter and very warm spring apparently got the currant bushed working hard to finish their crop before the real heat hits.

Going Retro or...

how everything old is new again.

I have wanted a clothes line for years.  First, I couldn't think of a good place for it, then not all family members thought it was a great idea.  Finally, once we got the deck and pergola finished, I had a great place.  I researched retractable clothes lines for quite a while before just picking one.  So far, I'm really loving this one.

For the past month, I've been using the line for more loads each week.  It is NOT big enough for all the laundry at once, but I can get about 1 1/2 loads on it at one time.  Now that the weather is quite warm, I can dry a load on the line outside almost as quickly as I can in the dryer downstairs.  I do need more clothes pins, too, as I run out of those before I run out of things to hang.

I still dry our bath towels in the dryer so we're not sandpapering our skin when we dry off.  I also tumble dry most of our colored clothes so that they don't fade, although I'm not sure it would make a big difference as most of the drying time is in the morning when the sun is blocked by the house.

I'm not sure how much money this process saves me.  I'm not sure that saving money is the point anyway.  I know I do look forward to laundry day in a way that I haven't before.  That's probably just because I'd always rather be outside than in.  lol.

I Told Them To Be Nicer To Their Little Brother!

When my sons were younger, I kept telling the older ones to be nicer to baby brother Ben as I figured he'd be bigger than they were when all was said and done.  Haven't had a chance to measure him for two years so we took care of that when he returned. 

Those rascals should have listened to me.  lol.  Lucky for them, baby brother is a nice guy.

Solar Eclipse

I was really excited about this solar eclipse as Utah was supposed to be the target zone for totality.  All would have been well except for this wacky Utah spring weather.  First the sky looked like this...

Not too promising for eclipse watching.  Then the clouds started to break up a bit, but still, never a clear peek.

Finally, after getting a bit tired of the whole process, Mike and I sat down on the lawn swing with our backs to the sun.  Lo, and behold, look at the cool shadows that the eclipse made on the back door a few minutes later.  lol.

One of these days, I'm going to see a total eclipse!  Just wasn't today.

He's Home!

Elder Benjamin Coffey has returned from his mission to the South Pacific.

He is taller, thinner, and tanner than when he left. At the moment, he's also more tired and more soft spoken. Tired as he was traveling for over 30 hours total including layovers. Soft spoken as he is translating every thing he says from French or Kanak before he says it in English. I'm so glad he's home!

Oh Yeah!

Sometimes, I go a little crazy when I make Mexican food.  Case in point...

tonight's dinner.  Four enchiladas would have been enough for Mike and I, but NO!  I had to go and make many, many more.  We'll be eating good for days.  Luckily, enchiladas only get better in the freezer.

In The Garden - May 6

Flower update:

The irises are amazing this year.  The stalks are long and the blooms...well, as you can see, the blooms are lovely.

Viburnum plicatum plicatum.  My favorite shrub to hate.  This year, definitely a favorite year.  The thing looked like we'd had a heavy snow fall.  Some years, there're about three blooms total.  Epic fail.  lol.  Years like this make me want to plant another one.

Up close view of the funky flowers on the viburnum.  Cool, huh?

My baby lilac.  My goal is to have this plant grow tall enough that I can smell lilac blooms through the kitchen window.  At the moment, though, it's only about three feet tall.  And the flowers are so heavy that they droop.  Poor little guy!

Up close view of the droopy flowers.  This cultivar is double-flowered which is why they're so heavy, I guess.  They're also very fragrant.  I wasn't sure they would be as fragrance seems to be the first characteristic to disappear when breeders start messing with flower structure.

South gate to the backyard lined with soapwort.  Kinda cool, I think.  Especially since I only planted 5 small soapwort plants originally.  They are the epitome of the word 'self-seeding'.  At the moment, it works for me.  If they start coming up everywhere, I might not be so sangfroid about it.

Close up of the soapwort blossoms.  Each one is less than a half inch across, but what they lack in size, they make up for in number!